Lambda-CDM theory - Woo or not?

[Michael Mozina]

Mozina's arguments here are not just unscientific, they are anti-scientific, and constitute an example of his continual denial of the validity of science. His opinion does not alter the objective facts. Dark energy is an empirically testable hypothesis which has in fact been empirically tested.

Just a week or so ago you agreed that you are "interpreting" the redshift phenomenon "differently/subjectively" than say Ari's tired light "interpretation". Now you can't seem to distinguish *INTERPRETATION* from "empirical".

Let's review. You can't even tell me where "dark energy" comes from. Even *IF* we "assume" that acceleration is a valid "interpretation" of the redshift data, you still cannot show a "cause/effect" relationship between "acceleration" and "dark energy" in any sort of controlled experiment anymore than I can demonstrate a relationship between "God energy" and that same acceleration.

What you have here is a *RELIGION* Tim, not "empirical physics". Empirical forces of nature like EM fields show up in real life experiments. They are not impotent on Earth and they can be MEASURED on Earth. Your sky gods are impotent on Earth, more impotent than your average religious icon. Even most religions *ASSUME* that God can manipulate the human mind here and now. We might measure something that has a tangible effect here and now. Your "religion" however is a pure "act of faith" in something that cannot only NOT be measured, it can never HOPE to be measured in a controlled experiment here on Earth. It's an impotent (on Earth) "sky god" forever and ever.

That hypothesis has passed its empirical tests. Observation and theory are mutually consistent, and that consistency is the heart & soul of science.

Ari's theories have also been put through those same "tests" Tim. Why did you choose a "faster than light speed expansion" over a static universe again?

I have already demonstrated these objective facts in numerous past posts (e.g., Empirical Evidence for Dark Energy (17 August 2010), Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Inflation and Real Science (16 May 2010), Cosmological Parameters (12 February 2010), Dark Energy is a Cosmological Constant III (7 February 2010), Inflationary cosmology is real science (30 January 2010), Dark Energy is a Cosmological Constant (26 january 2010), Inflationary cosmology & science (10 January 2010)).

the bottom line is this:


Certainly the idea of dark energy stands on strong empirical grounds; it is testable, it has been tested, it has passed the those tests with greater confidence than any other hypothesis that has been presented.

What confidence? You can't even tell me where dark energy comes from Tim. What kind of confidence is that? You can't tell me how to "control" it in a real "experiment" here on Earth, in fact it can't be "measured" at all here on Earth. All you can ever hope to do is point at the sky and offer me a "dark energy sky god of the gaps" argument, evidently till the end of time.

Mozina's comments stand on a firm foundation of profound ignorance. Is there anyone else out there who fails to appreciate the difference between background and foreground? The CMB is a cosmic microwave background. Galaxies and galaxy clusters are a non cosmic microwave foreground. It is not a terribly demanding task to realize that in a system of [background + foreground] then [background + foreground - foreground = background].

You missed the point Tim. We can clearly see that galaxies and stars, combined with scattering effects are the LIGHT SOURCES of this specific wavelength, not some "magic explosion" somewhere back in time. We can see from the FOREGROUND what the POINT SOURCES of light are for this specific wavelength of light. Put enough galaxies at a great distance, use enough scattering processes, and viola, you don't need "expanding space monkeys" and mythical creation stories anymore.

Standard LCDM cosmology requires the existence of a background electromagnetic radiation that is very strictly thermal, meaning that is very strictly adheres to a Planck Law spectral energy density (SED). One cannot clearly see the very weak background until one has removed the very strong foreground.

All you are doing Tim is removing the closest 'point sources' so that all you observe are the scattering effects over time and distance. So what? What you fail to note is that SUNS create these wavelengths and the plasmas of space absorb and emit them.

Mozina says, "The absorption and emission of such light has long been proposed as a source for such a 'background radiation'." But he has it all wrong. All the way back in 1926, Sir Arthur Eddington addressed that very question in his book The Internal Constitution of the Stars. Eddington explicitly pointed out that the background starlight has an "effective temperature", but is necessarily has a non-thermal SED.

Ya, because he wasn't trying to "subtract out" all the foreground effects, all the solar emission patterns etc. Now however, you have some great emotional need to do that in some feeble effort to support a "creation event" where everything comes from a singular "clump".

The CMB predicted by big bang cosmology must be thermal. So to insist that anyone has "long proposed" that the non-thermal starlight & galaxy emission is in fact the same thing as the thermal CMB is clearly just plain wrong.

Again Tim, you simply ignore the fact that your "foreground subtraction" process takes out all the point sources and all you're then left with are the EMISSIONS from plasma that fill space and absorb and emit these wavelengths. So what? That does NOT correlate to a "creation event". You simply IGNORED Ari's *INTERPRETATION* altogether. Why?

