Debating against Lambda-CDM, including the new Bicep2 paper.

[Michael Mozina]

Double post

[celeste]

For starters, they never even *bothered* to point a known source of synchrotron radiation at their camera to even see what it looks like before they handwaved it away.

But why would they need to do that? Synchrotron sources have been studied for decades, we know how they behave spectrally, they are quite predictable. This is prior work not handwaving.

Secondly, while they did a reasonable job filtering out synchrotron radiation sources in our own galaxy, and some bright points in some local clusters, they spent no time at all discussing or considering the implications of Alfven's *confirmed* prediction of large scale polarized photon from large synchrotron sources in *every* galaxy, not just our own. Instead what we got was a handwave of a paper that was based upon their *own* theories about a "thermal" universe that never even *mentioned* Alfven's confirmed prediction of large scalar polarized structures around *every galaxy*, not just ours.

Actually they did. WMAP maps were used to estimate the contribution of all foreground synchrotron, that isn't specific to the galaxy. Why would this be insufficient?

Synchrotron radiation is 100 percent of the contribution. They spend all that time and effort to filter *foreground* sources, but it blatantly ignored the potentially infinite number of polarized sources in *all* galaxies other than our own.

This to me is handwaving. Where is your calculation? Why don't these point sources show up in other frequencies and hence contribute to the systematic estimation? Why would these sources take on such a characteristic large scale structure?

If you are willing to accept for a minute that Donald Scott's filament model is true, you will see how the synchrotron spectra is altered, and why sources "take on such a characteristic structure".
For our models of synchrotron radiation to work, we need a magnetic field direction relatively constent over the synchrotron radius. In a truly large scale filament, the B field is effectively parallel everywhere (across a synchrotron radius). Not so in smaller and smaller scale filaments. The synchrotron radius allowed is actually a function of the filament size, or how fast the B field changes from that Bessel function. I'm not asking if you agree with Scott's model, but do you see that IF his model is right, we do have the influence on spectra that I'm showing?

[Michael Mozina]

If you are willing to accept for a minute that Donald Scott's filament model is true, you will see how the synchrotron spectra is altered, and why sources "take on such a characteristic structure".
For our models of synchrotron radiation to work, we need a magnetic field direction relatively constent over the synchrotron radius. In a truly large scale filament, the B field is effectively parallel everywhere (across a synchrotron radius). Not so in smaller and smaller scale filaments. The synchrotron radius allowed is actually a function of the filament size, or how fast the B field changes from that Bessel function. I'm not asking if you agree with Scott's model, but do you see that IF his model is right, we do have the influence on spectra that I'm showing?

It's truly incredible to me that they will "entertain" a whole host of supernatural constructs as a the potential "solution" to some mystery in space, but to consider any logical empirical alternatives based on a plasma physics and circuit theory is somehow beyond "reasonable" from their irrational perspective.

In terms of demonstrating pure cause/effect relationships in the lab, the only way they can even "test" their equipment is to fire up the electricity to create some polarized photons and generate some EM fields. We use electricity to generate synchrotron radiation in experiments on Earth, and all of the relationships can be studied in the lab, including how they directly effect the Bicep2 equipment. Every single cause/effect link between the flow of current through plasma and the generation of polarized photons as well as the "Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect", can be demonstrated right here on Earth, using their very same instrument, and electricity, were they curious enough to have done so. They didn't even try apparently.

Instead, they *ignored* the logical and empirical solutions, and boldly (sigma five no less) claimed that "Lambda-CDM did it", in spite of the fact they cannot demonstrate any of the cause/effect relationships being studied with respect to any photon, let alone "test" them in a lab, and in spite of the fact that CDM failed four straight so called "predictive tests" of CDM in just the last 18 months. It's a bad supernatural religion, a polytheistic blend of lots of supernatural constructs, so it''s no wonder they feel so threatened by empirical physics.

[Sain84]

I asked you where they attempted to discern what an *ordinary* B/E relationship looks like in Bicep2 from ordinary synchrotron radiation sources. I've been through most of the paper now, and it looks to me like you sent me on a 78 page wild goose chase. Either cite the part in the paper where they determined the ordinary B/E relationship from a range of ordinary synchrotron sources in plasma, or just admit they never did it.

