Another Problem With Big Bang?

Dancing David said:
And as far as the big bang event, it is a theory. It is currently the theory that approximates the behavior of reality rather well. If there are competing theories that is great, that is the way science works.
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Yet astronomy magazines will not publish articles on what plasma cosmologists have to say. Not because their peer reviewers can prove what the plasma cosmologists say is wrong, but because they challenge the dogma of those reviewers and the interest the Big Bang community has in expensive Big Bang *science*. That's why if you are interested in plasma cosmology work you have to look somewhere else than astronomy magazines and books. Is that the way *science* is supposed to work?

And since when did science invoke invisible magic particles, forces and magic events to explain every deficiency in a theory? Since when did science start using circular reasoning (like I pointed out earlier)? That is a new phenomena in *science* as far as I can tell.

Dancing David said:
When the plasma cosmology makes a prediction that matches the data better than the current theory, then it will become the standard theory.
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I think you are naive to think that, given that's already happened and still plasma cosmology gets virtually no mention in ANY astronomy literature. What is happening is that two seperate communities of scientists are forming. The plasma cosmologists are scientists and they are busy holding conventions and publishing their works in peer reviewed journals. They are doing that because the Big Bang Astronomers are acting like priests defending a religion.

Dancing David said:
So the extra particles (and I am curious which ones you feel haven't been observed?)
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Well let's start with dark matter. Has it been observed. Really observed?

Dancing David said:
are based upon the way the theory seems to work out.
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Consider WIMPS. They are a leading contender for dark matter according to the press. They are based on the way one particular set of math AND assumptions works out. And huge amounts of money have been invested in the belief they exist. I read that over 20 international teams expending vast amounts of money in caves, tunnels and mines are searching for these particles. Any success? There have been claims they were on the verge of success since 2000. Any success yet? I know the Italians claimed they did, but was anyone able to corroborate their claim? No? I think in fact that scientists now think the Italians were fooled by environmental effects. So how about it? Aren't WIMPS still a mathematical ghost imagined in a desperate attempt to explain observations that plasma cosmologists believe can be explained with matter and forces that we do know exist?

Dancing David said:
So there are other competing theories to the BBM, so?
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The "so" is that Big Bang astronomers don't seem to want to talk to plasma cosmologists or even mention that their theory exists in any of their writings. And the reason might have to do with money. Big Bang astronomy is a big expensive industry with lots of mouths to feed. :D
 
BeAChooser said:
Yet astronomy magazines will not publish articles on what plasma cosmologists have to say. Not because their peer reviewers can prove what the plasma cosmologists say is wrong, but because they challenge the dogma of those reviewers and the interest the Big Bang community has in expensive Big Bang *science*. That's why if you are interested in plasma cosmology work you have to look somewhere else than astronomy magazines and books. Is that the way *science* is supposed to work?
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Prove that.

And since when did science invoke invisible magic particles, forces and magic events to explain every deficiency in a theory? Since when did science start using circular reasoning (like I pointed out earlier)?
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In 1928 Dirac postulated the existence of the positron, a 'magical' particle by your standards. In 1932 it was discovered. That is science.
 
Yllanes said:
By the way, in case someone hasn't heard of it, here's a Wikipedia article on plasma cosmology.
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If one is wise, one doesn't use Wikipedia as the final word on anything.

I'd be willing to bet you that the article was written by a Big Bang proponent.

You would never know from that article there is a fairly large scientific community still advocating and doing research on plasma cosmology.

Frankly, I think this is a rather lame attempt not to actually address any of the criticisms I've offered on this thread. It's an attempt just to dismiss the topic out of hand. Does that sound like science ... or dogma?
 
BeAChooser said:
Frankly, I think this is a rather lame attempt not to actually address any of the criticisms I've offered on this thread. It's an attempt just to dismiss the topic out of hand. Does that sound like science ... or dogma?
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I gave the link as background, not as a final word on anything. As you can see I'm still writing on this thread.

So far the only criticism I have seen is that Big Bang cosmology requires 'magical' particles. But it only requires that if you want to go into the very first moments of the universe. It works without them the rest of the time. Also, 'magical' particles are not necessarily a bad thing (I gave you the example of the positron).

Plasma cosmology doesn't require these things, but it also doesn't offer results, so it fails.

