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Quantized redshift anomaly
19 years 6 months ago #13284
by Tommy
Replied by Tommy on topic Reply from Thomas Mandel
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">In electromagnetism, we may use, to make demonstrations, systems which cannot exist physically, in particular isolated systems in which the EM field results only from known sources.
For instance, to define the orthogonality of two solutions (or two modes) of Maxwell''s equations, we suppose that the considered solutions are alone in the Universe; this is mathematics, physically absurd, but useful for physics.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Well, I still don't understand you. Can you put it into structural terms? For example, How does an electromagnetic wave sustain it's energy while it is moving through space? So far, I hear that the electric wave produces the magnetic wave which produces the electric wave which produces the magnetic wave, and so on down the line. I understand that conventional Maxwellian equations describe it like so. And, they say, it works. At the same time I keep hearing about an energy source called by Maxwell the scalar field. I hear that scalar and vector go together, are they both just mathematical methodologies? Even so, vectors talk about something, so scalar talks about something too. It doesn't matter if the mathematics doesn't need
any more energy, it is the mathematical theory that doesn't need more energy. It is clear that a transmitted EMF is doing something, so the question is how does the wave do its thing? At least Maxwell had an idea, via displacement currents from scalar field inside the ZPE, opps, Aether...If we look to modern science for the answer I hear something like, "Oh, the equations are too complicated so we got rid of them, who will notice?"
Here's an interesting experiment - I found this paper on the web at keelynet written about the Aether. What is of interest here is the philosophy that was being considered at that time. I replaced the old word aether with the modern word ZPE for effect.
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">1908 - The ZPE of Space
and auxiliary files
by Lord Rayleigh and Sir Oliver Lodge
courtesy of Bruce L. Rosenberg
Friday, February 21, 1908
THE RIGHT HON. LORD RAYLEIGH,
O.M. P.C. M.A. D.C.L. LL.D. Sc.D. Pres.R.S., in the Chair
SIR OLIVER LODGE, LL.D. D.Sc. F.R.S. M.R.I
The ZPE of Space
THIRTY years ago Clerk Maxwell gave in this place a remarkable address on "Action at a Distance." It is reported in your Journal, Vol. VII., and to it I would direct attention. Most natural philosophers hold, and have held, that action at a distance across empty space is impossible-in other words, that matter cannot act where it is not, but only where it is.
The question "where is it?" is a further question that may demand attention and require more than a superficial answer. For it can be argued on the hydrodynamic or vortex theory of matter, as well as on the electrical theory, that every atom of matter has a universal though nearly infinitesimal prevalence, and extends everywhere; since there is no definite sharp boundary or limiting periphery to the region disturbed by its existence.
The lines of force of an isolated electric charge extend throughout illimitable space. And though a charge of opposite sign will curve and concentrate them, yet it is possible to deal with both charges, by the method of superposition, as if they each existed separately without the other. In that case, therefore, however far they reach, such nuclei clearly exert no "action at a distance" in the technical sense.
Some philosophers have reason to suppose that mind can act directly on mind without intervening mechanism, and sometimes that has been spoken of as genuine action at a distance; but, in the first place, no proper conception or physical model can be made of such a process, nor is it clear that space and distance have any particular meaning in the region of psychology. The links between mind and mind may be something quite other than physical proximity, and in denying action at a distance across empty space I am not denying telepathy or other activities of a non-physical kind-for although brain disturbance is certainly physical and is an essential concomitant of mental action, whether of the sending or receiving variety, yet we know from the case of heat that a material movement can be excited in one place at the expense of corresponding movement in another, without any similar kind of transmission or material connection between the two places: the thing that travels across vacuum is not heat.
In all cases where physical motion is involved, however, I would have a medium sought for; it may not be matter, but it must be something; there must be a connecting link of some kind, or the transference cannot occur. There can be no attraction across really empty space. And even when a material link exists, so that the connexion is obvious, the explanation is not complete-for when the mechanism of attraction is understood, it will be found that a body really only moves because it is pushed by something from behind.
...
...
So clearly and universally has it been perceived that waves must be waves of something- something distinct from ordinary matter-that Lord Salisbury, in his presidential address to the British Association at Oxford, criticised the ZPE as little more than a nominative case to the verb to undulate.
It is truly that, though it is also truly more than that; but to illustrate that luminiferous aspect of it, I will quote a paragraph from that lecture of Clerk Maxwell's to which I have already referred:
"The vast interplanetary and interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe, which the Creator has not seen fit to fill with the symbols of the manifold order of His kingdom. We shall find them to be already full of this wonderful medium; so full, that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of Space, or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity. It extends unbroken from star to star; and when a molecule of hydrogen vibrates in the dog-star, the medium receives the impulses of these vibrations, and after carrying them in its immense bosom for several years, delivers them, in due course, regular order, and full tale, into the spectroscope of Mr. Huggins, at Tulse Hill."
(It is pleasant to remember that those veteran investigators Sir William and Lady Huggins are still at work.)
This will suffice to emphasise the fact that the eye is truly an etherial sense-organ-the only one which we possess, the only mode by which the ZPE is enabled to appeal to us, and that the detection of tremors in this medium-the perception of the direction in which they go, and some inference as to the quality of the object which has emitted them-cover all that we mean by "sight" and "seeing."
I pass then to another function, the electric and magnetic phenomena displayed by the ZPE; and on this I will only permit myself a very short quotation from the writings of Faraday, whose whole life may be said to have been directed towards a better understanding of these ZPEeous phenomena.
Indeed, the statue in your entrance hall may be considered as the statue of the discoverer of the electric and magnetic properties of the ZPE of space. Faraday conjectured that the same medium which is concerned in the propagation of light might also be the agent in electromagnetic phenomena. He says:
"For my own part, considering the relation of a vacuum to the magnetic force, and the general character of magnetic phenomena external to the magnet, I am much more inclined to the notion that in the transmission of the force there is such an action, external to the magnet, than that the effects are merely attraction and repulsion at a distance. Such an action may be a function of the ZPE; for it is not unlikely that, if there be an ZPE, it should have other uses than simply the conveyance of radiation."
This conjecture has been amply strengthened by subsequent investigations. One more function is now being discovered; the ZPE is being found to constitute matter-an immensely interesting topic, on which there are many active workers at the present time. I will make a brief quotation from your present Professor of Natural Philosophy (J. J. Thomson), where he summarises the conclusion which we all see looming before us, though it has not yet been completely attained, and would not by all be similarly expressed:
"The whole mass of any body is just the mass of ZPE surrounding the body which is carried along by the Faraday tubes associated with the atoms of the body. In fact, all mass is mass of the ZPE; all momentum, momentum of the ZPE; and all kinetic energy, kinetic energy of the ZPE. This view, it should be said, requires the density of the ZPE to be immensely greater than that of any known substance."
Yes, far denser-so dense that matter by comparison is like gossamer, or a filmy imperceptible mist, or a milky way. Not unreal or unimportant-a cobweb is not unreal, nor to certain creatures is it unimportant, but it cannot be said to be massive or dense; and matter, even platinum, is not dense when compared with the ether. Not till last year, however, did I realise what the density of the ZPEether must really be, compared with that modification of it which appeals to our senses as matter, and which for that reason engrosses our attention. If I have time I will return to that before I have finished. Is there any other function possessed by the ether, which, though not yet discovered, may lie within the bounds of possibility for future discovery?
I believe there is, but it is too speculative to refer to, beyond saying that it has been urged as probable by the authors of "The Unseen Universe," and has been thus tentatively referred to by Clerk Maxwell:
"Whether this vast homogeneous expanse of isotropic matter is fitted not only to be a medium of physical interaction between distant bodies, and to fulfil other physical functions of which, perhaps, we have as yet no conception, but also to constitute the material organism of beings exercising functions of life and mind as high or higher than ours are at present-is a question far transcending the limits of physical speculation."
Indeed, it is a question whether it does not underlie everything that we know in the whole of the physical sciences; and whether it is not the basis of our conception of the three dimensions of space.
And so, on our present view, the intrinsic energy of constitution of the ZPE is incredibly and portentously great, every cubic millimetre of space possessing what, if it were matter, would be a mass of a thousand tons, and an energy equivalent to the output of a million-horse-power-station for 40 million years.
The universe we are living in is an extraordinary one; and our investigation of it has only just begun. We know that matter has a psychical significance, since it can constitute brain, which links together the physical and the psychical worlds. If anyone thinks that the ZPE, with all its massiveness and energy, has probably no psychical significance, I find myself unable to agree with him.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
For instance, to define the orthogonality of two solutions (or two modes) of Maxwell''s equations, we suppose that the considered solutions are alone in the Universe; this is mathematics, physically absurd, but useful for physics.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Well, I still don't understand you. Can you put it into structural terms? For example, How does an electromagnetic wave sustain it's energy while it is moving through space? So far, I hear that the electric wave produces the magnetic wave which produces the electric wave which produces the magnetic wave, and so on down the line. I understand that conventional Maxwellian equations describe it like so. And, they say, it works. At the same time I keep hearing about an energy source called by Maxwell the scalar field. I hear that scalar and vector go together, are they both just mathematical methodologies? Even so, vectors talk about something, so scalar talks about something too. It doesn't matter if the mathematics doesn't need
any more energy, it is the mathematical theory that doesn't need more energy. It is clear that a transmitted EMF is doing something, so the question is how does the wave do its thing? At least Maxwell had an idea, via displacement currents from scalar field inside the ZPE, opps, Aether...If we look to modern science for the answer I hear something like, "Oh, the equations are too complicated so we got rid of them, who will notice?"
Here's an interesting experiment - I found this paper on the web at keelynet written about the Aether. What is of interest here is the philosophy that was being considered at that time. I replaced the old word aether with the modern word ZPE for effect.
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">1908 - The ZPE of Space
and auxiliary files
by Lord Rayleigh and Sir Oliver Lodge
courtesy of Bruce L. Rosenberg
Friday, February 21, 1908
THE RIGHT HON. LORD RAYLEIGH,
O.M. P.C. M.A. D.C.L. LL.D. Sc.D. Pres.R.S., in the Chair
SIR OLIVER LODGE, LL.D. D.Sc. F.R.S. M.R.I
The ZPE of Space
THIRTY years ago Clerk Maxwell gave in this place a remarkable address on "Action at a Distance." It is reported in your Journal, Vol. VII., and to it I would direct attention. Most natural philosophers hold, and have held, that action at a distance across empty space is impossible-in other words, that matter cannot act where it is not, but only where it is.
The question "where is it?" is a further question that may demand attention and require more than a superficial answer. For it can be argued on the hydrodynamic or vortex theory of matter, as well as on the electrical theory, that every atom of matter has a universal though nearly infinitesimal prevalence, and extends everywhere; since there is no definite sharp boundary or limiting periphery to the region disturbed by its existence.
The lines of force of an isolated electric charge extend throughout illimitable space. And though a charge of opposite sign will curve and concentrate them, yet it is possible to deal with both charges, by the method of superposition, as if they each existed separately without the other. In that case, therefore, however far they reach, such nuclei clearly exert no "action at a distance" in the technical sense.
