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[edit] Here ... have a mind beer

Mind-beer ... on me ... User:QTJ/Wikipedia_Humor

Sometimes it helps to see the humor behind everything?

--QTJ 06:19, 31 October 2006 (UTC)


[edit] My letters...

http://listserv.arizona.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0101&L=quantum-mind&T=0&P=1046


JSC is the Journal of Consciousness Studies. The study of consciousness using the scientific method is seeking to explain what consciousness is. It began several years ago with the search for the NCC or Neural Correlate of Consciousness. Bit bit the brain was dissected and entities such as the neuron, spikes, snaptic junctions, calcium were proposed as the NCC. But after all was said none of them emerged as a winner. Today the list is still asking what is consciousness?

In jcs-online@yahoogroups.com, Thommandel@... wrote:
"There is a way to look at all this information as a whole

rather than a group of complicated parts. Most of the descriptions in the descriptive paragraph are in terms of "parts". Entities. But we can also describe what these parts are doing -- their relationships. Parvizi and Damazio used this approach in their paper on the The Recticular Formation, they even said so five, pages into the article, "It is important to note that these formations are described in terms of interactions."

"To make a long story short, I am enclosing a target paper by

Charles Francois, Editor of the International Encyclopedia of Cybernetics and Systems writing about the newest new theory, interconnection theory, what it is and how we can develop it. The theory he is talking about is like a template theory - providing a structure and you fill in the blanks.

"The NCC, if we can still use that term, is not one neuron - it is

two neurons - a system. interacting as a whole


(Alfredo) -
"I am in general agreement but not sure if the term "connection" is the right one. "Connectionist" models run in digital computers work pretty mechanistically. Jonathan and I have looked for a stronger way of information integration (related to what he calls "the information problem" in consciousness research). As the mechanistic picture of the world is "partes extra partes" (each part is statistically independent, or ontologically separated from the others), the stronger information integration we are looking for goes beyond mechanicism."
"I think that quantum entanglement is a good solution for this problem, but it is still unclear how a multiparticle entanglement could encompass informational variety.
"After a decade of theoretical research I have recently came to the conclusion that the best medium for quantum entanglement in the brain is the calcium ion population trapped in the astrocytic syncytium and interacting with the neurons' electrical fields (Local Field Potentials).
"This kind of proposal is partially similar to Penrose-Hameroff's, but in my view the quantum information that is relevant for consciousness is not processed by the microtubule/gap junctions proteins, but by the ions trapped in them. Johathan prefers a quantum "pattern" in the single neuron membrane.It seems we are entering a new phase in quantum consciousness research, with these and other neuroscientific-plausible proposals, leading to an exciting discussion in the near future.


Hi Thom,

Going offlist to let you know fyi, I am midstream in the process of formulating a new articulation of quantum bioholography. Since I wrote this 2001 paper, I've been seriously frustrated along with my colleagues at http://emergentmind.org that Gariaev has been less than forthcoming about details of his equipment and protocols. He has thereby stymied efforts at replication, such as those Louis Malklaka would like to run. He and Poponin are in a feud over the discovery. Gariaev tends to 'fall off the map' periodically, especially since he is back in Russia. Nevertheless, his work is becoming 'the next big thing'in New Age thought...a new meme.

However, the theoretics is certainly worth pursuing, though I never actually took it as a mind-over-matter proof of 'free will'. It is simply arguable, but much of that depends of WHICH school of physics is used for that train of thought. Elsewhere I have argued strongly against the new agey buzzword 'intentionality'. [attached] Like the new 'What the Bleep' movie, they oversell this in 'The Secret' in a rather embarrassing and exploitive, materialistic way, telling the audience what they WANT to hear, for a nice fee. New Age hucksterism is a pet peeve of mine, moreso in those I generally respect.

A colleague and I spent the summer going over all the equations for the various interpretations of QM, and wound up back where we began - with my dissenting colleague now convinced that plenum physics and solitons are a substantive investigative path (no pun intended). ;))) This time we will make a mathematical argument, and THEN a conceptual one that follows from it.

I was recently contacted by Dr. Mitja Perus of Slovenia who has worked with both Pribram and Bohm and can probably shed some illumination with metaphors from optical holography. Currently, we are pursuing Resonant Holography, modeling not only brain ventricles as optical resonators, but each cell, as well.

Thx for your interest.

Best, Iona Miller

[edit] Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience

Hello,

An Arbitration case involving you has been opened: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience. Please add any evidence you may wish the arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience/Evidence. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, Thatcher131 11:32, 12 October 2006 (UTC)


The article is about Plasma cosmology. The primary editors are big bang supporters. They have methodically reduced the Plasma Cosmology article to meaningless nonsense.


"SA, in my view, you are obviously anti-plasma" : User:Tommysun,


"in my view you are obviously an incompetent editor who knows very little about the subjects on which you are trying to inject a POV based not on verifiable fact or Wikipedia style guide or policies but on your own prejudices. No one here is "anti-plasma". No one here denies plasma exists. You seem to have some warped view over what exactly the controversy is, but I welcome you to explain your edits rather than heading off on such tangents. By the way, you should keep your paranoid conspiracies regarding the Big Bang gang to yourself. It makes you sound a bit fanatical." --ScienceApologist 13:15, 8 March 2006 (UTC)



I wrote that before I found your statement which shows you to be a big bang advocate, and the rest the support for your position. Did my "warped view" turn out to be true? Disruptive, but not warped. My complaint concerns the honesty of the article. A reader expects the article to be about what the title infers. If he is reading an article "plasma cosmology" that is what he expects. If that article would contain a section titled "We disagree and here is why a,b and c That would be doing it honestly. At least the reader would know who is doing the agreeing and disagreeing. To intermix two categories such as big bang and plasma cosmology in the plasma cosmology article is not being honest about it.

[edit] Evidence that Plasma Cosmology is not fringe science

Plasma cosmology is often regarded as a "fringe" science by commentators of the Standard theory. But "fringe" is not an accurate protrayal of what is happening, and may even be misleading. The Standard theory is based on Einstein's General Relativity. Thus the considerations of General Relativity are the considerations of the big bang theory. However, General Relativity is gravity based. Indeed, everything in the Standard theory is explained by means of gravity.

Plasma Cosmology has been championed here by its editors as a fringe science, merely a discredited alternative theory to the Standard theory. But that is not the case according to the literature. In J.N.N. Sullivan's book, (Sullivan was touted as one of the four or five greatest interpreters of physics in his time,) The Limitations of Science" Sullivan writes about Einstein's theory. (Notice how a great writer writes about a great theory. Compare his prose with that of Interpreters of the big bang theory today. )

These examples suffice to show that the experimental evidence for Einstein's theory is very good indeed. Another consideration, which appeals greatly to mathematicians, is the extraordinary inner harmony and elegance of the theory. The results follow so naturally from the premises, and the premises are in themselves so acceptable, that it seems most unlikely that so coherant an argument could be wrong. The later developments of the theory, however, are not so convincing. The ground covered by Einstein's generalized theory is very considerable. It does not. however, account for everything. In particular, electric and magnetic phenomena are left outside his scheme."

Plasma effects are not fringe science, they are just left out of it.

The big bang is a theory which holds as its world view the forces of gravity. But the forces of gravity do not account for much of what we observe. For example, we observe great outpourings of matter/energy from the center of galaxies, but gravity would have the matter moving inward toward the center. That is how gravity formed the glaxies to start with, according to the standard theory. So a mechanism was needed to create these outflows out of inflows, and the one idea they came up with was the accretion disk of a black hole that "reflects" my word, excess incoming matter back out. It can do this even when there is no incoming matter.

It is taught in the classroom by Proga that the black hole is something they came up with, a hypothesis. But by the time it gets down to the Daily News, the speculation becomes hypothesis becomes theory, becomes only theory, becomes fact, becomes truth.

What part does Wikipedia play in this representation?

Is the big bagn theory out of our reach? It is not fair/balanced/equitable to state that "content" is out of reach of the members of this committee, and that it is not the purpose of the committe to pass judgement on content, and then assume that the theory is a correct/accepted theory,and then evaluate the relationship with other theories that do not accept the same conclusions, as if the big bang content is the only correct theory. If content is not the issue here, then neither is the correctness of the content. And without correctness, debate about undue weight is meaningless.

I can't for the life of me, figure out why plasma cosmology is supposed to be about the big bang, except that it is the big bang group that is editing it. Does the article on rock n roll include the significant views of classical music? Why isn't Plasma cosmology about plasma cosmology? Why should it be written in relation to big bang? By the big bang professors none the less...Now there is vested interest, does a professor who teaches big bang theory and explains the opposing theory here have a conflict of interest? Does he have a vested interest in maintaing the status quo? Kuhn would say so I think.
The big bang is another theory altogether. Perhaps there are areas of overlap, for example Gribbins says that the equations for steady state and big bang are almost identical the difference is one term. (Didn't learn that from Wikipedia...so what happens to the fringe claim?)

""But except for content overlap, plasma cosmology should be about plasma cosmology and big bang should be about big bang. Black should be about black and white should be about white. NPOV is not, IMO, taking black and white and representing them as grey. Or, believing that white is better than black, eliminate the black altogether with justifications such as "Irrelevant"

""The problem here is NPOV, or rather the lack of NPOV accomplished by circumvention of NPOV. Here's how it works with them --"We won't criticize it in every sentence, we will just include a criticism in every sentence. Look, we have done a wonderful job of presenting the concept. Of course, we are experts." That dosn't make sense to me either, but that is what they do.

Is that how it is here?

Following is a statement by an anonymous editor found on the history page of the cosmology article.

(Redundant. Current physical cosmology does not *argue* for the big bang, it presupposes it.)

Is this how wikipedia works? What the involved scientists call a theory, and they concede, yet to be proven, somehow has become a not only fact, but presupposed fact. And, therefore, it is not necessary to mention the presupposed has beens. (When in fact, the big bang theory borrows from steady state, calls it fringe science, formulates a new physics which hasn't been verified yet,)

My day at WP NPOV talk

[edit] Greetings and salutations

Might I say, Sir, that I thought your edits to WP:NPOV were brilliant and useful. And Mr. Bauder asked you what I thought was a good question. Did you see it? In any case in edit mode for this page, here

[1]

probably is the technical code for the "diffs." Maybe you were thinking of something else. But, in any case, I am looking forward to see what you have to say in response to Mr. Bauder's request for diffs. Yours truly, Rednblu 03:59, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I stil don't know about diffs. I can do a page, but how do I do a sentence in a page?Tommy Mandel
Does that mean you have forgotten this? Art LaPella 16:17, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

---

Nice answer, Sir. Very insightful, in my opinion. Let's cool it for 24 hours, in any case--no more edits for 24 hours--whatever happens next, what do you say? In situations like this we should take responsibility for how the "owners" of the page must feel. Know what I mean? The murky and self-contradictory text of the WP:NPOV page must be fixed. But we will all have to learn our way there slowly. Does that make sense? --Rednblu 05:06, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Warning

Your recent edits to our core policy Wikipedia:Neutral point of view consitute disrupting Wikipedia to make a point. You should not make changes to core policy without first achieving consensus on the Talk page. Such disruption is strongly discouraged and can lead to your being blocked from editing Wikipedia. Guy 11:23, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

You are kidding of course...Of course you can provide be with the policy statement which backs up your accusation, otherwise I might think you are trying to bully me. You wouldn't do that would you?Besides, I did have an agreement.

If you want to get technical, my edit was a correction, I merely added a detail which was already in the body of the text. I think you are being unfair and not acting in accordance with the free encyclopedia concept of Wikipedia. Are you an owner of the page?

Tommy Mandel 15:47, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Please see WP:POINT. Also there is long-standing ArbCom consensus that editors with a vested interest in the content of an article should not edit it directly. You have a vested interest in this due to current disputes. Feel free to comment on Talk but please leave the article alone. Guy 17:59, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, but all I did was read the NPOV article and made two key statements say the same thing - a typo. The text said "all views" while the nutshell said "views". I merely added all to views in the nutshell. Therefore I did not disrupt anything because I did not change anything. Does that vested interest go for everyone?

[edit] RednBlu

RednBlu, Perhaps that "reading into" is the problem with NPOV, because it has several aspects to it, such as undue weight, verification, neutrality, and different readers of the policy will pay more attention to (read into) this or that aspect. I think that is what is going on, in part, at plasma cosmology, one editor sees "present all views" while other editors see " no undue weight" and in the process of correcting that aspect violates the other aspect. However I think SA knows what he is doing.Tommy Mandel 16:26, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
I wrote this to Art, but really should be sent to RednBlu
NPOV states that ALL SIGNIFICANT VIEWS should be included WITHOUT ADDING UNDUE WEIGHT. I can see one side of this dispute trying to add all significant views in compliance with NPOV, while the other side of the dispute are trying to remove undue weight in compliance with NPOV.
The article is about Plasma cosmology. By definition the material should be about plasma cosmology, correct? So does undue weight apply ALSO to comparisons to subject matter outside the plasma cosmology domain? Are we supposed to take into consideration something outside the field when determining undue weight? Seems to me that in the plasma cosmology article undue weight would apply to those aspects of plasma which differ in significance. And big bang considerations, a different article, ought not be considered in the comparison. So exactly where are the boundries of inclusion of determinants of undue weight? And what about accuracy? As in Attribution, Accuracy, NPOV. Maybe turn it around NPOV, Accuracy Attribution or NAA, Tommy Mandel


Question" Why is it that we all can beat down Plasma science to the status of fringe theory, but we are admonished not to point out the flaws in the big bang theory because we are amateurs? ----

Perhaps for the same reason that we all can beat down rap music if we don't like it: because one doesn't ordinarily need a PhD to promote rap music. Art LaPella 20:45, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Art, Rap music is art, and art is subjective Art. Science is objective. Don't need a PhD to see objective evidence. Turns out that the big bang is not even a theory yet, since the operating theory is Inflation, and Inflation has 21 varieties, none of which has become mainstream, I would classify big bang and plasma and a couple others as alternatives. Would you like to discuss flaws?