Big bang cosmology survives as the leading cosmological paradigm for several reasons.

It's mostly propped up by a pathetic heaping of "peer pressure" if this conversation is any indication of how it works. If one doesn't buy the dogma, one doesn't get/keep a job.

One of those reasons is that all big bang cosmologies predict the existence of a pervasive thermal CMB, and that observations in all cases confirm the existence of a thermal CMB that meets the requirements of the paradigm.

It only meets those requirements because you intentionally and methodically "subtracted out" everything that didn't fit with your preconceived ideas, including Ari's "Interpretation" of that same redshift phenomenon.

Alternate cosmological models might allow for such a CMB, but they do not require it. Only big bang cosmologies require it.

Right. That's why you have such a strong emotional need to "subtract out" everything that doesn't "fit" with your ideas about where that light originates, starting with every sun and galaxy you can find.

That's why the empirical existence of the CMB favors big bang cosmologies over competing or alternate cosmologies.

It's just a popular dogma at the moment. 25 years ago however, "dark energy" wasn't even a part of the dogma. The dogma changes but the dark energy never materializes in a real "experiment" because none of you even know where it comes from, let alone how to acquire any of it or "control" it.

Mozina's appeal to look only at the raw images from which the CMB is derived is an appeal to ignore science & reason.

Oh bull. It's an appeal to pure reason and pure logic. We can see from the raw images that suns and galaxies emit this specific wavelength of light. If we subtract out all the suns and galaxies from the image, all we are left with are the emissions from plasmas in the universe. So what if they are relatively uniform in distribution? Why wouldn't they be since you already "subtracted out' anything that wasn't "uniform" in the first place?!?!? WTF?

Mozina's claim that dark energy is without empirical merit is based on his own rejection of empirical science.

You have reality standing on it's head again Tim. I don't reject empirical physics like EM fields, just magical energies that fail to show up in any controlled experiment. It's not my fault you can't tell "empirical science" from mathematical myth making with impotent (on Earth) sky beings.

This thread has grown to 115 pages, 4580 posts, and yet nothing new has been added since the first few pages, the first few posts.

That is because your sky entities are impotent on Earth, and somehow you blame me for that flaw. It's like a religious person blaming me that they cannot show any correlation between their beliefs and something they call 'God' at the level of empirical physics. How is that my fault Tim? If you could make your sky entities show up here in a real experiment with actual control mechanisms, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Since you can't do that, and dark sky energy is impotent on Earth, it's always and forever going to be an act of faith on the part of the believer and you'll forever be unable to move a single atom with your impotent sky god here on Earth. I can move all kinds of things with EM fields Tim. It's no skin off my nose if your mythical sky god is impotent on Earth.

It's just a long string of Mozina claiming to be more scientific & empirical than everyone else, while at the same time actually rejecting science & empiricism! How ludicrous is this whole thread, and how ludicrous are Mozina's arguments!

What is ludicrous is that you cannot tell the difference between a demonstrated empirical force of nature like an EM field and "sky energies" that are impotent on Earth. What is ludicrous is that you believe that the EM field is not "kinetic" in nature. Since you do not even understand the very basics of light and it's transfer of kinetic energy into other atoms, of course you cannot conceive of absorption and emission of light from plasmas in space. Ignorance is not bliss Tim.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Wrong: tired light theories predated your birth and have been dead for a long time (Errors in Tired Light Cosmology). Get over it MM.

They are only dead *TO YOU* because you handwave at them very consistently. Somehow that's my fault? Did you find an actual flaw in Ari's math RC?

 

[GeeMack]

Just a week or so ago you agreed that you are "interpreting" the redshift phenomenon "differently/subjectively" than say Ari's tired light "interpretation". Now you can't seem to distinguish *INTERPRETATION* from "empirical".

[* Wall of complaints snipped. *]

Not a single objective criticism in all that complaining. Lying about the legitimate science behind LCDM theory? Check. Invoking gods and religion that somehow only the crackpots think are useful in a scientific discussion? Yep. Arguments from ignorance? Certainly. Unqualified, unsupported objections? Yes. No alternative explanations for the data offered. Not a single comment in all that argument-by-complaint is quantitative or objective, or has any bearing on the real science of LCDM theory. Just a huge rail against real scientists who understand the physics involved and who aren't giving the cranks a break. Tough.

 

[Reality Check]

They are only dead *TO YOU* because you handwave at them very consistently. Somehow that's my fault? Did you find an actual flaw in Ari's math RC?

