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Scientists See Nothing - Call
It 'Parallel Universe'
12/05/2007
By Michael GoodspeedWhy
is cosmology in a state of crisis? Some might doubt the tenability
of this loaded question, but to many critics of standard cosmology,
the question must be asked. New observations continually shock and
disturb astronomers and astrophysicists. But rather than see the
underlying pattern in these "surprises" and "mysteries," which would
alert them that something is terribly wrong with their view of the
Universe, they resort to exotic interpretations with little or no
evidentiary -- or even logical -- support. From black holes, to dark
matter, to dark energy, to "warps in the spacetime fabric," the
esoterica in astronomical literature has grown so weird and
fantastical as to rival the most implausible plot twists on Gene
Roddenberry's Star Trek.
Carl Sagan warned of this problem more than 25 years ago in his
iconic book, Cosmos. At that time, the Big Bang had not yet become a
"fact"; questions were still permitted. On the question of whether
the Doppler interpretation of galactic redshift is a reliable
indicator of an "expanding universe," Sagan wrote: "There is
nevertheless a nagging suspicion among some astronomers, that all
may not be right with the deduction, from the redshift of galaxies
via the Doppler effect, that the universe is expanding. The
astronomer Halton Arp has found enigmatic and disturbing cases where
a galaxy and a quasar, or a pair of galaxies, that are in apparent
physical association have very different redshifts...."
Sagan continues, "If Arp is right, the exotic mechanisms proposed to
explain the energy source of distant quasars -- supernova chain
reactions, supermassive black holes and the like -- would prove
unnecessary. Quasars need not then be very distant. But some other
exotic mechanism will be required to explain the redshift. In either
case, something very strange is going on in the depths of space."
Sagan's acknowledgment here revealed both a candor and humility no
longer found in popular scientific media (and the electrical
theorists can't help but note the irony of this). It's also
remarkable that 25 years ago, the astronomer Halton Arp had already
posed the challenge to the expanding universe, and the Big Bang. And
yet today, one would think the issues have all been settled.
For background on the discoveries that have challenged the Doppler
interpretation of redshift, including the extraordinary research of
Halton Arp, see
here.
To see just how far BB theory has taken cosmologists into a fantasy
land, consider the recent Internet item, "Evidence
for a parallel universe?". The story discusses
recent data acquired by NASA's WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy
Probe) satellite that supposedly reveals a "huge void" in the
universe: "Since our universe is relatively heterogeneous, empty
spaces are not rare, but in this case the enormous magnitude of the
hole is way outside the expected range. The hole found in the
constellation of Eridanus is about a billion light years across,
which is roughly 10,000 times as large as our galaxy or 400 times
the distance to Andromeda, the closest 'large' galaxy."
The story continues, "The dimension of the hole is so big that at
first glance, it results [sic] impossible to explain under the
current cosmological theories...."
So how are some scientists reacting to this data that may be
"impossible to explain under the current cosmological theories"? The
same way they react to other "impossible" observations and
discoveries -- by inventing esoterica that have no analogs in
experiment or nature.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill physics Professor Laura
Mersini-Houghton says that this "void" is "...the unmistakable
imprint of another universe beyond the edge of our own". The article
goes on to refer to the observation of the "void" as possible
"experimental evidence" for a parallel universe.
But what are scientists actually seeing that would lead anyone to
speculate about "parallel universes"? Answer: "NOTHING." And the
testable prediction offered by this interpretation is that MORE
"nothing" will be found -- "Her model predicts the existence of two
voids rather than one, one in each hemisphere of our universe."
Of course, no one predicted the appearance of a "void," and then
went looking for it. WMAP was mapping the Cosmic Microwave
Background (CMB) when the "void" came looking for them. Ergo, this
was not an "experiment," but rather an astonishing, even
"impossible" discovery that has thrown astronomers onto their back
feet.
The observation of clumps and "voids" has always been a problem for
Big Bang cosmology, but the discovery of this "impossibly" huge
"void" only highlights BB theory's inherent implausibility. From its
first formulation onward, the Big Bang hypothesis was hampered by
the problem of "inhomegeneity." Critics argued that raw subatomic --
or preatomic -- material exploding outward at nearly the speed of
light would produce an evenly distributed cloud with no force
present to generate cosmic structure. But in fact, we observe cosmic
structure everywhere we look, and the distribution of matter is
profoundly uneven. Both the concentrations of matter, and the
"voids" between these concentrations, falsify the inherent, logical
"predictions" of the original theory.
The force of gravity is weak and takes time to move things around.
The elapsed time since the conjectured Big Bang sets a limit on how
big any structure can be. Structures exceeding that limit are, by
the cosmologists' own admission, impossible. And just as the "huge
void" constitutes a problem, BB theorists must wrestle at the other
end of the spectrum, with massive galactic structure which, by their
own measuring stick (redshift = distance interpretation), must have
formed in the first phases of cosmic evolution. Now they can only
respond to undeniable observations by making things up -- in this
case, a PARALLEL UNIVERSE, no less.
