Plasma Cosmology - Woo or not

Zeuzzz · May 15, 2008

And here a fine example of the sort of post you keep writing that robinson specifically does not want in that thread he started. I'm quite sure that if you replied to my post with concrete science, without all the personal jibes, off point attacks on peoples credentials, and logical fallacies, that would be fine, but you seem completely incapable of doing so.

DeiRenDopa said:
Oh?

Of course! Silly me ... I missed all the references to papers published in relevant peer-reviewed journals, by astronomers ...

Wait! That's right! "Thornhill, W." got his PhD in astrophysics from ... where, exactly, Zeuzzz? And what was his thesis topic again? I seem to have forgotten.

Have you read the paper? Care to ellaborate on it? Or are just using the logical fallacy of guilt by association YET AGAIN?

Oh, and those suppressors of truth, how dare they ask that pretty pictures and word salad about 'scaling laws' be backed up with equations and statistical analyses before they publish papers! I mean, the sheer cheek!!

If you want the scaling laws for the dense plasma focus, just ask! Instead of jumping to instantaneous (completely false) conclusions.

For the Filippov dense plasma focus type fusion device (co-incidentally the one that Lerner is currently working with at the focus fusion society) the scaling law for the axisymmetric boundary of the pinched, or focused, hot plasma column can be represented by;

[latex]B_{c}=4z(\mu\frac{M}{m})B=0.8z(\mu\frac{M}{m})I/r[/latex]

In other words, the confining magnetic field in the plasmoid is proportional to the initial magnetic field at the cathode, multiplied by the atomic mass and the atomic charge.

References:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0401/0401126.pdf
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0710/0710.3149.pdf

For the dense plasma focus, which is a slightly different mechanism, the force free configuration can be derived, which is a bit more complex, but based on the same principle.

And I can absolutely guaran-damn-tee that i have posted far more "equations and statistics" than you have. Infact, have you posted any? how do I not know that you dont understand, or can use, the most basic mathematic principles? (the thread on magnetic reconnection and amperes law in on the x,y,z axis certainly implied this)

And it wouldn't do to mention that Bostick's 1986 (huh! robinson is so certain that this is a brand new revolution!!) paper has got all of 11 citations (in > 20 years!), so it certainly got a very cool reception indeed from both the astrophysics and plasma physics communities. And he himself obviously didn't think much of it ... he cited it only once.

Ah yes ...

Ahh yes, yet ANOTHER logical fallacy. Citations certainly don't imply veracity or disproof of the published science, though it may give an indication of popularity, which is hardly a scientific comment. Haven't we been over this before?

Do you need reading glasses?

Now who did I accuse of being enjoying being ignorant and enjoying flaunting that ignorance? Why the OP himself, robinson! And why, he-who-knows-plasma-so-well (I'm talking about you here Zeuzzz) did I make that accusation? HINT: read some of robinson's own posts on how bluntly (and ignorantly) he disses what others write ... then compare it with his own words, on a topic he started ... and then this (emphasis added): "In regards to plasma, cold plasma is still several thousand degrees. When discussing any matter that is at a million degrees K, we are talking about plasma. By definition."

Now, as to what others think; what say you to the inferred state of offense of the person who wrote this? (emphasis added)Or thisAnd let's not forget that this is the JREF forum, the Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology section.

Any more world salad? I'm real hungry, but I prefer some meat in my salad, and unfortunately, your post contains none.

In future I'm going to choose to ignore these types of posts DRD. Informed people can see straight through them. You see the type of responce I have to resort to when you write posts like this? I dont like doing it, but your attitude leaves me no option.

(awaiting the argumentative responce)

DeiRenDopa · May 16, 2008

DeiRenDopa said:
DeiRenDopa said:

What is the evidence against Plasma Cosmology? Part 1: standard meaning of 'cosmology'.

Maybe this should be a separate thread, in light of robinson's latest comment?

Well, I think it best to keep it here, for now; it'll all be in the one place.

In all the following, I shall take "Plasma Cosmology" (PC) to mean "as described or presented in papers published by E. Lerner and A. Peratt (and any et al.s) in relevant peer-reviewed journals".

This first part (Part 1) addresses 'cosmology' in its standard, contemporary meaning of the history, large-scale structure, and constituent dynamics of the universe.

Later parts will look at 'cosmology' as it is defined within PC itself, and PC as a branch of science (i.e. problems with PC's approach/method, as opposed to the content; 'one level up' if you will).

Without further ado, and in no particular order (NOTE: this is not a complete list, nor is it intended to be):

1. Observations show that the universe has a structure that is inconsistent with Lerner's fractal scaling relationship (Zeuzzz: what is the best, most recent of Lerner's published papers on this?). Here is an SDSS PR showing the observed large-scale structure; here is the corresponding paper.

2. Observations of x-ray and radio sources in the HDF (N) field do not show attenuation of radio sources with redshift; this is inconsistent with Lerner's explanation of the nature of the CMB (Zeuzzz: what is the best, most recent of Lerner's published papers on this?). Here is one paper presenting relevant observations (there are dozens of others, not all on the HDF (N) field!)

3. WMAP observations detect ~400 point sources, almost all of which can be matched to known radio sources; this is inconsistent with Lerner's explanation of the nature of the CMB. Here is the preprint of the relevant WMAP 5-year results.

4. Lerner's model of the CMB is inconsistent with its observed SED (spectral energy distribution: COBE observed that the SED is a blackbody (example - note that the error bars are 400 sigma!); Lerner says this about how well his model fits (emphasis added): "[the Lerner model] has accurately matched the spectrum of the CBR using the best-quality data set from COBE[27]. This fit, it should be noted, involved only three free pamenters and achieved a probability of 85%." In case you, dear reader, don't quite get this, I'll spell it out more clearly: 'a probability of 85%' is not, repeat not, an accurate match ... the error bars are so small that '85%' represents a total failure to match (you'd need something like 99.99% to still be in the game).

5. No "dense, magnetically confined plasma filaments that pervade the intergalactic medium" have been observed (to the best of my knowledge) - these hypothesised objects are central to Lerner's CMB model, and they should have been observed, directly or indirectly, by now (Zeuzzz: in which paper(s) does Lerner describe what their observational footprint would be (other than the CMB) and attempt to explain why they have not yet been observed?)

6. The time dilation observed in high-z Ia supernovae is inconsistent with Lerner's proposed mechanism for the Hubble relationship ('tired light') - an example.

7. The CMB angular power spectrum expected in Lerner's model has not been estimated/calculated (so the now excellent observations haven't yet been used to test the Lerner model). Of course, this is not evidence against Lerner's PC, merely a note on a test it hasn't yet been subject to.

8. Lerner's PC requires the fractal scaling relationship to apply at large scales, including beyond the observable universe, otherwise the night sky would not be dark (Olbers' paradox). The night sky is dark, and at large scales the observed universe does not follow Lerner's fractal scaling relationship, ergo you can rule out Lerner's PC every clear night (away from big cities!), by going outside and seeing a dark sky.

Click to expand...

(continued)

9. In Lerner's PC, the CMB is isotropised and thermalised starlight, and has but one temperature (pretty much the same as is observed), with no free parameters. Observations consistent with the CMB being at different temperatures at different redshifts would therefore be difficult if not impossible for his model to account for.

In December, 2000, the ESO issued a PR "VLT Observations Confirm that the Universe Was Hotter in the Past" ... the key part, for our purposes here, is that the team "derive[d] the temperature T of the CMBR at this large distance and early cosmic epoch [z=2.34] and [placed] a very firm lower limit on this temperature. The final result is that T is hotter than 6 K and cooler than 14 K" (emphasis added). Here is the paper with these results.

There have been several subsequent papers reporting firm detections of constraints on the temperature of the CMB at high-z; this quite recent one is a good example: the authors report a temperature of 9.15 +/- 0.72 K at z = 2.41837.

(continued)

One more on the CMB: the dipole.

The CMB dipole was discovered shortly after the CMB itself; it is explained, in standard astrophysics, as the motion of the solar system barycentre with respect to the CMB frame, and subsequent work showed that its magnitude and direction are consistent with the estimated distribution of mass 'locally' (which actually means out to 'the Great Attractor' and beyond!)*

As I understand it - and I freely admit that I may not, properly - there should be no CMB dipole if the CMB originates per Lerner's model. Or, more accurately, the SED (spectral energy distribution) of the CMB will not be a blackbody, as the CMB photons we detect from the sources, along any line of sight, will be redshifted by different amounts, as those sources will be moving, relative to us, at a wide range of speeds. Unless the sources have some large-scale structure - when integrated over the optical depth of those sources - there cannot be a dipole. Further, even if there is some integrated large-scale structure, it should exhibit an integrated fractal scaling (per Zeuzzz), and be essentially isotopic (per Lerner).

In summary: the observations which establish the existence of the CMB dipole would, very likely, be very difficult to explain using Lerner's model.

Of course, Lerner is quite explicit about one item on his 'to do' list: he has not yet published anything on what the CMB angular power spectrum should look like under his model. It is clear that the dipole is part of this 'to do'.

* special note to robinson: if you'd like references to the papers in which these results are published, please just ask me, OK?

DeiRenDopa · May 16, 2008

Large-scale structure (and fractal scaling), continued.

DeiRenDopa said:
... snip ...

I'll grant you that you may not, yet, have grokked that 'large-scale structure' inextricably includes the meaning 'right up to the very edge of the observable universe', so while interpretation of some SDSS data may be consistent with a fractal dimension of ~2 up to some (modest) scale (~Mpc or ~tens of Mpc, say), that's only a quite narrow range of scales.

Zeuzzz said:

For example, in this publication (L. Pietronero, 2005), titled "Basic properties of galaxy clustering in the light of recent results from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey", Pietronero and his colleagues note that;

"The recent SDSS results for these statistics are in good agreement with those obtained by us through analyses of many previous samples, confirming in particular that the galaxy distribution is well described by a fractal dimension D ~ 2 up to a scale of at least 20 Mpc/h.", the exact value for the fractal dimension that plasma cosmology proponents predicted years back.

Click to expand...

Yeah Jones et al. do say that ...

However, I think you should have been a bit more careful, and
a) acknowledge that 'at least 20 Mpc/h' is quite modest with respect to the scales probed by SDSS (etc);
b) note that the Jones et al. (2005) paper is at least as much about how to derive the 3D distribution of mass from surveys such as SDSS as it is about fractal scaling (see Swanson et al. (2008), for example, on whether Jones et al. (2005) were right or not about 'luminosity bias')
c) enter a giant caveat concerning, at the very least, a need to show that the predicted PC fractal dimension is the same (or similar) as that in Jones et al. (2005) ... I strongly suspect the two are actually incompatible.

Further support for this conclusion has been offered by Yurij Baryshev et al, (Fractal Approach to Large-Scale Galaxy Distribution 2005) "modern extensive redshift-based 3-d maps have revealed the ``hidden'' fractal dimension of about 2, and have confirmed superclustering at scales even up to 500 Mpc (e.g. the Sloan Great Wall). On scales, where the fractal analysis is possible in completely embedded spheres, a power--law density field has been found. The fractal dimension D =2.2 +- 0.2 was directly obtained from 3-d maps and R_{hom} has expanded from 10 Mpc to scales approaching 100 Mpc. In concordance with the 3-d map results, modern all sky galaxy counts in the interval 10^m - 15^m give a 0.44m-law which corresponds to D=2.2 within a radius of 100h^{-1}_{100} Mpc. We emphasize that the fractal mass--radius law of galaxy clustering has become a key phenomenon in observational cosmology.".

