Problem Number 1

What needs do mythology and religion serve in today's world and in ancient times? Here we discuss the relationship between mythology, religion and science from mythological, religious and philosophical viewpoints.

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tat tvam asi
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Problem Number 1

Post by tat tvam asi »

I had stated that I'm always interesting in knowing the problems with a scientific theory around here on another thread. Here's the main problems that I've found concerning our most popular Big Bang Theory of a creation, as opposed to an infinite cosmos:


The Big Bang Never Happened' by Eric J. Lerner

"In our century the cosmological pendulum has 'swung back'. The universe of present-day cosmology is more like that of Ptolemy and Augustine than that of Galileo and Kepler. Like the medieval cosmos, the modern universe is finite in time- it began in the Big Bang, and will end either in a Big Crunch or in slow decay and dissipation of all matter.
A universe of unlimited progress from an infinite past to an infinite future makes sense when society is 'advancing'. But when that advance halts, when the idea of progress is mocked by the century of Verdun, Auschwitz, and Hiroshima, when the prospect of human betterment is dim, we should not be surprised that the 'decaying cosmos' again rises to dominance.

Science and Society
And since, as history abundantly shows, people's views of the universe are bound up with their views of themselves and of their society, this debate has implications far beyond the realm of science, for the core of the cosmological debate is a question of how truth is known.
How these questions are answered will shape not only the history of science, but the history of humanity.
The emerging revolution in science extends beyond cosmology. Today the study of the underlying structure of matter, particle physics, is intimately tied up with cosmology- the structure of the universe, theorists argue, is the result of events in the first instants of time. If the Big Bang hypothesis is wrong, then the foundation of modern particle physics collapses and entirely new approaches are required. Indeed, particle physics also suffers from an increasing contradiction between theory and experiment.
Equally important, if the Big Bang never occurred our concept of time must change as well. Instead of a universe finite in time, running down from a fiery start to a dusty, dark finish, the universe will be infinite in duration, continuously evolving. Just such a concept of time as evolution is now emerging from new studies in the field of thermodynamics.

My aim is to explain these new ideas to the general reader, one who is interested in the crucial issues of science but who has no special training in the subject. I believe that if the issues are presented clearly, readers will be able to judge the validity of the arguments involved in this debate.

This history, then, involves more than the history of cosmology, or even of science. One of the basic (although far from original) themes of this book is that science is intimately tied up with society, that ideas about society, about events here on earth, affect ideas about the universe- and vice versa. This interaction is not limited to the world of ideas. A society's social, political and economic structures have a vast effect on how people think; and scientific thought, through its impact on technology, can greatly change the course of economic and social evolution.

My conflict with conventional physics started when I was an undergraduate at Columbia in the mid-sixties. Physics itself interested me, learning why things happen as they do- mathematics was merely a tool to understand and test the underlying physical concepts. That was not the way physics was taught; instead, mathematical techniques were emphasized. This is almost exclusively what students are still tested on, and obviously study the most.

Observation and Conflict
The only test of scientific truth is how well a theory corresponds to the world we observe. Does it predict things that we can then see? Or do our observations of nature show things that a theory says are impossible? No matter how well liked a theory may be, if observation contradicts it, then it must be rejected. For science to be useful, it must provide an increasingly true and deep description of nature, not a prescription of what nature must be.

In the past four years crucial observations have flatly contradicted the assumptions and predictions of the Big Bang. Because the Big Bang supposedly occurred only about twenty billion years ago (13.7 billion years), nothing in the cosmos can be older than this. Yet in 1986 astronomers discovered that galaxies compose huge agglomerations a billion light-years across; such mammoth clustering of matter must have taken a hundred billion years to form. Just as early geological theory, which sought to compress the earth's history into a biblical few thousand years crumbled when confronted with the aeons needed to build up a mountain range, so the concept of a Big Bang is undetermined by the existence of these vast and ancient superclusters of galaxies.
These enormous ribbons of matter, whose reality was confirmed during 1990, also refute a basic premise of the Big Bang - that the universe was, at its origin, perfectly smooth and homogeneous. Theorists admit that they can see no way to get from the perfect universe of the Big Bang to the clumpy, imperfect universe of today. As one leading theorist, George Field of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, put it, "There is a real crisis".

Other conflicts with observation have emerged as well. Dark matter, a hypothetical and unobserved form of matter, is an essential component of current Big Bang theory- an invisible glue that holds it all together. Yet Finnish and American astronomers, analyzing recent observations, have shown that the mysterious dark matter isn't invisible- it doesn't exist. Using sensitive new instruments, other astronomers around the world have discovered extremely old galaxies that apparently formed long before the Big Bang universe could have cooled sufficiently. In fact, by the end of the eighties, new contradictions were popping up every few months.
In all of this, cosmologists have remained entirely unshaken in their acceptance of the theory.

... cosmologists, with few exceptions, have either dismissed the observations as faulty, or have insisted that minor modifications of Big Bang theory will reconcile "apparent" contradictions. A few cosmic strings or dark particles are needed- nothing more.
This response is not surprising: most cosmologists have spent all of their careers, or at least the past twenty-five years, elaborating various aspects of the Big Bang. It would be very difficult for them, as for any scientist, to abandon their life's work. Yet the observers who bring forward these contradictions are also not at all ready to give up the Big Bang. Observing astronomers have generally left the interpretation of data to the far more numerous theoreticians. And until recently there seemed to be no viable alternative to the Big Bang - nowhere to go if you jumped ship.

Superclusters
While galaxies are a mere hundred thousand light-years across and clusters not more than ten million or so, a supercluster might snake through a few hundred million light-years of space.

It turns out that galaxies almost never move much faster than a thousand kilometers per second, about one-three-hundredths as fast as the speed of light.

Simply put, if Tully's objects exist, the universe cannot have begun twenty billion years ago.

In 1990 the existence of these huge objects was confirmed by several teams of astronomers. The most dramatic work was that of Margaret J. Geller and John P. Huchra of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who are mapping galaxies within about six hundred million light-years of earth. In November of 1989 they announced their latest results, revealing what they called the "Great Wall", a huge sheet a galaxies stretching in every direction off the region mapped. The sheet, more than two hundred million light-years across and seven hundred million light-years long, but only about twenty million light-years thick, coincides with a part of one of the supercluster complexes mapped by Tully. The difference is that the new results involve over five thousand individual galaxies, and thus are almost impossible to question as statistical flukes.

Science, Specialization and Academia
In 1889 Samuel Pierpont Langley, a famed astronomer, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and soon to be the one of the pioneers of aviation, described the scientific community as "a pack of hounds ... where the louder-voiced bring many to follow them nearly as often in a wrong path as in a right one, where the entire pack even has been known to move off bodily on a false scent."

The current system of specialized peer review originated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as science became more closely tied to, and supported by, large-scale capitalist enterprise. While inventor-entrepreneurs like Thomas Edison chose for themselves what to research, the later financier-industrialists wanted the "quality of work" guaranteed in advance. So they, together with leading academics, encouraged the idea of peer review- the inspection of scientific work by the "best authorities" in a given field.
At the same time, the growing industrialization of scientific research led to an increasing level of specialization. The older generation of scientists had picked their research topics according to their own interests and often hopped across an entire field (as the best twentieth-century scientists continue to do). But as scientific research became organized in large-scale industrial labs, and as university work fell under the sway of industrial concerns, research came to focus on specific topics of commercial need, and scientists were encouraged to devote their entire career to single specialties.

The combination of growing specialization and the peer-review system have fractured science into isolated domains, each with a built-in tendency toward theoretical orthodoxy and a hostility to other disciplines.

Evidence that "interdisciplinarification" does, in fact, fight orthodoxy and encourage the development of new ideas is in the willingness of Nobel Prize committees to recognize mavericks like Alfven and Prigogine. The committees consist of representatives from the whole broad field, such as physics or chemistry, and so they do not respect the specific orthodoxies of a given specialty and are far better able to judge a scientist's work on its merit, no matter how controversial it may be.