Decades ago, the father of "plasma cosmology," Nobel Laureate Hannes
Alfven, had already admonished cosmologists that the problem of
inhomogeneity would lead them to a dead end, so long as they refused
to deal with electricity in space. More recently, physicist Eric J.
Lerner, author of The Big Bang Never Happened, wrote that the scale
of observed voids in galaxy distribution, "combined with observed
low streaming of galaxies, imply an age for these structure that is
at least triple and more likely six times the hypothesized time
since the Big Bang...." According to Lerner, while this unevenness
refutes the BB hypothesis, "...the predictions of plasma cosmology
have been strengthened by new observations, including evidence for
the stellar origin of the light elements, the plasma origin of
large-scale structures, and the origin of the cosmic microwave
background in a 'radio fog' of dense plasma filaments." (These
observations of Lerner were offered years before the recent
observation of the "impossible" void -- IEEE Transactions on Plasma
Science, Vol. 31, No. 6, December 2003.)
It needs to be pointed out that scientists are handicapped both in
trying to assess the actual "size" of the "void," and why they are
seeing it. WMAP observed an area of space where the "temperature" of
the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is interpreted as 20 to 45
percent lower than that of the surrounding region (they interpret
"hot" spots and "cold" spots by the peak intensity frequency --
interpreted as "black body" (thermal) radiation (the Planck curve)
-- that varies slightly from one direction to another). This
suggested to astronomers the appearance of a "void." They then
looked at the SDSS galaxy-redshift survey, and saw that the "void"
(the space where no galaxies could be observed) was 900 million
light-years across. This lack of galaxies (actually galaxy clusters)
was confirmed by a survey of radio-galaxies by the Very Large Array
(VLA).
But in a plasma universe, the appearance of a vast and remote "void"
may be entirely illusory. It is now evident that astronomers imagine
they are seeing things at the far edges of the visible Universe that
are actually occurring in our own cosmic neighborhood, the Milky Way
galaxy. The research of radio astronomer Gerrit Verschuur has
demonstrated that the "cosmic microwave background" shown by WMAP is
local microwave fog, as Lerner proposed in the article noted above.
So the "vision" of observers using WMAP is clouded by the local
activity of electric current filaments.
See
Big Bang or Big Goof?
Underlying this issue, of course, is the controversial method of
measuring an object's distance from the observer by its redshift. We
are told that the larger the redshift of an object, the farther away
it must be, and the faster it is moving away from us. But since the
late 1960's, Halton Arp has been accumulating discordant redshift
evidence, as noted by Sagan above. Indeed, some have said that the
Big Bang has already been falsified due to the refutation of the
underlying redshift = distance assumption.
One of the most dramatic refutations can be found in the galaxy NGC
7319. This galaxy is a Seyfert 2, which means it is a galaxy
shrouded with such heavy dust clouds that they obscure most of the
bright, active nucleus that defines a normal Seyfert galaxy. This
galaxy has a redshift of 0.0225. In front of its opaque gas clouds,
or embedded in the topmost layers of the dust, is a quasar with a
redshift of 2.114. What does this tell us? By the Big Bang
principles, the quasar must be BILLIONS OF LIGHT YEARS farther from
us than the galaxy, because its redshift is so much larger. And yet
the galaxy is opaque, so the quasar must be near the surface of the
dust clouds or even IN FRONT of them.
See
Quasar in Front of Galaxy
It is clear that no legitimate reason exists for anyone to be
concocting science fiction fantasies about "parallel universes,"
based on phenomena that are perfectly explicable by plasma science.
Imagine a meteorologist going on television and explaining an
unusual weather front as an effect of "mini black holes," or
"invisible dark matter," or a "parallel universe." When asked to
verify his fantasies, he could pull out his chalkboard and begin
sketching some very elegant mathematical equations. Whom would he
succeed in convincing? We must remember that the laws of physics
that we observe on the earth are not suspended in the vast reaches
of space! The irony is that the most outspoken critics of the
Electric Universe have repeatedly asserted that it "violates" or
"rewrites" the known laws of physics. Somehow, discredited
theoretical guesses have become "laws of physics" in their minds. In
fact, the electric hypothesis observes the laws of nature much more
faithfully than the unmitigated esoterica that dominates astronomy
and theoretical physics. And this is precisely why mainstream
cosmology is now in a state of crisis bordering on meltdown.
______
For your best gateway to the Electric Universe, see
Thunderbolts.info. And for a highly-acclaimed 60 minute video
introduction to the Electric Universe, see
Thunderbolts of the Gods on Google Video.
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