Click to expand...

Yeah, but ...

This reminds me of the Peratt spiral galaxy model ... his simulation can produce some nice 'look at the pictures!' similarity while completely overlooking a fatal flaw.

In this case the whole issue of 'galaxy bias' - which is tied up with 'luminosity bias', and much more - is given rather short shrift. I think you'll find, when you dig into the details, that this Baryshev and Teerikorpi paper should be rather troubling for any PC proponent. For starters, it concludes that there is a cross-over scale (to homogeneity, from fractal scaling); PC does not permit large-scale homogeneity. For seconds, the scaling applies to a universe ruled by GR, with CDM built in to the logic chain that leads to the fractal scaling conclusions; to claim that this paper is consistent with PC would require rather a lot of work to re-do the calculations without GR and CDM.

... snip ...

About BAO ...

There's one clear signal in the large-scale structure survey observations that has been reported recently: BAO (Baryon Acoustic Oscillation); here is a recent paper on measuring it at z ~ 0.2 and ~0.35, in the 2dFGRS and SDSS datasets.

While the name of the signal (BAO) contains a nod to some aspects of ΛCDM cosmological models, its existence is independent of its name.

I don't recall reading about it in the Jones et al. (2005) paper, which is not surprising ... the first paper announcing detection of a BAO signal was published in 2005, and the scale at which it is clear is larger than what Jones et al. were looking at.

It's also not in the Baryshev and Teerikorpi (2005) paper (as far as I recall). Its omission in that paper is a little strange - while it hadn't been detected at the time they wrote their paper, Baryshev and Teerikorpi should certainly have known about it, and as their paper has a general scope (rather than the narrow 'bias' scope of Jones et al.), it would certainly have been relevant.

In any case, I wonder if any 'PC papers' on fractal scaling predicted a 'BAO' signal? Or can account for it in any way? Can you shed some light Zeuzzz?

DeiRenDopa · May 16, 2008

Zeuzzz said:
Ha!

You think that the fundamental property of scale invarience in plasma creating identical structures over many orders of magnitude is comparible to scaling a rotating lawn sprinkler???

Of course not, nor did I say it was.

If you don't understand the analogy I was making, I'll be more than happy to explain it, in more detail.

The two key points I was trying to make are:

1) that a similarity in structure, by itself, is not indicative of anything much.

2) even if a mechanism, or model, can be shown to produce a certain structure (a necessary condition), it must also not contain fatal flaws (a sufficient condition).

In the case of "scale invarience [sic] in plasma creating identical structures over many orders of magnitude", the sufficient condition is missing. For example:

> the plasma scaling has not, as far as I know, been shown to be the same when the gravitational forces on the constituent (charged) objects are included

> the observed motions and distributions of objects such as stars are not consistent with them being dominated by the electromagnetic force (the motions give the present day forces operating; the distributions the history of those forces, over times as long as billions of years).

Why dont you write up a paper on how the spiral shape in your toilet is actually how galaxies form? Because that would be ridiculous; we know that that does not scale. We DO know that plasma scales. Do you even read the posts that you write DRD?

And these type of purely subjective posts about your opinion of which theory is more valid are getting quite tiring.

Huh?

I wasn't aware that what I was writing about was "which theory is more valid" (except in a very limited way).

In fact, I've been trying very hard to focus on "Plasma Cosmology", and whether it is woo or not. And I have limited myself to only the materials you have chosen to declare are PC, or written by 'plasma cosmologists'.

But, perhaps I've inadvertently written something about 'other theories', in the sense of 'more valid'; later today I'll go check, and if I find anything, I'll write clarifications.

I could write the exact same post in reverse about you and your explanations for this, but what would it achieve? Nothing. (Other than annoying people that dont agree with your personal opinion) Robinson pointed this out very well previously.

1. Provide direct evidence = "Cherry picking"

2. Compare two theories = "declare - by fiat? - that there are only two games in town"

3. Show observations that contradict a theory = "Write up a parody of B so that it seems inconsistent with observation [...] lie, but try to ensure the lies are not blatant."

4. Show how the observations are relevant to the theory = "list how well the cherry-picked aspect of P matches observation"

5. State your opinion that the theory you support is correct = "declare P is, obviously so superior to B that you can't understand why anyone still works on B."

See what I mean?

Actually, no. (emphasis added)

It seems you have not understood what I wrote at all; would you be interested in a detailed clarification?

[wait for the accusations of me being a "woo dumping seagull" because I took time to contribute something to this thread ]

Happy to oblige ...

As it turns out, in one of my replies to an earlier, very long, post of yours I covered a frustration I feel (I wrote it without having read this post of yours that I am now replying to):

You may wish to look into a mirror - I feel that almost all the 'confrontation' stems from your posting behaviour, as I indicated in an earlier post:

If you:

* persistently continue to not answer (refuse to answer?) direct questions asked of the posts you yourself have written, on content that is directly relevant

* persistently mis-represent what others who have taken the trouble to actually read the material you provide wrote

* frequently engage in 'drive by' spamming (e.g. on JdG's 'redshifts'), i.e. obviously do not even bother to determine the context before posting

* change the key definitions (e.g. "Plasma Cosmology") you use, several times, in the course of just one thread, without acknowledgment

... and so on

why do you think you deserve respect?

Click to expand...

Next ...

And, to restate my last point (before I got distracted with this reply);

And be patient, there are answers to your previous "evidence against plasma cosmology" points, so i wouldn't spend too much time on other supposed problems with PC until I have addressed your previous ones. But its not going to be any time soon, as i said, the real world is beckoning at the moment

Click to expand...

Meanwhile, I'll let you give yourselves a pat on the back and stick to your conviction that you have falsified PC completely for the next month or so, but, to paraphrase good old arnie; I'll be back.

Click to expand...

Hmm ...

And who was it, just a few short sentences earlier, who wrote "this [thread] seems to be descending into too much of a confrontational style for my liking"?

And who is it who has, almost always, ignored posts ('confrontational' or not) about inconsistencies in what they have posted (for example, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here)?

(extract only, and the links have been lost; emphasis added).

So it seems that the only time you take "time to contribute something to this thread" is when something you read gets you sufficiently annoyed.

DeiRenDopa · May 16, 2008

Zeuzzz said:
And here a fine example of the sort of post you keep writing that robinson specifically does not want in that thread he started. I'm quite sure that if you replied to my post with concrete science, without all the personal jibes, off point attacks on peoples credentials, and logical fallacies, that would be fine, but you seem completely incapable of doing so.

It will come as no surprise, I'm sure, that I see things a little differently ...

You see, I have reached an interim conclusion on the answer to the question of whether PC is woo or not (and I stated it in an earlier post). Based on that tentative conclusion, I assess each of the posts on 'plasma' as to whether it is, primarily, woo or not.

So, until you can return to this thread and at least start to answer some of the dozens of posts (and hundreds of questions) on PC - you are the only one who claims to be able to speak, positively, about PC - I see no alternative to pointing out, as sharply as I see fit, that what you write is (or contains) woo.

After all, this is the Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology section of the JREF forum!

DeiRenDopa said:
DeiRenDopa said:

Oh?

Of course! Silly me ... I missed all the references to papers published in relevant peer-reviewed journals, by astronomers ...

Wait! That's right! "Thornhill, W." got his PhD in astrophysics from ... where, exactly, Zeuzzz? And what was his thesis topic again? I seem to have forgotten.

Click to expand...

Have you read the paper? Care to ellaborate on it? Or are just using the logical fallacy of guilt by association YET AGAIN?

I'll take the fifth ... no, the Zeuzzz defence ...

But how about this: you tell every reader of this thread whether "Thornhill, W." is Wallace Thornhill or not, and we'll take it from there, OK?

Or will this be another of the (hundreds) of questions you 'take the Zeuzzz' on?

Oh, and those suppressors of truth, how dare they ask that pretty pictures and word salad about 'scaling laws' be backed up with equations and statistical analyses before they publish papers! I mean, the sheer cheek!!

Click to expand...

If you want the scaling laws for the dense plasma focus, just ask! Instead of jumping to instantaneous (completely false) conclusions.

For the Filippov dense plasma focus type fusion device (co-incidentally the one that Lerner is currently working with at the focus fusion society) the scaling law for the axisymmetric boundary of the pinched, or focused, hot plasma column can be represented by;

[latex]B_{c}=4z(\mu\frac{M}{m})B=0.8z(\mu\frac{M}{m})I/r[/latex]

In other words, the confining magnetic field in the plasmoid is proportional to the initial magnetic field at the cathode, multiplied by the atomic mass and the atomic charge.

References:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0401/0401126.pdf
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0710/0710.3149.pdf

For the dense plasma focus, which is a slightly different mechanism, the force free configuration can be derived, which is a bit more complex, but based on the same principle.

Thank you Zeuzzz, thank you.

So, we may conclude from this, in the absence of something substantive from you (or a relevant reference), that "the scaling law for the axisymmetric boundary of the pinched, or focused, hot plasma column" "in the Filippov dense plasma focus type fusion device (co-incidentally the one that Lerner is currently working with at the focus fusion society)" is unlikely to be relevant to "the Vela pulsar" unless and until certain estimates are to hand; such as:

* "the confining magnetic field"

* "the initial magnetic field at the cathode"

* "the atomic mass and the atomic charge"

* and anything else in that nice equation for which you omitted to define any of the symbols (and which are not contained in any of the references you supplied).

Oh, and let's not omit other, relevant, things that relate to what we already know about the environment of the Velar pulsar.

Woo with equations is still woo.

And I can absolutely guaran-damn-tee that i have posted far more "equations and statistics" than you have. Infact, have you posted any? how do I not know that you dont understand, or can use, the most basic mathematic principles? (the thread on magnetic reconnection and amperes law in on the x,y,z axis certainly implied this)

If sol invictus, MattusMaximus, The Man, Tubbythin, Reality Check, or any of the others who actually engaged you in discussion on that topic are reading this, I'd like them to chime in.

For what it's worth, from what you wrote in that thread on that topic, in my opinion you displayed an appalling lack of understanding of some pretty basic stuff (and that's the charitable interpretation).

And it wouldn't do to mention that Bostick's 1986 (huh! robinson is so certain that this is a brand new revolution!!) paper has got all of 11 citations (in > 20 years!), so it certainly got a very cool reception indeed from both the astrophysics and plasma physics communities. And he himself obviously didn't think much of it ... he cited it only once.

Ah yes ...

Click to expand...

Ahh yes, yet ANOTHER logical fallacy. Citations certainly don't imply veracity or disproof of the published science, though it may give an indication of popularity, which is hardly a scientific comment.

Er ... no.

In context, it is highly appropriate.

As robinson has pointed out, there has been an upswing in the use of the word 'plasma' in popsci articles on astronomy (well, he says so; let's assume it is so, for now).