When scientists are specialized," Alfven comments, "it's easy for orthodoxy to develop. The same individuals who formulate orthodox theory enforce it by reviewing papers submitted to journals, and grant proposals as well. From this standpoint, I think the Catholic Church was too much blamed in the case of Galileo- he was just a victim of peer review.

The ability of a scientific theory to be refuted is the key criterion that distinguishes science. If a theory cannot be refuted, if there is no observation that will disprove it, then nothing can prove it - it cannot predict anything, it is a worthless myth.

Nicholas of Cusa, 1401
In his major work, paradoxically entitled On Learned Ignorance, Nicholas, returned to the central idea of Anaxagoras- an infinite, unlimited universe. In contrast to Ptolemy's finite cosmos circumscribed by concentric spheres with earth at their center, Nicholas argued that the universe has no limits in space, no beginning or ending in time. God is not located outside the finite universe, he is everywhere and nowhere, transcending space and time.
Nicholas's infinite universe is populated by an unlimited number of stars and planets, and, of course, has no center, no single immobile place of rest. The earth, he reasoned, must therefore move, like everything else in the universe. It appears at rest only because we're on it, moving with it. He cast aside the geocentric cosmos entirely.

The Atomic Bomb And The Return Of The Big Bang
To one of the Manhattan Project scientists, George Gamow, the detonation of an A-bomb constituted an analogy for the origin of the universe: if an A-bomb can, in a hundred-millionth of a second, create elements still detected in the desert years later, why can't a universal explosion lasting a few seconds have produced the elements we see today, billions of years later? In a paper in the fall of 1946, Gamow put forward his idea, a second version of the Big Bang. Unlike Lemaitre, he took as observational proof of his hypothesis the abundance of the elements, not cosmic rays; but like him, Gamow assumed that this abundance could not have been produced by any process continuing in the present-day universe.

Unlike Lemaitre, Gamow had a tremendous flair for publicizing and popularizing his own theories, a flair that, within a few years, would establish his element theory- soon to be dubbed the Big Bang, ironically, by its detractors - as the dominant cosmology. His propagandist talents are demonstrated in the first sentence of the article proposing his views - "It is generally agreed at present that the relative abundance of the various chemical elements were determined by physical conditions existing in the universe during the earlier stages of its expansion" - which was not at all the case: only a handful of scientists had accepted Lemaitre's primeval atom and perhaps only two or three believed that this could explain the origin of the elements.
But if it hadn't been true before, Gamow changed that: in 1947 he published the immensely popular and well-written book, One, Two, Three, Infinity, which gave a lively and sweeping overview of modern physical science and astronomy. The last chapter presents the Big Bang as accepted fact.

GAMOW'S of
Yet the rapid and widespread acceptance of Gamow's theory of a temporally finite universe was as sharp a break with past scientific thinking as Einstein's spatially finite universe had been. The Big Bang completed the swing of the cosmological pendulum, to the medieval universe- finite in extent, having a definite origin in an instant in time, and created by a process no longer at work in the universe. Gamow's Big Bang was a rejection of nearly all the premises that had evolved over the course of the past few hundred years of scientific development- the infinite nature of the universe, and the assumption that its evolution could be described in terms of processes observable here and now.


To the average layman the theory was certainly a shocking and fascinating one. Yet it seemed another insult to common sense, as Einstein's had been. If the universe had an origin in time, what came before it? What started it? The Big Bang seemed, on the surface, an invitation to hypothesize some supernatural power as the initiator of this titanic explosion.
Moreover, even before it was proposed, Gamow's theory of the origin of the elements had been undercut. Gamow had argued that the stars' temperatures are too low to create elements heavier than helium. From nuclear experiments it was known that hydrogen would fuse to form helium at temperatures as low as ten million degrees, which are known to exist at a star's core. But fusing helium to carbon requires much greater temperatures- more than a billion degrees- because the more protons there are in a nucleus the more they repel other nuclei, so far more energy is needed to overcome this repulsion and fuse.

Gamow contended that because these high temperatures couldn't be achieved by stars, the heavier elements must have been formed in the more intense heat of the Big Bang. But in April of 1946, several months before the publication of Gamow's theory, British astronomer Fred Hoyle put forward an alternative hypothesis involving stars that have exhausted their hydrogen fuel. In an normal star, hydrogen is converted to helium in the dense hot core of the star. The tremendous pressure generated by the radiation pushing outward from this core supports the rest of the star, preventing it from collapsing under its own gravity. As the core of the star is depleted of hydrogen, it contracts, increasing its temperature, and burning the remaining fuel faster - thus preventing the overall collapse of the star.
Once the core is entirely converted to helium, no more fusion of hydrogen can take place; there is nothing to support the weight of the star, so it rapidly contracts, and as it does, the temperature swiftly increases at the core. Hoyle calculated that the temperature would soon reach the billion or so degrees needed to start the fusion of helium to carbon. Once again, the energy pouring out of the core would support the weight of the star, stopping its contraction, until the helium is consumed. This process would continue, producing oxygen from carbon, and so on, eventually building up all the elements, either by fusion or by the same neutron-capture process Gamow used in the Big Bang. And with each contraction the star would spin more rapidly, eventually spewing much of its mass into space.

Hoyle accounted for the production of heavy elements by a process that continues into the present-day universe, and thus can - unlike the Big Bang - be verified. Moreover, he calculated that this process would produce the elements in roughly the observed proportions. Had the Big Bang occurred, the two processes together would have produced more heavy elements than are actually observed.

The Big Bang In Eclipse
... in 1957, after years of steady work- aided by advances in nuclear physics and stellar observations- Margaret and Gregory Burbridge, William Fowler and Hoyle published a comprehensive and detailed theory showing how stellar systems could produce all the known elements in proportions very close to those observed to exist. In addition, the theory accounted for the growing evidence that the elementary composition varies from star to star, something that would not be possible if the elements were produced by the Big Bang. The new theory was rapidly accepted as substantially correct.
The researchers showed that the most common elements - helium, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and all the other elements lighter than iron - are built up by fusion processes in stars. The more massive the star, the farther the fusion process can proceed, until it develops iron; at that point no more energy can be derived from fusion, since the iron nucleus is the most stable of all. Thus, when a star exhausts its fuel, it collapses, and the unburned outer layers of the star suddenly mix as they fall into the intensely high temperatures of the core. The star explodes as a supernova, a "little bang", that outshines an entire galaxy for a year. In this explosion, the heavier nuclei absorb still more neutrons, thereby building up the heaviest elements, including radioactive ones like uranium. This explosion scatters the new elements into space, where they later condense into new stars and planets. The earth and the entire solar system was, five billion years ago, formed from the debris not of the Big Bang but of a supernova.
... just as Lemaitre's Big Bang failed when cosmic rays were shown to be produced in the present-day universe rather than the distant past, so Gamow's failed when the chemical elements were shown to be produced by present-day stars.

The End Of The Golden Age
The annual number of cosmology papers published skyrocketed from sixty in 1965 to over five hundred in 1980, yet this growth was almost solely in purely theoretical work: by 1980 roughly 95 percent of these papers were devoted to various mathematical models, such as the "Bianchi type XI universe." By the mid-seventies, cosmologists' confidence was such that they felt able to describe in intimate detail events of the first one-hundredth second of time, several billion years ago. Theory increasingly took on the characteristics of myth- absolute, exact knowledge about events in the distant past but an increasingly hazy understanding of how they led to the cosmos we now see, and an increasing rejection of observation.

In astrophysics too theoreticians relied on extensive data from nuclear scientists and their accelerators, or on observers' giant radio and optical telescopes- or on even more expensive satellites. By contrast, theoretical cosmologists seemingly need no data at all. A few, especially in the later seventies, started using computers for simulations; but most of their time-consuming calculations needed nothing more than paper and pencil. Cosmology was scientific research on the cheap!
The tremendous growth of the theoretical side inevitably biased the entire field against observation, which became secondary to the "real" work of manipulating equations. Cosmologists came to look down on the observing astronomer who spent long nights at the telescope.