No, you started talking about calibration and standard lab sources and what I provided was a thesis covering the calibration. I made it quite clear that it was calibration. I gave you what you asked for.

As I told you they did measure the B/E relationship for synchrotron sources with WMAP data. The WMAP data is not a guesstimate. Please give technical detail rather than simply dismissing it.

I did so explain why it '"slipped through" that ridiculous "analysis" in section 9, the *disaster* section of that paper. Nowhere in that section did anyone take the time to mention Alfven's predictions of large scale polarized photons form *all* massive objects in space. They did some trivial handwaving at a billion potential sources for these photons in sections 9.2 and 9.3, *without* (apparently) ever bothering to measure the *normal* B/E relationship from *ordinary* synchrotron sources!

NO, you didn't once. I've asked time and time again for you to explain in technical detail how their methods fall short. All you've given me is "It probably has a lot to do with the basic energy outputs involved and the frequencies that were used." not good enough. You don't tell me in that statement that the method is insufficient, you tell me you believe it is but not why. I cannot be asked to acknowledge a problem that you won't specify.

It's insufficient because no lab tests were done to know what an *ordinary* B/E relationship looks like from an ordinary synchrotron source in Bicep2, let alone attempt to *subtract/account* for it. Instead you *assumed* it's coming from some mythical surface of last scattering in some magical snow globe universe.

This is where you make no sense. You cannot measure an astronomical source in the lab. What you can do is measure standard sources to work out interment parameters, that's what I provided. Then you can estimate how much the foreground will contaminate your signal. If is synchrotron then you can simply interpolate from a another frequency. BICEP2 has no means to study foreground emission by itself, you can only use WMAP data. Nobody is assuming all the light came from the surface of last scattering but the size of systematic errors has been measured and it is not significant. You dismiss this but wont detail why.

They *trivially* handwaved at them based on some other *hypothetical thermal snowglobe universe'. Give me a break. Where in sections 9.2 or 9.3 did they account for every jet around every massive object in spacetime?

No. Those estimates were not based on a thermal universe. They were interpolated with a power law from synchrotron, that is not thermal. I ask again why is this method insufficient?

Ya, I'm quite sure you'll never deal with those four straight lab falsifications of CMD..

I've seen your posts and you are wrong on that matter. Failures to find candidates is not a failure of CDM, they were potential particles, CDM does not predict these experiments would have positive results. It's like looking in Antarctica and concluding elephants don't exist. They might not but these experiments don't tell us that. It's incredibly dishonest to call these falsifications.

[Sain84]

For our models of synchrotron radiation to work, we need a magnetic field direction relatively constent over the synchrotron radius.

Could you give some more detail on this. You're claiming the variation of field geometry affects the spectrum. Is there any evidence or detailed theory to support this?

[celeste]

For our models of synchrotron radiation to work, we need a magnetic field direction relatively constent over the synchrotron radius.

Could you give some more detail on this. You're claiming the variation of field geometry affects the spectrum. Is there any evidence or detailed theory to support this?

I don't know if you've had a chance to look over Donald Scott's filament model
http://electric-cosmos.org/BirkelandFields.pdf ?

Then we can start comparing it to what they describe here
http://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/Volker.Beckman ... ation2.pdf

You only need a brief glance to see where the problems begin. In Donald Scott's filament model, the magnetic field direction continuously varies with filament radius. In the NASA pdf, you find the model of synchrotron radiation begins with "Motion of an Electron in a Uniform, Static Magnetic field". If we really do have current filaments in space (on more than one scale), they do not contain anywhere "Uniform magnetic field directions" .
It will get worse... under the heading "The Observed Frequency of Synchrotron Radiation" in the NASA pdf, it says it is assumed the particle moves in a circle(pitch angle 90 degrees) about the magnetic field lines. In Scott's model, the pitch angle of the magnetic field ITSELF changes.

Now, before we even talk about observations, don't you think it would be good to come to some agreement on what we should see IF we have current filaments in space, and they work as Donald Scott shows? Since you've been focused on polarization, you see under the heading "Non-relativistic gyroradiation and cyclotron radiation",that polarization is a function of magnetic field direction, which in Scott's filaments varies from line of sight to perpendicular, on almost any sightline through a filament. And that if we have VERY large scale filaments,where the magnetic field direction changes slowly with radius, the approximation of the NASA pdf does apply (we have effectivelly motion of an electron in a uniform static field). As we shrink filament size , we lose longest wavelengths first (changing the spectrum AND output of synchrotron and cyclotron radiation?

