Evidence against concordance cosmology

Eric L said:
I was suspended for 10 days by the moderators and then they closed the thread. They said I was breaking the rules by not quoting people directly. I have appealed , pointing out that I was putting forward new arguments and not trying to quote. No reason was given to me for closing the thread. I also appealed their decision on that. In addition, there is a technical discussion going on at the FB page Astrostatistics. Lots of stuff raised, and I have lots of other tasks, so I may be slow to reply on this thread, assuming I am not thrown off here as well.
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Hmm .. personally I think suspending you (if it was because of the quoting issue) was over-reaction on their part .. All they had to do was explain where your understanding of where they were coming from was in error, (as far as they were concerned).

I think closing the thread was actually probably fairer on you too, seeing as you couldn't respond to new comments. (The closure happened only minutes after I made a post on it requesting info on what had happened to you .. they deleted that post as well).

Either way, I think there are quite a few minds wanting to understand in more detail how you arrived at your model ... Here is probably as good as anywhere, I guess .. (hoping that folk here can stay focused on your analysis .. rather than the other evidence for concluding why the broader concordance model works).
 
procedure suggestion

Since I have replied to a number of points on the now-closed PF thread, I would like to suggest that people post their points based on the whole of that thread, including my latest replies. I think it would be good to read the FB thread on the Astrostatistics page as well. Finally I would personally prefer that people post one idea per post. It gets really hard to follow when I am answering multiple points from one post.
 
PF thread is now open again.
PeterDonis said:
The thread is being reopened in order to allow continued discussion of the specific paper referenced in the OP, and to allow @elerner to respond to specific questions regarding that paper (and the 2014 paper that it is based on). Please limit discussion to that specific topic. This thread is not about the general methodology of science or the overall pros and cons of the current mainstream cosmological model of the universe.

@elerner, in responding to questions, please give specific cites to your papers rather than general claims and opinions. We understand your basic claims; we are looking for the specific evidence and arguments given in your papers that you think support those claims, not repetitions of the claims themselves. Additional fine details of methodology not provided in the papers are fine (since that is a large part of what other posters have asked about).

Reference https://www.physicsforums.com/threa...nst-expanding-universe-in-mnras.943111/page-6
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And my proposal is firmly rejected:
PeterDonis said:
Jean Tate said:
it seems that there's rather a lack of interest in my proposal (to independently try to verify the GALEX results reported in L14)
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This is outside the scope of PF. Independent replication of scientific results is original research, which is not what PF is for.

Reference https://www.physicsforums.com/threa...nst-expanding-universe-in-mnras.943111/page-6
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Oh, and about this:
Eric L said:
I think it would be good to read the FB thread on the Astrostatistics page as well.
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I signed up to FB many years ago, and then, within weeks (?), did something unimaginable at the time, I "committed FB suicide" (i.e. deleted my account). I told everyone, whether they'd listen or not, that FB was a privacy disaster of immense proportions, just waiting to happen. How foolish I was.

Eric L: to be 100% clear, I will NEVER even read that FB thread, much less participate.
 
Eric;

For the sake of brevity, could you please provide maybe a link to the specific Galex dataset(s) you used?

Thanks.
 
Probably relevant: The Milky Way Is Still Growing, Surprising Scientists
Even with nothing new falling into it, our radius is increasing with every second that goes by.

It’s no big secret that galaxies grow over time. The force of gravity is powerful enough to pull smaller galaxies, gas clouds, and star clusters into larger ones, even over distances of millions of light years. Our own Milky Way has likely devoured hundreds of smaller galaxies over its lifetime, and continues to absorb the dwarf satellites which surround us. But there’s a steadier, more subtle way that galaxies grow: by continuing to form stars from the gas already inside. While most of the stars that form will do so in the plane or central bulge of a spiral galaxy like our own, a new study has shown that galaxies also grow outward over time, meaning that their physical extent increases in space. The implication is that our own galaxy is increasing in size by 500 meters per second: growing by a light year every 600,000 years.
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It looks like your paper ignored the known physical evolution of galaxies that causes them to increase in size through mergers, etc. and so its conclusions are dubious. This new observation of growth without merger, etc. makes the results a tiny bit more dubious.
 