And several others quickly corrected him - in saying that plasmas have been studied, in astrophysics, for decades (no revolution in sight).

Then you chip in with some PC woo, including a 1980s paper that clearly went nowhere.

No 'disproof of the published science' intended, nor of any relevance (robinson's thread is about linguistics, or sociology, or ... not science).

Haven't we been over this before? Do you need reading glasses?

Mine are fine ... it's yours that don't seem to be working ...

Now who did I accuse of being enjoying being ignorant and enjoying flaunting that ignorance? Why the OP himself, robinson! And why, he-who-knows-plasma-so-well (I'm talking about you here Zeuzzz) did I make that accusation? HINT: read some of robinson's own posts on how bluntly (and ignorantly) he disses what others write ... then compare it with his own words, on a topic he started ... and then this (emphasis added): "In regards to plasma, cold plasma is still several thousand degrees. When discussing any matter that is at a million degrees K, we are talking about plasma. By definition."

Now, as to what others think; what say you to the inferred state of offense of the person who wrote this? (emphasis added)Or thisAnd let's not forget that this is the JREF forum, the Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology section.

Click to expand...

Any more world salad? I'm real hungry, but I prefer some meat in my salad, and unfortunately, your post contains none.

Really?

What, pray tell, is the definition of a plasma?

Is a plasma defined by temperature?

In future I'm going to choose to ignore these types of posts DRD. Informed people can see straight through them.

If you say so ...

I'd rather let them speak for themselves.

You see the type of responce I have to resort to when you write posts like this? I dont like doing it, but your attitude leaves me no option.

(awaiting the argumentative responce)

Well now ...

You could always start to answer some of the many, highly relevant, questions people have asked you, about the very material you yourself have posted ... that would be a nice response (oops, I mean 'responce').

Tubbythin · May 16, 2008

DeiRenDopa said:
If sol invictus, MattusMaximus, The Man, Tubbythin, Reality Check, or any of the others who actually engaged you in discussion on that topic are reading this, I'd like them to chime in.

Well I thought he'd stopped posting on that thread because he'd been shown to be wrong and just kept changing his position. But what do I know?

You could always start to answer some of the many, highly relevant, questions people have asked you, about the very material you yourself have posted ... that would be a nice response (oops, I mean 'responce').

I'd particularly like to know why he deliberately lied here.

sol invictus · May 16, 2008

DeiRenDopa said:
If sol invictus, MattusMaximus, The Man, Tubbythin, Reality Check, or any of the others who actually engaged you in discussion on that topic are reading this, I'd like them to chime in.

Zeuzzz was unable to produce a single quantitative and specific prediction of "plasma cosmology". Therefore (at least insofar as Zeuzzz represents it) it is not a scientific theory and cannot be compared or treated as one.

As far as I can tell, PC is a vague set of incoherent ideas connected mostly by the collective crankery of their proponents.

Dancing David · May 16, 2008

Um, DRD, he lacks the ability to explain his model in the face of evidence or reconstruct the model.

At best we have pictures "it looks like a cosmic bunny" and in some cases it does.

But the "EM forces providing some rigidity to the galactic stucture" we lack.

DeiRenDopa · May 16, 2008

Apologies to all readers; I think I misunderstood what Zeuzzz wrote, and so responded inappropriately. :blush:

Here's what he wrote:

And I can absolutely guaran-damn-tee that i have posted far more "equations and statistics" than you have. Infact, have you posted any? how do I not know that you dont understand, or can use, the most basic mathematic principles? (the thread on magnetic reconnection and amperes law in on the x,y,z axis certainly implied this)

.

Zeuzzz seems to be asking whether I understand, and/or can use, "the most basic mathematic principles".

Zeuzzz also seems to be suggesting, somewhat obliquely, that what I wrote in "the thread on magnetic reconnection and amperes law in on the x,y,z axis" implies that I do understand these principles (or that I do not; there are rather a lot of negatives to parse out, either grammatically or mathematically).

My misunderstanding is that I thought the part in brackets ("(the thread on magnetic reconnection and amperes law in on the x,y,z axis certainly implied this)") referred to his understanding and ability to use the most basic mathematical principles.

So, Zeuzzz, I shall not 'take the Zeuzzz'* on this: you may judge for yourself, based on what I have written in the Arp objects, QSOs, Statistics thread. Be sure to keep reading, because it is likely that some of my future posts in that thread will be relevant to your question.

You may also, if you wish, read my other posts in the JREF forum, particularly those where I cite various papers and discuss their contents. You may draw any conclusion you wish concerning my understanding of, or ability to use, anything (whether 'the most basic mathematic principles', or how to tie shoelaces).

Concerning a more relevant question: as my posts in this thread have been almost entirely about "plasma cosmology" - particularly the drawing of provisional conclusions and the asking of questions on "plasma cosmology" material that you have supplied - surely it's more relevant to know whether my provisional conclusions and my questions are pertinent to the posts you wrote and the material you cited? And in that regard, doesn't you 'taking of the Zeuzzz' so often speak rather loudly (I won't mention the outright lying)?

* for readers new to this thread, I coined this phrase; it means 'do not answer a direct question, and do not even acknowledge that such a question has been asked', based on Zeuzzz' persistent behaviour, which I documented earlier.

DeiRenDopa · May 16, 2008

Follow up:

DeiRenDopa said:
... snip ...

Zeuzzz said:

Why dont you write up a paper on how the spiral shape in your toilet is actually how galaxies form? Because that would be ridiculous; we know that that does not scale. We DO know that plasma scales. Do you even read the posts that you write DRD?

And these type of purely subjective posts about your opinion of which theory is more valid are getting quite tiring.

Click to expand...

Huh?

I wasn't aware that what I was writing about was "which theory is more valid" (except in a very limited way).

In fact, I've been trying very hard to focus on "Plasma Cosmology", and whether it is woo or not. And I have limited myself to only the materials you have chosen to declare are PC, or written by 'plasma cosmologists'.

But, perhaps I've inadvertently written something about 'other theories', in the sense of 'more valid'; later today I'll go check, and if I find anything, I'll write clarifications.

... snip ...

(emphasis added)

First, there has been some discussion of the recent x-ray observations of the 'cosmic web' filament connecting Abell 222 and Abell 223 (links in this thread given to some popsci articles and to the Werner et al. preprint). In some of my posts on that topic, I included a summary of parts of standard astrophysics, including the Millennium simulation (here, here, and here). This was not intended to be, in any way, a 'which theory is better' contribution, merely a summary of what the state of play is.

Second, in almost every one of my posts I have cited, or referred to, papers reporting astronomical observations. To the extent that the conversion of photon/electromagnetic radiation detection to clean data (such as magnitudes, colours, spectra) involves theories, then those posts of mine do assume the theories involved in those conversions are valid. However, I don't think this is relevant to this thread, if only because no PC proponent has ever said the astronomical data itself is wrong because the theories that went into producing it are invalid (nor do any say there is an alternative, PC, theory for this).

But perhaps some PC proponents do say that; any inputs Zeuzzz?

Third, in post #118, I summarised ever so briefly part of what Freeman and McNamara write in a book that a source Zeuzzz mentions cites. I also invited readers to take a look at another JREF forum thread, on the observational evidence for CDM. However, I think it would be a big stretch to say that those comments constitute me making a case for, or offering an opinion on, "which theory is more valid".

Fourth, in post #88, I said "The history is interesting ... but it tells us little about how well the actual observations match one theory or another, and surely this is the more important thing to examine?" While in context I think what I meant is clear, I think it may lead a skimmer to a wrong conclusion. So, let me clarify it now (in case you were one of those skimmers Zeuzzz): I think this thread is about PC, and whether it is woo or not. Part of the process of getting to a conclusion involves looking at how well PC matches the relevant (astronomical) observations. Whether any other theory (singly or in combination) matches these observations, or any other astronomical observations, or does not match them, is irrelevant to this thread.

Finally, there is another set of words in post #88 that are relevant here:

DeiRenDopa said:
Zeuzzz said:

And invalidating aspects of the Big Bang fairy tale does add credence to the basic premise of plasma cosmology, as the reasons always put forward to "refute" plasma cosmology are nearly always Big Bang material, so it works both ways. You cant use the Big Bang to falsify plasma cosmology, and then shout "false dichotomy" when we do it in return!

Click to expand...

Huh?

I wasn't aware that anyone, in this thread, had put forward any reasons 'to "refute" plasma cosmology', much less ones that were based solely on 'Big Bang material' ... would you (or any other reader) be kind enough to point to posts which contain such reasons?

For the record, Zeuzzz did not answer that question (nor did anyone else).

For clarity, the question in its current context should read (much has been written since 5 May):

Would any reader who knows of posts in this thread which contain stuff based critically on 'Big Bang material' put forward to "refute" plasma cosmology please point them out?

DeiRenDopa · May 17, 2008

By a curious cosmic coincidence, BeAChooser did some drive-by spamming of another JREF Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology thread, almost at the same time Zeuzzz was doing the same thing in 'the robinson' thread! By a further strange coincidence, BAC posted some of the same material (or at least references to it)!!

This material is quite interesting, and relevant, to this thread.

First, referring to the SN 1987A material, Zeuzzz uses the term "plasma universe", while BAC the term "plasma cosmology"; this establishes them as synonyms (at least as far as this forum's two PC proponents are concerned).

Second, the references to pulsars and SN 1987A, in both sets of posts, establishes 'local' astronomical phenomena as within the scope of PC.

Third, two references offer mutually inconsistent accounts ('models', perhaps) of neutron stars/magnetars - links to a thunderblots site and an electri universe site (the former is pretty vehement that the latter is pure woo).

Fourth, one of the references makes a clear connection between x-ray observations of the Vela pulsar and what might be called neo-Velikovsky woo ("ancient witnesses observed such undulating phenomena stretching along the polar axis of the earth, when our planet moved through a more dense, more electrically active environment").

In addition to the material Zeuzzz had already introduced, and which is already under discussion (actually, awaiting Zeuzzz' answers to questions on it), there is one paper (by Healy and Peratt) that is new (and relevant).

Zeuzzz · May 17, 2008

sol invictus said:
Zeuzzz was unable to produce a single quantitative and specific prediction of "plasma cosmology". Therefore (at least insofar as Zeuzzz represents it) it is not a scientific theory and cannot be compared or treated as one.

I have already listed many past predictions from PC/PU that have turned out right over the years in the "something new under the sun thread", but at that time, you had me on ignore, so probably missed it.

I just realized anyway, you probably want future predictions? correct?

DeiRenDopa said:
By a curious cosmic coincidence, BeAChooser did some drive-by spamming of another JREF Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology thread, almost at the same time Zeuzzz was doing the same thing in 'the robinson' thread! By a further strange coincidence, BAC posted some of the same material (or at least references to it)!!

This material is quite interesting, and relevant, to this thread.

First, referring to the SN 1987A material, Zeuzzz uses the term "plasma universe", while BAC the term "plasma cosmology"; this establishes them as synonyms (at least as far as this forum's two PC proponents are concerned).

Second, the references to pulsars and SN 1987A, in both sets of posts, establishes 'local' astronomical phenomena as within the scope of PC.

