Lambda-CDM theory - Woo or not?

[Reality Check]

Let's try this approach:

All your "black body" argument demonstrates is that over time and distance the plasmas in space act like a "black body" to this specific wavelength. So what?

Let's try this approach: You are consistently displaying your ignorance that plasmas in intergalatic space do not produce blackbody spectra.

It takes a dense plasma to produce a blackbody spectrum and even the dense plasmas in solar photospheres only produce a roughly blackbody spectrum.

Try reading or using a few brain cells to understand the physics involved here, MM. See Plasma Redshift Cosmology Fails III , etc.

 

[Reality Check]

I'll try to respond to the rest of your post later today, but you need to start accepting the fact that your raw images DO NOT produce a 'perfect black body" at that wavelength.

We have been saying all along that the raw images DO NOT produce a 'perfect black body' at any wavelength.

One more time, MM: The raw image is contaminated by the foreground radiation, mostly from the Milky Way. To get the background radiation the foreground radiatioin has to be removed.
Is there something you canoot understand about removing conamination from images?

A nice diagram of the processing pipeline is on Max Tegmark's CMB data analysis center page (a bit out of data since it only goes to 1999).

Foreground removal


To remove contaminating foreground signals, we can can take advantage of all ways in which they differ from the CMB signal:

• Their frequency dependence can be used to detect and subtract them.
• When they are highly non-Gaussian, we can use this to detect and remove them (e.g., interpreting 5-sigma outliers as point sources and discarding these pixels, which is more effective after band-pass filtering the map).
• When they are localized in real space (like the galactic plane, say), we can discard or downweight the polluted regions.
• When they are localized in Fourier space, we can downweight the most contaminated modes. Example: for low multipoles, one can downweight high (dust-contaminated) frequency channels, whereas for high l, one can downweight low (radio source contaminated) frequency channels.

A detailed discussion of all these issues is given in Tegmark & Efstathiou (1996), and detailed simulations can be found in Brandt etal (1994). The bottom line is that for future multichannel experiments like MAP and PLANCK (ne COBRAS/SAMBA), an easy-to-implement subtraction scheme can eliminate all foregrounds to a an accuracy of much better than a percent if current foreground estimates are OK . Unfortunately, this is still a big if, as we lack e.g. accurate point source counts between 20 and 200 GHz.

With enough "manipulation" of the raw image, a good fit to a black body is achieved.

And there you go again, insanely accusing scientists of creating the black body spectrum on purpose.

The fact is that the foreground sources are removed and what is left is measured to have the most perfect blackbody spectrum that has ever been detected in the universe.

N.B. This is not just a 'good' fit. It is an astoundingly accurate fit. To get error bars that are visible on graphs you have to multiply them by 500 times otherwise they are hidden by the theoretical line.

...
Eddington...

And the total inability to understand the simplest physics continues



Eddington did not "predict" the CMB

• The CMB is a blackbody spectrum, i.e. produced by radiation in thermal equilibrium.
• Eddington looked at radiation in interstellar space which is not in thermal equilibrium: Radiation in interstellar space is about as far from thermodynamical equilibrium as it is possible to imagine ...".

 

[Tim Thompson]

Interstellar Plasma Black Body

All your "black body" argument demonstrates is that over time and distance the plasmas in space act like a "black body" to this specific wavelength. So what?

Please specify:

Do you mean by this that the plasma emits black body radiation at that temperature?

Do you mean by this that the plasma scatters star light photons into black body emission at that temperature?

What plasma, specifically, are we talking about? Is it limited to the plasma in the local neighborhood of the Sun? Is it the plasma that extends throughout the entire Milky Way Galaxy? Is it the plasma in the Milky Way halo? Is it the plasma between the galaxies of the Local Group? Is it the plasma that extends beyond the Local Group and into the universe at large? Which plasma, or mixture of plasmas, is responsible for the observed microwave background?

 

[edd]

I'm baffled too. If the CMB is from local plasmas, what are we measuring when we detect the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect - a tiny deviation from a black body usually put down to scattering of the CMB by plasmas such as those found in galaxy clusters?

 

[ben m]

I'm pretty sure that's a K-band (23GHz) image Michael chose to link to.

That's the band that CMB astronomers look at *specifically* because it contains very little CMB and lots of synchrotron foregrounds. When you want to see the CMB almost by itself, you look at 80-200 GHz. When you want to see galactic synchrotron sources you look lower (MHz to 10s of GHz). When you want to see dust and molecular gas you look higher (THz to IR). When you want to see stars you look even higher (IR-vis).

