Albert Einstein and the speed of light

[willendure]

Thanks for your explanation, sketch.

Before I joined this thread I thought, like many people, that Michelson-Morley was a definitive experiment that completely ruled out the ether, and that there was no need to give consideration to the lunatic fringe who believed otherwise. I've read enough about it now to realize that I should be joining the fringe.

I agree with Dirac, there is a lot of speculation (including our own), and not so many facts.

I was a student at Cambridge University and one of my physics friends had a story about Dirac. At dinner, with a storm blowing loudly outside, someone remarked to him that it was very windy today. He got up, went to the window and opened it and looked outside, then came back to his place and replied "yes".

[sketch1946]

Hi will endure...

someone remarked to him that it was very windy today

Haha, that's physics....
I would have expected the story to end with Dirac
scribbling an exotic equation that proved the existence of anti-wind...

...Dirac "was once asked what was his fundamental belief.
He strode to a blackboard and wrote that the laws of nature should be expressed in beautiful equations."


I had an experience once when I was a young lad in the city,
a mad scotsman at a party demonstrated with a match and natural gas
how the big bang worked...

Another story: a skeptical but very much still-alive pilot who had to fly a small
aircraft solo between remote Australian outback cattle stations, where the thunderstorms
are wild, it's not practical to try to fly through them,
he would never trust weather reports,
but would make a long distance call to his destination,
and ask them to go outside and describe the sky...

He is still alive....
----------------------------------
BTW, if you were at Cambridge with Dirac, then you and I
must be close to the same age...
G.

[Higgsy]

Greetings
I agree, I mean I suspect that the CMB could better be explained by the Heliosheath/Heliopause interaction with charged particles in interstellar space...
SNIP

Hello, first post here. Hoping to learn more about the EU and the evidence that favours it over the mainstream, so I'll mostly be asking questions.

So, in the post above, you refer to 3kHz signals, but I don't really understand what 3kHz has to do with the CMB. Can you help me understand the connection between 3kHz electromagnetic waves and the CMB?

Hi Sketch,

I am trying to follow this thread and I'm stuck trying to understand your reference to 3kHz signals and the CMB. I'd really appreciate it if you could help me.

[sketch1946]

Hi Higgsy,

I am trying to follow this thread and I'm stuck trying to understand your reference to 3kHz signals and the CMB. I'd really appreciate it if you could help me.

You're familiar with the heliosphere? where the solar wind meets charged particles in interstellar space?
The two voyagers detected a signal which was a 'surprise'
http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/~dag/pu ... NATURE.pdf

There was a fairly long discussion in this thread previously, about how the faint signals detected by
Penzias and Wilson, who initially thought it was caused by pigeons pooping in their radio instrument, but discovered the CMB microwave background 'noise' that was initially said to be isotropic.. ie
filling all of space at just over 2 degrees above absolute zero...

"In 1965, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were testing a sensitive Horn Antenna that was designed to detect radio waves. In order to measure these radio waves, they needed to remove any outside interference (such as radio broadcasts, radar, and heat). Following these steps, they discovered a constant low level noise (like static between radio stations), which was consistent and unchanging throughout the day and night. Moreover, this low level noise seemed to be evenly spread through the sky. Nether Penzias nor Wilson believed that it was coming from the Earth, the Sun, or even our galaxy."

"After checking their equipment, heading over to the antenna, shooing the pigeons that had nested inside of it away, and subsequently clearing out all of the bird poop from the apparatus, they still found that the noise was sticking around. Since they knew that the noise wasn’t from any interference from the birds, Penzias and Wilson determined that the noise must, in fact, be coming from outside of our galaxy."

then George Smoot did some hard work, using a satellite based radio interferometer, cooled with liquid helium, sent up on the COBE satellite, trying to separate the measured microwave background from other possible sources, like an observed hemispherical difference, and from other signal to noise factors, and yet still trying to preserve faint differences at a level of 1/100000 of a degree, trying to convince himself he wasn't just picking up 'signal noise', in order to have believable evidence of primordial differences in the big bang radiation, so that these tiny differences could theoretically have turned into galaxies...etc.. it's all discussed in previous messages especially the links...

Since Smoot, others have suggested the signal could have come from other sources than the hypothetical 'big bang' like telluric currents in the world's oceans (Pierre-Marie Robitaille) or from the heliosphere:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/0905.2978.pdf

[Higgsy]

Hi Higgsy,

I am trying to follow this thread and I'm stuck trying to understand your reference to 3kHz signals and the CMB. I'd really appreciate it if you could help me.