That is dumb - there is no hand waving. The empirical data rules out tired light theories: Errors in Tired Light Cosmology

• There is no known interaction that can degrade a photon's energy without also changing its momentum, which leads to a blurring of distant objects which is not observed.
• The tired light model does not predict the observed time dilation of high redshift supernova light curves.
• The tired light model can not produce a blackbody spectrum for the Cosmic Microwave Background without some incredible coincidences.
• The tired light model fails the Tolman surface brightness test.

It is your fault when you ignore the empirical data.
I saw no flaw in Ari's math. Pity that it does not describe the real universe.

 

[Reality Check]

Lets look at the preprints of Ari Brynjolfsson 'papers':
Redshift of photons penetrating a hot plasma (2005, no sign of publication)
Plasma Redshift, Time Dilation, and Supernovas Ia (2004, no sign of publication)
The type Ia supernovae and the Hubble's constant (2004, no sign of publication)
Weightlessness of photons: A quantum effect (2006, no sign of publication)
Hubble constant from lensing in plasma-redshift cosmology, and intrinsic redshift of quasars (2004, no sign of publication)
Magnitude-Redshift Relation for SNe Ia, Time Dilation, and Plasma Redshift (2006 presentation)
Surface brightness in plasma-redshift cosmology (2006, presentation).

So what we have are a few single author preprints and presentations.
The reason that he has not been able to publish his work is simple - it is fundementally flawed like all tired light theories.

 

[Dancing David]

Lets look at the preprints of Ari Brynjolfsson 'papers':
Redshift of photons penetrating a hot plasma (2005, no sign of publication)
Plasma Redshift, Time Dilation, and Supernovas Ia (2004, no sign of publication)
The type Ia supernovae and the Hubble's constant (2004, no sign of publication)
Weightlessness of photons: A quantum effect (2006, no sign of publication)
Hubble constant from lensing in plasma-redshift cosmology, and intrinsic redshift of quasars (2004, no sign of publication)
Magnitude-Redshift Relation for SNe Ia, Time Dilation, and Plasma Redshift (2006 presentation)
Surface brightness in plasma-redshift cosmology (2006, presentation).

So what we have are a few single author preprints and presentations.
The reason that he has not been able to publish his work is simple - it is fundementally flawed like all tired light theories.

Really four unpublished?

Really?

sad.

 

[Michael Mozina]

That is dumb - there is no hand waving. The empirical data rules out tired light theories: Errors in Tired Light Cosmology

• There is no known interaction that can degrade a photon's energy without also changing its momentum, which leads to a blurring of distant objects which is not observed.
• The tired light model does not predict the observed time dilation of high redshift supernova light curves.
• The tired light model can not produce a blackbody spectrum for the Cosmic Microwave Background without some incredible coincidences.

• 
  
  You either didn't read his work about supernova light curves or your simply ignored it. There is no "blackbody spectrum" in the CMB as we can observe in RAW (unprocessed) images. There's only a 'blackbody spectrum" after you PROCESS the image to get it to look like a blackbody spectrum! Holy cow!
  
  

  The tired light model fails the Tolman surface brightness test.

  
  Which physical "test" was that RC?
  
  

  I saw no flaw in Ari's math.

  
  I didn't think so.
  
  

  Pity that it does not describe the real universe.

  
  IMO it's a pity that you're so willing and even eager to tweak the parameters and properties of your impotent sky gods till the cows come home but you can't even conceive of "tweaking" any tired light parameters as required.
  
  I think it's pretty damn clear that math is irrelevant. Not a single one of you found a single mathematical flaw in Ari's work but you all handwave at it as though it's already been falsified somehow. What a crock. You folks don't actually care about math. You simply use your mathematical skill set like a sledge hammer to pound on individuals that dare to question your dogma. If you actually cared about the math, you'd go though Ari's work and find his flaw. Since you aren't actually interested in "truth' or "math", you all sort of handwave at it, and ignore the work entirely.
  
  I think you need to get used to the idea that tired light theories have always and will always be an alternative to your personal redshift interpretations. It may not be as "popular" at the moment as other "interpretations", but it's always been a competing concept and it always will be a competing concept.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Not a single objective criticism in all that complaining.

Ah, more pure denial. Objectively speaking, your sky entities are *MORE* impotent on Earth than your average religious icon. Most religions assume that their God has some tangible effect here and now on Earth. Your dark sky entity is such a big wussy, he can't even move a single atom or manipulate a single photon on Earth today. What a pathetic and impotent sky god.

You've shown no empirical link between acceleration and dark energy. That is in fact a valid and empirically objective criticism of your belief system. Denial is just plain ugly.

 

[Tubbythin]

There's only a 'blackbody spectrum" after you PROCESS the image to get it to look like a blackbody spectrum! Holy cow!

Nope, there's only a blackbody spectrum after you process the image to remove the foreground. The background could have been anything. The fact that it is a blackbody spectrum would be absolutely astonishing if we didn't already know exactly why it was there.

