What is Plasma Cosmology? - Lerner's WP page

[Nereid]

I found this webpage was cited in the Thunderbolts Forum:

And I found the *uncensored* version of the plasma cosmology page at wikipedia, as editted by Lerner. It certainly comes in handy when trying to explain the fundamental concepts of plasma cosmology to people;
Plasma cosmology

While it's no longer the Wikipedia entry, it does seem to be an accurate, succinct summary of what Plasma Cosmology is (and it contains lots of links too).

Is there any serious disagreement with this summary, by Thunderbolts Forum members? I looked but could not find any.

Also, is the webpage, as Zeuz says, edited by Lerner?

[Jarvamundo]

I agree with you Nereid, it's a far more complete and helpful page than wiki's currently heavily censored efforts.

http://bigbangneverhappened.org/
http://bigbangneverhappened.org/wiki.htm

Lerner's editing history should be available from wiki.

http://thunderbolts.info/wp/forum/phpBB3/v ... ?f=6&t=573

[Grits]

Is there any serious disagreement with this summary, by Thunderbolts Forum members? I looked but could not find any.

By the way, the current article is UTTERLY horrible. As just one example of the foolishness in it, the claim is made that Alfven's ideas about star formation from birkeland currents are "refuted" by a "study" in 2006 which flatly asserted (based on computer models of "big bang") that there was no charge separation in space (except early in "big bang", of course), of course, and that the entire universe was electrically neutral.

The laughable abstract of this "refuting" paper follows:

Although observations point to the neutrality and lack of currents on large scales in the universe, many mechanisms are known that can generate charges or currents during the early universe. We examine the question of survivability of relic charges and currents in a realistic model of the universe. We show that the dynamics of cosmological perturbations drive the universe to become electrically neutral and current-free to a high degree of accuracy on all scales, regardless of initial conditions. We find that charges are efficiently driven away in a time small compared to the Hubble time for temperatures 100 GeV > T > 1 eV, while the same is true for currents at all temperatures T > 1 eV. The forced neutrality relaxes constraints on the generation of an electric charge in the early universe, while the forced erasure of currents disfavors many mechanisms for the early origins of large-scale magnetic fields.

Further idiocy ensues when they characterize the beginning of plasma cosmology being spurred by the idea of "ambiplasma", an idea not put forth by Alfven until 1981[http://books.google.com/books?id=ZjwoGl ... &q&f=false], in a few pages of the speculation of "antimatter plasma", after the barrage of announced discoveries of "antimatter". Apparently the idea of "ambiplasma" is woo-woo, but "antimatter" (another protected wikipedia article) is not.

[davesmith_au]

The notice on the (old version linked by Nereid) page: "This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Elerner (talk | contribs) at 01:30, 20 November 2006. It may differ significantly from the current revision." is misleading to say the least. Perhaps it was, at the time, LAST edited by Lerner, but had been edited by many other editors as well.

From what I can gather, Eric Lerner didn't get much chance to edit the page. Whilst he made some edits to it, it has been contributed to by all and sundry.

The last 500 edits by Eric Lerner, which go back to February 2006:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... et=Elerner

Note to the unwashed, "Talk:Plasma cosmology" is NOT the article page, but contributions to the discussion page. So the only edits of the actual article display as "Plasma cosmology".

The last 500 edits to the Plasma Cosmology page, going back to December 2006:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... on=history

The current version calls for an 'expert' though Lerner was banned from editing the article. It would be a laughable situation if it wasn't so serious.

Cheers, Dave.

[Nereid]

Thanks everyone for the comments.

About the 'last edited by': of course the words are there near the top of the page; however, I was wondering just how accurate that is, given all that I've read here about WP. I mean, if it's just a software feature, then it must be accurate at some level; however, Dave's post says that it is quite misleading.

Anyway, it's good to know that the document is held in high regard here.