Third, two references offer mutually inconsistent accounts ('models', perhaps) of neutron stars/magnetars - links to a thunderblots site and an electri universe site (the former is pretty vehement that the latter is pure woo).

Fourth, one of the references makes a clear connection between x-ray observations of the Vela pulsar and what might be called neo-Velikovsky woo ("ancient witnesses observed such undulating phenomena stretching along the polar axis of the earth, when our planet moved through a more dense, more electrically active environment").

In addition to the material Zeuzzz had already introduced, and which is already under discussion (actually, awaiting Zeuzzz' answers to questions on it), there is one paper (by Healy and Peratt) that is new (and relevant).

Why on earth are you mentioning Velikovsky???? I dont think that he should be linked with anyone.

And the "electric universe site" is quite old now ( I think, I had not really seen it until it was brought up here a couple of days ago, but I may be wrong). Some of it seems interesting, and i'll have a look at it over the coming days, but I dont think it should not be taken as an authority on much.

Could we stop worrying if this should be categorized as this, or that, if this is actually cosmology, cosmogeny, if its astophysics or plasma physics, plasma cosmology or plasma universe, electric universe or electrodynamics, all I would say about lumping things into categories like this is that a lot of the EU stuff about online is controversial, such as some of the electric sun idea, some of the electric comets, electric crater formation theories, but some aspects of each are now accepted by PC proponents too, so the line between them is quite blurred. And i haven't started any threads here yet on any of them, as I said, patience is a virtue, the real world is beckoning at the mo, and I will try to answer the questions you have posed. You could check out the post I just wrote in the millisecond pulsar thread, I couldn't resist considering someone started a topic all about them; http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3711109&postcount=15

DeiRenDopa · May 18, 2008

Zeuzzz said:
... snip ...

DeiRenDopa said:

By a curious cosmic coincidence, BeAChooser did some drive-by spamming of another JREF Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology thread, almost at the same time Zeuzzz was doing the same thing in 'the robinson' thread! By a further strange coincidence, BAC posted some of the same material (or at least references to it)!!

This material is quite interesting, and relevant, to this thread.

First, referring to the SN 1987A material, Zeuzzz uses the term "plasma universe", while BAC the term "plasma cosmology"; this establishes them as synonyms (at least as far as this forum's two PC proponents are concerned).

Second, the references to pulsars and SN 1987A, in both sets of posts, establishes 'local' astronomical phenomena as within the scope of PC.

Third, two references offer mutually inconsistent accounts ('models', perhaps) of neutron stars/magnetars - links to a thunderblots site and an electri universe site (the former is pretty vehement that the latter is pure woo).

Fourth, one of the references makes a clear connection between x-ray observations of the Vela pulsar and what might be called neo-Velikovsky woo ("ancient witnesses observed such undulating phenomena stretching along the polar axis of the earth, when our planet moved through a more dense, more electrically active environment").

In addition to the material Zeuzzz had already introduced, and which is already under discussion (actually, awaiting Zeuzzz' answers to questions on it), there is one paper (by Healy and Peratt) that is new (and relevant).

Click to expand...

Why on earth are you mentioning Velikovsky???? I dont think that he should be linked with anyone.

Thanks for asking.

I acknowledge your question.

I agree it is relevant.

I might get around to answering it sometime in the next month or so ...

In the meantime, I stand by my statement: material cited, by PC proponents here in the JREF forum, as 100% certified 'plasma cosmology' includes strong, incontrovertible statements linking PC to what might be called neo-Velikovsky woo.

And the "electric universe site" is quite old now ( I think, I had not really seen it until it was brought up here a couple of days ago, but I may be wrong). Some of it seems interesting, and i'll have a look at it over the coming days, but I dont think it should not be taken as an authority on much.

I'm sure BeAChooser will be happy to know he has out of date plasma cosmology sources.

And it seems that you didn't actually read the material BAC posted, did you!?

For example: "© 1995 - 2005 by Dr. László Körtvélyessy", and "Last update: 2005-11-08"

And the date on the image you lifted (without attribution) from the holoscience site? 27 October 2004.

Could we stop worrying if this should be categorized as this, or that, if this is actually cosmology, cosmogeny, if its astophysics or plasma physics, plasma cosmology or plasma universe, electric universe or electrodynamics, all I would say about lumping things into categories like this is that a lot of the EU stuff about online is controversial, such as some of the electric sun idea, some of the electric comets, electric crater formation theories, but some aspects of each are now accepted by PC proponents too, so the line between them is quite blurred. And i haven't started any threads here yet on any of them, as I said, patience is a virtue, the real world is beckoning at the mo, and I will try to answer the questions you have posed. You could check out the post I just wrote in the millisecond pulsar thread, I couldn't resist considering someone started a topic all about them; http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3711109&postcount=15

Actually, you've put your finger on two areas where PC clearly distinguishes itself from science (at least, modern astronomy, astrophysics, etc):
* lack of a set of open, peer-reviewed publications
* tolerance of extreme inconsistencies.

The first, of course, may be regarded as little more than a mere inconvenience ... or as quite enough to earn PC its 'woo wings'.

On the second there is no room for respectful disagreement - from your own posts and in the material you have cited, I have seen little (if any) acknowledgment that serious inconsistencies (internal, with experimental results, with observations, ...) even exist, let alone that any 'plasma cosmologist' is deeply concerned about them.

However you choose to define 'woo', such insouciance to such a central feature of science would surely rank high in the list of criteria ...

Zeuzzz · May 18, 2008

DeiRenDopa said:
Thanks for asking.

I acknowledge your question.

I agree it is relevant.

I might get around to answering it sometime in the next month or so ...

In the meantime, I stand by my statement: material cited, by PC proponents here in the JREF forum, as 100% certified 'plasma cosmology' includes strong, incontrovertible statements linking PC to what might be called neo-Velikovsky woo.

Ha! What has Velikovskys many completely mad ideas got to do with PC? Whatever makes it easier for you to deal with....

Like when you tried to link PC with ID'ers, only to find its in fact you that puts your faith into the biggest event of god given creation in history, supporting a ridiculous prophetic approach as opposed to a realistic actualistic approach to cosmology.

Is this conversation geting anyone anywhere? You see what happens when you write posts like this?

I'm sure BeAChooser will be happy to know he has out of date plasma cosmology sources.

And it seems that you didn't actually read the material BAC posted, did you!?

For example: "© 1995 - 2005 by Dr. László Körtvélyessy", and "Last update: 2005-11-08"

From what I know, I thought that the book written by Dr. László Körtvélyessy was published in 1995, but I may be wrong, and as I said, I really haven't looked into much material on that page. By the looks of it, your right, it does seem to have been updated recently. I'll have a look at it when i've more time, but i'm not familiar with this particular material. Might be some hidden gems in there. I did hear that Eric Crew wrote favorably about the book, so it may be an interesting perspective to look into. http://www.electric-universe.de/printings/biography.html

Actually, you've put your finger on two areas where PC clearly distinguishes itself from science (at least, modern astronomy, astrophysics, etc):
* lack of a set of open, peer-reviewed publications
* tolerance of extreme inconsistencies.

The first, of course, may be regarded as little more than a mere inconvenience ... or as quite enough to earn PC its 'woo wings'.

On the second there is no room for respectful disagreement - from your own posts and in the material you have cited, I have seen little (if any) acknowledgment that serious inconsistencies (internal, with experimental results, with observations, ...) even exist, let alone that any 'plasma cosmologist' is deeply concerned about them.

However you choose to define 'woo', such insouciance to such a central feature of science would surely rank high in the list of criteria ...

Entirely Subjective. And just because you dont have access to lots of publications does not mean they dont exist. Should I start a thread about the tremendous amount of inconsistencies with modern cosmology? or do they not count as inconsistancies when applied to the model that you adhere to? rather "problems to be sorted out", while the only thing keeping the theory from not being falsified is the faith you attribute to it?

Pissing contest over. You're doing it again DRD..... nothing productive comes of posts like this......

Reality Check · May 18, 2008

Hi Zeuzzz:
Have you an answer to the question that I asked a couple of times before:
How important is Peratt's plasma model of galaxy formation to plasma cosmology?

Or to put it another way:
If we test the predictions of Peratt's plasma model of galaxy formation and find that they are wrong then is plasma cosmology wrong?

Zeuzzz · May 18, 2008

Reality Check said:
Hi Zeuzzz:
Have you an answer to the question that I asked a couple of times before:
How important is Peratt's plasma model of galaxy formation to plasma cosmology?

Its quite important, its the most detailed current description of a transient galaxy model which fits well within a PC framework, mainly due to the fact that it not only uses gravity but shows that EM forces can play a role in the formation and structure of galaxies, which is an idea very compatible with plasma cosmology proposals. The current model of galaxies could be tweaked in a number of places, remove a few of the knomes (by replacing the need for them with plasma effects), and some of the finite boundaries placed on on it (that ultimately result from the Big Bang aspect) and it could also match within a PC framework. Dark matter and other such things are a real issue though, currently only the various known types of matter exist in PC, as there has not been any sort of conclusive proof of the non baryonic matter that is thought to make up most of the universe.

Reality Check said:
Or to put it another way:
If we test the predictions of Peratt's plasma model of galaxy formation and find that they are wrong then is plasma cosmology wrong?

If tomorrow it was suddenly discovered that there is infact not a huge mass (super-massive black hole) at the centre of the galaxy, would that falsify the Big Bang? no, I dont think so. So neither would some inconsistencies with Peratts. List them if you will. And, dont forget, PC will not patch up all the glaring holes in its model with tonnes of mysterious matter or new ad hoc physics, what you see is, essentially, what you get.

Reality Check · May 18, 2008

Zeuzzz said:
Its quite important, its the most detailed current description of a transient galaxy model which fits well within a PC framework, mainly due to the fact that it not only uses gravity but shows that EM forces can play a role in the formation and structure of galaxies, which is an idea very compatible with plasma cosmology proposals. The current model of galaxies could be tweaked in a number of places, remove a few of the knomes (by replacing the need for them with plasma effects), and some of the finite boundaries placed on on it (that ultimately result from the Big Bang aspect) and it could also match within a PC framework. Dark matter and other such things are a real issue though, currently only the various known types of matter exist in PC, as there has not been any sort of conclusive proof of the non baryonic matter that is thought to make up most of the universe.

If tomorrow it was suddenly discovered that there is infact not a huge mass (super-massive black hole) at the centre of the galaxy, would that falsify the Big Bang? no, I dont think so. So neither would some inconsistencies with Peratts. List them if you will. And, dont forget, PC will not patch up all the glaring holes in its model with tonnes of mysterious matter or new ad hoc physics, what you see is, essentially, what you get.

I think that you have got confused between observation and theory.
Peratt's plasma model of galaxy formation is a theory.
A huge mass (super-massive black hole) at the centre of the galaxy is an observation.

Do you agree with these statements:

If General Relativity were to be disproved then that would falsify the Big Bang theory.
If Peratt's plasma model of galaxy formation were to be disproved then that would falsify the plasma cosmology theory.

Or is Peratt's plasma model an "optional" part of plasma cosmology?