Some philosophers have reason to suppose that mind can act directly on mind without intervening mechanism, and sometimes that has been spoken of as genuine action at a distance; but, in the first place, no proper conception or physical model can be made of such a process, nor is it clear that space and distance have any particular meaning in the region of psychology. The links between mind and mind may be something quite other than physical proximity, and in denying action at a distance across empty space I am not denying telepathy or other activities of a non-physical kind-for although brain disturbance is certainly physical and is an essential concomitant of mental action, whether of the sending or receiving variety, yet we know from the case of heat that a material movement can be excited in one place at the expense of corresponding movement in another, without any similar kind of transmission or material connection between the two places: the thing that travels across vacuum is not heat.
In all cases where physical motion is involved, however, I would have a medium sought for; it may not be matter, but it must be something; there must be a connecting link of some kind, or the transference cannot occur. There can be no attraction across really empty space. And even when a material link exists, so that the connexion is obvious, the explanation is not complete-for when the mechanism of attraction is understood, it will be found that a body really only moves because it is pushed by something from behind.
...
...
So clearly and universally has it been perceived that waves must be waves of something- something distinct from ordinary matter-that Lord Salisbury, in his presidential address to the British Association at Oxford, criticised the ZPE as little more than a nominative case to the verb to undulate.
It is truly that, though it is also truly more than that; but to illustrate that luminiferous aspect of it, I will quote a paragraph from that lecture of Clerk Maxwell's to which I have already referred:
"The vast interplanetary and interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe, which the Creator has not seen fit to fill with the symbols of the manifold order of His kingdom. We shall find them to be already full of this wonderful medium; so full, that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of Space, or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity. It extends unbroken from star to star; and when a molecule of hydrogen vibrates in the dog-star, the medium receives the impulses of these vibrations, and after carrying them in its immense bosom for several years, delivers them, in due course, regular order, and full tale, into the spectroscope of Mr. Huggins, at Tulse Hill."
(It is pleasant to remember that those veteran investigators Sir William and Lady Huggins are still at work.)
This will suffice to emphasise the fact that the eye is truly an etherial sense-organ-the only one which we possess, the only mode by which the ZPE is enabled to appeal to us, and that the detection of tremors in this medium-the perception of the direction in which they go, and some inference as to the quality of the object which has emitted them-cover all that we mean by "sight" and "seeing."
I pass then to another function, the electric and magnetic phenomena displayed by the ZPE; and on this I will only permit myself a very short quotation from the writings of Faraday, whose whole life may be said to have been directed towards a better understanding of these ZPEeous phenomena.
Indeed, the statue in your entrance hall may be considered as the statue of the discoverer of the electric and magnetic properties of the ZPE of space. Faraday conjectured that the same medium which is concerned in the propagation of light might also be the agent in electromagnetic phenomena. He says:
"For my own part, considering the relation of a vacuum to the magnetic force, and the general character of magnetic phenomena external to the magnet, I am much more inclined to the notion that in the transmission of the force there is such an action, external to the magnet, than that the effects are merely attraction and repulsion at a distance. Such an action may be a function of the ZPE; for it is not unlikely that, if there be an ZPE, it should have other uses than simply the conveyance of radiation."
This conjecture has been amply strengthened by subsequent investigations. One more function is now being discovered; the ZPE is being found to constitute matter-an immensely interesting topic, on which there are many active workers at the present time. I will make a brief quotation from your present Professor of Natural Philosophy (J. J. Thomson), where he summarises the conclusion which we all see looming before us, though it has not yet been completely attained, and would not by all be similarly expressed:
"The whole mass of any body is just the mass of ZPE surrounding the body which is carried along by the Faraday tubes associated with the atoms of the body. In fact, all mass is mass of the ZPE; all momentum, momentum of the ZPE; and all kinetic energy, kinetic energy of the ZPE. This view, it should be said, requires the density of the ZPE to be immensely greater than that of any known substance."
Yes, far denser-so dense that matter by comparison is like gossamer, or a filmy imperceptible mist, or a milky way. Not unreal or unimportant-a cobweb is not unreal, nor to certain creatures is it unimportant, but it cannot be said to be massive or dense; and matter, even platinum, is not dense when compared with the ether. Not till last year, however, did I realise what the density of the ZPEether must really be, compared with that modification of it which appeals to our senses as matter, and which for that reason engrosses our attention. If I have time I will return to that before I have finished. Is there any other function possessed by the ether, which, though not yet discovered, may lie within the bounds of possibility for future discovery?
I believe there is, but it is too speculative to refer to, beyond saying that it has been urged as probable by the authors of "The Unseen Universe," and has been thus tentatively referred to by Clerk Maxwell:
"Whether this vast homogeneous expanse of isotropic matter is fitted not only to be a medium of physical interaction between distant bodies, and to fulfil other physical functions of which, perhaps, we have as yet no conception, but also to constitute the material organism of beings exercising functions of life and mind as high or higher than ours are at present-is a question far transcending the limits of physical speculation."
Indeed, it is a question whether it does not underlie everything that we know in the whole of the physical sciences; and whether it is not the basis of our conception of the three dimensions of space.
And so, on our present view, the intrinsic energy of constitution of the ZPE is incredibly and portentously great, every cubic millimetre of space possessing what, if it were matter, would be a mass of a thousand tons, and an energy equivalent to the output of a million-horse-power-station for 40 million years.
The universe we are living in is an extraordinary one; and our investigation of it has only just begun. We know that matter has a psychical significance, since it can constitute brain, which links together the physical and the psychical worlds. If anyone thinks that the ZPE, with all its massiveness and energy, has probably no psychical significance, I find myself unable to agree with him.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
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19 years 5 months ago #13541
by Tommy
Replied by Tommy on topic Reply from Thomas Mandel
Deep questions, but why always gravity?
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><center><font size="3">Space News </font id="size3">
from Around the Internet
Updated Every Weekday </center>
<font size="3">Twin Black Holes Churn at the Heart of M83 </font id="size3">
Summary - (May 18, 2005) Most galaxies, like cells in the body, have only a single nucleus in their midst - but a few have more. Now a team of astronomical sleuths from Argentina have used some advanced observational and software analysis methods to determine that 15MLY distant M83 is one of the few. Could the unique gravitational effects of having two such mass concentrations (SMBHs?) account for the numerous massive super-cluster star-formation regions associated with this 30-thousand light year diameter grand spiral galaxy? <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
<center> </center>
The full article can be found at ( www.universetoday.com/am/publish/twin_bl...les_m83.html?1852005 )
<hr noshade size="1">
<font size="5">T</font id="size5">here is an assumption mentioned in the above article; the assumption of attractive matter. The assumption is being made that a galaxy attracts matter and that eventually this matter collects at the center. The extreme situation is that of a black hole existing at the center of the galaxy.
However, when we look at the center of a galaxy what we see is a white hole. And when we ascertain the movement of matter in a galaxy, Oort finds that matter is streaming out from the center of the galaxy. And now, two black holes together?
So which is it? Is a galaxy a producer of matter? Or is a galaxy a collector of matter?
The answer to this question has profound ramifications. For one it would mean that the so-called "big bang" did not occur at one place at one time in the distant past, but is in fact occuring right now at the center of every galaxy. Remember that, strictly speaking, the big bang theory as an explosion of matter has been falsified. Simply put matter by itself cannot produse the Universe as it is now. As a replacement theory, a new "inflationary" theory involving not matter but space was proposed, a theory which has to violate the known laws of physics, that is, does not follow our present laws in order to attain the size of the universe today. Instead of matter expanding, space expands and carries matter along with it. Then, they tell us, the laws of physics kick in.
Interesting, Einstein's principle of equivilance, that gravity cannot be differentiated from acceleration in a free fall, doesn't seem to impress the scientists in this situation. Matter accelerating apart from each other circumvents ordinary physics because it is the space inbetween matter that is expanding. It only looks like matter is expanding...
Then they turn around and tell us that they have projected the life of the universe based on the expansion of matter...
But is the Universe really expanding? To begin with I do not see "expansion." For one, we normally would be expanding away from the center, meaning that we would see more stars behind us than in front of us. We don't. What we do see would put us at the middle, everything else expanded away from us...
But the expansion theory is only an assumption. It is an assumption based on another assumption. Expansion is observed, they tell us, in the red shift doppler effect. But this doppler effect was not itself an observation, rather it came about when Hubble added "c" the speed of light to his equations. He left it to the experts to concluded what it meant. What the experts concluded was the assumption, the taking as true without proof, that the redshift doppler effect was real. This assumption then was taken as observation of a recession speed proportunal to distance. They subsequently have seen galaxies receding at three fourths the speed of light. Their theory predicts that at some point the galaxies are receding at the speed of light. And it follows, at a greater distance, the galazies are receding faster than the speed of light. Or else they suddenly stopped...
All of this is based on the assumption that redshift is a measure of velocity. But that there is a correlation between recessional velocity and redshift is also an assmption.
What is strange, and sad, and a threat to our national security, is that the referee's will not allow evidence that redshaift is not a measure of velocity. Both Tifft and Arp introduce evidence that redshift is not a measure of velocity. Tifft show us, confirmed by many others, that redshift has periodicity, that it is quantized. This quantization of redshift frequencies would not be observable at high velocities - it would be smeared out. Arp shows us that galaxies connected together by magnetic flows of plasma can have different redshifts even though they are obviously at the same point in space.
Of course there is a lot at stake here. If it can be proven that redshift is not a measure of recessional velocity, then the assumption of expansion no longer is needed. The standard model, however, is supported by this assumption, and if the assumption is not true, then the entire scientific cosmological model falls apart.
At the time the big bang was first proposed by Gamov, there was no obvious source for all the matter observed in the universe. It had to come from somewhere, so they hypothesized that matter appeared out of nowhere long ago. Interestingly, the scientist's explanation for this anomaly is that science cannot say anything before t=0. But since that time, a source has been identified existing in another dimension which I can only grasp be regarding this dimension as existing "inside" ours. This source was confirmed by Hal Puthoff in 1987 in a paper which he shows how the electron obtains a balancing energy from the ZPE. Such a thing was also implied by Bell's Theorem which subsequent experiments verified indicating that particles communicate in a non-local way as if they are a single entity even while physically separated. The Casimir effect demonstrates an effect of the ZPE by which plates of matter in close proximity are "pushed" together.
There is a source of great energy available right now today which can explain how matter can arise without having to do so at some fantastic magical past event. There are various names depending on what aspect is under consideration. I call it the INSIDE of empty space which is where it is.
As a test of the conjecture, I submit that the present notion that matter is being sucked into galaxies is wrong. In it's place I submit that a galaxy is producing matter. This matter is a physical form of the energy coming through the ZPE probably via plasma current flows. Do we "see" plasma? Plasma has the nature of spirialing due to difference in the components of the current flow. Do we see spirialing at the cosmological scale? The answer is yes we do.