It took no great insight to realize that if the Big Bang theory was basically wrong, as had been thought as recently as the early sixties, then these researchers were simply wasting time and talent. A challenge to the Big Bang theory would threaten the careers of several hundred researchers. It could hardly be surprising that by the end of the seventies virtually no papers challenging the Big Bang in any way were accepted for presentation at major conventions or in publication in major journals. It became simply inconceivable that the Big Bang could be wrong- it was a matter of faith.
Yet in the course of this golden age, not a single new confirmation of the theory had emerged. No new phenomena predicted by theoreticians had been observed, or any additional feature of the universe explained. In fact, serious conflicts between theory and observation were developing.
The first and most serious was the problem of the origin of the galaxies and other large-scale inhomogeneities in the universe. The extreme smoothness of the microwave background posed another, more theoretical problem. According to Big Bang theory, points in the universe separated by more than the distance light can have traversed since the universe began (about ten or twenty billion light-years) can have no effect on one another. As a result, parts of the sky separated by more than a few degrees would lie beyond each other's sphere of influence. So how did the microwave background achieve such a uniform temperature?

The Fourth Big Bang: Inflation
As the eighties progressed, the level of theoretical fancy rose higher. The Higgs field began to produce objects like cosmic strings; these too served to explain away such problems as galaxy formation. Finally cosmologists took off on their own, going the particle theorists one better by postulating quantum gravitational theories that bring gravity under the same theoretical framework as the GUTs' three forces. From this effort came the most bizarre theoretical innovation of the eighties- baby universes- pioneered by Stephen Hawking. At the scale of 10 -33 cm, less than one-million-trillionth of a proton's diameter, space itself is, according to this idea, a sort of quantum foam, randomly shaping and unshaping itself; from this, tiny bubbles of space-time form, connected to the rest by narrow umbilical cords called wormholes. These bubbles, once formed, then undergo their own Big Bangs, producing complete universes, connected to our own only by wormholes 10 -33 cm across. Thus from every cubic centimeter of our space, some 10 to the 143 or so universes come into existence every second, all connected to ours by tiny wormholes, and all in their turn giving birth to myriad new universes- as our own universe itself emerged from a parent universe. It is a vision that seems to beg for some form of cosmic birth control.

During this entire period, none of the cosmologists' speculations received observational confirmation- in fact, the foundations of this theoretical structure were being undercut. Even with dark matter, the Big Bang still could not account for the low level of microwave anisotropy, or the formation of galaxies and stars. Nor could it accommodate Tully's large-scale supercluster complexes. And the dark matter itself was ruled out by new observation and analysis. The Big Bang in all its versions has flunked every test, yet it remains the dominant cosmology; and the tower of theoretical entities and hypotheses climbs steadily higher. The cosmological pendulum has swung fully again.

Today's cosmologists have, as Alfven puts it, "taken Plato's advice to concentrate on the theoretical side and pay no attention to observational detail."
They are creating a perfect edifice of pure thought incapable of being refuted by mere appearances.
They have thus returned to a form of mathematical myth. A myth, after all, is just a story of origins, which is based on belief alone, and as such cannot be refuted by logic or evidence. Neither can the Big Bang. Entire careers in cosmology have now been built on theories which have never been subjected to observational test, or have failed such tests and been retained nonetheless. The basic assumption of the medieval cosmos - a universe created from nothing, doomed to final destruction, governed by perfect mathematical laws that can be found by reason alone - are now the assumptions of modern cosmology.

Certainly this development is due in part to the growing legitimacy within cosmology of a purely deductive method, justified by Einstein himself. In 1933 he said,
"It is my conviction that pure mathematical construction enables us to discover the concepts and the laws connecting them, which gives us the key to the understanding of nature ... In a certain sense, therefore, I hold it true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed."

Today's cosmologists, with the support of this lofty authority, proudly proclaim that they have abandoned experimental method and instead derive new laws from mathematical reasoning. As George Field says, "I believe the best method is to start with exact theories, like Einstein's, and derive results from them."

As we have seen, Einstein himself did not use this deductive method in making his great breakthroughs. More important, I think, he would have been horrified to see what his words have been used to justify: even in his unsuccessful later work he ruthless rejected theories clearly contradicted by observation. Yet today's cosmologists take the deductive method as a rationalization for clinging to long-disproven theories, modifying them into bizarre towers of ad hoc hypotheses and complexities- something Einstein, the lover of simplicity and beauty in both nature and mathematics, would never have tolerated.

If the wealthiest members of society earned billions by mere manipulation of numbers, without building a single factory or mill, it didn't seem to strange that scientific reputations could be made with theories that have no more relation to reality. If a tower of financial speculation could be built on debt - the promise of future payment - then, similarly, a tower of cosmological speculation could be built on promises of future experimental confirmation.

Fortunately for science, even the perfection of existing technologies, such as the computer, requires a broad base of scientific research. But it is fundamental research- investigations whose findings don't seem to be immediately useful- that suffer first when technological development slows. Today those areas are clearly cosmology and particle or high-energy physics- where the link between science and technology, theory and human progress, has been broken almost completely. It is here that, as in post classical Greece, the stagnation of society has led to the return of mathematical myths, a retreat from the problems of base matter to the serene contemplation of numbers.

Myth and Science
When Alfven and his colleagues were developing an alternative cosmology, he opened a broad attack on the methodological and philosophical underpinnings of the Big Bang. In 1978 he formulated the broad thesis that I have elaborated here- that the Big Bang is a return to an essentially mythical cosmology. Over the millennia, Alfven argued, cosmology has alternated between a mythical and scientific approach - an alternation he termed the cosmological pendulum.

The difference between myth and science is the difference between divine inspiration of 'unaided reason' (as Bertrand Russell puts it) on one hand and theories developed in observational contact with the real world on the other, Alfven writes.
The Ptolemaic system - based on the unquestioned acceptance of the unchanging heavens, the centrality of earth, and the necessity of perfect circular motion - is a mythical cosmology. The Copernican system, as perfected by Kepler and Galileo, is an empirical one: ellipses are not more beautiful than circles, but they are the actual planets' orbits.

Since it is without empirical support, Alfven concluded, the Big Bang is a 'myth', a wonderful myth maybe, which deserves a place of honor in the columbarium which already contains the Indian myth of a cyclic Universe, the Chinese cosmic egg, the Biblical myth of creation in six days, the Ptolemaic cosmological myth, and many others.

The reason why so many attempts have been made to guess what the state several billion years ago is probably the general belief that long ago the state of the Universe must have been much simpler, much more regular than today, indeed so simple that it could be represented by a mathematical model which could be derived from some fundamental principles through very ingenious thinking. Except for some vague and unconvincing reference to the second law of thermodynamics, no reasonable scientific motivation for this belief seems to have been given. This belief probably emanates from the old myths of creation. God established a perfect order and "harmony" and it should be possible to find which principles he followed when he did so. He was certainly intelligent enough to understand the general theory of relativity, and if He did, why shouldn't He create the Universe according to its wonderful principles?"
"Worst of all, this approach allows theory to rule over observation, like the Ptolemaic astronomers who refused to look through Galileo's telescope. Today cosmology is the hands of scientists who ... ' had never visited a laboratory or looked through a telescope, and even if they had, it was below their dignity to get their hands dirty. They looked down on the experimental physicists and the observers whose only job was to confirm the high-brow conclusions they had reached, and those who were not able to confirm them were thought to be incompetent. Observing astronomers came under heavy pressure from theoreticians. The result was the development of a cosmological establishment, like that of the Ptolemaic orthodoxy, which did not tolerate objections or dissent.

Once I found Halton Arp's Atlas of Peculiar galaxies, it was beautiful. I could link up each picture of a galaxy with some stage of one of my simulations and I knew exactly what forces - electromagnetic forces - were shaping the galaxies. (Peratt)

Quasars and Black Holes
The central radio source and emerging jets looked exactly like quasars and active galactic nuclei that emit such jets- which has long been observed, and which Alfven had theorized plasma processes can generate. Evidently there is no need for a black hole at the galactic center to generate such energy, because trapped magnetic energy, squeezed by the pinch effect, can do the trick even better.