As you can see, I have actually addressed all of your criticisms. You also made the accusation that plasma cosmology is suppresed by the 'dogmatic science'. You have to provide evidence for that if you want it to be taken seriously.
 
BeAChooser said:
And since when did science invoke invisible magic particles, forces and magic events to explain every deficiency in a theory?
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I took the liberty of deleting the stupid lies in your question.

Scientists invoke invisible particles, forces, and events frequently.

They don't babble about magic, because they are not the strawmen who populate your imagination.
 
TV's Frank said:
I don't know why BeAChooser keeps going on about how cosmologists "ignore" plasma physics. Plasma physics plays a large role in cosmology
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Yes they do, and I thank you for mentioning a few of the ways it does. So why are plasma and electromagnetic force terms that one rarely finds in the publications of Big Bang astronomers? Why is that?

TV's Frank said:
The universe contains a whole lot of physics, but at large scales everything is dominated by gravity.
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Plasma cosmologists can make a pretty convincing case that plasma physics are at work at the scale of galaxies and in the interaction of galaxies. I think you are just claiming that gravity dominates because it's Big Bang dogma.

TV's Frank said:
Plasma cosmology is hampered by two things: it's inability to make predicitons that match observations (see the wikipedia article)
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I hope you don't use wikipedia are your final authority on most things. ROTFLOL!

TV's Frank said:
and the fact that there just aren't any large-scale electric fields! None! Nada! There are tons of electric fields out there, but no big ones. Sorry! And by "large-scale" I mean cosmological scale: of the order of the Hubble length, or at least cluster-sized.
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Well how could you tell? Do we have instruments that could detect such things? The fact is the instruments we have show large electric fields at work as far out as they can look. We see electromagnetic forces influencing the interaction of colliding galaxies. We know that intergalactic space ... especially that space as it would have been billions and billions of years ago when the bulk of the galaxies were first forming ... would have been filled with vast amounts of plasma. We know that everywhere we find plasmas, we find electric and magnetic fields in play. So why do you ASSUME (because that's what you are doing) that there are not electric fields out there? Dogma?
 
BeAChooser said:
Well how could you tell? Do we have instruments that could detect such things? The fact is the instruments we have show large electric fields at work as far out as they can look.
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Intergalactic fields, as I said, are not strong enough or at a large enough scale.

We know that everywhere we find plasmas, we find electric and magnetic fields in play. So why do you ASSUME (because that's what you are doing) that there are not electric fields out there? Dogma?
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I asked you before if you knew what the Debye length was. Part of the definition of a plasma is that it be a quasineutral system, i.e., that the electric charge be shielded at distance of a scale (the Debye length) much smaller than the system. So electromagnetic fields control the dynamics of a plasma but seen from outside the system is neutral. Which means that even if the interstellar medium is a plasma (which of course it is), two galaxies won't attract each other because of their electrical charge.

It is more complicated than all that, and you need something much better than an observation like 'there is a lot of plasma' to challenge a theory as well established as Big Bang cosmology.
 
Yllanes said:
99% of the visible matter.
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Precisely my point. 99% of the PROVEN matter is plasma.

Yllanes said:
Because matter is neutral.
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Plasmas are not neutral. Where'd you get that idea?

Yllanes said:
There are no large scale EM fields, as TV's Frank said. The intergalactic magnetic field is of the order of the microgauss and consists of random clusters of no more than 1 MPc. At larger scales (cosmological scales) there is no discernible EM field.
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Really?

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ApJ/journal/issues/ApJL/v599n2/17639/17639.html "Cosmological Magnetic Field Generation by the Weibel Instability ... snip ... published 2003 December 3 ... snip ... Our mechanism supports the earlier conjecture (Rye et al. 1998) that cosmic magnetic fields are strongly correlated with the large-scale structure of the universe."

What a curious thing for scientists to state, if what you claim is true. What if, as plasma cosmologists contend, the large-scale structure of the universe is BECAUSE of the interaction of charged plasmas?

