TPOD Nov 23, 2010 Eject This

[davesmith_au]

Furthermore, Morris is quoted as saying: “You can regard these magnetic field lines as akin to a taut rubber band, ... If you twist one end, the twist will travel up the rubber band.” Does this make him incompetent too? (The same caveat as I previously used applies to this statement).

I checked Morris et al. (2006), but could not find those words; may I ask what you are quoting?

I'm really glad you asked. The exact quote:

“You can regard these magnetic field lines as akin to a taut rubber band,” Morris added. “If you twist one end, the twist will travel up the rubber band.”

comes from BOTH the UniverseToday piece, AND the UCLA press-release. In fact, Fraser's only original input to the article on UT is the first paragraph! The rest is copied, word for word (as far as I could tell) from the press-release. So Fraser himself has added exactly one paragraph of original information (17 paragraphs in the UCLA release, 18 in UT), yet the story is listed as "by Fraser Cain" not "posted by Fraser Cain" which would be more accurate, under the circumstances don't you think?

I not only checked Morris et al. (2006) but have read through it and understand the bulk of it. Of course rubber bands are not mentioned in the paper, because Fraser got his info from a PRESS RELEASE! Which, incidentally, includes a number of quotes from Morris, including the one I referenced.

Go take another peek at the Universe Today writeup on the DHN. It likewise doesn't say "it is at least 20 arcminutes (50 parsecs) in length, extending between galactic coordinates l = 0.08, b = 0.5 and l = 0.02, b = 0.80". Does this make Fraser Cain incompetent (or at least, unscientific) too?

That particular story ends with "Original Source: UCLA News Release".

The UCLA News Release contains the following: "The research is published March 16 in the journal Nature", "Morris has argued for many years that the magnetic field at the galactic center is extremely strong; the research published in Nature strongly supports that view", and "Co-authors on the Nature paper are Keven Uchida, a former UCLA graduate student and former member of Cornell University's Center for Radiophysics and Space Research; and Tuan Do, a UCLA astronomy graduate student."

So no, it doesn't; Fraser Cain cites his sources, so his story can be checked against the only thing which counts as physics, papers published in relevant, peer-reviewed journals.

Fraser's source was a UCLA PRESS RELEASE (you said this yourself!) which certainly doesn't have any content from the published relevant peer-reviewed journal paper!

There is a huge difference between what comes out in press releases and what is in the papers supposedly supporting said press releases, which is kind of the whole point of this discussion. TPODs are NOT written in response to some peer-reviewed published paper in a journal, but in response (often, but by no means always) to press releases given out by reputedly scientific organizations.

Your view "the only thing which counts as physics, [is] papers published in relvant, peer-reviewed journals" is the real problem here with many of your discussions on these forums. I am not discounting the value of such papers, but they are NOT where most of the general public get the bulk of their science information from. They get it from (often sensationalist) press releases. That unless something appears in a published, relevant peer-reviewed journal is the only thing which "counts" as physics is a somewhat myopic view to hold, in my opinion, and is not conducive to productive scientific discourse.

Another trait conducive to productive scientific discourse (and which has some sway in the integrity stakes) is the ability to admit "I was wrong"...

Cheers, Dave.

PS - Considering the hullabaloo on another thread regarding credits for images, I find it ironic that on this particular story, Fraser listed the image credit as "NASA/UCLA" whereas the press release he cites as his original source states it as "NASA/JPL_Caltech/UCLA". A bit sloppy, don't you think?

[solrey]

In fact, Fraser's only original input to the article on UT is the first paragraph! The rest is copied, word for word (as far as I could tell) from the press-release. So Fraser himself has added exactly one paragraph of original information (17 paragraphs in the UCLA release, 18 in UT), yet the story is listed as "by Fraser Cain" not "posted by Fraser Cain" which would be more accurate, under the circumstances don't you think?

I called UT out on that practice of borderline plagiarism several months ago. The excuse I got was that their software automatically inserts the person submitting the article as the author. So what? Just include an introductory paragraph that states the article is from a press release and/or change the header to specify who submitted, authored and edited the article, which should be a no brainer for any skilled author, editor or software programmer. Yet the most vitriolic commenters at UT consistently accuse EU/PC scientists/theorists of fraud. Oh, the irony of hypocrisy.

cheers

[Jarvamundo]

the only thing which counts as physics, papers published in relevant, peer-reviewed journals

This is a truly disturbing attitude. Wow we got there.

Stop the clock at #388.

[Nereid]

There's way too much misunderstand here!

Let's slow down.

Please.