Quasars appear to be only a light-year across, compared with the one hundred thousand light years of a galaxy and the ten thousand light-years cell-size of his stimulation.
In 1989, however, new evidence developed which will probably doom the black-hole hypothesis. Gas and plasma near the center of galaxies has always been observed to move at a high velocity, up to 1500 km/sec for our own galaxy, and similar or higher values for others. These velocities are generally treated as evidence for a black hole whose powerful gravitational field has trapped the swirling gases. But the two scientists at the University of Arizona, G.H and M.J. Rieke, carefully measured the velocities of stars within a few light-years of the center of our galaxy, and found the velocities are no higher than 70km/sec, twenty times slower than the plasma velocities measured in the same area. since the stars must respond to any gravitational force, their low velocities show that no black hole exists. The high-speed gases must therefore be trapped only by a magnetic field, which does not affect the stars.

Tully's results quickly became a hot topic in cosmological circles. However, any alternative to the Big Bang remained almost unknown, since plasma cosmology was routinely rejected by astrophysical journals, and our papers were published only in plasma physics journals, which astronomers never read.

The Search For Beauty
If the Big Bang is wrong, then many of the basic ideas of fundamental physics are wrong as well. The same methods that have led cosmology into a blind alley have also simultaneously stalled the advance of knowledge of the structure of matter and energy.

Fundamental or particle physics, the study of the underlying structure of matter and energy, focuses on the effort to unify the basic forces of nature. As far as is known, the interactions of matter can be described in terms of four forces: gravitation, electromagnetism, and two nuclear forces- the strong force responsible for keeping the nucleus together (the source of nuclear energy), and the weak force responsible for radioactivity and the decay of the nucleus.
As we've seen, over a century ago Maxwell unified two previously separated but related forces - electricity and magnetism - into a single force, electromagnetism, and elaborated its laws and many of its properties. Similarly, today's fundamental physicists hope to develop a theory that will unify all four forces, and thereby to explain the nature of the particles that make up matter - electrons, protons, neutrons, and a host of others.
In itself, this is a fine idea: science has frequently advanced by unifying hitherto distinct phenomena under a single theoretical concept. But it has also advanced by discovering new phenomena not covered by any previous theory. The problem in presenting particle physicists' search for such unified theories is that it is based overwhelmingly on certain mathematical concepts derived from pure reason, rather than on observation. Moreover, this theory is viewed not as the next step in an unlimited search for knowledge but as the Holy Grail of science, the final absolute knowledge that will explain the universe and everything in it, a Theory of Everything.

The goal of this work is nothing less than a complete explanation of the universe, to be achieved within the lifetime of many of those working today, as Stephen Hawking puts it. Such a Theory of Everything will explain not only the four forces, all the particles, the universe itself, galaxies, stars, planets, and people, but it will also be so simple a set of equations that it can be written on a T-shirt. Or, as John Wheeler of the University of Texas puts it, To my mind there must be at the bottom of it all, not an equation, but an utterly simple idea. And to me that idea, when we finally discover it, will be so compelling, so inevitable, that we will say to one another, 'Oh, how beautiful. How could it have been otherwise?
Such a theory will complete the main task of science, leaving only a mopping up of details, except for one major question, in Hawking's view: Why does the universe exist? Once we know the answer to that final question we will then achieve final knowledge; we will, in his words, know the mind of God.

The Big Bang and Religion
So we should not be surprised that today cosmology remains entangled with religion. From theologians to physicists to novelists, it is widely believed that the Big Bang theory supports Christian concepts of a creator. In February of 1989, for example, the front-page article of the New York Times Book Review argued that scientists and novelists were returning to God, in large part through the influence of the Big Bang.

Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow echoes the same theme in his widely noted God and the Astronomers: the Big Bang of the astronomers is simply the scientific version of Genesis, a universe created in an instant, therefore the work of a creator. These ideas are repeated in a dozen or more popular books on cosmology and fundamental physics.
Such thinking is not limited to physicists and novelists, who could perhaps be dismissed as amateur theologians. Ever since 1951, when Pope Pius XII asserted that the still-new Big Bang supports the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, Catholic theologians have used it in this way. The pope wrote in an address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences,
In fact, it seems that present-day science, with one sweeping step back across millions of centuries, has succeeded in bearing witness to that primordial 'Fiat lux' [Let there be light] uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation, while the particles of the chemical elements split and formed into millions of galaxies ... Hence, creation took place in time, therefore, there is a Creator, God exists!

To many in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the idea of a universe 'infinite in time and space' is not allowed for the same reasons Augustine argued two millennia ago: infinity is exclusive to the deity, and thus prohibited for the material universe. To say that the universe is unlimited is to obscure a crucial difference between God and nature, and thus to advocate pantheism- the idea that nature itself is inherently divine and, perhaps, needs no God. Thus a belief in an infinite cosmology implies heresy. Such reasoning is intimately linked to the arguments used against Nicholas of Cusa, Copernicus and Giordano Bruno hundreds of years ago. For many theologians they have lost none of their force today.
For many this all proves that the meaning of the universe resides in a progress toward God to be achieved in the last judgment. But to many existentialists (and physicists) this vision is one of complete meaninglessness. Bertrand Russell, for example, writes: "All the labor of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the death of the solar system- all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.

Cosmologists such as Edward Harrison describe a similar end: The stars begin to fade like guttering candles and are snuffed out one by one. Out in the depths of space the great celestial cities, the galaxies cluttered with the memorabilia of ages, are gradually dying. Tens of billions of years pass in the growing darkness ... of a universe condemned to become a galactic graveyard.

Paul Davies, another cosmologist, writes: No natural agency, intelligent or otherwise, can delay forever the end of the universe. Only a supernatural God could try to wind it up again.

The ability of human society to make increasingly better use of energy flows by increasing the level of technology would preclude both an end to life and even an end to the growth of life. Cosmic pessimism is unsupported by science.

... the idea that the evolution of humankind is purely an accident, divinely engineered or otherwise, ignores the vast mass of evidence that there are long-term trends in biological evolution. Over these millions of years there has been an irregular but unmistakable tendency toward adaptability to a greater range of environments, culminating in human adaptation to virtually any environment. Over this period the intelligence of the most developed animals on earth has risen with increasing speed, from trilobites, to fish, to amphibians, to the dinosaurs, to mammals, to primates, to the hominid apes and the direct ancestors of humankind.
Of course, through this long period there have been many chance events, many zigs and zags, advances and setbacks, which determined the exact timing and mode of the development of a creature capable of social evolution. Yet this unpredictability in no way erases the long-term tendency that makes the development of higher levels of intelligence, and eventually something resembling human beings, all but inevitable - as inevitable as the development of amino acids in a primal chemical soup.
Thus we find that the apparently improbable accidents of the universe are neither the products of a random and incomprehensible cosmos nor evidence for a designing creator. Rather, they are misinterpretations of the general evolution of the universe.
The old cosmology and the old physics leave humanity with a choice between despair at contemplating a purposeless cosmos and abandonment of the scientific project and the ascription to the deity of all that science can not explain. In either case a gap is created between a rational humanity and a fundamentally irrational, incomprehensible nature - whether or not it is guided by God.

If as a result of some interior revolution, I were to lose in succession my faith in Christ, my faith in a personal God, and my faith in spirit, I feel that I should continue to believe invincibly in the world. The world (its value, its infallibility and its goodness) - that , when all is said and done is the first, the last and the only thing in which I believe. It is by this faith that I live. (Teilhard de Chardin, "How I Believe")." - Lerner


One thing is for certain. Our current popular model of the universe is in obvious error. It seems pretty safe to assume that we have a 'false image' of the cosmos currently as our mainstream cosmology. This warrants the need for major improvements in the near future if science is to actually work correctly. The new infinite cosmos models are attempting to do just that. They are improvements on an extremely self contradicting image of the universe. Hopefully science will be able to get a handle on this problem and correct the standard model cosmology in the near future and finally get a grip on what the universe actually is. Perhaps Wave physics will reveal the actual truth about the universe.


tat tvam asi/space
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tat tvam asi
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Post by tat tvam asi »

There aren't very many replies towards Eric Learners lesson on the standard model cosmology.