I've become quite a fan of Scott's filament model of late. Whether your response says, "Hey, Scott may be on to something", or you respond, "That can't possibly be right, and here is why...", I will be listening intently.

[Michael Mozina]

For our models of synchrotron radiation to work, we need a magnetic field direction relatively constent over the synchrotron radius.

Could you give some more detail on this. You're claiming the variation of field geometry affects the spectrum. Is there any evidence or detailed theory to support this?

How could there be any physical laboratory evidence to support anything since apparently none of the necessary lab work was ever done to test for such things in the first place?

Here you are peddling the *single* most extraordinary claim in the entire history of physics, yet the lab work done to test *ordinary* B/E relationships, and ordinary EM field influences to those ordinary B/E relationships in a lab was apparently *never even done*! Holy Cow! Talk about sloppy work, ridiculous claims, and *absurd* leaps of faith!

You apparently sent me on a 78 page wild goose chase looking for ordinary B/E relationship tests which were evidently never conducted. Nobody ever doubted that they calibrated their equipment. I doubted that they tested the ordinary B/E relationships and influences that are likely to be present in plasmas. Evidently I was exactly right. They ignored every single physical possibility, never ran simple *tests* of the B/E relationship in *ordinary* plasma sources in their equipment, and simply handwaved at the sky and the claimed their invisible inflation deity did it! Sections 9.1 through 9.3 were really sad. Nothing was ever done to determine *ordinary* B/E relationships *in the lab*! Instead they just *assumed* every single polarized photon in the entire universe comes from some mythical, magical snow globe surface of last scattering, and subtracted out a few foreground effects from WMAP. Even after going to *extraordinary* lengths to get rid of synchrotron contamination from our own galaxy, they just *assumed* no other galaxy in the universe emits them in section 9.2-9.3! Oy Vey! Section 9 was the most ridiculous handwave of all time in the whole history of physics.

Extraordinary claims requires *extraordinary* support. You don't do the *ordinary* lab work that one would expect for any *ordinary* claim of discovery. Considering however that you're claiming to have found *sigma five* evidence for *three more* empirical forces of nature, beyond the known four, *and* sigma five evidence of gravity waves, such handwaves in sections 9-1-9.3 are *inexcusable* and childishly unprofessional IMO.

[Michael Mozina]

Ya, I'm quite sure you'll never deal with those four straight lab falsifications of CMD..

I've seen your posts and you are wrong on that matter. Failures to find candidates is not a failure of CDM, they were potential particles, CDM does not predict these experiments would have positive results. It's like looking in Antarctica and concluding elephants don't exist. They might not but these experiments don't tell us that. It's incredibly dishonest to call these falsifications.

Since your theory is based on two basic clams, lambda and CDM, I'll argue the two issues separately to make sure they both get dealt with.

You make all these grandiose claims to the public about how your hypothetical entities are so successful at making "predictions', when in fact most if not all of them were *postdicted fits* to known observations. Three of your four supernatural claims completely defy laboratory testing. Nobody can even 'test' to see that "space expansion' has any effect on a photon in a real lab experiment on Earth. Likewise nobody can setup a "test" on Earth to demonstrate that inflation has any effect on a photon. Ditto for dark energy. Of the four supernatural claims you're making, only *one* of them makes any actual "predictions" that are testable and falsifiable in a lab on planet Earth.

You folks made four unique and very testable predictions/claims about exotic matter. You claimed your predictions would produce results at LHC as you folks handwaved math at me by the boatload back in 2005 to support your nonsense. All of those tons of maths and predictions that you so proudly handwaved in my face back in 2005 have now been falsified at LHC, every single one of them.

You also made bold claims about finding "hints' of exotic matter in underground tests and you spent a bunch more of my tax money building more expensive equipment and technology that also falsified a bunch more of your now falsified predictions and maths.

You folks are constantly pointing at gamma rays from the sky and claiming WIMPS did it. You therefore predicted that you would find some kind of high energy cutoff in AMS-02 tests, yet alas, that prediction was also *falsified*.