Tommy Mandel 22:58, 31 October 2006 (UTC) My evidence in a nutshell:

[edit] 21 flavors

What are the 21 flavors of inflation? Where is your reference for that? You provided a link to Andrei Linde's website, [2], but I couldn't find anything about 21 flavors there. –Joke 15:43, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Maybe it is in one of his papers. You do know about the 21 different inflation theories, don't you? Maybe the "flavors" was my original research.

I tried to find it, but can't. Maybe it is one of those arxiv pdfs... It was a paper written by one of those involved. He went through the 21, or maybe a few of them. One of them has singularities all over the place. I don't get the sense that they have a favorite one that has been tested and confirmed...but if one reads secondary sources, inflation is a fact. Tommy Mandel

Found something

JOHN GRIBBINInflation for Beginners [[3]]


INFLATION has become a cosmological buzzword in the 1990s. No self-respecting theory of the Universe is complete without a reference to inflation -- and at the same time there is now a bewildering variety of different versions of inflation to choose from.

[edit] Why Hubble's opinion should or shouldn't be mentioned

Regarding your note to me, are you contending that the mere fact that Hubble held the POV that redshift "represents a hitherto unrecognized principle of nature" makes it significant (in the wiki sense)? --Art Carlson 20:13, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

It depends if you are using WikiTalk or WikiWalk. The essence of NPOV is to not introduce a writers bias. In other words there should be no Wiki angle on the story. The article should be transparent.

What is of great significance about Hubble's beliefs is the mainstream view that Hubble proved expansion. That belief is false. Hubble's equation, which he added velocity to, is not a proof, it is an assumption, assumed to be true without proof - like one is one. A tautology actually. And it is that addition/interpretation that Hubble did not like.

Hubbles discovery was that the farther away a star is, the greater the redshift. This is what was observed. That the redshift was a Doppler effect, created by adding velocity to the equation, was assumed by others, and not by Hubble himself.

The significance of this can be traced to an anomaly recently found in cosmology - quantized redshift. If quantized redshift is confirmed, and that has been done several times, then there is no Doppler/expansion/Inflation, and no need for all that black stuff. And no more controversy and Plasma cosmology will be the only theory in town. So, yes, it is significant. It will become what Hubble will always be known for, like a real artist, he knew when to stop.Tommy Mandel 00:21, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

This sound a little different from your note, so I'm not sure I understand yet which argument you're making. Are you arguing that Hubble's opinion should be included in Big Bang and Plasma cosmology because it is true, in contrast to the opinion held by the majority of scientists and the general public? --Art Carlson 07:29, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Certainly it is true that Hubble concluded no expansion. It is not true, contrary to what the majority of scientists and the general public believe, that Hubble proved expansion. What has been proved is the relationship between distance and redsift, that this redshift is also an indicator of velocity has not been proved, it remains a hypothesis.
Hubble's "opinion" was based on his observations, so his opinion is really his conclusion. Hubble concluded that redshift did not show expansion. Has his conclusion been refuted? My guess is that if it had been, then we all would know about it as it would constitute observational evidence of Doppler redshift.
I think the fact that
"Hubble concluded redshift did not mean Doppler/expansion"
should be mentioned anywhere Hubble and redshift/Doppler are mentioned together. To pull it out based on perceived relevance or truth is a technical violation of NPOV. You can circumvent NPOV here by finding someone who specifically refuted Hubbles specific views and published it in a peer reviewed paper and then restate his counter-conclusion.
And if there were such a paper, maybe you could even argue then that Hubbles incorrect view is not relevant. Until then, Hubbles conclusion is a hypothesis yet to be falsified. That is what makes it relevant.
205.188.116.5 03:42, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but I'm still having some trouble with this. As I understand you, you believe the following (please correct me if I am wrong):
  • That Hubble was the first to observe the (roughly linear) relationship between redshift and distance, and that this observation is important, verifiable, and uncontroversial and should thus be reported in Wikipedia. --Art Carlson 08:19, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
I believe that is true.
  • That the majority of scientists and the general public believe that Hubble proved expansion, and that this majority opinion should be reported as such in Wikipedia. (I would hope that scientists express this with a little more nuance.) --Art Carlson 08:19, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
I do not believe that is true.
Pardon me if I am still having trouble fitting all your statements together. Since you wrote above, "It is not true, contrary to what the majority of scientists and the general public believe, that Hubble proved expansion.", but you don't believe the bulleted statement here, I can only conclude that you believe "that this majority opinion should not be reported as such in Wikipedia". Is this correct? --Art Carlson 08:03, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Very interesting logic you use. First of all, can you point me to the paper which reports that expansion has been proved and at least one paper confirming that? As far as I know, there is evidence of expansion, but there is also evidence of no expansion. Evidience, as you know, is not proof. If you mention the SN-1a (sic) proof, that is only an observaton of the relationship between redshift and distance. It is only when the assumption that redshift is a Doppler effect, and therefore we are also seeing a velocity, that a hypothesis, not a proof, is formulated. The hypothesis is that the Universe is expanding at an accelerated pace.
Realistically, mainstream science can only state they they accept the hypothesis that redshift is a Doppler effect. They cannot, and I guarantee you, that they do not, state that redshift Doppler has been proved. To start with they are not the experts and the real experts are not making that claim.
As far as the general public is concerned, do you really believe that the opinion of someone who has no idea of what is going on matters in the scientific way? Are you telling me that scientists listen to public polls about details of their favored subject?
But to answer your question, I don't know. The belief, "that Hubble proved expansion" is incorrect, Certainly you agrre with that much. I don't believe that the majority of scientists will state that Hubble proved expansion, but let's say they do believe it. How do you report a belief in a falsehood? Well, original research doesn't count here. So, do you have a verifiable source from a reputable publisher that states that "Hubble proved expansion"? (Hmmm, I wonder if I was the one to first say Hubble proved expansion, no, I read it stated just like that somewhere.)
(Emphasis added by Art Carlson.)
So far so good.
  • The first thing that disturbs me is that you seem to equate observations with conclusions. Is that true, or was that perhaps an unfortunate formulation? --Art Carlson 08:19, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
If you mean that I said Hubble based his conclusion on his observations, I believe that is true. If so, his opinion is not an opinion but a hypothesis.
I still find your writing style confusing ("his opinion is really his conclusion" and "his opinion is not an opinion"), but I think I've caught your drift. --Art Carlson 08:03, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Second, you seem to think that there are no conclusions in the scientific literature based on Hubble's data other than his own. This would certainly be a valid reason to report Hubble's opinion in Wikipedia. Do you believe this to be true? --Art Carlson 08:19, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
That is not what I think at all. ScienceApologist had dismissed Hubble's conclusion as irrelevant. I say that until it has been falsified it remains a hypothesis. We could call it Hubble's hypothesis.
So we agree that there are a number of interpretations of Hubble's data in the verifiable scientific literature. (Of course, Hubble's data itself is woefully outdated and has been supplanted by newer measurements, but I think that is not an issue here.) So we have gotten to the central question, What criteria should an encyclopedia use to decide which of many published interpretations to report? Can we agree that the principles in WP:NPOV#Undue_weight are relevant here? Do you know of any other wiki policies that are directly relevant? (I am - brashly - assuming that we can agree on which facts are verifiable and which sources are reliable. I also realize that there is still plenty of room to disagree about how to apply the policy on undue weight.) --Art Carlson 08:03, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
What you are asking for is very important. To start, the Principle of NPOV is primary. Subsequent principles cannot be used to circumvent it. Do you agree with that? If so, then the NPOV principle is
WIKIPOLICY The neutral point of view is a means of dealing with conflicting views. The policy requires that, where there are or have been conflicting views, these should be presented fairly. None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being the truth, and all significant published points of view are to be presented, not just the most popular one. It should also not be asserted that the most popular view or some sort of intermediate view among the different views is the correct one. Readers are left to form their own opinions.
So wouldn't you agree that publishing a statement such as "mainstream science and the majority of the public believe Hubble proved expansion." is giving undue weight to "a popular view of some sort."?
If so then it is a violation of NPOV, correct?
Now, if you can come up with a scientific paper which proves Hubble proved expansion, and a second source which confirms the proof, then I suppose you could circumvent NPOV by publishing that proof. Same with a survey of public opinion.
Assuming that you cannot do this, do you agree that the statement "mainstream science and the majority of the public believe that Hubble proved expansion" is an assertion of "the most popular view" and thereby violates NPOV?
64.12.117.5 23:16, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
There is a crucial difference between asserting that "Hubble proved expansion" is the most popular view and asserting "that the most popular view ... is the correct one". Only the latter is forbidden by NPOV policy. Can we agree to maintain this distinction? I am puzzled because I thought we would be discussing which other views to include. Of all views on this issue, you seem to want to exclude the most popular one. Have I misunderstood you, or can you somehow reconcile that exclusion with WP:NPOV#Undue_weight? --Art Carlson 08:36, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Art you wrote; "There is a crucial difference between asserting that "Hubble proved expansion" is the most popular view and asserting "that the most popular view ... is the correct one".

Seems to me that while "truth" is not our goal at Wikipedia, wouldn't you agree that is because Wikipedians are not qualified to determine truth? Therefore, editors can only rely on authoritaive sources to ascertain truth, correct? So the quest for truth remains, albeit in a secondary way. My question then is: Do we sacrifice truth for procedure? Do we sacrifice truth for the populat view? The point I am wanting to make is that our reliance on secondary sources is to keep in touch with the truth, and when the secondary source tells us an untruth, it no longer qualifies as a verifiable and reputable source. Therefore, if we know for a fact that Hubble did not prove/discover/observe/believe in expansion, then we know that any reference to "Hubble expansion" is not a truth, and if we continue to assert Hubble expansion based only on the most popular/accepted/revered/ view is telling a lie.

Three umpires were talking shop over a beer. The first one said, "I just calls 'em as they are." The second was not quite so confident in his own abilities and said, "I calls 'em as I sees 'em." There ensued a heated discussion about how reliably the truth can be discovered. Noticing the silence from across the table, they turn to the third umpire for his opinion. Refusing to be drawn into their dispute, he answered, "They ain't nuthin' until I calls 'em."
If you "know something for a fact", then you should (a) publish it in a verifiable, reliable source, and (b) be so convincing that your publication becomes notable. Until you do, your opinion, truth or not, does not belong in Wikipedia. This is an essential and non-negotiable ground rule. If you don't want to play by it, this is not the place for you. --Art Carlson 08:57, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Does that go for You and SA and Art L and Joke was well? I agree that my opinion should not appear in the article, nor should it appear on their talk page as evidence. Does that go you youse guys too? I have no plans on staying here long, as I said I am a reader, not an editor, simply trying to correct some mistakes I found.
Of course the ground rules apply to everybody. --Art Carlson 08:54, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, Art, I requested a verifiable reputable source for the opinion that the big bang is the most widely acecepted theory in science and thus can be said to be the mainstream view... I keep asking but I don't see the citation supporting, what do you call it, opinion?. Could it be that there isn't a verifiable reputable source that says that? And while you are at it, what about the verifiable reputable scientific source stating that plasma cosmology is discredited and ignored by mainstream cosmology? The source you do cite is our source complaining that we are being ignored. Neat trick you play on them.

Try looking through several textbooks on cosmology. If you find even one that does not commit over 90% of its space to Big Bang theory, I will be shocked and grateful and go straight to the library. I will be surprised if you find one that even mentions plasma cosmology. --Art Carlson 09:18, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] the sweet breath of intelligence

Are you telling me to go to the library and look in all the theory of gravitation books and I will discover that only ten per cent of the space is devoted to elecromagnetism? What does that tell us? Does the standard particle theory, in it's quest for a unification of the forces of nature, attempt to unify those forces by making the gravitational force the dominant force and ignoring the electroweak force? Physical cosmology, without EMF, is not the compete theory. Tommy Mandel 03:39, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

That's right. The mainstream view is that gravitation is gravitation and E&M is E&M, notwithstanding the fact that both are necessary to understand some phenomena. If you have a theory of gravity based on E&M, then that is a fringe theory, and you can tell that by looking in textbooks on gravitation. --Art Carlson 18:16, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, a theory of gravitation based on EMF would be a fringe theory. I have seen some of those. But no one knows what gravity is, so one cannot say that a e&m theory of gravity is fringe or not? Einstein's theory of gravitation is, I think, a theory of equivalance, a metaphor.

Maybe you think that I am trying to explain everything in terms of plasma. I can understand your perception, it is not uncommon for a theory to be regarded as the one theory. That might be a flaw in theory construction - assuming the theory has to explain it all. Or in this case, assuming that the standard theory explains it all.

I do not think that everything is to be explained in terms of plasma. I am reminded of gravity all the time. I think that a complete cosmology will include gravity, but I also think it will include electromagnetic effects, and the subsequent products. You see, EMF can create new things, gravity can only hold things down. In other words, if the Universe evolves, it does so because of predomanently eletromagnetic fields. Life for example.