You're familiar with the heliosphere? where the solar wind meets charged particles in interstellar space?
The two voyagers detected a signal which was a 'surprise'
http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/~dag/pu ... NATURE.pdf

There was a fairly long discussion in this thread previously, about how the faint signals detected by
Penzias and Wilson, who initially thought it was caused by pigeons pooping in their radio instrument, but discovered the CMB microwave background 'noise' that was initially said to be isotropic.. ie
filling all of space at just over 2 degrees above absolute zero...

SNIP

Hi Sketch,

Thanks for this. I have read up on the first detection of what has come to be known as the CMB signal. Nice story, with the pigeons and all. But I'm still struggling with the post that I first asked you questions about, where you pointed out all the sources of 3kHz or near 3kHz signals in the solar system. But I am obviously missing something because I don't understand what a 3kHz signal has to do with the CMB - that's what I'm struggling with and what I'm asking for you to help me with. Thanks.

[willendure]

BTW, if you were at Cambridge with Dirac, then you and I
must be close to the same age...

No. Long after, but he left his reputation behind.

[sketch1946]

Hi Higgsy,

But I am obviously missing something because I don't understand what a 3kHz signal has to do with the CMB - that's what I'm struggling with and what I'm asking for you to help me with. Thanks.

I hope I haven't given you the idea that I have all the answers!

I'm an artist, definitely not a scientist, or even a mathematician,
all my life I have loved the truth, and loved to read about science,
and a whole lot of other things... I like to learn about things...

For a long time, I have had a sort of intuition that something is rotten in the State of Denmark...
(a quote from Shakespeare, a poet whose stories sometimes held deeper meanings...)

Dirac "... criticised the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer's interest in poetry: "The aim of science is to make difficult things understandable in a simpler way; the aim of poetry is to state simple things in an incomprehensible way. The two are incompatible."

Dirac wrote: "It seems to be one of the fundamental features of nature that fundamental physical laws are described in terms of a mathematical theory of great beauty and power, needing quite a high standard of mathematics for one to understand it."

"You may wonder: Why is nature constructed along these lines? One can only answer that our present knowledge seems to show that nature is so constructed. We simply have to accept it."

"One could perhaps describe the situation by saying that God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe. Our feeble attempts at mathematics enable us to understand a bit of the universe, and as we proceed to develop higher and higher mathematics we can hope to understand the universe better."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dirac

What's Shakespeare got to do with the CMB? Nothing directly, except perhaps his
comment about the internal state of Denmark might be like the state of modern speculative
physics with a superabundance of theoretical things, and relatively few proofs...
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/somethin ... of_Denmark

I read about the issue of signal-to-noise problems and the physical problems with the collection of
1/100000th of a degree temperature anisotropies, all the mathematical problems with massaging
the data trying to mathematically 'remove' the 'foreground data', the galaxy etc,

and then I read about some of the people who have suggested problems or possible alternative sources for the CMB... this made me start to question its validity, or at least read about what alternative views might be...

So I'm just like you, trying to get my head around what's going on, physically and theoretically,
with the whole big bang story...

This is one paper:
"The very weak polarization of light from nearby stars reaches a maximum near the ecliptic plane in a position offset by λ ∼35◦ from the heliosphere nose direction."

"The position angle for the polarization in this ecliptic-plane peak is the same for near and distant stars, to within uncertainties, indicating the interstellar magnetic field direction is relatively constant over several hundred parsecs in this region."

"This region is near the center of a magnetic bubble that has recently been identified by Wolleben. The magnetic field directions defined by the polarizations of nearby and distant stars in the direction of this polarization maximum, and also by the observed offset between interstellar Heo and Ho flowing into the heliosphere, converge to a local magnetic field direction that is inclined by ∼55◦ with respect to the galactic plane, or ∼65◦ with respect to the ecliptic plane."

"Surprisingly, the geometry of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) dipole moment shows a strong correlation with this heliosphere geometry."

"Several vectors associated with the CMB low ℓ multipole moments are located at the positions of heliosphere landmarks such as the 3 kHz emissions detected by the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 satellites. Together these results suggest that an unrecognized heliospheric foreground is present in the measured CMB background."

"All data are consistent with the expansion of the S1 subshell of the Loop I magnetic bubble to the solar location. The magnetic field in this shell then determines the field direction at the Sun, helps shape the heliosphere, and generates an additional unrecognized CMB foreground."

