Origins of the UNIVERSE

[Nereid]

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0504097

I thought I'd "nibble" at this paper a bit today since it is used as a representation of the "new and improved" timelines related to galaxy formation theory applied "post-hoc" to the observations from Hubble and Spitzer. There are some glaring problems in this paper, and a very distinct set of biases and assumptions being made that I think are indicative of what's going on in astronomy today.

The cold dark matter model has become the leading theoretical paradigm for the formation of structure in the Universe.

Well, the appeal to popularity fallacy in the very first sentence says a mouthful, and IMO it highlights the "herd mentality" that seems to plague modern astronomy from my plasma cosmology perspective.

It may be the "leading" idea, but that does not make it the scientifically correct idea.

This combines the largest simulation of the growth of dark matter structure ever carried out with new techniques for following the formation and evolution of the visible components. We show that baryon-induced features in the initial conditions of the Universe are reflected in distorted
forming the low-redshift galaxy distribution, an effect that can be used to constrain the nature of dark energy with next generation surveys.

So in essence what we have here is some creative "back engineering" by "mixing in" some "key", but completely unproven ingredients of "dark matter" and "dark energy". It's sort of the ultimate set of ingredients too. By throwing in some additional undefined "dark energy" we might created enough "lumpiness" in the batter. By throwing in a dash of "dark energy", we can mix in the appropriate acceleration factor. Of course never mind the fact that nobody knows if dark energy exists, or dark matter exists. Furthermore neither of these things is required in plasma cosmology. Electrical currents and typical plasma "formations' can explain many of the things we observe in space without necessitating "dark energy" or dark matter. Again, when do we apply an Occum's razor argument to this discussion?

It might be one thing if we only needed one or the other of these unevidenced kinds of "matter/energy", but when you need two of these "fudge factors" to make it work, I really start to get suspicious. Again, from a plasma cosmology standpoint, Alfven and his students have demonstrated that plasma cosmology can explain such movements and "lumpiness" without "darkanything". That seems like a major advantage from my point of view.

I'll try to post some more as I get time later this evening.

When I first read this, I thought you were joking, but in light of your posts in this thread, I expect that you are not.

It seems to me that there is a huge gulf between how the astronomers of today go about doing science and what you, Michael Mozina (and also, very likely, harry) consider to be legitimate, in terms of how the science of astronomy should be done.

I see no point in going through yet another dozen specific examples - such as this paper - unless this (apparent) fundamental mismatch in what constitutes astronomy, as a science, is resolved.

So, let's have harry answer astro_uk's questions.

Let's have Michael Mozina describe for us what he sees as the nature and role of hypothesis formation, hypothesis testing, modelling, and theory formation and testing, in modern astronomy. When he's done that, and after we have asked him questions about his understanding of modern astronomy as a science, we can then see where it aligns with, and where it differs from, what astronomers today actually do.

Fair enough?

[harry]

Hello All


Just a quick hello. Taking my son to tennis.

Astro said

Alright Harry how do you expect us to act?

Taking four very simple observations (I could list about 20 but that would be overkill):

1) That all galaxies outside the local group are observed to be moving away from us.

Galaxies are in clusters. The question is: Do the clusters move away?
And the idea that objects are moving away from us needs to be proved.That is, prove that the universe is expanding. The universe is a word that means all. All can not expand. Its man's history of thinking that he is the centre of ALL.

2) That the further into space you look the less galaxies look like those seen today.

You need to give evidence for this.

3) That all stars are observed to have ages less than 13Gyr.

This will depend on how you age the stars. Once they go Nova or supernova the dating process changes.

4) That all of space is permeated by an almost uniform temperature radiation, exactly what
you would expect from the redshifted remains of a high temperature BB spectrum.

This is not evidence for the BBT


I can give you over 30 issues. But if you have the mindset of a BB person.
What can I say?

As soon as we get deep field images with clarity and over 14 to 20 Gyrs than we shall talk.

You say its general info. Than give me the evidence. The evidence that you think is EVIDENCE.

[astro_uk]

You haven't answered the question Harry. I asked for explanations of those observed facts that don't rely on the BBT and that hopefully aren't mutually exclusive.

You want evidence, fine here you go.

1)

The SDSS list of galaxy redshifts http://www.sdss.org/
The 2dF list of galaxy redshifts: http://www.roe.ac.uk/~jap/2df/

Their both easy to search, just play around, you could even cross link with the results of the supernovae distance scale like the one seen in figure 2 here http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmoall.htm.
What do you know redshift increases linearly with distance. How do you explain this fact Harry?

2)

That the fraction of spirals increases as you look to larger redshift. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-d ... db_key=AST

That as you increase in redshift the number of blue galaxies increases and the number of red ones decreases. There are actually hundreds of papers that show this but here are a few.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-d ... db_key=AST
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-d ... db_key=AST

Or the observation that the morphologies of galaxies is different in the higher z universe.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0109358

Care to explain these easily verfiable facts Harry?


3)

It doesn't matter how you "age" stars Harry. They don't magically get younger after they go Supernovae, they die, end of story. All that is left is a white dwarf, a neutron star, or a BH thats it. Some of the gas that is thrown of gets incorperated into new stars. but you would still give them a young age if you measured their age.

Their are dozens of ways to work out the age of the Universe or individual stars but one of the best is white dwarfs, they emit light converted from gravitational contraction and can do this for 100s of billions of years, but guess what? every single one we look at has an age that is less than 14 Gyr. The same for very small main sequence stars, non of those stars which can live longer than 1 Trillion years have ages greater than 14 Gyr.
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archiv ... 10/video/b

So Harry get out of this one.

4)

How is the CMB not evidence for the BBT? Its evidence of the entire Universe being in causal contact ((otherwise the temperature wouldnt agree so well) at a time 14Gyr ago. So the entire Universe was at exactly the same temperature once, but has now cooled down. So how do you explain this observation?