Wangler · May 18, 2008

Reality Check said:
Do you agree with these statements:

If General Relativity were to be disproved then that would falsify the Big Bang theory.

If Peratt's plasma model of galaxy formation were to be disproved then that would falsify the plasma cosmology theory.

Or is Peratt's plasma model an "optional" part of plasma cosmology?

If you were asking me, I would say Yes to the first, and No to the second.

But, the statements are not exactly equivalent.

Your first statement is asking about a fundamental aspect of the Big Bang theory, while Peratt's galaxy formation model is just a predictive aspect of the plasma cosmology model. If I understand correctly.

I think that equivalent statements might be:

*If the cosmological redshift is shown to not only be dependent upon distance, would that falsify the Big Bang theory?

*If Peratt's galaxy rotation model is wrong, would that falsify the Plasma Cosmology theory.

I would say the answer to both of these would be "No".

Or, you could state:

*If General Relativity were disproved, would that invalidate the Big Bang Theory?

*If Maxwell's equations were disproved, would that invalidate the Plasma Cosmology Theory?

These seem to me to be equivalent statements in terms the weight GR and Maxwell have with each respective theory.

My answer to these would be "Yes".

Reality Check · May 18, 2008

Wangler said:
If you were asking me, I would say Yes to the first, and No to the second.

But, the statements are not exactly equivalent.

Your first statement is asking about a fundamental aspect of the Big Bang theory, while Peratt's galaxy formation model is just a predictive aspect of the plasma cosmology model. If I understand correctly.

I think that equivalent statements might be:

*If the cosmological redshift is shown to not only be dependent upon distance, would that falsify the Big Bang theory?

*If Peratt's galaxy rotation model is wrong, would that falsify the Plasma Cosmology theory.

I would say the answer to both of these would be "No".

Or, you could state:

*If General Relativity were disproved, would that invalidate the Big Bang Theory?

*If Maxwell's equations were disproved, would that invalidate the Plasma Cosmology Theory?

These seem to me to be equivalent statements in terms the weight GR and Maxwell have with each respective theory.

My answer to these would be "Yes".

Can you define what the "plasma cosmology model" is (the one that Peratt's galaxy formation model is just a predictive aspect)?

sol invictus · May 18, 2008

Zeuzzz said:
I just realized anyway, you probably want future predictions? correct?

Reality Check · May 18, 2008

Reality Check said:
Can you define what the "plasma cosmology model" is (the one that Peratt's galaxy formation model is just a predictive aspect)?

Also Zeuzzz:

Is Peratt's galaxy formation model disproved by the actual observation of dark matter?
Why do we not see the over 200 billion galactic plasma filaments that the model predicts? Every one of about 100 billion galaxies should have 2 or more filaments extending from them. They should be producing radiation due to the currents running through them. They definitely will have gravitational effects.
Another question - Why did Peratt compare the results of his simulation (maps of plasma density) with optical photographs of galaxies?
Optical photos show light density, e.g. the spirals in spiral galaxies are areas of young (bright) stars. The density of stars between the spiral arms is almost as high as in the arms. Somewhere Peratt must have plasma density profiles of his maps but I have not seen them. Without then I have to assume that his simulation maps have a plasma density of zero between the arms. This does not match the actual structure of galaxies.

Belz... · May 18, 2008

sol invictus said:

Seconded.

Zeuzzz · May 18, 2008

sol invictus said:

So, I take that as a yes? You want future predictions?

And I take this also to mean that you are choosing to ignore the predictions that have already turned out correct made by plasma cosmology proponents, a couple I listed here; http://www.randi.org/forumlive/showpost.php?p=3538619&postcount=676, but there are many more that I havent got the time to write up.

A few more past predictions are listed in this pulblication; http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel5/27/28301/01265349.pdf?arnumber=1265349 [[full text]]

I dont have much time at the mo, but i'll list a few future predictions from what i have gathered from reading various PC papers online.

* The universe did not originate in a Big Bang 13.7 years ago
* Element abundances can be more easily explained by plasma processes ongoing in the universe today.
* The universe shall show primarily a filamentary structure resulting from EM effects on large scales, which is in contrast to the results of the attractive field of gravity and the Big Bang that predictes a homogenous smooth universe. As the strength of measurements in space increases and encompasses more of the EM spectrum this structure shall become increasing apparent.
* The effects of plasma physics and EM forces are not negligable on the large scale, and play a role alongside gravity, mainly since it is now known that the universe is nearly all matter in a plasma state. This is in stark contradiction to current theories, that state that the only force at work on large scales is the exclusively attractive field of gravity.
* We can learn about space from experimental plasma simulations in laboratories, whereas most simulations with current theories are now replaced with computer models that likely have currently unknown assumptions hidden within them.
* Extremely similar phenomena exist in plasmas at all scales because of inherent scaling laws, ultimately derived from Maxwell's laws.
* The experimental method is key, and entities that lack any sort of experimental proof (dark matter, dark energy, inflation, etc) should be treated with severe skeptisism until verified in an empirical way
* Cosmological redshifts are a ubiquitous phenomenon that is summarized by Hubble's law in which more distant galaxies have greater redshifts. One of the key assumptions of plasma cosmology is that this observation does not indicate an expanding universe.
* A scalar expansion as predicted from the FRW metric is not accepted as part of this evolution, making the univserse static.
* The formation of force-free filaments plays an important role in the formation of structures on all scales (see; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkeland_current)
* The exploding double layer, where charge separation builds up in a current-carrying plasma, leading to the disruption of the current, the generation of high electric fields and the acceleration of energetic particles plays an important role in space.
* The pinch effect in space plasma plays a role in many structures on large scales, (see; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinch_effect)
* The universe is hierarchically structured, and a detailed process oriented viewpoint of space can be constructed from studying the interaction between seemingly separate objects. This is in contrast with the isolated object orientated view of modern cosmology with its gravitationl equations.
* There is no such things as a pure vacuum in space, and most things in the universe are connected by the particles and forces that flow between them, and will be discovered as our capability to see these areas in more detail increases (excluding the need for dark matter, or other dubious things proposed to be in these areas).
* The microwave background has a local origin, nothing to do with the Big Bang. Stellar nucleosynthesis can likely account for this, as Lerners model implies.
*The mass of condensed objects formed can be predicted as a function of density. Magnetically confined filaments initially compress plasma, which is then condensed gravitationally into a fractal distribution of matter. For this to happen, the plasma must be collisional — a particle must collide with at least one other in crossing the object. This condition leads to the prediction of a fractal scaling relation in which the structures are formed with density inversely proportional to their size. This fractal scaling relationship (with fractal dimension equal to two) is a key prediction of plasma cosmology.

And there are more predictions, i'm probably not doing them justice here, but that'll do for now.

Dancing David · May 18, 2008

Uh Zeuzzz,

So what charge, what mass, what magnetic field is involved in the acceleration of stars beyond that of gravity minus dark matter.

You still haven't answered the question.

What makes the stars move faster than they should?

The magnetic field is usually measured in micro gauss, so what size charge is a star going to have to have for it to move at the observed speeds?

please show us how your model explains 'flat rotation curves'.

Reality Check · May 18, 2008

Hi Zeuzzz,
I am curious about a "future prediction" in your list:

* The experimental method is key, and entities that lack any sort of experimental proof (dark matter, dark energy, inflation, etc) should be treated with severe skeptisism until verified in an empirical way.

In what way is this a prediction?
To my mind the experimental method is key to science today. Any theory that is not backed up by experiment is just an unfounded hypothesis.

But do you include observations of the universe as "verified in an empirical way"?
If you do then you definitely need to remove dark matter (directly observed) and maybe remove dark energy (or provide a plasma cosmology explanation for the acceleration of the expansion of the universe) from your list.

Any theory that makes falsifiable predictions and these predictions are found to be false is thus false. Peratt's galaxy formation model has predicted the non-existence of dark matter and the existence of galactic plasma filaments. Dark matter has been directly observed and so Peratt's galaxy formation model is false. We are missing any evidence for the over 200 billion galactic plasma filaments but that prediction is not falsifiable until someone states how they can be detected. After all they may be made of magic gnome plasma

!

But Peratt's model is fundamentally flawed in any case. As has been pointed out in other threads to you, stars cannot hold enough charge for the magnetic fields that we have observed in galaxies to have any influence on them. The most charitable interpretation is that his model only forms galaxies that then disconnect from the filaments (or maybe the filaments just break up). From then on gravity is the dominant effect and dark matter is needed to explain their rotation curves.

Reality Check · May 18, 2008

Zeuzzz said:
* The micorwave background has a local origin, nothing to do with the Big Bang. Stellar nucleosynthesis can likely account for this. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Plasma_cosmology&oldid=88919194#cite_note-37

The citation is to "E. J. Lerner, "On the problem of big-bang nucleosynthesis", Astrophys. Space Sci. 227, 145-149 (1995). E.J. Lerner, "Galactic Model of Element Formation," IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, Vol. 17, No. 3, April 1989, pp. 259‑263."

Note the dates on these papers. Any paper that tries to explain the microwave background before the launch of COBE in 1989 is likely to be outdated. He can only be predicting an istropic blackbody radiation with a temperature of 2.725K from his model. COBE measured the extremely faint fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (only one part in 100,000). Now we have WMAP data with which we have a detailed power spectrum of the CMB.
The Lambda-CDM model fits the WMAP data closely.

How does Lerner's model do?
If Lerner's model cannot fit the WMAP data then does this falsify it?

Zeuzzz · May 18, 2008

Dancing David said:
Uh Zeuzzz,

So what charge, what mass, what magnetic field is involved in the acceleration of stars beyond that of gravity minus dark matter.

You still haven't answered the question.

What makes the stars move faster than they should?

The magnetic field is usually measured in micro gauss, so what size charge is a star going to have to have for it to move at the observed speeds?

please show us how your model explains 'flat rotation curves'.

The arms are essentially magnetically supported in his model, by using a force free plasma configuration. I dont think that anyone really knows why force free configurations arrise. Why do force free configurations arrise? Is there really a 'force', as such, that is responsible for them? or are they just fundamental scale invarient properties of our universe? They seem to be linked with EM forces, as cancelling of the force components to make the configuration force free arrise from primarily EM effects, like Birkeland currents. This effect is sometimes reffered to as "doubleness in plasma" http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/anatomy.html .What we know is that force free configurations do exist, crucially, on all scales, and that is what Peratt is using. Its a bit like asking "why does all mass attract" (gravity) No-one has a clue, it just does.

The mass and gravity in Peratts model would account for a significant fraction, and I imagine that the charge on the stars would also contribute, but, he didn't really deal with that scale. He is dealing with the larger scale. We live in heirarchical universe. Current models of galaxy formation to not include a detailed account for every single star, that would be an astronomically hard model to create, they use average mass density and work out the overall shape at larger scales using the assumption that gravity is the only force at work, which is overall a similar technique to what Peratt is proposing. Each scale has it completely different laws of physics, they are complementary, but each scale is different. There are the laws of our nuclei, where the strong force dominates, the world of our atoms, where the weak force dominates, the planetary domain, where gravity dominates, and Peratt is proposing that on the larger scales the force free configuration used, along with gravity and EM forces, dominates. I'm not sure for the exact value of the charge, I would estimate a charge on the sun of 10^4±2 would be tenable, but I dont think that any conclusive numbers can really be put on it yet, and I havent seen this value addressed in full yet in any publication.