"...The plane that separates the cold and hot hemispheres of the CMB dipole moment also divides the east and west hemispheres of the heliosphere, and also encloses most sightlines within 15 pc that have interstellar N(Ho) > 1.0 × 10^18cm ^−2."

"The CMB quadrupole area vectors of Copi et al. (2007) line up with the positions of the locations of the 3 kHz events detected by Voyagers 1 and 2."

"A mix of primary and alternate locations for the 3 kHz emissions are used for this
comparison (Appendix B)."

" A plane can be formed from points that are equidistant between the two poles of the
CMB dipole. At the closest point to the heliosphere nose direction defined by inflowing
interstellar Heo, the position angle of this plane is within ∼15◦ of the position angles
of the optical polarizations that form the ecliptic-plane-polarization-maximum."

"Wolleben (2007) has modeled the Loop I magnetic field in terms of two bubbles, one of which (S1) has expanded to the solar location. The distribution of interstellar Ho within 35 pc shows evidence of a shell morphology coinciding with the rims of S1. The eastern part of the shell, in ecliptic coordinates, is closest to the Sun. The upstream direction of the ISM flow past the Sun is towards the center of the S1 shell. The polarizations seen by Tinbergen are somewhat concentric with the curvature of the S1 shell for southern ecliptic regions."

"The hot and cold CMB Doppler dipole moment poles are both directed toward the
boundaries of the S1 shell."

"These results suggest that the magnetic field associated with the S1 subshell of the Loop I supernova remnant creates the interstellar magnetic field at the heliosphere nose. The S1 shell dominates the polarization of stars close to the Sun, the distribution of ISM within 15 pc, the heliosphere configuration that yielded the 3 kHz emissions, and the hot and cold poles of the CMB Doppler dipole moments."

"The CMB foreground that mimics the spatial distribution of the 3 kHz emissions and the east-west heliosphere symmetry may arise from the heliosphere itself, ..

...or from another property that is also affected by the interstellar magnetic field in the S1 shell, such as the spectrum of synchrotron emission or dust grains trapped and heated in the shell."

Source: "Interstellar Dust and Magnetic Field at the Heliosphere"
P. C. Frisch
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.2970.pdf

[sketch1946]

This is funny, don't take me seriously..

“Dust In The Wind”

I close my eyes only for a moment, and inflation’s gone
My Nobel dreams pass before my eyes, a curiosity

Dust in the wind, all inflation is is dust in the wind

Same old song, just a drop of hype in the CMB
Inflation crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see

Dust in the wind, all inflation is is dust in the wind

Now, don’t hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away, and all your money won’t another primordial wave buy

Dust in the Linde, all inflation is is dust in the wind (all inflation is is dust in the wind)
Dust in the wind (inflation is dust in the Linde), inflation is dust in the wind (the wind)

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=7199

[Higgsy]

Hi Sketch,

I hope I haven't given you the idea that I have all the answers!

No, you haven't done that. But I was hoping you'd have answers directly relating to your own post.
SNIP

I read about the issue of signal-to-noise problems and the physical problems with the collection of
1/100000th of a degree temperature anisotropies, all the mathematical problems with massaging
the data trying to mathematically 'remove' the 'foreground data', the galaxy etc,

and then I read about some of the people who have suggested problems or possible alternative sources for the CMB... this made me start to question its validity, or at least read about what alternative views might be...

So do you think the CMB is explicable by alternatives? It seems that Zyxzevn thinks so, and I'm hoping for him to help me with that - I asked him a few questions up-thread. What alternatives are your favourite candidates to explain the CMB signal? Is it just noise?

Referring back to that post where you quoted a number of 3kHz sources in the solar system or nearby, do you think 3kHz signals affect the CMB measurements? If so, my original question stands: I am struggling to see why you have associated a range of 3kHz signals with the CMB - can you help me with that?

So I'm just like you, trying to get my head around what's going on, physically and theoretically,
with the whole big bang story...

This is one paper:
"The very weak polarization of light from nearby stars reaches a maximum near the ecliptic plane in a position offset by λ ∼35◦ from the heliosphere nose direction."

Or is it just this one paper that mentions the 3kHz heliosphere emissions that you are focusing on? But if so, why did you reference all the other 3kHz signals? As you can see, I am still confused. Anyway thanks for referencing this particular paper, which I've briefly read now. See below.

