Starship Asterisk*

The sticky at the very top of forum includes the words "This is a scientific forum".

But what does this mean?

Let's start with astronomy. From as early as we have records, observations of the heavens were quantitative. The observations of Tycho Brahe were quantitative. Johannes Kepler's analyses of these was done using math, equations, and stuff. In the hands of Isaac Newton, Kepler's analyses yielded not only a (modern) theory (of gravity), but also an entirely new branch of mathematics (calculus, though Gottfried Leibniz shares the honours re developing the calculus). And so on.

Astronomy is a quintessentially quantitative branch of science; math, numbers, equations and stuff are its soul, its backbone, its heart ... without these, astronomy has no meaning.

What does this mean, particularly in regard to the many links folk such as harry post in this forum?

In a nutshell, it means unless there is math, numbers, equations, and stuff behind what's on those webpages, no matter how interesting it might be, one thing it ain't is astronomy.

So, to all who are reading this post*, your questions and comments on the astronomy related to the APODs are welcome. However, if you want to include some links, please do a quick sanity check - is the material backed up by math, equations, numbers and stuff? If not, then please, don't post it here, in this astronomy forum.

OK, so you've found a webpage with some ideas relating to, say, the origins of the universe, and when you checked it out you found there were what looked like maths, numbers, equations and stuff backing those ideas. Good.

But is it scientific? How can you tell?

A good way is to see if there are papers on the idea, published in peer-reviewed astronomy, astrophysics, or cosmology journals. If you're not sure, then please ask! If you find there are no such, then please, don't post links to such websites here, in this scientific astronomy forum.

If, after checking, you find that the ideas you find fascinating are not backed by maths (etc), nor are there any papers published in peer-reviewed journals, and you STILL want to discuss them ... what do you do? The internet has hundreds, possibly thousands, of discussion fora which do not have (modern) science as a necessary requirement for holding a discussion - please go to one of those sites to have a discussion of those ideas.

Suppose you get really fired up, and want to defend the (non-science) ideas you read on one of those websites, from a scientific standpoint - what to do? As far as I know, there is only one internet discussion forum which openly welcomes such presentations ... BAUT (but be sure to check out their requirements for posting in their Against The Mainstream section).

That leaves one very important class of ideas to cover, here: Plasma Cosmology/Electric Universe/Electric Cosmology/Electric Sun (PC/EUEC/ES) ...

Indeed, Hannes Alfvén, a Nobel Prize winner, did contribute greatly to the physics that underlies these ideas (plasma physics, esp MHD). And you will find some publications, on websites promoting these ideas, in peer-reviewed journals. So, is this mainstream astronomy? or fringe? or just a bunch of crackpots and pseudo-science?

The first thing to get straight is just how important plasma physics is to modern astronomy, and just how important it is a great many of the successes of astronomy over the last century. For many branches of astronomy, a solid grasp of plasma physics is an essential pre-requisite.

The next thing to grasp is just how thoroughly the PC/EU/EC/ES ideas have been shown to be inconsistent with good observational (and experimental) results ... despite the towering intellectual achievements of Alfvén, who developed so many of these ideas.

And it's particularly easy to see how - plasma physics is not mysterious, the math, equations, numbers and stuff are well-developed; the underlying principles well-understood. So it's relatively straight-forward to see how an idea, such as the Electric Sun, could be fleshed out into a series of well-defined hypotheses, and how these could be tested, using multiple, independent observations.

So the reason why so few papers cite Perratt's EU papers is ... because the ideas he presents in his papers are inconsistent with the data we gather using our telescopes.

Next, a few words about the logic of "mainstream astrophysics can't account for {insert your pet observation here}, THEREFORE {insert your pet pseudo-science here} must be right!".

*but especially harry

Hello Nereid

What you say is correct.

But! what do we do with unconventional ideas that are not backed by Maths.

History shows that some unconventional ideas have sparked others to research and than add the Maths.

I'm worried now to show any links at all

Darn habit

But! what do we do with unconventional ideas that are not backed by Maths.

Pose the ideas as questions and not evidence.

Hello All


Hello Dr Skeptic
Some of us like to talk it out. Most of my discussions are not evidence but an opinion.

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Rather than having this bitchy discussion I'd rather discuss the universe.

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Going back to superclusters

In my opinion some would take way over 100 Gyrs.
Some of you have relied on the Big Bang and the ideas behind it. To say that these superclusters were formed in a billion years or less is so much in La La land.

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Can someone explain to me the Big Bang. Because sometimes I think some of you talk about it without knowing about it.

harry wrote:Hello Nereid

What you say is correct.

But! what do we do with unconventional ideas that are not backed by Maths.

History shows that some unconventional ideas have sparked others to research and than add the Maths.

I'm worried now to show any links at all

Darn habit

Ideas are cheap - anyone can have one.