It has been noted that General Relativity requires a singularity and this led to the big bang theory. But why just one singularity? Why not a singularity at the center of every galaxy or star? If GR works at the grand cosmological level, then it must also work at the local level. And if GR works at the local level, why we do not need a grand cosmological level.
If we ignore the singularity at the grand level, we are confronted with finding it within our own galaxy, and indeed, within our solar system. Our sun would have to be a micro-galaxy. And indeed, our sun does in fact create anomalous energy. For example, the temperature od the sun's surface, the photosphere, is around 6000 degrees, Yet, the temperature of the chronosphere can sometimes reach a hundred times hotter. Gravity does not do an acceptable job at explaining this. But interrupted plasma flows would create such an effect. An analogy would be the coil in a car, when the points open, the current flow through the coil stops, the magnetic field collaspes, inducing new current flows which attain whatever voltage is necessary to jump the gap of the spark plug in your car's engine.
And so it is with our sun. Gravity may keep our planet in place, but the interaction with our sun is electromagnetic in essence.
What will it take for standard science to catch up?
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><center><font size="3">Space News </font id="size3">
from Around the Internet
Updated Every Weekday </center>
<font size="3">Twin Black Holes Churn at the Heart of M83 </font id="size3">
Summary - (May 18, 2005) Most galaxies, like cells in the body, have only a single nucleus in their midst - but a few have more. Now a team of astronomical sleuths from Argentina have used some advanced observational and software analysis methods to determine that 15MLY distant M83 is one of the few. Could the unique gravitational effects of having two such mass concentrations (SMBHs?) account for the numerous massive super-cluster star-formation regions associated with this 30-thousand light year diameter grand spiral galaxy? <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
<center> </center>
The full article can be found at ( www.universetoday.com/am/publish/twin_bl...les_m83.html?1852005 )
<hr noshade size="1">
<font size="5">T</font id="size5">here is an assumption mentioned in the above article; the assumption of attractive matter. The assumption is being made that a galaxy attracts matter and that eventually this matter collects at the center. The extreme situation is that of a black hole existing at the center of the galaxy.
However, when we look at the center of a galaxy what we see is a white hole. And when we ascertain the movement of matter in a galaxy, Oort finds that matter is streaming out from the center of the galaxy. And now, two black holes together?
So which is it? Is a galaxy a producer of matter? Or is a galaxy a collector of matter?
The answer to this question has profound ramifications. For one it would mean that the so-called "big bang" did not occur at one place at one time in the distant past, but is in fact occuring right now at the center of every galaxy. Remember that, strictly speaking, the big bang theory as an explosion of matter has been falsified. Simply put matter by itself cannot produse the Universe as it is now. As a replacement theory, a new "inflationary" theory involving not matter but space was proposed, a theory which has to violate the known laws of physics, that is, does not follow our present laws in order to attain the size of the universe today. Instead of matter expanding, space expands and carries matter along with it. Then, they tell us, the laws of physics kick in.
Interesting, Einstein's principle of equivilance, that gravity cannot be differentiated from acceleration in a free fall, doesn't seem to impress the scientists in this situation. Matter accelerating apart from each other circumvents ordinary physics because it is the space inbetween matter that is expanding. It only looks like matter is expanding...
Then they turn around and tell us that they have projected the life of the universe based on the expansion of matter...
But is the Universe really expanding? To begin with I do not see "expansion." For one, we normally would be expanding away from the center, meaning that we would see more stars behind us than in front of us. We don't. What we do see would put us at the middle, everything else expanded away from us...
But the expansion theory is only an assumption. It is an assumption based on another assumption. Expansion is observed, they tell us, in the red shift doppler effect. But this doppler effect was not itself an observation, rather it came about when Hubble added "c" the speed of light to his equations. He left it to the experts to concluded what it meant. What the experts concluded was the assumption, the taking as true without proof, that the redshift doppler effect was real. This assumption then was taken as observation of a recession speed proportunal to distance. They subsequently have seen galaxies receding at three fourths the speed of light. Their theory predicts that at some point the galaxies are receding at the speed of light. And it follows, at a greater distance, the galazies are receding faster than the speed of light. Or else they suddenly stopped...
All of this is based on the assumption that redshift is a measure of velocity. But that there is a correlation between recessional velocity and redshift is also an assmption.
What is strange, and sad, and a threat to our national security, is that the referee's will not allow evidence that redshaift is not a measure of velocity. Both Tifft and Arp introduce evidence that redshift is not a measure of velocity. Tifft show us, confirmed by many others, that redshift has periodicity, that it is quantized. This quantization of redshift frequencies would not be observable at high velocities - it would be smeared out. Arp shows us that galaxies connected together by magnetic flows of plasma can have different redshifts even though they are obviously at the same point in space.
Of course there is a lot at stake here. If it can be proven that redshift is not a measure of recessional velocity, then the assumption of expansion no longer is needed. The standard model, however, is supported by this assumption, and if the assumption is not true, then the entire scientific cosmological model falls apart.
At the time the big bang was first proposed by Gamov, there was no obvious source for all the matter observed in the universe. It had to come from somewhere, so they hypothesized that matter appeared out of nowhere long ago. Interestingly, the scientist's explanation for this anomaly is that science cannot say anything before t=0. But since that time, a source has been identified existing in another dimension which I can only grasp be regarding this dimension as existing "inside" ours. This source was confirmed by Hal Puthoff in 1987 in a paper which he shows how the electron obtains a balancing energy from the ZPE. Such a thing was also implied by Bell's Theorem which subsequent experiments verified indicating that particles communicate in a non-local way as if they are a single entity even while physically separated. The Casimir effect demonstrates an effect of the ZPE by which plates of matter in close proximity are "pushed" together.
There is a source of great energy available right now today which can explain how matter can arise without having to do so at some fantastic magical past event. There are various names depending on what aspect is under consideration. I call it the INSIDE of empty space which is where it is.
As a test of the conjecture, I submit that the present notion that matter is being sucked into galaxies is wrong. In it's place I submit that a galaxy is producing matter. This matter is a physical form of the energy coming through the ZPE probably via plasma current flows. Do we "see" plasma? Plasma has the nature of spirialing due to difference in the components of the current flow. Do we see spirialing at the cosmological scale? The answer is yes we do.
It has been noted that General Relativity requires a singularity and this led to the big bang theory. But why just one singularity? Why not a singularity at the center of every galaxy or star? If GR works at the grand cosmological level, then it must also work at the local level. And if GR works at the local level, why we do not need a grand cosmological level.
If we ignore the singularity at the grand level, we are confronted with finding it within our own galaxy, and indeed, within our solar system. Our sun would have to be a micro-galaxy. And indeed, our sun does in fact create anomalous energy. For example, the temperature od the sun's surface, the photosphere, is around 6000 degrees, Yet, the temperature of the chronosphere can sometimes reach a hundred times hotter. Gravity does not do an acceptable job at explaining this. But interrupted plasma flows would create such an effect. An analogy would be the coil in a car, when the points open, the current flow through the coil stops, the magnetic field collaspes, inducing new current flows which attain whatever voltage is necessary to jump the gap of the spark plug in your car's engine.
And so it is with our sun. Gravity may keep our planet in place, but the interaction with our sun is electromagnetic in essence.
What will it take for standard science to catch up?
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19 years 5 months ago #11579
by Tommy
Replied by Tommy on topic Reply from Thomas Mandel
I believe that I should repeat myself if only to make it clear what I am saying. What I am saying is that it appears (to me at least) the the American scientific journals are guilty of negligence of prior research and may also be criminally guilty (scientifically speaking)of falsification by ommission of the records, While Kuhn points out in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" that refree's will often in not always favor the prevailing orthodix viewpoint, it is not scientific to say the least to ignore evidence to the contrary. This is invokation of authority, and if you remember, our first scientist, Thales of Melitus gave birth to science (May 28 585 B.C.) specifically to go against the then prevailing view of how the universe worked.
So to invoke authority, which is what peer review does, is to revert to pre-scientific thinking.
I wish to resend a previous message just to make the point.
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">I wrote some time ago and I still believe...
I think what I am driving at is not so much that Maxwell's equations
can describe a ZPF field, but more so that it is obvious to me that EMFs have a source, and Maxwell did try at least to incorporate this source. There is something very suspicious going on in this regard, while Maxwell used the concept of Aether as his source, Aether is considered non-existent as evidenced by the M&M experiment interpretation and Einstein's non-use of it. And yet science has managed to come up with myriad, yes myriad versions of the Aether. What is suspicious is the total disregard for the Aether especially in the sense of "prior research" If this were a court of law, I would charge science with a crime of negligence and identity theft. The referee's should have caught this, and I am asking why didn't they?
Today, the top theory for the creation of our universe is based on a scalar field, necessary to instantaneously (almost) create the universe first, then the big bang "physics" work "better". So what is this scalar field and who first used it as a source of the energy matter uses to sustain its existence?
References:
quote:
On Quaternions in Electrodynamics
Version 2
www.aw-verlag.ch/EssaysE.htm#ED_withScalarField
At the advent of Maxwell’s electrodynamics the quaternion notation was often used, but today this is replaced in all text books with the vector notation. If the founders of electrodynamics would have used the quaternion notation consequently with their most unique property – namely the four-dimensionality – they would have discovered relativity much before Voigt, Lorentz and Einstein. A short description of electrodynamics with quaternions is given. As a result a new set of Maxwell’s equations is proposed, which transform in today’s equations when the Lorentz gauge is applied. In addition an application of this new quaternion notation to quantum mechanics and other disciplines is presented.
One of the most emotional disputes in the late nineteenth-century electrodynamics was about the mathematical notation to use with electrodynamics equations. The today’s vector notation was not fully developed at that time and many physicist – one of them was James Clerk Maxwell – are convinced to use the quaternion notation. The quaternion was "invented" in 1843 by Sir William Rowan Hamilton. Peter Guthrie Tait was the most outstanding promoter of quaternions. On the other side Oliver Heaviside and Josiah Willard Gibbs both decided independently that they could use a part of the quaternion system better than the entire system, why they proceeded further with that, what today is called the vector notation. Generally the vector notation used in pre-Einstein electrodynamics uses three-dimensional vectors. The quaternion on the other hand is a four-dimensional number. To make the quaternion usable for the three-dimensional electrodynamics of Maxwell, Hamilton and Tait indicated the scalar part by prefixing an ‘S’ to the quaternion and the vector part by prefixing a ‘V’. This notation was also used by Maxwell in his Treatise , where he published twenty quaternion equation with this notation. But with applying this prefixes the whole benefit of quaternions is not used. Therefore Maxwell has never done calculations with quaternions but only presented the final equations in a quaternion form. It was then merely a calculation with vectors and scalars as today practiced.
This papers introduces a new quaternion notation and applies it first to electrodynamics. Then in a second step it is shown that this new notation is also very suitable for application in other physical disciplines like quantum mechanics or kinematics. A new extended form of Maxwell's equations is suggested which transform into the well-known equations if the Lorentz gauge is applied.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
So to invoke authority, which is what peer review does, is to revert to pre-scientific thinking.