SNIP

Source: "Interstellar Dust and Magnetic Field at the Heliosphere"
P. C. Frisch
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.2970.pdf

So having glanced through it, it seems to me that this paper is not a fundamental challenge to the CMB per se, but is an attempt to explain some of the anomalies in the CMB anisotropy (eg the surprising alignments of the low-l multipoles) by suggesting that there is some unrecognised and uncleaned foreground contamination in the CMB data caused by interaction with foreground dust, where the dust alignment is shaped by the local magnetic field and the interaction with the solar wind at the heliopause. Is that how you read it? Isn't the actual CMB signal at a different frequency from 3kHz?

If you agree with my reading of that paper, do you also agree that the author finds alignments between features in the heliosphere and features in the CMB data, but doesn't really explain how the two are linked?

[Justatruthseeker]

The physical constants aren't constant. This is established fact if you think about it. If clock tick durations change along with lengths of meters, then in any frame not traveling in relative motion with this frame, the same measurements are not obtained. Even E tried to tell them this when he told them that only in frames traveling in relative motion with one another were the laws of physics the same. That in frames not traveling in relative motion were the laws of physics different.

If my clock tick is longer than your clock tick then my constants can not be the same as your constants. We have fooled ourselves into believing everything is constant because we call different duration ticks of time seconds and different length rulers meters,

One MUST reset ones zero points along with the changes in clocks and rulers. It is this which makes light the same value regardless of velocity, not because it is a constant. Even though it is constant I'll repeat what I said in an earlier post.

Look at the speedometer on your car. Imagine 100 mph is the speed of light. Accelerate to 10 mph. As you accelerate your division marks (clocks and rulers) change spacing. Now is the important part to understand it all. You MUST rotate the dial so that the zero point follows the needle.

The consequence of the above is that 100 mph still ends up being 100 mph regardless of your velocity. Also your velocity reads as zero, just as it does right now despite our moving through space at an unknown velocity.

This is why light appears constant regardless of velocity. As energy is added on the quantum level from changes in velocity, our zero points reset proportionally to that energy along with our clocks and rulers. As long as we use our clocks and rulers we will always obtain the same value for light regardless of our velocity, even if that value is different in every frame based proportionally upon that frames energy content.

If one does not reset ones zero points then they treat this frame as an absolute frame. This leads to the error in belief that mass or energy requirements prevent us from reaching c. It is our very own clocks and rulers along with a resetting of zero points that prevent us and keep light appearing as a constant. The resetting of the zero points exactly compensates for the changes in velocity.

The speed of light is not mysterious, it is not magical, nor is it unexplainable. It is a simple shifting of our zero points along with changes to our measuring devices proportional to the energy added or subtracted with changes in velocity.

Light is c+ or c- v, but this will never be seen as the + or - v is exactly compensated for by the shift in our zero points proportionally to energy gained or lost with changes in said velocity. Light is constant, but it is not the same speed in every frame it is c+v or c-v, but calculates to the same value as zero points shift.

In other words as you reduce the spacing on your speedometers dial, you at the same time reset it back by moving the dial so that the zero point follows the needle. In my example above in reality light is now 90 mph faster than you, not 100, but to you it still appears as 100 mph because your zero points shifted along with your division mark spacing.

E fooled them all by convincing them clocks and rulers have nothing to do with it. When said clocks and rulers are the entire reason it remains c.

[sketch1946]

Hi Higgsy,
The significance of the 3 kHz acoustic signal detected past Jupiter?
The Voyagers detected an acoustic signature at the heliopause way out past Jupiter which included an acoustic signal at approx 3 kHz, which turns out to be a little understood interaction of cosmic rays and the sun's heliosphere... I was looking for possible alternative explanations for the CMB...
so I wondered if a similar thing might be causing the CMB radiation, that might be happening above the earth, or on the earth,maybe in the atmosphere, or the magnetosphere.. interactions with microwaves leaving an acoustic signature...
there seems to be an influence of the atmosphere (including way up to the magnetosphere) on the earth including its oceans... so I was looking for evidence of a similar effect nearer to the earth....

Is there any evidence of microwave heat absorption and emission in the upper atmosphere?
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questi ... each-earth

"The Earth's atmosphere blocks much of the light in the microwave band, so astronomers use satellite-based telescopes to observe cosmic microwaves. The ***entire sky is a source of microwaves in every direction..."

(including 'noise' of every kind...)

If the atmosphere 'blocks' much of the extraterrestrial microwaves...
there should be a physical reaction as reradiated energy, or induced convection or other local non-CMB potential source of 'noise'?
Where does the energy go, if these waves are 'blocked'? Convection, heating, energy exchanges....
What if the CMB is exactly the radiation from microwaves being absorbed and then re-radiated in the upper atmosphere? This radiation from the earth's surface and the reflection and absorption and emission from the atmosphere is the basis for the theories about the 'greenhouse effect'
image of earth's energy 'budget' including radiation exchanges in the atmosphere...