Why did you pick the K-band image to link to, Michael? Because you don't have an EU/PC explanation of the V and W bands and you thought no one would notice?

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/media/101082/index.html

 

[sol invictus]

He's absolutely right about that point too Tim:

http://images.iop.org/objects/phw/news/15/7/15/cmb1.jpg

It's not a "black body" because all objects closest to stars will radiate more than objects that are further away and the stars themselves radiate these wavelengths. We can see of that inhomogeneity in any raw image. It's not a "black body" or even close to it.

Michael, I'm not sure you understand what a black body is. When we say the CMB consists of black body radiation, or the sun is close to a black body, what we mean is that the spectrum (intensity as a function of wavelength or frequency) of photons coming from the corresponding part of the sky or from the sun has a certain shape - a shape that depends on only one parameter (the temperature).

The image you linked to shows the intensity of light in a particular frequency band coming from different points on the sky. It cannot tell us whether or not the light coming from a given point is a black body - it might be that the bright spots in your image correspond to higher temperature black bodies (don't get me wrong, they don't in general - I'm just trying to make sure you understand what a BB is).

To determine if the emission from a particular part of the sky is a black body or not, you need to point your telescope at that point and take a spectrum. What ben told you is that if you point it at nearly any part of the sky except the plane of the Milky Way or right at a star or nearby galaxy, you will observe a nearly perfect 2.73 degrees Kelvin black body spectrum. That's a true statement, and it's consistent with the image you posted.

What others are telling you is that even if you point your telescope at a point in the sky containing an object like a distant galaxy or dust cloud, it's still quite easy to see the 2.73K background, because the galaxy emits radiation primarily at very much higher frequencies than the CMB. According to standard cosmology, that's because CMB light is 13.7 billion years old, and the universe has expanded by a factor of 1,000 since it was emitted (from hot plasma!), which means CMB light is very redshifted and very cold. CMB light is a black body at a temperature of 2.7K, while when it was originally emitted (again yes, from hot plasma) it had a temperature of roughly 1,000*2.7=2,700K, which is close to what stars emit today.

Blackbody radiation at 2.7K is completely different from blackbody radiation at 3,000 or 6,000K (like from the sun or other stars), so even when they are in the image it's generally pretty easy to subtract stars and galaxy foregrounds and observe the CMB backgrounds.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

Michael, I'm not sure you understand what a black body is. When we say the CMB consists of black body radiation, or the sun is close to a black body, what we mean is that the spectrum (intensity as a function of wavelength or frequency) of photons coming from the corresponding part of the sky or from the sun has a certain shape - a shape that depends on only one parameter (the temperature).

The shape of that curve has something to do with what Michael doesn't bark.

 

[ben m]

I'm still fuzzy on whether Michael thinks:

a) There is no blackbody radiation, it's made up by people subtracting whatever they want

OR

b) 2.73K blackbody radiation exists as observed, but is explained by some EU/PC plasma process to be named later.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Michael, I'm not sure you understand what a black body is. When we say the CMB consists of black body radiation, or the sun is close to a black body, what we mean is that the spectrum (intensity as a function of wavelength or frequency) of photons coming from the corresponding part of the sky or from the sun has a certain shape - a shape that depends on only one parameter (the temperature).

And essentially that's all you're actually "measuring" IMO, the average temperature of the plasmas of space due to the influences of light, cosmic rays, electrons, neutrinos and other forms of energy that flow through it. So what? The "average temperature" is not and cannot be *EMPIRICALLY* related to inflation because you cannot show that inflation actually 'causes' anything, let alone that it's related to "temperature".

 

[ben m]

And essentially that's all you're actually "measuring" IMO, the average temperature of the plasmas of space due to the influences of light, cosmic rays, electrons, neutrinos and other forms of energy that flow through it. So what? The "average temperature" is not and cannot be *EMPIRICALLY* related to inflation because you cannot show that inflation actually 'causes' anything, let alone that it's related to "temperature".

(Nicely proving Sol's point: you really, really don't know what blackbody radiation is, do you?)

Blackbody radiation is emitted at the "average temperature" only in the case of a dense, opaque plasma in thermal equilibrium at that temperature.

Indeed, the Cosmic Microwave Background is a collection of blackbody photons emitted by a dense, opaque plasma in thermal equilibrium. The plasma in question actually filled the whole universe at a temperature of 10,000K, but a very long time ago, and the radiation has since then redshifted down to 2.7K by the Hubble expansion.