He can certainly stand corrected for speaking about God in a non-transcendent mystery of being tone of voice. He's still keeping his shots aimed at the personified deity conception of God for the most part. 8)

If the universe is inevitably infinite in reach after all, then the transcendent God ideas certainly hold a place of legitimacy with respect to the very mystery of an existing infinite universe. Religion can go strait to the mystery. Lerner can stand corrected on his God assumptions for sure.

On his teaching about the importance of 'scientific theories' correctly matching 'scientific observation', the entire scientific community can stand corrected. Observing structures in our universe which contradict the age that we've given the universe through popular theory shows a definite need to correct the popular theory. This seems to be self evident.

While I can't say for sure which competitive theory is absolutely correct, I can realize that our current popular theory is very 'incorrect' about a few things. But Religion will no doubt penetrate any of the given runners up to it's mystery.

Religion can jump from the big bang theory right into the following popular theory of course - when the time arrives. But there will certainly be a lot of 'doubt' over having to let go of a scientific theory that the Vatican had approved as 'church truth'. That may have been a little premature. I'm sure that the Vatican will recover however, it always seems to recover. :twisted:

tat tvam asi/space
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Post by Og »

Dark Matter can be observed (the guy above claims it doesn't exist). It's presences lenses photons from other stars towards us and hawking radiation emanates from black holes.


What do you think of this special issue of Science?
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/s ... /5627/1893

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Post by Og »

Observing structures in our universe which contradict the age that we've given the universe through popular theory shows a definite need to correct the popular theory. This seems to be self evident.
Darwin said the eye was too complex to be evolved. This turns out to not be the case.

Just because one observation may appear to contradict the current theory doesn't mean that the other observations all of a sudden are invalid. We have to make sense of these objects that are (in this article) claimed to be 100 billion years old (without any references given) and we have to make sense of them amongst other observations that indicate a contradictory age to the universe.

I think it's much more likely that the data has been misinterpreted on the "much older" objects and have been focused on in the author's mind because (as he accuses science of doing) he's looking for vulnerabilities in the armor of the current theory (which is a good thing to do, but he's doing it with the wrong motives).

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Post by jufa »

Creation of all gases; forms of invisible and visible matter began
not from what scientist call the "big bang." Life, whether viewed as
mineral, animal, or human, did not, and does not begin from the birth
of matter, or animals, or humans. Creation and life are the ever
renewing, ever unfolding expression of infinite Life within the
silent structure of divine Being. Creation and life are the essence
and substance emerging from the consciousness of Being.

jufa
Never give power to anything a person believe is their source of strength - jufa
http://theillusionofgod.yuku.com

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Post by jd101 »

Hello Tat,

I hesitate to offer comments on your lengthy post, as I can’t consider myself competent in these areas… I am however, fascinated by the cosmological function of mythology, and I am drawn towards trying to assimilate my gleanings here and there on the current understanding of the cosmos into reflections on what is going on here!

However, I have a good friend who is very up to date on this field, as he is a professor of astrophysics at UCSD.

I sent him a copy of your first post, lengthy as it was, with the hopes of getting a reply that would help my understanding.

For what it is worth, (maybe nothing) here is what his comments were. I wouldn’t take his statements as a long reasoned reply, just a very quick top o’ the head reply to my inquiry. I offer this with hopes it might help someone.


John

“I agree that myths have as one of their purposes explaining
cosmology. In my view it goes back to the world being not being made
of atoms, but being made of stories.

However, I think modern cosmology is different from cosmologies of
the past. Our current view is forced on us by experiment. No matter
what we scientists want or would prefer, the observations and scientific method force us to our current view.

The article you sent is mostly completely wrong in most places where
it tries to talk about science. For example, it says if the big bang theory is wrong, modern particle physics collapses. Particle physics is based upon experiments done at accelerators and is almost completely independent of astronomical observations. The author also doesn't understand the relation between time and cosmology, since what
he says is is not correct. It is also false in what it says about the age of the Universe. The theory says the big bang happened 13.7 billion years ago. It is a great success of the theory that everything in Universe seems to be younger than this. Superclusters of galaxies are well explained by the current theory, in contradiction to his claims.
So far the big bang theory has passed every observational test and
almost all the alternative theories have been ruled out, (but still people try to come up with alternatives which we always look at very closely; as a scientist finding a contradiction to the big bang theory is a road to fame and so is goal of many scientists, unlike what the author says).

Pretty much everything he/she says about astronomy or physics is wrong, so in my opinion you should just ignore the article.

Is the author Lerner? I actually have the Lerner's book "The big bang never happened" and it is mostly nonsense. Just a bunch of false claims, speculation with no scientific basis, and mostly in contradiction with observations and experiment. Also, Alven (a UCSD Nobel lauriate for his work in plasma physics!)kind of went off his rocker in his old age. I saw him talk at a conference once and he just rambled on like someone with dementia. We in the audience were embarrassed for him. His cosmological theories were not really scientific theories and did not make sense.

If you want to talk about the current cosmological model, etc. give
me a call sometime It is actually quite remarkable and in fact many things, such as the size and fate of the Universe are not known. We don't know what happened before the big bang, but there are a couple of very interesting speculations which actually include the possibility of an infinite number of big bangs and therefore and infinite number of other universes.”
john

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Post by Aireal »

JD101

Your friend is both right and wrong. The Big Bang rests on the concept of curved space time. As I have pointed out, curved space time can not be proved or disproved at this time. As Relativity is the source of this problem, until relativity can be proven to be correct without curved space time, we are stuck with it.

Send your friend this little thought experiment. See what he has to say about it. It is an excerpt from my paper.



A long, long time ago, in a universe far, far away, there were two planets.

The planet called Euclid, and the planet Non-Euclid. They share a common history and differ only in their view of the universe.

The planet Non-Euclid claimed that space was curved, and the shortest path between two points was a curve called a Geodesic line.
The planet Euclid claimed that only the yardstick used to measure space was curved, and the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

Both have spacecraft that can travel at the speed of light. They agree to a space race to decide this once and for all. They pick a course for the race. It is through a corridor of densely packed stars and planets.

Both ships can travel forward at the speed of light, but they are not the same design. The Euclid ships are equipped with powerful maneuvering thrusters all around, mounted 90 degrees to the direction of thrust. Their computer system uses relativity to calculate the gravitational pull in any direction on the ship, and the gravity is opposed by maneuvering thrusters so that the ship maintains a straight line through space.

What happens to the ships, and who will win the race?

The Non-Euclid ship, just like a photon, will travel a curved path through space. As they are moving at a constant speed, they do not feel the effects of acceleration. They perceive themselves at rest, moving at the speed of light. At first they will see the Euclid ship as flying an erratic course, first moving towards the center of gravity, then away from it.

The Euclid ship will think their navigation computer has gone haywire as they are thrown sideways, first in one direction, and then the other. They see themselves as flying an erratic course also. The sideways thrust does not affect the forward speed of their ship, so they see themselves as traveling at the speed of light also.

Both ships are in the same frame of reference. They are made of matter, which is just a dense region of energy. So both ships are affected by the force of gravity. The crews of both ships are stuck in the same frame of reference.

There is one crew member however that has a frame of reference outside id the effect of gravity. The navigational computer. It uses math to step outside the frame of reference to plot a straight course for the race, traveling a chord through the gravitational field rather than a geodesic line. But this requires an input of energy to achieve. In these extreme conditions, traveling at light speed, we can separate the forward thrust from the sideways thrust into their individual scalar values.

The Euclid ship will see the Non-Euclid ship as traveling slightly slower than the speed of light. The Non-Euclid ship will see the Euclid ship as traveling slightly faster than the speed of light. Yet both are in fact traveling at the speed of light. The Euclid ship will win the race.