My ontological objection (a point of view) is that the big bang theory is based on gravity, subsequently it tries to explain everything in terms of gravity and that has resulted in a whole collection of imagined invisible stuff. (This used to be a hunch I had, and did not find any corroborating evidence until I read Sullivan who informs us that EM is not a part og General Relativity - purposely. Obviously because GR is Einstein's theory of gravity. And the big bang is based on Einstein's General Relativity/gravity which has a beginning singularity requirement. It is this singularity that is causing all the problems. BUT, as someone said, the theory does not tell us how big this singularity is, or how small it is. So again we have an assumption - the assumption that the singularity was small. Assume, on the other hand, that the singularity was/is big. Now the question becomes exactly how does the physical Universe emerge from this everywhere singularity? Did it do it once? Or is it doing it all the time? Did this phase reversal occur at sometime in the past? Or is it occuring now? If energy were being produced now, and to be consistent, it would have have been produced all along, why isn't everything just energy by now?

Enter the second law - over to you.

Back to Wikiland. Obviously electromagetism plays a significant role, witness Proga's incorporation of MHD modeling into his astrophysical research. No longer can you say plasma research is discredited/ignored/disputed/fringe. And your friends, now, can only argue that plasma research is not an integral part of Plasma cosmology. Tommy Mandel 03:33, 16 November 2006 (UTC)


As for the signers of the Open Letter, are you trying to say they are (a) not verifiable, (b) not reputable, or (c) not scientific? --Art Carlson 11:26, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

No, I'm not. Is a link to that letter in the big bang article? What I am saying is that the comment was taken out of context and used as if it were some sort of evidence that ignorance of plasma is the fault of plasma.

Good, so the Open Letter is, in general, a verifiable, reputable, and scientific source. Then you feel when the Open Letter says
An open exchange of ideas is lacking in most mainstream conferences.
Today, virtually all financial and experimental resources in cosmology are devoted to big bang studies.
that it is not valid to conclude from that
... advocates for these ideas are mostly ignored by the professional cosmology community.

No it is not valid the way it was presented in the article. First of all it is the editors synthesis/conclusion/twist. You are assuming only one of two possibilities is true, an alternative explanation is that the professional cosmology community is ignorant of plasma effects. 152.163.100.67 19:26, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't quite follow you. What difference do you see between "the professional cosmology community ignores these ideas" and "the professional cosmology community is ignorant of these ideas"? Perhaps our ideas are close enough that we can compromise on a wording. Do you have a suggestion? --Art Carlson 20:05, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

It is called honesty. The impression given by the letter is not the same impression given by the article. There was no evidence presented in the quoted statement as to why no funding has been forthcoming, the twist is to imply that that lack of funding is because scientists are ignoring plasma. Tommy Mandel 04:26, 16 November 2006 (UTC)


? --Art Carlson 09:27, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Let me explain it this way. Intent. There are two aspects of a criminal act mens reus and actus reus. The act and the intent. Noth are necessary for a criminal act to have been committed. Woman walks into store puts her purse down, then picks up other ladies purse and walks out. Did she steal it? If her intent was to take her own purse, then it was a mistake and not theft. The difference beteen ignores these ideas and is ignorant of these ideas is the implied intent. Tommy Mandel 03:33, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I still can't figure out where you see a problem. It would help if you would suggest an alternate wording. Are you saying that Tom Van Flandern is wrong, dishonest, or putting the blame on plasma when he writes that plasma cosmology is "ignored by astronomers"? Would you be happy if the article said "The professional cosmology community is not aware of the ideas of plasma cosmology." or "The professional cosmology community does not pay any attention to the ideas of plasma cosmology." or maybe explicitly "Research in plasma cosmology receives no funding and its ideas are not discussed at scientific conferences."? --Art Carlson 09:01, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

It is not my opinion that Hubble didn't believe in expansion. It is not my opinion that redshift can be explained in various ways (Creil). It is not my opinion that what happened before and leading up to Inflation is not known. It is not my opinion that the mechanism of Inflation is not known. It is not my opinion that there are very many different versions of the Inflation theory. It is not my opinion that none of them has yet to be widely accepted as the most popular theory. It is not my opinion that cosmologists research with recently found hybrid MHD modelings. It is not my opinion that MHD ignores electric effects, I think, because of a lack of understanding of electrostatics they said...(?)It is not my opinion that galaxies are spirialing outward and not inward. It is not my opinion that the quasars are local. It is not my opinion that a black hole is actually a while hole.

What is my opinion is that the source of energy/matter is at the center af a AGN, and it is perfectly normal for such a source to be spewing out all kinds of stuff. (gases and plasma's)Tommy Mandel 02:31, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I've been wondering how you reconcile a static universe with the second law of thermodynamics. Now I see you solve half the problem by postulating objects that violate conservation of mass/energy. I must say, if postulating forms of matter (dark matter, dark energy, inflaton) that have never been observed on Earth is manslaughter, then postulating violation of the conservation of mass/energy is murder in the first degree, but, hey, you're welcome to your private opinion. The other half of your problem is finding a sink so that the density of the universe stays constant. May I suggest two solutions? (1) Black holes, although they would have to not only swallow matter but annihilate it, or (2) an expanding universe (à la steady state theory). --Art Carlson 09:18, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

This is a deje vu for me, just before I looked up plasma in Wikipedia, a colleague and I were at the tail end of a long detailed discussion about the second law. One of his concluding comments was that he needed the big bang to create the second law. (conceptually) As far as the law of conservation, Inflation derives the energy from the scalar field, so why not my Inside dimension which is the same thing? Now, the sink. Thanks for pointing out the other half of the question/solution. Do you know anything about Tommy Gold's recycling cosmology? I read one sentence of his, enough for me to adopt his name, but strangely never got around to looking into his model. Anyway, are you saying that as much energy must disappear as that which appears?

Tommy Mandel 03:39, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Still thinking about it. Tommy Mandel 03:33, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

You tell me. This is your fantasy of cosmology. But if you believe the universe was always like it is now and always will be, then you can't allow energy to build up over time. --Art Carlson 09:14, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Let's start with this, I am not the only one --

"How can anything that small be conscious?", David Bohm says in "The Undivided Universe", 1994, p. 37:

"The fact that the particle is moving under its own energy, but being guided by the information in the quantum field, suggests that an electron or any other elementary particle has a complex and subtle inner structure .... To make this suggestion yet more plausible, we note that between the shortest distances now measurable in physics (of the order of 10^-16 cm) and the shortest distances in which current notions of space-time have any meaning which is of the order of 10^-33 cm, there is a vast range of scale ... comparable to that which exists between our own size and that of the elementary particle. Moreover, since the vacuum is generally regarded as full ... it may further be suggested that ultimately the energy of this particle comes from this source."

This "source" was identified by Hal Puthoff in his 1987 paper in which he shows that the radiational energies of an atomic particle are balanced by an energy input from what he called the ZPF. In short, atomic particles move, and some of them have magnetic moment, and they do this moving forecer. You talk about the law of conservation, so how can a particle do it's thing forever without running out of energy? Eventually we come to the conclusion that a particle gets it's energy from inside, and when you put a quantity of particles together such as in a star, you have a lot of energy being supplied by what to us is the center of the star. This explains why we do in fact observe energy flowing out from a star and from the center of a galaxy and from what is called a black hole, which Arp calls a white hole.

What the hell are you talking about? If you don't have any notion what the sink of energy is, just say so. --Art Carlson 17:59, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, what is the sink of energy? Tommy Mandel 03:33, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Are you asking me where the sink of energy is in your cosmology? --Art Carlson 09:03, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] time to answer these questions

Do you agree that: A) The original big bang theory as an explosion of matter has been falsified and discarded? B) The replacement theory of Inflation has not been "proved" C) Inflation is based on a physics which is unknown to us. D) After Inflation, the Universe is in a plasma state. E) the big bang theory is based on gravity and does not take plasma into account. !!!!

Those are questions we can perhaps discuss at some point, but I would really like to first settle these questions (or at least understand your position on them):
1) Is it required, or at least always allowed, to report what the majority believes on an issue (right or wrong)?
2) Should Hubble's opinion be reported as one of the notable minority opinions on the interpretation of the redshift-distance relation?
--Art Carlson 20:37, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

How come, after thirty years of reading science books, I cannot recall even one which talked about majority and minority views? Except, of course, Thomas Kuhn's "Strucure of Scientific Revolutions which goes into some detail how the mainstream protects their favored theory until finally a revolution takes place, a.k.a. paradigm shift, is a notable exception. Have you read it?

To answer your question, it is allowed to report opinions as long as they are from verifiable and reputable sources. And of course Hubble should be mentioned in regards to redshift/distance. But that does not allow one to misrepresent Hubble's view on redshift/expansion.

We are emphatically not doing science here (WP:NOR), we are writing an encyclopedia. And we are not assuming (in the sense of taking on) the majority view, we are reporting it. If it's all right with you, I would like to declare this point settled: An article on any topic is required to report, in one form or another, what most people think about it. --Art Carlson 08:23, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

(Does this mean we can include what four hundred people think about the big bang? Tommy Mandel

First, the plasma cosmology article is not about the big bang theory. There is no valid comparison of majority and minority here except in terms of Plasma cosmology. This is not a general article about cosmology where majority and minority positions are represented. This is a dedicated article about plasma cosmology. As far as mentioning what people think of it, I would say that it is the plasma people who should dominat that mentioning, and of course what the big bang thinks of plasma should be mentioned. I do not argue that mention of the big bang is not appropriate, I argue that here in the plasma cosmology article the dominant theory is plasma cosmology theory. Can you understand that? Tommy Mandel

So at least you now acknowledge that your insertion of Hubble's view into the big bang article was out of place? --Art Carlson 20:57, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes and no. Yes in the sense that big bang is about big bang and is not required to present opposing views per se...(?) No, in the sense that whenever redshift, Doppler, and Hubble are mentioned together, it would be more accurate to include Hubble's position.

Have I got this straight? Your position is that the article about plasma cosmology should not report, in any form, what most people think about it. --Art Carlson 08:28, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Now getting back to the point, you seem to think that Hubble was right concerning the nature of redshift, and you seem to think that that is an argument for including his POV in some science articles (as opposed to his biography). Are you aware that, according to Wikipedia policy (with which you may disagree),
  • Your opinion doesn't matter in Wikipedia. (WP:NOR)
  • It doesn't matter whether Hubble really was right or not. (WP:V)
--Art Carlson 08:23, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Nor does your opinion. Nor does Scienceapologist's opinion. What matters are the facts. And the fact is that Hubble did not agree with expansion. The fact is that it cannot be said that Hubble proved expansion. Why are you arguing about leaving information out of the articles? I thought you said you try to improve them? Is leaving out valuable information improving the article?

Tommy Mandel 23:07, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
And it is also a fact that Tommy Mandel does not agree with expansion. The question is, whose views are notable enough that they should be reported? I submit that Mandel has a better claim than Hubble, because Mandel has had the opportunity to review half a century of intensive observations and theoretical development that was not available to Hubble. --Art Carlson 20:57, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Trying to find an answer to your question...I am not the only one who doesn't accept expansion as an explanation. That list of 30 has grown to four hundred signers. Even so what I think shouldn't influence my editing here. However, I can report what is being reported in the field. And by selective editing accomplish the same thing - a circumvention of NPOV.

But here is my point about Hubble. I once read somewhere, that "Hubble proved the Universe is expanding" Now, if one studies the history of cosmology, one finds that not only did Hubble not prove expansion, he didn't even believe it. So the statement "Hubble proved expansion" is false. And when it appears in a place that is purported to be scientific, then that statement is pseudoscience or as a scientist would put it, it is not science. It is a falsehood. I have no desire to edit the big bang article.

Hubble's conclusion/doubts should be in the big bang article at least as a note. If you go to the article "redshift" I would say that Hubble's belief should be in the article proper. If you go to intrinsic redshift, it should be in the lead paragraph. If you go to the redshift section of plasma cosmology, it should be mentioned because plasma cosmology does not have a Doppler redshift. PC assumes an intrinsic (non-Doppler)cause for redshift, and that is what Hubble wanted to say.

Tommy Mandel
I don't care that you 'once read somewhere, that "Hubble proved the Universe is expanding"'. You didn't read it in Wikipedia (check out the links in your last section, as well as Hubble's law and Big bang), so there is nothing to correct. --Art Carlson 08:43, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I care that "someone" is telling us that Hubble proved expansion because that is not true. What is an encyclopedia for anyhow? I'll take your word for it that it is not being said in Wikipedia. My thought was that because it has been mentioned "somewhere" that "Hubble proved expansion" it would be a courtesy to keep the reader well informed. Tommy Mandel 01:53, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Is cosmology the big bang theory?

(Blocked)::Exactly what is this "mainstream view" in science" If it is a belief system among the scientists, then their beliefs do not constitute evidence that their belief is true. And is this "mainstream view" reporting a verifiable and reputable source? Or is is the opinion of the editor, expertise notwithstanding? Obviously editorial opinions violate NPOV. So it is important to determine where "mainstream view" comes from. Is there a scientific paper stating that there is a mainstream view and what that view is?


ArtC, I went to the article called cosmology. It states in part --

In recent times, physics and astrophysics have come to play a central role in shaping what is now known as physical cosmology, i.e. the understanding of the Universe through scientific observation and experiment. This discipline, which focuses on the Universe as it exists on the largest scales and at the earliest times, begins with the big bang, an expansion of space from which the Universe itself is said to have erupted ~13.7 ± 0.2 billion (109) years ago

According to the article, "This discipline (physical cosmology) begins with the big bang..." do you agree with that?