You disagree? You think that the Universe's plasmas are (a) opaque, (b) at 2.7K, and (c) in thermal equilibrium, right now? Really?

First: Why don't you work out how much plasma it takes to make something opaque to 100GHz microwaves.

Second: why don't you look out in space and start adding up known plasmas and finding their temperatures. I'll start: the free gas in a galaxy clusters is something like 4% of all the known mass of the Universe (including DM/DE). If you want to restrict yourself to directly-measured masses, say the gravitational-lensing and/or virial and/or binding-energy mass of the cluster itself, this gas is something like 20-25%. If you're counting known baryons, this is simply most of it. Surely, if you're calculating the "average temperature" of cosmic plasma, you have to include this stuff. OK, what is its temperature? 10,000,000K to 100,000,000K---so hot that it emits x-rays. (And the x-rays come from bremsstrahlung---despite being far denser than the IGM, it's still optically thin at all wavelengths.)

So there goes large fraction of the baryons that you ought to be "averaging"---they're not at 2.7K, they're ultra-hot. What do you want to "average" that with so that the "average temperature" is 2.7K?

And how does that radiation get "averaged" to begin with? Where's the optically-thick body in thermal equilibrium at 2.7K?

(I don't expect serious answers from you. The only possible answer, from someone who knew any thermodynamics or plasma physics, would be along the lines of "ha ha, never mind, I was just tossing ideas around.")

 

[Tim Thompson]

Cosmic Plasma and the Background Temperature

On the other hand, I'm willing to entertain the possibility that over *MILLION IF NOT BILLIONS OF LIGHT YEARS* that a light plasma is "opaque" to a few wavelengths of light.

Believe away, but your belief makes absolutely no common sense at all. First and foremost, it requires all of the plasma everywhere in the universe to be at the same temperature, within about +/- 0.001 Kelvins.

Not exactly. It just has to AVERAGE about the same temperature in every direction over BILLIONS OF LIGHT YEARS. Some of it can be warmer. Some of it can be cooler. It just has to have an AVERAGE that peaks at around 2K.

No, it cannot possibly be an average temperature, not at all. Make sure you understand: not possibly at all. Planck's Law does not work that way. The reason the solar photosphere is an approximate black body and not an exact black body is because we are seeing an average temperature (more correctly an "effective" temperature) of the solar photosphere. The same law of physics applies to the cosmos at large. There is one and only one way to get an exact black body, Planck Law, thermal spectral energy distribution (SED). One and only one way. That way is for everything to be at exactly the same temperature. Planck's Law does not permit the possibility that your idea about an "average temperature" can be valid.

Tim the original "calculation" for a "background temperature" of space was done a LONG time ago.

No it was not. The temperature of space was not calculated by anyone prior too the advent of expanding universe cosmology. Indeed, there is no evidence that the concept that the universe would have a temperature existed before the advent of expanding universe cosmology. You are quite wrong about that, and the detailed explanation of your error is here: Eddington did not "predict" the CMB.

We already know for a FACT from the raw images that these very same wavelengths are generated by stars.

"We" don't know any such thing. The raw images are almost exclusively dust and not stars. But the raw images have nothing much to do with the cosmic background temperature anyway. You just use the raw images as a cheap excuse to avoid the real science. See Eddington did not "predict" the CMB II for further detailed explanation regarding the lame attempt to avoid rational thought by appealing to the raw images.

I think you really must not comprehend the concept of an "infinite" universe very well Tim. In Ari's universe, the universe doesn't move, it has not set age, and it has not set size. So what if it takes 2000 trillion light years?

Since Ari's universe is not physically possible (e.g., Plasma Redshift Cosmology Fails III, Plasma Redshift Cosmology Fails II & Plasma Redshift Cosmology Fails), appealing to it as a refuge for your failed ideas does not help you any.

Thirdly, you reveal that you have no true concept of the physical meaning of the word "scatter"

Sorry Tim, but you didn't even grasp the fact that EM fields are KINETIC in nature, ...

I did not "fail to grasp" anything. Electromagnetic fields are definitely not kinetic. You failure to grasp physics at the level required to realize that is your own weakness, not mine.

... let alone account for their effects on the plasmas of space. I think I'll just skip that ridiculous claim.

I grasp their effect on space plasmas far better than you do, no doubt about that. But of course you are going to skip that "ridiculous" claim. When did you ever give an answer to a question that involved anything a reasonable person would call "physics"? Never, of course.