Im waiting for a serious attempt here Harry, some evidence of understanding, not just parroting the deranged ramblings of a couple of nuts with websites. Show some evidence you understand the topics not just that you have learned verbatim your party line. Explain why those points raised are not good evidence for a start to the Universe, do it with peer reviewed papers and we may take you seriously. Otherwise be a man and admit your poistion is due to faith or a need to feel on the outside not due to any understanding of the scientific method.

[cosmo_uk]

1. Galaxies aren't all in clusters, many are field galaxies but this is irrelevant. We see all distant galaxies/galaxy clusters moving away from us, ie universe is expanding. I would provide citations for this but it would run into thousands of papers. Type "spectra galaxy" into a astronomy paper search box like astro-ph or ADS and you'll see that all distant galaxies with spectra are observed to be receding from us ALL of them.

2. citation http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0501088 this will do as its the first one I found on ADS. They see that the galaxies at z>2 are in general weirder than galaxies now and much smaller implying they have grown and evolved. This is entirely independent of BBT.

3.Thats a fact, astro can go into this a bit more he's an expert on the subject

4. The CMB is definite evidence for the BB. It is most certainly not related to diffuse plasma radiation or whatever mr Mozina and his people talk about. Its smooth to 1 part in 10,000! Do understand what that means? It means the only way, THE ONLY WAY to achive this is if at some point all of the universe was in causal contact with its self, ie extremely small and dense, not through a random average of radiation from plasma.

[astro_uk]

There are a few things in your last post that betray a lack of understanding of the intricacies of the topic Michael so I'll try and clear a few of them up.

Yet Hubble has seen galaxies that are more "mature" than our own galaxy at a far greater distance that Z>2. You're "generalizing" isn't necessarily true in every case.

That entirely depends on what you mean by more mature. Hubble has never seen a galaxy at higher redshift which has an age inconsistent with the age of the Universe. So when hubble observes a galaxy and then we take spectra of the galaxy if it is at a redshift consistent with being 5 Gyr back in time the galaxy is always younger than 8Gyr. If by more mature you mean we see some elliptical galaxies further back in time of course this is true, you clearly didnt read the papers I provided. Elliptical galaxies formed very early in the Universe in general because they formed in the most dense environments. There are indeed some more well formed galaxies further back in time, but the point is that on average there are less and less "modern" galaxies as you look further back. Simple undeniable fact. Eventually as we look far enough back there will be no galaxies left that look like the ones around us.

There's an X-ray background too by the way.

Indeed there is, just as their is a radio background, and an optical one and probably a gamma ray one. The point is that the energy in these backgrounds is negligible compared to that in the CMB, they are also much less uniform, exactly as you would expect if these backgrounds are the result of emmision from point sources in the Universe, i.e. galaxies and quasars. The CMB is clearly not like this and is almost entirely uniform over the entire sky.

Ok, lets assume for the sake of argument that some "casual contact" took place between two intersecting "mass waves" of galactic materials, some being made of matter, some being made of antimatter, and an "explosive event" took place at some point in a distant past. How do you know this "casual contact" involved something smaller than say a thousand light years across, or that all matter was "consumed" (converted to quark soup) in the process?

This last one is the most curious because it is nothing like the BBT theory, so I suspect you are simply misunderstanding the BBT. In the actual BBT the following is generally accepted.

The very early universe just after the BB was a seething mass of elementary particles, it was incredibly smooth, but quantum fluctuations meant that in some regions there was very slightly more energy than others. The Universe then underwent a very rapid burst of expansion during which those fluctuations were blown up massively, so the microscopic quantum fluctuations became expressed on a macroscopic scale. The important point is that the fluctuations which were in causal contant before the expansion (because light had time to travel from one side of the fluctuation to the other) are expanded to such a large size that either side is not now in causal contact, they have become so large that it becomes impossible to smooth them out again. Some time later the Universe then cools down enough that the soup of elementary particles combines to form normal protons electrons etc. A little further along the Universe is cool enough for the protons and electrons to combine to form Hydrogen and the Universe becomes transparent to radiation so the radiation that is left can freely travel away giving us our observed CMB (after it has been heavily redshifted by the expansion).

So to answer your question we know the size of the causal contact because it is enforced by QM which as Im sure your aware is the most accurate theory ever developed by man.

Well, not with absolute certainty, no. I know the data is "massaged" a bit to remove "spikes" that *might* be attributable to cosmic interference. That certainly helps to "smooth" out the data too.

This is also techinically true but essentially irrelevant. Its possible to do exactly the same analysis on regions of the CMB away from the galaxy and get essentially exactly the same results (you lose some power in the higher order terms of the power spectrum because you have less area) but you get the same results for the smaller angle correlations with or without using the regions you have to clean the galaxy from. Since its actually the position of the first peak that determines most of the interesting physics it doesnt really matter.

[astro_uk]

Firstly apologies for the slightly disordered replies. Secondly I'm still waiting for Harrys input here.

From my perspective, this statement is purely a statement of faith.

You are absolutely right, but not in the way that you think. I have faith that those that have looked at this and thought about it more deeply than I ever have are more than likely correct. The fact is neither me nor yourself have anything like the required expertise to do justice to debating the rights and wrongs of a topic like the CMB, we simply haven't put in the time. From everything I know though, I have faith that those that do work in this field know what they are doing. There are many reasons for this, I could give you plenty of reasons why subtracting the foregrounds is not as big a problem as you think but the simple version is this. The foregrounds can be observed in many different wavelengths, the CMB cannot, when you do this you find that the foregrounds are all associated with dust and gas and stars in the MW and their behaviour at all wavelengths is essentially exactly what you would expect of these objects. You can quite accurately remove the black body tail of these objects which generally have temperatures greater than 10K, leaving you with the "pure" CMB. The CMB is associated with such a low temperature ~3K that there is nowhere naturally occuring in the Universe that is this cold, therefore it cannot be due to black body emission at this temperature and must therefore be the redshifted remains of a hotter temperature emission.