 

[ben m]

You've shown no empirical link between acceleration and dark energy.

True or false, Michael:

When you imagine a Universe in which there is such a thing as "vacuum energy" AND that (in this imagined Universe) GR treats vacuum energy exactly like any other energy, when you calculate that Universe's CMB/CMBpol/LyA/SNe/LSS/BBN/BAO/cluster-mass behavior, it looks like what we see in the data.

Answer: True or false? There is no possible "waaaa it's not empirical its just god fairies" objection; we're applying the laws of GR to a hypothetical universe. That's something scientists can do.

If you wanted to know what a Universe containing nothing but 17 keV muon neutrinos and axions would look like, I can tell you. (I can do that even though axions are hypothetical and 17 keV muon neutrinos definitely do not exist.) If you want to know what a cylindrical Universe filled with a hot e+e- plasma would look like, I can tell you. (I can do that even though the result looks nothing like the real Universe.)

So answer the question: under the hypothesis (which may be true or approximately true or false) that a hypothetical Universe were to contain 73% "vacuum energy", and 22% dark matter, and 5% baryons, all of which are hypothesized to obey the GR equations, calculate the CMB/CMBpol/SNe/LyA/etc. observables.

(This is called a "hypothesis". Get used to it.)

True or false? Do calculations of the CMB/CMBpol/LSS/etc. in the hypothetical Universe look like, or look different than, the data in the real one? I await your answer.

 

[GeeMack]

Ah, more pure denial. Objectively speaking, your sky entities are *MORE* impotent on Earth than your average religious icon.

To claim that is "objectively speaking" is either a lie or a ludicrous attempt to bastardize the English language in order to support a nonsensical pseudoscientific fantasy. Oh, that would be a lie, too. Okay, so argument-by-bare-faced-lie.

Most religions assume that their God has some tangible effect here and now on Earth. Your dark sky entity is such a big wussy, he can't even move a single atom or manipulate a single photon on Earth today. What a pathetic and impotent sky god.

You've shown no empirical link between acceleration and dark energy. That is in fact a valid and empirically objective criticism of your belief system. Denial is just plain ugly.

Argument by prattling gibberish rejected. It's more nonsense. And again, not a single piece of objective criticism of LCDM theory. Just more complaining. And since it appears that whining and complaining is all the EU/PC kiddies have, if they were honest they'd fold up their tents and go home. Trouble is, they're not honest.

 

[Reality Check]

You either didn't read his work about supernova light curves or your simply ignored it. There is no "blackbody spectrum" in the CMB as we can observe in RAW (unprocessed) images. There's only a 'blackbody spectrum" after you PROCESS the image to get it to look like a blackbody spectrum! Holy cow!

Holy cow - you have really gone off the deep end there, Michael Mozina !
Do you realize how insane it is to accuse all of the scientists who have analyzed the RAW CMB data of purposely PROCESSING it to make it into the most perfect blackbody spectrum ever seen?

The processing of the CMB data is complex but is basically removing the foreground microwave soureces, e.g. the Milky Way. A nice diagram of the processing pipelin is on Max Tegmark's CMB data analysis center page.

Which physical "test" was that RC?

The Tolman surface brightness test (Errors in Tired Light Cosmology) and:

• There is no known interaction that can degrade a photon's energy without also changing its momentum, which leads to a blurring of distant objects which is not observed.
• The tired light model does not predict the observed time dilation of high redshift supernova light curves.
• The tired light model can not produce a blackbody spectrum for the Cosmic Microwave Background without some incredible coincidences.

IMO it's a pity that you're so willing and even eager to tweak the parameters and properties of your impotent sky gods till the cows come home but you can't even conceive of "tweaking" any tired light parameters as required.

More idiotic religious stuff from you.

1. No tweaking allows tired light theories to not blur distant objects .
2. No tweaking allows tired light theories to predict the observed time dilation of high redshift supernova light curves.
3. Extreme tweaking can produce a blackbody spectrum but this leads to a real problem: Errors in Tired Light Cosmology
   

   The FIRAS data limit this prefactor to 1.00001+/-0.00005, which requires that the CMB come from redshifts less than 0.00005, or distances less than 0.25 Mpc. This is less than the distance to the Andromeda Galaxy M31, and we know the Universe is transparent well beyond this distance. In fact, since millimeter wave emission is observed to come from galaxies at redshifts of 4.7 or higher, the tired light model fails this test by 100,000 standard deviations.

   (emphasis added)

Add to this

• AFAIK: tired light theories cannot predict the power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background radiation temperature anisotropy.

I think it's pretty damn clear that math is irrelevant. Not a single one of you found a single mathematical flaw in Ari's work but you all handwave at it as though it's already been falsified somehow.

