Plasma Cosmology - Woo or not

[Zeuzzz]

Zeuzzz, is this an actual theory that you want to stand up for? Do you want to make a statement like "In my opinion, Plasma Cosmology's best theory of redshift is the NanoQED theory; it has been examined carefully by many PC advocates and the bugs have been worked out as best as we are able---I'm prepared to argue that its details are correct, and the case for PC would be weakened if we didn't have it."? (Or make a similar statement in your own words.)

Or: is this something you found on Google five minutes ago, said "hey, looks good, I can post THIS link to answer the redshift question", and have no science opinion on whatsoever?

The second option please sir.

Worth a poke Looked intriguing till I looked into it and could not actually find a model behind the words.

My knee jerk reactions are not doing me any favors, especially in this thread as you will presume its plasma cosmology.

 

[sol invictus]

Zeuzzz, is this an actual theory that you want to stand up for? Do you want to make a statement like "In my opinion, Plasma Cosmology's best theory of redshift is the NanoQED theory; it has been examined carefully by many PC advocates and the bugs have been worked out as best as we are able---I'm prepared to argue that its details are correct, and the case for PC would be weakened if we didn't have it."? (Or make a similar statement in your own words.)

Or: is this something you found on Google five minutes ago, said "hey, looks good, I can post THIS link to answer the redshift question", and have no science opinion on whatsoever?

The second option please sir.

You see Zeuzzz, that's why I'm waiting for your response to this:

For the PC side, you've provided two papers by Eric Lerner. Can I assume that - in your view - the theory presented in those papers is (part of) PC, and that the results in those papers were derived correctly from the theory?

But as usual ben m is more eloquent than me, so:

You've provided two papers by Eric Lerner. Is this an actual theory that you want to stand up for? Do you want to make a statement like "In my opinion, Plasma Cosmology's best theory of Li abundance is the theory described in those papers; it has been examined carefully by many PC advocates and the bugs have been worked out as best as we are able---I'm prepared to argue that its details are correct, and the case for PC would be weakened if we didn't have it."?

 

[ben m]

The second option please sir.

Worth a poke Looked intriguing till I looked into it and could not actually find a model behind the words.

My knee jerk reactions are not doing me any favors, especially in this thread as you will presume its plasma cosmology.

So: how can "plasma cosmology" have "superior predictive power", when there's not even a hint of a non-crackpot explanation for redshift? Redshift is practically the single most obvious observational fact about galaxies. The first things astronomers knew about galaxies were, in the following order: (a) they're not stars, (b) they contain stars, (c) they're redshifted, and (d) they're far away.

It's like saying "Clasma Posmology is the most predictive scientific theory of planet formation. All it needs is to do is explain how planets can go around stars."

 

[Zeuzzz]

Hang on Ive lost my flip flop, brb.

 

[Zeuzzz]

Well Sol I dont really care what you choose to critique, I'll listen whatever.

I'm leaning more to the predictions made by Lerner about radio absorption in the IGM using force free filaments that generate the CMB, and can also account for the alignment of the CBR anisotropy.

this theory hypotheses filaments that efficiently scatter radiation longer than about 100 microns, it predicts that radiation longer than this from distant sources will be absorbed, or to be more precise scattered, and thus will decrease more rapidly with distance than radiation shorter than 100 microns. Such an absorption has been demonstrated by comparing radio and far-infrared radiation from galaxies at various distances--the more distant, the greater the absorption effect. New observations have shown the exact same absorption at a wavelength of 850 microns, just as predicted by plasma theory.

Original model and prediction: Force Free Magnetic Filaments
http://www.photonmatrix.com/pdf/Force Free Magnetic Filaments.pdf

Radio Absorption By The Intergalactic Medium - Eric Lerner - The Astrophysical Journal
http://www.photonmatrix.com/pdf/Radio Absorption By The Intergalactic Medium.pdf

Intergalactic Radio Absorption And The COBE Data - Astrophysics and space science
http://www.photonmatrix.com/pdf/Intergalactic Radio Absorption And The COBE Data.pdf

I really dont care, critique both if you want. As far as I can see they are a couple of the most specific predictions made.

 

[Zeuzzz]

So: how can "plasma cosmology" have "superior predictive power", when there's not even a hint of a non-crackpot explanation for redshift? Redshift is practically the single most obvious observational fact about galaxies. The first things astronomers knew about galaxies were, in the following order: (a) they're not stars, (b) they contain stars, (c) they're redshifted, and (d) they're far away.

It's like saying "Clasma Posmology is the most predictive scientific theory of planet formation. All it needs is to do is explain how planets can go around stars."