According to Anthony Peralt, a plasma physicist at LANL (http://www.springerlink.com/content/h4w5l7l06280863r/), "One of the earliest predictions about the morphology of the universe is that it be filamentary (Alfvén, 1950). This prediction followed from the fact that volumewise, the universe is 99.999% matter in the plasma state. When the plasma is energetic, it is generally inhomogeneous with constituent parts in motion. Plasmas in relative motion are coupled by the currents they drive in each other and nonequilibrium plasma often consists of current-conducting filaments. In the laboratory and in the Solar System, filamentary and cellular morphology is a well-known property of plasma. As the properties of the plasma state of matter is believed not to change beyond the range of our space probes, plasma at astrophysical dimensions must also be filamentary. During the 1980s a series of unexpected observations showed filamentary structure on the Galactic, intergalactic, and supergalactic scale. By this time, the analytical intractibility of complex filamentary geometries, intense self-fields, nonlinearities, and explicit time dependence had fostered the development of fully three-dimensional, fully electromagnetic, particle-in-cell simulations of plasmas having the dimensions of galaxies or systems of galaxies. It had been realized that the importance of applying electromagnetism and plasma physics to the problem of radiogalaxy and galaxy formation derived from the fact that the universe is largely a plasma universe. In plasma, electromagnetic forces exceed gravitational forces by a factor of 10^^36, and electromagnetism is 10^^7 times stronger than gravity even in neutral hydrogen regions, where the degree of ionization is a miniscule 10^^–4. The observational evidence for galactic-dimensioned Birkeland currents is given based on the direct comparison of the synchrotron radiation properties of simulated currents to those of extra-galactic sources including quasars and double radio galaxies."

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/9602097 " Magnetic Fields and Large Scale Structure in a hot Universe. ... snip ... Magnetic fields have a strong influence on the formation of large-scale structure."

More food for thought:

http://www.physicsmyths.org.uk/darkmatter.htm

http://members.cox.net/dascott3/Interview.htm

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0401420 "A new interaction, plasma redshift, is derived, which is important only when photons penetrate a hot, sparse electron plasma. The derivation of plasma redshift is based entirely on conventional axioms of physics. When photons penetrate a cold and dense plasma, they lose energy through ionization and excitation, Compton scattering on the individual electrons, and Raman scattering on the plasma frequency. But in sparse hot plasma, such as in the solar corona, the photons lose energy also in plasma redshift. The energy loss per electron in the plasma redshift is about equal to the product of the photon's energy and one half of the Compton cross-section per electron. In quiescent solar corona, this heating starts in the transition zone to the corona and is a major fraction of the coronal heating. Plasma redshift contributes also to the heating of the interstellar plasma, the galactic corona, and the intergalactic plasma. Plasma redshift explains the solar redshifts, the redshifts of the galactic corona, the cosmological redshifts, the cosmic microwave background, and the X-ray background. The plasma redshift explains the observed magnitude-redshift relation for supernovae SNe Ia without the big bang, dark matter, or dark energy. There is no cosmic time dilation. The universe is not expanding. The plasma redshift, when compared with experiments, shows that the photons' classical gravitational redshifts are reversed as the photons move from the Sun to the Earth. This is a quantum mechanical effect. As seen from the Earth, a repulsion force acts on the photons. This means that there is no need for Einstein's Lambda term. The universe is quasi-static, infinite, and everlasting."

Oh oh ... is red shift in trouble too? :D
 
Unfortunately, I have to go pack right now for a trip. I'll be away for a few days but I promise to respond to each comment from the point I stopped when I return. Enjoying the lively debate. Are you? :)
 
BeAChooser said:
Plasmas are not neutral. Where'd you get that idea?
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I said before what I meant by quasineutrality, which is part of the definition of a plasma.

[long post snipped]
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Listen, I don't claim plasma cosmology is a completely stupid concept. Serious scientists have studied it. I'm just saying that nowadays the level of observational support and theoretical development it has is nowhere near that of Big Bang cosmology. This means that the latter has to be the standard theory.