Ari's math is completely relevant (and correct).
Ari's work is just another example of a theory that is mathematically correct but does not match the observations of the real universe.

I think you need to get used to the idea that tired light theories have always and will always be an alternative to your personal redshift interpretations.

You are deluded in your opinion: The physical evidence is that tired light theories will never be an alternative to the theories that actually work.

 

[ben m]

Not a single one of you found a single mathematical flaw in Ari's work but you all handwave at it as though it's already been falsified somehow.

I did not handwave: I compared Ari's 1998-data-based prediction to the (much better) 2011 data and the prediction was wrong. That's what falsification means. That's how it works.

If you actually cared about the math, you'd go though Ari's work and find his flaw.

Two comments.

First, Ari's work contains two things: math, and a hypothesis that the Universe contains the bath of ultra-uniform, dense, hot plasma ... which he guesses is there and plugs into his calculations. If the math is right AND this plasma is there, then the predictions should have been right.

The predictions were not right. That means that either the math is wrong OR the plasma is not there. Why don't you care that the predictions were wrong?

Second: the math IS wrong. In, for example, http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0401420 (whose "math" is sloppily tossed together to begin with) the most straightforwardly-obvious error is on page 8. The author takes the motion of an electron in a photon field, and begins writing it simple harmonic motion. He then, utterly incorrectly, takes the electron's total kinetic energy---dominated by thermal energy, e.g. motion in a straight line---and plugs it into the term that was intended to represent the oscillation energy only. This gives him an equation describing a highly-excited harmonic oscillator, and he claims to calculate the radiation of that. But he shouldn't have had a highly-excited oscillator; without the mistake, he would have had a scarcely-excited oscillator with a large (but nonradiating) translational kinetic energy.

Get on it, Michael. Ari mistakenly derived that hot plasmas "redshift" light. He applied that mistaken effect to a hot, dense plasma that he hypothesized fills our Universe. The result "describes" a Universe in which the supernova magnitudes get super-linearly dimmer with redshift; the actual Universe we live in has a magnitude-redshift curve that dims (relative to linear) from z=0.5 to z=1 and then brightens beyond that.

 

[Tim Thompson]

Plasma Redshift Cosmology Fails

Just a week or so ago you agreed that you are "interpreting" the redshift phenomenon "differently/subjectively" than say Ari's tired light "interpretation".

Reference my earlier post:

Although the emphasis on "interpretation" is exaggerated, the technical point is correct and we should keep that in mind. The expansion of the universe, and the probable acceleration thereof, are definitely not observed but are definitely an interpretation of the relationship between observed redshifts and observed distances. The redshift-distance relationship is, in my mind, the real key. I am unaware of any alternative cosmology even trying to reproduce this key fact of the universe, and many respond to their demise by denying it altogether. Any alternative cosmology, EU/PC included, must be able to reproduce the observed (not "interpreted") strong correlation between redshift & distance.

Now you can't seem to distinguish *INTERPRETATION* from "empirical".

Interpretations are empirical, there is no "distinguishing" to be done.

You simply IGNORED Ari's *INTERPRETATION* altogether. Why?

I could not have "ignored" Ari's interpretation because I had no idea who or what you are talking about. I have been on a month long rambling vacation with virtually no internet access and have not been able to follow this thread. So I have spent the last few days searching for "Ari" and his interpretation. Now I know you are talking about Ari Brynjolfsson and his plasma redshift cosmology. Had I been aware of who & what you were talking about at the time, I certainly would not have ignored him. His "cosmology" is far too easy to disprove to ignore.

The difference between me & Brynjolfsson is certainly not simply a matter of interpretation, it is a matter of physics, and Brynjolfsson's is dead wrong. All you have to know is that he is applying the methods of solid state physics to sparse plasmas. That by itself dooms everything he says to impotence. He says his equations are "more accurate" because they include the effect of a dielectric constant and magnetic permeability. I say his equations are just plain wrong because they violate the second law of thermodynamics, which takes a lot of explaining as far as I am concerned.

Quite regardless of the details of the interaction, these criteria must be satisfied by any all and theories or hypotheses which include interactions between photons & charged particles: If the energy of the photon is greater than the energy of the charged particle, then any transfer of energy must always be from the more energetic photon to the less energetic particle (a redshift of the photon and a heating of the plasma). If the energy of the photon is less than the energy of the charged particle, then any transfer of energy must always be from the more energetic particle to the less energetic photon (a blueshift of the photon and a cooling of the plasma). Brynjolfsson's "cosmology" produces only redshifts, never blueshifts, yet it is based on the interaction between the photons & charged particles (i.e., "plasma redshift"). Therefore, his cosmology is impossible on the grounds of fundamental physics and an examination of the mathematical details is unnecessary (although I point out post 4593 by ben_m, which demonstrates that the details of his physics are also wrong, further bad news for Brynjolfsson). The reason for Brynjolfsson's fundamental error certainly appears to lie in his desire to use a dielectric constant and magnetic permeability for the plasma that are not justified by physics.