The most worked on model to explain redshift is Baileys CREIL effect.

 

[Zeuzzz]

Can I assume that - in your view - the theory presented in those papers is (part of) PC, and that the results in those papers were derived correctly from the theory?

Umm im not entirely sure what you mean by this. Yes they are definately part of PC as they are the only PC explanation for various element abundances that have an alternative BBT based explanation.

I dont have a clue what you mean by "the results in those papers were derived correctly from the theory". They were derived from standard physics, plasma physics and mathematical deductions. PC does not have unique laws of physics.

 

[Ziggurat]

Technically true, but theories that have similar resultant effects can use absorption instead of scattering, which will not produce blurring, and leads to a static universe.

If you use absorption instead of scattering, then you don't get a red shift.

Hubbles redshifts have nothing to do with an expanding universe, amazingly the evidence is already there.

The alternatives you have presented don't actually match observation. Sorry, but expansion is still the only explanation which accounts for the red shift.

There are alternative theories.

Really? What alternative to general relativity explains gravitational lensing?

Just found this too.

I notice that you didn't actually cite where this came from. Without a source, this can't really be put in much context, so it's rather difficult to evaluate what it's trying to say (for example, several acronyms are undefined here).

And what significance do you think this actually has?

But wait. I'm just going to relive this moment for a bit.

"Newtonian gravity is proven wrong" .... even within our own solar system.

Why are you even discussing gravity if you don't already know that? Why did you need me to tell you?

I wonder how much more deviation from the theory we can expect as NG and GR are experimentally tested further and further.

Why would anyone bother to test Newtonian gravity further when we already know when and how it breaks down?

As for GR, yes, that may break down at some point too. In fact, we already have some idea of where that might happen.

Took einstein something like 10 years to write GR, I dont expect a variation of it would be any quicker (technology will help though actually)

I don't either. But as with special and general relativity supplanting Newtonian physics, whatever supplants GR is almost certain to only show significant deviation in extreme conditions. So there's no reason to expect it to be relevant to cosmology.

It is an error, but by no means fundamental, as it does not actually relate to plasma cosmology at all

It's fundamental to your misunderstanding of physics.

I have a question for you.

Is inflation experimentally falsifiable? How?

Yes it is. And the way it is falsifiable has been explained many times in the past in these threads, by people more familiar with it than I am. I do not care to repeat their work, because I cannot improve upon it.

But it's also somewhat beside the point. Whatever the faults of inflation, the conclusion that the universe is currently expanding is the ONLY conclusion which is supported by observation and known physics. Plasma cosmology theories are either unfalsifiable or already falsified, and you can't rescue any of them no matter how many holes you poke in inflation.

 

[ben m]

The most worked on model to explain redshift is Baileys CREIL effect.

I dont have a clue what you mean by "the results in those papers were derived correctly from the theory". They were derived from standard physics, plasma physics and mathematical deductions. PC does not have unique laws of physics.

Well, Zeuzzz, the CREIL effect (I assume you mean http://il.arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0203/0203099v1.pdf) is not standard physics. It's complete baloney, guesswork, and cherry-picked extrapolations, from the atomic physics on down. The author appears to pull the CREIL effect out of thin air, by guessing that (laboratory, solid, laser-stimulated) ISRS works similarly-ish without the solid or the laser. He's wrong. His atomic physics is ... well, it appears to be just complete nonsense, having nothing to do with ISRS.

If there were a mechanism under which individual gas molecules could Raman-scatter incoming photons, and ONLY downward---never upward, like real Raman---and do so perfectly in the forward direction, it would still not agree with data.

a) First, it's stochastic. Photon A scatters 100+/- sqrt(100) times, Photon B from the same source, on the same path, scatters 100+/- sqrt(100) times. They have different energies at the end.

b) It's not the same on all lines of sight. Redshifts look the same when you look through a filament or through a void. This is simply not possible if the redshift is related to line-of-sight gases. It's nonsense.

c) It doesn't explain time-dilation, which is observed.

d) There is no way it works the same at all wavelengths, from 21cm to (say) 7 keV (the iron line). (Does GLAST have any extragalactic sources at 511 keV yet?) That's not what atoms do.

e) Olber's Paradox. In this model the CMB is not a blackbody, and it's not a relic---it's the sum of all of the "missing" energies of all of the optical photons since the birth of the Universe.

f) There is no evidence that the purported scattering-molecules are actually there. The only thing we see in intergalactic space is atomic hydrogen (H, not H2).

And so on. Seriously, Zeuzzz, this is a stack of standard crackpot papers on yet another crappy grey-dust theory. That's the best you've got? Really?

