Cosmology in Crisis—Again!

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Cosmology in Crisis—Again!

Unread post by davesmith_au » Tue May 26, 2009 12:00 am

24 May, 2009 ~ Wal Thornhill

It seems the toughest thing for scientists to grasp - that a cherished paradigm like the big bang can be wrong. The latest crisis was reported in Physorg.com on May 5th: "Study plunges standard Theory of Cosmology into Crisis." The study of dwarf companion galaxies of the Milky Way support the view that a "modified Newton dynamic" [MOND] must be adopted. “This conclusion has far-reaching consequences for fundamental physics in general, and also for cosmological theories.” One of the researchers involved said, “it is conceivable that we have completely failed to comprehend the actual physics underlying the force of gravity.”... [More...]
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Re: Cosmology in Crisis—Again!

Unread post by dm_ » Thu May 28, 2009 9:35 am

you're definitely in the right direction...
think kepler instead of newton. there lies the nature of gravity.

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Re: Cosmology in Crisis—Again!

Unread post by davesmith_au » Thu Jul 30, 2009 7:42 am

The off-topic posts on this thread have been moved to the NIAMI board:

http://thunderbolts.info/wp/forum/phpBB3/v ... &sk=t&sd=a

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Re: Cosmology in Crisis—Again!

Unread post by Peron » Sun Sep 13, 2009 11:01 am

"It seems likely that redshift may not be due to an expanding Universe, and much of the speculations on the structure of the universe may require re-examination." — Edwin P. Hubble, astronomer, 1947

"… if redshifts are not primarily velocity-shifts, the picture is simple and plausible. There is no evidence of expansion and no restriction of time-scale, no trace of spatial curvature, and no limitation of spatial dimensions." — Edwin P. Hubble, astronomer, 1937

http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=bqx15w21

Quote mining:
The practice of quoting out of context, sometimes referred to as "contextomy" or "quote mining", is a logical fallacy and type of false attribution in which a passage is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning.
The full context of the Hubble quote:

"Thus the most important observational problems in cosmology may be described as the small, second-order effects of great distances. The nebulae [i.e. galaxies] appear to be distributed in a roughly uniform manner and the red-shifts appear to be roughly proportional to distance, out to the limits of the 100-inch. The next step is to determine these features more precisely over the limited range of the 100-inch and approximately out to far greater distances.
Attempts have been made to attain the necessary precision with the 100-inch, and the results appear to be significant. If they are valid, it seems likely that red-shifts may not be due to an expanding universe, and much of the current speculation on the structure of the universe may require re-examination."

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Re: Cosmology in Crisis—Again!

Unread post by Peron » Sun Sep 13, 2009 11:06 am

Hubble wrote that 60 years ago and much has happened since then. For one thing we don't use photographic plates anymore, instead we have high quality CCD's.

Anyway, when Quote mining is used thats usely a sign of a loosing argument.

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Re: Cosmology in Crisis—Again!

Unread post by nick c » Mon Sep 14, 2009 7:42 pm

Hello Peron,
Anyway, when Quote mining is used thats usely a sign of a loosing argument.
You could not be more wrong. Your accusation that Wal Thornhill is guilty of "quote mining" is totally unfounded. It is common knowledge that Hubble did not support the proposition that redshift proved the universe was expanding. That is the point Thornhill was trying to make, and he did it legitimately.
Even wikipedia will tell you that Hubble questioned the prevailing interpretation of the redshift:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Hubble
In the 1930s Hubble was involved in determining the distribution of galaxies and spatial curvature. These data seemed to indicate that the universe was flat and homogeneous, but there was a deviation from flatness at large redshifts. According to Allan Sandage,

"Hubble believed that his count data gave a more reasonable result concerning spatial curvature if the redshift correction was made assuming no recession. To the very end of his writings he maintained this position, favouring (or at the very least keeping open) the model where no true expansion exists, and therefore that the redshift "represents a hitherto unrecognized principle of nature."[8]
highlight added
Thornhill's use of Hubble quotes is not in any way deceiving and is consistent with the intent of Hubble when he wrote them and would not come under the category of "quote mining."

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Re: Cosmology in Crisis—Again!

Unread post by Peron » Tue Sep 15, 2009 6:58 pm

Quote mining is the practice of, "quoting out of context" .

Four words where removed from the original sentence. That is quote mining, since the intention is to make Hubble look like he didn't believe in the expanding universe. Remove four little words, words that give a completely new meaning to the sentence and you are quote mining.