The hard part is working through an idea, doing basic sensibility checks, formulating some proto-hypotheses, and then, if the idea is still alive, knuckling down to some hard yakka.

An underappreciated skill, in far too many internet discussion fora, is critical thinking ...

Let's say your idea is "everyone is from Christmas Island". You learn that harry is not from the USA. Is it logical for you to say "therefore, my idea is right!"?

Put like this, it's downright silly.

But how often have you seen pseudo-scientific ideas presented with essentially the same logic? One common form is something like this "the Big Bang Theory can't explain {some set of observations}, so the Earth is the centre of the universe".

There are many variants, all illogical. Another example, involving no alternative: "There are features in the CMB angular power spectrum which have a significant correlation with {insert object/plane/whatever here}; therefore there was no Big Bang!"

Apart from the faulty logic, there is another, perhaps more disturbing, flaw in much of this ... the apparent unstated assumption that doing science is like collecting postage stamps, that the 'book of science' is no more than a collection of isolated experiments or observations.

This kind of a view ignores the interconnectedness of modern physics, and its application to astronomy and cosmology. Perhaps atomic spectra illustrate this best: once astromoners can get a spectrum of some object with some clear, unambiguous lines in it, a great deal can be inferred about the object (or the medium between it and us). Yet little to nothing of those inferences make any sense without assuming that universe has atoms (etc) just like those here on Earth, and that the behaviour of those atoms can be described by quantum mechanics (QED, in this case) and Newtonian gravity (or, occassionally, GR) plus special relativity*. Of course, you are perfectly at liberty to reject any one of these (or all three); however, if you do so, you have the herculean task of re-explaining all the relevant features of atomic spectra ... not a job for the faint-hearted.

Add in just plain mis-understanding of a modern theory (e.g. TVF's 'speed of gravity is x million c' is simply his own misunderstanding of GR) and outright mis-representation (hundreds of example), and there's nothing left in the many, many lists and webpages put on the table recently.

And all it takes to see through (most of) this pseudo-science is some basic critical thinking ....

*this is a partial list; other theories explaining the behaviour include thermodynamics, gas theory, plasma physics, ...

Direct from the “Giant Space Cow”

2. All threads must be questions or comments on astronomy, preferably related to APOD (general questions are ok, but remember this is an APOD forum).

3. No threads about conspiracy theories, astrology, magic, abductions, UFO sightings, etc. I will delete any threads on these two subjects regardless of any replies. In particularly egregious cases, the thread starter will be banned. This is a scientific forum, if you want to talk about such subjects; there are many other message boards on the internet to post about such things.

4. Keep posts constructive.



Although I like your style Nereid you probably should lay off the moderator whip a little bit, for humanity’s sake, eh? I know Harry gets a little carried away and I certainly don’t want to bump heads with you but we do have to keep this interesting and entertaining.

Harry & Co. Maybe you could ease up on the links a bit and make your post a bit more constructive.

All astronomy comments are welcome here with open arms. Especially about APOD!!!

harry wrote:[snip]

Can someone explain to me the Big Bang. Because sometimes I think some of you talk about it without knowing about it.

In a very few words ...

Assume the universe as a whole can be described by General Relativity, at least outside the Planck regime*. Assume the universe contains mass-energy. Then it is either expanding or contracting ('stationary' solutions to the relevant GR equations are not stable).

Add the known properties of 'baryonic' mass, and electromagnetic radiation, to the 'expanding' solution to the GR equations, and you get:

- predictions of the 'primordial abundance of light nuclides' (hydrogen, deuterium, helium-3, helium-4, lithium-6, lithium-7, and beryllium-9)

- a 'surface of last scattering', which we see today as the CMB

These two, plus the 'Hubble relationship', form the three classical 'pillars' of the Big Bang.

A fourth pillar - large scale structure - takes a bit more work to derive, from the theory; because it's rather difficult to explain it is only occassionally mentioned.

Adding the properties of cold, dark (non-baryonic) matter - which you need for a wide range of 'local' phenomena - and 'dark energy' (which is really just a shorthand for a term in the GR equations), and you've accounted for just about every relevant cosmological observation. Pretty impressive, eh?

Oh, there's also 'inflation'.

That's a 50,000' summary. I'm sure you'll have lots of questions ... feel free to ask!

Oops, I almost forgot to add: as far as I know, no alternative theory of cosmology comes close to consistently accounting for even one of these four sets of observations, let alone all four .... and Olbers' paradox is also solved, with the BB theory.

*GR and quantum mechanics are mutually incompatible, including at a very deep, structural level. This incompatibility doesn't matter for anything we can see, today ... the domain in which the incompatibility produces observable consequences is far, far, far beyond anything we can produce in our labs, or which the universe can produce (and which we can also see). If you fell into a black hole, and could communicate after you crossed the event horizon, you may be able to get some data about a regime where GR and QM are inconsistent (but we can't). Similarly, 'running the tape backwards', on the universe's expansion, will bring us to a time when this inconsistency is overwhelming ... the Planck regime.