Imagine the following dialogue, between three imaginary people, me, Ari, and Starmel:

- - - - - - - -
me: How did Meve and Stel conclude there are squares there, in that picture?

Ari: The same way Alex did, here (points to a website).
Starmel: Just like astrophysicists always do.

me: But what's in the website Ari found is obviously based on a paper by Chris! Sal, who wrote the paper the picture is based on, doesn't say a word about squares.
And Meve and Stel did not even hint at any paper they read, to conclude there are squares there!
Perhaps they just looked at a picture and said "That looks like a bunch of squares to me"?

(Ari and Starmel are silent; loud voices are heard off-stage)
- - - - - - - -

So, may I ask again: how did Mel Acheson and Stephen Smith conclude that "the axial filaments in M82" are helices (or helixes)? Specifically, in what paper(s), if any, did they read that the features they see in the M82 image are helixes (or helices)?

[David Talbott]

Nereid, with all due respect I have to ask you to play by the rules here. We are not beholden to the myths of "settled science." The Inquisitor of old might claim that all authority rests with Church teachings. He might demand biblical citations and refuse to acknowledge any wisdom that has not been institutionally ratified.

Turning institutionalized science into an exclusive authority is not the way forward here.

By now you must realize that the mantras, "show me the peer reviewed article," and "show me the math' have no credibility within our group. We are challenging the assumptions behind both mantras. To simply repeat the mantras is no different from demanding biblical chapter and verse.

Much peer reviewed research and mathematical analyses on the plasma universe and electricity in space has been cited in these pages. But the issue here is the state of denial that, to a provable degree, dominates official science today. The present function of peer review has turned a legitimate protocol into a means of perpetuating illusions. Shattering the illusions to the extent we've already achieved requires practical reasoning from direct evidence — laboratory experiments, the nature of electric circuits, the complexities of plasma behavior and high-energy electric discharge, images from space across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, and even celestial formations anciently carved on stone around the world. The evidence as a whole constitutes an interdisciplinary argument from indisputable fact. The conclusion is that the official teachings you would ask us to bow to are not correct. Why would you, then, continue the ruse of asking for official teachings, as if the independent evidence does not count for anything?

[solrey]

Nereid, with all due respect, making an issue out of demanding papers specifically addressing helical jets from M82 is a mere strawman argument against an article written for the layperson to consider those might be helical jets, based on visual comparison and precedent. ( a valid scientific practice to hypothesize the qualities of a test subject based on known qualities of similar subjects ) I think AGN's, or nebulae, emitting helical jets is pretty well established by now. Here are just a few examples:

Astrophysical jets: proceedings of the Astrophysical Jets Meeting

A relativistic helical jet in the gamma-ray AGN 1156+295

Pc-scale rotation measures across radio galaxy jets

Lots of detail on the data used to determine the helical structure of the astrophysical jets studied in those papers/presentations.

So, Nereid, do you know of any data that proves those jets from M82 are NOT helical? Until proven one way or the other it's still an open question then, isn't it? Based on precedent and visual comparison the idea of helical jets from M82 is totally valid and more of a prediction than a final answer, imo.

cheers

[Nereid]

Here is what electrical theorists* have written about M82, its "axial filaments", and associated quasars (or QSOs), as far as I've been able to determine (excluding TPODs); if any reader has other sources (not counting copies of the same material on different webpages), please post it!

Thornhill (source):

Another recent example: British astronomers have discovered a "magnetic bubble" around one of Arp's favorite galaxies, M82. Notice that astrophysicists always deal with effects (winds, magnetism) and not causes (electric currents). The diagram of M82 is almost identical to that of the plasma physicist, Eric Lerner, in his book "The Big Bang Never Happened", published in 1992.
{image}
The red and blue arrows show the observed magnetic field directions and the white dashed curves outline the magnetic bubble structure. The long white arrows depict the direction of the wind from the center of the galaxy. Photo: JAC
{image}
Electric current (yellow lines) flows along the magnetic field lines - which conforms closely to the image of M82

In that book, a simple, highly compact and efficient ejection engine is described - the plasma focus.

Acheson (source):

Here's a research project that's a slam-dunk, and it's going begging:

There are 10 x-ray and radio sources in a line to the northwest of the active galaxy M82. They've never been analyzed to see if they're quasars. On the exactly opposite side of M82 are 9 quasars, coincidentally aligned with a jet of luminous material from M82. Now the odds of adding coincidences in a string is the product of the odds for each incident. This means the 9 in a line are highly unlikely, but, hey, coincidences happen. Because quasars are background objects at the far reaches of the universe, they're distributed fairly uniformly. This means the 9 in a line pretty much account for all the quasars in the vicinity of M82.
Multiplying all these unlikelihoods makes it nearly certain the 10 unidentified objects are NOT quasars.