I would certainly agree with you that we should clearly define "maturity"

This is really a difficult question but fortunately you can work around it. Simply ask the question how many galaxies are there at a given redshift per unit volume of space, and how many are star forming (and hence blue) and how many are not star forming and hence red. You find that over time, even over the time between z=0 to 0.5, there is a sizeable change in the number of red and blue galaxies, in the sense that there are fewer star forming galaxies now then there was at z=0.5. This is not a selection effect, at z=0.5 its still possible to trace all the way down to galaxies much smaller than the MW, so this effect is real. You can push to higher redshifts and this trend continues, every time we look further back with new instruments we see this trend continuing. With the associated trend that galaxies are also getting smaller in mass. This leads to a pretty inescapable conclusion, which I leave as an excercise for the reader.

Well, IMO, that has as much to do with the limitations of Hubble as anything else. Hubble can only see so far.

Not strictly true, Hubble could see to infinity if there was something infinitely bright there to see. This is a major flaw in your thinking, the HST is in fact incredibly sensitive, it can see bright objects at huge distances, it can detect spiral structure in galaxies at a redshift of 2-3, and spirals arent that bright. If the Universe is constant and unchanging, quite apart from Olbers paradox which this is a version of, we wouldnt be able to see any region of the sky that didnt have a bloody great galaxy along the line of sight somewhere. The amazing thing is not the number of galaxies the HST can see in the UDF or HDF its the fact that the number is finite, it means they are getting fainter (in general) further back.

I'm really far more interested in these sorts of galaxies that presumably formed less than 800 million years after the so called "bang". How did they get so massive so fast? This one is bigger than our own galaxy. When the next generation of telescopes provides us with better views of this particular galaxy, will it have clearly delineated spiral arms, etc?

The simple answer is statistics, but I guess you wont like that. Look at it this way, in standard cosmology galaxies and clusters of galaxies form where there are overdensities in the matter and DM, these overdensities follow a relation (i think its a power law) which means that there are many more places with slightly more or less than the mean density of mass than there are places with lots more or less mass than the mean density. When you look far enough back you are looking at a huge volume of space, at 800Myr after the BB even the HSTs field of view is covering areas of many Mpc^3, statistically speaking we would expect to find one or two extreme overdensities in these types of volumes and that is exactly what we see.

Looking at the nearby Universe we know this must be the case, if you look at the ages of the Globular Clusters (which formed in the earliest stages of the galaxy formation) of large cluster elliptical galaxies we see that they all have ages about 12-13Gyr. These galaxies are exactly what you would expect those galaxies you see at high redshift to evolve into, they have the right mass and are in the right locations (right in the middle of a large overdensity). They most likely form like the spiderweb galaxy from the simultaneous merger of many smaller irregular galaxies, these gas rich galaxies merge and produce huge amounts of stars, of the order of 1000Msun of new stars per year, it doesnt take long for this to build you up a huge galaxy. So in answer to your question I would be extremely suprised if these high z galaxies look like spirals they will almost certainly be disturbed looking things. This is also in line with the fact that the further back you look the more galaxies tend to look disturbed and irregular.



I'll try and answer the other points later, they're more particle physics related.

[harry]

Hello All

I just came back.

I will read the above posts.

I'm reading through Astro's so called evidence.

The only person who has a balance and an unbiased opinion is Michael.

As for the BBT ,everybody knows my stand on this.

[harry]

Hello All

The Sloan Legacy Survey
http://www.sdss.org/legacy/aboutlegacy.html

Not complete, regarless does not show any evidence for BB.
=============================================
The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey
http://www.roe.ac.uk/~jap/2df/
The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: Power-spectrum analysis of the final dataset and cosmological implications

I cannot see any evidence for the BBT

=============================================
Ned Wright's Cosmology Tutorial
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmoall.htm

The conformal space-time diagram above shows the phi(x) at recombination determined by COBE's dT data, and the worldlines of galaxies which are perturbed by the gravitational forces produced by the gradient of the potential. Matter flows "downhill" away from peaks of the potential (red spots on the COBE map), producing voids in the current distribution of galaxies, while valleys in the potential (blue spots) are where the clusters of galaxies form

This link also does not prove the BBT.

==============================================

Evolution since z = 0.5 of the Morphology-Density relation for Clusters of Galaxies
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9707232
Using traditional morphological classifications of galaxies in 10 intermediate-redshift (z~0.5) clusters observed with WFPC-2 on the Hubble Space Telescope, we derive relations between morphology and local galaxy density similar to that found by Dressler for low-redshift clusters. Taken collectively, the `morphology-density' relationship, M-D, for these more distant, presumably younger clusters is qualitatively similar to that found for the local sample, but a detailed comparison shows two substantial differences: (1) For the clusters in our sample, the M-D relation is strong in centrally concentrated ``regular'' clusters, those with a strong correlation of radius and surface density, but nearly absent for clusters that are less concentrated and irregular, in contrast to the situation for low redshift clusters where a strong relation has been found for both. (2) In every cluster the fraction of elliptical galaxies is as large or larger than in low-redshift clusters, but the S0 fraction is 2-3 times smaller, with a proportional increase of the spiral fraction. Straightforward, though probably not unique, interpretations of these observations are (1) morphological segregation proceeds hierarchically, affecting richer, denser groups of galaxies earlier, and (2) the formation of elliptical galaxies predates the formation of rich clusters, and occurs instead in the loose-group phase or even earlier, but S0's are generated in large numbers only after cluster virialization.

Again no evidence for the BBT

===========================================

We analyse $u-r$ colour distributions for several samples of galaxies in groups drawn from the Fourth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. For all luminosity ranges and environments considered the colour distributions are well described by the sum of two Gaussian functions. We find that the fraction of galaxies in the red sequence is an increasing function of group virial mass. We also study the evolution of the galaxy colour distributions at low redshift, $z\le0.18$ in the field and in groups for galaxies brighter than $M_r-5\log(h)=-20$, finding significant evidence of recent evolution in the population of galaxies in groups. The fraction of red galaxies monotonically increases with decreasing redshift, this effect implies a much stronger evolution of galaxies in groups than in the field.

again I cannot see any evidence for the BBT.