 

[Reality Check]

And I challenge you Sol to produce one of the predictions of BBT in return.

No he will not. This is the plasma cosmology thread.
Crackpots often resort to the fallacy of false dichotomy where they imagine that the evidence against one theory is evidence for their theory.

Please do not label yourself as a crackpot by committing the same fallacy, Zeuzzz.

 

[ben m]

The most worked on model to explain redshift is Baileys CREIL effect.

And, let me add: show me the "predictive power." I'm not seeing any predictive power here whatsoever. Show me. What's the list of free parameters, and the list of data points used to test the model?

 

[ben m]

Wondering if you read the previous page where I clearly stated numerous predictions plasma cosmology has made and how they differ from big bang theory? Did you read any of the references so you can see that the predictions were indeed made? http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6583582&postcount=3400 Most of which have been confirmed since.

Those are not predictions, they are dishonestly compared to the Big Bang standard, and they are dishonestly presented as "confirmed".

#1. That's not a prediction, nor a confirmation, that's a statement of parts of the two models.

#2. The Big Bang doesn't predict that the Universe is nonfilamentary. When I say the words "Large Scale Structure", this is what I'm talking about. The observed filaments are exactly what you predict from gravity's normal attraction, acting on the exact same set of wave modes that also explain the CMB. Again, this is a numerical agreement. Where is PC's numerical prediction of large-scale structure? (NOTE: digging up a random plasma simulation and saying "Look, there are filaments in this random tokamak photo, and also in cosmology" is not the same thing as saying "The actual space plasma in my actual cosmology theory obeys *these* force laws, and here I show *those* force laws making filaments with *this* power spectrum")

#3. Citation #30 doesn't predict CMB anisotropy; it's an attempt to explain CMB isotropy, not anisotropy. (As a side note is uses incompetent statistics. You can't do a least squares fit to a line in log-log space. It just doesn't work. 100% of the "statistical significance" of that line-fit---which is the entire content of the paper---is due to the two leftmost data points.)

Citation #31 barely mentions the CMB at all, and when it does it doesn't mention anisotropy---but it DOES throw out a handful of alternative CMB theories all of which are different than the one in reference #30. (It's also a generic crackpot paper, right down to the "whoa, what if atoms are like, little galaxies" speculations.)

#4. The Big Bang prediction of random anisotropy is one of the most precisely confirmed aspects of the whole thing. It's called "gaussianity". The preferred-orientation? It's called a dipole. It's there because the Earth/Sun/Milky Way are moving, and has nothing to do with the source of the CMB. If you think the Sun/Earth/MW motion does not predict a dipole, then you're insane. Can there be another preferred orientation? Sure, you could have a quadrupole. You know what the data says? The single most surprising thing about the CMB is that the quadrupole is unusually weak. The lack of a quadrupole term tells you quite strongly that the CMB is not somehow dependent on a local B-field vector.

And I challenge you Sol to produce one of the predictions of BBT in return.

Why don't you list the standard ones and tell us what you think of *them*. You've heard of them before. Pedagogical, historical, and technical references are very easy to find.

The CMB (temperature, blackbody spectrum, Gaussian scale-invariant fluctuations, strong E-mode polarization correlated with temperature ... ), the LSS (CDM evolution under gravity with exactly the CMB as initial condition, plus BAO with the CMB as initial condition), weak lensing (same prediction as LSS with a different z-dependence), SNe (should show Hubble's Law, including time dilation, with all the GR constants set from LSS and CMB data), LyA (same prediction as LSS, tested at different redshifts), BBN (has to match the time/temperature/density history seen in the CMB)

 

[sol invictus]

Well Sol I dont really care what you choose to critique, I'll listen whatever.

No Zeuzzz, it doesn't work that way. You asserted that PC is more predictive than the BB. Now it's time to back that up. So you pick one prediction of PC, we'll take a look.

It has to be specific and quantitative and cosmological. It has to differ from the BB either in the prediction or in the mechanism, or both. And most importantly, you have to say - in advance, before we analyze it - that it is a core part of PC, that the success of PC depends significantly on it, and that if it were falsified, it would falsify or significantly weaken the case for PC as a theory of cosmology.

I'm leaning more to the predictions made by Lerner about radio absorption in the IGM using force free filaments that generate the CMB, and can also account for the alignment of the CBR anisotropy.

Make up your mind - pick something and take a stand. That's where you failed last time, and that's probably where you'll fail this time too. Science is about making falsifiable predictions, that's what distinguishes it from religion.

 

[Skwinty]

The only thing we see in intergalactic space is atomic hydrogen (H, not H2).