What about Halton Arp? Eric Lerner? Anthony Peratt?

Only Arp; here's what I found:
"Faint Ring around the Spiral Galaxy M82" (1965) - this subsequently became known as Arp's loop
"Further observations and analysis of quasars near companion galaxies" (1983)
"A Possible Relationship between Quasars and Clusters of Galaxies (2001)
"The nature of the ultraluminous X-ray sources inside galaxies and their relation to local QSOs" (2003)
"QSOs Associated with M82" (2003):

The starburst / AGN galaxy M82 was studied by Dahlem, Weaver and Heckman using X-ray data from ROSAT and ASCA, as part of their X-ray survey of edge-on starburst galaxies. They found seventeen unresolved hard-X-ray sources around M82, in addition to its strong nuclear source, and other X-rays within the main body of M82. We have measured optical point sources at these positions, and have obtained redshifts of six candidates at the Keck I 10-m telescope, using the low-resolution imaging spectrograph (LRIS). All six are highly compact optical and X-ray objects with redshifts ranging from 0.111 to 1.086. They all show emission lines. The three with the highest redshifts are clearly QSOs. The others with lower redshifts may either be QSOs or compact emission-line galaxies. In addition to these six there are nine QSOs lying very close to M82 which were discovered many years ago. There is no difference between optical spectra of these latter QSOs, only two of which are known to be X-ray sources, and the X-ray emitting QSOs. The redshifts of all fifteen range between 0.111 and 2.05. The large number of QSOs and their apparent association with ejected matter from M82 suggest that they are physically associated with the galaxy, and have large intrinsic redshift components. If this is correct, the absolute magnitudes lie in the range -8 < M_v < -10. Also we speculate that the luminous variable X-ray source which has been detected by Chandra in the main body of M82 some 9 arcseconds from the center is another QSO in the process of ejection from the nucleus, and propose some observational tests of this hypothesis.

According to NED, there are >2,700 objects within 15' of M82 (well over half of which have SDSS designations); or, more precisely, of the J2000.0 position 09h55m52.7s +69d40m46s. Of these, NED says there are ~90 x-ray sources (though some may be the same source under different names); ~half these appear in more than one x-ray catalogue.

Acheson did not report how far from M82 the "line to the northwest" extended (i.e. what the distance of the furthest of the 10 is), nor what the boundaries of the line are; further, there is no finding chart. Fig. 1 in Burbidge et al. (2003) shows nine QSOs to the southeast ("SSE" in their words), within 15'; however, they do not seem (to me) to be "aligned with a jet of luminous material from M82".

(M82 is also Arp 337, i.e. the 337th entry in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies (1996))

* Mel Acheson, Hannes Alfvén, Kristian Birkeland, C.E.R. Bruce, James P Hogan, Ralph Juergens, C. J. Ransom, Don Scott, David Talbott, and Wal Thornhill

(to be continued)

[Goldminer]

Here is what electrical theorists* have written about M82, its "axial filaments", and associated quasars (or QSOs), as far as I've been able to determine (excluding TPODs); if any reader has other sources (not counting copies of the same material on different webpages), please post it!
. . .

Acheson (source):

Here's a research project that's a slam-dunk, and it's going begging:

There are 10 x-ray and radio sources in a line to the northwest of the active galaxy M82. They've never been analyzed to see if they're quasars. On the exactly opposite side of M82 are 9 quasars, coincidentally aligned with a jet of luminous material from M82. Now the odds of adding coincidences in a string is the product of the odds for each incident. This means the 9 in a line are highly unlikely, but, hey, coincidences happen. Because quasars are background objects at the far reaches of the universe, they're distributed fairly uniformly. This means the 9 in a line pretty much account for all the quasars in the vicinity of M82.
Multiplying all these unlikelihoods makes it nearly certain the 10 unidentified objects are NOT quasars . . .

Your quote of Mel Acheson does not include the "punch line:"

The bureaucrats will love the project because it's a sure find,
and the astronomers will love it because it's sure to vindicate
orthodox truth over crackpot error. The enterprising researcher
can gain fortune and fame with practically no risk and with losing
only one night's sleep. Bureaucratic science doesn't get any
better than this! Why hasn't someone jumped on it?

What do you think they would find?

So, Nereid, What do you think they will find? That is the question, Nereid, What do you think they will find? Why hasn't someone jumped on it? Can you put some money towards finding out what they will find?