But it doesn't help that you are linking to very dubious pages. From http://www.physicsmyths.org.uk/darkmatter.htm (bolding mine):

The special theory of relativity, as developed by Einstein, is directly based on the Lorentz Transformation formula and attempts to transfer the 'equation of motion' for light signals to the space- time coordinates of moving material bodies. Not only is this generalization completely unjustified, but it violates in fact the principle invariance of the velocity (of light) in moving coordinate systems, which obviously does not apply for material objects (for which the usual vectorial addition of velocities holds). (more)
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Gross misunderstanding of SR here:

he conclusions of time dilation and length contraction are hence invalid because they are based on a set of equations that is inconsistent with physical principles. This inconsistency is also evident from the well known 'Twin Paradox' which is due to the fact that motion is always only relative and any time dilation effect would therefore be ambiguous. Some physicists claim that the situation would in practice not be symmetric as one observer has to turn around in order to compare the clocks (see for instance http://www.phys.vt.edu/~jhs/faq/twins.html), but it is clear that this argument does not hold water as the time dilation should already be apparent before one observer turns around.
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That from looking 5 min at one of your links chosen at random. That page has no credibility.

ETA: His treatment of curved space ain't any better:

Curved Space: The concept of a 'curved space', which is essential for present cosmological models, is logically flawed because space can only be defined by the distance between two objects, which is however by definition always given by a straight line. Mathematicians frequently try to illustrate the properties of 'curved space' through the example of a spherical (or otherwise curved) surface and the associated geometrical relationships. However, a surface is only a mathematical abstraction within the actual (3-dimensional) space and one can in fact connect any two points on the surface of a physical object through a straight line by drilling through it.
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I will throw a tiny bone to BeAChooser: we have not detected dark matter particles. We have inferred their presence from gravitational effects. However, there are currently MANY detectors operating right now trying to find them (we may even make some at the LHC). Finding a DM particle is pretty much an instant Nobel. If we don't find these particles in, say, 10 years or so, then we will have some challenging questions to face.

So, I've just remembered: even if the standard cosmological model is demonstrated to be completely, totally, unconditionally wrong, then that does NOT make plasma cosmology automatically correct. Even if we never find a dark matter particle, it does NOT mean plasma cosmology is the answer.

BeAChooser is challenging us on two fronts: to defend standard cosmology AND attack plasma cosmology. But we do not need to defend standard cosmology, since it has already passed strict observational tests. The onus is on BeAChooser to use plasma cosmology to explain the observed facts of the universe.

So, BeAChooser, please use plasma cosmology to explain the following observations. Note: we are doing physics, so you MUST use mathematics. You MUST compare directly to observations. You MUST provide details. If you need help with any of this, or finding data that you can compare to, let me know and I can point you to helpful resources. Remember, these are OBSERVATIONS, and so ANY cosmological model must explain them!

-the age of the universe (at least older than the solar system!)
-the abundance of light elements (e.g., hydrogen, helium, and lithium)
-the existence of the CMB (e.g., temperature)
-the power spectrum of the CMB (e.g., the l=200 peak, isotropy)
-the spectral index of CMB fluctuations
-the flatness of spatial curvature
-the matter power spectrum (e.g., scale of non-linear growth, presence of BAO peak)
-the lyman-alpha forest
-the luminosity-distance relations of type 1a supernova


Hmmm...that's all I feel like typing for now. And if you're feeling unmotived, BeAChooser, remember: if you can produce a cosmological model that beats the standard, and makes preditions that the standard model doesn't, then you get a free trip to Stockholm....
 
BeAChooser said:
Dark matter (along with dark energy, inflation, strings, black holes and other phenomena that may be nothing but mathematical constructs) are the foundations of the current Big Bang theory. If there's a problem with dark matter, there's a significant problem with Big Bang.
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No there isn't. The amount of matter in the Universe just predicts whether or not the Universe will go on expanding forever or contract back in on itself. We can run the BB model back to the first fraction of a second, dark matter understood or not.
 
TV's Frank said:
I will throw a tiny bone to BeAChooser: we have not detected dark matter particles. We have inferred their presence from gravitational effects. However, there are currently MANY detectors operating right now trying to find them (we may even make some at the LHC).....
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Why do you define gravity as not a means of detecting something? We detect planets around other stars by the effects gravity has on the star's movement. We don't see the planet but we detect it.

And my understanding is that some other means of detecting DM just gives us additional information about the nature of the matter.
 
He means detecting the specific particles that comprise dark matter. We see their gravitational effect, so they must be there, but we don't know what kind of particles they are (they can't be ordinary baryonic matter). They could be supersymmetric particles, for example.