You folks claimed that electrons wouldn't be entirely round due to the influence of exotic matter on their shape, yet again your claims and predictions about exotic matter were *falsified* in the lab.

The *worst* part however is that *since the 2006 lensing study* which claimed to provide evidence of "dark matter", your galaxy mass estimation techniques have since been falsified three straight times. You folks *grossly* underestimated the number of stars in a given galaxy by a whopping factor of between 3-20, depending on the size of the star, and the galaxy type in question. Not only did all of your actual testable "predictions" falsify your theory, real life data about your galaxy mass estimation techniques also falsified your claims.

Peratt has already demonstrated that simply adding MHD influences can explain galaxy rotation processes, and your predictions and claims about finding evidence of dark matter have been falsified 7 times in the last 8 years.

[Sain84]

For our models of synchrotron radiation to work, we need a magnetic field direction relatively constent over the synchrotron radius.

Could you give some more detail on this. You're claiming the variation of field geometry affects the spectrum. Is there any evidence or detailed theory to support this?

I don't know if you've had a chance to look over Donald Scott's filament model
http://electric-cosmos.org/BirkelandFields.pdf ?

Then we can start comparing it to what they describe here
http://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/Volker.Beckman ... ation2.pdf

You only need a brief glance to see where the problems begin. In Donald Scott's filament model, the magnetic field direction continuously varies with filament radius. In the NASA pdf, you find the model of synchrotron radiation begins with "Motion of an Electron in a Uniform, Static Magnetic field". If we really do have current filaments in space (on more than one scale), they do not contain anywhere "Uniform magnetic field directions" .
It will get worse... under the heading "The Observed Frequency of Synchrotron Radiation" in the NASA pdf, it says it is assumed the particle moves in a circle(pitch angle 90 degrees) about the magnetic field lines. In Scott's model, the pitch angle of the magnetic field ITSELF changes.

The simplest models of synchronous do include a uniform magnetic field but that's just the simplest calculation, you can calculate more complex geometries. What I'm asking is do you have any evidence that a nonuniform magnetic field could produce a radially different spectrum, for example one that could be confused with a 3K blackbody.

On a small technical note a magnetic field doesn't have a pitch angle, you just say the magnetic field is nonuniform, pitch angle is the property of a particle in the field not the field.

[Sain84]

You folks made four unique and very testable predictions/claims about exotic matter. You claimed your predictions would produce results at LHC as you folks handwaved math at me by the boatload back in 2005 to support your nonsense. All of those tons of maths and predictions that you so proudly handwaved in my face back in 2005 have now been falsified at LHC, every single one of them.

You also made bold claims about finding "hints' of exotic matter in underground tests and you spent a bunch more of my tax money building more expensive equipment and technology that also falsified a bunch more of your now falsified predictions and maths.

You folks are constantly pointing at gamma rays from the sky and claiming WIMPS did it. You therefore predicted that you would find some kind of high energy cutoff in AMS-02 tests, yet alas, that prediction was also *falsified*.

You folks claimed that electrons wouldn't be entirely round due to the influence of exotic matter on their shape, yet again your claims and predictions about exotic matter were *falsified* in the lab.

The *worst* part however is that *since the 2006 lensing study* which claimed to provide evidence of "dark matter", your galaxy mass estimation techniques have since been falsified three straight times. You folks *grossly* underestimated the number of stars in a given galaxy by a whopping factor of between 3-20, depending on the size of the star, and the galaxy type in question. Not only did all of your actual testable "predictions" falsify your theory, real life data about your galaxy mass estimation techniques also falsified your claims.

LHC results are not a even test of LambdaCDM. It is not a falsification. That is a search for CDM candidates, the fact one type wasn't found does not invalidate CDM. Show me a paper that says this test will make or break CDM, it doesn't exist.

AMS-02 still hasn't reported back the high energy data as far as I'm aware but again it was not a falsification. It was a test of a candidate signal seen in gamma rays. Again not a falsfication.

Electron roundness is not a test of dark matter. That is a test of SUSY, you don't need SUSY for dark matter.

Lastly I'll ask for a source on the lensing study, I'm pretty sure it doesn't say what you think it does.

[celeste]

On a small technical note a magnetic field doesn't have a pitch angle, you just say the magnetic field is nonuniform, pitch angle is the property of a particle in the field not the field.