A geodesic line through space is the most energy efficient path to follow, not the shortest.

This is seen from the start. The electron has the orbit it does because it is efficient to do so, energy lost and gained from waves equal out. To do otherwise requires an input or shedding of energy.

The illusion that space is curved is the result of the contraction of energy density and mass from the effects of gravity.

The warping of space is RELATIVE to our frame of reference. If our frame of reference is a rubber yardstick that bends (light), then we perceive that space is bent also. But if we know how much our yardstick is bent, we can correct for it. Thus we can use a mathematical yardstick independent of "Ridged Bodies" to measure space.

Postulate #5 The Curvature of Space is Relative to the Frame of Reference of the Observer.

This has always been true. Man at one time thought the heavens revolved around us. Math taught us that this was not the case, just an illusion of the senses. Then we discovered a new yardstick to use, light. However our ruler is bent by gravity. It does not travel in a straight line. So it seems that all of space is curved. But our new yardstick is in fact the old one, for it was sight, caused by photons and light, which first gave us the impression that the heavens were curved and traveled around us. Einstein gave us the math to determine just how bent our yardstick is at any given point, and make corrections to it based on those equations.

As space/time diagrams are rooted in the same frame of reference as we are, they give the illusion that space is curved. Classical methods of calculating matter/time contractions do not suggest this, as they are in a different frame of reference.

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Post by tat tvam asi »

"If you want to talk about the current cosmological model, etc. give
me a call sometime It is actually quite remarkable and in fact many things, such as the size and fate of the Universe are not known. We don't know what happened before the big bang, but there are a couple of very interesting speculations which actually include the possibility of an infinite number of big bangs and therefore and infinite number of other universes.” - John

This is the future of cosmology. No matter which model succesfully takes the lead it will have to account for 'infinity' in some way - even the Big Bang model is taking this direction through string theory. Some of the more progessive cosmological models go ahead and assume that space goes on infinitely. Matter and space and existence keep going, and going, and going, and going.

I know that Big Bang enthusiasts don't like Eric Lerner at all - especially scientists whose careers are founded on it. That understandable. President Bush admirers don't seem to be very fond of Michael Moore either. It's pretty much the same difference. Fundamental Christians aren't real fond of Joseph Campbell for the most part. I've heard some of them call him a liar. Did Campbell actually lie about anything, or are the accusations of lying unfounded? The few in society who face off against the worlds mega-stuctures of misconception are often labeled as liars by whatever the misconceptions may be. Usually, the most popular thing is generally a wrong thing in the long run - Biblical literalism, Flat earth, expanding universe etc.

Here's a little segment on the famous Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation:

"In mainstream cosmology, the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation is regarded as the best available evidence of the Big Bang theory. But is it conclusive 'evidence'?

The following article is from a Forum post by Paul Marmet on NPA_Dissidents@yahoogroups.com and provides an 'interesting argument' that the "Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation" (CMBR) must be caused by 'low temperature Hydrogen in Space', thus it cannot be caused by the 'Big Bang', thus there wasn't necessarily a 'Big Bang' event in past at all." _- Haselhurst

Paul Marmet wrote;

"As you know, the Cosmic Background Radiation (CMBR) is a wide spectrum (a continuum) of electromagnetic radiation received from outer space. It has exactly the shape of the spectrum given by the Planck equation (a bell-shape spectrum). Also the Planck spectrum represents faithfully the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation emitted by any hot body at any temperature.
In the Planck equation, there is a parameter related to temperature, so that the equation is valid at any temperature.

The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) is assumed to come from the Big Bang when it became transparent at 3000K (assumed early universe). At the same time, due to its very large expanding velocity, there is a redshift of that Planck radiation at 3000K, so that, after taking into account the assumed Doppler effect, the spectrum appears at about 3K (as observed).
It is well known that any hot surface emits the Planck spectrum. Of course, if there are electronically excited atoms above the emitting surface, some spectral lines corresponding to the quantum states of these atoms will appear superimposed to the Planck spectrum (example, the hot plasma above the surface of the Sun).

A hot surface can be at any temperature. For example, the temperature can be 10000. degrees or 100. degrees or 3. degrees (Kelvin) or any temperature. The hot surface can have any nature. It can be a solid, a liquid or a gas. That does not change anything about the Planck emission (as long as it is not a plasma).

For example, the surface of planet Venus is about 600. degrees C. However, Venus is covered by a thick atmosphere, which is perhaps at 200 degrees C. On Earth, we receive from Venus the Planck radiation corresponding to 200 degrees C. (The hotter Planck radiation emitted by the surface at 600C is absorbed by Venus atmosphere.)
Also on Earth, we can easily measure the temperature of any independent cloud above us. We just have to measure the Planck spectrum (in the infrared). Clouds temperature is often at about minus 70 degrees C.

With respect to the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, the only point which is "certain", is that we detect "some radiation" at 3 K in the night Sky. Most astrophysicists believe that it is the strongly redshifted Planck radiation emitted by the Big Bang.
However, we know that the universe is not empty. Not only are there stars and Galaxies, but there is also (certainly) a large amount of gas (molecular hydrogen) filling the space, with a thickness of billion of light years around us. The temperature of that gas (hydrogen) has been measured (using a different method). It was measured (i.e. by G. Herzberg a Noble Laureate) that that hydrogen is at 3K.

It is impossible for that hydrogen in space not-to-emit the Planck spectrum. All matter in the universe must emit the Planck spectrum.
Therefore if the Big Bang really emits the Planck spectrum, there must then exist two different Planck spectra. (the one emitted by Hydrogen in the universe and the one due to the Big Bang). However only one Planck spectrum is observed.

Therefore, I conclude that since the hydrogen is well known in space, the Planck spectrum observed (erroneously attributed to the Big Bang) is due to Hydrogen at 3K in the universe.
We must conclude that the Big Bang model fails, because the 3K radiation must be attributed to Hydrogen, since hydrogen has been well observed by many different methods.
The 3K radiation (and the absence of any other Planck spectrum) proves the steady state model of the universe.

I hope this letter answers your question.
Paul Marmet

Jim Nibblett in reply:

Paul, This is Brilliant! The citation of Herzberg is just what the doctor ordered. I will, of course, have to look it up. I'm looking forward to finding out his independent means for taking hydrogen's temperature. Also, I wonder if you'd allow for me to quote this letter of yours. On another hand, the single spectrum accounted for by molecular hydrogen in intergalactic space does not 'prove' that the Universe is Eternal.

What it does do is knock the single most important prop out from under the only competitor, the BBT. After all, the statement made about the CMBR is that it is the most convincing piece of evidence in favor of the BBT. I'm sure that there are a hundred ways of saying it, but the combination of having a second way of taking hydrogen's temperature which accounts for a Planck spectrum plus the lack of a second one corresponding to an adiabatic expansion means that all observations are compliant with a theory that the Universe is Eternal."

tat tvam asi/space
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Post by Aireal »

Tat

You can find my paper here. http://www.wbabin.net/physics/laster.pdf

I have already sent a copy to Geoff and Milo as well as some of the people whose work I cited in my paper.

I have also sent it to a couple spots for peer review and publication.


JD101

Forget what I said about sending your friend that excerpt from my paper, you can just send him the link I gave Tat.

Little Feather

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Post by tat tvam asi »

Hey jd101.

Do you think that you could send a copy of the C.M.B.R. conversation to your friend? I'm just trying to go over peoples opinions on this anti-big bang cosmos movement. I would like to see how he feels about the 3K temperature of hydrogen gas as negating the Big Bang theory. If you would, I'd like to have his comments posted here on this thread again so that I can go over them.

He's a scientist so I realize that his financial livelyhood is centered around a deep rooted faith in the standard model. Most scientists have much invested in the standard model as Lerner suggests. If he disagrees with the 3K temperature of hydrogen gas as explaining the C.M.B.R. I'd like to try and follow the arguement against it. It's helpfull for my researching to follow the arguements. Thanks.