Remove "If they are valid" and you get,
"It seems likely that redshift may not be due to an expanding Universe, and much of the speculations on the structure of the universe may require re-examination."

Add it and you get, "If they are valid, it seems likely that red-shifts may not be due to an expanding universe, and much of the current speculation on the structure of the universe may require re-examination."

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Re: Cosmology in Crisis—Again!

Unread post by nick c » Tue Sep 15, 2009 7:44 pm

hi Peron,
That is quote mining, since the intention is to make Hubble look like he didn't believe in the expanding universe.
Perhaps you did not understand the point of my previous post? Thornhill was not quote mining since there was no deceit intended and in fact the quote was consistent with reality...that is, Hubble never was convinced that the red shift validated the expanding universe!
Hubble's student [url2=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Sandage]Allan Sandage[/url2] wrote:
To the very end of his writings he maintained this position, favouring (or at the very least keeping open) the model where no true expansion exists, and therefore that the redshift "represents a hitherto unrecognized principle of nature".
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/diamond_jub ... ubble.html
Hubble did not believe in the expanding universe, just as Thornhill wrote in his holoscience article.

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Re: Cosmology in Crisis—Again!

Unread post by Peron » Tue Sep 15, 2009 7:52 pm

nick c wrote:hi Peron,
That is quote mining, since the intention is to make Hubble look like he didn't believe in the expanding universe.
Perhaps you did not understand the point of my previous post? Thornhill was not quote mining since there was no deceit intended and in fact the quote was consistent with reality...that is, Hubble never was convinced that the red shift validated the expanding universe!
Hubble's student [url2=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Sandage]Allan Sandage[/url2] wrote:
To the very end of his writings he maintained this position, favouring (or at the very least keeping open) the model where no true expansion exists, and therefore that the redshift "represents a hitherto unrecognized principle of nature".
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/diamond_jub ... ubble.html
Hubble did not believe in the expanding universe, just as Thornhill wrote in his holoscience article.

nick c
It does not matter what Hubble believed. The quote was taken out of context. Thats quote mining.

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Re: Cosmology in Crisis—Again!

Unread post by nick c » Tue Sep 15, 2009 7:59 pm

Peron,
nit·pick (ntpk)
intr.v. nit·picked, nit·pick·ing, nit·picks
To be concerned with or find fault with insignificant details.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/nitpick


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Re: Cosmology in Crisis—Again!

Unread post by Peron » Tue Sep 15, 2009 8:01 pm

Possibly. Doesn't change the fact that he was Quote mining. Quote mining misleads people, if Wal had good intentions then just say that Hubble didn't believe in the expanding universe.
Which is still irrelevant to anyones theory.

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Re: Cosmology in Crisis—Again!

Unread post by davesmith_au » Tue Sep 15, 2009 11:47 pm

Peron.

If you are going to contunually roam around this forum waving your hands about, not only will you tire of it, but so will everyone else.

Your view of quote mining is, to say the least, very limited if you feel Thornhill was guilty of it in that context. Quote mining is taking someone's words out of context to imply they are saying something other than what they actually said. The four words you added make no difference to the outcome of his words, they simply amplify his doubt about the validity of reshift indicating expansion. Once this was pointed out to you, that is that Hubble himself had serious doubts about universal expansion, you say it doesn't matter what Hubble believed. However, in almost any contemporary discussion of universal expansion, you'll read things like "Hubble is the founder of the expansion theory" and that the Hubble constant which was named after him somehow shows that he himself was agreeable to this theory. However, it is quote mining by the proponents of this mistaken, absurd idea which allows this situation to continue. Hubble would probably be doing somersaults in his grave. He was much more careful than those who abuse his name to perpetuate their nonsense give him credit for, and has been misrepresented by the mainstream for a good number of years. That he *considered* the idea is very different to he *believed* the idea was *the* answer.

Your continued nit-picking is becomeing tiresome, and unless you begin to reference the material in your posts with something substantial I feel most here will see you as nothing more than a troll.

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Re: Cosmology in Crisis—Again!

Unread post by Nereid » Thu Dec 02, 2010 9:08 pm

I don't know if, by common practice, it is appropriate for me to add a comment to a thread in this section, many months after the last post (and many months after the thread was created), so apologies in advance if it's not (and perhaps an admin - Dave Smith? - could then take the appropriate action?)