Tommy Mandel 23:44, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, I do have to admit that the discipline of physical cosmology did not begin with the big bang, but rather some 13.7 ± 0.2 billion years later. ;-) --Art Carlson 08:08, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Are you saying that the only theory explaing physical cosmology is the big bang theory? Do you have a source which proves the big bang is the only correct theory? Or is "Inflation" still an unproven hypothesis? And then guess what I found in the history? It was a revert by an editor and this is his explanation for the revert.
(Redundant. Current physical cosmology does not *argue* for the big bang, it presupposes it.)
Perhaps you could explain this to me please...

Tommy Mandel

I realize that a Wiki editor here must take into consideration the weightyness of what he is writing about. But at the same time, I question that NPOV allows the editor to interject weightyness. My understanding is that NPOV is circumvented by merely citing a verifiable and rreputable source stating weightyness.

So a statement that such and such cosmology is the most popular among scientists should read like this "as reported by a poll taken of the scientists and reported in this publication. And not, "XYZ cosmology, the most popular theory among scientists, is ..."

My judgements are based on observations, and I pay little attention to public opinion as well as imaginary science polls. "Wisdom is not an attribute of a majority"

My observations are A. The big bang theory is based on Einstein's General Relativity theory. B. Einstein's General Relativity theory is based on gravitational forces. C. Einstein's General Relativity leaves out electric and magnetic forces.

I have a reputable and verifiable source from a book written by a great interpreter of physics which states that.J.W.N. Sullivan. The Limitation of Science. Mentor books (1949)

Therefore, the Standard Cosmological big bagn theory which is derived from General Relativity and has its basis the garvitational forces, ALSO leaves out the electric and magnetic forces. (Remember we (ArtL and me)talked about this, you said Plasma is considered at cool down?)

Therefore, Plasma, insofar as cosmology is concerned, strictly speaking, scientifically, is a missing piece of the puzzle, yet to recognized by the classical cosmologists, and is not, in this scientific way, a "fringe" science in the sense that it is being portrayed here, as a discredited theory. It is not discredited, it uncredited.


[edit] Cosmological singularity

Without wanting to get into long discussions, I think some of your objections to the big bang might be based on an understanding of the term that I and many others do not share. For example, you wrote today "The big bang necessarily assumes that the beginning occured at point." This is not the current thinking.

Permit me to explain briefly how I think of the big bang. First, I accept (tentatively) the Doppler nature of the redshift as the most obvious interpretation given our current understanding of physics. Given that, the universe was once denser and hotter than it is now. The question is how far the extrapolation is valid. For many phenomena in physics, an extrapolation over one, two, or three orders of magnitude is already a great success and nobody is surprised if different physics comes into play after that. In the case of the big bang, after extrapolating a factor of 3000 in size, we come to a transition between plasma and neutral atoms, which results in the prediction of a CMB. That's nice, but not great because we cannot directly predict the temperature it should have. If we keep going, we can go another factor of a million before anything really interesting happens, namely BBN. If we examine the consequences of the hypothesis of an expansion extending back to this era, we can now make a quantitative prediction of the temperature of the CMB. That is what I see as the real success of the big bang hypothesis, and I would call it the big bang, even if the story stopped there. After all, a theory that makes successful predictions by extrapolating over 10 orders of magnitude is nothing to sneeze at. Encouraged by this success, we can continue to extrapolate backward. We find that we can describe the universe at earlier times, but we can't really make any robust observational predictions. At 10^-35 seconds, there seems to be a need to introduce some new physics - inflation - in order to go farther. I, and many cosmologists, agree with you that inflation, although very attractive, is still very speculative. Even if we can jump that hurdle, at the latest (earliest) we know that our extrapolation has to introduce something new at the Planck scale, 10^-43 seconds.

The point is, I think it is not necessary, and probably not even possible, to extrapolate back to a singularity in order to talk about a big bang. For me, the big bang is the physics of the universe up to the present day but starting at some time between 10^-43 seconds and 1 second. This is also the way it is described in the article:

Mysteries appear as one looks closer to the beginning, when particle energies were higher than can yet be studied by experiment. There is no compelling physical model for the first 10−33 seconds of the universe, before the phase transition that grand unification theory predicts. At the "first instant", Einstein's theory of gravitation predicts a gravitational singularity where densities become infinite. To resolve this paradox, a theory of quantum gravitation is needed. Understanding this period of the history of the universe is one of the greatest unsolved problems in physics.

I don't expect to bring you over to the big bang side, but I hope you can see some common ground in what I have described, so that the discussion can proceed with a bit less heat and more clarity. Do you see a possibility of finding a common definition of the big bang that does not necessarily extrapolate all the way back to a singularity?

--Art Carlson 08:32, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Welllll, thank you for discussing this intelligently and honestly. If we are to move forward, then we can only do so honestly, otherwise it is a game. In return I will be honest with you and try to explain why I think as I do. Doing so will be stepping into uncharted territories for me, and I trust you will help me rather than trip me.

I think the significant aspect of the big bang is not the singularity, I will return to that later, but gravity. When I look up into the night sky, or look at a photograph of a galaxy, I can't see gravity pulling all of it together. It just doesn't look to me like gravity at work. Sure, a spiral galaxy could be looked at as if gravity were sucking all those stars inward, but what about a globular cluster? How could they exist like that? They say that at galactic distances, the gravity of a galaxy drops significantly. Yeah, but still...

At some point it occured to me that perhaps the spiral galaxy is not spiraling inward, like water vortexing it's way down a drain, perhaps it is spiraling outward, like those fireworks spinners the kids love to play with. Indeed, the same conclusion was reached by an astronomer, the president of a Royal astonomical society nonetheless, (I tried to put that into the article, but...)he said that the more he looked at the plates, the more it looked like the galaxy is spiraling outward. Isaac Asimov wrote about that in one of his books, and how Oort measured an outflowing matter from a/the galaxy, and to him this suggested a cycling going on becauce Oort's calculated rate of out flow was about one stellar mass per year, and by this time the galaxy would be empty.

BUT, and this is a big but, if matter is spiraling outward, where is it coming from? What is the mechanism that is producing the matter that is flowing outward?

That's a good question. But let me digress here for a moment. Can we ask the same question of the big bang theory? Why not? What is the mechanism that created the scalar field? And even if a mechanism is hypothesized, it is possible to test it? One of the answers I have heard, and it is frankly totally unsatisfying to me, is that we don't know what happened before T = 0 because nothing existed before that time (or something along those lines). Duhhhh...That rates along side of the explanaton for the forever orbiting movement of electrons around the nucleus "because they can't fall in".

Back to the question, "What would produce matter/energy inside a galaxy?

Before I get into my explanation, let me point out that there is observable evidence, objective evidence, of matter/energy flowing outward from a AGN, and other sources too. And here is where the big bang and plasma theory are supposed to be saying the same thing. If gravity were the dominant force, and if matter were being pulled/pushed inward toward the center of a galaxy/star, why would matter be seen moving outward? Sometimes faster than light! In plumes, jets, sprays, geysers, you name it. It is, Proga said, to provide the mechanism to do just that that the black hole was conceived of. Not the black hole, because it is out of this universe so to speak, but the accretion disk around the black hole. The story as I understand it is that as matter is pulled inward toward the black hole, radiation from the black hole counteracts the inward flow, and at some point this radiation pushes some matter back out. And that is how we see matter flowing outward. Problem is, there are supossed black holes without a surrounding matter supply.

Remember, all we need is one counterinstance and the entire theoretical structure fails. We don't need a scientific concensus to falsify, just one (confirmed) instance does the job.

Let's talk about that singularity now. I don't know anything about General relativity, or his gravitational theory, in spite of the six books I have written by Einstein. I have read that a singularity is required in the mathematics. BUT I have also read that nothing in the theory defines a size for this singularity. How big is a single?

Let's jump to another subject - non-locality. Bell's theorem and Aspect's confirmation shows us experimentally that a photon pair ejected from a common source maintain a relationship even when separated. Non-locality is regarded as scientific fact. I have a source. There are, I read, two possible explanations for the observations which led to non-locality. (I think there are always two possible explanations for anything) One explanation is that there is faster than light transmission. The hundreds of verifications testing led to the development of fast as light switches. The alternative explanation is that the two photons are a single entity even while separated.

I reject the former faster than light explanation, because it would mean arriving before leaving. The second alternative, that the photons are of a single entity, makes much more sense to me. In that case, there is no here and there.

And now we can go back to a singularity. We know for a fact that the scalar field is non-local. As far as the scalar field is concerned there is no such thing as a point or even point like. The singularity happened everywhere, and not in a few nanoseconds, but instaneously.

It wasn't a big inflation, it was more like a phase transition, like when water freezes.

Interestingly, one of those Bewildering array" of Inflation theories has many many singularities happening. They are described as Universes. But why couldn't they be galaxies? AGN?

Back to the present. What mechanism would create energy in the center of a star/galaxy? Well, if a tiny plasmoid can do it is some guy's basement, surely a star could do it too?

Thank you for your description, but you are asking me to accept Doppler redshift as a given. I agree that if it were a given, then all that you talk about could be for real. But Doppler redshift is not a given, it was not derived from observation, it hasn't been proved, there is evidence which contradicts the Doppler redshift interpretation, and, I am told, redhift is well known to those working with optics. The CREIL effect creates redshift without scattering. There is some evidence that redshift/expansion does not exist. Logically, it would result in galaxies moving at the speed of light.

Let's stop here for a second. Some might interject at this point, and state that it is the space that is expanding. As if the moving apart is some kind of illusion. So how does this illusion not affect relative velocities on the one hand and yet affect redshift velocities on the other hand? Keep in mind that this so called "space" is really the non-local scalar field. (I'm using scalar field as a catch all word for the dozen other names of physicists have come up with.) If Einsten ca say that acceleration and gravity cannot be told apart in sertain situations, then I can say that expansion and gravity cannot be told apart either. What I mean is that inertia is not negated by the expansion of the scalar field. And then if the process were carried even further toward it's logical end, at sme point there is a galaxxy moving away from us faster than the speed of light.

The theory is not consistent, beautiful or elegant ad it does not lead to natural conclusions and observations. It certainly isn't simple.

Let's pause for a moment.

Beep! Overload! Can we try to be terse and focussed and stick to one (or no more than three) question at a time? Can we agree that it is reasonable and commmon to use the term big bang without refering to a singularity? --Art Carlson 09:27, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Can we...

Objection. The original "big Bang" as conceived by it's authors, has been falsified/discredited/forgotten, Inflation is an ontologically different theory. The name "Big Bang" was retained in a contest. It is, regardless of popular opinion, stating a falsehood. Ask anybody what big bang means?

To answer your question, it doesn't seem like big bang and singularities can be separated so in one sense they are the same. I would think that anyone would assume that big bang meant singularity, whether or not he knew what that meant.

Can we agree that it is reasonable and commmon to use the term big bang without refering to a singularity?

I don't know...certainly you think that way because you know something, but those that don't know that something would most likely assume the natural thing. Which in my case is a point. Can you tell me what a singularity is, I know it is a mathematical concept, can you show me the notation?Tommy Mandel

This is just stuff going on inside my head, I read once that General Relativity has a singularity, but the size of the singularity is not defined. Doesn't this mean that there is nothing in the theory saying that singularity has to be say Planck's length? Maybe there isn't any smaller and bigger singularity. Maybe the size of a singularity is an artifact of our conceptual construction. Is infinity big or small?

Excuse me, but just because stuff is going on in your head doesn't mean I want to know about it. I am more concerned with what you do. In the case of discussions in Wikipedia, I would like you to use language in a way that is consistent with the way other people use it. It reduces the frictional losses. In particular, your statement "The big bang necessarily assumes that the beginning occured at point." (my emphasis), is not consistent with current thought and usage.
Actually, I would expect you to be very interested at least in the eternal inflation versions of the big bang. One of your major objections is your aversion (more philosophical than observational) to the idea of a beginning of the universe. Eternal inflation, currently a serious contender among theories of cosmic inflation, has no singularity and (at least in some versions) no beginning.
--Art Carlson 11:39, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
Fine with me. As far as being clear, I wonder how come members of your group use words that I have never before seen in my entire lifetime, and they use words I have seen but in ways I have seen them used before in my life time, and the logic is not understandable by me? How come you ask me to be exact and precise with my wording when your group succeeds at deriving a presupposed fact from what you admittedly call a speculation. What you have going on is not the most correct theory of the beginning of the Universe, but a theory of possible theories, one of which is a serious contender among other theories of cosmic inflation. In other words the big bang theoyur is only one of many alternative theories. That is to say, there is no big bang theory that can be presupposed.
My aversion to a sized beginning derived from the redshift Doppler interepretation is based on my observation that Doppler redshift does not exist. And without that Doppler assumption, I do not have to deal with beginnings or size. What I then can deal with is what is happening right now, and not some supposed past which can only exist in my mind.
My complaint here is that the editors here act as if the big bang has been proven a fact, the correct theory, and all the rest are fringe theories long ago discredited by most cosmologists. And the insistence to criticize the alternatives explanation without accepting criticism themselves.
If this is "fine with you", then how about amending accordingly the parts of your evidence that build on the statement "The big bang necessarily assumes that the beginning occured at point."? --Art Carlson 16:50, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
It's fine with me if you don't want to hear my thoughts. What if I substitute "spot" for "point." Tommy Mandel 18:57, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
What difference does that make??? --Art Carlson 19:16, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
And also point A ("the big bang theory ... postulates a beginning from nothing") of this evidence? --Art Carlson 16:56, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
Are you saying that what we think of as nothing is really something?Tommy Mandel 18:57, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
No. The eternal inflation scenario says there has really always been something. --Art Carlson 19:16, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
No. The eternal inflation scenario says there has really always been something. --Art Carlson 19:16, 29 October 2006 (UTC)


(Back to margin) Eternal is a good start. ERWIN SCHROEDINGER had something to say about eternal,


"Hence this life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is, in a certain sense, the WHOLE; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in the sacred, mystic formula which is yet so simple and so clear: "Tat Tvam asi". this is you...And not merely "someday"; now, today, every day she is bringing you forth, not once, but thousands upon thousands of times, just as every day she engulfs you a thousand times over. For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end.