Aireal, nice work and congradulations. I'm going read through all of it later tonight.

tat tvam asi/space
Last edited by tat tvam asi on Thu Aug 23, 2007 12:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by jd101 »

hello all,

thanks for the links and thoughts...

i will forward this thread to my friend and try to solicit some more reactions.....

john
john

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Post by jd101 »

well, here goes.....
i am definitely in over my head....
all i can say is i hope that this helps and not hurts!

i guess i also can say that i could not accuse Dr. Griest of taking a position for any reason other than truth. he's just not that kind of person. 21 aug 2007
Hi John,
Here are some responses. I am fine with you posting this.
I'm am not sure why, but there is a rather large group of people who
believe that they have proved Einstein is wrong and/or don't like the
big bang theory. Since I do a lot of
public talking on Black Holes, cosmology, etc. I hear from many of
these
people. Sometimes it is because God told them, but mostly it is
because they
think of some analogy and use common sense. Typically they have not
learned the math or the theory and don't know all the experimental
evidence.
Many times they have alternate theories, which also typically
contradict
experiment (or don't make testable predictions). Sometimes they
have very interesting ideas that get me thinking.
In any case, I view it as part of my job to explain science to
the public; after all
they pick up the tab for public universities, NASA, the NSF, the DoE,
etc.
which pay my bills. I find there are two general types: 1) really
wants
to know the truth, 2) has a preconcieved idea and only wants to hear
things
that support it. I am happy to talk with the former, but quickly
disengage from the later.
Note a common theme with all those of the second type, is when they
hear the evidence
contradicting their ideas, they say scientists can't be trusted
because
of financial involvement. This is really stupid; I would get much
more famous and get more grants if I could show the big bang wasn't
true,
or show flaws with Einstein's theory. Of course,
I would have to do this in a way consistent with current
observations;
there's the rub. We don't use Einstein's theories
because we like him; those theories are forced down our throats by
experiments just like theory of thermodynamics and Maxwell's theory
of
electricity and magnetism. Try building an electronic device that
doesn't obey the theories of E&M and quantum mechanics and you will
be wasting your time.

Aireal is right that the Big Bang theory rests on the concept of
curved
spacetime, which is an essential feature of Einstein's general
relativity (GR).
But he is completely wrong that curved spacetime has not been proved
to exist.
The GPS system uses it or it would get distances wrong (spacetime is
more curved here on Earth that at the altitude of the GPS
satellites).
Gravitational lensing, one of my areas of expertise is a direct proof
of the curved spacetime predicted by GR. Atomic clock experiments
show clocks run slower in stronger gravitational fields, another
direct
proof of curved spacetime. The guy in the office next to me shoots
lasers
at the reflectors left on the moon by the Apollo missions. He
measures
the distance to the moon to within a millimeter in order to test GR.
GR predicts that the moon's orbit differs from the Newton theory by
several meters, exactly as seen, so again direct experimental proof
that curved
spacetime, exactly as GR predicts exits.
There are many, many, other examples.

Aireal's comments and example, show that he has not studied general
relativity
or even the special relativity upon which GR is based.
(I did not read his long paper on the link).
If he really
wants to understand these things, I suggest he work through Taylor
and Wheeler's, Spacetime physics. This is a sophomore level book and
can be understood by anyone who has had some calculus. It should
help
remove the many elementary mistakes in relativity made in his
example.

Among them:
1. ships made of matter cannot move at the speed of light.
2. Independent of their speed,
everyone sees something moving at the speed of light (something
massless
like the photon) moving at c,
(remarkable but essental and proved in many many experiments);
3. no one in any frame can every see another traveling faster than
c,
so it can't be true that the non-euclid ship will see the other
travelling faster than c.
4. A geodesic through space alone (spacelike hypersurface) is the
shortest
distance, but in GR (and SR) the metric has a minus sign and so the
geodesic through spacetime can be the shortest, longest, or even
an inflection point (we call it extremal).

The warping of space is real and can be measured. We can tell a
globe is
curved because the angles of a triangle drawn on it don't add up to
180
degrees as they do in flat space. (Think of a triangle on the Earth
made
of "straight lines" (e.g. geodesics which are parts of great
circles).
Start at north pole and go south to equator, take 90 degree
turn and run along equator 1/4 of the way around, then another
90degree
turn north and back to the north pole. The angles are 90+90+90=270,
not
180. In the curved spacetime around a planet or star, a similar
experiment
can be done: It doesn't matter what inertial frame you are in,
spacetime really is curved!

We scientists don't have much respect for Lerner, not because our
careers are founded on cosmology. I want to know the real truth. If
Einstein, the big bang theory, and all of modern cosmology is wrong,
then
I want to know that. However, Lerner says so many things that are
contradicted by experiment. You just can't take someone seriously
when they ignore the facts of the matter.
There is a web site that claims that the Sun and stars go around the
Earth.
They show pictures of time lapse photography of star trails and
polaris
and say common sense proves it. What can one do?
I also talk on climate change
and also sometime interact with people who don't believe in it.
Many times after I show the experimental results and discuss the
basic physics they change their minds; but sometimes they have a
strong preconcieved idea of
how the world is and won't seriously consider the data.
Lerner is like that.
I am happy to consider the data and give up the big bang! But so far
I am amazed how every new measurement just seems to substantiate the
theory.
Even skeptics are having to accept it now; you just can't make any
sense
of all the measurement or calculate any real numbers in cosmology
without it.

Finally, Marmet is totally wrong about the cosmic microwave
background (CMB)
being emitted by Hydrogen. We know roughly how much H there is (in
atomic H,
ionized HII, and molecular (this is a main work of radio
astronomers)).
Depending on where the H is it can be at different temperatures.
There is not enough of it and it is not mostly at 2.7 degree K.
A key point is that at the observed densities, H is mostly
transparent
to the CMB (optically thin); H also will not give rise to a
good Planck spectrum: it will mostly emit in various lines.
thus it cannot give rise to the observed blackbody.
Interestingly, one can sometimes measure the relative strengths of
lines
in a molecule to tell the temperature of the radation field in which
it
sits. This has been use to show that some moles are sitting in the
CMB.
Even more interesting at large distances, when the universse was
older,
smaller and hotter, the ratio of line strengths show the CMB was
hotter,
just the big bang model predicts.
People who try to get the CMB from non-big bang sources have long ago
given up on H, and have been forced
into the idea of the universe being filled with long iron needles
(which in high enough densities could give a good blackbody).
However,
that idea has now also been ruled out by experiment
(See old papers by George Smoot on this subject).
The work of radio astronomers is mostly to study H (and other
molecules), so
its state and spectrum are well understood.
In fact, one the recent successes of the CMB idea is the measurment
of
tiny deviations from a Planck spectrum caused by the H (actually the
electrons associated with the ionized H). This is called the
Sunyaev-Zeldovich
(SV) effect. There are beautiful radio images of the hot H gas in
clusters of galaxies found by plotting the deviation of
the CMB from 2.7K caused by the intervening cluster. So H won't
work.
Also, the 2006 Nobel Prize was given to Smoot and Mather for their
detection
of other (one part in 100000) deviations from perfect blackbody.
These
are thought be acoustic oscillations which are remnants of a time
picoseconds after the big bang. They are seeds of the structures we
see today in galaxy redshift surveys. Art Wolfe, my colleague at
UCSD,
got famous 30 years ago using GR to predict that these should exist.
Iron needles, and any non-big bang source of the CMB are have not
been able to explain these new measurements at all, and so have
mostly
been dropped.
Really in science it is not enough to just have an idea.
One has to calculate the effect using
the standard equations of thermodynics and atomic physics.

Regards,
Kim Griest
john

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Post by jd101 »

Since I got Dr. Griest’s approval to post his comments, I also wanted to provide 3 links that might be of interest to people interested in pursuing these questions.