This is not the venue for discussing the goings on at other fora. Please keep to the topic of this thread, on this forum. For the time being, I am not going back and removing the offending posts, but if the off topic discussion of other threads, at other forums, and the moderation thereof continues, then I will be forced to do a thorough cleaning here and redecorate with little yellow cards.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: kmortis
 
As of late, there is one article I keep seeing poppin up (referenced) by proponents of the Electric Universe ideas. It's called 'Lensing by Refraction…Not Gravity?'. It talks about, for example:

Professor R. C. Gupta at the Institute of Engineering & Technology in Lucknow, India has presented such a theory in a paper entitled, “Bending of Light Near a Star and Gravitational Red/Blue Shift: Alternative Explanation Based on Refraction of Light.”
The paper asserts that the theory behind gravitational lensing — one of the evidentiary “proofs” of General Relativity — is wrong, and that the lensing effect is caused by refraction through the “atmospheres” of stars and galaxies.
The paper also presents the mathematical basis for refraction and shows that refraction closely predicts the same lensing effect as attributed to gravity.
It is a plausible theory based on the presence of plasma atmospheres that pervade stellar and galactic formations at every scale. Dr. Gupta shows that a stellar, or galactic atmosphere will bend light, the same way it is refracted by water as the light passes from lower density to a higher density medium.
It is the kind of simple answer based on classical physics and the known behavior of electromagnetism that EU Theory rigorously requires, unlike the General Relativity concepts that require theoretical, unproven mass and energy.
...
The Standard Model predicts a massive black hole at the galactic center. Astronomers have observed stars in fast elliptical orbits around the galactic center for over a year, some having completed entire orbits. Although the stellar orbits are cited as indirect evidence of a black hole, and the validity of General Relativity, they do not exhibit the predicted optical distortion to indicate gravitational lensing.
To test for refraction as the cause of lensing, Dr. Gupta’s paper suggests no lensing effect will be seen near a body without an atmosphere. This may be difficult to observe given plasma pervades space to a greater degree than often recognized. Even our distant planet Pluto has been found to have a substantial atmosphere and a cometary tail of plasma streaming from it.
Another test is chromatic aberration in the light bent through refraction. Diffraction is a natural consequence of refractive lensing as in a prism. General Relativity predicts no diffraction with gravitational lensing since gravity warped space-time should bend all wavelengths equally. General Relativity theorists suggests the lack of diffraction in lensing is evidence their theory is correct. Yet “Einstein Rings” are blue.
An “Einstein Ring” is a special case of lensing when the focal point of distant light is directed at the observer to create a ring of light around the intervening galaxy. The blue color is an indication of diffraction.
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I'll be blunt: "Professor R. C. Gupta" should know better^.

Yes, there are many EU acolytes whose grasp of basic physics is so poor that they think a "flow of electric charges" constitutes an electric current (so a fireboat spraying sea water creates a massive electric current :eek:), but many are not so willfully ignorant. They certainly know that any refractive medium creates chromatic "bending" (i.e. the deflection depends on the wavelength), while GR predicts achromatic (i.e. x-rays or radio, the deflection is the same).

Of course, there are tests for the achromatic GR-predicted deflection, e.g. light and radio by the Sun (which can be observed far from the line of sight to the Sun, and in fact Gaia models this over the whole sky), which EU nutters conveniently forget to mention.

There's so much nonsense in what you quote, Jono, it's hard to know where to start. Perhaps just one example "Yet “Einstein Rings” are blue." Um, no. Some Einstein rings are blue, some are not. And the reasons for the differences are well-known and understood.

But let's see if any EU proponent is willing to come here and try to defend this nonsense ...

^ caveat: I haven't read his so-called paper, which is published on arXiv only (link to abstract), in 2004
 
JeanTate said:
I'll be blunt: "Professor R. C. Gupta" should know better^.
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I appreciate the reply. It also gets me how, as soon one tells them that a magnetic flux always turn into to closed loops... it seems, they are quick to cry "but but... Birkland Current!!!". Of course, as far as I know we haven't observed such on such large scales and so there exists no reason to invoke it.
 
Jono said:
As of late, there is one article I keep seeing poppin up (referenced) by proponents of the Electric Universe ideas.
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That is the very deluded Thunderbolts web site. I analyzed their delusions in the electric comet thread:
18 November 2010: The lies, failures and successes of Thunderbolts Deep Impact predictions by Wal Thornhill
10th April 2015: The ignorance, delusions and lies in the Thunderbolts web site, videos, etc.
13 April 2018: A couple of the delusions in Scott's Birkeland current paper.

Strictly speaking they are not EU proponents, they are cranks who have taken the fantasies of Immanuel Velikovsky to an new, absurd level.

Bending of Light Near a Star and Gravitational Red/Blue Shift : Alternative Explanation Based on Refraction of Light by Dr.R.C.Gupta is an unpublished pre-print. It was loaded in 2004 and has had no refereed citations since then.

The un-refereed citation show that Gupta is quite deluded himself: "Gravity as the Second-Order Relativistic-Manifestation of Electrostatic-Force" :eye-poppi! This is the stupidity that neutral objects cannot experience gravity and gravity is not really related to mass.