In Dr. Scott's model, the magnetic fields of a current filament are helical, so they do indeed have a pitch angle (which varies with filament radius).

That does lead to interesting results. As you say, particles may have a pitch angle spiraling around in a magnetic field.
A charged particle may also travel along the magnetic field lines of a filament, which leaves it spiraling at the pitch angle of the filament's magnetic field. In the textbook case, a charged particle spiraling in a uniform magnetic field, radiates until it is left traveling along the magnetic field direction. In a filament, a charged particle should radiate energy until it is left spiraling along the filaments magnetic field.

[Solar]

Only one article about this thus far:

Star dust casts doubt on recent big bang wave result
18:29 15 April 2014 by Maggie McKee

An imprint left on ancient cosmic light that was attributed to ripples in spacetime – and hailed by some as the discovery of the century – may have been caused by ashes from an exploding star.

In the most extreme scenario, the finding could suggest that what looked like a groundbreaking result was only a false alarm. Another possibility is that the stellar ashes could help bring the result in line with other cosmic observations. We should know which it is later this year, when researchers report new results from the European Space Agency's Planck satellite.

On 17 March, researchers led by John Kovac of Harvard University announced that gravitational waves from the early universe had been found by a telescope called BICEP2 at the South Pole.

The waves were said to be the "smoking gun" evidence for the theory of inflation, which suggests that space expanded faster than the speed of light in the first moments after the universe's birth. The announcement sent shock waves through the physics world. "I was so excited," recalls Philipp Mertsch of Stanford University in California.

Dust damper

But soon it dawned on him that his own research on galactic dust might put a damper on the result. That is because BICEP2 identified the waves based on how they appeared to polarise, or align, the electromagnetic fields of photons they came into contact with in the infant universe.

Those photons, which have been travelling through space ever since, appear in every direction in the sky as the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. But other things apart from gravitational waves, such as dust, can emit polarised photons.

To minimise the chances of this effect causing a false signal, the BICEP 2 team pointed their telescope at a patch of sky far away from the Milky Way's dusty disc. Then they used models of the dust in that part of the sky to estimate its effect on the polarisation. They found that this could account for no more than about 20 per cent of the signal that they attributed to gravitational waves last month.

Giant loops

But Mertsch says the models they used didn't account for dust shells produced as the expanding remnants of supernovae slam into surrounding gas and dust. Magnetic field lines threading through those shells should get compressed and aligned, causing some of the material to line up as well. If the aligned dust contains iron, the particles' slight vibrations due to their own heat would produce polarised microwave radiation, says Mertsch.

A handful of nearby dust shells can be seen by radio telescopes, appearing as giant loops looming above the Milky Way's galactic disc. Mertsch and his colleagues, led by Hao Liu at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, plotted the positions of these loops. They found that one "goes right through the BICEP field", Mertsch says. This plot shows the patch of the sky that BICEP2 observed (multicolored patch) and the giant loops detected by radio telescopes (blue lines).

The effect of this finding on the BICEP2 result is not clear, because no thorough measurements have yet been made of how much polarised light the dust in our galaxy produces. But David Spergel of Princeton University says that if you take the dust into account, along with emissions from charged particles in the galaxy – which he says the BICEP2 team probably underestimated – it might make the gravitational wave signal disappear entirely.

"It is important to explore the possibility that the galactic signal could account for all of the signal seen by BICEP," he says. "Given its importance, the BICEP2 team needs to make a more convincing case."

Pressure on Planck

Another upshot of the finding could be that dust doesn't account for all of the polarisation that BICEP2 attributed to gravitational waves – just some of it. That would help bring the BICEP2 result in line with more preliminary measurements taken by the Planck satellite last year, which hinted at weaker ripples than BICEP2 reported.

The BICEP2 team leaders did not respond to requests for comment on the new research, but upcoming observations by Planck should help settle the matter. The Planck team is currently measuring the polarisation of the CMB and is expected to report its findings in October. Unlike BICEP2, Planck observes at a range of different wavelengths. Because emissions from dust vary with wavelength, this should allow researchers to better separate out the contributions to polarised light from dust.

"For sure, this BICEP2 result will put even more pressure on Planck's next release," says Fabio Finelli, a Planck team leader at Italy's National Institute for Astrophysics in Bologna.