What does this mean? One thing: there are no 'singularities' ... either in terms of the how the universe began, or at the heart of black holes. All there is is a domain in which GR and QM are incompatible, so we cannot say what physics accurately describes things 'there'.

Going back to superclusters

In my opinion some would take way over 100 Gyrs.
Some of you have relied on the Big Bang and the ideas behind it. To say that these superclusters were formed in a billion years or less is so much in La La land.

Harry check out this link, http://space.com/scienceastronomy/06101 ... alaxy.html

Here we see a supercluster (around the merging galaxies). Why is this not expected within a few Gyr of the Big Bang? What physics prevents it?

For once list your objections. I am quite willing to pick apart any you may have, because I know that there is nothing unexpected in seeing clusters this far back, forming quickly. A lot of very smart people have looked at this and decided that everything fits brilliantly, what do you know that everyone else doesnt?

Here is some elementary maths for you Harry, at the time that most of the structures seen here were forming the Universe was between 1/100 and 1/10 of its size now. This means of course that the average density was a factor of 100 to 10 higher than it is now. Which because gravity is an inverse square law means that gravity between different concentrations of mass (in this case averagely space galaxies) was a factor 100^(2) = 10 000 to 10^2 = 100 times what it is on average now. Needless to say its pretty easy to form large clusters and large galaxies (through mergers) when the density is that high.

Your problem is that you are stuck in the mindset of a steady stater and can't see how elegantly the BB deals with your imaginary "problems".

Well, I certainly am not a voice of authority here but I do feel the rules posted by the Giant Space Cow - are broad for a reason.

Dan C. clearly includes subjects that aren't acceptable and for good reason I am sure. Ultimately we can all moderate because we all have the power to ignore posts that don't interest us (just look at all the posts that are without replies). Remember -it is one thing to be genuine but its clearly another to be ignorant. Ignoring truths is counter-constructive and the moderators are cracking whips. Not to mention they have little tolerance for redundant posts that support opinions that are not peer reviewed. or that are obsolete.

I have been a viewer of APOD since it began (if I could only remember that darn password ) and I am appreciative for it and for this forum. I just don't want anyone to get discouraged by the totalitarian type of control that Nereid is attempting to exercise upon it. Remember that science/astronomy is for everyone it is not just for those that agree with any particular theory.

Back to the Origins of the universe......Please keep in mind the Standard Model / Concordance Cosmology (ty) is still a THEORY . A theory that is continuously searching for supporting evidence. Lets not forget that there are a number of renowned scientists that disagree with it and for the most part with good cause.

I think the M-theory is currently our best chance at furthering our understanding in this search for "the origins of our universe".

Hello All

I got to smile.

I have read the comments on the Big Bang. So far no one has explained to me The Big Bang. You have tried.

But! if that is what you think it is. I think we are in fantasy land. Not one pillar has been proven.

Yes we have read about the sudden Big Bang. Think about it for a sec. Did this Big Bang occur everywhere at the same time. Well thats what the theory states.

Is the universe really expanding, because Hubble himself had reservations over his constant and up to this date its under fire.
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http://www.newtonphysics.on.ca/HUBBLE/Hubble.html
A New Non-Doppler Redshift
Paul Marmet, Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics
National Research Council, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1A 0R6
Updated from: Physics Essays, Vol. 1, No: 1, p. 24-32, 1988

Read the paper for further info.

This redshift appears indistinguishable from the Doppler shift except when resonant states are present in the scattering gas. It is also shown that the energy lost should be detectable mostly as low frequency radio waves. The proposed mechanism leads to results, which are consistent with many redshifts reported in astrophysical data.

The Top 30 Problems with the Big Bang

http://metaresearch.org/cosmology/BB-top-30.asp#_edn16

I know you said not to include links, but this link hits the nail on the head.

http://www.moondaily.com/reports/Big_Ba ... t_999.html

OOps i notice Michael had the same link

A team of UAH scientists led by Dr. Richard Lieu, a professor of physics, used data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) to scan the cosmic microwave background for shadows caused by 31 clusters of galaxies.

"These shadows are a well-known thing that has been predicted for years," said Lieu. "This is the only direct method of determining the distance to the origin of the cosmic microwave background. Up to now, all the evidence that it originated from as far back in time as the Big Bang fireball has been circumstantial.

"If you see a shadow, however, it means the radiation comes from behind the cluster. If you don't see a shadow, then you have something of a problem. Among the 31 clusters that we studied, some show a shadow effect and others do not."