Zeuzzz · May 18, 2008

Reality Check said:
The citation is to "E. J. Lerner, "On the problem of big-bang nucleosynthesis", Astrophys. Space Sci. 227, 145-149 (1995). E.J. Lerner, "Galactic Model of Element Formation," IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, Vol. 17, No. 3, April 1989, pp. 259‑263."

Note the dates on these papers. Any paper that tries to explain the microwave background before the launch of COBE in 1989 is likely to be outdated. He can only be predicting an istropic blackbody radiation with a temperature of 2.725K from his model. COBE measured the extremely faint fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (only one part in 100,000). Now we have WMAP data with which we have a detailed power spectrum of the CMB.
The Lambda-CDM model fits the WMAP data closely.

How does Lerner's model do?
If Lerner's model cannot fit the WMAP data then does this falsify it?

What you list here is data. The data itself does not hold preference for one theory or another. And Lerner had addressed the COBE data in his work, heres a few of his publications on it;

An Alternative Explanation Of The Cobe Data - IEEE International Conference on plasma science

Intergalactic radio absorption and the cobe datap - Astrophysics and Space Science, Volume 227, Numbers 1-2 / May, 1995

Confirmation of radio absorption by the intergalactic medium - Astrophysics and space science

and see his page here for a bit more info; http://www.plasma-universe.com/index.php/Eric_Lerner

Zeuzzz · May 18, 2008

Reality Check said:
Hi Zeuzzz,
I am curious about a "future prediction" in your list:

In what way is this a prediction?

That these objects in the future will be shown to be not needed, and false. Which is a prediction.

But do you include observations of the universe as "verified in an empirical way"?
If you do then you definitely need to remove dark matter (directly observed)

You should say "directly implied" from gravitational models.

and maybe remove dark energy (or provide a plasma cosmology explanation for the acceleration of the expansion of the universe) from your list.

We have to remove something that you invented to explain inconsistant observations with your original theory?

Any theory that makes falsifiable predictions and these predictions are found to be false is thus false. Peratt's galaxy formation model has predicted the non-existence of dark matter and the existence of galactic plasma filaments.

To quote you "I think that you have got confused between observation and theory." If the current model of galaxies is falsified, does that falsify the Big Bang? This is the same resoning that you are using against Peratts model. If peratts model of galaxy formation is falsified, does that falsify plasma cosmology? No. Neither are strictly true.

But Peratt's model is fundamentally flawed in any case. As has been pointed out in other threads to you, stars cannot hold enough charge for the magnetic fields that we have observed in galaxies to have any influence on them. The most charitable interpretation is that his model only forms galaxies that then disconnect from the filaments (or maybe the filaments just break up). From then on gravity is the dominant effect and dark matter is needed to explain their rotation curves.

In your opinion yes, but in PC that is not needed. The galaxies are essentially a force free configuration. And why do you keep implying that only the charge is the force at work here? Gravity also plays a strong role, its just that plasma physics, certain force free configurations and EM forces are not negligable on this scale in this model, and can account for the shapes of galaxies to a much higher degree than a purely attractive field resulting from an initial Big Bang.

By your logic, the existence of filaments in the majority of galaxies perpendicaulr to the plane of the galaxy should falsify the current model, as gravity does not predict them. Instead you make use of lots of completely separate theories to account for this. By parsimony any model that requires less theories to explain observations is the better theory. Peratts does, but of course, there will be exceptions, galaxies are tremendously varied.

Zeuzzz · May 18, 2008

Peratt's plasma model of galaxy formation is a theory.
A huge mass (super-massive black hole) at the centre of the galaxy is an observation.

The current exclusively gravity driven models of galaxies are also a theory too!

That super-massive black hole claim can certainly be challenged. Many observations that have lead to this idea can in fact be attributed to an energetic star type object that requires no spooky illusive super huge black hole. I will start a thread on this in the future. My breif posting spree here is over, hope my contributions are appreciated, you can critique what i've said (as you'll no doubt do) but thats it for now...

Reality Check · May 18, 2008

Zeuzzz said:
What you list here is data. The data itself does not hold preference for one theory or another. And Lerner had addressed the COBE data in his work, heres a few of his publications on it;

An Alternative Explanation Of The Cobe Data - IEEE International Conference on plasma science

Intergalactic radio absorption and the cobe datap - Astrophysics and Space Science, Volume 227, Numbers 1-2 / May, 1995

Confirmation of radio absorption by the intergalactic medium - Astrophysics and space science

and see his page here for a bit more info; http://www.plasma-universe.com/index.php/Eric_Lerner

That is correct - the COBE, WMAP and (soon) Planck satellites measure data.

Any theory that states that it can explain the CMB has to fit the COBE, WMAP and (soon) Planck data. The Big Bang theory fit the COBE and WMAP data.

At the most Lerner can fit the COBE data. He has had since 2003 to fit the WMAP 1 year data release and since 2006 to fit the WMAP 3 year data release (the 5 year data release was on Februaray 28, 2008 so he may not had time to look at it). I can see no sign of a paper on the CMB prediction for the WMAP data from his Perhaps you know of one?

Reality Check · May 18, 2008

Zeuzzz said:
The current exclusively gravity driven models of galaxies are also a theory too!

The theories only use gravity because there is no evidence that electromagnetic forces are sufficient to be anything but a totally minor component. In another thread you cite this paper which gives an estimate of the maximum charge on a star as

If the mass Mr is given in solar masses and charge Qr in Coulombs, then Qr = 77.043 Mr.

This is calculated for a rather idealized star (spherical and electrostatic) as you point out. It is unlikely to be more than an order of magnitude out.
The calculation for the Sun is in this post and the result is that

So magnetic forces can only account for roughly 1 part in 10²² of our acceleration.

Feel free to arbitrarily increase the charge on the Sun and the galactic magnetic field by a billion. Electromagnetic forces will still be a totally minor component of the force on the Sun and other stars.

Zeuzzz said:
That super-massive black hole claim can certainly be challenged. Many observations that have lead to this idea can in fact be attributed to an energetic star type object that requires no spooky illusive super huge black hole. I will start a thread on this in the future. My breif posting spree here is over, hope my contributions are appreciated, you can critique what i've said (as you'll no doubt do) but thats it for now...

I would be interested in joining that thread (you should also note the "JEROME - Black holes do not exist" thread).

Expect the following to appear quickly in your new thread:
The super-massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way is not a "energetic star type object" even though we know that there is a strong radio source there - Sagittarius A*. The actual mass and radius of the Sagittarius A* has been determined by looking at the orbits of 7 of the many stars that are orbiting it. This is about 3.7 million solar masses within a volume with radius no larger than 6.25 light-hours (45 AU) or about 4.2 billion miles. For comparison, Pluto orbits our Sun at a distance of 5.51 light-hours or 3.7 billion miles.
The basic point is that the object that the stars are orbiting around is not a star - it does not emit any light and does not appear on the same photographs as the orbiting stars. It is a super-massive star contained in a small volume and omitting no light - try to guess what we call this!

DeiRenDopa · May 18, 2008

As I think it was ben m who said: Lather, Wash, Rinse, Repeat.

Zeuzzz said:
Reality Check said:

The citation is to "E. J. Lerner, "On the problem of big-bang nucleosynthesis", Astrophys. Space Sci. 227, 145-149 (1995). E.J. Lerner, "Galactic Model of Element Formation," IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, Vol. 17, No. 3, April 1989, pp. 259‑263."

Note the dates on these papers. Any paper that tries to explain the microwave background before the launch of COBE in 1989 is likely to be outdated. He can only be predicting an istropic blackbody radiation with a temperature of 2.725K from his model. COBE measured the extremely faint fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (only one part in 100,000). Now we have WMAP data with which we have a detailed power spectrum of the CMB.
The Lambda-CDM model fits the WMAP data closely.

How does Lerner's model do?
If Lerner's model cannot fit the WMAP data then does this falsify it?

Click to expand...

What you list here is data. The data itself does not hold preference for one theory or another. And Lerner had addressed the COBE data in his work, heres a few of his publications on it;

An Alternative Explanation Of The Cobe Data - IEEE International Conference on plasma science

Intergalactic radio absorption and the cobe datap - Astrophysics and Space Science, Volume 227, Numbers 1-2 / May, 1995

Confirmation of radio absorption by the intergalactic medium - Astrophysics and space science

and see his page here for a bit more info; http://www.plasma-universe.com/index.php/Eric_Lerner

Right.

I have written several detailed posts, in this very thread, on all these Lerner papers:
#120,
#177,
#182,
#204, and
#322.

Note that I have addressed both the mechanism Lerner proposes for the CMB and the match between the observations and Lerner's model.

Note too that Zeuzzz has not responded to any of these posts (at least, not to the content that concerns the papers he cites).

I'll just repeat what I said regarding the match between observations and model (we can rule out Lerner's model even with only COBE data):

#322 said:
The CMB dipole was discovered shortly after the CMB itself; it is explained, in standard astrophysics, as the motion of the solar system barycentre with respect to the CMB frame, and subsequent work showed that its magnitude and direction are consistent with the estimated distribution of mass 'locally' (which actually means out to 'the Great Attractor' and beyond!)

As I understand it - and I freely admit that I may not, properly - there should be no CMB dipole if the CMB originates per Lerner's model. Or, more accurately, the SED (spectral energy distribution) of the CMB will not be a blackbody, as the CMB photons we detect from the sources, along any line of sight, will be redshifted by different amounts, as those sources will be moving, relative to us, at a wide range of speeds. Unless the sources have some large-scale structure - when integrated over the optical depth of those sources - there cannot be a dipole. Further, even if there is some integrated large-scale structure, it should exhibit an integrated fractal scaling (per Zeuzzz), and be essentially isotopic (per Lerner).

In summary: the observations which establish the existence of the CMB dipole would, very likely, be very difficult to explain using Lerner's model.

Of course, Lerner is quite explicit about one item on his 'to do' list: he has not yet published anything on what the CMB angular power spectrum should look like under his model. It is clear that the dipole is part of this 'to do'.

#204 said:
9. In Lerner's PC, the CMB is isotropised and thermalised starlight, and has but one temperature (pretty much the same as is observed), with no free parameters. Observations consistent with the CMB being at different temperatures at different redshifts would therefore be difficult if not impossible for his model to account for.

In December, 2000, the ESO issued a PR "VLT Observations Confirm that the Universe Was Hotter in the Past" ... the key part, for our purposes here, is that the team "derive[d] the temperature T of the CMBR at this large distance and early cosmic epoch [z=2.34] and [placed] a very firm lower limit on this temperature. The final result is that T is hotter than 6 K and cooler than 14 K" (emphasis added). Here is the paper with these results.

There have been several subsequent papers reporting firm detections of constraints on the temperature of the CMB at high-z; this quite recent one is a good example: the authors report a temperature of 9.15 +/- 0.72 K at z = 2.41837.