There are many candidates: axions, WIMPs (including neutralinos), etc. They are much more than names, we know what properties they would have. All of these are not part of the standard model, so we need new experiments to see whether they exist.
 
BeAChooser said:
Unfortunately, I have to go pack right now for a trip. I'll be away for a few days but I promise to respond to each comment from the point I stopped when I return. Enjoying the lively debate. Are you? :)
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I'm still waiting to see anything of substance about "plasma cosmology". Some math would be nice, or some testable predictions ... I'm not holding my breath.
 
BeAChooser said:
How utterly BIZARRE. It's almost like magic powder!
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I don't suppose you have heard of nutrinos have you?
Why is it reasonable if other more mundane explanations for phenomena it is said to explain exist?
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Said to exist and matching the data are different.
Take the rotation curve data I mentioned earlier.
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yes matter closer to the core of rotation moves faster than it should.
Plasma cosmologists have an explanation that doesn't involve this mysterious dark matter
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Really, put your money where your mouth is, how does it work, how does EM make the stars move faster?
, that involves physics that we have immense experience with over the last hundred years, that involves physics we can (and have) demonstrated in the lab as producing such a rotation curve.
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really, the EM force can do that, post a link. Put your cards on the table.
Yet read any Big Bang astronomy book and you find no mention of this. Why is that reasonable?
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Because it is a gravitational effect?

Can EM make an object orbit more quickley than it should?
 
BeAChooser said:
Yet astronomy magazines will not publish articles on what plasma cosmologists have to say. Not because their peer reviewers can prove what the plasma cosmologists say is wrong, but because they challenge the dogma of those reviewers and the interest the Big Bang community has in expensive Big Bang *science*. That's why if you are interested in plasma cosmology work you have to look somewhere else than astronomy magazines and books. Is that the way *science* is supposed to work?
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What *data* can the plasma cosmology explain?

Like the Hubble constant?

What data, not speculative theory, does it explain?

What article have you read that should have been in a peer reviewed journal. Put it on the table.
And since when did science invoke invisible magic particles, forces and magic events to explain every deficiency in a theory?
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I don't suppose you know about the neutrino?

Or the pion, I can go on for a long time.
Since when did science start using circular reasoning (like I pointed out earlier)? That is a new phenomena in *science* as far as I can tell.
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So without using the word 'rotation curve', show how EM cam make objects orbit faster than they should from observed matter.
I think you are naive to think that, given that's already happened and still plasma cosmology gets virtually no mention in ANY astronomy literature.
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What *data* does it explain? Give us the data. Stop with the hand wringing conspiracy theory. Give us the data.
What is happening is that two seperate communities of scientists are forming. The plasma cosmologists are scientists and they are busy holding conventions and publishing their works in peer reviewed journals.
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You just contradicted yourself, if they are in peer reviewed journals then there isn't a conspiracy. Or are they just speculative articles?
They are doing that because the Big Bang Astronomers are acting like priests defending a religion.
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More crap. You have never been to an academic conference, have you?

What explanation of the data do they have that is not acknowledged by astronomers.

Rubber meets the road, show us the data and the numbers.
Well let's start with dark matter. Has it been observed. Really observed?
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That is not some huge amount of particles, it is one of many explanations to say why things appear to act as though there is more gravity than there should be.

Read the next line:

There are no apparent large scale EM forces.

1. What data suggests that there are?
2. How do they make matter rotate more quickly than it should in an orbit?

Consider WIMPS.
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that makes two. Oh, I see , you are just using hyperbole. have you read the history of physics much?

read up on Gell-Mann would you, some theoretical particles are eliminated, some turn out to be true, quarks are a theoretical explanation.
They are a leading contender for dark matter according to the press.
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According to the press, know that means a lot doesn't it. Not on this forum, post a link.
They are based on the way one particular set of math AND assumptions works out.
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And so? Pauli numbers are math and they work out. You don't show the data yet.
And huge amounts of money have been invested in the belief they exist.
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Yeah, where? Are you sure?