Big Bang Cosmology Meets an Astronomical Death
By Paul Marmet (1932-2005)
http://www.newtonphysics.on.ca/BIGBANG/Bigbang.html

More and more astronomical evidence shows the weaknesses of the theory stating that the universe started with a Big Bang. A Canadian Astrophysicist presents this evidence and explains how the cosmic redshift is caused by gaseous matter in space.

http://www.rense.com/general53/bbng.htm
Big Bang Theory Busted
By 33 Top Scientists

The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed-- inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples. Without them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory.

Can all these 33 well known scientists be wrong.
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http://www.newtonphysics.on.ca/UNIVERSE/Universe.html

The big-bang theory was first proposed by Abbé Georges Lemaître [1]. Later, H. Hubble deduced the related constant, but as reported by Shelton [2]: "Dr. Hubble never committed himself to the theory of the expanding universe". Hubble himself in his book states [3]: "The familiar interpretation of red shifts as velocity shifts very seriously restricts not only the time scale, the age of the universe, but the spatial dimensions as well. On the other hand, the alternative possible interpretation, that red shifts are not velocity shifts, avoids both difficulties . . . ." Many prestigious scientists like R. A. Millikan agreed with Hubble when he wrote in a letter [4] dated 15 may 1953: "Personally I should agree with you that this hypothesis (tired light) is more simple and less irrational for all of us." Another prestigious scientist, Hannes Alfvén, is also challenging the orthodox view of the origin of the universe [1]. Since its origin, the big bang theory has remained an important controversy that is actively discussed in many specialized meetings [5].

An Open Letter to the Scientific Community
http://www.cosmologystatement.org/

Even observations are now interpreted through this biased filter, judged right or wrong depending on whether or not they support the big bang. So discordant data on red shifts, lithium and helium abundances, and galaxy distribution, among other topics, are ignored or ridiculed. This reflects a growing dogmatic mindset that is alien to the spirit of free scientific inquiry

http://metaresearch.org/cosmology/DidTh ... inning.asp
Did the Universe Have a Beginning?

Here, we examine the evidence for the most fundamental postulate of the big bang, the expansion of the universe. We conclude that the evidence does not support the theory; and that it is time to stop patching up the theory to keep it viable, and to consider fundamentally new working models for the origin and nature of the universe in better agreement with the observations.

Discovery of H2, in Space
Explains Dark Matter and Redshift

http://www.newtonphysics.on.ca/hydrogen/

The recent discovery of an enormous quantity of molecular hydrogen not only solves the problem of missing mass; it also solves the problem of the redshift, in a non-expanding unlimited universe. The Doppler interpretation of the redshift is a variation of the Creationist theory, since it claims that the universe was created from nothing, 15 billion years ago, with a sudden Big Bang. Since a much larger amount of molecular hydrogen than previously admitted has been observed in the universe, we can now see how this hydrogen is responsible for the redshift observed. That molecular hydrogen is responsible for the redshift which is erroneously believed to have a cosmological Doppler origin.

Exploding the Big Bang
David Pratt

The majority of astronomers and cosmologists subscribe to the big bang theory, and interpret the redshift to mean that all galaxies are flying apart at high speed and that the universe is expanding. A growing minority of scientists, however, maintains that the redshift is produced by other causes, and that the universe is not expanding. As astronomer Halton Arp remarks in Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science, "one side must be completely and catastrophically wrong" [1].

Redshift
http://www.electric-cosmos.org/arp.htm
Arp discovered, by taking photographs through the big telescopes, that many pairs of quasars ("quasi-stellar objects") which have extremely high redshift z values (and are therefore thought to be receding from us very rapidly - and thus must be located at a great distance from us) are physically associated with galaxies that have low redshift and are known to be relatively close by. Arp has photographs of many pairs of high redshift quasars that are symmetrically located on either side of what he suggests are their parent, low redshift galaxies. These pairings occur much more often than the probabilities of random placement would allow. Mainstream astrophysicists try to explain away Arp's observations of connected galaxies and quasars as being "illusions" or "coincidences of apparent location". But, the large number of physically associated quasars and low red shift galaxies that he has photographed and cataloged defies that evasion. It simply happens too often

Hannes Alfvén (1908-1995)
http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/people/alfven.html

To Alfvén, the problems being raised were not surprising. "I have never thought that you could obtain the extremely clumpy, heterogeneous universe we have today, strongly affected by plasma processes, from the smooth, homogeneous one of the Big Bang, dominated by gravitation."

The problem with the Big Bang, Alfvén believed, is similar to that with Chapman's theories, which the scientific community accepted mistakenly for decades: Astrophysicists have tried too hard to extrapolate the origin of the universe from mathematical theories developed on the blackboard. The appeal of the Big Bang, said Alfvén, has been more ideological than scientific. When men think about the universe, there is always a conflict between the mythical approach and the empirical scientific approach. In myth, one tries to deduce how the gods must have created the world - what perfect principles must have been used."

http://redshift.vif.com/JournalFiles/V1 ... 0N1ANT.pdf
A Bang into nowhere. Written well.

http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf080/sf080a04.htm

More evidence for galactic "shells" or "something else"

Measurements of periodic red-shift bunching appeared in the literature at least as far back as 1977 in the work of W.G. Tifft. The implications of this phenomenon are apparently too terrible to contemplate, for astrophysicists have not taken up the challenge. They may be forced to take the phenomenon more seriously, because two new reports of redshift bunching have surfaced.