The first is a podcast discussion of dark matter at

http://www.scienceandsociety.net/podcas ... est_p.html


The second is his website at UCSD

http://www-physics.ucsd.edu/~griest/



Finally, if you have an interest in Black Holes, General Relativity and the Galaxy,
Here is a link to a full 15 lecture course at UCSD last spring.

http://physics.ucsd.edu/students/course ... hysics161/



john


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john

Evinnra
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Post by Evinnra »

jd101 wrote:well, here goes.....
21 aug 2007
Hi John,
Here are some responses. I am fine with you posting this.
I'm am not sure why, but there is a rather large group of people who
believe that they have proved Einstein is wrong and/or don't like the
big bang theory. Since I do a lot of
public talking on Black Holes, cosmology, etc. I hear from many of
these
people. Sometimes it is because God told them, but mostly it is
because they
think of some analogy and use common sense. Typically they have not
learned the math or the theory and don't know all the experimental
evidence.
Many times they have alternate theories, which also typically
contradict
experiment (or don't make testable predictions). Sometimes they
have very interesting ideas that get me thinking.
In any case, I view it as part of my job to explain science to
the public; after all
they pick up the tab for public universities, NASA, the NSF, the DoE,
etc.
which pay my bills. I find there are two general types: 1) really
wants
to know the truth, 2) has a preconcieved idea and only wants to hear
things
that support it. I am happy to talk with the former, but quickly
disengage from the later.
Note a common theme with all those of the second type, is when they
hear the evidence
contradicting their ideas, they say scientists can't be trusted
because
of financial involvement. This is really stupid; I would get much
more famous and get more grants if I could show the big bang wasn't
true,
or show flaws with Einstein's theory. Of course,
I would have to do this in a way consistent with current
observations;
there's the rub. We don't use Einstein's theories
because we like him; those theories are forced down our throats by
experiments just like theory of thermodynamics and Maxwell's theory
of
electricity and magnetism. Try building an electronic device that
doesn't obey the theories of E&M and quantum mechanics and you will
be wasting your time.


Kim Griest



Thank you for posting this reply jd101. It is not at all surprising that Dr Griest is becoming increasingly tired of people accusing scientists of financial opportunism. Philosophers are in a very similar position, for without proving the practical implications and workability of their ideas, no government is inclined to spend a dime. :roll: Philosophers train their mind to delve into abstracts as accurately and painstakingly as possible yet an other skill, practical application is what gets the 'dough'. That is sad, since philosophy has so much more to offer for society - in politics, social engineering, psychology, arts etc. - than the general public realizes. I tend to think that Little Feather is one of those thinkers who does NOT accuse scientists in general to be money grabbing self-serving hippocrates, rather the opposite appeared to be coming through from his posts to my understanding.

Anyway, after this is off my chest, I'd like to contribute just one thought to this BB theory conundrum. The reason why many people - some of them highly trained scientists - are not happy with the BB theory is very similar to why the laws of Thermodynamics made even scientists uneasy. It does not depict a balanced picture of the Universe as a self-contained and everlasting entity. This uneasiness about the lack of balance has little to do with one's religious attitudes and much more to do with our general concept of the world around us being dynamic and self-moving.

Something is definitely missing from our scientific understanding of the Universe.


Evinnra

tat tvam asi
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Post by tat tvam asi »

JD101, you're doing a great job. Thanks. This is helpfull.

Aireals paper shows a relationship between math's physicist Milo Wolff's "wave structure of matter" findings and that of the big bang model. Whether right or wrong, he's actually looking for the middle ground between an expanding universe model and the wave physics model that will satisfy the career scientists. You should probably have them read the paper before commenting on it's subject matter. The last post was abrupt.

The next issue that I would like to hear some feedback on from the community assisting career scientists is on Milo Wolff's 'wave structure of matter' research. If it's not too much of a bother at this point in the conversation, would either of your friends be willing to go over the research found in the 'articles section' at:

www.quantummatter.com

I appreciate the former responses and I would like to move into a deeper subject matter here by moving from Lerner, on down the evolution of the 'anti-big bang movement' towards the research of Milo Wolff. He's claiming to have a 'solid theory' which merges 'special relativity with quantum theory'.

One of the issues is that through wave physics we should expect to see a decrease in wave interaction with distance, causing a red shift with distance, which is exactly what we 'do' experience (theory and observation match here). This would seem to eliminate an expanding universe theory and favor a 'steady state model' of the universe at first glance, but Aireal is looking for the "Middle Way" with his work. What do the career scientist's think about there fellow physicist Milo Wolff? He's not exactly some crazy religious creationist, he's a 'career scientist' who worked for 'Nasa' and has accomplished much. I'll paste a few interesting points of his research for those who don't feel like reading through the provided link:

The Spherical Wave Concept of Matter solves Quantum Theory Enigmas

"Four thousand years ago, Democritis created the point particle of mass to represent the fundamental elements of matter. This concept was satisfactory until about 1900 when quantum properties of matter were found. Then, puzzles, problems, and paradoxes appeared because most properties of matter derive from the wave structure of particles. Democritis couldn't know this and until recently few persons challenged his embedded concept. Nevertheless, Schroedinger, deBroglie, Dirac, and Einstein, the founders of quantum theory, preferred a 'wave structure of matter', and in the last decades researchers have 'validated their intuition'.

The Space Resonance concept – matter structured of spherical wave centers – avoids and explains the 'paradoxes and problems' of point particles. In hindsight it is simple; since mass and charge substances do not exist in nature, removing them from particle structure also removes their 'problems'. In their place, the wave centers possess the properties of mass and charge which we observe in a human-sized laboratory, but without the problems of finding mass points which do not exist!. One of the fascinating puzzles explained below by this new structure is the former mystery—the spin of the electron! The overwhelming proof of the Wave Structure of Matter is the discovery that all the former empirical natural laws originate from the wave structure. The probability of a coincidence is infinitesimally small.

New Insights.

A simple spherical wave structure of the particles leads to new exciting insights, including:

1) the origin of the natural laws, and

2) the relationships between the smallest things—particles—and the largest, the universe itself.

These insights are breath-taking in their scope and potential. This structure appears to agree with and predict experimental observations.

Origin of the Laws.

The origin of the natual laws are basically concerned with the behavior and forces between two particles. Using Democritis' static particle model, there was no way to understand how forces, locations, or directions could be communicated between the particles. Now the inward and outward spherical waves of the two particles provide that infomation continuously. The origin of the natural laws are described in a book, “Exploring the Physics of the Unknown Universe”, available at Amazon.com.

The Particle vs. the Universe.

The relationships between particles and the entire universe are interacting with each other through their inward and outward waves. Thus they become joined into one ensemble of waves which determines the behavior of the individual particles. The simplest example is Mach's Principle, which proposed (1890) that all the matter of the universe determines the law of inertia (F=ma). This and other relationships are discussed in the paper “The Eightfold Way of the Universe" - Milo Wolff

Applications

Carver Meade, Professor emeritus at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), investigated electron waves in his 2000 book Collective Electrodynamics published by MIT Press. His work has been used and supported by the Intel Corporation. He recognized that the electron is not a point particle but a wave structure, and that e-m
approximations, especially in magnetism, do not work at quantum dimensions. He used the measured effect of wave structure at low temperatures (termed the Quantum Halleffect) that the magnetic flux f in a closed loop of current takes only quantized values: Flux = nf, where n is an integer. This is because the waves of the circulating electrons must join together in phase, otherwise they cancel each other. He derived a vector potential to correct the flawed magnetic terms of Maxwell’s Equations, using measurements of electron waves in closed loops. Recall that Einstein pointed out the flaws of Maxwell’s Equations long ago but science had to wait 40 years before Meade corrected them. His book, very popular in Silicon Valley, shows correct ways to solve the electromagnetism of transistor circuits.

MIT awarded him the Lemelson-MIT Prize ($500,000) in 1999. Meade felt that the failure of the physics community to recognize the WSM was a serious omission. He wrote:

"It is my firm belief that the last seven decades of the twentieth century will be recorded in history as the 'dark ages' of theoretical physics."

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