Show us the money trail.
I read that over 20 international teams expending vast amounts of money in caves, tunnels and mines are searching for these particles.
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Ah, that is particle physics, you don't really know what you are talking about. That is not BBE physics at all.
Any success? There have been claims they were on the verge of success since 2000. Any success yet? I know the Italians claimed they did, but was anyone able to corroborate their claim? No? I think in fact that scientists now think the Italians were fooled by environmental effects. So how about it?
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So how about Gell-Mann and the pion? Or the Yukawa particles?
Aren't WIMPS still a mathematical ghost imagined in a desperate attempt to explain observations that plasma cosmologists believe can be explained with matter and forces that we do know exist?
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You keep saying that. Where do they explain the rotation of stars being faster than observed data?
The "so" is that Big Bang astronomers don't seem to want to talk to plasma cosmologists or even mention that their theory exists in any of their writings.
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So? What data are they able to explain, how exactly does the EM make the stars move faster.

You are also wrong, the baryon asymmetry is part of the standard model.
And the reason might have to do with money. Big Bang astronomy is a big expensive industry with lots of mouths to feed. :D
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Shows that you have never been to an astronomy or cosmology department, have you?
 
BeAChooser said:
Perhaps because the amount of $$$$$ spent on plasma cosmology is a drop in an ocean compared to what they are spending to prop up Big Bang?
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Um dude I hate to tell you this.

Your beloved theory does not explain the Hubble constant. they have to start with that, speding money is not going to do that. That is a problem with the theory as far as the needs to explain the observation.

Why aren't there other observation that show the large scale EM force in intra galactic space?

Do you really think that Guth got a large grant when he was working out the math of the inflationary theory? Or that Gell-Mann had a huge lab somewhere. Do you think that Einstien, Guth, Dirac and Gell-Mann were paraded through the streets or something?

I will put it this way, 'there was considerable debate'.

The super colliders do not prop up the BBE theory, they are part of the standard particle model exploration.

You have reached the point where you need to start showing your evidence.

1. Articles that should have been in peer reviwed journals but aren't.

2. An explanation for how the EM force causes stars to rotate more quickley than they should around a galactic center given the obsvered visible matter.
 
BeAChooser said:
I notice that you haven't even attempted to dispute any of the facts I mentioned. All you've done is just claim victory. Is that going to be typical of *debates* with you? :D
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What "victory"? I don't need to claim anything. For a start, it's your claim, so you answer the questions. Secondly, others far more qualified than I can accommodate you handsomely if you want to discuss physics, cosmology, etc. So bring your game-brain, OK? I'm a keen reader on the subject, but no expert like they are.

BeAChooser said:
If you want to have an honest discussion of the subject, I'll be more than happy to cooperate but if this is going to be typical of your offerings, you will probably just be ignored.
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Now this is curious, because I have not ever responded to "BeAChooser" before, but this is a very similar to a response I have received from someone else on this forum who has similar beliefs. I wonder...do I smell socks??

BeAChooser said:
I tell you what ... I'll give you another chance to dialog.

If 99% of the matter in the observed universe consists of plasmas which respond to electromagnetic forces and electromagnetic forces have been observed everywhere we've looked in the universe, and they are vastly stronger than gravity forces, why do you think that electromagnetic forces have played no role in the formation and operation of galaxies or the interactions between galaxies? That certainly seems to be what the Big Bang Astronomers are saying since they hardly ever mention electric plasmas and electric forces in anything they write. :D
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You want an answer? OK, let's break your question down by its components:

1) ...99% of the matter in the observed universe consists of plasmas which respond to electromagnetic forces...: Evidence? Source?

2) ...electromagnetic forces have been observed everywhere we've looked in the universe...: Evidence? Source?

3) ...they [electromagnetic forces] are vastly stronger than gravity forces...: Evidence? Source?

4) ...why do you think that electromagnetic forces have played no role in the formation and operation of galaxies or the interactions between galaxies? Care to reference how you know I think that? (This is called a "strawman" argument, btw.)

And then you follow up with faulty logical inference:

That certainly seems to be what the Big Bang Astronomers are saying since they hardly ever mention electric plasmas and electric forces in anything they write.
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Please explain to us clearly how the latter can be inferred from the former.

Oh, and be careful to wash your socks. ;)
 
I'd also like to ask BeAChooser how he thinks a controversial theory like MOND ever got into the astonomy literature, and how it continues to get time and space there, since it also directly contradicts the Dark Matter theory.
 