First, B. Guthrie and W, Napier, at Edinburgh's Royal Observatory, have checked Tifft's "bunching" claim using accurately known red shifts of some nearby galaxies. They found a periodicity of 37.5 kilometers/second -- no matter in which direction the galaxies lay.

(Gribbin, John; "'Bunched' Red Shifts Question Cosmology," New Scientist, p. 10, December 21/28, 1991.) The work of Guthrie and Napier is elaborated upon in the next item.

Sec ond, B. Koo and R. Krone, at the University of Chicago, using optical red-shift measurements, discovered that, in one direction at least, "the clusters of galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars, seemed to be concentrated in evenly spaced layers."

http://www.bigbangneverhappened.org/

The Big Bang Never Happened.
Two World Systems Revisited:

Despite its great popularity, the Big Bang framework for cosmology faces growing contradictions with observation. The predictions of the theory for the abundance of 4He, 7Li and D are more than 7s from the data for any assumed density of baryons and the probability of the theory fitting the data is less than 10-14. Observations of voids in the distribution of galaxies that are in excess of 100 Mpc in diameter, combined with observed low streaming velocities of galaxies, imply an age for these structure that is at least triple and more likely six times the hypothesized time since the Big Bang.

http://www.ldolphin.org/tifftshift.html
On the Quantization of the Red-Shifted Light from Distant Galaxies
by Mark Stewart

One of the first indications that there might be a problem with this picture came in the early 1970's. William G. Tifft, University of Arizona noticed a curious and unexpected relationship between a galaxy's morphological classification (Hubble type), brightness, and red shift. The galaxies in the Coma Cluster, for example, seemed to arrange themselves along sloping bands in a redshift v.s. brightness diagram. Moreover, the spirals tended to have higher redshifts than elliptical galaxies. Clusters other than Coma exhibited the same strange relationships.

By far the most intriguing result of these initial studies was the suggestion that galaxy redshifts take on preferred or "quantized" values. First revealed in the Coma Cluster redshift vs. brightness diagram, it appeared as if redshifts were in some way analogous to the energy levels within atoms.

These discoveries led to the suspicion that a galaxy's redshift may not be related to its Hubble velocity alone. If the redshift is entirely or partially non-Doppler (that is, not due to cosmic expansion), then it could be an intrinsic property of a galaxy, as basic a characteristic as its mass or luminosity. If so, might it truly be quantized?

Some of you would say, darn we have been over this over and over. We are going around in circles.

Well until it is resolved we may do so.


http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0412276

On the absence of gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background

Here we have a more robust conclusion: neither of the widely accepted models are good description of clusters, or important elements of physics responsible for shaping zero curvature space are missing from the standard cosmological model. When all the effects are accrued, it is difficult to understand how WMAP could reveal no evidence whatsoever of lensing by groups and clusters.

If the Big Bang is correct than I'm on the wrong track and will eat my own hat.

The question is how did the BBT ever get off the ground and become the standard model. Where were all the great scientists. How did it last up to this modern era? Why do scientists and cosmologists try to make it work and prop it up where ever possible.

It doesn't matter whether the Big Bang is correct Harry, you could never be convinced of its correctness, which is why you continue to scratch away at the rough edges desperately trying to find God in the gaps.

Besides you never answered my question. I'll repeat it for you. What physics of the BB is inconsistent with large structures forming rapidly? I await your reply with interest.

Oh an Harry do us all a favour and don't bother posting links that have been thoroughly destroyed before, I took a long time to explain why every point of your 10 problems with the big bang are wrong, so you post a list of 30, 10 of which are the same ones I explained, the other 20 are frankly pathetic. There are too many posts where all you have done is list the same dozen pages by cranks who can barely write never mind undertake theoretical physics.


To answer this point by Michael Mozina.

Well, so far so good, sort of. This really only works correctly if we "assume" that a sun's plasmas do not mass separate to any substancial degree, certainly not into individualized layers. We assume the elements stay relatively mixed, in spite of the fact that plasmas will separate down to the isotope in the presense of strong magnetic and gravitational fields here on earth. Hmmmmm.

You misunderstand, the measurement of the primordial make up of the Universe catergorically does not come from measurements of the Sun. There is no way it could be know the material in the Sun has been cycled through at least 3 other stars. The measurement of the primordial ratios comes from looking at intergalactic gas, which has had little enrichement due to stellar evolution.