Is that what they mean by "eternal?" The present Now? And the task is to describe what's happening? Tommy Mandel 23:30, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Whatever. Are you going to change your evidence to make it consistent with what you have said here? --Art Carlson 06:38, 30 October 2006 (UTC)


Not on the basis of what you told me Art, On of many theories do not start at a minimum size, that does not mean the minimum size can be ignored. Tommy Mandel 16:37, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

You state that "On[e] of many theories do[es] not start at a minimum size". Do I properly understand that to mean you admit "There is at least one version of big bang theory that does not assume that the beginning occurred at a point?" If so, that is in contradiction to your evidence. --Art Carlson 17:51, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
Not so fast. I want to understand what it is that you want me to understand because my understanding of what you are saying I think is quite different. Because if I understand you rightly, you are saying that the Universe always was, and you are asking me to remove my point as if it were me that made the mistake. Seems to me that I heard this same stuff but coming from the fringes, you know, those discredited nonsensical disruptions. So you found one of the 21 variations of Inflation Theory that postulates an eternal scalar wave. Do you know what eternal means to me?
Only God knows whether the universe always was. I don't. But I do know that at least one version of big bang theory (call it Inflation Variation Number 21), postulates just that. Either you don't believe that such a theory exists, or you believe that it does, or you don't know. In any case except the first, you cannot consistently state that the big bang necessarily postulates a beginning from nothing. --Art Carlson 07:48, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
I am not sure what you mean by God, my understanding in the more scientific sense is the Whole. So the Whole creating something from itself makes more sense to me. The "eternal" that which has no beginning, is the present moment, a.k.a. Now. What happened tens of billions years ago is what is happening now. Is that what your Eternal Inflation theory assumes? 205.188.116.5 16:58, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
If so, then I would have to say that "Mainstream big bang theory widely supports creation from nothing" and your good idea becomes one of those fringe theories with only minor support and acceptance. So, how does it feel?205.188.116.5 17:10, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
I don't know how much popularity eternal inflation currently enjoys, and I don't care right now. The question (which you seem to be trying to avoid) is which of these (mutually exclusive) statements do you believe (or neither, or both):
  • "Eternal inflation is a big bang theory that does not postulate a beginning in time."
  • "Any big bang theory must necessarily postulate a beginning in time."
--Art Carlson 19:02, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
(A) False. Eternal Inflation is not a big bang theory, big bang is part of Inflation theory, according to one of the authors of Inflation theory. So while it can be argued that there is one version of Inflation family which does not postulate a beginning in time, the big bang aspect of it does.
Thanks. That narrows the playing field a bit. You seem to admit that eternal inflation (as the name suggests) does not postulate a beginning in time. So you believe that eternal inflation is not a big bang theory. That's a new one on me. Would you care to elaborate? --Art Carlson 23:35, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Not me, but Linde said that big bang is part of Inflation theory. I can see why, FIrst Inflation, then big bang. What derives from what? Does big bang derive from Inflation? Does Inflation derive from big bang? If the former then big bang is part of Inflation, but if the latter then Inflation must necessarily have a beginning.
You have a real knack for expressing yourself unintelligibly. Do you believe (a) inflation necessarily implies a Big Bang, or (b) a Big Bang necessarily implies inflation? --Art Carlson 08:25, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm going to have to ask you to define Big Bang in terms of "modern big bang" sans Inflation, please.205.188.116.5 15:47, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
I already told you how I use the term. What I'm trying to figure out is how you intended to use the term when you said a Big Bang necessarily implies a beginning in time. --Art Carlson 17:23, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
(B) True. Looking at the primary evidence of the big bang, the cmbr, expansion, heavy atoms, fluctuations, aren't they all derived from a beginning? Tommy Mandel 23:08, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Interwesting how this plawas out.

I seem to be avoiding the answer? Yes I am. I am being cautious because I don't want to admit that your theory is the same as ours at some point. Because if I do admit that, then if you follow historical precedent, after the opposing theory has been ridiculed, then they say they are saying the same thing and after that then they say they thought of it first.

I solemnly swear that I will not steal your Nobel prize. --Art Carlson 08:20, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

So let me ask a question: do you agree that the central notion/claim among all the fringe theories taken as a whole, in some form, emerges as a description of the Universe as (A)a continuous process, today, and; (B) always was a continuous process?

I don't think it makes any sense to take "fringe theories as a whole" and I'm not sure what you mean by "continuous process". Since the central idea of the dominant cosmological paradigm is the Big Bang, the fringiest theories will generally deny that and suggest some sort of steady state universe. Eternal inflation (which I would not describe as fringe) is an interesting case that accepts Big Bang evolution on "cosmological" scales (billions of years and God knows how many Gigaparsecs), while postulating the perfect cosmological principle on still larger scales. One of the many problems that steady state cosmologies have is explaining the variation of various properties, e.g. metallicity, densities of quasars, and large scale structure, with redshift. In the Big Bang, that is a natural consequence of the evolution of the universe. --Art Carlson 08:20, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
I really do not believe that dominance is any kind of evidence in the scientifc sense. Thales of Melitus first conceived of science to break away from the dominant view, remember? So in the scientific sense it is not a case of the dominant and the fringe, they are all candidates here. It is not true that plasma cosmology has been discredited, because the big bang does not consider EMF, plasma is uncredited. Unknown, not ignored. And in the end the cosmological theory will consist of both gravity and EMF, not unlike the standard theory of particle physics.
Having said that, I'd like to answer your concerns specifically. It will take some time But the quasar density is easy - Hmmmm I really am confused about what the big bang really is? I know it was not the explosion of matter, that was falsified long ago. I understand that Inflation was proposed as a means of getting to the right "flat" size from the start, so let's start after the Universe is the right size, what is the first physical process in your words?Tommy Mandel
Maybe it would be a good idea to refrain from making catagorical statements about a concept before you have an idea what it really is?
Would you like to see a Graphical timeline of the Big Bang? After inflation, in the standard view, comes a quark-gluon plasma. Doesn't that thrill your heart?
--Art Carlson 09:35, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
What I would like to see is the big bang explanation for redshift.
My understanding was that the Doppler interpretation was adopted by cosmologists and popularizers as an indecation of expansion, and that it was this expansion that indicated the logical beginning and that to get from this beginning whateveritwas to the size of the Universe the only explanation offered was an inflation, they don't know how, but the Univese went from tiny to huge, AND THEN standard physics kicks in. Now you call it quark/gluon plasma, I wonder where I heard that word before. Let's see, Art L called it discredited, fringe stuff, and here we are with a title called by Wikipedia "Pseudoscience." Do you se something wrong with this scenario?
The big bang explanation for the cosmological redshift is the expansion of space. Although apparently not 100% correct, it doesn't matter for present purposes if you think of it as a Doppler shift. Either way you arrive at the important conclusion that there was a lot less elbow room in the universe a few billion years ago. That is the great divide between mainstream and fringe cosmology, not what happened way back in the first second or the first 10^-35 sec. And since when did Art L or anybody else call quark-gluon plasma "discredited" or "fringe"? --Art Carlson 20:43, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
I think he's misquoting this. Art LaPella 23:08, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Expansion and the equivalence principle

I'm glad that you acknowledge that plasma has not been discredited or even that it should be considered a fringe science. So do you agree that because plasma is in fact the major component of the Universe, the scientific study of the major component of the Universe cannot be said in any sense to be a "fringe" science? Do you also agree that there are many instances where plasma plays a significant role, and that these specific applications require a specialized science and therefore the entire field of plasma science could encompass a great variety of theories? And do you agree that because there is a great variety of different theories for different applications that this variety should not be taken to mean that plasma science is merely a hodgepot of different ideasTommy Mandel

Hey, I'm a plasma physicist, for chrissake. However, I'm sorry to inform you, in the mainstream view (which I share), only 4% of the universe the plasma. The rest is dark matter and dark energy. But still, 4% of the whole universe is not exactly peanuts. I smell a trap, but still I can agree with everything you say here. --Art Carlson 13:00, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
If you are a plasma physicist, why don't you say it correctly, Dark matter and Dark Energy are hypothesized solutions to problems caused by the expansion theory and the gravitational theory. They are products of the big bang theory necessary to make it work. If there is no expansion then there is no need for Dark Energy. And if a galaxy is not wholly gravity driven, Dark matter would not be required. Tommy Mandel 13:37, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Did I say something incorrectly? Is it not the mainstream view that the combined hypotheses of expansion, general relativity, dark matter and dark energy best explain the sum of all observations? And I don't see how any other explanation (j×B forces, or what?) can simultaneously explain the velocities of stars in galaxies and galaxies in clusters, the pressure balance of hot plasmas in galaxies and in clusters, gravitational lensing, and formation of large scale structure. --Art Carlson 15:02, 4 November 2006 (UTC)


You tell me that the redshift is caused by the expansion of space. But when I look it up in Wikipedia it says this

From Wikipedia Redshift--"Redshift occurs when a light source moves away from an observer, corresponding to the Doppler shift that changes the frequency of sound waves. Although such redshifts have several terrestrial uses (e.g. Doppler radar and radar guns),[1] they are essential in spectroscopic astrophysics to determine the movement of distant astronomical objects.[2]

So, who do I believe?

Tommy Mandel 00:47, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

In case of doubt, always believe me! ;-)
You have made another of your small but important misquotes that would make me hot under the collar if this were a public page: The correct quote is "A redshift can occur when a light source moves away from an observer" (emphasis mine). The next paragraph is the one you were looking for :"Another redshift mechanism accounts for the famous observation that the spectral redshifts of distant galaxies, quasars, and intergalactic gas clouds are observed to increase proportionally with their distance to the observer. This relation is accounted for by models that predict the the universe is expanding, seen in, for example, the Big Bang model.[1]".

There's a whole lot of unanswered questions on both sides which I want to get to, so I hesitate asking yet another. But it bothers me, this expansion of "space". Sure, it is the scalar field that is really expanding, (why not use the proper terminology? It is not space that is expanding, space is a measurable physical thing, what would be expanding, if expansion were happening, would be the inside of space - the hyperdimension.) But, I ask again, what about non-locality? What I am trying to say is that the properties of the scalar field are such that the physical property of expansion would not take place. What would take place is a phase transition. This phase transition would be non-local, meaning, in our terms, it is a single entity and has no here nor there to it.

I have a problem with an expansion of the scalar field. First of all why do we need expansion? Because we observe a redshift? Tommy Mandel 02:17, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't know what you're trying to ask about the (non-)locality of the expansion. I believe the standard picture is that expansion occurs a bit faster here and there, and that that is actually one of the reasons we see fluctuations in the CMB. But I'll take a stab at the question of why we need expansion. First, to explain the redshift, of course. Second, to be consistent with general relativity. Third to explain why nothing in the universe seems to be over 13 billion years old. Fourth, to explain why all the hydrogen has not yet been burnt to helium in stars, and why galaxies and galaxy clusters have not yet completely collapsed. That's a pretty good start. After that we get into details like BBN and CMB fluctuations. --Art Carlson 13:00, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Excuse me Art C

There's something I have to get off my chest, want you to know that you did not have anything to do with I am going to say.

I am NOT a wikieditor, nor do I aspire to become one. I have enough writing of my own to keep me busy. Part of my job is to do research and I have done quite a lot of that. I have read enough of the literature, both Western and Eastern, to be able to tell the good from the bad, the great from the small. The good doesn't have to belittle the bad and the great wants to lift everyone else up, not drag them down to their level. Your editors may think themselve as being clever with their sly remarks in the interest of mainstream NPOV, but it is obvious to almost any reader when the story starts to read one way or the other. Editors have to twist the story to twist the story. Duhhhh Unfortunately, the "reader" is hardly if ever mentioned. I am a reader and the quality of your literature does not impress me. It is tainted and It makes me wonder what isn't. In my estimation, Wikipedia is useless to the serious researcher. The presentation of the most popular view is already known to every researcher, it is the small out of the way so called fringe information that we are interested in. That Hubble never believed in expansion. That Inflation Theory replaced the original big bang. That the big bang does not include electromeagneticsm the stuff that makes life, and instead tries to explain everything in terms of gravitational forces and to do that it was necessary to invent all kinds of black stuff so far invisible and unconfirmed. That no one actually knows what gravity is. That all of this is just a theory, a hypothesis, an educated guess. And it is absurd from my point of view that you promote it in the guize of some imaginary Mainstream science as if science were a religion. Science is a verb, Google it.
For one thing, you're a wikieditor because you edit the wiki. Art LaPella 06:33, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Art L, I managed to edit out your last edit here I think by accident. something you said, can't find it anymore. Tommy Mandel
This is another of your misconceptions about the mainstream theory that I wish would would stop repeating. Electromagnetism does plays a very important role in Big Bang theory. From the quark-gluon plasma, through the acoustic fluctuations that explain the CMB fluctuations, through the recombination that produced the CMB itself, and later through reionization and processes in the formation of large scale structure. How on earth did you ever get the idea that electromagnetism or plasmas are ignored by mainstream cosmologists? --Art Carlson 10:01, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Probably when the mainstream cosmologist's secondary reporters talk about "gas" Probably because GR is about gravity and not EMF.
Probably because mainstream cosmologist's reporters try to describe plasma effects in terms of gravity like the outpourings of AGN. Probably because mainstream cosmology reporters do not believe that magnetic and electric effects affect large scale structure. Tommy Mandel 16:37, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure I follow you. It sounds like you might be willing to entertain the hypothesis that the problem is not in mainstream cosmology itself, but in the way mainstream cosmology gets reported by the time it gets to you. Remember, too, that while general relativity is essential to Big Bang cosmology, a lot of other things (like plasmas) are important, too. --Art Carlson 17:28, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
I do not believe that the beliefs of mainstream science is scientific and therefore the so called mainstream view cannot be considered a part of science. Of course "facts" are a different story.