===========================================
http://arxiv.org/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0109/0109358.pdf

This new paradigm has transformed our
view of galaxy evolution. It is now
believed that most visible galaxies are
embedded in much larger and more
massive dark matter halos that detached
from the expanding cosmic plasma
(created in the Big Bang) at early times.
Furthermore, galaxies are no longer
viewed as growing in isolation, but rather
as being linked into a web of large scale
structure, which originated in the density
fluctuations traced by the surface
brightness variations now seen in the
cosmic microwave background (2-5).
Observations of galaxy morphology now
span about 70% of the total age of the
Universe and allow this paradigm to be
tested.
Caveats
Morphological classification of galaxies
at redshifts near z = 1 is challenging
because the number of pixels per image
may be as much as ~100 times smaller
than in the images of nearby galaxies.
Classification at z ~ 1 therefore
represents a considerable extrapolation
from similar work at z ~ 0. Caution has to
be exercised to avoid resolutiondependent
effects that might affect
images of distant galaxies more than they
do nearer galaxies. The slight “under
sampling” of images on HST’s Wide-
Field/Planetary Camera 2 makes the
classification of very compact galaxies
(such as distant ellipticals) particularly
difficult. Another problem is that it is
often tempting to “shoehorn” slightly
peculiar distant galaxies into the familiar

Again no evidence for the BBT.
But it does indicate that cluster formations are more so than not. I would expect roaming of some stars and glaxies. The extent is another question. They will still form part of the super dupper cluster.

===========================================
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archiv ... 10/video/b

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has found the oldest burned-out stars in our Milky Way Galaxy. These extremely dim and old "clockwork stars" provide a completely independent reading of the age of the universe. By measuring the temperature of white dwarf stars in a globular star cluster, astronomers can estimate their ages. Hubble's sensitive detectors came up with an age of 12 to 13 billion years, dovetailing nicely with other independent measurements placing the universe's age at 13 to 14 billion years.

If you consider this as evidence for the age of the universe, this is rape of science.

Some of the stars are 12 to 13 Gyrs old (This depends on how they are dated). Imagine how long to form our MilkyWay with the dozens of mini galaxies around it. Without any calculations I would say over 50 Gyrs. I hope one day someone does a proper claculation. I know BB people will add ad hoc ideas and make it 13.7Gyrs.

=========================================

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0501088
THE ASSEMBLY OF DIVERSITY IN THE MORPHOLOGIES AND STELLAR POPULATIONS
OF HIGH–REDSHIFT GALAXIES1
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0501/0501088.pdf