The original evidence of the CMB radiation discovered by Penzias and Wilson in 1964 was from here on earth looking up through a dense sea of thermal radiation right across the spectrum...
diagram for earth's shielded surface:

It seems to be a curiosity that the CMB peeks in through a 'window' through the otherwise shielded earth, I wonder if this window hasn't influenced the interpretation of the sources of the CMB

"Microwaves have a long wavelength, though not as long as radio waves. The Earth's atmosphere is transparent to **some wavelengths of microwave radiation, but not to others. The longer wavelengths (waves more similar to radio waves) pass through the Earth's atmosphere more easily than the shorter wavelength microwaves. Microwave telescopes need to be large, but not as large as radio telescopes."

The current wisdom has it that this radiation has cooled from 3000K and travelled 13.x billion years, and got red-shifted into the microwave part of the EM spectrum, I wonder why it didn't get stretched right out into the radio end...

"Microwave Background Radiation (or Cosmic Background Radiation) is the primordial radiation field that fills the universe, having been created in the form of gamma rays at the time of the big bang. It has now cooled so that its temperature today is 2.73K and its peak wavelength is near 1.1mm (in the microwave portion of the EM spectrum)."

The earth has an extremely active environment, with lots of dynamic exchanges of energy:
Cosmic rays heat the oceans, and induce electromagnetic effects:

Acoustic waves heat the atmosphere:
http://commons.erau.edu/publication/11/

Oceanic waves end up in the thermosphere:
"Microbaroms may also be produced by standing waves created between two storms, or when an ocean swell is reflected at the shore. Waves with approximately 10-second periods are abundant in the open oceans, and correspond to the observed 0.2 Hz infrasonic spectral peak of microbaroms, because microbaroms exhibit frequencies twice that of the individual ocean waves. Studies have shown that the coupling produces propagating atmospheric waves only when non-linear terms are considered.

"Microbaroms are a form of persistent low-level **atmospheric infrasound, generally between 0.1 and 0.5 Hz, that may be detected as coherent energy bursts or as a continuous oscillation. When the plane wave arrivals from a microbarom source are analyzed from a phased array of closely spaced microbarographs, the source azimuth is found to point toward the low-pressure center of the originating storm. When the waves are received at multiple distant sites from the same source, triangulation can confirm the source is near the center of an ocean storm."

"Microbaroms that propagate up to the lower ***thermosphere may be carried in an atmospheric waveguide, refracted back toward the surface from below 120 km and above 150 km altitudes, or dissipated at altitudes between 110 and 140 km. They may also be trapped near the surface in the lower troposphere by planetary boundary layer effects and surface winds, or they may by ducted in the stratosphere by upper level winds and returned to the surface through refraction, diffraction or scattering."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbarom

"Above the mesosphere lies the extremely tenuous thermosphere. This layer is so thin, in fact, that many satellites orbit within it. This region is one in which temperatures once again rise with increasing altitude, reaching as high as 2,500°C (4,500°F) in the daytime! Embedded within the thermosphere are several layers of the ionosphere; regions where ionized gas particles can reflect radio waves, a feature that people used to send messages beyond the line-of-sight range of the horizon before the advent of satellites. The thermosphere extends to somewhere between 500 and 1,000 km above the Earth's surface. Many of the atoms and molecules in the thermosphere (and above) have lost electrons, thus becoming electrically charged ions; so the motions of particles in the upper atmosphere are partially influenced by electrical currents and Earth's magnetic field."

"However, in the stratosphere, our friend the ozone layer is especially good at absorbing UV radiation; which shields us from most of these high-energy rays, and also heats this layer as the UV photons transfer their energy to the oxygen (ozone is an unusual type of oxygen molecule, O3) molecules. And so it goes, throughout our upper atmosphere. The air varies in its chemical composition at different altitudes; and various chemical species absorb different wavelengths of EM radiation preferentially. Wherever there is the right combination of certain chemicals and an abundance of radiation of a type that those chemicals are good at absorbing, the atmosphere absorbes a lot of energy and its temperature rises. Remember how certain images of the Sun as certain specific wavelengths, especially in various narrow bands of the UV spectrum, provided us with "views" of very specific elements (such as helium or iron) in the Sun? Just as certain elements emit specific wavelengths of EM radiation, certain elements and compounds preferentially absorb certain specific wavelengths."