I do believe that when this imaginary mainstream view filters down through secondary sources it does become a belief system, contrary to the purpose of empirical science. If this filtering were accurate, then I would agree that the simplificaton/synthesis would be a good thing. But I have, over the years, found that this reporting is not accurate, and can be twisted around to support a belief when that support is only hypothetical.

As an example, consider black holes. I have pasted below two statements from D. Proga, one of the principle investigators of black holes. Proga wrote in a paper I cannot find again, that the black hole's accretion disk was a mechanism they had devised to explain the OUTFLOW of matter/energy. Basically, inflowing matter creates a radiation which opposes the inflow, the outflow being that portion which is in effect reflected back out or away from the black hole. Notice in the following how Proga is tentative "most likely" "natural to suppose" "often fails"

In Proga http://www.physics.unlv.edu/~dproga/

Some of the most dramatic phenomena of astrophysics, such as quasars and powerful radio galaxies, are most likely powered by accretion onto supermassive black holes (SMBHs). Nevertheless, SMBHs appear to spend most of their time in a remarkably quiescent state. SMBHs are embedded in the relatively dense environments of galactic nuclei and it is natural to suppose that the gravity due to an SMBH will draw in matter at high rates, leading to a high system luminosity. However, this simple prediction often fails as many systems are much dimmer than one would expect.

(farther down ---)

Recently, I considered a new generation of disk wind models: a hybrid of line-driven and MHD driven wind model. I used ideal MHD to compute numerically the evolution of Keplerian disks, varying the magnetic field strengths and the luminosity of the disk, the central accreting object or both. I find that the magnetic fields very quickly start deviating from purely axial due to the magnetorotational instability. This leads to fast growth of the toroidal magnetic field as field lines wind up due to the disk rotation. As a result the toroidal field dominates over the poloidal field above the disk and the gradient of the former drives a slow and dense disk outflow, which conserves specific angular momentum. Depending on the strength of the magnetic field relative to the system luminosity the disk wind can be radiation- or MHD driven.

Notice the word "recently" "new generation" "hybrid line driven and MHD driven"

What do you suppose he is referring to when he uses the word MHD?

So can you tell me what happened to the MHD section in plasma cosmology? Tommy Mandel 16:22, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I have to pass on black holes. I know even less about them than I do about cosmology. I do happen to know something about MHD, but I don't get your point. If you want to know what happened to any particular content in plasma cosmology, check out the history. --Art Carlson 09:06, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

It is the wise man who says he does not know when he does not know. Apparently not much is known about Black holes lots of conjectures tho.. But what they are really talking about is a compact object that they surmise is a black hole. HOWEVER, it would seem that the black hole would suck all matter that is close by inward. HOWEVER, what astomomers see is matter flowing OUTWARD. Proga is sayig that the only mechanism they can think of which might spew matter outward is an accretion disk. The point where outward radiation meets inward matter,the excess matter is radiated back outward. Problem is that there are compact objects spewing out matter but no matter can be seen infalling. Tommy Mandel 02:16, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Back to the real world

OK, I think we are getting somewhere. I want to collect all the points you make for BBT. Then I want to define the terms/state the situation. Then I want to see how gravity explains it and how plasma explains it. So let's start with the below. Please add concepts when appropriate.

1)redshift

velocity
unknown

2)general relativity

theory of gravitation
not discussed

3)age limit

old galaxies at high redshift

4)hydrogen supply

from a time in the past
from plasma

5)galaxy collaspe

Galaxy expansion

6)large scale structures

[edit] just notes

Blocked going into evidence

The argument is over the merits of what is said, not how long they have managed to keep it in the article. This section "future" is about the future of plasma but if you red it above, it is all negative. So negative that it seems like a waste of time to consider plasma anymore. They are very subtle in their editing. Calling plasma fringe science because it is new and just beginning to develop is pseudoscientific Is it wise to ignore content on the one hand but cite "correctness" on the other? If content cannot be considered here, then by all rights the big bang and plasma cosmology are equals just like gravity and electromagnetism are equally valid.Tommy Mandel 16:37, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Evidence that there is no big bang theory

If one were to research the subject deeply, one finds that the big bang theory is actually Inflation theory, and Inflation theory is not one theory but several different versions none of which have risen to the status as the correct version. It cannot be said or even implied that the big bang is the most correct theory. It cannot even be said that the big bang is a correct theory. In reality the big bang is a potential proposal, and has yet to attain the big bang theory status, let alone be proven a scientific fact. If the editors here are competant in this field, then I also question why these facts have been left out, and why the subject has been treated as if it is widely accepted. There is no theory to be accepted yet. Something is very wrong here.Tommy Mandel

Cosmological redshifts are a ubiquitous phenomenon that is summarized by Hubble's law in which more distant galaxies have greater redshifts. This redshift has been taken by some astronomers to indicate a Doppler effect. One of the key assumptions of plasma cosmology is that this observation does not indicate an expanding universe.

Hubble's Law shows that the farther away a galaxy is, the greater its redshift. This observation by itself does not indicate expansion. Expansion is indicated when it is assumed that the redshift id Doppler related, and therefore is indicative of velocity and thus expansion.

Plasma Universe and plasma cosmology. Hannes Alfvén urged the application of laboratory and magnetospheric data, and Anthony Peratt of large-scale particle-in-cell simulations, to non-in-situ space regions. Together with direct observation of interstellar and intergalactic plasma phenomenon, this leads them to predict a knowledge expansion about the universe, and a backflow of information about laboratory plasmas. (Click image to enlarge)

From Wikipedia Redshift--"Redshift occurs when a light source moves away from an observer, corresponding to the Doppler shift that changes the frequency of sound waves. Although such redshifts have several terrestrial uses (e.g. Doppler radar and radar guns),[1] they are essential in spectroscopic astrophysics to determine the movement of distant astronomical objects.[2] This redshift phenomenon was first predicted and observed in the nineteenth century as scientists began to consider the dynamical implications of the wave-nature of light. Most famously, the spectral redshifts of distant galaxies, quasars, and intergalactic gas clouds are observed to increase proportionally with their distance to the observer. This is generally considered to be significant evidence that the universe is expanding, as predicted by the Big Bang model.[3]


[edit] Personal Attacks

Where was everyone when I was being attacked over and over and over? So I call them stupid and you all come down on me.

Personal attacks are never acceptable. Comment on the content, not the contributor. Thanks. JBKramer 13:37, 13 October 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Evidence of personal attacks found through Art LaPella Quoting Science Apologist's discussion tactics with me from a long time ago.

"SA, in my view, you are obviously anti-plasma" : User:Tommysun,


"in my view you are obviously an incompetent editor who knows very little about the subjects on which you are trying to inject a POV based not on verifiable fact or Wikipedia style guide or policies but on your own prejudices. No one here is "anti-plasma". No one here denies plasma exists. You seem to have some warped view over what exactly the controversy is, but I welcome you to explain your edits rather than heaading off on such tangents. By the way, you should keep your paranoid conspiracies regarding the Big Bang gang to yourself. It makes you sound a bit fanatical."
--ScienceApologist 13:15, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Art!

Now, you were saying. . .


I take an extremely dim view of the edits you have made on Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience/Evidence. "Outing" a pseudonymous Wikipedia editor in this manner is completely unacceptable, as are your veiled comments about legal action, and an editor's place of work. --BillC 11:20, 14 October 2006 (UTC)


ScienceApologist made the claim that he worked at a cosmology institute, I did not out him. Please retract your claim.

My veiled comments about legal action is meant as a wake up call. It seems that ScienceApologist and some others think that they can claim someone else is a lunatic and get away with it. Imagine if a search engine were to pick this up. And furthermore, ScienceApologist made the claim that Lerner was using Wikipedia to further his own interests by including his awards. I am simply asking ScienceApologist if he is getting paid by a cosmology Institute for editing the nig bang, err, alternative, er non-standard cosmology pages? I do believe that constitutes a vested interest which according to an ArbCom ruling means that Science Apologist ought not edit opposing articles.

Hi Tommysun, could I suggest that you rephrase your comments to express concern that remarks by other editors may be in contravention of WP:LIBEL. Addhoc 12:40, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
Hi, ok I apologize for overstepping the mark. For what its worth, I agree your comments don't appear to reveal any new information about Wikipedia editors. Also there isn't anything inappropriate about requesting clarification if you think somebody could have a conflict of interest. However, I would suggest that in future, you express concern about libel in terms of WP:LIBEL and don't allow other editors to give the impression you have issued legal threats. Again, my apologies. Addhoc 08:54, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
AddHoc, my reply was to BillC, (I corrected the order) one of the editors at crop circles. I consider BillC and IAMTHEBOB to be sensible, mature and reasonable editors. There was an editor at crop circles that did not have any of those attributes, and who repeatedly insulted me big time while BillC didn't say anything about that. All this was in the archives but somehow that got deleted...His "stuff" didn't bother me, since it was very telling about him, but I am left with a bitter taste in my mouth nevertheless. I find the same attitude being expressed by ScienceApologist, but SA is at least educated, and ultimately reason prevails. Not so with DF, who seems to me to be a 13 yr old making like an adult. I am trying to be precise with my writing, because it is so easy for others and me to to read into writing something that is not there.


(Redundant. Current physical cosmology does not *argue* for the big bang, it presupposes it.)

[edit] Personal Attacks (Talk:Crop Circle)

Do you mind not insulting everyone who disagrees with you in the crop circle talk page? It gets kind of annoying, and won't do us any good. This is under accordance with WP:NPA. Thanks. iamthebob 21:59, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I apologize. I have no quarrel with you Bob. I have removed all my insults, although I personally did not take them as insults, and they were NOY Oops, I just saw I left NOT out, sorry Bob. it was NOT directed at you, you know who, I thought of what you call insults as being a fact... It is not that "they" don't agree with me, it is the methods that they "use" in showing this. I have been insulted far worse, why didn't you say something then? I have been implied as "nutty", suggested a lunatic and called raving mad. And their arguments are dumb. All I said is that they are being stupid. And it wasn't "them" so much as it was their logic which is actually a beautiful example of what pseudoscience really is. But you are right, I could be insulted a hundred times, and if I insult back once, it is all my fault. Well, I just had to get it off my chest.
Okay, just wanted to get that straignt :) I think I'm going to take a break from editing the Crop Circle article for a bit, and come back later. It was fun talking to you (and I mean that seriously). Peace. iamthebob 21:33, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Do you mind not making edits [4] without re-signing? This makes it look as if you have said the phrase "why didn't you say anything then?" on October 9, which in fact you did not say. If you had said it, I would have responded that I had not joined the argument yet at that point, and that I was not reading the responses clearly. I had only looked over the argument generally while Fred was making his argument, I did not really start to post consistently until he left. iamthebob 22:16, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, it was not intentional. And my pleading is not directed at you per se, rather at anyone who comes down on me, after being insulted a dozen times, and claims I made a personal attack. I lost my senses and called them, not you or Bill, stupid. Actually, I was thinking about some of the stupid things some people have come up with to justify calling cerealology a pseudoscience. As if by putting the same label on two completely differnt situations makes them somehow the same. I'm sorry, but that is stupid. Tommy Mandel 01:45, 15 October 2006 (UTC)



[edit]crop circle crops The nature of their origin has become highly controversial with one school concluding they are of human origin, the other school concludng that they are not of human origin, and the scientific community which has directly investigated the circles reporting that they are unable to determine the origin of some circles. Gerald Hawkins, renown astronomer of Stonehenge fame, has investigated the crop circles and concludes, "It’s a difficult topic because it tends to raise a knee-jerk solution in people’s minds. Then they are stuck. Their minds are closed. One can’t do much about it. But if they can keep an open mind, I think they’ll find they’ve got a very interesting phenomenon."

There is no such thing as "mainstream science" I don't know where that word comes from, but it is not a scientific term by definition. It is, by definition incorrect. Any scientist worth his salt will not form opinions on subject matter that he is ignorant of. Science is not a doctrine, rather it is a methodology. Opinion is not one of those scientific methodologies. So if a scientist states his opinion on something that he is ignorant of, then he is not using the scientific method and has no more "authority" than any other member of the public. Scientific papers do not get published which uses data such as "the majority of others believe this or that." I( wouldn't be surprised if "mainstream science" came from Wikipedia editors.