Yllanes said:
He means detecting the specific particles that comprise dark matter. We see their gravitational effect, so they must be there, but we don't know what kind of particles they are (they can't be ordinary baryonic matter). They could be supersymmetric particles, for example.

There are many candidates: axions, WIMPs (including neutralinos), etc. They are much more than names, we know what properties they would have. All of these are not part of the standard model, so we need new experiments to see whether they exist.
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I see. DM is one of the funner things to contemplate when I contemplate the Universe. It's a puzzle. How do you detect something that doesn't react with light yet has some kind of mass which exerts gravitational force. I love to contemplate puzzles.
 
To bring this back around to the matter of dark matter, has anyone mentioned this story from a few days ago yet?

New Mystery of Invisible Matter Generated by Cosmic Collision
Cosmic train wreck' baffles astronomers


There's also the following story from a few days ago, it's not related to dark matter but I thought it interesting to mention anyway:

Dead star holds evidence of Earth-like planet



Huzzah! Post #1,000! That was a quick 1,000 compared to my previous posting totals on other message boards...
 
skeptigirl said:
I see. DM is one of the funner things to contemplate when I contemplate the Universe. It's a puzzle. How do you detect something that doesn't react with light yet has some kind of mass which exerts gravitational force. I love to contemplate puzzles.
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One example of (attempt at) direct detection is the DAMA experiment at the Gran Sasso (an underground laboratory buried under a mountain in Italy).

They use scintillators capable of detecting the recoil of electrons and nuclei after a collision with another particle. This particle may be DM, background radiactivity, cosmic rays, etc. To eliminate all kinds of noise and leave a possible signal due to DM they measure for very long periods of time. The orbit of the Earth around the Sun causes a modulation in the DM flux (and not on the background).

The experimenters at DAMA reported a signal, but it has not been reproduced anywhere else, so we still don't have any direct detection of DM. An enhanced version of the same experiment is now running, I think the first data should come out in 2008 or something like that.

Corsair 115, the story you mention is precisely the one BeAChooser commented in his OP. It was him that first mentioned plasma cosmology.
 
Further to my thread on Cosmological Philosophizing, why do some posters, who are clearly grossly unqualified to do research into practical plasma physics (and would have to admit so, faced with an actual plasma chamber), feel that they are able to seriously critique cosmological models? Is it because at some level cosmology intrudes on religion (and that amateur philosophy can have serious theological impact)?

I'm not critical of peoples' rights to hold opinions, but where opinion conflicts with learned convention, ought not a person to do more listening and less talking? Convention may be incorrect, but it will not be overthrown by internet babbling...

:boggled:
 
You can participate as long as you really try to communicate, we can all think good thought but it helps to listen to the other side. If you just state that what you assert is true then you are not a critical thinker. You can critique things if you try to understand the 'conventional' as long as you maintain critical thought. May people, including the best and brightest are will to not be critical about their thinking a lot of the time.

You must strive to understand the conventional model to critique it, that is probably the most striking part of scepticism, you should try to understand the data, there are often critical errors in interpretation of the data.

However it points out that if you can't discuss the data then you really can't critique it. Then it is just assertions and beliefs and they are very prone to errors of perception.
 
Yllanes said:
Corsair 115, the story you mention is precisely the one BeAChooser commented in his OP. It was him that first mentioned plasma cosmology.
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It is? Well, that's what I get for not paying closer attention. :o
 
This doesn't seem to have been clarified so I'll put this as clearly as I can. The big bang has absolutely nothing to do with dark matter, the standard model, MOND, plasma physics, dark energy or any other theory about what makes up the universe. The big bang is based on one single point - everything in the universe is moving away from everything else, therefore at some point it must have all been in the same place. That's it.

It doesn't matter where the structure of the universe comes from, it doesn't matter what matter is made out of or what forces affect it, all of these theories just address what happens once the big bang has happened. BeAChooser clearly doesn't understand this, and therefore his understanding of any cosmology is suspect.

Dark matter might be undetectable particles that interact only with gravity. It might be regular matter that we just can't see because it isn't doing anything. It might be something else entirely. It might be gravity working differently and not matter at all. It might be other forces, known or unknown. There are valid theories about all these possibilities, and more. None of this has anything to do with the big bang. No matter which one of these theories turns out to be correct, if any of them, everything is still moving away from everything else, and the only explanation we have for this is a big bang. Of course, there are also plenty of different theories about exactly what that was and how it worked, but that's not really the point.
 