Brynjolfsson's plasma redshift cosmology requires all photons to always lose energy (always redshift) and never gain energy (never blueshift). It violates the second law of thermodynamics, as described above, and therefore stands falsified.

Again Tim, you simply ignore the fact that your "foreground subtraction" process takes out all the point sources and all you're then left with are the EMISSIONS from plasma that fill space and absorb and emit these wavelengths.

That is, to put it bluntly, a damn lie. I worked at the periphery of the old COBE project as a system manager, and although I have worked closely with many scientists on the WMAP project, I have not worked on that project myself. Nevertheless, I am quite familiar with the foreground subtraction process, and the intelligence & honesty of the people who work on the projects, both of which in them I place far above and beyond the equivalent of yours.

Simply put, the real process works like this: The radiative characteristics of the known foreground sources are determined independently, based on models & observations, by independent teams (and numerous completely independent groups using several different methods). Those foregrounds are then subtracted from the raw image to yield a background image. Although all-sky images are presented to the public, they are not generally used for background analysis of cosmological parameter determination, because of the difficulties involved with subtracting the Milky Way foreground. So most analyses use only the regions around the Galactic poles (anyway, only COBE and WMAP are real all-sky observations, the numerous other small scale projects generally limit their observations to the Galactic poles for the same reason).

The background has a very precise thermal shape because it really is precisely thermal, and not because anybody (or anything) was manipulated in any way to make it so. That is the whole big point of doing CMB studies in the first place. The cosmic background really is precisely thermal and that really is a really big deal. It is a really big deal because, while legitimate alternative cosmologies might allow for a precisely thermal background, under exceptional conditions, only big bang cosmologies require a thermal background (and allow only a thermal background).

We can see from the FOREGROUND what the POINT SOURCES of light are for this specific wavelength of light. Put enough galaxies at a great distance, use enough scattering processes, and viola, you don't need "expanding space monkeys" and mythical creation stories anymore.

Wrong again and yes you do need "expanding space monkeys". It is not possible by any known physics to combine point sources and galaxies, and by their emissions create a background that is both precisely thermal in all directions and precisely the same temperature in all directions (within about 1 milli-Kelvin). You think you can wave the magic wand of your imagination and make all things happen, but physics does not work that way. "Voila" (viola is a musical instrument) does not cut it. If you can't come up with the physics, then you lose.

Let's review. You can't even tell me where "dark energy" comes from. Even *IF* we "assume" that acceleration is a valid "interpretation" of the redshift data, you still cannot show a "cause/effect" relationship between "acceleration" and "dark energy" in any sort of controlled experiment anymore than I can demonstrate a relationship between "God energy" and that same acceleration.

Of course I can come up with a cause and effect relationship, that has already been done. And if you could write down your "God energy" in the form of a scalar field, you could do likewise.

The dogma changes but the dark energy never materializes in a real "experiment" because none of you even know where it comes from, let alone how to acquire any of it or "control" it. ... If you could make your sky entities show up here in a real experiment with actual control mechanisms, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Astronomical observations do constitute, in every legitimate sense of the words, a real experiment. Therefore, yes we can demonstrate the presence of dark energy in a real experiment. Furthermore, astronomical observations can be selected so as to constitute valid controlled experiments as well, so that one too is covered. Your problem is that you don't know what a real experiment is, nor do you know what real control mechanisms are, so it is no surprise that you speak with a clueless voice.

 

[Michael Mozina]

True or false, Michael:

When you imagine a Universe in which there is such a thing as "vacuum energy" AND that (in this imagined Universe) GR treats vacuum energy exactly like any other energy,

Oh, you mean like STANDARD KINETIC ENERGY vacuum energy then, not the mythical "negative pressure" vacuum energies that you guys prattle on about?

when you calculate that Universe's CMB

From what? What did you base this "calculation" on Ben? How do you know that the CMB isn't just there because it's there? Atoms absorb and emit light. Big deal. If the plasmas of spacetime are relatively homogenous distributed, it's PREDICTED in any system that predicts absorption and emission of light from elements in space. So what?

/CMBpol/LyA/SNe/LSS/BBN/BAO/cluster-mass behavior, it looks like what we see in the data.

So what? You "tweaked" all these things to "fit" anyway, so why not "tweak" Ari's tired light concepts too?

Answer: True or false? There is no possible "waaaa it's not empirical its just god fairies" objection; we're applying the laws of GR to a hypothetical universe. That's something scientists can do.