Behold the "ridiculous" claim:

Thirdly, you reveal that you have no true concept of the physical meaning of the word "scatter". Ever hear the old question, "why is the sky blue?" It's blue because of Rayleigh scattering. You see the scattering coefficient looks like d⁶/w⁴ where w is the wavelength of the scattering wave, and d is the diameter of the scattering particle. If d and w are comparable in size, the numerator dominates and scattering is efficient. But if the particle is very much smaller than the wavelength, then the denominator dominates and scattering is inefficient. Make the particle small enough and scattering simply does not happen at all for any practical purpose. The thermal cosmic microwave background (CMB) peaks in intensity at a wavelength just shy of 2 mm. That's a wavelength no less than 10¹² times larger than the scattering particle. That's a scattering efficiency that looks like 10^-48. So you are trying to tell us that the truly thin & wispy cosmic plasma is going to scatter mm wave photons efficiently enough to make them look thermal, despite a scattering coefficient that looks like 10^-48? You have the wispy cosmic plasma doing supernatural, physics defying magic tricks.

So, where is the "ridiculous" part? Maybe you think Rayleigh scattering is ridiculous? Even if I give you your mystical, magical, fairy tale 2000 trillion light years, you still only get a column density of 10²⁸ or so scatterers, and you still have a scattering coefficient that looks like 10^-48, so you still aren't going to scatter millimeter waves around in that plasma, and you are not going to get a black body SED. So where's the "ridiculous" part? It's the part where you think that a Planck Law SED comes from an "average" temperature, that's where it is.

You're essentially ignoring several key points. A static universe can be ANY size Tim, it's not limited to a set size like your "faster than light speed", physics defying, creation thingy. It MUST have a "background temperature" that is related to the average energy density of the universe. As long as you keep ignoring these two points, you won't "get it".

You're essentially ignoring one really big, key, critical point: physics. So, naturally, you ignore the point that a static universe is physically impossible, or that an "average temperature" cannot possibly produce a Planck Law SED, or that millimeter waves don't scatter around in the cosmic plasma, and so on & so forth & etc.

So, where does your truly personal contempt for physics come from?

 

[Michael Mozina]

No, it cannot possibly be an average temperature, not at all. Make sure you understand: not possibly at all. Planck's Law does not work that way.

We now have two different "black body" conversations going at the same time. In this thread I'm going to ignore all references to the photosphere and focus *ONLY* on the CMB.

You're dead wrong Tim. As sol explained before, that BB spectrum in the CMB can *only* relate to temperature. It specifically relates to the AVERAGE temperature of space. That temperature has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with "dark" crap, inflation sky entities, or anything of the sort. I defy you to EMPIRICALLY show me that "dark energy" has any material, empirical effect at all on anything. It's a pure figment of your collective imagination. Even by YOUR OWN THEORY that BELL CURVE around 2.7K is related to TEMPERATURE.

When we get that far, then we can discuss why some of the points on the curve are higher (hotter) and some points on the curve are *COOLER*. It's an *AVERAGE* temperature of space Tim, nothing more, nothing less.

Once we get to that point, you can then try to explain to me why you believe that space has no ambient temperature with all that quantum energy running through it.

 

[GeeMack]

We now have two different "black body" conversations going at the same time. In this thread I'm going to ignore all references to the photosphere and focus *ONLY* on the CMB.

You're dead wrong Tim. As sol explained before, that BB spectrum in the CMB can *only* relate to temperature. It specifically relates to the AVERAGE temperature of space. That temperature has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with "dark" crap, inflation sky entities, or anything of the sort. I defy you to EMPIRICALLY show me that "dark energy" has any material, empirical effect at all on anything. It's a pure figment of your collective imagination. Even by YOUR OWN THEORY that BELL CURVE around 2.7K is related to TEMPERATURE.

Argument by complaint, argument from ignorance, and dishonest attempt to deflect the burden of proof.

When we get that far, then we can discuss why some of the points on the curve are higher (hotter) and some points on the curve are *COOLER*. It's an *AVERAGE* temperature of space Tim, nothing more, nothing less.

Argument from ignorance.

Once we get to that point, you can then try to explain to me why you believe that space has no ambient temperature with all that quantum energy running through it.

Argument from incredulity and ignorance.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Argument by complaint, argument from ignorance, and dishonest attempt to deflect the burden of proof.

Argument from ignorance.

Argument from incredulity and ignorance.