Reading through this paper

CONCLUSIONS
We have studied the evolution in the morphologies and colors
of two samples of high–redshift galaxies at z ∼ 2.3 and
z ∼ 1 in order to investigate how these galaxies assembled
their stellar populations. From z ∼ 2.3 to 1, galaxies grow
in size, stellar mass, total color, and internal color dispersion,
which we interpret as evidence for an increase in the diversity
of stellar populations as galaxies assemble.
The majority of luminous galaxies (M(B) ≤ -20.5 in the
rest frame) in the z ∼ 1 sample have rest–frame optical morphologies
that are classifiable as early–to–mid Hubble types.
These galaxies have regular, symmetric morphologies, and
many show strong transformations between their morphologies
when viewed at rest–frame UV and optical wavelengths.
In contrast, the rest–frame optical morphologies of the luminous
(M(B) ≤ 20.5 in the rest–frame) galaxies at z ∼ 2.3
are irregular and/or compact, and there is little difference in
the galaxy morphologies from rest–frame far–UV to optical
wavelengths. None of the z ∼ 2.3 galaxies appear to be normal
Hubble–sequence galaxies. Because the z ∼ 2.3 galaxies
show little transformation in morphology fromrest–frameUV
to optical wavelengths, the UV components are not generally
the small, star–forming pieces within larger host galaxies.
Themean galaxy size increases fromz∼2.3 to 1 by roughly
40%, in broad agreement with expectations from hierarchical
models. Furthermore, the number density of large galaxies,
r1/2 > 3 kpc and M(B) ≤ -20, increases by a factor of
≈ 7. We have tested that the size evolution is robust against
surface–brightness dimming effects. The half–light radii of
the z ∼ 1 galaxies when simulated at z = 2.7 decrease by
< 20% compared to their measured values at z ∼ 1, but this
decrease is small compared to the observed evolution. The
radius–luminosity distribution of galaxies at z ∼ 1 is consistent
with the local distribution for pure luminosity evolution.
However, the size–luminosity, and size–mass distributions of
z ∼ 2.3 galaxies indicate that they are not the fully formed
progenitors of large, present–day galaxies. Galaxies at z & 2
must continue to build, both in terms of size and stellar mass.
We have analyzed the rest–frame UV–optical total colors,
and the internal color dispersion using the novel statistic developed
in P03. The internal color dispersion quantifies differences
in galaxy morphology as a function of wavelength,
and between rest–frame UV and optical wavelengths it constrains
the amount of current star–formation relative to the
older stellar populations. Both the mean and scatter of total
color and the internal color dispersion increase from z ∼ 2.3
to 1. At z ∼ 1, galaxies with high internal color span a range
of morphological types. Many are spiral galaxies, with a few
starbursting and interacting systems. There is no clear correlation
between total color and the internal color dispersion,
although galaxies with the highest internal color dispersion
have moderate total UV–optical colors, which implies a mix
of heterogeneous stellar populations. The z ∼ 1 galaxies with
the highest internal color dispersion appear to be early–to–
mid-type spiral galaxies, and they exhibit strong transformations
between their UV and optical rest–frame morphologies.
At z ∼ 2.3 few galaxies have high internal color dispersion,
and those that do also have interacting and disturbed morphologies,
which implies that the UV–optical light from these
galaxies is dominated by young, largely homogeneous stellar
populations. We interpret the evolution in galaxy color and
internal color dispersion as evidence that the diversity in the
stellar populations of galaxies is increasing from z ∼ 2.3 to 1
as the older stellar components build up over time.
To interpret the evolution in the properties of galaxies, we
have modeled the stellar populations of galaxies in spheroidal
and disk components, and star–forming H II regions. These
simple models broadly support the conclusion that the range
of internal color dispersion corresponds to increased diversity
in the galaxies’ stellar populations. Galaxies with significant
bulge components with star–forming disks and/or compact,
H II regions produce high internal color dispersion, and
broadly reproduce the colors, sizes, and internal color dispersion
of the high–redshift galaxies. We find that large values
of the internal color dispersion require galaxy to have formed
spatially segregated, diverse stellar populations where old
stars dominate the optical light and stellar mass (i.e., & 80%
of the stellar mass resides in stars > 1 Gyr). For smaller fractions
of old stars, young stellar populations dominate the UV–
optical internal colors.
The scatter in the internal color dispersion of the z ∼ 2.3
galaxies is smaller than what is allowed under these models
and basic timescale arguments. We interpret this as evidence
that brief, discrete and recurrent starburst episodes dominate
the star–formation history of galaxies at this epoch. If these
arise from strong interactions or mergers of gas–rich conDIVERSITY
IN THE STELLAR–POPULATIONS OF GALAXIES 19
stituents, then they will erase any heterogeneity in the stellar
content that otherwise develops, and this is supported by
the low internal color dispersion observed in galaxies at this
epoch. The greater range of internal color dispersion that
forms at z ∼ 1 suggests that major mergers are less frequent
and more quiescent star–formation mechanisms are the norm.
The greater diversity in the stellar populations of these
high–redshift galaxies coincides with the emergence with
large Hubble sequence galaxies. Large values of the UV–
optical internal color dispersion require a diverse and spatially
unmixed stellar population, and this occurs when galaxies
have formed most of their stellar mass. In order to maintain
the spatial heterogeneity between the young and old stellar
populations also requires that major mergers are less common
at this epoch. These conditions all occur at z.1.4, which naturally
allows galaxieswith Hubble–sequencemorphologies to
develop.
We wish to thank our colleagues for stimulating conversations,
the other members of the HDF–N NICMOS GO team
who contributed to many aspects of this program, and the
STScI staff for their optimal planning of the observations and
efficient processing of the data. We are grateful to Tamás Budavári
for helpful assistance and for providing the photometric
redshifts, and to Eric Bell and George Rieke for their comments
on this manuscript and many interesting discussions.
We thank the anonymous referee for insightful and prompt
comments, which improved the quality and clarity of the conclusions
in this paper. We also wish to acknowledge the very
generous hospitality and science–conducive environment of
the Aspen Center for Physics, where much of this work was
finished. CP also thanks STScI for hospitality on several visits
while this research was completed. Partial support for this
work was provided by NASA through grant GO-07817.01-
96A from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated
by the Association of University for Research in Astronomy,
Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. CP acknowledges
partial support by NASA through Contract Number
960785 issued by JPL/Caltech.

============================================

The links above do not prove to me that the BBT did happen.
They do show, that many think along the lines of the BBT and in so doing make assumptiions. I worry that, because of these assumptions the so called evidence is also missleading.
The other worry is that the redshift used to measure distance could be disputed.

Is it better to agree with the BB people and relax.

[astro_uk]

Well Harry I have to take my hat off to you there, you have managed to make a huge post which adds absolutely nothing to the discussion as usual. You seem to have missed the point entirely its not that anyone of those lines of evidence proves the BBT its that taken together they make it almost impossible to find any other theory that fits the observations. I assume you do not object to the observations, in which case it is up to you to stop pouting on the sidelines and come up with a self consistent theory that can fit them.

The fact is plenty have people have tried and no one has suceeded.


I find the following utterly hypocritical.

If you consider this as evidence for the age of the universe, this is rape of science.

Some of the stars are 12 to 13 Gyrs old (This depends on how they are dated). Imagine how long to form our MilkyWay with the dozens of mini galaxies around it. Without any calculations I would say over 50 Gyrs.

So you object to people using science and facts to determine an age of the objects that make up the milky way which you call a crime against science. You constantly claim that astronomers do not follow the scientific method. But you in your infinite wisdom can pull an age for the MW from your behind and its ok? You who knows next to nothing about the intricacies of star formation, and galaxy evolution, but you just know it couldnt have happened within 50Gyr? In future Harry treat this as a scientific forum, if you are going to make claims make sure you have either some maths or some evidence to back up your claims, because frankly I find that little rant the height of hypocrisy.




So lets try and focus the debate. Harry, Michael you are frankly the only anti-BBs here so perhaps you could suggest an alternative explanation that is self consistent. The evidence you have to fit are:

1) The stars of the Universe all have ages less than 13Gyr despite some of them being able to live much longer.

2) Galaxies change in both appearance and number as you look back in redshift. Specifically there are more smaller bluer (star forming) galaxies the further back you go.

3) All galaxies not bound within the local group are observed to be receding from us.

4) There is an all pervasive microwave background which is incredibly well fit with a BB temperature of ~3K. This temperature is much lower than the temperature of any part of the Universe that is naturally occuring.

5) The naturally occuring element ratios show that there was originally a primordial abundance of elements which was about 75% H 24% He and less than a percent Lithium, etc.

6) The sky at night is dark.

7) The Universe looks essentially the same in all directions except for slight differences in the densities of galaxies.