You also leave out the two most important pillars as far as I can see, these are not typically listed but they are pretty persuasive

galaxy evolution: galaxies seen at high redshift do not look like ones seen today. There many more smaller galaxies than today, there are many more spirals than today. Galaxies at higher redhshift always have measured ages consistent with them starting to form about 13Gyr ago.

stellar ages: there are no known stars or objects with ages greater than 13Gyr, despite the fact that some stars could easily live for a Trillion years.

If you can get out of those undeniable facts Ill be amazed.

Hello Astro

You know why I like you.

Because you do noy give up. I like that. Makes life interesting.

You would be so happy If I just agreed.

Astro said

Besides you never answered my question. I'll repeat it for you. What physics of the BB is inconsistent with large structures forming rapidly? I await your reply with interest.

Short answer : Time


It takes time to form stars, galaxies super clusters and so on. Evolution does not happen over night. Unless you are a BB person and you can make it so. Sounds like GOD's hand.

13 or 14 billion years is not enough time.

Our sun has a life period of maybe 12 billion years, and before that another star. How many stages did it go through.

Astro time will tell. I hope you have a hat.

No Hats, but I'd happily eat a sombrero if you are right. Needless to say, I'm not worried. I don't doubt that there will be changes to the overall theory, Dark Energy may go, inflation may be tweaked, but the overaching theory is undoubtedly correct.

Your argument here is nonsense, and I suspect you already know it is.

The sun has a lifetime of 10Gyr, its had 5 Gyr of that, so from a Big Bang point of view the Sun formed when the universe was roughly 8 Gyr old, now the sun cannot of formed from the remnants of a solar mass star.

Why? Because a solar mass star keeps the vast majority of its mass, locked up as a white dwarf.

The Sun must have formed from gas enriched by a star of at least mass 2-3Msun, stars of this size have a lifespan of less than 1Gyr, so how is it difficult to believe that several generations of stars cannot have enriched the interstellar medium before the Sun formed?

Again though you have provided no evidence for your claims, as Nereid would say, I think you should provide some maths that backs up your assertions. I can provide maths that shows that gravity between galaxies was about 10000 times stronger in the early universe (because they are closer together), its up to you to show mathematically that this means that you can't create superclusters over a billion years.

Now I know for a fact you can't do this, because I have seen the simulations that only include gravity build up exactly those structures in exactly that amount of time. So you are most definitely wrong. But you undoubtedly will not be able to admit that.

You fail to understand just how long a billion years is, a 100 solar masses of stars being formed per year over a billion years is: a 100 Billion solar mass galaxy, and 100 solar masses per year is quite small at such a high redshift.

For once provide some evidence of some inconsistency here. Or just accept that you are holding a faith based position with no supporting evidence only your belief, as such it has no place here.

Martin wrote:Direct from the “Giant Space Cow”

2. All threads must be questions or comments on astronomy, preferably related to APOD (general questions are ok, but remember this is an APOD forum).

3. No threads about conspiracy theories, astrology, magic, abductions, UFO sightings, etc. I will delete any threads on these two subjects regardless of any replies. In particularly egregious cases, the thread starter will be banned. This is a scientific forum, if you want to talk about such subjects; there are many other message boards on the internet to post about such things.

4. Keep posts constructive.



Although I like your style Nereid you probably should lay off the moderator whip a little bit, for humanity’s sake, eh? I know Harry gets a little carried away and I certainly don’t want to bump heads with you but we do have to keep this interesting and entertaining.

Harry & Co. Maybe you could ease up on the links a bit and make your post a bit more constructive.

All astronomy comments are welcome here with open arms. Especially about APOD!!!

Hi Martin,

Thank you for your comments.

If I may share a little of my frustration with the (to speak honestly) nonsense that keeps getting posted here?

Some time ago, in another forum, I asked the following question: How good are the best alternatives to the Big Bang theories? That forum had (and still has) a much more liberal (shall we say) policy regarding the posting of non-mainstream astronomy ideas than this one does. To say that the contributions were disappointing is an understatement.

Few, if any, professional astronomers (or scientists of any kind) would pass up the chance to make a break-through discovery, or write a major new theory - just look at the resources that are going into the study of Dark Energy, check out how many thousands of papers have been written, proposing extensions to, modifications of, or radical alternatives to, General Relativity - to cite just two examples. Or, in an earlier era, look at the huge excitement around quasars, and the millions of hours of observations of them, the thousands of papers on them, etc.

Or, if you get a chance, go to an astronomy, astrophysics, or cosmology convention (or meeting) - you don't even have to pay to attend (in many cases), you can walk in off the street at the hotel or convention centre, and take a coffee among the folk who are there. Listen to them discuss, debate, argue, agonise over, ... the astonishing array of ideas, conjectures, models, theories, etc that are at the forefront of whatever that conference is about.