[jjohnson]

I find that both the Plasma Universe and the Electric Universe idea sets to be non-standard, which is appropriate given their divergence from the Standard Model. I believe that the standard model for whatever reasons does not want to open an even-handed discussion of whether or not plasma and electrodynamics and plasma's documented ability to maintain charge separation for long periods and distances in space might afford an improvement to the existing paradigm, so someone else not in the thick of it will have to develop the electric universe's ideas and see if they are coherent enough and predictive enough to evolve into a theory that could compete for survival against the present model

There is too much well-done physics and astronomy in the standard model to dismiss it, and no one I've discussed these things with says that there's no such thing as gravity — that is not the intent or the issue. Different forces have different ranges of influence and dominance under different conditions. I just think that there are advantages to looking deeper into many of the ideas being thrown out by EU adherents rather than being dismissive of them "to save time and energy", or "Maxwell and Birkeland and Lorentz and Alfvén are old hat and irrelevant" or N.I.H.

I find Wikipedia to be very useful, but it must be used with a lot of caution, like almost any source of ideas and knowledge. It is often written by people with normal human foibles and biases and prejudices. So are newspapers and textbooks. Nothing new there. Just be alert and try to think critically, without jumping to knee-jerk conclusions. I do not discuss cosmology other than to ask questions or read such discussions, as I have no training or experience in that subject, so would rather stick with trying to look at it objectively and just listen. That said, and with no evidence (either way) I prefer the ideas of indefinitely large, indefinitely old Universe with an indefinitely long existence, and have little regard for the presumptive Big Bang ideas and the cold death of entropy. If that's to be the case, what a waste of a perfectly good Universe! The preferences that makes me feel best have nothing to do with objective scientific reasoning, I am sure.

Nereid: Why did you write that you find it good that Lerner's document is held in high regard here? What brought on that observation from you? Just trying to gauge why you are involving yourself in these discussions, frankly, and equally frankly think that there should be more of such fraternization without rancor on all sides of questions of mutual interest. Thanks,

Jim

[Grits]

The notice on the (old version linked by Nereid) page:...is misleading to say the least.

I think that's just a standard boilerplate notice, automatically generated based on the last person to edit that revision of the article. I don't think it's intentionally misleading, just indicating he was the last one to edit that particular version.

[davesmith_au]

The notice on the (old version linked by Nereid) page:...is misleading to say the least.

I think that's just a standard boilerplate notice, automatically generated based on the last person to edit that revision of the article. I don't think it's intentionally misleading, just indicating he was the last one to edit that particular version.

Agreed Grits, in which case the keepers of the Wikipedia faith should amend the boilerplate to make it more accurately reflect the truth. This would only require the word "last" to be added to the template. It's not rocket science...

Cheers, Dave.

[Grits]

This would only require the word "last" to be added to the template. It's not rocket science...

I would agree it's not rocket surgery...but then again, we're talking about wikipedia...it hard to underestimate the user base there.

[Nereid]

I find that both the Plasma Universe and the Electric Universe idea sets to be non-standard, which is appropriate given their divergence from the Standard Model.

Just to note that "the Standard Model" (capital S, capital M) usually means the Stardard Model of particle physics (quarks, leptons, QED, QCD, etc); here I think you mean something quite different (including what the - hidden - WP webpage on plasma cosmology calls "standard cosmology").

I believe that the standard model for whatever reasons does not want to open an even-handed discussion

While I think it's pretty clear what you mean (and I hope this is not nit-picking - I find your posts to be generally very well written), it is surely people who have discussions, not models?

of whether or not plasma and electrodynamics and plasma's documented ability to maintain charge separation for long periods and distances in space might afford an improvement to the existing paradigm,

What, then, do you make of WOPA (link is to a thread here in the Thunderbolts Forum)?

I find Wikipedia to be very useful, but it must be used with a lot of caution,

Hear hear!

Although I must say that I myself use it less and less. For me the main problem is its inconsistency: some articles are extremely well written, and about as informative as you could hope for, given the limitations (number of words, etc); others are not, and there's no way to tell which is which (unless you yourself know a lot about the subject, and if that's the case, why would you go to WP anyway?).