Dynamic noise in the atmosphere leads to heating, and wave propagation:
"Their density amplitudes increase exponentially with height, so that at the mesopause these waves become turbulent and their energy is dissipated (similar to breaking of ocean waves at the coast), thus contributing to the heating of the thermosphere by about 250 K in eq.(2). On the other hand, the fundamental diurnal tide labelled (1, −2) which is most efficiently excited by solar irradiance is an external wave and plays only a marginal role within lower and middle atmosphere. However, at thermospheric altitudes, it becomes the predominant wave. It drives the electric Sq-current within the ionospheric dynamo region between about 100 and 200 km height."

Heating, predominately by tidal waves, occurs mainly at lower and middle latitudes.
"The thermosphere becomes a damped oscillator system with low-pass filter characteristics. This means that smaller-scale waves (greater numbers of (n,m)) and higher frequencies are suppressed in favor of large-scale waves and lower frequencies."

The intensity of light from a blackbody emitter is defined by Planck’s Law,
<..equation..>where h is Planck’s constant, c is the speed of light,
and k is Boltzmann’s constant.

Measuring the radiation as a practical experiment on Earth:
"In this experiment, you will measure the intensity at 10 GHz."

"At lower frequencies, interference from galactic emission becomes more appreciable,
while at higher frequencies atmospheric absorption grows."

Penzias and Wilson measured their pidgeon shit noise at 4080 mHz:
"In a second note, jointly signed by Penzias and Wilson titled, "A Measurement of Excess Antenna Temperature at 4080 Megacycles per Second," they noted the existence of the residual background noise and attributed a possible explanation to that given by Dicke in his companion letter."

"To do so, they had to eliminate all recognizable interference from their receiver, removing the effects of radar and radio broadcasting and suppressing interference from the heart of the receiver itself by cooling it with liquid helium."

Penzias and Wilson measure the wavelength of the radiation as 7.35 cm:
I'm curious why they reported it as this value, when Dicke who were eagerly looking for evidence for their Big Bang theory jumped on the data, now the value is 2.732 K which calculates to be 1mm...

"However, when Penzias and Wilson reduced their data, they found an annoying background "noise", like static in a radio, that interfered with their observations. The noise was a uniform signal in the microwave range (with a wavelength of 7.35 centimeters), and seemed to come from all directions."

"The red line in the figure on the left shows that according to Big Bang theory, the Universe had a radius of more than 10-10 metres at 10-45 seconds after the Big Bang. Since the speed of light travels at 3×108 m/s, information could only have travelled ~3×10-37 metres during this time. Big Bang theory therefore makes it impossible for the whole Universe to have equalised its temperature at these early times, as not all the Universe was in communication. In everyday life we cannot receive information beyond our horizon, so this is known as the horizon problem."

"To resolve the horizon problem, astronomers introduced an inflationary period into the Big Bang model (blue region in figure). This sudden increase in the rate of expansion of the Universe soon after the Big Bang, resolves not only the horizon problem, but also the flatness problem. It has therefore been accepted as part of the current concordance model of cosmology."

To fix a problem with the Big Bang theory, an 'inflationary period' is 'introduced'
to 'resolve the horizon problem'....
... then it's claimed that a CMB caused by anything else than the Big Bang theory is 'extremely difficult to produce by other means...than Big Bang plus inflation... but inflation just got made up to make the theory work..

"The presence of a background radiation which has a temperature, spectrum and uniformity consistent with Big Bang cosmology and inflation, is extremely difficult to produce by any other means. Therefore, astronomers believe that by studying the properties of the CMB, they are in fact studying the conditions of the early Universe."

http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/C/C ... Background


The CMB is only 'visible' through a narrow 'window' otherwise there's too much 'contamination',
yet Penzias and Wilson report the radiation they discovered in 1964 at a wavelength of 7.5cm, instead
of the current accepted value of close to 1 mm??

Problems with foreground 'noise':
"A relevant issue in the final evaluation of the CMB temperature is represented by the necessity of accurately subtracting from the sky temperature the contributions from the Galaxy and from unresolved extragalactic sources..."
"Synchrotron and bremsstrahlung processes dominate the Galactic emission for all wavelengths above about 3 mm."
and dust:
"At shorter wavelengths, and especially in the submillimeter region, a new source of emission takes over, namely thermal emission from warm dust in the Galaxy."
https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0206350.pdf

The Planck satellite was unable to measure the CMB due to equipment noise, and failures in the reference 4K equipment as predicted by P. M. Robitaille who is a professor of magnetic resonance imaging, in his expert criticism of the design and methodology of the equipment on COBE, WMAP and Planck satellites:

"To complicate matters, the Planck team ignores the reality that good conductors make poor emitters <...>This fact has been known for more than 100 years. "

"Yet, the LFI consortium unknowingly has created a situation where they believe that their reference
loads can be treated as perfect conductors. They write that: “the 70 GHz loads are assumed to be perfect thermal conductors, due to their small thickness and mass”. They have created these “perfect conductors” by enclosing a small amount of absorber within a metallic enclosure. This issue is discussed in greater detail in [30], but nonetheless, the design of the Planck LFI reference targets reflects a sidestep of elementary thermodynamic principles."