#177 said:
4. Lerner's model of the CMB is inconsistent with its observed SED (spectral energy distribution: COBE observed that the SED is a blackbody (example - note that the error bars are 400 sigma!); Lerner says this about how well his model fits (emphasis added): "[the Lerner model] has accurately matched the spectrum of the CBR using the best-quality data set from COBE[27]. This fit, it should be noted, involved only three free pamenters and achieved a probability of 85%." In case you, dear reader, don't quite get this, I'll spell it out more clearly: 'a probability of 85%' is not, repeat not, an accurate match ... the error bars are so small that '85%' represents a total failure to match (you'd need something like 99.99% to still be in the game).

So, what's the bottom line?

Lerner's model of the CMB is inconsistent with a great many, very good, independently validated observations, in many wavebands.

Now just for fun, hot off the arXiv press: The VLA Survey of the Chandra Deep Field South. II. Identification and host galaxy properties of submillijansky sources. If any reader would like some help understanding how Lerner's model of the CMB is inconsistent with the observations in this paper, just ask; in a nutshell, they knock out this explanation: "Absorption by the IGM is the only reasonable explanation for this correlation" (from the abstract of Lerner's Confirmation of radio absorption by the intergalactic medium).

Dancing David · May 18, 2008

Zeuzzz said:
The arms are essentially magnetically supported in his model, by using a force free plasma configuration. I dont think that anyone really knows why force free configurations arrise. Why do force free configurations arrise? Is there really a 'force', as such, that is responsible for them? or are they just fundamental scale invarient properties of our universe? They seem to be linked with EM forces, as cancelling of the force components to make the configuration force free arrise from primarily EM effects, like Birkeland currents. This effect is sometimes reffered to as "doubleness in plasma" http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/anatomy.html .What we know is that force free configurations do exist, crucially, on all scales, and that is what Peratt is using. Its a bit like asking "why does all mass attract" (gravity) No-one has a clue, it just does.

The mass and gravity in Peratts model would account for a significant fraction, and I imagine that the charge on the stars would also contribute, but, he didn't really deal with that scale. He is dealing with the larger scale. We live in heirarchical universe. Current models of galaxy formation to not include a detailed account for every single star, that would be an astronomically hard model to create, they use average mass density and work out the overall shape at larger scales using the assumption that gravity is the only force at work, which is overall a similar technique to what Peratt is proposing. Each scale has it completely different laws of physics, they are complementary, but each scale is different. There are the laws of our nuclei, where the strong force dominates, the world of our atoms, where the weak force dominates, the planetary domain, where gravity dominates, and Peratt is proposing that on the larger scales the force free configuration used, along with gravity and EM forces, dominates. I'm not sure for the exact value of the charge, I would estimate a charge on the sun of 10^4±2 would be tenable, but I dont think that any conclusive numbers can really be put on it yet, and I havent seen this value addressed in full yet in any publication.

10^2 what?

I will read up on this force free plasma, but I notice that you still aren't answering the question.

there are stars that are moving faster than gravity minus dark matter would allow, now you are still not providing an asnwer as to how the PC model accounts for the motion of the stars.

I will read up, but this is really weak Zeuzzz, I expected better from you.

"There is no answer they just do." is not a theory of flat rotation curves.

DeiRenDopa · May 18, 2008

In post #296, where I quote from the following of Zeuzzz' post, I asked: "May I ask what the source of this, and subsequent, material (in the parts of you post I'm quoting) is?"

As far as I know, Zeuzzz did not answer, so I went looking for myself.

Here's what I found.

Zeuzzz said:
... snip ...

Lerners model does not treat every element other than He as primordial. It also sort of depends on what you are defining the word primordial to mean in his model, it really takes on a slightly different meaning, as there is no real 'initial' creation event like the Big Bang theory to make it that clear cut. Galaxies are essentially transient phenomenon.

There is a universal relationship between the density of plasma in which they condensed and the distance (r) between condensed objects. This can be shown well over 15 orders of magnitude for mass, all the way from modern laboratory experiments to stars and galaxies. In plasma cosmology the main reason for the existence of this relationship is the role played in the process of gravitational condensation by plasma vortices which have typical ion velocities (m_e/m_p)^3/4c. The ion collision distance is 1 x 10¹⁹n^-1 cm, or nr = 1 x 10¹⁹/cm², where condensations are separated by distances r. You can otherwise state this relationship as M = 1.8n^-2 where M is the mass of the condensed object in solar masses. This implies that in the early stages of galactic condensation, when the average plasma density in the galaxy was lower than at present, the average mass of the formed stars that constitute it was higher.

I'm not sure what Zeuzzz means by writing this in italics, but it is a nearly word-for-word copy of Section 3 of Lerner's paper "Plasma model of microwave background and primordial elements: an alternative to the Big Bang" (ADS reference; it's also available from Lerner's own website, under the title "Plasma Model An Alternative To The Big Bang"). My comparisons are with the PDF document on Lerner's webpage.

You can use this relationship in a simplified model of star formation to determine approximately how much helium and heavy elements were created during the formation of a galaxy.

This is a re-write of the first sentence to Section 4 of that paper ("The abundance of helium and heavy elements"), replacing "We" with "You".

This includes the creation of the elements often used to 'prove' the Big Bang. And other element observations are included too, Deuterium abundance, Oxygen abundance, carbon, and other elements

This seems to be additional text.

can be accounted for using a cloud contracting in the axial direction in the plane of rotation by spiral radial magnetic filaments.

At any given instant, B/n is a constant throughout the contracting plasma. Since the currents converge toward the center and flow out along the axis, you get B = 0.2 I/r, where I is the galactic current and r is the distance from the axis. Density, n, thus also decreases outwards from the center, with the heaviest stars forming in the least dense regions, furthest out.

This is a similarly minor re-write of the next parts of Section 4 ("we have" -> "you get")

Incoming filaments are sufficiently numerous that in any given annulus star formation is occurring whenever previous generations of stars have released their gas to the interstellar medium or have not yet been formed. That is, stars of an appropriate mass constitute essentially all the plasma mass in each annulus, so the situation simply along a single radial slice can be considered.

Ditto ("We assume that the incoming filaments" -> "Incoming filaments", "so we can consider the situation simply along a single radial slice." -> "so the situation simply along a single radial slice can be considered.")

For the He, we know from stellar evolution theory that the amount of helium produced for stars of various masses, varying from abut 10% for M = 12M_s, to 3% for M = 5M_s
[latex]He(M)=\left|^{tf}_{t0}F(M)M^{0.5}n_{i}0.375t_{1}L_{t}^{-1}(1-e^{\frac{Lt}{t1}})e^{\frac{t}{t1}[/latex]
where F is the fraction of mass converted to helium by stars of mass M and He(M) is the total fraction of the galactic mass converted to helium by these stars.

The re-write here, to section 4.2 ("Helium abundance") are a little more extensive; perhaps most egregious is the omission of the source ("Adouze & Tinsley 1976"). The other edit is "From stellar evolution theory we know" -> "For the He, we know from stellar evolution theory".

The beginning time to is defined by the point at which the shock wave first forms, that is when V, the velocity of the plasma past the filament exceeds V_a the Alfven velocity.

Two sentences are omitted.

Now, [latex]V_{a}=\frac{I}{10h^{0.5}n^{0.5}m^{0.5}_{p}r}[/latex] where mP is the proton mass, and I the galactic current. Studies by Beck and others (Ref - IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science) have shown that galactic magnetic fields and currents can be related to a galaxy's mass per unit surface area, and thus to its orbital velocity. From these results, the empirical relationship I = 1.5 x 10^-4V²G^-1 can be derived.

Again, only a small re-write ("Studies by Beck " -> "Studies by Beck and others "; "From Beck's results, we can derive the empirical relationship I = 1.5 x 10^-4V²G^-1." -> "From these results, the empirical relationship I = 1.5 x 10^-4V²G^-1 can be derived"))

Using this for the Milky Way, V²/R_m = 1.2 x 10^-8 cm/sec and n, = 0.35 (taking Mg = 2 x10¹¹Ms, Rm = 5 x 10²² cm). Substituting these values into the previous relationships, and integrating over a mass range 4Ms < M < 12Ms, and solving the equations simultaneously, you get as a solution t₁ = 8 x 10¹⁵ second (260 My) and He = 0.225, in excellent agreement with observation.

Parts of Lerner's paper are omitted; however, this is an almost word-for-word copy ("For the Milky Way, we find that" -> "Using this for the Milky Way," "M_g" -> "Mg" "M_s" -> "Ms" (three times) "R_m" -> "Rm" "values into (9) and (10)" -> "values into the previous relationships" "we get" -> "you get")

Most significantly, since He varies inversely with V²/Rm the observed upper limits on V²/Rm, sets lower limits to He and it is these minimum He values which have given reasonably consistent figures for 'primordial' helium abundance.

Parts of Lerner's paper are omitted; however, this is a word-for-word copy (apart from the converting of subscripts)

For the carbon abundances, using the above relationships, Integrating this over t and M you get (with a bit more work in between);

C = (5.6 x 10^-19 -1.1 x 10^-19n^0.5) t_i

= 4 . 5 x 10^-3 - 8.5 x 10 -4n^0.5
= 0 .0042 OK?

This is in good agreement with observations of 0.004-0.005.

This comes from section 4.3 ("Carbon abundance"), with the copying starting with "Integrating" (the phrase in brackets ("with a bit more work in between") is added). However, the formulae are copied incorrectly (the subscript "i" is dropped from "n").

For the Oxygen abundance, using the same calculation, and adjusting the rates of production accordingly, you get a value of ~0.018.

Apart from the phrase order switch at the beginning ("Using the same calculation for oxygen," -> "For the Oxygen abundance, using the same calculation,") and a "we" -> "you", there are two curious differences to this otherwise word-for-word copy of the first part of section 4.4 ("Oxygen abundance"):

"0.018" -> "~0.018"

and omission of the following (after "0.018"): "which is somewhat high compared with observed values of 0.012 but is within the uncertainties generated by stellar evolution theory, especially for pure hydrogen stars, which we are here assuming."

It should also be noted that He ions will be able to migrate out of the galaxies to enrich the immediate surrounding medium much more easily than the heavier elements such as carbon and oxygen. It is out of this He-enriched but heavy element poor medium that dwarf galaxies form.

Parts of the rest of section 4.4 are omitted; however, this is an almost word-for-word copy ("However this does not contradict the model since it is clear that" -> "It should also be noted that")

For the Deuterium abundance, using a value of 1 Gev of energy is for each deuterium production, z of the energy goes into the production of deuterium and the current abundance should be in the area of 2 x 10^-5.

This rather strangely worded sentence seems to be a mangling of the original in Lerner's paper, from the last part of section 4.5 ("Deuterium abundance"): "If about 1 Gev of energy is used for each deuterium production, 1/2 of the energy goes into the production of deuterium and the current abundance should be in the area of 2 x 10^-5."

There is a close linear correlation between radio power generated by galaxies and IR thermal radiation, presumably derived from young massive stars. If we take as a measure of total cosmic ray production (twice radiated power) 3 x 10¹⁹f (1.49 GHz) (the flux at that frequency) you find that about 1.2% of thermonuclear yield is in the form of cosmic rays, which yields 20 Kev per hydrogen atom in cosmic ray energy

This is from the last part of section 4.5 ("Deuterium abundance"), apart from some minor editing ("we find" -> "you find" "cosmic rays. This yields" -> "cosmic rays, which yields")

... snip ...