I'm troubled by this part in the Thunderblog:
Cosmology is in crisis because from the very outset the “big bang” was not science! The big bang invokes a miraculous creation of the universe from nothing.
I think this perpetuates a widespread, very common, misconception; namely, that the relevant cosmological theory (or class of theories), as science, includes a "creation of the universe from nothing" (whether miraculous or not).

Of course, you will certainly find many papers presenting ideas - possibly even theories - on how the universe got to be the way it is before one Planck second (Roger Penrose's latest idea is being discussed in another thread, in another section of this forum, to give just one example), but, as pointed out, they all involve going beyond today's well-established electroweak plus strong interaction plus gravity theories of physics.

As far as I know, the various cosmological theories that incorporate only these theories, published to date, do not go back 'earlier' than a Planck second, and that's because of the deep, fundamental inconsistency between General Relativity (GR) and quantum theory (at the Planck scale, the two theories are so mutually incompatible that no consistent description is possible).

So, for example, LCDM models (i.e. a set of models built using only the quantum version of electromagnetism, the weak and strong interactionsm, and GR, as the core theories of physics), as science, are silent on any 'beginning' for the universe (which should be, to be precise, the observable universe).

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Re: Cosmology in Crisis—Again!

Unread post by Grits » Thu Dec 02, 2010 10:47 pm

Nereid wrote:I think this perpetuates a widespread, very common, misconception; namely, that the relevant cosmological theory (or class of theories), as science, includes a "creation of the universe from nothing" (whether miraculous or not).
The big bang myth was invented by a belgian priest, so it's not surprising that it's seen as a "creation myth", it's essentially the genesis myth from the bible without mentioning god. Believers are quick to point out that no "origin event" is proposed, just a "winding back the clock" to approach the implied origin event. They are approaching lim -> t=0, so t=0 is implied.

I won't even begin to belabor the flaws of the big bang myth, it's already been thoroughly refuted many times in many ways on this web site.
they all involve going beyond today's well-established electroweak plus strong interaction plus gravity theories of physics.
What's "well-established" about this "electroweak" force is that the fictional "weak force" vanishes at high enough energies (ionization).

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Re: Cosmology in Crisis—Again!

Unread post by Aristarchus » Fri Dec 03, 2010 10:01 am

I'm sure others at TB have already read this little gem from Alexander Shulgin, which is a good read and funny.

http://www.tmgnow.com/repository/cosmology/bigbang.html

WHAT BIG BANG?
Sometimes when I am working late in my laboratory I have problems finding an OK radio station. On KNBC, at 740, there is a continuing reiteration of the day's news which I hear repeated almost verbatim every few hours, and I lose interest. And then, up the dial a little bit, I find Morten W. on KGO at 810. He is a knowledgeable scientist explaining such weird stuff as, for example, why green water is coming out of the water pipes over in Danville. He always explains such things well, but with a tone of superiority and arrogance that I find humorous rather than impressive. But when I go from 740 to 810, I pass a station at 770 or 780 that is devoted to the Bible and Christian fundamentalism, and finding that has proven to be a total treasure. A stanza that I learned in childhood comes to mind, "Whenever I go to Severn along the Erie Tract, I pass by a poor old farm-house whose shingles are broken and black." This religious farmhouse on the way to KGO along the AM dial is often my retreat from the boredom of both replayed news and omniscience.

It is here that I have learned much of what I know about creationism. Most of the speakers hold to the seven-day model of Genesis, a week of God's work, ending with an earth, the sun and, for all I can tell, the rest of the universe. Since this is the text of the Bible, and the Bible is the word of God, it serves well as a fait accompli explanation of our origins. Given the premise of divine origin, everything holds together remarkably well. Oh, there are a few things that are awkward, such as fossil records and partially decayed radioactivity, but if you accept the cosmology of creationism, then you can find ways of accepting and living with its troublesome contradictions. Once the shift is made from a process of reason to one of faith, everything can be made to fit your thesis. Things such as dinosaurs and uranium, things that give the illusion of ancient times, are also the products of that busy week, and all were the handiwork of the
Creator.