Journal reference: arxiv.org/abs/1404.1899

[Michael Mozina]

LHC results are not a even test of LambdaCDM. It is not a falsification. That is a search for CDM candidates, the fact one type wasn't found does not invalidate CDM. Show me a paper that says this test will make or break CDM, it doesn't exist.

Give me a break. For the past 10 years, the number of papers written to supposedly "explain" CDM using some sparticle of SUSY theory are probably numbered in the *thousands*. SUSY theory has been your industry's bread and butter when it comes to published papers and when to comes to your mathematical models. Suddenly now when the whole thing blows up in your empirical face, it's not even a "test" of CDM? Right. Your theory is unfalsifiable. All you "popular" mathematical brands of CDM were falsified at LHC, and SUSY theory even failed it's own "golden test".

AMS-02 still hasn't reported back the high energy data as far as I'm aware but again it was not a falsification. It was a test of a candidate signal seen in gamma rays. Again not a falsfication.

You guys run around claiming to make all these important so called "predictions" based on your CDM theory like that expected cutoff in the AMS-02 data set that simply isn't there. As soon as the data doesn't work your way however, you immediately distance yourself from the claims as though your theory never "predicted" anything related to that piece of equipment that was designed to your specifications.

Electron roundness is not a test of dark matter. That is a test of SUSY, you don't need SUSY for dark matter.

Every single one of your "popular" mathematical models related to CDM were falsified over the past 18 months, every single one. Nothing once "popular" is left standing anymore, and the only thing left are the bottom of the barrel theories and the ad hoc one's they're still dreaming up in their heads.

It's *so* bad, and *such* an exotic matter of the gaps claim at this point in time, that you simply won't even tell us *which* energy range you'll even commit to, and which models you'll commit to anymore. It's a pure supernatural matter of the gaps claim now. Is there even any model and energy state that you'll commit to for us?

Talk about pure denial. This is *so* typical of all debates with Lambda-CDM proponents. They *don't* even do the necessary lab work to isolate *ordinary* B/E relationship in their gear. Instead they *assume* that magically they filtered out *every* single ordinary polarized photon from every single galaxy in the universe, and all we observe are magical untouched photons from the mythical surface of last scattering.

It's pretty clear that the whole Bicep2 paper is the ultimate hail Mary pass in the history of physics. They're already clamoring all over themselves to slap the term "bicep2" to every new paper being written.

Snore. The entire Lambda-CDM theory is based upon a plethora of affirming the consequent fallacies with respect to cause/effect justifications.

First you claimed that your lensing studies offered us "proof" of exotic forms of matter. Since then however we've discovered that your galaxy mass estimates used in that study weren't worth the paper they were printed on. In 2008, we found out that you've been *grossly* underestimating the brightness of galaxies and consistently underestimating the mass of the largest stars that we can actually observe in distant galaxies.

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/news/archiv ... 439,en.php

The following year we found out that you botched the stellar mass estimates on ordinary sized stars like our own star by a whopping factor of 4!

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=2287

But the failures of your galaxy mass estimates don't stop there. Oh no. The next year we found out that you've been underestimating the number of the most common stars, dwarf stars by anywhere from 3 to 20 times, depending on the type of galaxy!

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/12/ ... ion-stars/

All of this is on top of the million degree plasmas they found around our galaxy in 2012.

http://io9.com/5946052/milky-way-galaxy ... t-gas-halo

Even after revelation after revelation about the failures in the galaxy mass estimation techniques, and in spite of that string of failures at LUX, at LHC at AMS-02 and the electron roundness experiments, you're still sticking to the same falsified nonsense? You galaxy mass estimates were clearly not worth the paper they were printed on in those earlier lensing studies. We know that from 20/20 hindsight. Your galaxy mass estimates were *flawed* to begin with! The reason you can't find any exotic matter is because you don't need any exotic matter. You need to fix your broken galaxy mass estimates!

Lastly I'll ask for a source on the lensing study, I'm pretty sure it doesn't say what you think it does.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... atter.html
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0608407

That 2006 claim has since been falsified 7 times in the past 8 years. Three times your galaxy mass estimates were falsified, and 4 times your lab predictions blew up in your face.

[viscount aero]

Without becoming ensnared in the rip tide flame war here, I will add my 2 cents:

The premise of the big bang; moreover, the need to keep the big bang as the best idea out there primarily drives and enables all the spinoff theories that attempt to rescue it.