I wish to resend a previous message just to make the point.
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">I wrote some time ago and I still believe...
I think what I am driving at is not so much that Maxwell's equations
can describe a ZPF field, but more so that it is obvious to me that EMFs have a source, and Maxwell did try at least to incorporate this source. There is something very suspicious going on in this regard, while Maxwell used the concept of Aether as his source, Aether is considered non-existent as evidenced by the M&M experiment interpretation and Einstein's non-use of it. And yet science has managed to come up with myriad, yes myriad versions of the Aether. What is suspicious is the total disregard for the Aether especially in the sense of "prior research" If this were a court of law, I would charge science with a crime of negligence and identity theft. The referee's should have caught this, and I am asking why didn't they?
Today, the top theory for the creation of our universe is based on a scalar field, necessary to instantaneously (almost) create the universe first, then the big bang "physics" work "better". So what is this scalar field and who first used it as a source of the energy matter uses to sustain its existence?
References:
quote:
On Quaternions in Electrodynamics
Version 2
www.aw-verlag.ch/EssaysE.htm#ED_withScalarField
At the advent of Maxwell’s electrodynamics the quaternion notation was often used, but today this is replaced in all text books with the vector notation. If the founders of electrodynamics would have used the quaternion notation consequently with their most unique property – namely the four-dimensionality – they would have discovered relativity much before Voigt, Lorentz and Einstein. A short description of electrodynamics with quaternions is given. As a result a new set of Maxwell’s equations is proposed, which transform in today’s equations when the Lorentz gauge is applied. In addition an application of this new quaternion notation to quantum mechanics and other disciplines is presented.
One of the most emotional disputes in the late nineteenth-century electrodynamics was about the mathematical notation to use with electrodynamics equations. The today’s vector notation was not fully developed at that time and many physicist – one of them was James Clerk Maxwell – are convinced to use the quaternion notation. The quaternion was "invented" in 1843 by Sir William Rowan Hamilton. Peter Guthrie Tait was the most outstanding promoter of quaternions. On the other side Oliver Heaviside and Josiah Willard Gibbs both decided independently that they could use a part of the quaternion system better than the entire system, why they proceeded further with that, what today is called the vector notation. Generally the vector notation used in pre-Einstein electrodynamics uses three-dimensional vectors. The quaternion on the other hand is a four-dimensional number. To make the quaternion usable for the three-dimensional electrodynamics of Maxwell, Hamilton and Tait indicated the scalar part by prefixing an ‘S’ to the quaternion and the vector part by prefixing a ‘V’. This notation was also used by Maxwell in his Treatise , where he published twenty quaternion equation with this notation. But with applying this prefixes the whole benefit of quaternions is not used. Therefore Maxwell has never done calculations with quaternions but only presented the final equations in a quaternion form. It was then merely a calculation with vectors and scalars as today practiced.
This papers introduces a new quaternion notation and applies it first to electrodynamics. Then in a second step it is shown that this new notation is also very suitable for application in other physical disciplines like quantum mechanics or kinematics. A new extended form of Maxwell's equations is suggested which transform into the well-known equations if the Lorentz gauge is applied.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
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19 years 1 month ago #14496
by Tommy
Replied by Tommy on topic Reply from Thomas Mandel
From
www.cosmology.info/2005conference/wps/burbidge.pdf
THE STATE OF COSMOLOGY
Geoffrey Burbidge
University of California, San Diego
In introducing the general topic of this meeting I am going to give a personal view. Only late in my professional career (~ 1990) did I begin to work seriously in cosmology, though I had always followed with interest the various claims that progress was being made, and I even wrote a review of the state of affairs for Nature in 1971 entitled, "Was There Really a Big Bang" (Burbidge 1971).
1. Introduction
For some years this period, starting in the 1990s, has been said to be the golden age of cosmology. Compared with the situation earlier, this is a fair judgement, since in the last decade or more there has been a tremendous increase in the number of people working in the field, and large sums of money have been invested in new methods of observation of the background radiation and of large numbers of galaxies and other discrete objects, often those with high redshifts. Another important ingredient is the renewed interest in cosmology taken by many theoretical physicists and experimental particle physicists.
With this expansion has come a great deal of new information, and a model for the universe which almost everyone believes in. This in turn means that while there are many conferences on cosmology, the theme is almost always the same. This meeting will be different because some of its organizers have for a variety of reasons not followed the main stream. At the same time I hope that there will be a fair discussion of the conventional cosmological model.
In this introduction I want to make it clear why it is that some of us do not accept as the only starting point the usual model of an evolving universe starting with an initial creation process. The arguments against this approach are of two kinds. First there is the history which show that on several occasions in the early work assumptions were made which would lead to the observed answers, when alternatives were possible i.e. there have been very few real predictions, and two, the modern situation in which not all of the data are taken into account. This being the case it is extravagant and entirely premature to make the kind of claims that are now being made (cf. Spergel et al. 2003) for a standard model.
2. The Expansion of the Universe
The major discovery was the redshift - apparent magnitude relation for nearby galaxies by Hubble in 1929 (Hubble 1929). This was immediately interpreted as direct observational evidence for an expanding universe of the Lemaitre-Friedmann type, meaning that this interpretation agrees with the expanding solution of Einstein's equations. By 1930 everyone accepted that the universe is expanding. Reversal of the time axis of the expansion then leads to the conclusion that there was a finite origin for the universe which Lemaitre in 1936 originally described as the "Primeval Atom."
3. Nucleosynthesis and the Cosmic Microwave Background
There were no convincing physical investigations of the early state of this Primeval Atom until the late 1940s, when a group of leading physicists including Rudolf Peierls, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Maria Meyer, George Gamow and his colleagues Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman and others made the assumption that it was at that very early epoch that the chemical elements were synthesized. Gamow in 1946 had originally speculated that the electron degeneracy in the early universe would more than compensate for the mass difference between the neutron and a proton plus electron. Thus he concluded that the matter at the beginning would be a single neutron lump, so that the synthesis of the chemical elements out of this lump could be a verification of the Friedmann model. However, the problems of nucleosynthesis immediately encountered were, first that there is no stable mass at A = 5 or 8 so that the build up cannot go beyond D, 3He, 4He, and 7Li. Moreover a radiation field together with neutrons, protons and electrons leads to more complications, which were discussed by Gamow, Alpher and Herman. The other leading physicists gave up the problem when they realized that the bulk of the chemical elements could not be made in this way.
It was also realized in this period that the bulk of the known 4He, approximately 25-30% by mass could not have been made in the stars seen in the galaxies. The problem was that using the known luminosity's of galaxies and the time scale for the universe which was then thought to be ~ 2 x 109 years very little helium would have been made. Thus it was concluded that the helium must have originated in primordial nucleosynthesis. This required that the energy density of radiation in the early universe had to be very large. Until then, the reverse had always been assumed in Friedmann models. In such models S(t) (the scale factor) } t1/2 and T9 = const. t -1/2. The next step was completely ad hoc. The mass density of stable non-relativistic particles, #961; b, explicitly neutrons and protons in the theory of 1950, decreases with the expansion as S-3 or t-3/2 . Alpher and Herman put the density #961; b = 1.70 x 10-2 t-3/2 gm-3. But there is nothing in the theory which fixes the value of this numerical coefficient. It is adopted to make things come out right, -- to make the calculated value of Y agree with the observed value. This is why the big bang theory cannot be claimed to explain the microwave background or to explain a cosmic helium value close to 0.25. It is only an axiom of modern big bang cosmology, and the supposed explanation of the microwave background is a restatement of that axiom. Thus in no sense did the big bang theory predict the microwave background.1 This would only be true only if putting the factor 1.7 x 10-2 is called a prediction. If we eliminate t between the relations given above we find that
#961;b = 1.51 x 10-32 T3
which can be rounded off to #961;b #8776; 10-32 T3 gm cm-3. Alpher and Herman put the mass density of the universe #961;b = 10-30 gm cm-3 and thus concluded that T must be about 5ºK. Ten years later, when the Hubble constant had been further reduced, it appeared that #961;b #8776; 10-29 gm cm-3, and then both Gamow and Dicke suggested that T #8776; 15°K. Of course these were gross overestimates.
What none of the physicists throughout this period were aware of was that in 1941 McKellar (1941) had determined the temperature of the interstellar radiation from the spectra of the interstellar lines due to the molecules CH and CH+ which Adams and later McKellar had detected in the spectra of stars. McKellar showed that if the radiation has black body form, 1.8°K < T < 3.4°K, which is in remarkable agreement with what was found later. McKellar stated the following
"Adams has kindly communicated to the writer his estimate of the relative intensity, in the spectrum of #958; Ophiuchi, of the #955;R(0) interstellar line of the #955;3883 CN band and the #955;3874.00, R(1) line, as 5 to 1. B0J#8243;(J#8243; + 1) + . . . . has the value 0 and 3.78 cm-1 for the 0 and 1 rotational states and for the two lines R(0) and R(1) the values of the intensity factor #1110; are, respectively, 2 and 4. Thus from (3) we find, for the region of space where the CN absorption takes place, the "rotational" temperature,
T = 2°.3K.
If the estimate of the intensity of R(0) / R(1) were off by 100 per cent, this value of the "rotational" temperature would not be changed greatly, R(0) / R(1) = 2.5 giving T = 3°.4K and R(0) / R(1) = 10 giving T = 1°8K."
When, in 1965, Penzias and Wilson reported that they had directly detected the radiation, (Penzias and Wilson 1965) and later Mather et al. (1990, 1994) showed that the radiation is of almost perfect black body form with T = 2.726°K, they were richly rewarded. What I want to stress here is that while the black body nature of the radiation was predicted by the big bang theory, the numerical value of the temperature was not, and cannot be (see Turner 1993) and since McKellar had already measured it, admittedly indirectly, it is a moot point as to whether the 1965 event truly was a major discovery. (If someone has already discovered a new phenomenon and published it, but the people most interested are unaware of the earlier discovery, how should credit be apportioned?) In truth no prediction was involved. But the psychological effect based on mistaken ideas concerning the prediction and discovery is one of the major reasons why the big bang is believed.
What is now being done is to put the observed temperature in equation (1) and derive a value for #961;b . This is then compared with the value obtained from the nucleosynthesis calculations and observations involving D, He3 and He4. Very good agreements can be reached between theory and observation for #961; = 3 x 10-31 gm cm-3; so this is now called the observed baryonic mass fraction in the universe. This is a clear plus for the big bang cosmology. However, since the closure density in the big bang model 3Ho2 / 8#960;G is about 6.8 x 10-30 gm cm-3 (for Ho = 60 Km sec-1 Mpc-1) this is only about 5% of the closure density.
While this discrepancy has been known for ~ 30 years, it is only in the last few years that this "missing" mass energy has been claimed first to be cold dark matter (CDM) and more recently cold dark matter and dark energy (#923; CDM).