But your "hypothetical universe" contains things that this one does not. In THIS universe all "vacuums" contain POSITIVE kinetic energy and POSITIVE pressure. Your vacuums require NEGATIVE pressures and nonsense that simply doesn't apply to THIS universe Ben.

If you wanted to know what a Universe containing nothing but 17 keV muon neutrinos and axions would look like, I can tell you. (I can do that even though axions are hypothetical and 17 keV muon neutrinos definitely do not exist.) If you want to know what a cylindrical Universe filled with a hot e+e- plasma would look like, I can tell you. (I can do that even though the result looks nothing like the real Universe.)

But the problem ben is eventually you found a "mathematical solution" to your redshift phenomenon that rules out every known force of nature known to man, and requires "faster than light expansion" of objects made of mass. That tells me that either your redshift *INTERPRETATION* is *UTTERLY FLAWED*. Instead of acknowledging that point, you ignore redshift concepts entirely and insist in "magic energies" that cause space to expand and all sorts of metaphysical nonsense you cannot show here on Earth.

So answer the question: under the hypothesis (which may be true or approximately true or false) that a hypothetical Universe were to contain 73% "vacuum energy",

Define "vacuum energy" for us ben. Does it have POSITIVE kinetic energy and POSITIVE pressure?

 

[Michael Mozina]

I did not handwave: I compared Ari's 1998-data-based prediction to the (much better) 2011 data and the prediction was wrong. That's what falsification means. That's how it works.



Two comments.

First, Ari's work contains two things: math, and a hypothesis that the Universe contains the bath of ultra-uniform, dense, hot plasma ... which he guesses is there and plugs into his calculations. If the math is right AND this plasma is there, then the predictions should have been right.

The predictions were not right. That means that either the math is wrong OR the plasma is not there. Why don't you care that the predictions were wrong?

Second: the math IS wrong. In, for example, http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0401420 (whose "math" is sloppily tossed together to begin with) the most straightforwardly-obvious error is on page 8. The author takes the motion of an electron in a photon field, and begins writing it simple harmonic motion. He then, utterly incorrectly, takes the electron's total kinetic energy---dominated by thermal energy, e.g. motion in a straight line---and plugs it into the term that was intended to represent the oscillation energy only. This gives him an equation describing a highly-excited harmonic oscillator, and he claims to calculate the radiation of that. But he shouldn't have had a highly-excited oscillator; without the mistake, he would have had a scarcely-excited oscillator with a large (but nonradiating) translational kinetic energy.

Get on it, Michael. Ari mistakenly derived that hot plasmas "redshift" light. He applied that mistaken effect to a hot, dense plasma that he hypothesized fills our Universe. The result "describes" a Universe in which the supernova magnitudes get super-linearly dimmer with redshift; the actual Universe we live in has a magnitude-redshift curve that dims (relative to linear) from z=0.5 to z=1 and then brightens beyond that.

FYI, IMO these are valid "rebuttals" to his work. My question then to you becomes this: If you're so willing to "tweak" all the variables of metaphysical sky entities, why in the universe would you be unwilling to "tweak" the parameters and variables of a tired light theory until it "fits" the same data too?

I'll spend some time today thinking about these criticisms you've mentioned but I would like you see you respond to the notion of "changing of few variables" in tired light theories to achieve the same objective.

Keep in mind that it's MUCH easier to 'tweak' a purely metaphysical "ad hoc" entity like "dark energy" (which never shows up in a real lab) to get what you want from it. It's a whole lot more challenging to work with the KNOWN LAWS OF PHYSICS. It's shouldn't be a great surprise to anyone that there are newer data sets to work with, nor should it be an "automatic fail" the moment anything doesn't quite work to your liking. If you can stuff "dark energies' full of "ad hoc" properties galore, then surely it's reasonable to tweak the variables of tired light theories as well.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Reference my earlier post:

Interpretations are empirical, there is no "distinguishing" to be done.

I'll probably have to pick at your post a bit today since it's long and I'm busy today. I think I'll start with this idea first. In a PURE OBSERVATION (no control mechanisms involved) there are typically multiple ways to 'interpret' the very same data set. Ari chose ONE way (tired light). You prefer another "interpretation" (expansion of space) that you absolutely cannot demonstrate here and now on Earth. You're basing your "interpretation" on the notion of "expanding space". Why? How can you eliminate one concept or the other based *STRICTLY* on *OBSERVATION* (no control mechanisms)?

The difference between me & Brynjolfsson is certainly not simply a matter of interpretation, it is a matter of physics,

What "physics" supports "expanding space" ideas Tim?

and Brynjolfsson's is dead wrong. All you have to know is that he is applying the methods of solid state physics to sparse plasmas. That by itself dooms everything he says to impotence.