The easy debunking of the preprint is the simple fact that refraction bends different wavelength of light differently. That is how a prism works. Plasma bending light will have the same effect. Thus we should see "rainbows" for It lies:stars whose light have been bent by the Sun. We should see "rainbows" for all of the gravitationally lensed galaxies. We do not.
Plasma would have to be distributed in every case of gravitational lensing in such a way to produce the same effects as predicted by GR. But we have enormously different environments. The Sun is very different from a galaxy. Galaxies are different from each other.

Then there is the Thunderbolts article quote.
It lies. The pre-print does not show that GR is wrong. The GR prediction of gravitational lensing matching observsions is "proof" of GR regardless of any other theory for gravitational lensing. Showing that the predictions are wrong needs evidence using GR that they are wrong.
Complete idiocy of "theoretical, unproven mass and energy". Energy exists. Mass exists. Stars have mass and energy. Galaxies have mass and energy.
Misleading "Astronomers have observed stars in fast elliptical orbits around the galactic center for over a year" when the observations are over decades.
A lie of "do not exhibit the predicted optical distortion to indicate gravitational lensing" for the the stars in orbit around our supermassive black hole.
Gravitational lensing of stars orbiting Sgr A* as a probe of the black hole metric in the Galactic center was proposed for the next generation of instruments in 2010. 26 abstracts citing the paper, all about the theory. No observations.
 
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not on topic!

These last few posts have NOTHING to do with this thread! Please stay on topic folks. This thread is about my paper, cited at the start of the thread.
 
At the risk of incurring kmortis' wrath, there is no significant discussion of EricL's paper(s) here. Rather it takes (or, better, took^) place in one of those other fora ...

^I stopped even following the thread after my questions went unanswered ... :(
 
Speaking of which, is Tim Thompson still with us? Not seen much activity from him for years.
 
Eric L said:
These last few posts have NOTHING to do with this thread! Please stay on topic folks. This thread is about my paper, cited at the start of the thread.
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Not quite correct because you cited a video of a presentation at a conference. We exhausted discussion of that presentation over 2 years ago (February 2016)!

Posts addressing the electric universe woo were clearly not about your video or the referenced paper.

A bit of history for everyone about the video and paper:
A alternate "cosmology" that is the well known to be invalid tired light theories. I was one of several posters that pointed this out back on 15th February 2016.

A lack of citation in the video for some assertions.

At 19:55. A rather bad citation to the obviously invalid "plasma model of galaxy formation (1988)" which predicts that spiral galaxies have no mass between their arms when stellar densities are only 10-20% less. The paper is also invalidated by the (perhaps known in 1988) fact that double lobed radio galaxies are actually elliptical galaxies.

At 20:38. A misrepresentation that a paper on local dark matter density is about the LCDM model.

At 21:34. A relevant paper about large structures being a problem for the Lambda-CDM model. Followed by "formation by magnetic-gravitational processes" fantasies and what looks like the invalidated many years ago Plasma Cosmology (not to be confused with the current plasma "cosmology").

At 22:34. Uncited "CBR Alignments and Asymmetries Contradict Inflation Predictions".

At 23:01. "Evidence Indicates Scattering/Absorption of Radio-Frequency radiation in local universe" with a fantasy about the CMB not originating from a Big Bang.

At 23:40. A summary which leaves 2 pieces of evidence against the concordance model: Structures that seem too large. Missing local dark matter.

ETA: The 2013 Clowes et. al paper is later addressed in 2014 and 2015.

The conclusion is just wrong. It is never time to swap to a cosmology that cannot get fundamental observations correct, e.g. the temperature, black body spectrum and power spectrum of the CMB.

The rest of the video is about your Tolman surface brightness paper that has the basic flaw of ignoring that galaxies evolve. That was one of the results of the papers done by experts on the Tolman surface brightness test.

Your responses start with bad assertions, e.g. The hypothesis that the universe is expanding, taken by itself –-that is taking this hypothesis alone--makes very few testable predictions
The Big Bang leads to about 10 testable and tested predictions (not "very few"): What is the evidence for the Big Bang?. That list does not include the complex Tolman surface brightness test test that has also been passed. Ignoring the ΛCDM model for a different model does not invalidate that test. As you wrote: "In this paper, we do not compare data to the ΛCDM model". You explicitly wrote that the paper is not evidence against the ΛCDM (concordance) model.

In conclusion: The video and paper have no evidence against the concordance model.
 
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Jono said:
Speaking of which, is Tim Thompson still with us? Not seen much activity from him for years.
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Wish he was. Not saying he's shuffled off this mortal coil, but his contributions are much missed. Probably got sick of banging his head against a brick wall.
 
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