Robitaille: "In closing, for nearly 50 years, the microwave signal first detected by Penzias and Wilson, has fascinated scientists. Yet, all too quickly, its cosmological nature was embraced. In fact, the publication of the interpretation preceded the discovery itself ...
http://www.ptep-online.com/index_files/ ... -22-02.PDF

This is confirmed indirectly by the Planck 2015 results:
"...A second useful illustration of the power of global analysis presented in this paper is the identification of important instrumental systematic errors. One example is the detection of, and correction for, systematic errors in the Planck bandpass measurements...."
"..For polarization, the residuals are statistically consistent with instrumental noise at high latitudes, but limited by significant temperature-to-polarization leakage..."
"...degeneracies between synchrotron, free-free and spinning dust remain the leading source of uncertainty on the low frequency side. Additional observations between, say, 2 and 20 GHz are essential to break these degeneracies..."
"...In addition, it is important to note that the current model makes no attempt at separating between Galactic thermal dust emission and CIB fluctuations, and these therefore constitute a significant contaminant in our thermal dust model on small angular scales.."
"...Finally, for polarization the main limitations are instrumental systematics, primarily in the form of temperature-to-polarization leakage, uncertainties in the analog-to-digital conversion..."

http://planck.caltech.edu/pub/2015resul ... d_maps.pdf

[sketch1946]

"Inspired by the COBE results, a series of ground and balloon-based experiments measured cosmic microwave background anisotropies on smaller angular scales over the next decade. The primary goal of these experiments was to measure the scale of the first acoustic peak, which COBE did not have sufficient resolution to resolve."

"Although WMAP provided very accurate measurements of the large scale angular fluctuations in the CMB (structures about as broad in the sky as the moon), it did not have the angular resolution to measure the smaller scale fluctuations which had been observed by former ground-based interferometers."

"Raw CMBR data from the space vehicle (i.e. WMAP) contain foreground effects that completely obscure the fine-scale structure of the cosmic microwave background. The fine-scale structure is superimposed on the raw CMBR data but is too small to be seen at the scale of the raw data."

mmmm this is beyond belief... 'too small to be seen' but we believe it's still there...

"....in practice it is hard to take the effects of noise and foreground sources into account. In particular, these foregrounds are dominated by galactic emissions such as Bremsstrahlung, synchrotron, and dust that emit in the microwave band; "

"...in practice, the galaxy has to be removed, resulting in a CMB map that is not a full-sky map. In addition, point sources like galaxies and clusters represent another source of foreground which must be removed so as not to distort the short scale structure of the CMB power spectrum."

"Constraints on many cosmological parameters can be obtained from their effects on the power spectrum, and results are often calculated using Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling techniques."

'the most exact blackbody curve ever measured...."

Markov Chain Monte Carlo:
"...More sophisticated Markov Chain Monte Carlo-based algorithms such as coupling from the past can produce exact samples, at the cost of additional computation..."

"A full Bayesian analysis of the WMAP power spectrum demonstrates that the quadrupole prediction of Lambda-CDM cosmology is consistent with the data at the 10% level and that the observed octupole is not remarkable."

Bayesian inference:
"Furthermore, Bayes' rule can be applied iteratively: after observing some evidence, the resulting posterior probability can then be treated as a prior probability, and a new posterior probability computed from new evidence. This allows for Bayesian principles to be applied to various kinds of evidence, whether viewed all at once or over time. This procedure is termed "Bayesian updating"."

"Ultimately, due to the foregrounds and the cosmic variance problem, the greatest modes will never be as well measured as the small angular scale modes. The analyses were performed on two maps that have had the foregrounds removed as far as possible..."

"2014 – On March 17, 2014, astrophysicists of the BICEP2 collaboration announced the detection of inflationary gravitational waves in the B-mode power spectrum, which if confirmed, would provide clear experimental evidence for the theory of inflation..."