I'm throwing down the gauntlet here, mostly because I know you can't do it. But I would like to see what picture you come up with that has less "ad hoc" add ons. I know from looking at the issue that you will very rapidly require ad hoc after ad hoc to try and fit the data, but lets see what you get.

[astro_uk]

I'll try now to address Michaels other points within the limits of my knowledge.

So how much "time" did it take for *any* galaxies to form in your opinion?

That depends entirely on your opinion of what constitutes a galaxy. From the ages of the Globular Clusters of galaxies we know that stars were forming within perhaps 700Myr of the formation of the Universe. Importantly these stars were not the first generation either, the stars in GCs are enriched in elements only produced in supernovae, so they must be second or third generation stars.

Simulations seem to indicate that the first stars could have formed within a few hundred million years of the BB. This fits in nicely with observations that seem to indicate that the Universe was reionized around 300-600Myr after the BB, this reionization is when the ultraviolet light given off by the first massive stars ionized most of the Hydrogen in the Universe again. In any case the LOFAR array should be able to detect reionization, so we will have a definite date for the reionization in a few years. This reionization should proceed fairly rapidly after the start of star formation, so the implication is that the first proto-galactic clumps (like those in the spiderweb) probably formed between 300-600Myr after the BB.

As for when the first bona-fide spirals formed, well that probably didnt happen until a few Gyr after the BB, the earliest phases of galaxy formation involved rapid build up of the bulges of galaxies via chaotic accretion of smaller pre galactic clumps. It wouldn't be until after this had settled down that discs could be built up and survive. This agrees well with what we see, in the sense that the halos/bulges of galaxies are always a Gyr or so older than the any reasonably large fraction of the discs.

I'd eventually like to discuss the physics related to the speed of the traveling subatomic particles and hydrogen atoms that first formed. When in your opinion did hydrogen atoms first form, and how fast were they traveling relative to the speed of light and to one another?

This one is actually very simple to find out. Hydrogen as an atom as opposed to seperate protons and electrons first formed at the during recombination which created the CMB. So about 380,000 years after the BB, this is actually fairly secure just from an understanding of how temperature decreases in a plasma as it expands.

You of course can also work out how fast the H was moving at this point using the fact that E=1/2mV^2. Because we know that the temperature is just too low to ionize Hydrogen (13.6eV) we can assume that there is some equipartition and the hydrogen has 13.6eV of energy for motion, this gives a velocity of 51km/s by my calculation.

Even if this calculation is way off it is essentially unimportant, as this motion is random, the clumps of hydrogen do not move with any motion other than the expansion of the universe. They by this point are already gravitationally bound (in terms of the large scale structure) and always will be. The hydrogen atoms are each flying around with large random motions which would tend to wash out the inhomogenieties in the density, except that their motion is too small to travel very far in the time allowed. As the Universe continues to expand and cool, so does the hydrogen, through repeated collisions and emission of photons. Eventually it is cool enough that it can begin to collapse under its own gravity.

Gravity then grows the inhomogenities in the density rapidly, remember the Universe is much smaller and denser at this point, so gravity between clumps of matter is much larger, by a factor of r^2. So at a point a few Myr after the BB gravity between individual clumps is very large compared to what it is now for clumps of the same mass, because they are now on average much further apart. This doesnt help form individual stars but it does help to coalesce clumps of stars.

When would you suggest that elliptical (any) galaxies first formed?

Everything we see at the present seems to indicate that there were objects that we would class as ellipiticals within the first Gyr, not that many of them, but because of the statistical nature of the density peaks there should be a few back then.

Ok. How exactly did you go about ruling out *all* other possible explanations for this particular wavelength?

The simplest and most persuasive is simply that the CMB is a well fit by a black body at this temperature of ~3K. There is as far as I am aware no known physics that can produce a black body other than as radiation from a body of a certain temperature. You simply can't build up the right shape by adding up the tails of other back bodys or emission from stars etc. It may be resorting to Occam here, but it is almost infinitely more plausible to believe that the CMB is a BB of ~3K than to believe the incredible level of fine tuning that would be required to produce it from dozens of other sources none of which are in causal contact so cannot "know" the temperature that they are meant to be reproducing. Wouldnt you agree?

A body of water is also a "seething mass of energy", but left alone it generates no waves, certainly nothing that would cause it to "expand rapidly".

I wont pretend to know enough about particle physics to comment on the causes of inflation except to state that the theorists seem to think its plausible and it does fit the observations.

You seem to be proposing a small pebble somehow creates a tsunami. That would violate the first law of thermodynamics.

You misunderstand. The quantum fluctuations present before inflation are very well understood, we know they exist and we know how they behave. You would agree with this? There is no problem reconciling thermodynamics and QM as far as I know, the QM fluctuations simply average back to the first order non QM thermodynamics case. This is exactly the same here, inflation takes the QM fluctuations which we know exist and expands them rapidly enough that there isnt time for them to smooth away when seen on macro scales. You are not getting something for nothing here, you still have exactly the same energy that you would have had if there was no rapid infation, its simply distributed differently, now instead of a constant value of energy per volume space you have some mean with gaussian fluctuations above and below that mean, the total amount of energy is exactly the same. So thermodynamics is entirely happy with the situation.

Your analogy of the pebble and the tsunami is utterly wrong in this case and can be seen to be so easily. The small waves have some energy, the tsunami has much more because it is moving vastly more mass. This is catergorically NOT the case in the BB. Think about it, there is exactly the same amount of energy in the QM fluctuations when they are small as when they are large. Its just that they increase in volume over time, the total amount of energy and hence later mass is exactly the same both before and after inflation. You are not creating anything from nothing, you are simply expanding some energy and therefore decreasing its density. If you think about this a bit more carefully I think you will see just what an elegant solution this is.

[Nereid]

Some of the questions which harry has not yet answered*:

Mon Nov 27, 2006 1:52 pm (extract):

harry, in at least one of the debunkings of those "Problems of the Big Bang Theory", you were asked to clarify a number of points. As far as I know, you have not done so yet. Would you please do so?