Are you saying there is no molecular hydrogen in intergalactic space, or, just that it is difficult to detect?

Stephans Quintet is emitting large molecular hydrogen signals.

The antenna also sees so I may be misreading your statement.

 

[Reality Check]

The real problem with plasma cosmology (PC) that Zeuzzz is confirming yet again is that PC does not exist!

Thus it is impossible for Zeuzzz to produce a testable, falsifiable prediction from PC.

As stated a couple of years eye-poppi) ago (emphasis added):

Just to remind everyone that the question that this thread was started with has been answered:
The "plasma cosmology" supported by Zeuzzz, BeAChooser and others is definitely a nonscientific, crackpot theory (not woo).

The scientific theory of Plasma Cosmology is that of Hannes Olof Gösta Alfvén. This was expanded upon by Anthony Peratt, especially in the area of galaxy formation.

But the "plasma cosmology" that has emerged in this thread is not Plasma Cosmology and is not a scientific theory. Since it's proponents claim that it is a scientific theory that makes it crackpottery.

The definition of "plasma cosmology"is that it is a collection of scientific theories (not one consistent scientific theory) with a common thread. This thread seems to be that the theory either emphasizes the contribution of plasma in the universe or is a steady state cosmological theory.


This collection allows the addition of any new theory that matches the criteria regardless of consistency with existing theories in the collection. Thus the collection allows:

• Multiple inconsistent theories on cosmological redshift.
• Multiple inconsistent theories on the cosmic microwave background.
• Multiple inconsistent theories on the structure of the universe.
• Multiple inconsistent theories on stellar formation.
• Multiple inconsistent theories on anything else that is contained in "plasma cosmology"

The PC collection includes: (long list snipped)

There seems to be an emphasis on the extension of laboratory experiments in theory to large sizes via plasma scaling (ignoring the problems with this - see the Astrophysical application section). The observational evidence for this scaling has some gaps in it.


pc completely forgets about the laboratory experiments on gravity that can be scaled in theory without any problems to cosmic scales. The observational evidence for this scaling has some gaps in it.

 

[ben m]

Are you saying there is no molecular hydrogen in intergalactic space, or, just that it is difficult to detect?

Let me be careful with this. We measure the Ly-alpha forest in intergalactic space; we see this as an absorption of UV photons at the HI-absorption-edge, when broadband light from distant quasars and galaxies traverses this "forest" of absorbers. The forest is transparent to everything longer than the H absorption line at 1215A.

This forest is at such a low density that you don't expect molecules to form.

Now: you can tell the difference between HI and H_2 absorption using stellar sources. That's how we know, in part, that dense H clouds (like those found in galaxies) are molecular, not atomic. But I realize I'm not sure if there is a good absorption signal for H_2 in Lyman-alpha clouds.

So I should say that "based on the behavior of hydrogen, there shouldn't be much molecular hydrogen in intergalactic Ly-A clouds, and there is no evidence to the contrary[/I]." But I can't personally put a number on a H_2/H ratio (or a limit on such a ratio) derived from data.

 

[Skwinty]

Thanks for the clarification.

 

[Tubbythin]

e) Olber's Paradox. In this model the CMB is not a blackbody, and it's not a relic---it's the sum of all of the "missing" energies of all of the optical photons since the birth of the Universe.

Forgive my pedantry, but I think you mean "Olbers'"

 

[Tubbythin]

Most professional scientists dont ignore models they dont like. They may cite them, refute them, or reply to them indirectly. The fact that they have not been able to find ONE peer reviewed refutation of any plasma cosmology material speaks absolute volumes. Scientists must read it and pretty much agree, else there would be rebuttals.

It does speak volumes and volumes just not the way you think. What it basically says is probably a mixture of the following:
a) Cosmologists don't read the relevant journals because they're not published in relevant (prestigious) cosmology journals.
b) Cosmologists don't write rebuttals because they think of it as a joke. From limited personal experience, responses are only usually written in response to results that are taken seriously in the relevant community.
c) Journals won't publish responses that reject stuff that nobody but a few "fringe" scientists take seriously anyway.

In other words, you have presented no evidence whatsoever for the claim that "Scientists must read it and pretty much agree".

 

[Tubbythin]

This has already been done but...

Based on its superior predictive power, better more scientifically sound starting assumptions and the fact that we now know that 99.99% of the matter in the universe is infact matter in a plasma state (not solid, liquid, or gas, like was assumed when the Big Bang theory and the standard model for the sun and stars was formulated) and thus the universe should obey primarily complex plasma physics, dependent on the charge separation in space plasma, not fluid and gas equations that the big bang and solar models are based on.