Why? Because you say so? Shall we ignore how atoms interact with photons?

He says his equations are "more accurate" because they include the effect of a dielectric constant and magnetic permeability. I say his equations are just plain wrong because they violate the second law of thermodynamics, which takes a lot of explaining as far as I am concerned.

I'll bite. How does it violate the 2nd law? I'll get to the rest of your post in a bit later.

I want to stay focused on THIS idea in this post:

Astronomical observations do constitute, in every legitimate sense of the words, a real experiment. Therefore, yes we can demonstrate the presence of dark energy in a real experiment.

I take two exceptions to this claim. First, without a 'control mechanism', it's not a real "experiment", it's just a "test" at best case, it's certainly not an "experiment" where we can CONTROL various variables and determine actual CAUSE/EFFECT relationships by trial and error.

Secondly, you CANNOT establish a "cause/effect" relationship between a scalar field called "God energy" and acceleration of distant objects just by pointing at the sky Tim. That's called "make believe math" with "make believe entities". If you can't demonstrate that God energy exists and has some tangible effect on matter here on Earth, pointing at the sky and claiming that God energy did it based on some trumped up math is simply a "religion" that requires 'faith in the unseen" (in the lab). Worse yet, your mythical mathical sky entity is such a big wimp, it's a complete fail in the lab for all time! That's not just faith in the unseen, that is faith in the unseeable.

Without establishing an actually cause/effect relationship in lab, all you're doing is creating a "sky religion" based on mythical entities that you made up in your head.

 

[Michael Mozina]

To claim that is "objectively speaking" is either a lie or a ludicrous attempt to bastardize the English language in order to support a nonsensical pseudoscientific fantasy. Oh, that would be a lie, too. Okay, so argument-by-bare-faced-lie.

It is a bald faced lie that you have ever established an empirical link between acceleration and "dark (evil sky) energies", or any other kind of "energy" for that matter. That is a valid empirical criticism of your sky *RELIGION*. Denial of that empirical fact is another form of lying, the one you consistently chose to engage in.

 

[Michael Mozina]

That is, to put it bluntly, a damn lie. I worked at the periphery of the old COBE project as a system manager, and although I have worked closely with many scientists on the WMAP project, I have not worked on that project myself. Nevertheless, I am quite familiar with the foreground subtraction process, and the intelligence & honesty of the people who work on the projects, both of which in them I place far above and beyond the equivalent of yours.

Why is it that you folks constantly feel compelled to "attack the messenger"? WTF? I simply noted that you intentionally and methodically "subtracted out" every single solitary point source in the image and THEN you folks claim it's a "blackbody background". So what? All you've done is eliminated the obvious actual light sources (stars) from the image and reduced the image to only the background radiation from the plasmas of space due to absorption and emissions of this specific wavelength of light. Big deal! It's NOT a "black body" in it's raw form. It's NOT the only theory in the world that predicts this "scattering" effect either.

Simply put, the real process works like this: The radiative characteristics of the known foreground sources are determined independently, based on models & observations, by independent teams (and numerous completely independent groups using several different methods).

I don't care HOW you did it, just THAT you did it! Get it?

The background has a very precise thermal shape because it really is precisely thermal, and not because anybody (or anything) was manipulated in any way to make it so.

So what? You're talking about a SCATTERING effect that Ari's theory PREDICTS! You seem to be intent on ignoring the fact that nobody doubts it's a thermal effect. I simply think it's due to a scattering effect of "starlight", not some mythical "surface of last scattering".

 

[Michael Mozina]

Holy cow - you have really gone off the deep end there, Michael Mozina !
Do you realize how insane it is to accuse all of the scientists who have analyzed the RAW CMB data of purposely PROCESSING it to make it into the most perfect blackbody spectrum ever seen?

It's now "insane" to accuse folks of "doing their job" as they see it? What's with you guys anyway?

The processing of the CMB data is complex but is basically removing the foreground microwave soureces, e.g. the Milky Way.

Yes, and they remove every other star and galaxy and every other "point source" that doesn't fit the "black body" concept. Yes, we know. We are then left with "background radiation" that is a direct result of scattering in plasmas. So what?

It seems as though your basic argument against Ari's work (along with Tim's basic argument as well) is that BECAUSE IT'S A NEW TYPE OF SCATTERING effect that he is proposing, you are simply unwilling to entertain the idea based on some sort of philosophical objection to the concept. The difference is that "scattering" can in fact be "experimented with" in real experiments with real control mechanisms. Furthermore Ari has cited the physical conditions that must be met (high temp plasma for instance) in order for this effect to take place. In theory at least it can be "tested" in a standard empirical experimentation process, whereas not a single one of you can even tell me where "dark energy" comes from, let alone how to "control' it.