If you'd like a refresher on what those questions were, I'd be happy to provide it.

And one more thing: in that "Brief Summary", what material has not already been covered, in the "at least 3 occasions" astro_uk refers to? What, among the earlier debunkings, has not - in your view - been adequately addressed?

Tue Nov 28, 2006 8:57 am (extracts):

harry, I'm going to ask you, as nicely as I can, to stop this cut and pasting of material that we have already dealt with (in several cases, more than once).

If you don't understand a rebuttal that has been given, by all means ask for clarification.

[...]

Now, for avoidance of doubt, I will ask just this one more question:

In what way is the repeated posting of the same material, that we have covered at least once before, different from spam?

Wed Nov 29, 2006 4:10 am (extracts):

OK harry, here's a proposal:

You pick one, just one, from the many that you keep (repeatedly) posting, and you defend it.

The rules will be the same as those for anyone doing astronomy - internal consistency, consistency with well-established theories whose domains of applicability overlap, and (above all) consistency with good observational results. In all cases, consistency needs to be established quantitatively.

Or, instead, you pick one, just one, of the many that other folk have already debunked, and you show - in a scientific manner - that the debunking is flawed.

Or, a third choice, you show how one of recent 'cut and paste' you have posted is different from an earlier one that was already debunked. In this case, it will be someone else who makes the choice of 'the one'.

How about it harry?

Wed Nov 29, 2006 4:16 am (extract):

What, in the harry view of astronomy, constitutes "evidence"?

What, in the harry view of astronomy, constitutes "ad hoc adds"?

Thu Nov 30, 2006 1:15 pm (extract):

Taking four very simple observations (I could list about 20 but that would be overkill):

1) That all galaxies outside the local group are observed to be moving away from us.

2) That the further into space you look the less galaxies look like those seen today.

3) That all stars are observed to have ages less than 13Gyr.

4) That all of space is permeated by an almost uniform temperature radiation, exactly what
you would expect from the redshifted remains of a high temperature BB spectrum.

What would you infer from this?

I'm incredibly curious to know. These are observations that are not affected by our theories, so what picture do you have that explains them? Remember none of these observations requires any input from BBT, they are simply the way the Universe is independent of our own ideas and imaginations, so any theory you have must explain them. BBT very naturally explains them, how would you?

So please Harry enlighten us poor blind fools, let us know the truth, we who are so blinded by facts and knowledge and reason, tell me what I am missing. How can you explain those observations without a finife start for the Universe?

Here is, as far as I can tell, you only response to any of these questions and proposals: (Fri Dec 01, 2006 4:49 am (extracts)):

I can give you over 30 issues. But if you have the mindset of a BB person.
What can I say?

So here's another question: which of these "over 30 issues" were NOT included in your Tue Jul 04, 2006 12:04 pm and Tue Oct 17, 2006 7:40 am posts?

In closing, may I remind you harry that the rules here are those of science.

If you don't understand what science is, then please ask.

If you don't like what modern science is, then fine, just say so, your opinion will be noted and we can move on.

If you think that modern astronomy is not science, then say so, and present a case showing that it isn't (starting with a good definition of science).

However, what is not acceptable is continued avoidance of answering questions about the non-mainstream (astronomical, cosmological) claims which you yourself continue to post here. However you choose to characterise it, I'm sure you'd agree that 'discussion' it isn't.

*If I have missed your answers to any of these, I apologies harry; please point to where you did, in fact, answer them.

[harry]

Hello All

Neried said

In closing, may I remind you harry that the rules here are those of science.

If you don't understand what science is, then please ask.

If you don't like what modern science is, then fine, just say so, your opinion will be noted and we can move on.

If you think that modern astronomy is not science, then say so, and present a case showing that it isn't (starting with a good definition of science).

Do you really think that the rules here are of science?
I do understand what science is. The question is do you?
How can modern astronomy be science? Their mind set predetermines the out come and if it does not they add ad hoc ideas to make it work.

Above I wrote how the modern Astronomers dated the universe by dating a star and they deduced the age of the universe. If you think this is science than I think you need to read more on the functioning of the parts within the universe.

As for my info on star and galaxy formation it growing by the day. I do not pretend to know it all, but the more I look into it the less I find that I know. But! I also realize how very little people know.

Prime example is the following by astro

That depends entirely on your opinion of what constitutes a galaxy. From the ages of the Globular Clusters of galaxies we know that stars were forming within perhaps 700Myr of the formation of the Universe. Importantly these stars were not the first generation either, the stars in GCs are enriched in elements only produced in supernovae, so they must be second or third generation stars.

Simulations seem to indicate that the first stars could have formed within a few hundred million years of the BB. This fits in nicely with observations that seem to indicate that the Universe was reionized around 300-600Myr after the BB, this reionization is when the ultraviolet light given off by the first massive stars ionized most of the Hydrogen in the Universe again. In any case the LOFAR array should be able to detect reionization, so we will have a definite date for the reionization in a few years. This reionization should proceed fairly rapidly after the start of star formation, so the implication is that the first proto-galactic clumps (like those in the spiderweb) probably formed between 300-600Myr after the BB.

As for when the first bona-fide spirals formed, well that probably didnt happen until a few Gyr after the BB, the earliest phases of galaxy formation involved rapid build up of the bulges of galaxies via chaotic accretion of smaller pre galactic clumps. It wouldn't be until after this had settled down that discs could be built up and survive. This agrees well with what we see, in the sense that the halos/bulges of galaxies are always a Gyr or so older than the any reasonably large fraction of the discs.

If you think this is science and the ideas are in line with modern Astronomy God help us. He lacks info on star and galaxy formation and the time it takes to evolve mature stars and galaxies. Its not my position to correct him, but! to advice further research.

[harry]

Hello All

I cannot remember if I posted this before:

Email from Hilton Ratcliffe to Harry.

