After reading through the plasma cosmology thread today, I'm curious how mainstream Lambda theory would hold up to the same level of scrutiny? What exactly does Lambda-CDM theory "predict" without the use of unfalsifiable and unverifiable entities?
For instance, what empirical evidence supports the idea of inflation? No other known vector or scalar field found in nature will retain near constant density over several exponential increases in volume. The presumed homogeneous layout of matter used to be inflation's primary claim to fame, yet recent observations of "dark flows" would suggest that matter is not homogeneously distributed as "predicted" by inflation. What empirical evidence from controlled experiments demonstrates that inflation even exists in nature?
Dark energy? What is that? How do I get some? What controlled empirical test demonstrates it has any effect on nature?
What about all the so called "properties" of dark matter? How do we verify or falsify these ideas?
In what tangible and demonstrateable way is Lambda-CDM theory any "better" than any other cosmology theory?
I'd like to see where we're up to, wrt answering the question this thread asks.
First, the question - and thread - appears in the JREF Forum's
Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology section, so I guess it's OK to assume "woo" means "woo in the context of "Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and/or Technology". Further, since "Lambda-CDM theory" doesn't have anything to do with Medicine, we can refine the scope. Then, although there are certainly Mathematics and Technology aspects to "Lambda-CDM theory" they are secondary*.
So the question becomes "is "Lambda-CDM theory" scientific woo or not?".
Well, to answer that question, we need to have a common understanding of what "scientific woo" is, don't we?
Of course, we could always ask the site owners or admins or moderators to clarify for us, but ahead of doing that, can we take a stab at working out an answer?
One such answer might be along the lines of "that which is published in relevant peer-reviewed journals and presented at relevant conferences", where "relevant" is understood to mean something like "to do with cosmology".
If so, then "Lambda-CDM theory" is certainly not scientific woo; case closed.
But perhaps a somewhat different definition of 'scientific woo' might be called for, something that deals with what's written in the OP, about 'evidence', 'scrutiny', 'falsification', 'verifiability', and so on?
If so, then "Lambda-CDM theory" is certainly not scientific woo, as was made quite clear in the first page of posts in this thread ... it has been intensely scrutinised, there is tonnes of evidence to support it (and essentially none that doesn't), it is quintessentially falsifiable and verifiable, and so on.
Now I think it's fair to say that MM, the OP, is of the (strong) opinion that "Lambda-CDM theory" is, in fact, woo.
Why?
Clearly not because of reasons of falsifiability, verifiability, evidence, scrutiny etc ... if those were the kinds of reasons, then he'd've provided a link to a paper such as this:
Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Interpretation (link is to the astro-ph preprint; some formatting is lost):
Komatsu et al. (abstract) said:
(Abridged) The WMAP 5-year data strongly limit deviations from the minimal LCDM model. We constrain the physics of inflation via Gaussianity, adiabaticity, the power spectrum shape, gravitational waves, and spatial curvature. We also constrain the properties of dark energy, parity-violation, and neutrinos. We detect no convincing deviations from the minimal model. The parameters of the LCDM model, derived from WMAP combined with the distance measurements from the Type Ia supernovae (SN) and the Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO), are: Omega_b=0.0456+-0.0015, Omega_c=0.228+-0.013, Omega_Lambda=0.726+-0.015, H_0=70.5+-1.3 km/s/Mpc, n_s=0.960+-0.013, tau=0.084+-0.016, and sigma_8=0.812+-0.026. With WMAP+BAO+SN, we find the tensor-to-scalar ratio r<0.22 (95% CL), and n_s>1 is disfavored regardless of r. We obtain tight, simultaneous limits on the (constant) equation of state of dark energy and curvature. We provide a set of "WMAP distance priors," to test a variety of dark energy models. We test a time-dependent w with a present value constrained as -0.33<1+w_0<0.21 (95% CL). Temperature and matter fluctuations obey the adiabatic relation to within 8.9% and 2.1% for the axion and curvaton-type dark matter, respectively. The TE and EB spectra constrain cosmic parity-violation. We find the limit on the total mass of neutrinos, sum(m_nu)<0.67 eV (95% CL), which is free from the uncertainty in the normalization of the large-scale structure data. The effective number of neutrino species is constrained as N_{eff} = 4.4+-1.5 (68%), consistent with the standard value of 3.04. Finally, limits on primordial non-Gaussianity are -9<f_{NL}^{local}<111 and -151<f_{NL}^{equil}<253 (95% CL) for the local and equilateral models, respectively.
So what's going on?
Here's my working hypothesis: MM has a very different view of what modern cosmology, as a science, is than almost everyone else who has posted to this thread. If that's the case, I'd like to take this thread in somewhat of a different direction and focus on what MM's view of modern cosmology, as a science, is. In particular, I'd like to examine the extent to which it is internally consistent and the evidence there is that it employs critical thinking.
*
though perhaps it's worth taking a look at these aspects later