Those who see themselves as being scientifically sophisticated will smile with patient and quiet amusement upon those whom they see as present-day champions of a Middle Ages philosophy. Those who wish to enter into a dialogue will support their arguments with the hard, cold facts of science, the rewards gained from the application of the "scientific method." And the creationists quite rightly argue back, that these scientists are defending their positions with the same blend of theory and observation that they themselves employ. Neither camp will gracefully admit that there are many embarrassing observations that are being ignored. In my lecturing at Berkeley, I enjoy the disruption that will inevitably follow some off-hand comment I might make concerning the arguments that favor the one-week origin that took place some maybe ten thousand years ago.

As a person who identifies himself with the scientist side rather than the creationist side of this polemic, I find myself quite irritated when I hear the theory of the big bang being accepted by the scientific community as an item of faith. This is the current myth in vogue that deals with the origin of the universe.
One of the most predictable questions each of us has asked of our elders, at one time or another in our youth, is, "Where did I come from?" As individuals we cannot remember back to our birth -- our memories are sadly incomplete and we seek the input from others who may fill in the details. As a species we ask the same question over an immensely broader time base, "Where did we come from? Was there a beginning? What was there before that?"

Embarrassing stuff, here, since there is no available parent to help us find answers when the question is asked in cosmological terms. The religious fundamentalist says, God created us all out of his infinite good will, in early March, 8065 B.C. Or thereabouts. The learned astrophysicist says the big bang created us all in late September, 14.3 billion years B.C. Or thereabouts. There is no record of this event that is unambiguous, so the acceptance of the big bang myth is every bit as much an act of faith as is the acceptance of the Genesis myth. To keep things in perspective, I should capitalize Big Bang so that it looks as important as God.

Not that I want to knock God. As this fun essay progresses, I hope to offer an alternative to the concept of origin. There might have been no origin. Our universe has always been here, it is infinitely old, and so God just might have been with us much longer than anyone ever suspected. All the weird observations that are part of our science will fit another explanation just as well, or even better, but the veil of prejudice must be put aside for a moment for us to see it. More of this iconoclasm later.
Good stuff! :lol:

Sorry, I should have added ...
Let me paint a brief word picture of the Big Bang religion first, using the vocabulary of the faithful. We have interpreted the evidence from our instruments to support a theory that the universe is expanding, and expanding at a remarkably rapid rate. And the further away something is, the faster it is moving away from us. This is our way of being at peace with the observation that the further away a light source is, the more the spectrum of that light is shifted to the red. This relationship, between how far away the light emitter is from us, and the red shift of the light emitted, is called the Hubble constant. The resemblance between this dynamic picture and an explosion has provided us an irresistible model for the origin of our universe. This is portrayed as a super explosion, and what we see now is the debris, the shards and fragments, still flying away in every direction. With this model in front of us, let us pretend that we can watch the passing of time in the reverse direction. Let's run the movie projector backwards. Each frame takes you to an earlier point in time, so that the flying fragments appear to be coming together again, with the volume of the universe getting progressively smaller and the matter (or whatever it is) that is in it getting progressively hotter. As the film continues to roll backwards, everything appears to condense to a smaller and smaller volume, and then even this shrinks further to what looks like a point and that point is so hot that matter can't even exist at all. Stop the projector right there. Look at that birth frame. If you closely inspect the image before you, you should see an extremely small something, at a temperature of a fantastically large number of degrees centigrade. The movie is said to have started from this point in the normal time direction and that is what the physicists call the Big Bang.

>From that minuscule source came all the stuff that constitutes this universe: the energy, the eventual mass, the stars and the galaxies, the forces of gravity and of life.

I recently read a review by Rem B. Edwards (published in the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion) of a book written by two physicists, who argued as to whether the Big Bang cosmology provided evidence for the existence of God. It stated that both authors agreed that our universe emerged as a cataclysmic explosion from an initial singularity, understood in contemporary astrophysics as a state in which the mass/energy of the universe is condensed into an infinitely dense, infinitely hot, infinitely small (zero diameter), infinitely curved, pointlike dimension. If those were the true dimensions of our origin as shown on that birth frame, then even if that "cataclysmic explosion" were to increase that original diameter a zillion-fold it would still be zero, if the temperature were to drop a zillion-fold, it would still be infinite. Anything times zero is still zero. Infinity divided by anything is still infinity. In short, the second frame, and the thousandth frame of our movie would appear identical to the first one, and there would be no stars or galaxies. We would not exist.
An object is cut off from its name, habits, associations. Detached, it becomes only the thing, in and of itself. When this disintegration into pure existence is at last achieved, the object is free to become endlessly anything. ~ Jim Morrison

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