neilwilkes wrote:Surely "LCDM ppl" - smart or otherwise - fail your criteria that the "Actual mechanism must physically be coherent and consistence. Of course, easy enough for a fifth grader to understand."
Or am I misreading/not understanding your point?
The LCDM model has ever been "physically coherent", and it's certainly never been consistent. According to GR theory, no particle of mass can travel faster than light, but an expansion interpretation of redshift requires a faster than C expansion process. That issue alone *should* have caused the mainstream abandon their claim that redshift is related to expansion in a "physically consistent" and physically coherent model.
Instead, they basically cheated the system by claiming that objects don't actually move, rather the "space" between them expands, but *only* in magical, presumably physically/gravitationally disconnected places such as between galaxy clusters. Then they eventually acknowledged that galaxy clusters are part of galaxy *superclusters*, so apparently "space" only magically expands somewhere in some mythical void between superclusters, yet it manages to do so uniformly in all directions anyway. Then they put together computer models that show that superclusters are aligned along continuous "dark matter filaments", but somehow they keep expanding uniformly in all directions anyway. More physical inconsistency.
About 20 years ago now, their whole expansion interpretation failed a highly relevant and important "test" of their claim about the cause of redshift. Instead of the universe showing signs of slowing down as they originally predicted, it didn't. Again, the *logical* thing to do would be to acknowledge that your expansion interpretation of redshift is a bust, and revisit Hubble's preferred solution to Hubble's Law, but *nooooooooo*. They quite literally invented/dreamed up an ad-hoc new form of energy that is unlike any form of energy that we know of from the lab, and they *drastically* altered their expansion model by liberally adding about 70 percent of this new mythical form of energy to their model. There was nothing physically consistent or coherent about that move at all. The only purpose was to save their expansion interpretation of the redshift phenomenon from falsification, but at the cost of nearly abandoning empirical physical entirely.
Then they made another major departure from reality somewhere along the way related to "dark matter". Originally they acknowledged that their baryonic mass estimates of distant galaxies could easily be missing ordinary forms of matter. Then, by some unknown miracle, they began *assuming* that their baryonic mass estimates *must be* correct, so they turned that missing matter into an exotic new form of matter and they pretty much abandoned empirical physics entirely. Again, that subjective choice was not consistent with anything related to actual known science.
Now we find out that even their introduction of 70 percent metaphysical nonsense still doesn't make their theory compatible with distant quasar observations. That revelation is a second major bust/fail for the expansion interpretation of redshift in the last two decades, but do you see any hint of them revisiting Hubble's *preferred* explanation of redshift? Hell no! They keep unethically claiming to the public that Hubble "proved" that the universe is expanding even though Hubble personally didn't believe that himself. They unethically write about a concept that Alfven called "pseudoscience' while misusing his math to model the behaviors of plasma which has already been reduced to only about 5 percent of their model anyway.
Their model is now 100 percent physically inconsistent with empirical physics. And to top it all off, somewhere along the way they developed an electrophobic view of plasma physics to boot. Everything they do has been physically inconsistent with empirical physics.
About the only thing that's consistent about the LCDM model, is their "pledge of allegiance" to their expansion interpretation of redshift, even though we know for a fact that light transfers some of it's momentum to plasma in the lab as it traverses a plasma medium. They literally have to treat plasma in space as being completely and totally different than plasma in a lab. Their magical form of imaginary space plasma must be 100 percent transparent to inelastic scattering processes, unlike ordinary plasma in the lab.
In short, the universe according to the LCMD model has to be 100 percent different from, and 100 percent *inconsistent* with, anything that we experience or observe in labs on Earth. The LCDM model is about as physically inconsistent with known physics as it can possibly get. It's 95 percent metaphysical nonsense combined with 5 percent pseudoscience, and requires the use of magical transparent plasma no less. The LCDM model of cosmology is completely detached from physical reality. That's about the only thing that's "consistent" about it.
IMO that quasar study is a death blow to the LCDM claim that redshift is related to expansion. That redshift assumption has *never* been useful at predicting high redshift observations in the first place. We're seeing "mature" galaxies where none should exist. We're seeing massive quasars which their model fails to predict or explain. Now we're seeing that their model is physically inconsistent with redshift patterns at larger redshifts. The LCDM model has failed virtually every so called "test" possible, yet astronomers *refuse* to reconsider their core assumption that redshift is related to expansion in spite of overwhelming evidence that redshift has nothing to do with expansion.
The LCDM model is a *dismal* failure. It has no useful predictive value because every new high redshift observations is a huge 'surprise' to astronomers. It's also failed every lab test to date. No new observation or experimental result ever fits their expansion interpretation of redshift. The bizarre rationalizations that they use to excuse that fact are just getting more bizarre and less believable every single day. Next they'll dream up a new form of exotic "dark energy" to try to plug up the massive holes of their sinking ship. Big bang theory is utter metaphysical nonsense that is 100 percent detached from empirical physics and physical reality. None of it actually works in the lab, and it's core assumption actually defies what does work in the lab, namely the loss of photon momentum to a plasma medium as light passes through plasma in the lab.
Astronomers today are actually far worse, and more detached from reality than Ptolemaic astronomers of thousands of years ago who were peddling epicycles to save their models. The metaphysical nonsense of the LCDM model make even epicycles look like "good science" by comparison.
Keep in mind that while the LCMD model doesn't require us to be in a special location, it absolutely does require us to live in a very special and unique period of cosmological time. It also violates the Copernican principle with respect to time as badly as Ptolemaic forms of astronomy violated that principle with respect to location. In a few trillion years according to the LCDM model intelligent forms of life would end up living in a visually barren night sky, only being able to observe the stars in their own galaxy and galaxies in their own local supercluster and they would be completely oblivious to redshift entirely, and have no evidence of expansion.
LCMD is simply an atrocious cosmology model. It's completely detached from empirical physics and physical reality. It's akin to a bad dogmatic religion, not unlike Scientology. The more you look under the hood, the worse it gets, the more unfalsiable dogma it requires, and the more it fails every important test. The only thing it's actually good for is to bilk an unsuspecting public out of billions of dollars, but apparently that's all that professional astronomers actually care about in 2019. Empirical physics and science be damned.