Then come back and take a read through some of webpages that have been posted here, and do so with your critical thinking hat on.

And, if you've been around a while, ask yourself "what's new?", "why are they STILL using stuff that's 30, 50, 100 years old, when the amount of high quality astronomical data, from just one day's observing, exceeds that, many-fold?"

If you've not seen a thorough debunking of these same, tired collections of pseudo-science, mis-representations, mis-understanding, and outright lies, then by all means, ask for a reference.

Asking questions is good, it's always good; wilful ignorance is not.

Thanks to harry and Michael Mozina for their responses to my (brief) summary of the "Big Bang".

Your posts contain some very good points (and questions), and some nonsense (and much in between). As this is a particularly interesting topic (thanks Martin), I feel it is worth taking time to go over the serious points, in detail if necessary.

As we do so, I ask only that we stay focussed - addressing one issue (or question) at a time - and, above all, we stick to the science.

"stick to the science" ... this may require us to take some 'time out' from discussing one issue at a time. For example "Not one pillar has been proven". As we're sticking with science, of course 'not one pillar has been proven'; in science, 'proof' is impossible (cf maths, and even there 'proof' has a narrow, technical meaning which is not quite the same as its meaning in everyday English).

So, here is my shorthand for what you can expect, in science:

*the engine room is theories; science is about the creation, testing, modification, etc of theories

*theories must be internally consistent

*theories should be consistent with other, well-established theories, where their domains of applicability overlap

*above all, theories should be consistent with good observational and experimental results, within their domain of applicability.

Your (scientific) mileage may vary, but not by too much.

While we may have great interest in the decisions around the awarding of 'telescope time', I'm not sure it's a proper topic for this forum:

harry wrote:[snip]


An Open Letter to the Scientific Community
http://www.cosmologystatement.org/

Even observations are now interpreted through this biased filter, judged right or wrong depending on whether or not they support the big bang. So discordant data on red shifts, lithium and helium abundances, and galaxy distribution, among other topics, are ignored or ridiculed. This reflects a growing dogmatic mindset that is alien to the spirit of free scientific inquiry

[snip]

So, just a single comment on this statement:

Virtually all the data taken by all the 'big astronomical observatories' is available, free, to anyone with an internet connection. This includes, in many cases, the raw data. For specific proposals, on the Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer, etc, there is a 'proprietary period' (usually a year), during which the the PI (Principle Investigator) has sole access.

This public data includes all survey results - 2MASS, HIPPARCOS, WMAP, COBE, SDSS, 2dF, the various supernovae surveys, UDF, GOODS, .... any one of which is far richer, far more consistent, etc than anything astronomers had to work with, only a few decades ago.

If those with alternative theories to the Big Bang wish to make a case for 'telescope time', the very least they could do is use the cornucopia of public data, to show that their ideas are consistent with what's already available. That they have not* speaks volumes for the quality of the 'science' they claim to have done. So, to me, this 'cosmologystatement' reads like petulent whining.

Apologies for the strong tone, but I can't stand 'woe is me' stories from folk who don't take the trouble to use what's already available - for free! - to try to make their case.

For the specific claims - one point at a time (to follow).

*with some notable exceptions.

Nereid I completely understand your point and I whole heartedly agree with you. It is not my intention to undermine your reasons or for you to assume that I am new to astronomy. However, people keep replying to these obvious "look at me! look at me!" posts.

My point is this, I don’t think Harry is the worst example I have seen here. And I certainly do not mind seeing an occasional abstract opinion here and there. But I would hope that unless the offense is in direct conflict with posted rules we should maybe just file 13 it. After all, a non-reply can say just as much as repeated attempts to ask for evidence that doesn’t exist.

I do applaud Astro's continued effort to help Harry to use better judgment and simple logic. Unfortunately, it is all too clear that Harry has motives other than the search for truths.

Again back to the M-Theory –Harry the answers you seek (whether you can or cannot acknowledge them) will be found here. This may be the closest humankind will get to understanding the mechanics of our universe and the origins of our observable universe.

*This thread should be locked

Martin, I don't know if it should be locked per-say But I do think it belongs on the CAFE and should probably be relocated there when it is reopened.

BMAONE23 wrote:Martin, I don't know if it should be locked per-say

I agree.

But I do think it belongs on the CAFE

Yep ... and that's where it is now!

and should probably be relocated there when it is reopened.

Your wish is granted ...

harry wrote:[snip]

The Top 30 Problems with the Big Bang

http://metaresearch.org/cosmology/BB-top-30.asp#_edn16

[snip]

OK, so to start the ball rolling how about we address this list*. Most, if not all, the 'problems' have been powerfully debunked, in internet discussion fora which care about science.