An elaborate "theory" (more appropriately a "scenario") of galaxy formation then rests on this belief that this missing mass is real, because only if CDM exists in large measure is it possible to simulate galaxy formation at all. This is a classical example of "The Emperor has no clothes" syndrome. While a great deal of energy and money is being devoted by particle physicists to searches for the WIMPS which could conceivably be the basis for the dark matter, nothing has been found so far. (cf. Science, 304, 950, 2004).
But, of course, none of this is necessary if we go back to the original observation of the He / H ratio and take the position that the observed ratio is the result of hydrogen burning in stars. Then, of course, the whole of the mass must be baryonic. This leads us to one final point. If hydrogen burning was responsible for this ratio, an estimate can be made directly from observation of the energy released in this process. The mass density in the universe can be determined from the masses of galaxies derived from their rotation curves and/or the velocity dispersion of the stars in galaxies, or of the galaxies in clusters. The virial both for individual galaxies and clusters is assumed to hold, so that in making this estimate we are assuming that some of the mass is dark. Putting in observed values for the space density of galaxies and a range of values of M/L, and a Hubble constant of 60 kmsec-1 Mpc-1 and supposing that the 4He/H ratio is 0.24, we obtain an energy density of the radiation 4.5 x 10-13 erg cm-3. (Fig. 4). This energy will initially be released in hard photons (UV radiation) but ultimately, according to thermodynamic arguments, it will be degraded to black body radiation with T #8776; 2.75°K. This is remarkably close to the measured value of 2.726°K. This is either a pure coincidence as it must be for those who believe in the big bang, or else it tells us that hydrogen burning was originally responsible for the CMB. In the QSSC it is argued that it is due to hydrogen burning in the newly created galaxies and that intergalactic dust is responsible for the degradation to thermal energy.
While this agreement was mentioned in one or two earlier papers (cf. Fowler, Wagner and Hoyle 1967) it was not described in detail until 1998 when Hoyle and I managed to get it published in the Astrophysical Journal (Burbidge & Hoyle 1998). The paper was earlier rejected by Phys. Rev. Letters whose referees were strong proponents of the big bang. In our paper we showed that it was possible to explain the origin of all of the isotopes including D and 3He in stars. D is probably built up in stellar flares on the surfaces of stars and partly destroyed by mixing in stellar interiors. An observational fact following from this hypothesis is that it predicts the D/H will be variable from one place in the galaxy to another, from galaxy to galaxy, and from QSO to QSO. But there really is no need to invoke a big bang.
Since none of the observations just described require this, what are the alternatives? Since the universe is expanding we can consider as possibilities a steady state universe which remains unchanged, or a cyclic universe with a cycle period ~ 20 Gyr. Here we omit discussion of Milne's kinematic cosmology, though it should not be forgotten that Milne raised the problem of the particle horizon, in the classical big bang picture, and this is only claimed to be resolved now by recourse to an inflationary period.
It is natural that what came next was the classical steady state universe of Bondi and Gold (1948) and Hoyle (1948).
4. The Steady State Universe
The basic idea is that the universe is not evolving. Thus matter (hydrogen) must be spontaneously created at a rate determined by the expansion. Bondi and Gold (1948) used as the basis for the theory what they called the perfect cosmological principle. Hoyle (1948) obtained the same model by generalization of Einstein's theory allowing for a repulsive term in the strong field regime (the C field) corresponding to creation (cf. Hoyle and Narlikar 1964, 1966). The steady-state theory was given quite a hostile reception as can be seen from an appraisal of the ways in which the various observational tests of the theory were handled (cf. Dingle 1953; Hoyle 1969; Hoyle et al. 2000, Chapter 7).
I believe that much of the prejudice in modern cosmology began at this time. In general the observers did not like the steady state theory, although several of the pieces of observational evidence against it were shown later to be false. My good friend Allan Sandage has always insisted that some of his colleagues at Mount Wilson and Palomar were from its inception convinced that the steady state must be wrong, because they already had good evidence for evolution. Overall, one has the impression that most people liked the idea that there was a beginning, and that evidence for evolution would ultimately be detected. The general view was that all of the galaxies are old with ages comparable to Ho-1. Thus, for example, evidence for young galaxies with ages « Ho-1 (cf. Burbidge, Burbidge, Hoyle 1963) was immediately disputed (Sandage 1963), so fast indeed, that the rebuttal paper of Sandage was published ahead of the paper by Burbidge et al. (was the Editor, a good friend of all of us, showing his prejudice?).
5. The Acceleration
There was one clear-cut prediction from the steady state theory. This was that the expansion of the universe would tend to accelerate (due to the creation process) rather than decelerate, as it must do in all Friedmann models without a cosmological constant (cf. Hoyle & Sandage 1956). Thus many claims were made from 1950 onward that the observations showed that the universe is decelerating, until by the 1980s it was finally admitted that the uncertainties in the observational methods being used were so great that it was impossible to decide.
Much more recently, starting in 1998, work using supernovae of Type Ia as standard candles which can be detected at high redshifts was announced by Perlmutter, Riess and their colleagues. They showed fairly conclusively, initially, with measurements out to z #981; 0.6 that the universe is accelerating. This being the case, there are two different cosmological scenarios that can explain it. The first is to insert a positive cosmological constant into the usual Friedmann models. The second is to remember that the classical steady state theory predicted (cf. Hoyle & Sandage 1956) this result and the modified steady state (the QSSC) also predicted that the universe would be accelerating (Hoyle et al. 1993, 2000). However, in reporting this result the observers once again showed their prejudice. Instead of at least stating that their result was qualitatively what had been predicted by the classical steady state model and the quasi-steady state cosmology, as is normally done in announcing a new observational result, and then going on to interpret their data in terms of a Friedmann model with a positive cosmological constant, they simply made the claim that they had demonstrated the reality of that model, as though that was the only way to go. And, of course, in doing this they were followed by the community who were equally ignorant or biased, or both, though attempts to clarify the situation (cf. Narlikar et al. 2002) have been published.
6. Driven by the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and the NASA Value of Ho
Since the direct discovery of photons from the CMB by Penzias and Wilson in 1965, and the mistaken belief by many that this was the fulfillment of a prediction by Gamow and his colleagues (though they were undoubtedly short-changed when it came to recognition), the standard model largely buttressed by this CMB "discovery" took over. It was generally assumed2 before it was established that the radiation would have black body form (cf. the continuous discussion of "relict" radiation by the school of Zeldovich), as indeed had been predicted by Gamow et al., provided it was generated in the big bang, and when it was finally showed by Mather et al. (1990, 1994) that the radiation has a beautiful black-body form over a wide range of wavelengths the triumph was complete. The result was cheered at the meeting when it was first announced (I was the chairman of the session of the AAS meeting at which the announcement was made).
For nearly all cosmologists this was thought to be the death knell of the steady state model and any of its improvements (which we were working on at the time). The idea that such a background spectrum could be obtained from many discrete sources appeared to be much too farfetched, though we have now shown that it is entirely possible (Hoyle et al. 2000). And in many ways what was more important, the CMB had shown how homogeneous and isotropic this component of the universe is. But a serious question that was still unanswered was to understand how can the matter component also show the same effect on the large scale, i.e. homogeneity and isotropy, if galaxies first condensed from quantum fluctuations in a very early universe when conditions prevailed such that objects were not able to communicate with each other soon after the beginning.
The way out of this problem was to invoke inflation, proposed by Guth (1981) and Linde (1982, 1983). The main point that I want to make here is not that inflation is not a good idea. It is, but it is not a paradigm (cf. Peebles 1993). It is yet another idea invented to explain what we see, like the numerical value of the initial baryon to photon-ratio and the existence of non-baryonic matter. Inflation has no basis in fundamental theory. Given all three of these assumptions we can make a plausible model, which will fit the observations. Without them we cannot. But this is how big bang cosmology, or if you like, evolutionary cosmology has progressed. The most recent observational programs are devoted to fitting together more and more of the details based on a series of assumptions chosen to make the original model work.
Undoubtedly the most impressive work of late on models of the universe has been the most recent analysis of the CMB based on the WMAP observations. Spergel et al. (2003) have shown that assuming a model in which the universe is flat with a large cosmological constant #923;, in which galaxy formation was started by nearly scale invariant adiabatic Gaussian fluctuations, they can fit the WMAP data very well with other parameters such as the Hubble constant and the D/H ratio in high redshift QSOs.
(note) Preliminary observations from rockets suggesting that the background radiation was not of black-body form were widely discredited by theorists who had already made up their minds.
The agreement between the model calculations of the acoustic fluctuations in the CMB due to matter fluctuations out to the third peak expected is particularly impressive, so that there now is considerable interest and belief in this latest "cosmological concordance" model.
However, if we restrict ourselves to observational quantities which are not based on any assumptions other than that the universe is expanding, the greatest discrepancy between model parameters chosen, and observations probably comes from the Hubble constant which Spergel et al. have used. They have claimed that this best fit model is obtained when Ho = 71 kmsec-1 Mpc-1, almost exactly the same as the value claimed to be correct by the group working with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and called the HST Key project (Freedman et al. 2001). The difficulty with this is that this value of Ho may be much too high. Sandage and Tammann, the most experienced workers in the field, have since 1974, argued that a value close to 50 Km/sec/Mpc is a much better choice (for a detailed discussion see Hoyle et al. 2000, Chapter 4). Over the last few years Sandage and Tammann have competed directly with the other group, also using the HST (Sandage and Tammann 2000), but for reasons much more to do with NASA's approach to public relations than to science, all of the publicity and attention has been given to the results and the personalities of Freedman et al. When we made a careful study of all of the data available up to 1999 (Hoyle et al. 2000) we concluded that the best value is Ho = 58 Kmsec-1 Mpc-1. Sandage and Tammann and their colleagues in their most recent work (Parodi et al. 2000; Tammann et al. 2002) have obtained a value for Ho = 58.5 kms-1 Mpc-1.
There is no doubt that that the popularity of the higher value of Ho has much more to do with the sociology of astronomy than to science. In this case the origin of this belief can be dated rather precisely, to May 25, 1999 when NASA held a press conference in Washington to announce, as they modestly put it, that the search for the Holy Grail of cosmology was over.3 The research team working on what was called the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project claimed they had finally solved one of the original mysteries -- the age of the universe. Sandage and his team were barred from attending or speaking at this press conference. The press conference was followed up by a similar announcement to a very large group at an AAS meeting in Chicago, this time by Robert Kennicutt, a Key team leader. He was more circumspect and mentioned Sandage's and Tamman's work. Kennicutt's announcement was also widely publicized, as was the work on the microwave background mentioned earlier.
How sensitive is the model to the value of Ho, which is put into the calculations?
Recently Blanchard et al. (2003) have tested whether or not a cosmological constant is really required by these observations of the CMB and large scale structure. They find that it is not, provided that the value of the Hubble constant is 46 kmsec-1 Mpc-1, a value which is certainly compatible with the work of Sandage and Tamman. Other quite small changes in other parameters are required. Then we are back to an Einstein - de Sitter model. But then we have to deal with the evidence for acceleration described earlier, because it was this evidence which led the community to about turn soon after about 1998 and start using a positive cosmological constant.