So your scenario has a flaw in it by presupposing "mainstream science" actually exists. It cannot exist in the scientific sense. Nor should we present it as if it does. "Mainstream science" is a pseudoscientific notation. PS And if you come back with the argument that there are scientific ideas that have been accepeted by all scientists, you are talking about scientific fact. NOT "mainstream science". Tommy Mandel 15:54, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

But there can be scientific fact that is accepted by the majority of scientists, no? Like a round earth? iamthebob 04:53, 18 October 2006 (UTC) You hit the nail on the head, what is accepted by the majority of scientists are scientific facts, not majority opinions. It can be argued that the whole idea of science is to prevent rule by majority opinion, an argument by authority. If authority were the rule in science, we would not have the benefits of Russian science.Tommy Mandel 05:50, 18 October 2006 (UTC)



Ah, and what if the majority of scientists believed that crop circles are all made by men? See, that is the problem with the reasoning. I do think that the crop circle article should mention the possibility that there exists crop circles that are not man made. However, it should not be made out that this is a majority viewpoint, despite the amount of publishing that may have been done on it. iamthebob 02:43, 19 October 2006 (UTC) I think that the majority of scientists do believe that crop circles are all made by men. But how many of them can/will put that belief into a scientific paper? I don't think that the majority of scientists having an opinion based on opinion only, and a majority of scientists having an opinion based on facts, are the same thing. The majority opinion is not "scientific" and therefore cannot be attributed to majority "science". In other words, the majority of scientists are not aware of the scientific findings. Their "opinions" carry no more weight than yours or mine. I never intended to present it as if the majority view is such and such. My field of supposed expertise is multiperspectual science. What I would want to do is actually present all the facts, from both sides of the controversy as they actually exist. Because, and I know this doesn't count in Wikiland, after I had read of all the facts from both sides, I reached the same conclusion Haselhoff concludes, something very strange is going on. I certainly agree that most people beieve that crop circles are man made. But I also believe that most people haven't studied the subject matter and their opinions are not reliable. The hoaxers lie, they are not reliable. THe true believers are smitten, they are not reliable. The key researchers are somewhat reliable, but they are on both sides of the fence. All that is left are those scientists who have studied the circles. None of them, outside Meaden, claim to know what causes them. Not that they don't have an opinion on that...Most, if not all, of them agree that there are features which cannot be explained by mechanical technology. That is, IMO, the true scientific concensus on crop circles. And if Wikipedia is about presenting the facts, the fact is that there is a mystery surrounding the crop circle phenomenon. No one who has studied them in detail will disagree with that. Even hoaxers who have done a circle say upstraight that weird stuff happened to them - their story is above somewhere. Well, in the crop circle talk anyhow. Tommy Mandel Tommy Mandel 06:14, 19 October 2006 (UTC)


[edit] crop circle crops

The nature of their origin has become highly controversial with one school concluding they are of human origin, the other school concludng that they are not of human origin, and the scientific community which has directly investigated the circles reporting that they are unable to determine the origin of some circles. Gerald Hawkins, renown astronomer of Stonehenge fame, has investigated the crop circles and concludes, "It’s a difficult topic because it tends to raise a knee-jerk solution in people’s minds. Then they are stuck. Their minds are closed. One can’t do much about it. But if they can keep an open mind, I think they’ll find they’ve got a very interesting phenomenon."

There is no such thing as "mainstream science" I don't know where that word comes from, but it is not a scientific term by definition.

It is, by definition incorrect. Any scientist worth his salt will not form opinions on subject matter that he is ignorant of. Science is not a doctrine, rather it is a methodology. Opinion is not one of those scientific methodologies. So if a scientist states his opinion on something that he is ignorant of, then he is not using the scientific method and has no more "authority" than any other member of the public. Scientific papers do not get published which uses data such as "the majority of others believe this or that." I( wouldn't be surprised if "mainstream science" came from Wikipedia editors.

So your scenario has a flaw in it by presupposing "mainstream science" actually exists. It cannot exist in the scientific sense. Nor should we present it as if it does. "Mainstream science" is a pseudoscientific notation.

PS And if you come back with the argument that there are scientific ideas that have been accepeted by all scientists, you are talking about scientific fact. NOT "mainstream science". Tommy Mandel 15:54, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

But there can be scientific fact that is accepted by the majority of scientists, no? Like a round earth? iamthebob 04:53, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
You hit the nail on the head, what is accepted by the majority of scientists are scientific facts, not majority opinions. It can be argued that the whole idea of science is to prevent rule by majority opinion, an argument by authority. If authority were the rule in science, we would not have the benefits of Russian science.Tommy Mandel 05:50, 18 October 2006 (UTC)


Ah, and what if the majority of scientists believed that crop circles are all made by men? See, that is the problem with the reasoning. I do think that the crop circle article should mention the possibility that there exists crop circles that are not man made. However, it should not be made out that this is a majority viewpoint, despite the amount of publishing that may have been done on it. iamthebob 02:43, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
I think that the majority of scientists do believe that crop circles are all made by men. But how many of them can/will put that belief into a scientific paper? I don't think that the majority of scientists having an opinion based on opinion only, and a majority of scientists having an opinion based on facts, are the same thing. The majority opinion is not "scientific" and therefore cannot be attributed to majority "science". In other words, the majority of scientists are not aware of the scientific findings. Their "opinions" carry no more weight than yours or mine.
I never intended to present it as if the majority view is such and such. My field of supposed expertise is multiperspectual science. What I would want to do is actually present all the facts, from both sides of the controversy as they actually exist. Because, and I know this doesn't count in Wikiland, after I had read of all the facts from both sides, I reached the same conclusion Haselhoff concludes, something very strange is going on. I certainly agree that most people beieve that crop circles are man made. But I also believe that most people haven't studied the subject matter and their opinions are not reliable. The hoaxers lie, they are not reliable. THe true believers are smitten, they are not reliable. The key researchers are somewhat reliable, but they are on both sides of the fence. All that is left are those scientists who have studied the circles. None of them, outside Meaden, claim to know what causes them. Not that they don't have an opinion on that...Most, if not all, of them agree that there are features which cannot be explained by mechanical technology. That is, IMO, the true scientific concensus on crop circles.

And if Wikipedia is about presenting the facts, the fact is that there is a mystery surrounding the crop circle phenomenon. No one who has studied them in detail will disagree with that. Even hoaxers who have done a circle say upstraight that weird stuff happened to them - their story is above somewhere. Well, in the crop circle talk anyhow. Tommy Mandel

The biggest mystery being, of course, why some people persist in the belief in some kind of supernatural mumbo-jumbo when it's been clearly shown that hoaxing is the most likely cause by far. Guy 10:08, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
What? That is something Darkfred used to say, oh, I get it. Are you Darfred with a new name? Your ligic is identical with his. The words you use are very telling. "Supernatural" means you are unfamliar with esoteric philosophy, Mumbo Jumbo means that esoteric philosophy is mumbo jumbo to you, and clearly shown means you have not yet studied the subject enough to tell the difference. So, now it all makes sense, you changed your name.
Tommy, Guy and Darkfred are two different people. --BillC 23:46, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. For a minute there I didn't think so, but after looking at his edits at NPOV talk, that wasn't Darkfred by any means. Anyway, now we have to talk about mumbo jumbo, supernatural and it is clear that the circles are hoaxed all over again.

Guy, first of all there are things about the circles that are not consistent with a hoax. Certain features which defy any trivial explanation as one scientist puts it. For example the structure of clay taken from inside a circle and compared to a sample taken from outside show marked changes. The atomic structure of the clay, the crystallization has increased compared to clay from outside the circle. According to the scientists who have rigorusly tested this, confirmed by a top expert, the changes only occur under great pressure at high temperatures for a long geological time. A piece of wood stomped on the ground is not enough pressure, needless to say. So there is a mystery that hasn't been solved yet. "Probably" and most likely" still haven't made it to all of them.

As far as supernatural, I don't know what that means. Super -- natural. What is natural?

And the mumbo jumbo. Well, when I talked about the scalar field, DF called it Mumbo jumbo. Obviously he didn't know about it. But I never could figure out how by calling it mumbo jumbo made him come out on top? Anyway, what is new in physics is what is called the hyperfield. It is also called the scalar field, ZPE, ZPF, quantum ground, Dirac's Sea and I call it the inside of space. This is not fringe science look it up at NASA. There is a connection gbetwen the crop circles and this hyperspace. The Balls of Light or BoL's as they are called, look like what plasma would look like. Plasma can become like a ball, and at low energy levels could appear as a transleusent ball of light. The interesting part for me is how this ball of plasma interconnects with the hyperspace? Obviously, that interaction occurs naturally, more specifically, the deep question is, for me, are the balls of light seen worldwide under some sort of "control?" Once that is answered, then the next question, who? But first, are there balls of light? and are these balls of light controlled?

Tommy Mandel 04:59, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

This might be an interesting read: [5]. It is a "refutation" of the work being done by cerealogists. I'm not saying that it's definitive or correct in any way, but it's interestering nevertheless, and sheds light on some of the "science" that is being done on crop circles. Now what I really need now is a refutation to this article by BLT Research or something... iamthebob 05:09, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Even before I read it I can say that there is objective evidence but before I say more than I know,...Tommy Mandel

OK, I read this one before. I don't think it refures as much as call into question the protocol. Hold on...Tommy Mandel

Yeah, that was the issue I was trying to point out: that there are people out there who think cerealogy is a pseudoscience (as in, it does not follow proper scientific protocol). Nevertheless, I think that the cerealogist's POV should be presented in the article. I just do not think that putting it under a section called "scientific investigation" is appropriate. iamthebob 18:04, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
Hm... I retract the last bit about "scientific investagions." I will have to think it over again; I'm not sure what is needed to be done about the article anymore... iamthebob 18:06, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
The thing is, there is irrefutable evidence that some of the circles are hoaxes, and no credible peer reviewed evidence that any of them have anything other than a human or natural source. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. As I have said elsewhere, nobody who had not already decided that there was no mundane cause has ever found any evidence to support anything other than a mundane cause. Some have been persuaded to scepticism, I see no evidence of any reputable scientist being persuaded to any of the paranormal theories. Also, I think Tommy, as a "true believer" needs to learn about "writing for the enemy". Guy 18:32, 21 October 2006 (UTC)



Guy, why don't you be an example? Besides, you seem to be doing a good job of writing for the enemy. None of what you say is true except that there is irrefutable evidence that some crop circles are man made. Are you using the Wikipedia article as your source? Certainly some crop circles are man made, I have seen pictures of them myself. But those I have seen look like someone made them, so I wonder about that "preciseness". You are wrong Guy, when you claim there is no credible peer reviewed evidence..." Do you have a source? Are you claiming that the thrtee papers spoken of here are not credible? Are you saying that the peer review committee of three journals didn't know what they were doing? Hawkins was a somebody, and he leaves open the question of who made them. And are you saying all those reported observatons were incorrect? Where does "paranormal" come in? How about extraordinary?

Incidently, the Grassi, Cocheo and Russo paper was rejected by the journals. That paper does not claim the three scientific papers are not credible, they ran an analysis on the statistical confidence of the testing that was done. Essentially what they are saying is that the samples used were selected for best of the crop. Evidence of this is cited by the lack of including the center standing tuft in the measurements of the bent crop within the circle.Does this mean it is not credible? Tommy Mandel 00:44, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

This is about as productive as debating evolution with Kent Hovind. Whatever facts are put his way, they conflict with his base premise and are therefore obviously wrong. The way it goes in scientific subjects is: you propose a theory, cite the evidence, and then it gets peer reviewed. If the theory is sound it gets accepted and extended. If not, it gets rejected. If it is still expounded after rejection, it gets ridiculed. Which is the stage that "cerealogy" appears to be at. It is clear, however, that you require proof which accepts your base premise, and since it is your base premise which is at fault, this is an unproductive discussion. Wikipedia is not a place to propound those theories which are rejected in the mainstream. Guy 18:06, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
You forget Guy, that you are in my page. Why do you come into my house and try to kick me out? It is obvious you are not talking from a position of knowledge, you never wrote a scientific paper and I do not understand your logic. In a sense you are not aware of, this exchange has been the most productive I have ever experienced at Wikipedia. And if this soapbox is not my soapbox then who does it belong to?
The way it is supposed to go in science is that you make an observation, formulate a theory, propose a prediction, conduct a test, publish the results. Peer review kicks in prior to publication and the only purpose is to make sure the data/test was properly conducted. Peer review does not mean acceptance. I do not know of one "peer reviewed published in a journal paper" which disputes the findings of Levengood and Heselhoff. The paper Bob showed us was rejected by the journals, and published in a non-peered reviewed journal of scientific exploration which will publish anything. And as we just discussed at length, it does hot refute the evidence, stating only that the three papers do not provide enough "proof" to prove beyond any doubt.

Well, :::From the BLT website

7. Laboratory Replication of Crop Circle Plant Changes. Apical node (the first node beneath the seed-head) elongation and expulsion cavities (holes blown out at the lower plant-stem nodes) have been induced in normal plants in the laboratory by placing them in a commercial microwave oven for between 20-30 seconds. It is microwave radiation, here, that is heating up the moisture inside the plant stem which--as it turns to steam and expands--either stretches the more elastic fibers at the top of the plant, or blows holes in the tougher nodes farther down the plant stem.
The more positive plant changes--enhanced growth rate, increased yield & increased stress tolerance--observed in the laboratory in seedlings grown from cropcircle plants which were mature when the crop circles occured, have also been replicated in the laboratory. In 1998 W.C. Levengood and John Burke obtained a patent (Patent #5740627) on equipment they developed which delivers unusual electrical pulses to normal seed. Called the MIR process and carrying the registered Trademark "Stressguard," this equipment creates organized electron-ion avalanches which then form organized plasmas, to which seeds are exposed. Tommy Mandel 01:13, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

And what mainstream are you talking about? Specifically, who are they?