Irony overload. Not one of you can even tell me where "dark energy" comes from. Talk about arguments from ignorance.

 

[GeeMack]

Irony overload. Not one of you can even tell me where "dark energy" comes from. Talk about arguments from ignorance.

Putting the "E" in JREF: An argument from ignorance has nothing to do with people explaining things. Several people in this discussion have gone to great lengths to explain what blackbody radiation is and the thermal characteristics that support the LCDM theory. An argument from ignorance is when someone ignores or doesn't understand those explanations and continues to assert they are wrong, aren't accurate, or don't apply.

Not one of you can even tell me where "dark energy" comes from.

... is a definitive example of an argument from ignorance.

Back to the topic: Is there any quantitative objective evidence to suggest there's a significant problem with the current state of LCDM theory?

 

[Michael Mozina]

Putting the "E" in JREF: An argument from ignorance has nothing to do with people explaining things. Several people in this discussion have gone to great lengths to explain what blackbody radiation is and the thermal characteristics that support the LCDM theory. An argument from ignorance is when someone ignores or doesn't understand those explanations and continues to assert they are wrong, aren't accurate, or don't apply.

​

... is a definitive example of an argument from ignorance.

Back to the topic: Is there any quantitative objective evidence to suggest there's a significant problem with the current state of LCDM theory?

So when all else fails, go back to pure denial, is that it? When did you intend (if ever) to acknowledge that Lambda theory's problems have nothing to do with "quantification" and everything to do with "qualification"?

You have never qualitatively shown that your impotent in the lab sky entities have any empirical effect on anything in a lab, let alone have any effect on an atom's "temperature".

 

[ben m]

You're dead wrong Tim. As sol explained before, that BB spectrum in the CMB can *only* relate to temperature. It specifically relates to the AVERAGE temperature of space.

Wrong. Blackbody radiation relates to the temperature of optically-thick bodies in thermal equilibrium. (In thermal equilibrium there's only one temperature to begin with.) If you have two emitter populations at different temperatures---a cold gas next to a hot gas---then you do not get blackbody radiation at an intermediate temperature. If you have an optically thin emitter, you get emission lines a non-blackbody spectrum and non-Stephan-Boltzmann power.

You're simply WRONG, Michael. There is no law of physics, known or imagined or hypothesized, under which you are right. You're just making stupid mistakes.

That temperature has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with "dark" crap, inflation sky entities, or anything of the sort.

The CMB isn't being emitted by the dark energy. The CMB is emitted by a hot, opaque, equilibrated, hydrogen plasma. That's why it's there and that's why it's a blackbody.

(Dark energy contributes to the gravity and geometry that determines when the CMB gas was emitting, and how far it has redshifted since then.)

Once we get to that point, you can then try to explain to me why you believe that space has no ambient temperature with all that quantum energy running through it.

I can only guess at what you mean by that.

The Universe has lots of diffuse intergalactic plasma and gas in it. It's optically thin, it's poorly coupled to photons, it does not emit blackbody radiation and it does not absorb much of the radiation (blackbody or otherwise) emitted from behind it, so its temperature is irrelevant to the CMB.

The Universe has clumps of intracluster plasma in it. It's optically thin, but it's very hot (10^7 degrees), so it emits x-rays according to the laws of physics of x-ray emission in thin plasmas, not according to the blackbody laws.

The Universe has stars in it. Stars are always optically thick, so somewhere down there they're always emitting blackbody radiation according to the blackbody laws. The top optically-thick layer of a star is called the photosphere, and the blackbody radiation is emitted at the photosphere temperature. Material above the photosphere (which is by definition) optically thin, it emits non-blackbody radiation according to the laws of radiation of thin plasmas, and it may absorb parts of (but not all of---if it did it'd be optically thick) the blackbody spectrum from behind it.

The Universe may or may not have various other forms of energy (dark matter, dark energy, neutrinos, axions, starlight) stored in it or streaming through it or whatever. Some of that would be hot and some of that would be cold. Either way, since it doesn't couple to photons, it's optically thin and it doesn't emit blackbody radiation.

Seriously, Michael: is there some science here, or just ignorance?

Is there a cosmology hypothesis that says "If I rewrite the laws of blackbody radiation, like so, I can build the following cosmology hypothesis"?

Is there a chapter in Alfven where he says "Ignore anything the mainstream idiots tell you about radiation"?

Do you have a motivation for getting all of physics wrong, or are you just trolling?

