This post falls somewhere between 'What is the evidence against Plasma Cosmology?' judged by the standard meaning of 'cosmology' and the special meaning which 'cosmology' has in PC.
This post is about just one of Lerner's papers,
Galactic model of element formation, published in 1989. It is an incomplete examination, because the copy I have (from Lerner's own website) is missing one of the five pages.
There are apparently only three citations to this paper, two by Lerner (the other, by Marmet and Reber, is not relevant to this thread ... unless Zeuzzz wishes to expand the big PC tent further, to include yet another, seriously inconsistent, 'alternative'). One of the two is Lerner's first paper on his model for the CMB; the second (later) is a critique of the BBT and does not add anything to Lerner's model. In his own writings, Lerner often refers to this 1989 paper as being quite definitive, and viable as an alternative account of the observed abundances of light nuclides (whether 'primordial' or not, and covering more than just H, He, and
7Li).
It is also important because it seems to include the only published PC model of how (spiral) galaxies are formed (Peratt's papers are not, explicitly, about formation; rather, they are about the maintenance of such galaxies' rotation curves).
First, the conclusion (1): Lerner's model is bunk; it is inconsistent with so many robust and well-established parts of astronomy, astrophysics, and plain ordinary physics that it is hard to know where to start. In this, and maybe another post or two, I will look at just some of places it is bunk ... not necessarily the worst, and certainly not a complete debunking.
Second, the conclusion (2): despite Lerner's (and Zeuzzz' and most PC promoters') strong claims concerning a rejection of an origin of the universe ("
An origin in time for the universe is rejected,[11] due to causality arguments and rejection of ex nihilo models as a stealth form of creationism.[12]", for example), the kindest thing that can be said about this Lerner paper, concerning an origin of the universe (or its rejection) is that it is very confused; more realistically, Lerner all but claims either a universe little more than ~14 billion years old, or that we live in a highly special, privileged place (or some other epicycle of breath-taking audacity).
Finally, by way of introduction, a caveat: I may well have misunderstood this paper. I trust that Zeuzzz at least will be vigilant in pointing out any such misunderstandings.
Without further ado, and in no particular order ...
* cosmic ray spectra do not, in fact, "
peak at around this energy [~1 GeV]". This eliminates the only direct observational support for Lerner's method of production of D (the 'knee', now thought to mark the transition from galactic to extra-galactic CRs, is at ~10
16eV, 5 orders of magnitude higher).
* at least one MW star
has been observed with a metallicity < 2 x 10
-4 (the minimum that any MW star that 'can survive to the present day' must have), and its composition is almost certainly inconsistent with Lerner's model. There are likely hundreds, if not thousands, of such stars, though it is hard to say to what extent their compositions are inconsistent with Lerner's model because he says very little about what they should be.
* current estimates of the abundance of D and
3He are inconsistent with those predicted by Lerner's model (~2 x 10
-5 and ~1 x 10
-5, compared with H, vs ~1 x 10
-5 for both, respectively). Again, however, it is difficult to say how strongly inconsistent the observed values are because Lerner is pretty vague on what the range of expected values should be. This is quite serious, for Lerner, because it implies that the range of 'primordial' abundances consistent with his model is quite large (other than for
4He ... a point he makes in his 'uncensored' Wikipedia webpage).
* recent observations of the MW halo have turned up several 'streams', thought to be the remnants of cannibalised former satellite galaxies. To the extent that such galaxies would have added gas and dust as well as stars to the halo (and disk, and bulge), presumably early in the MW's history, they scramble Lerner's model. For example, his assumption that the MW began as the gravitational collapse of a filamentary cloud of pure H, and that all the abundance of everything in the MW derives from the subsequent stellar and cosmic ray processing of that H, is wrong. However, it is, again, hard to say how incorporating realistic estimates of contributions from cannibalised galaxies would change the expected compositions of MW stars, gas, and dust.
* per Lerner, galaxy formation like that in his paper should be continuing today, elsewhere in the universe. Further, there should be large numbers of filamentary clouds of pure H - proto-galaxies. As far as I know, no such clouds have ever been observed ... and every 'free floating' cloud of H is already rich in He (as far as I know, but it's an interesting question so I might investigate further).
* many 'star-burst' galaxies have been observed, some that seem to be forming stars for the first time. As far as I know, they do not have elemental abundances consistent with Lerner's model, nor do they have the four-region structure of his model.
* the MW has a thin disk, a thick disk, a bulge, and a halo; Lerner's model does not address questions about the separate formation of each, and it is hard to see how it could.
* the MW has ~200 globular clusters orbiting in an approximately spherical halo. They are all old (as far as I know), and seem to have formed at approximately the same time as the MW. I cannot see how Lerner's model could account for them.
* my fave, for today: if the universe does not have an origin, where did the filamentary clouds of pure H come from? If the universe is, in fact, much older than ~14 billion years, why are there (apparently) no stars older than ~14 billion years? What magic happened, in an already infinitely old universe, ~14 billion years ago to turn galaxy formation on (and the first stars to shine)?