Thank you for your email and interest in our work. I share your surprise that Mather and Smoot received the 2006 Nobel Prize for physics because of their very biased interpretation of the Microwave Background. Even more surprising was the fact that the “discoverers” of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR), radio engineers Penzias and Wilson, also received the Nobel Prize. They did not look for CMBR, they did not know of the predictions of Gamow, when they found it, they thought (correctly) that it was just radio noise interfering with their work, and they tried to get rid of it. In fact, they at first thought it was caused by pigeon droppings in their radio antenna! Only when Peebles and Dicke from Princeton University told them of Big Bang prediction did they try to make something useful (and profitable!) out of it. From pigeon dung, the Nobel Prize!

The CMBR has been intensively investigated by both the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) and more recently by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). The COBE data was inconclusive (because of low resolution) but the WMAP results are overwhelming in their challenge to Big Bang theory. Study after study (conducted independently and sometimes by arch supporters of Big Bang) have shown that it is extremely unlikely that such radiation could have come from a primal explosion. The anisotropies seen in high-resolution WMAP images indicate an astonishing correlation with local astrophysical structure, both on the ecliptic and in the galaxy. All the current evidence suggests that the microwave background is simply a benign background picture of the radiating structures that surround us.



For an overview of how well organised alternatives to Big bang are, you may care to read my review on the First Crisis in Cosmology Conference, published in the journal Progress in Physics, vol 3, 2005.



http://www.americanantigravity.com/docu ... cliffe.pdf



Some other useful references:

1. Halton Arp, Seeing Red: Red shifts, Cosmology, and Academic Science (Apeiron, Montreal, 1998).

2. http://www.metaresearch.org

3. Eric J. Lerner The Big Bang Never Happened (Vintage Books, New York, 1991)

4. http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com

5. http://www.bigbangneverhappened.org

6. http://www.cosmology.info.

7. http://www.cosmologystatement.org.

8. http://www.electric-cosmos.org

9. http://www.holoscience.com.

If the Big Bang is to remian the standard model it will need stand aginst critics.

This flow of alternative cosmology is moving quite rapidly through the sciences.

It is not my opinion that is of interest it is the papers in the above links.

[astro_uk]

Just got time to explain one point here.

I'm going to have to chew on that speed number for awhile, particularly since the universe is thought to be greater than 27.4 light years across. It seems to me that hydrogen atoms would have to move faster than 51 km/sec for the any hydrogen atom to be further away than 27.4 light years from any other hydrogen atom.

Quote:
Even if this calculation is way off it is essentially unimportant, as this motion is random, the clumps of hydrogen do not move with any motion other than the expansion of the universe. They by this point are already gravitationally bound (in terms of the large scale structure) and always will be. The hydrogen atoms are each flying around with large random motions which would tend to wash out the inhomogenieties in the density, except that their motion is too small to travel very far in the time allowed. As the Universe continues to expand and cool, so does the hydrogen, through repeated collisions and emission of photons. Eventually it is cool enough that it can begin to collapse under its own gravity.


This brings us back to "gravity" and what held the singularity "together" to begin with. Even subatomic particles would have mass according to contemporary theory, so how could a hydrogen atom moving at 51km/sec hope to overcome the forces of gravity from all that subatomic and atomic matter?

The 51km/s I came up with is just the random motions of the individual gas particles, it does not include the expansion velocity of the Universe. I'm afraid I don't know what the velocity of the expansion was, I should be able to find out though. Needless to say it is much greater than the thermal velocities of the gas.

[harry]

Hello All

Interesting link on plasma

http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/papers.html

[astro_uk]

Unfortunately Michael I'm not really sure what definition could be used to decide whether an object is mature. I know some people that model spiral formation so I'll ask how long it takes for recognisable spiral features to appear.

I guess one of the least arbitrary choices would be to ask how much stellar mass a galaxy contains. You can then get at this question in one of two ways, by looking at the age of stars in nearby galaxies or by measuring the ages of distant galaxies, both are pretty difficult for different reasons.

Perhaps you could also call something mature when it has stopped forming stars, but as this depends on the environment of the object you run into all sorts of selection effects.

[harry]

Hello All

I just read Michael and Astro discussion. Not only did I learn from it, but I noticed scientific thought in the discussion. This type of discussions will make the Asterik a better forum.

Just dropped in for a sec.

Sorry guys I have to go, another funeral. This year has been bad.

[astro_uk]

In response to Harrys post Mon Dec 04, 2006 1:35 am.

Harry, you have revealed repeatedly that you understand nothing about astronomy.

Your "knowledge" comes from a wide range of nuts, pseudo scientists and attention seekers.

How many lecture courses on the physics of stellar evolution have you attended? How many peer reviewed papers on the formation of galaxies have you read or even better written? Astronomy is not a back of the envelope science, it is not something you can just pick up an become an expert. It takes ten years of hard full time 9-5 work to get to the point where you know enough to be able to do anything new.

How many times have you simulated the formation of a galaxy? With full hydrodynamic gas physics included, starting from pure hydrogen and helium and building up to heavier elements? You do not understand the first issue with dealing such things yet you think you know better than those that have spent decades in serious study. Your behaviour is nothing short of insulting to a large group of very dedicated people.

As we have seen previously your understanding of the scientific method is very limited, you cannot just decide that a galaxy takes 50Gyr to form because you like nice round numbers. People that have looked at this have published thousands of papers and spent millions of hours researching galaxy formation and find that you need much less than 10Gyr to form a galaxy.

We have not one, not even one single object that is older than ~14Gyr, looking at many different objects, with many different techniques using known immutable laws of physics. Yet because you don't like that it must be wrong. The Universe was not made to make you feel comfortable it is the way it is whether you like it or not.

I will ask you again Harry, its time to put up or shut up, either you provide your all encompassing theory that blows the BB out of the water and explains all the observed facts from earlier, or you leave the discussion to those that wish to have a serious discussion and to learn.