Five years after the first evidence for acceleration and hence the presence of a positive cosmological constant "dark energy" was claimed, the picture has become more complicated. Many more SN Ia redshifts have been obtained out z ~ 1.5 cf. Barris et al. (2004); Riess et al. (2004). While it is still claimed that the work shows that there is dark energy and dark matter it is suggested that at a redshift of about 0.5 there was a transition between acceleration and deceleration (a cosmic jerk). It also appears that a model with no cosmological constant in which the effect is due to dust which is replenished at the same rate as it is diluted by the expansion could also explain the observations (Riess et al. 2004) (Fig. 5).
By showing the way that a standard model has evolved (always starting with a big bang), I hope that by now that I have provided enough evidence for a reasonable person to conclude that there is no particularly compelling reason why one should so strongly favor a standard model universe starting with a beginning rather than an alternative approach, apart from the fact that it is always easier to agree with the majority rather than to disagree. This sociological effect turns out to be actually extremely powerful in practice, because as time has gone on young cosmologists have found that if they maintain the status quo they stand a much better chance of getting financial support, observational facilities and academic positions, and can get their (unobjectionable) papers published.
7. Explosive Phenomena and the Alternative Cosmological Approach
Starting in the 1950s the first radio galaxies were identified, and it became clear that they are extremely powerful energy sources often emitting energies of at least 1060 ergs (#981; 106 M?) in the form of relativistic particles and magnetic flux filling large volumes outside the galaxies, though they must have arisen from very small nuclei. The origin of this energy is either gravitational, or is due to creation in galactic nuclei. It soon became clear that many galaxies have active energetic nuclei, emitting large fluxes of energy not only in radio frequencies but in optical, X-ray, and #947;-ray wavelengths. Thus, by the 1980s, it was generally accepted that explosive events in galaxies are of primary importance.
But, from the point of view of cosmogony, this comparatively new phenomenon has not been integrated into the classical evolutionary cosmological picture.
However, in the 1950s and 1960s, V. A. Ambartsumian (1958, 1961, 1965) had already made the radical proposal that the centers of galaxies are places where the material of new galaxies is created and ejected. While Ambartsumian's ideas, based completely on the observations, have been largely ignored by the cosmological establishment, these are the cosmogonical ideas out of which, in the 1990s Hoyle, Narlikar & I formulated the quasi-steady-state cosmology (QSSC) in which it is argued that the centers of active galaxies are the creation sources, and it is in them, in the vicinity of near black holes, that the C (Creation)-field operates. Thus matter is being created out of a set of singular points associated with the nuclei of galaxies. Thus, using biblical terminology, galaxies do beget galaxies. This leads to expansion and contraction with a period of about 40 x 109 years superimposed on an overall expansion with a characteristic time #953;1012 years. This is a cyclic universe, which does not contract to extremely small dimensions (Narlikar & Burbidge 2004).
This theory, based on the C- field theory of Hoyle & Narlikar (1964, 1966), was developed in a number of detailed papers published since 1990 and in a book (Hoyle et al. 2000). Although many details remain to be worked out, it seems possible that all of the observed properties of the universe can be understood within the framework of this theory, though there are some phenomena that are still extremely difficult to understand. At this meeting these data will be discussed in detail by several speakers and Dr. Narlikar will discuss the QSSC.
8. Conclusion
In this introductory talk I have tried to describe some of the historical evidence which suggests to some of us that in trying to understand the properties of the universe we should not be forced into the straight jacket of the standard cosmology.
It is certainly possible that everything did begin in a single explosion, or, if the universe is cyclic (Steinhardt & Turok 2002, for example) it collapses to very small dimensions before it bounces, but this may not have ever happened. If it did theoretical physicists may relate it ultimately to string theory or something related to it, but this will still forever be out of reach of any genuine observational test.
If on the other hand ejection is occurring in the centers of galaxies all around us and throughout the universe we stand a much better chance of making observations which we may ultimately be able to interpret in theoretical terms.
Partly for historical reasons, and partly because cosmological research is driven more by the beliefs of strong individuals than by observational evidence, there is a complete imbalance between very different, but viable approaches. Only one cosmologist I have ever known (the late Dennis Sciama) ever changed his mind. I hope that this situation will not continue indefinitely. For cosmology, as in other nefarious pursuits, Sherlock Holmes4 got it right "It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all of the evidence" (A Study in Scarlet, Chapter 3), or "before one has data, one begins to twist facts to suit theory instead of theory to twist facts"
THE STATE OF COSMOLOGY
Geoffrey Burbidge
University of California, San Diego
In introducing the general topic of this meeting I am going to give a personal view. Only late in my professional career (~ 1990) did I begin to work seriously in cosmology, though I had always followed with interest the various claims that progress was being made, and I even wrote a review of the state of affairs for Nature in 1971 entitled, "Was There Really a Big Bang" (Burbidge 1971).
1. Introduction
For some years this period, starting in the 1990s, has been said to be the golden age of cosmology. Compared with the situation earlier, this is a fair judgement, since in the last decade or more there has been a tremendous increase in the number of people working in the field, and large sums of money have been invested in new methods of observation of the background radiation and of large numbers of galaxies and other discrete objects, often those with high redshifts. Another important ingredient is the renewed interest in cosmology taken by many theoretical physicists and experimental particle physicists.
With this expansion has come a great deal of new information, and a model for the universe which almost everyone believes in. This in turn means that while there are many conferences on cosmology, the theme is almost always the same. This meeting will be different because some of its organizers have for a variety of reasons not followed the main stream. At the same time I hope that there will be a fair discussion of the conventional cosmological model.
In this introduction I want to make it clear why it is that some of us do not accept as the only starting point the usual model of an evolving universe starting with an initial creation process. The arguments against this approach are of two kinds. First there is the history which show that on several occasions in the early work assumptions were made which would lead to the observed answers, when alternatives were possible i.e. there have been very few real predictions, and two, the modern situation in which not all of the data are taken into account. This being the case it is extravagant and entirely premature to make the kind of claims that are now being made (cf. Spergel et al. 2003) for a standard model.
2. The Expansion of the Universe
The major discovery was the redshift - apparent magnitude relation for nearby galaxies by Hubble in 1929 (Hubble 1929). This was immediately interpreted as direct observational evidence for an expanding universe of the Lemaitre-Friedmann type, meaning that this interpretation agrees with the expanding solution of Einstein's equations. By 1930 everyone accepted that the universe is expanding. Reversal of the time axis of the expansion then leads to the conclusion that there was a finite origin for the universe which Lemaitre in 1936 originally described as the "Primeval Atom."
3. Nucleosynthesis and the Cosmic Microwave Background
There were no convincing physical investigations of the early state of this Primeval Atom until the late 1940s, when a group of leading physicists including Rudolf Peierls, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Maria Meyer, George Gamow and his colleagues Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman and others made the assumption that it was at that very early epoch that the chemical elements were synthesized. Gamow in 1946 had originally speculated that the electron degeneracy in the early universe would more than compensate for the mass difference between the neutron and a proton plus electron. Thus he concluded that the matter at the beginning would be a single neutron lump, so that the synthesis of the chemical elements out of this lump could be a verification of the Friedmann model. However, the problems of nucleosynthesis immediately encountered were, first that there is no stable mass at A = 5 or 8 so that the build up cannot go beyond D, 3He, 4He, and 7Li. Moreover a radiation field together with neutrons, protons and electrons leads to more complications, which were discussed by Gamow, Alpher and Herman. The other leading physicists gave up the problem when they realized that the bulk of the chemical elements could not be made in this way.
It was also realized in this period that the bulk of the known 4He, approximately 25-30% by mass could not have been made in the stars seen in the galaxies. The problem was that using the known luminosity's of galaxies and the time scale for the universe which was then thought to be ~ 2 x 109 years very little helium would have been made. Thus it was concluded that the helium must have originated in primordial nucleosynthesis. This required that the energy density of radiation in the early universe had to be very large. Until then, the reverse had always been assumed in Friedmann models. In such models S(t) (the scale factor) } t1/2 and T9 = const. t -1/2. The next step was completely ad hoc. The mass density of stable non-relativistic particles, #961; b, explicitly neutrons and protons in the theory of 1950, decreases with the expansion as S-3 or t-3/2 . Alpher and Herman put the density #961; b = 1.70 x 10-2 t-3/2 gm-3. But there is nothing in the theory which fixes the value of this numerical coefficient. It is adopted to make things come out right, -- to make the calculated value of Y agree with the observed value. This is why the big bang theory cannot be claimed to explain the microwave background or to explain a cosmic helium value close to 0.25. It is only an axiom of modern big bang cosmology, and the supposed explanation of the microwave background is a restatement of that axiom. Thus in no sense did the big bang theory predict the microwave background.1 This would only be true only if putting the factor 1.7 x 10-2 is called a prediction. If we eliminate t between the relations given above we find that
#961;b = 1.51 x 10-32 T3
which can be rounded off to #961;b #8776; 10-32 T3 gm cm-3. Alpher and Herman put the mass density of the universe #961;b = 10-30 gm cm-3 and thus concluded that T must be about 5ºK. Ten years later, when the Hubble constant had been further reduced, it appeared that #961;b #8776; 10-29 gm cm-3, and then both Gamow and Dicke suggested that T #8776; 15°K. Of course these were gross overestimates.
What none of the physicists throughout this period were aware of was that in 1941 McKellar (1941) had determined the temperature of the interstellar radiation from the spectra of the interstellar lines due to the molecules CH and CH+ which Adams and later McKellar had detected in the spectra of stars. McKellar showed that if the radiation has black body form, 1.8°K < T < 3.4°K, which is in remarkable agreement with what was found later. McKellar stated the following
"Adams has kindly communicated to the writer his estimate of the relative intensity, in the spectrum of #958; Ophiuchi, of the #955;R(0) interstellar line of the #955;3883 CN band and the #955;3874.00, R(1) line, as 5 to 1. B0J#8243;(J#8243; + 1) + . . . . has the value 0 and 3.78 cm-1 for the 0 and 1 rotational states and for the two lines R(0) and R(1) the values of the intensity factor #1110; are, respectively, 2 and 4. Thus from (3) we find, for the region of space where the CN absorption takes place, the "rotational" temperature,
T = 2°.3K.
If the estimate of the intensity of R(0) / R(1) were off by 100 per cent, this value of the "rotational" temperature would not be changed greatly, R(0) / R(1) = 2.5 giving T = 3°.4K and R(0) / R(1) = 10 giving T = 1°8K."
When, in 1965, Penzias and Wilson reported that they had directly detected the radiation, (Penzias and Wilson 1965) and later Mather et al. (1990, 1994) showed that the radiation is of almost perfect black body form with T = 2.726°K, they were richly rewarded. What I want to stress here is that while the black body nature of the radiation was predicted by the big bang theory, the numerical value of the temperature was not, and cannot be (see Turner 1993) and since McKellar had already measured it, admittedly indirectly, it is a moot point as to whether the 1965 event truly was a major discovery. (If someone has already discovered a new phenomenon and published it, but the people most interested are unaware of the earlier discovery, how should credit be apportioned?) In truth no prediction was involved. But the psychological effect based on mistaken ideas concerning the prediction and discovery is one of the major reasons why the big bang is believed.