Indeed planets and dwarf stars are still on the list of explanations that can't be ruled out. So are neutrinos which I would think fall in to the category of "regular matter" if that phrase means "particles we already know about".
 
Of course, as Cuddles says, at this point there are many possibilities and DM may not even exist, though this is very unlikely. One of them is MOND (MOdified Newtonian Dynamics).

That said, if we stick to the standard theory it is true that DM cannot be ordinary matter, if by ordinary we mean baryonic (protons and neutrons are baryons, but neutrinos aren't). All the matter we are familiar with on Earth is made of baryons (and electrons). Of course there is baryonic invisible matter (dwarf stars, MACHOs) but the study of Big Bang nucleosynthesis and the Cosmic Microwave Background tells us that it can only be a small fraction of the total amount of DM.

Most DM is non baryonic. Neutrinos are the simplest candidate, but it doesn't seem likely that they can be responible for all the DM we see. Other candidates are more exotic and include supersymmetric particles, WIMPs, etc.
 
Yllanes said:
Of course there is baryonic invisible matter (dwarf stars, MACHOs) but the study of Big Bang nucleosynthesis and the Cosmic Microwave Background tells us that it can only be a small fraction of the total amount of DM.
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Isn't there still a lot of room for our accounting of cold neutral hydrogen to be wrong?
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
Isn't there still a lot of room for our accounting of cold neutral hydrogen to be wrong?
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Much more hydrogen would mean a very dense early universe. This in turn would imply a very efficient burning of H to give He. The problem is that right now there remains too much deuterium, which means that the original fusion could not have been too efficient. We also don't know any mechanism of deuterium production that could account for this discrepancy. The conclusion is that there can't be that much H.

This is of course more complicated and there are more possibilities, but in my last post I was presenting the most likely scenario with our current data, without discussing alternatives. However, at this point, our understanding of DM is incomplete enough to leave room for many alternative explanations.
 
My own personal opinion is that MoND (as far as dark matter goes) is pretty much dead in the water. It was never really good at accounting for cluster dynamics anyway, and when you write a relativistically-correct version (not a trivial thing), it fails to reproduce the CMB power spectrum. Modifying GR is still open for explaining dark energy, however.

Far and away, the best candidate for dark matter is a cold, weakly-interacting non-standard-model particle. Neutrinos don't work since they are too "hot" -- if they were the dark matter they would have washed out formations like galaxies (and us). Now, up for debate is WHICH cold, weakly-interacting non-standard-model particle it is.
 
I'm with you, especially after the latest observations. I think there is very little room for MOND right now. Of course, I'm not a cosmologist, so this is an outsider's opinion.
 
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Hi, I'm back. I would have been back sooner but I got tied up in some other threads here at JREF. I'm going to put those on hold for a while and focus on this one. Hope everyone is still aboard. :)

I'd like to start off by commenting on something TV's Frank posted earlier.

TV's Frank said:
"The 'Deep Impact' mission by NASA produced information that astounded the project cometologists, yet these key findings were predicted by the Thunderbolts group to which author/lecturer Donald Scott belongs."

Hahahahahahahahahaha.
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Just curious. Have you, Frank, (or anyone else on this thread) read the new book by Donald Scott titled "Electric Sky"? Deep Impact and many other topics are discussed in the book. I'm curious what you have to say about the specific evidence he presents concerning flaws in Big Bang and specific evidence suggesting the plasma cosmologists are right.

And just for the record, he's not just an author/lecturer ... he's a electrical engineer who taught the subject at a major university for over 39 years. He says he got interested in cosmology when he heard astronomers and astrophysicists making claims about electrical and magnetic phenomena that are simply false. And I think proves it in the book. :D
 
wollery said:
Does plasma physics explain all galaxy rotation curves? If not then it fails as a theory in that regard.
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Well apparently it does for everything they've looked at so far. You are certainly welcome to present an instance where it fails. The nice thing about plasma cosmology is that it is falsifiable. The big bang explanation is not. Think about that. :)
 
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