Lamba-CDM (with dark energy) is invoked to buttress and bailout the big bang from being deemed as heresy. Although there is no evidence for CDM actually, it must remain something that is very real albeit indirectly "detected."

Without CDM/DE, the big bang becomes more specious as today's findings only begin casting more doubt upon its relevance. The more doubt that is cast upon the BB then the more it must be upheld by supportive/alleged evidence.

Hence, enter the damage control zone of WMAP, Planck, the LHD, Michio Kaku, etc... These cast of characters all exist to legitimize an entire scientific paradigm and culture even if it is based on an increasingly dying idea--that of "spacetime expansion."

Being that spacetime expansion is the main idea, then a simple lab experiment should render this expansion clearly evident and ever-present and easy to see. But it cannot be tested for. The BB (and inflation) is often spoken of in terms of "the first trillionth of a second..." This assumes time and distance scales measured in terms of atomic radii and quantum mechanics. The stuff being spoken of here originated in a very tiny place, in the briefest of moments imaginable. As it should be today, too.

So why is this not actually scalable?

When asked to demonstrate spacetime expansion locally, that is, within a few nanometers of "space," no such experiment or commentary exists. Spacetime expansion should be happening everywhere, at any moment, at any scale, and forevermore. This should be easy to detect and observe directly in a lab. But no such event has ever been recorded to date. To my knowledge, no one has ever detected spacetime expanding within the four walls of a room.

If I am incorrect then so be it. I'd be happy to admit to being wrong. It's only a chat forum.

[Solar]

Late review:

After initially hearing of this and spending 2-3 days at the Bicep2 website pouring over the information from BICEP1 onwards, while on vacation no less, I had problems with the same section of the paper that Mozina has pointed out but; for different reasons. Specifically Section 9.1 which analyzes seven different models listed in the upper right of Fig 6 (Source). The first, expectation of lensed ACDM+r = 0:2 spectrum is a simulation with r set to 0:2, the other five models are breifly described in section 9.1. The last two models listed, DDM1 & DDM2, were constructed by the BICEP team using public data and a few more assumptions.

All the graph really says is that compared with their lensed ACDM+r = 0:2 simulation injected auto spectra the other cross spectra supported estimated and projected models tend to zero for the influence of foreground contamination based on those models. If you begin to look at some of those other models one finds even more “data driven” estimating, predictions, and constraining based on still other models. Of course that is what models have a propensity to do; estimate and average. It is the stacking of the various models of polarized dust emission with their estimates, “constraints”, “projections”, and “predictions” that struck me as too flimsy.

If I recall correctly (I was, and still am, way past burnt out on anything inflation oriented after studying this at that time) the estimated values and parameters of the modeled – models are then statistically extracted from the signal and the ACDM values, parameters, and expectations get statistically inserted. Then, viola! – the supposed “signature” (not direct detection) of “gravity waves” magically appeared.

Well, what else is supposed to happen when you statistically remove what you want from a signal then statistically put what you expect back into it? Coupled with what impressed as the unreliable stacking of several modeled-models within models only to statistically model again (epicycles come to mind) this just struck me as the inadvertent ‘manufacturing’ of a result after trying to statistically beat down foreground and systemic “noise”. They believe’ the signal is “cosmic”, they believe in “gravity waves” so the poetic incense to manipulate the signal accordingly is a given. I’d like to say that it was interesting; but it wasn’t. Primarily because of the reliance on so very many models. That is where Section 9 lost it for me. The whole thing boiled down to statistics and stacked modeling.

Obviously I don’t believe anything of the ‘big bang inflation' idea and I certainly don’t give credence to any idea asserting that it knows what occurred at -10^32secs, or at one microsecond, some +13 billion years ago. That is just odd thinking and some sort of hubris altogether; or something. Even before revealing that the Loop 1 Bubble thwarted their efforts I didn’t see how this statistical tour de force was counted on at that confidence level for something so very significant to this theoretic. That only one press release accompanies the demise of their claim via "fingerprints" of the Loop 1 Bubble contaminating their results, leaving all of that false inflationary inertia just hanging out there after such a large scale and rather obvious media blitz, is a disservice.

That's my 2cents