What is now being done is to put the observed temperature in equation (1) and derive a value for #961;b . This is then compared with the value obtained from the nucleosynthesis calculations and observations involving D, He3 and He4. Very good agreements can be reached between theory and observation for #961; = 3 x 10-31 gm cm-3; so this is now called the observed baryonic mass fraction in the universe. This is a clear plus for the big bang cosmology. However, since the closure density in the big bang model 3Ho2 / 8#960;G is about 6.8 x 10-30 gm cm-3 (for Ho = 60 Km sec-1 Mpc-1) this is only about 5% of the closure density.
While this discrepancy has been known for ~ 30 years, it is only in the last few years that this "missing" mass energy has been claimed first to be cold dark matter (CDM) and more recently cold dark matter and dark energy (#923; CDM).
An elaborate "theory" (more appropriately a "scenario") of galaxy formation then rests on this belief that this missing mass is real, because only if CDM exists in large measure is it possible to simulate galaxy formation at all. This is a classical example of "The Emperor has no clothes" syndrome. While a great deal of energy and money is being devoted by particle physicists to searches for the WIMPS which could conceivably be the basis for the dark matter, nothing has been found so far. (cf. Science, 304, 950, 2004).
But, of course, none of this is necessary if we go back to the original observation of the He / H ratio and take the position that the observed ratio is the result of hydrogen burning in stars. Then, of course, the whole of the mass must be baryonic. This leads us to one final point. If hydrogen burning was responsible for this ratio, an estimate can be made directly from observation of the energy released in this process. The mass density in the universe can be determined from the masses of galaxies derived from their rotation curves and/or the velocity dispersion of the stars in galaxies, or of the galaxies in clusters. The virial both for individual galaxies and clusters is assumed to hold, so that in making this estimate we are assuming that some of the mass is dark. Putting in observed values for the space density of galaxies and a range of values of M/L, and a Hubble constant of 60 kmsec-1 Mpc-1 and supposing that the 4He/H ratio is 0.24, we obtain an energy density of the radiation 4.5 x 10-13 erg cm-3. (Fig. 4). This energy will initially be released in hard photons (UV radiation) but ultimately, according to thermodynamic arguments, it will be degraded to black body radiation with T #8776; 2.75°K. This is remarkably close to the measured value of 2.726°K. This is either a pure coincidence as it must be for those who believe in the big bang, or else it tells us that hydrogen burning was originally responsible for the CMB. In the QSSC it is argued that it is due to hydrogen burning in the newly created galaxies and that intergalactic dust is responsible for the degradation to thermal energy.
While this agreement was mentioned in one or two earlier papers (cf. Fowler, Wagner and Hoyle 1967) it was not described in detail until 1998 when Hoyle and I managed to get it published in the Astrophysical Journal (Burbidge & Hoyle 1998). The paper was earlier rejected by Phys. Rev. Letters whose referees were strong proponents of the big bang. In our paper we showed that it was possible to explain the origin of all of the isotopes including D and 3He in stars. D is probably built up in stellar flares on the surfaces of stars and partly destroyed by mixing in stellar interiors. An observational fact following from this hypothesis is that it predicts the D/H will be variable from one place in the galaxy to another, from galaxy to galaxy, and from QSO to QSO. But there really is no need to invoke a big bang.
Since none of the observations just described require this, what are the alternatives? Since the universe is expanding we can consider as possibilities a steady state universe which remains unchanged, or a cyclic universe with a cycle period ~ 20 Gyr. Here we omit discussion of Milne's kinematic cosmology, though it should not be forgotten that Milne raised the problem of the particle horizon, in the classical big bang picture, and this is only claimed to be resolved now by recourse to an inflationary period.
It is natural that what came next was the classical steady state universe of Bondi and Gold (1948) and Hoyle (1948).
4. The Steady State Universe
The basic idea is that the universe is not evolving. Thus matter (hydrogen) must be spontaneously created at a rate determined by the expansion. Bondi and Gold (1948) used as the basis for the theory what they called the perfect cosmological principle. Hoyle (1948) obtained the same model by generalization of Einstein's theory allowing for a repulsive term in the strong field regime (the C field) corresponding to creation (cf. Hoyle and Narlikar 1964, 1966). The steady-state theory was given quite a hostile reception as can be seen from an appraisal of the ways in which the various observational tests of the theory were handled (cf. Dingle 1953; Hoyle 1969; Hoyle et al. 2000, Chapter 7).
I believe that much of the prejudice in modern cosmology began at this time. In general the observers did not like the steady state theory, although several of the pieces of observational evidence against it were shown later to be false. My good friend Allan Sandage has always insisted that some of his colleagues at Mount Wilson and Palomar were from its inception convinced that the steady state must be wrong, because they already had good evidence for evolution. Overall, one has the impression that most people liked the idea that there was a beginning, and that evidence for evolution would ultimately be detected. The general view was that all of the galaxies are old with ages comparable to Ho-1. Thus, for example, evidence for young galaxies with ages « Ho-1 (cf. Burbidge, Burbidge, Hoyle 1963) was immediately disputed (Sandage 1963), so fast indeed, that the rebuttal paper of Sandage was published ahead of the paper by Burbidge et al. (was the Editor, a good friend of all of us, showing his prejudice?).
5. The Acceleration
There was one clear-cut prediction from the steady state theory. This was that the expansion of the universe would tend to accelerate (due to the creation process) rather than decelerate, as it must do in all Friedmann models without a cosmological constant (cf. Hoyle & Sandage 1956). Thus many claims were made from 1950 onward that the observations showed that the universe is decelerating, until by the 1980s it was finally admitted that the uncertainties in the observational methods being used were so great that it was impossible to decide.
Much more recently, starting in 1998, work using supernovae of Type Ia as standard candles which can be detected at high redshifts was announced by Perlmutter, Riess and their colleagues. They showed fairly conclusively, initially, with measurements out to z #981; 0.6 that the universe is accelerating. This being the case, there are two different cosmological scenarios that can explain it. The first is to insert a positive cosmological constant into the usual Friedmann models. The second is to remember that the classical steady state theory predicted (cf. Hoyle & Sandage 1956) this result and the modified steady state (the QSSC) also predicted that the universe would be accelerating (Hoyle et al. 1993, 2000). However, in reporting this result the observers once again showed their prejudice. Instead of at least stating that their result was qualitatively what had been predicted by the classical steady state model and the quasi-steady state cosmology, as is normally done in announcing a new observational result, and then going on to interpret their data in terms of a Friedmann model with a positive cosmological constant, they simply made the claim that they had demonstrated the reality of that model, as though that was the only way to go. And, of course, in doing this they were followed by the community who were equally ignorant or biased, or both, though attempts to clarify the situation (cf. Narlikar et al. 2002) have been published.
6. Driven by the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and the NASA Value of Ho
Since the direct discovery of photons from the CMB by Penzias and Wilson in 1965, and the mistaken belief by many that this was the fulfillment of a prediction by Gamow and his colleagues (though they were undoubtedly short-changed when it came to recognition), the standard model largely buttressed by this CMB "discovery" took over. It was generally assumed2 before it was established that the radiation would have black body form (cf. the continuous discussion of "relict" radiation by the school of Zeldovich), as indeed had been predicted by Gamow et al., provided it was generated in the big bang, and when it was finally showed by Mather et al. (1990, 1994) that the radiation has a beautiful black-body form over a wide range of wavelengths the triumph was complete. The result was cheered at the meeting when it was first announced (I was the chairman of the session of the AAS meeting at which the announcement was made).
For nearly all cosmologists this was thought to be the death knell of the steady state model and any of its improvements (which we were working on at the time). The idea that such a background spectrum could be obtained from many discrete sources appeared to be much too farfetched, though we have now shown that it is entirely possible (Hoyle et al. 2000). And in many ways what was more important, the CMB had shown how homogeneous and isotropic this component of the universe is. But a serious question that was still unanswered was to understand how can the matter component also show the same effect on the large scale, i.e. homogeneity and isotropy, if galaxies first condensed from quantum fluctuations in a very early universe when conditions prevailed such that objects were not able to communicate with each other soon after the beginning.
The way out of this problem was to invoke inflation, proposed by Guth (1981) and Linde (1982, 1983). The main point that I want to make here is not that inflation is not a good idea. It is, but it is not a paradigm (cf. Peebles 1993). It is yet another idea invented to explain what we see, like the numerical value of the initial baryon to photon-ratio and the existence of non-baryonic matter. Inflation has no basis in fundamental theory. Given all three of these assumptions we can make a plausible model, which will fit the observations. Without them we cannot. But this is how big bang cosmology, or if you like, evolutionary cosmology has progressed. The most recent observational programs are devoted to fitting together more and more of the details based on a series of assumptions chosen to make the original model work.
Undoubtedly the most impressive work of late on models of the universe has been the most recent analysis of the CMB based on the WMAP observations. Spergel et al. (2003) have shown that assuming a model in which the universe is flat with a large cosmological constant #923;, in which galaxy formation was started by nearly scale invariant adiabatic Gaussian fluctuations, they can fit the WMAP data very well with other parameters such as the Hubble constant and the D/H ratio in high redshift QSOs.
(note) Preliminary observations from rockets suggesting that the background radiation was not of black-body form were widely discredited by theorists who had already made up their minds.
The agreement between the model calculations of the acoustic fluctuations in the CMB due to matter fluctuations out to the third peak expected is particularly impressive, so that there now is considerable interest and belief in this latest "cosmological concordance" model.
However, if we restrict ourselves to observational quantities which are not based on any assumptions other than that the universe is expanding, the greatest discrepancy between model parameters chosen, and observations probably comes from the Hubble constant which Spergel et al. have used. They have claimed that this best fit model is obtained when Ho = 71 kmsec-1 Mpc-1, almost exactly the same as the value claimed to be correct by the group working with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and called the HST Key project (Freedman et al. 2001). The difficulty with this is that this value of Ho may be much too high. Sandage and Tammann, the most experienced workers in the field, have since 1974, argued that a value close to 50 Km/sec/Mpc is a much better choice (for a detailed discussion see Hoyle et al. 2000, Chapter 4). Over the last few years Sandage and Tammann have competed directly with the other group, also using the HST (Sandage and Tammann 2000), but for reasons much more to do with NASA's approach to public relations than to science, all of the publicity and attention has been given to the results and the personalities of Freedman et al. When we made a careful study of all of the data available up to 1999 (Hoyle et al. 2000) we concluded that the best value is Ho = 58 Kmsec-1 Mpc-1. Sandage and Tammann and their colleagues in their most recent work (Parodi et al. 2000; Tammann et al. 2002) have obtained a value for Ho = 58.5 kms-1 Mpc-1.