I wonder if there is an "innocent explanation" for this apparent plagiarism (or, if you prefer, an omission of attribution)? Perhaps "Zeuzzz" is really "E. J. Lerner"?

Anyway, I'm curious to know a) whether other material posted by Zeuzzz is of a similar character, and b) what readers of this thread think of what I have found (and posted above).

Zeuzzz · May 18, 2008

DeiRenDopa said:
In post #296, where I quote from the following of Zeuzzz' post, I asked: "May I ask what the source of this, and subsequent, material (in the parts of you post I'm quoting) is?"

As far as I know, Zeuzzz did not answer, so I went looking for myself.

Here's what I found.

I'm not sure what Zeuzzz means by writing this in italics, but it is a nearly word-for-word copy of Section 3 of Lerner's paper "Plasma model of microwave background and primordial elements: an alternative to the Big Bang" (ADS reference; it's also available from Lerner's own website, under the title "Plasma Model An Alternative To The Big Bang"). My comparisons are with the PDF document on Lerner's webpage.

This is a re-write of the first sentence to Section 4 of that paper ("The abundance of helium and heavy elements"), replacing "We" with "You".
This seems to be additional text.
This is a similarly minor re-write of the next parts of Section 4 ("we have" -> "you get")
Ditto ("We assume that the incoming filaments" -> "Incoming filaments", "so we can consider the situation simply along a single radial slice." -> "so the situation simply along a single radial slice can be considered.")

The re-write here, to section 4.2 ("Helium abundance") are a little more extensive; perhaps most egregious is the omission of the source ("Adouze & Tinsley 1976"). The other edit is "From stellar evolution theory we know" -> "For the He, we know from stellar evolution theory".

Two sentences are omitted.
Again, only a small re-write ("Studies by Beck " -> "Studies by Beck and others "; "From Beck's results, we can derive the empirical relationship I = 1.5 x 10^-4V²G^-1." -> "From these results, the empirical relationship I = 1.5 x 10^-4V²G^-1 can be derived"))

Parts of Lerner's paper are omitted; however, this is an almost word-for-word copy ("For the Milky Way, we find that" -> "Using this for the Milky Way," "M_g" -> "Mg" "M_s" -> "Ms" (three times) "R_m" -> "Rm" "values into (9) and (10)" -> "values into the previous relationships" "we get" -> "you get")

Parts of Lerner's paper are omitted; however, this is a word-for-word copy (apart from the converting of subscripts)

This comes from section 4.3 ("Carbon abundance"), with the copying starting with "Integrating" (the phrase in brackets ("with a bit more work in between") is added). However, the formulae are copied incorrectly (the subscript "i" is dropped from "n").

Apart from the phrase order switch at the beginning ("Using the same calculation for oxygen," -> "For the Oxygen abundance, using the same calculation,") and a "we" -> "you", there are two curious differences to this otherwise word-for-word copy of the first part of section 4.4 ("Oxygen abundance"):

"0.018" -> "~0.018"

and omission of the following (after "0.018"): "which is somewhat high compared with observed values of 0.012 but is within the uncertainties generated by stellar evolution theory, especially for pure hydrogen stars, which we are here assuming."
Parts of the rest of section 4.4 are omitted; however, this is an almost word-for-word copy ("However this does not contradict the model since it is clear that" -> "It should also be noted that")

This rather strangely worded sentence seems to be a mangling of the original in Lerner's paper, from the last part of section 4.5 ("Deuterium abundance"): "If about 1 Gev of energy is used for each deuterium production, 1/2 of the energy goes into the production of deuterium and the current abundance should be in the area of 2 x 10^-5."

This is from the last part of section 4.5 ("Deuterium abundance"), apart from some minor editing ("we find" -> "you find" "cosmic rays. This yields" -> "cosmic rays, which yields")

I wonder if there is an "innocent explanation" for this apparent plagiarism (or, if you prefer, an omission of attribution)? Perhaps "Zeuzzz" is really "E. J. Lerner"?

Anyway, I'm curious to know a) whether other material posted by Zeuzzz is of a similar character, and b) what readers of this thread think of what I have found (and posted above).

I couldn't quote the whole thing, a quote that size would have been instantly taken down, so I had to add it as normal text. And the version that I copied is not from the version on Lerners site (I dont think that you can even copy text from that? and where is that text? if i had known that i would have just linked to it! its not listed here with his others; http://www.health-freedom.info/pdf/index.html), its from a later reprint of the Laser and Particle Beams edition, not the "Alfven special edition" version, under the title "Plasma model of microwave background and primordial elements: an alternative to the Big Bang", which is a slightly different version, and presumably intended for a slightly different audience. I have it on file, along with all my other sources, not from online. I added in a few sentences, and the latex code for one equation, and changed a few words to put it in a suitable tense. Yes. Your point?

Maybe i should have put it all in italics, and indiacted this more clearly, but Its the same scientific material no matter who you thought wrote it. And I'm flattered that you thought it was me that came up with all of this

You seem to hold me in much higher regard than even I do!

I dont write the science I quote myself (surely you have gathered this by now?) I just point out material that has already been written by other scientists that tends to be ignored.

And, does it really matter that it was copied? I could take a look at the equations that you have posted and accuse you of copying them from somewhere, but, since the equations are the same no matter where you get them from, it really doesn't matter. Or do you want to spend more posts accusing me of being someone, and talking about things not relevent to the subject at hand? Or do you want to actually discuss the material that I took the time to post here?

The Man · May 18, 2008

I have not been following this thread for some time, so my question may be a little dated.

Zeuzzz, I have noticed a new catch phrase in the lexicon of your most recent posts. That phrase being “force free configuration” and even reversed as “configuration force free”. Sometime you interject the word “plasma” in there as in “force free plasma configuration” and sometimes not. You seem to bandy this phrase about as if it is some fundamental physical force even going so far as to make this comparison to gravity.

Zeuzzz said:
What we know is that force free configurations do exist, crucially, on all scales, and that is what Peratt is using. Its a bit like asking "why does all mass attract" (gravity) No-one has a clue, it just does.

Yet you yourself admit that you do not know how a “force free configuration” arises.

Zeuzzz said:
The arms are essentially magnetically supported in his model, by using a force free plasma configuration. I dont think that anyone really knows why force free configurations arrise. Why do force free configurations arrise? Is there really a 'force', as such, that is responsible for them? or are they just fundamental scale invarient properties of our universe? They seem to be linked with EM forces, as cancelling of the force components to make the configuration force free arrise from primarily EM effects, like Birkeland currents. This effect is sometimes reffered to as "doubleness in plasma" http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/anatomy.html .What we know is that force free configurations do exist, crucially, on all scales, and that is what Peratt is using. Its a bit like asking "why does all mass attract" (gravity) No-one has a clue, it just does.

Are you referring to force free magnetic fields which are a type of field in a plasma where the plasma pressure is significantly less then the magnetic pressure? Hence the plasma pressure can be disregarded and the magnetic field pressure considered free of the force from the plasma pressure. An example would be the Sun’s corona.

Or perhaps you are referring to force free currents, were charged particles are moving due to the structure of a magnetic fields and plasma and not due to any voltage. Therefore they do not gain or lose any net energy. The force this situation is “free” of is the Lorenz force and an example would be the ring currents caused by Earth’s magnetosphere.

Or are you implying something similar to gravity where in General relativity the motion of an object under gravity becomes simply the motion along a space-time geodesic with the shortest proper time and no force is required. In this case the force that a person moving under the influence of gravity is free of is the gravitational force. An example would be if you jumped off a cliff you would not experience any force of gravity until, of course, the base of the cliff finally slams into you.

All of these “force free” examples have specific forces that they can be considered free of, for various reasons. Can you (or anyone else) describe (or provide any clue as to) what force or combination of forces your “force free configuration” is free of and provide any examples (other then to say “that is what Peratt is using).

I think this might become a new PC/EU catch phrase where they can’t really explain what it is but use it to explain anything and everything else (including itself).

From what I read and recall of Peratt’s paper, I believe force free current is the “force free” aspect Zeuzzz thinks Peratt is utilizing, since he uses the MHD formula for charged particle drift. Strangely though (or maybe not) he seems to leave out the term for guiding center gyration (if I remember that correctly), since it probably would have upset his model to have all of those charge particles gyrating around their guiding centers in opposite directions for positive and negative charges. But of course in order to get the drifts in the same direction (as well cancel the effects of an inhomogeneous galactic magnetic field) would require and electrical field and that configuration would no longer be “force free”. Of course I am only going from memory as it has been awhile since I looked at that paper.

As a reference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guiding_center

Zeuzzz · May 18, 2008

Damn. It is listed on that site; http://www.health-freedom.info/pdf/index.html

its under a completely different title though; "Plasma Model an Alternative To The Big Bang" instead of the one that includes the primoridal elements in the title. That would have saved me copying it, but oh well.

Reality Check · May 18, 2008

The Man's posting above reminded me of another doubt that I have about Peratt's plasma model of galaxy formation and the subsequence driving of the galactic rotation by electromagnetic forces:

If the charge on a star in a galaxy can be either positive or negative then why do we not see 2 groups of stars in galaxies that orbit in opposite directions?
If the charge on all stars in a galaxy has to be either positive or negative then what determines this and what effects would we see?
At a guess the charge on the galaxy as a whole is somehow maintained by the invisible galactic plasma filaments. Otherwise I can see no reason why it should not dissipate as charged particles from the inter-galactic medium are pulled in.

Zeuzzz · May 18, 2008

The Man said:
Yet you yourself admit that you do not know how a “force free configuration” arises.

Depends on what sort of force free configuration you are referring to. In PC it uses a scale invarient force free configuration to explain this. You may want to check out these; Magnetic Vortex Filaments
Force Free Magnetic Filaments what you wants probably in there somewhere, dont have the time to go fishing....

All of these “force free” examples have specific forces that they can be considered free of, for various reasons. Can you (or anyone else) describe (or provide any clue as to) what force or combination of forces your “force free configuration” is free of and provide any examples (other then to say “that is what Peratt is using).

I think this might become a new PC/EU catch phrase where they can’t really explain what it is but use it to explain anything and everything else (including itself).

From what I read and recall of Peratt’s paper, I believe force free current is the “force free” aspect Zeuzzz thinks Peratt is utilizing, since he uses the MHD formula for charged particle drift. Strangely though (or maybe not) he seems to leave out the term for guiding center gyration (if I remember that correctly), since it probably would have upset his model to have all of those charge particles gyrating around their guiding centers in opposite directions for positive and negative charges. But of course in order to get the drifts in the same direction (as well cancel the effects of an inhomogeneous galactic magnetic field) would require and electrical field and that configuration would no longer be “force free”. Of course I am only going from memory as it has been awhile since I looked at that paper.

Not sure exactly what your getting at here, try to be a bit more specific in your actual question, but this brief excerpt that i posted before may answer your questions;

Plasma Cosmology - Woo or not

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