"2015 – On January 30, 2015, the same team of astronomers from BICEP2 withdrew the claim made on the previous year. Based on the combined data of BICEP2 and Planck, the European Space Agency announced that the signal can be entirely attributed to dust in the Milky Way."

"The accuracy of the Galactic model at the observation frequency primarily depends on the accuracy of the 408 MHz map and the accuracy of the spectral index used to scale the map."

"The Haslam’s map is a ***compilation of four different surveys and has overall errors of 3 K in the zero level and ± 10% in the gain.At very low frequencies [i.e. 600 MHz (Sironi et al. 1990)], the uncertainty on the Galactic temperature is dominated from the error on the zero level of the 408 MHz map. "

"Above 1 GHz, instead, the largest error in the Galactic signal arises from the uncertainty in the spectral index. A first approximation of the spectral index comes from the the 408 MHz map (Haslam et al. 1982) and the map at 1420 MHz by Reich & Reich (1986), after both have been corrected for the CMB signal."

"For experiments in Table 2 the absolute measurement of the CMB are done by comparing the output of a radiometer when looking the sky and when looking at a precisely known calibration blackbody maintained at cryogenic temperature, and by subtracting-out any other non cosmological contribution (Bonelli et al. 1995)"

"The WMAP scan pattern causes pixels near the ecliptic poles to to be sampled relatively uniformly over a wide range of azimuthal angles, while pixels near the ecliptic plane are only sampled over a ≈ ±22.◦5 degree range. This results in the effective beam shape varying with sky position; regions near the ecliptic poles have more symmetric effective beam shapes than those near the ecliptic plane.

Each pixel is observed roughly the same number of times with the A-side and B-side beams, further symmetrizing the effective beam shape since the axis of asymmetry for the A and B side beams project to different sky directions.

The WMAP window functions are calculated from symmetrized beam profiles generated by azimuthally averaging beam maps obtained from observations of Jupiter...

"These maps significantly improve the symmetry of the effective beam, but also have a larger window function uncertainty caused by the limited resolution and signal-to-noise ratio of the beam maps and numerical approximations needed to make their computation practical."

"The CMB has a thermal black body spectrum at a temperature of 2.72548±0.00057 K"
Unbelievably accurate....

"Although many different processes might produce the general form of a black body spectrum, no model other than the Big Bang has yet explained the fluctuations."

"Two of the greatest successes of the Big Bang theory are its prediction of the almost perfect black body spectrum and its detailed prediction of the anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background."

"The CMB spectrum has become the most precisely measured black body spectrum in nature"
Unbelievably so....

Sources:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0206350.pdf
https://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/ma ... esults.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_mi ... background
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain_Monte_Carlo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_inference

[willendure]

So you take some noise of dubious origin, apply probabilistic models to extrapolate it, and the result is LCDM.

It would seem to me that LCDM is as likely to have originated in a computers random number generator as anything else. I seriously did not appreciate the tenuousness of all of this until now.

[Zyxzevn]

"The CMB spectrum has become the most precisely measured black body spectrum in nature"

The CMB is totally bullshit in its basic sense,
because there are no objects or boundaries in a big-bang from where the radiation can come from.
Even if such objects or boundaries would exist, which is incompatible with the big bang,
it would not produce a "black body" spectrum.

So the black body spectrum, if it is really measured correctly,
is an indication that the cause is an equal distribution of energy.
Like the energy caused by photons losing energy in interstellar plasma.

[sketch1946]

Haha, yes,
it seems so similar to the familiar story of creation,
like a Godless version....

the old testament=Newton
the new testament=relativity
revelation=quantum mechanics
God=singularity
chaos=the first three minutes (or thereabouts)
the void=Planck epoch
the deep=photon epoch
the waters=reionization
creation=big bang
Let there be light=Recombination/Decoupling,time of last scattering
omnipresent=CMB
knowing the end from the beginning=quantum entanglement
first night, first day=solar system
first life=animals and then man
Garden of Eden=carboniferous
Adam=neanderthal
Eve=lucy
Out of Eden=out of Africa
the flood=mass extinction event
priesthood=university degree in science
scribes=mathematicians
prophets=Einstein, Hawking, Dawkins, et al
the saints=big bang believers
evil angel=big bang denier
hell, the pit=big crunch, black hole
perdition, lost soul=scientist with alternate view, EU advocate
sound doctrine=consensus
scriptures=peer reviewed published papers
heretic=pseudo science, crank, Velikovsky, Robitaille, Tesla et al
sacred=photon as massless particle, physical constants, speed of light