There is no doubt that that the popularity of the higher value of Ho has much more to do with the sociology of astronomy than to science. In this case the origin of this belief can be dated rather precisely, to May 25, 1999 when NASA held a press conference in Washington to announce, as they modestly put it, that the search for the Holy Grail of cosmology was over.3 The research team working on what was called the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project claimed they had finally solved one of the original mysteries -- the age of the universe. Sandage and his team were barred from attending or speaking at this press conference. The press conference was followed up by a similar announcement to a very large group at an AAS meeting in Chicago, this time by Robert Kennicutt, a Key team leader. He was more circumspect and mentioned Sandage's and Tamman's work. Kennicutt's announcement was also widely publicized, as was the work on the microwave background mentioned earlier.
How sensitive is the model to the value of Ho, which is put into the calculations?
Recently Blanchard et al. (2003) have tested whether or not a cosmological constant is really required by these observations of the CMB and large scale structure. They find that it is not, provided that the value of the Hubble constant is 46 kmsec-1 Mpc-1, a value which is certainly compatible with the work of Sandage and Tamman. Other quite small changes in other parameters are required. Then we are back to an Einstein - de Sitter model. But then we have to deal with the evidence for acceleration described earlier, because it was this evidence which led the community to about turn soon after about 1998 and start using a positive cosmological constant.
Five years after the first evidence for acceleration and hence the presence of a positive cosmological constant "dark energy" was claimed, the picture has become more complicated. Many more SN Ia redshifts have been obtained out z ~ 1.5 cf. Barris et al. (2004); Riess et al. (2004). While it is still claimed that the work shows that there is dark energy and dark matter it is suggested that at a redshift of about 0.5 there was a transition between acceleration and deceleration (a cosmic jerk). It also appears that a model with no cosmological constant in which the effect is due to dust which is replenished at the same rate as it is diluted by the expansion could also explain the observations (Riess et al. 2004) (Fig. 5).
By showing the way that a standard model has evolved (always starting with a big bang), I hope that by now that I have provided enough evidence for a reasonable person to conclude that there is no particularly compelling reason why one should so strongly favor a standard model universe starting with a beginning rather than an alternative approach, apart from the fact that it is always easier to agree with the majority rather than to disagree. This sociological effect turns out to be actually extremely powerful in practice, because as time has gone on young cosmologists have found that if they maintain the status quo they stand a much better chance of getting financial support, observational facilities and academic positions, and can get their (unobjectionable) papers published.
7. Explosive Phenomena and the Alternative Cosmological Approach
Starting in the 1950s the first radio galaxies were identified, and it became clear that they are extremely powerful energy sources often emitting energies of at least 1060 ergs (#981; 106 M?) in the form of relativistic particles and magnetic flux filling large volumes outside the galaxies, though they must have arisen from very small nuclei. The origin of this energy is either gravitational, or is due to creation in galactic nuclei. It soon became clear that many galaxies have active energetic nuclei, emitting large fluxes of energy not only in radio frequencies but in optical, X-ray, and #947;-ray wavelengths. Thus, by the 1980s, it was generally accepted that explosive events in galaxies are of primary importance.
But, from the point of view of cosmogony, this comparatively new phenomenon has not been integrated into the classical evolutionary cosmological picture.
However, in the 1950s and 1960s, V. A. Ambartsumian (1958, 1961, 1965) had already made the radical proposal that the centers of galaxies are places where the material of new galaxies is created and ejected. While Ambartsumian's ideas, based completely on the observations, have been largely ignored by the cosmological establishment, these are the cosmogonical ideas out of which, in the 1990s Hoyle, Narlikar & I formulated the quasi-steady-state cosmology (QSSC) in which it is argued that the centers of active galaxies are the creation sources, and it is in them, in the vicinity of near black holes, that the C (Creation)-field operates. Thus matter is being created out of a set of singular points associated with the nuclei of galaxies. Thus, using biblical terminology, galaxies do beget galaxies. This leads to expansion and contraction with a period of about 40 x 109 years superimposed on an overall expansion with a characteristic time #953;1012 years. This is a cyclic universe, which does not contract to extremely small dimensions (Narlikar & Burbidge 2004).
This theory, based on the C- field theory of Hoyle & Narlikar (1964, 1966), was developed in a number of detailed papers published since 1990 and in a book (Hoyle et al. 2000). Although many details remain to be worked out, it seems possible that all of the observed properties of the universe can be understood within the framework of this theory, though there are some phenomena that are still extremely difficult to understand. At this meeting these data will be discussed in detail by several speakers and Dr. Narlikar will discuss the QSSC.
8. Conclusion
In this introductory talk I have tried to describe some of the historical evidence which suggests to some of us that in trying to understand the properties of the universe we should not be forced into the straight jacket of the standard cosmology.
It is certainly possible that everything did begin in a single explosion, or, if the universe is cyclic (Steinhardt & Turok 2002, for example) it collapses to very small dimensions before it bounces, but this may not have ever happened. If it did theoretical physicists may relate it ultimately to string theory or something related to it, but this will still forever be out of reach of any genuine observational test.
If on the other hand ejection is occurring in the centers of galaxies all around us and throughout the universe we stand a much better chance of making observations which we may ultimately be able to interpret in theoretical terms.
Partly for historical reasons, and partly because cosmological research is driven more by the beliefs of strong individuals than by observational evidence, there is a complete imbalance between very different, but viable approaches. Only one cosmologist I have ever known (the late Dennis Sciama) ever changed his mind. I hope that this situation will not continue indefinitely. For cosmology, as in other nefarious pursuits, Sherlock Holmes4 got it right "It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all of the evidence" (A Study in Scarlet, Chapter 3), or "before one has data, one begins to twist facts to suit theory instead of theory to twist facts"
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19 years 1 month ago #12656
by RussT
Replied by RussT on topic Reply from Russ Thompson
Tommy...you are prolific in your posts, and thanks for this last post from Mr. Burbidge.
Although I agree with him on much of what he says about the BB Theory and it's problems (Dark Matter or Dark Energy is not BB theory dependent in my opinion), the QSST's explanation for "How the Matter is created" has a major flaw in it...If you say that the Matter is being created from the center of the galaxies (from a singular process), how did the first galaxy get here to start that process??? In other words, it pre-supposes galaxies already in existence to do this.
I have a similar but different theory I will be sharing with the group in the next few days! Stay Tuned!
S=G
Although I agree with him on much of what he says about the BB Theory and it's problems (Dark Matter or Dark Energy is not BB theory dependent in my opinion), the QSST's explanation for "How the Matter is created" has a major flaw in it...If you say that the Matter is being created from the center of the galaxies (from a singular process), how did the first galaxy get here to start that process??? In other words, it pre-supposes galaxies already in existence to do this.
I have a similar but different theory I will be sharing with the group in the next few days! Stay Tuned!
S=G
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19 years 1 month ago #11119
by Tommy
Replied by Tommy on topic Reply from Thomas Mandel
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">(Dark Matter or Dark Energy is not BB theory dependent in my opinion), the QSST's explanation for "How the Matter is created" has a major flaw in it...If you say that the Matter is being created from the center of the galaxies (from a singular process), how did the first galaxy get here to start that process???<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
That is a very good question. It forces me to refine my original statement. Remember that the alternative view is that matter is sucked into the center of a galaxy with the extreme resulting in a black hole. In my view, the reverse is true, rather than matter being sucked in, matter is being spewed out. The model I have in mind is like comparing a sink drain which forms a whirlpool of water as it flows into the drain. This would be the conventional view. In my view, the ooposite model would be like those spinning fireworks which as they spin spew out hot gases and smoke. It also looks like a whirlpool, but is more like a spirialing.
I do not think that I want to say that it is the galaxy that is creating matter, rather that the creation of matter takes place at the center. A galaxy, after all, is a collection of stars, so we could simplify the situation and state that matter is created by a star. And that brings us to your question. If a star creates matter, what created the star?
I guess I wouldn't get away with the conventional scientific answer and claim that it simply appeared out of nowhere in a blink of an eye. So I won't even try that route.
So the question, if it is to remain a good question, really becomes
"How is matter created out of nothing? Well, matter isn't created out of nothing. Space, empty space is not nothing. It has been shown that what has usually been considered empty space is not empty. On the cntrary it is full of potential energy. This energy can be detected and has been, at absolute zero degree temperatures. They call it Zerp Point Energy or ZPE for short. This is not new, it used to be called the Ether, until our brilliant scientists decided that they didn't need it, and since they couldn't detect it, they just assumed that it was nothing at all.
So the original Big Bang theory was based on an assumption that empty space was nothing, and from this nothing, they surmised, came everything.
I like to call the ZPE, which is actually an electromagnetic thing, the INSIDE of space. That way I know where it is. This INSIDE can be detected and has been by the casimir effect, two polished plates placed together will stick together.
Maxwell believed in this INSIDE, and even derived mathematical equations to explain how electromagnetic fields propagate. But our brilliant scientists decided that his quatins were to "mystical" and difficult to work with, and since they didn't need them, they simplified Maxwell's equations to the now famous four.
So now the question becomes how does matter emerge from the INSIDE?
Let me think about this for a while...
tommy
That is a very good question. It forces me to refine my original statement. Remember that the alternative view is that matter is sucked into the center of a galaxy with the extreme resulting in a black hole. In my view, the reverse is true, rather than matter being sucked in, matter is being spewed out. The model I have in mind is like comparing a sink drain which forms a whirlpool of water as it flows into the drain. This would be the conventional view. In my view, the ooposite model would be like those spinning fireworks which as they spin spew out hot gases and smoke. It also looks like a whirlpool, but is more like a spirialing.
I do not think that I want to say that it is the galaxy that is creating matter, rather that the creation of matter takes place at the center. A galaxy, after all, is a collection of stars, so we could simplify the situation and state that matter is created by a star. And that brings us to your question. If a star creates matter, what created the star?
I guess I wouldn't get away with the conventional scientific answer and claim that it simply appeared out of nowhere in a blink of an eye. So I won't even try that route.
So the question, if it is to remain a good question, really becomes
"How is matter created out of nothing? Well, matter isn't created out of nothing. Space, empty space is not nothing. It has been shown that what has usually been considered empty space is not empty. On the cntrary it is full of potential energy. This energy can be detected and has been, at absolute zero degree temperatures. They call it Zerp Point Energy or ZPE for short. This is not new, it used to be called the Ether, until our brilliant scientists decided that they didn't need it, and since they couldn't detect it, they just assumed that it was nothing at all.
So the original Big Bang theory was based on an assumption that empty space was nothing, and from this nothing, they surmised, came everything.
I like to call the ZPE, which is actually an electromagnetic thing, the INSIDE of space. That way I know where it is. This INSIDE can be detected and has been by the casimir effect, two polished plates placed together will stick together.
Maxwell believed in this INSIDE, and even derived mathematical equations to explain how electromagnetic fields propagate. But our brilliant scientists decided that his quatins were to "mystical" and difficult to work with, and since they didn't need them, they simplified Maxwell's equations to the now famous four.
So now the question becomes how does matter emerge from the INSIDE?
Let me think about this for a while...
tommy
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