Points that are either out of date (more recent observations have removed any apparent inconsistency) or just plain mis-understandings of standard cosmology (or, perhaps, deliberate mis-representations):
4, 5, 6, 7, 'pencil-beam surveys', 'UHECRs', 'Gunn-Petersen effect', 'excess QSOs', 'first law of thermodynamics', 'large-scale homogeneity', elliptical galaxies', 'Faraday rotation in galaxies', 'acoustic peaks in the CMB', 'quantised redshifts', 'evolution of IGM temperature', 'fine structure constant', and 'two-point correlation function'. There may be more, that is just a quick skim.

These also cover the following, in harry's post:

Exploding the Big Bang
David Pratt

The majority of astronomers and cosmologists subscribe to the big bang theory, and interpret the redshift to mean that all galaxies are flying apart at high speed and that the universe is expanding. A growing minority of scientists, however, maintains that the redshift is produced by other causes, and that the universe is not expanding. As astronomer Halton Arp remarks in Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science, "one side must be completely and catastrophically wrong" [1].

Redshift
http://www.electric-cosmos.org/arp.htm
Arp discovered, by taking photographs through the big telescopes, that many pairs of quasars ("quasi-stellar objects") which have extremely high redshift z values (and are therefore thought to be receding from us very rapidly - and thus must be located at a great distance from us) are physically associated with galaxies that have low redshift and are known to be relatively close by. Arp has photographs of many pairs of high redshift quasars that are symmetrically located on either side of what he suggests are their parent, low redshift galaxies. These pairings occur much more often than the probabilities of random placement would allow. Mainstream astrophysicists try to explain away Arp's observations of connected galaxies and quasars as being "illusions" or "coincidences of apparent location". But, the large number of physically associated quasars and low red shift galaxies that he has photographed and cataloged defies that evasion. It simply happens too often

[...]

http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf080/ ... quote]More evidence for galactic "shells" or "something else"

Measurements of periodic red-shift bunching appeared in the literature at least as far back as 1977 in the work of W.G. Tifft. The implications of this phenomenon are apparently too terrible to contemplate, for astrophysicists have not taken up the challenge. They may be forced to take the phenomenon more seriously, because two new reports of redshift bunching have surfaced.

First, B. Guthrie and W, Napier, at Edinburgh's Royal Observatory, have checked Tifft's "bunching" claim using accurately known red shifts of some nearby galaxies. They found a periodicity of 37.5 kilometers/second -- no matter in which direction the galaxies lay.

(Gribbin, John; "'Bunched' Red Shifts Question Cosmology," New Scientist, p. 10, December 21/28, 1991.) The work of Guthrie and Napier is elaborated upon in the next item.

Sec ond, B. Koo and R. Krone, at the University of Chicago, using optical red-shift measurements, discovered that, in one direction at least, "the clusters of galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars, seemed to be concentrated in evenly spaced layers."

[...]

http://www.ldolphin.org/tifftshift.html
On the Quantization of the Red-Shifted Light from Distant Galaxies
by Mark Stewart

One of the first indications that there might be a problem with this picture came in the early 1970's. William G. Tifft, University of Arizona noticed a curious and unexpected relationship between a galaxy's morphological classification (Hubble type), brightness, and red shift. The galaxies in the Coma Cluster, for example, seemed to arrange themselves along sloping bands in a redshift v.s. brightness diagram. Moreover, the spirals tended to have higher redshifts than elliptical galaxies. Clusters other than Coma exhibited the same strange relationships.

By far the most intriguing result of these initial studies was the suggestion that galaxy redshifts take on preferred or "quantized" values. First revealed in the Coma Cluster redshift vs. brightness diagram, it appeared as if redshifts were in some way analogous to the energy levels within atoms.

These discoveries led to the suspicion that a galaxy's redshift may not be related to its Hubble velocity alone. If the redshift is entirely or partially non-Doppler (that is, not due to cosmic expansion), then it could be an intrinsic property of a galaxy, as basic a characteristic as its mass or luminosity. If so, might it truly be quantized?

[/quote]
Points that are illucid (perhaps, kindly, self-contradictory?):
2, 'blue galaxy counts'

Open questions (or ones that require a closer examination):
3, 8, 9, 10, 'matter-antimatter asymmetry', 'quasar metallicities', 'damped LyA systems', 'luminosity evolution', and 'globular cluster formation'.

So that we can have a good, focussed discussion, how about anyone who wishes to claim that any on the first two lists ("out of date, misunderstandings") or second ("illucid") are still standing, as valid scientific holes in the Big Bang theories present the case. To do so, I expect you will be prepared to cite recent papers, and (if necessary) defend your assertion quantitatively.

I will address the "open questions", and the rest of the items in harry's post (as well as those, as yet unaddressed, in Michael Mozina's) later.

*I'd be unsurprised to learn it's been covered in this forum earlier; a quick search failed to find it - if anyone knows where it's covered, I'll add a link to it.