 

[GeeMack]

So when all else fails, go back to pure denial, is that it? When did you intend (if ever) to acknowledge that Lambda theory's problems have nothing to do with "quantification" and everything to do with "qualification"?

You have never qualitatively shown that your impotent in the lab sky entities have any empirical effect on anything in a lab, let alone have any effect on an atom's "temperature".

The argument from ignorance is noted.

Make a star in a lab, or a galaxy, or a planet, or an 8.5 earthquake, or an EF5 tornado!

​

 

[ben m]

I'd like to remind Michael of the challenge of a few pages ago.

Is there an EU/PC theory whose predictions look anything whatsoever like observations?

I asked for any EU/PC paper whatsoever that showed a successful theory/experiment comparison on any of the CMB/CMBPol/BBN/BAO/LSS/LyA/Sne data. This is about the lowest bar you could possibly ask for; EU/PC parties have had this data on their desks for, respectively, 20/20/10/10/15/10/10 years.

Michael posted one paper, which attempted to match the Sne using explicitly-mistaken atomic and plasma physics. And it didn't even match.

Since then he's been making stuff up on the spot. What's the EU/PC CMB? The past 20 years of EU/PC "thinking" have produced no good ideas, so Michael waltzes in and declares (off-the-cuff) that it's surely an average temperature of some sort. Geez, Michael---if the CMB is some sort of average temperature, show me the well-educated EU/PC thinker who said so 20 years ago and showed that it worked. Link to the paper.

You can't do it. There is no such paper. No educated EU/PC supporter, in the 20 years that they've known about the CMB in great detail, has ever written a document of any sort showing that "The CMB is just an average temperature" is a good description of the Universe. Because it isn't. It isn't even a good idea by the standards of the "crisis-in-cosmology" sort of crackpot journal.

So:

• you failed to find one paper showing any agreement between any EU/PC hypothesis and the CMB angular spectrum.
• you failed to find one paper showing any agreement between any EU/PC hypothesis and the CMB polarization distribution.
• you failed to find one paper showing any agreement between any EU/PC hypothesis and the baryon acoustic oscillation.
• you failed to find one paper showing any agreement between any EU/PC hypothesis and the supernova magnitude/redshift relation.
• (and so on)

There's no point in your making stuff up, Michael. You really think that you can sit here in 2011 and extemporaneously find, and fix, mistakes in mainstream cosmology? Mistakes which no one found, or fixed, in 20 years of alternative-cosmology conferences, open-access alternative journals, thousands of crackpot web pages, and God knows what else?

You're not just expounding a bad cosmology hypothesis. A bad cosmology hypothesis would be one you've spent time thinking about, even ill-informed time and confused thinking. Your current posts are all stuff you're literally making up as you go along.

Go back to quoting Alfven, Michael. At least Alfven thought about stuff and wrote it down.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Wrong. Blackbody radiation relates to the temperature of optically-thick bodies in thermal equilibrium.

That's what I just said ben. Over enough distance, the universe is "optically thick" to that wavelength because that is the average temperature of the universe.

(In thermal equilibrium there's only one temperature to begin with.) If you have two emitter populations at different temperatures---a cold gas next to a hot gas---then you do not get blackbody radiation at an intermediate temperature.

That's why you guys have to "filter out" all those galactic "point sources" in fact. Once you've done that subtraction process, all you're left with is the background temperature of the universe, mixed in with some distant, but bright point sources.

If you have an optically thin emitter, you get emission lines a non-blackbody spectrum and non-Stephan-Boltzmann power.

True. Over enough distance however, the universe is 'optically thick" to this wavelength due to it's background temperature.

You're simply WRONG, Michael. There is no law of physics, known or imagined or hypothesized, under which you are right.

You have reality standing on it's head IMO ben. You can't explain how a physically "small", but optically thick "hydrogen plasma" suddenly violates every law of physics known to man to expand faster than light speed to a size that is greater than twice the distance that light could travel in that time. You're quite literally "inventing" new laws of physics (like space expansion) to endow your sky entities with.

You're just making stupid mistakes.

No ben, you're just not willing to "listen" yet. I have faith that we'll get there sooner or later.

The CMB isn't being emitted by the dark energy. The CMB is emitted by a hot, opaque, equilibrated, hydrogen plasma.

Of what size? How physically large is your "opaque, equilibriated, hydrogen plasma at this point in time? How long ago was this? What is the size of the universe now? When did you decide to "make up" new laws of physics to overcome your "faster than light speed expansion" problems?