Plasma is a fluid.

The problem is this. When the Big Bang was first proposed (as a joke by cosmologist fred hoyle "it just went "bang!" everything from nothing" he said, or something similar) the equivalent of a messiah came to answer all these big questions cosmologists had been struggling with for years*. Paradoxical as a beginning in time from nothing is, if you assume this then you can work from there very easily. Soon people were expanding on the idea, new research was funded, huge facilities built, billions invested, all to try to discover more about the magical CMB and expansion and what it might tell us about the origin of the universe.

The above is wrong in very many ways. Fred Hoyle did not propose the Big Bang model. In fact when it was in its infancy, Hoyle was about 10. He coined the term "Big Bang" in a derogatory sense. But the theory of an expanding universe had been around since the mid 1920's and caught on in the 1930's after Hubble's observations.
The sentence about a messiah is of course utter nonesense. It is your own personal choice to invoke religious connotations, nobody elses here. As for "struggling with for years..." it wasn't until the earlyish 1920's that we even new there was more than one galaxy in the Universe.
As for "Paradoxical"... can you:
a) explain why the notion of a beginning of time is any more paradoxical than an infinite amount of time.
b) explain why you believe the Big Bang model proposes a beginning of time.

The effect was very weird. Scientists starting coming over all religous about this issue*. They had started to put all this work and effort into the idea of a definitive beginning in time for the universe, so any time someone pointed out that the laws of physics as we know do not allow the big bang to happen it really seemed to touch a nerve. Instead of the main cosmologists at the time being honest with the public they instead started to give the impression that they had worked out the biggest mystery in the universe. Us primitive apes, despite all our fancy equipment, arcane mathematical abstractions and all these hypothetical entities never discovered on earth, are basically clutching in the dark, Big Bang models are still riddled with assumptions and issues. Yet instead of evaluating the different frameworks they could approach cosmology from they ploughed on with the models they had started based on expansion and the CMB. So within a few years textbooks in schools were being published with Big Bang theory work as if it was fact. University courses were set up, millions goes into new investment. And the only real evidence for it was in their interpretation of the data they use to prove expansion, and apparently the homogeneity of the microwave part of the em spectrum means something amazingly cool and big bangy (depending on how you interpret the data!)

What touches a nerve with a lot of people is when other people make stuff up in order to misrepresent there views. Stuff like: "Scientists starting coming over all religous about this issue*. They had started to put all this work and effort into the idea of a definitive beginning in time for the universe"
Errm the CMB was discovered in the late 1960's. It was a prediction of the Big Bang model made originally by Alpher and Gamow.
And no that really isn't the only evidence

I might as well find a pattern in a part of the EM spectrum thats not been studied much, assign that huge universal significance, and then combine this with light data from galaxy clusters to prove once and for all that these two tiny nit picks of data are amazingly significant on a cosmological scale, and everything else can just be explained later by more mundane local things like pulsars or stars.

Well er, no. You might as well predict the existence of the line shape of a specific part of the spectrum that is almost completely spatially isotropic. Then observe this to be spot on to extraordinary precision. Then predict the sizes and distributions of the tiny spatial fluctuations needed by the relevant model and then observe these to be in precise agreement too. When you've done that, and surpassed this phenomenal achievement, then you'll be in a good position to belittle the significance of the work.

Even mention at uni that the Big Bang never happened and you'll be a laughing stock. Its just accepted fact. But show one of the people laughing an alternative explanation for the origin of the CMB by one of the various scientists that have made such models, or one of the better tired light related theories to put inflation into doubt, and they will just go kinda quiet.

There are no tired light theories that stand-up to any scrutiny... or show me wrong. Ditto CMB.

The Big Bang based projects get billions. Literally billions to send satellites up to study the data in space they have chosen to be significant. Funny thing is that plasma cosmology, despite getting hardly any funding at all, has used THEIR data, and found out that their predictions are still better to this day! If plasma cosmology was taken seriously by the religious zealots that seem to think that the Big Bang is the only theory allowed in town they could send satellites up to actually find what they want to. They are still doing well using the Big Bang based data though. But as it is they publish the work and models, buts its completely ignored by the "mainstream" cosmology community. )

This is just unevidenced assertions. I also note that you have descended to more ridiculous claims of "religious zealots" due, I must assume, to your inability to make a scientific argument.

Heres the *uncensored* plasma cosmology Wikipedia. It was taken down by admins at wikipedia that did not like the fact that the big bang had a competing theory that seemed to get far much more right with far simpler ideas.

Or because someone with a vested interest was undermining the integrity of the site perhaps?