Guy, could you, please, give me an idea of how much research on crop circles you have done? Have you read any of the books? Which ones? Have you visited BLT's website and read the reports there? Have you read about Hawkins discovery of the theorems and his conclusion? Because I wonder how you arrived at your conclusions that the crop circle debate has been definitely decided by peer reviewed journal articles proving that all crop circle features were produced by man? Is that what you are saying? So can you show me this paper you base your conclusions on? And if you do not have such a paper, then what do you base your conclusions on? Your best guess?

[edit] What they do not refute

Thanks Bob for having an open mind. I will try to respond in kind. I had a reply written in part but it disappeared somewhere. The paper you brought up is an interesting presentation. At a glance it seems to be saying that because the three investigations do not meet statistical confidence, the evidence is not acceptable as a condition which proves that some crop circles are not manmade. What is it refuting it seems to me is the conclusions of the three papers

In my first reply I started to do an analysis of your paper step by step. I lost that so starting again I will go step by step through their paper. I copied them below and will work on it little by little


Only three studies were published in a scientific journal: the first one was authored by W. C. Levengood (1994), the second one by W. C. Levengood and N. P. Talbott (1999), and the last one by E. H. Haselhoff (2001). All three papers suggested the involvement of some kind of electromagnetic radiation during the circles’ formation. However, in those three papers a list of sufficient conditions (or at least necessary conditions) was not provided in order to establish without any doubt if a geometric formation has or has not been made by man.
This is convoluted. What are they sayihg?

A list of sufficient conditions was not provided

in order to establish

without a doubt

Sounds to me like the paper is merely saying that (the hypothesis) has not been proven without a doubt.

It says nothing whatsoever about "therefore this is proof that all circles are man made."

It's not trying to say that all circles are man made. It's trying to show that cerealogy is pseudoscience. iamthebob 01:36, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
What makes you say that?. A credible scientific paper, if proven wrong by a second experiemnt, is not thereby made uncredible/pseudoscientific. Being wrong in science is not being pseudoscientific. I really didn't catch that one. I understood that they were nit-picking the results, and this is what they found.
I think the idea of the paper is to show that the cerealogists were not thorough in their work. The flaw with your second sentence (A credible scientific paper...) is that it assumes that the papers written by the cerealogists were credible in the first place, which they might not be (just like the paper that I showed you might not be). Perhaps there are things that were missed in the papers, in which case they should be revised to produce more accurate results. iamthebob 04:21, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Not being thorough is not being pseudoscientific. My second flaw is my assumption that the journal peer reviewers knew what they were doing. Remember it is the Russo et al paper that wasn't accepted by the reviewers. But your point is well taken, I would like to see a definitive paper too.
There probably is a whole lot of Pseudoscience going on in crop circle circles. A scientist does not set out to prove someone is pseudoscientific. I would bet that the term came from Wikipedia. A scientist would simply say, That is not science. I don't see at all, even in the questionable title, that the three authors are stating in any way that the other three papers are not doing science. What they are actually saying, which is what they are supposed to be doing, is that the science is not enough to prove beyond any doubt, because, they imply, it is possible to duplicate the node growth in a man made circle. But are they right about that?
I agree that the paper does not say that the three papers are not doing science, but it is trying to show that the papers are doing bad science—and that's not far away from not doing science. iamthebob 04:23, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, but their goal is to "prove" and that is a long way from bad science.
Pseudoscience is when one claims a scientific conclusion which is not based on testable evidence.
Exactly. The purpose of the article (as far as I could tell), was to show that the journal publications about crop circles were not detailed in their research and that the evidence was not sufficient to obtain the conclusion that they obtained, which means that it is not conclusive that there exist crop circles that are not man-made. iamthebob 04:21, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Exactly, BUT it can only be said about that specific evidence. I'm not at all impressed by the skeptics paper. What about Levengood's findings? And, not even mentioned, what about the clay structure? And isn't it the ball og Light effect that is being questioned? Haselhoff said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And is he showing us a relatinship between the nodes and a supposed point source above the center of the circle. Haselhoff is saying that there is a measurable relationship. Tommy Mandel
Yes, and the paper says that the relationship is measurable, but that the results that Haselhoff obtains are not complete, and that a different analysis of the same data that Haselhoff uses provides completely different results (so Haselhoff's conclusion is not correct). What the paper tries to show is that Levengood was not following proper scientific procedure when performing his experiment, hence his findings are not accurate, becuase he may have used his process in order to obtain the results that he wanted. iamthebob 21:12, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
You say Levengood was not following proper procedure, but I find nothing about Levengood's procedure specifically, did you mean Haselhoff?Tommy Mandel
Levengood is mentioned on page 11 of the article. iamthebob 01:51, 23 October 2006 (UTC)


An experiment carried out in Maryland in 1997, Levengood and Talbott (1999) made, by themselves, a crop circle, claiming that the gravitropic response of the flattened plants was no more than about 10% in the three days since the circle creation, too little to explain the elongations observed in the alleged ‘‘genuine’’ fomations. We will discuss this assumption later in this paper. In 1999 Levengood and Talbott (1999) published the results of the monitoring
it should be noted that the node lengths increase up to 30%, proving wrong the conclusions of the Levengood and Talbott experiment at Maryland (1997), in which plant gravitropism was estimated to be no more than about 10%, ... meanwhile demonstrating that man-made circles can have node elongation as large as those found in the reputedly non-anthropogenic (‘‘genuine’’) formations.
Well, I sure wonder a lot about this node stuff. Are the Croppies so dumb that they didn't notice which way the plants are bent when they found them? Correct me if I am wrong, but a plant node that elongates on one side, and thus allows the plant to fall toward the center, or a plant that is forced down by mechanical means, would have to elongate in the opposite direction to bring the plant to the previous position. This is very evident when a plant is pulled back toward its original position I would think sitting here in my philosophers chair..."That way" and "back" are not the same bend. And the skeptics argument for gravitropism in three days can equal what has been found, does not explain those circles which were found the next day. What the skeptics don't talk about are the real strange stuff, like canola plants that bend. Carrots...Trees...Ice...Corn. On the other hand, where is the definitive paper in regards to bending plants?
Man made circles do not have node elongation immediately after they have been stompted. It takes several days before node length changes by natural means. Seems to me that it is the skeptics who are being sloppy here.Tommy Mandel 17:18, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
I believe it says in the papers that some of the plants were obtained several days after they were formed. iamthebob 21:12, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Doesn't make sense, too many different researchers to make the same dumb mistake. Obviously aftr a while, the plant tries to bend back, do the scientists collected grain that was a week old and didn't notice the direction of the bending? Many circles were found the next day. Tommy Mandel 04:25, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

::Any conclusion concerning the comparison of samples coming from the formations and those from the whole crop field are therefore not supported by a robust statistical analysis.

Wellll...I believe that the above is the point they are trying to make. That point is clear, they are saying that the three papers do not prove "X" with the appropriate level of confidence. They don't say the papers are wrong, only that the samples may have been selected to make the point. Let me say this, if I were investigating the circles I would look for the most extreme example, for example I would look for the single photograph of a canola plant bent into a 180 degree bend. One example is all I need. I do not need five or five hundred, all I need is ONE plant that man could not have bent. And I do not need a scientific paper to prove it to me, because the evidence is objective, it exists out there. There is a photograph of a canola stalk bent 180 degrees. Canola does not bend, it breaks like celery.
If the paper says that the three papers do not prove "X" with appropriate level of confidence, that means that the conclusion is not proven. Since the three papers conclude that there must exist man made crop circles, the skeptic paper is saying that the three papers may not be correct; and that it is possible for all crop circles to be man made. The problem is not with the most extreme example; there are always anomalies within crops; there are just so many of them in any given field. iamthebob 21:12, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps the problem is a reader reading into a paper what he or she thinks it is saying. If the skeptic's paper were scientific, and the refusal of the journals to publish it suggests that it is not scientific, if it were scientific it would state up front what it is trying to prove. It is not fair to twist the intentions of the skeptics around by claiming "that is what they are saying inbweteen the lines." That is not science. Tommy Mandel 16:38, 22 October 2006 (UTC)


We conclude that the claims about the involvement of some kind of electromagnetic radiation in the creation of crop circles are not supported by the available evidence. In particular, the 1/r2 symmetry exists only as a consequence of the unjustified exclusion of unwanted data; even in this favourable condition, the suggested model does not fit the data as well as a simple ‘‘best fit’’ straight line. Even if a 1/r2 trend were found, it should not, anyway, be related to a point source radiating the exposed crop field, because this implies a complete transparency of the plants to the striking radiation, so avoiding the absorption of energy. Moreover, the BOL model was selectively applied only to circular imprints, while all other geometric crop formations with rectangular or more complex patterns were deliberately ignored because they cannot fit the BOL hypothesis. The total evidence discussed in this critical review demonstrates nothing but a mere difference in the stem elongation between the flattened plants lying inside the circles and those standing outside it, as we should expect when whatever kind of mechanical force flattens the plants, rope and wood plank

included.

You know, even if we accept everything that is said in this conclusion, we are left with their own conclusion that there is a difference (how much they don't say mere doesn't do the job) but they do not explain how mechanically bending a plant lenghtens/bursts the node.
I do not think that it is necessary to include all circles, just one circle is enough to prove existence. I do not think it is necessary to include the standing stalk in the center of a circle as part of the bent stalks within the circle in order to arrive a significant conclusion.
I would reject the skeptics paper too if I were a reviewer. It is obviously not a comprehensive or definitive paper. It finds flaws, but the flaws are not fatal flaws. Let me say this, two possible explanations are always found in science. It is not science to say that because there is an alternative explanation the primary explanation is thereby proved incorrect. Proof that a crop circle was man made is not proof that the next one is man made.

In science it is the test, not the theory that ultimately prevails (Einstein said that) Right now I want to show you how this works. There is a whole lot more going on than the correlation of source and bending. We can talk about changes in the seeds within a crop circle. And they have the pictures to show that. But forget the statistical analysis, Levengood, took their knowledge, figured out what was going on, built a machine to replicate it, patented it, and now are on the way to their bank.


From the BLT website
7. Laboratory Replication of Crop Circle Plant Changes. Apical node (the first node beneath the seed-head) elongation and expulsion cavities (holes blown out at the lower plant-stem nodes) have been induced in normal plants in the laboratory by placing them in a commercial microwave oven for between 20-30 seconds. It is microwave radiation, here, that is heating up the moisture inside the plant stem which--as it turns to steam and expands--either stretches the more elastic fibers at the top of the plant, or blows holes in the tougher nodes farther down the plant stem.
The more positive plant changes--enhanced growth rate, increased yield & increased stress tolerance--observed in the laboratory in seedlings grown from cropcircle plants which were mature when the crop circles occured, have also been replicated in the laboratory. In 1998 W.C. Levengood and John Burke obtained a patent (Patent #5740627) on equipment they developed which delivers unusual electrical pulses to normal seed. Called the MIR process and carrying the registered Trademark "Stressguard," this equipment creates organized electron-ion avalanches which then form organized plasmas, to which seeds are exposed. Tommy Mandel 01:13, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I just got an idea! Thanks Guy! I don't know if I can get away with this, but I sure am going to try. Because this is my page

[edit] Tommysun's incompetant/biased/fanatical/lunatic mad ravings of a POV crusader

Editors are invited to read and discover a editorial POV, This is how I would write a NPOV article. Well, at until the end where I get to the point that I don't know what to say.


Crop Circles By Tommy Mandel An example of NPOV writing: (I think)

Crop circles, circular geometrical formations of flattened cereal crop, have become a controversial subject in England and worldwide. The precisely formed formations found in fields of grain have baffled visitors for decades. Some believe they were made by aliens, some believe they were made by the winds, some believe they all were hoaxed on us by Doug and Dave, and the many who followed them. SOme have unusual explanations. But the story is a little more complicated than just a flattened shape in a wheat field. There is a lot more to it.

A few scientists have ventured into the investigations. Gerald Hawkins, the renown astronomer who deciphered Stonehenge, investigated the circles before hoaxing became popular. He found that some of them conform to exact geometrical shapes. Some circles demonstrate the diatonic ratios found in music. And in some circles Hawkins found Euclidian theorems not yet published in the literature.


There appear to be certain characteristics found in the circles that are unusual in that one wouldn't expect to see them in a circle Doug and Dave typically made. The crop is bent rather than broken over. Sometimes this bent is a woven form. Sometimes the bent is woven in layers, one circle had five different layers of bent. In one circle, a tuft of grain consisting of a few standing (unbent) stalks was found in every square foot of a crop circle. Sometime standing stalks ae found interspersed with bent stalks. In the triple Julia set circle, each of the hundreds of individual circles had a different lay pattern. Oilseed rape, canola, has a structure similar to celery. It does not bend very much, instead it breaks. Crop circles are found regularily in canola. In one circle a canola plant was bent 180 degrees.

Looking closer, changes in the structure of the crop is found. The nodes show elongation on one side bending the plant over. Sometimes the node has burst. Internally visible changes also occur in pits (I think)

Changes in the soil are found. In some cases the soil is dryer than it is outside the circle. Magnetic particles have been found, white deposits also have been found. While these were added to the soil, changes in the soil itself has been found. Confirmed by a leading authority, the crystalline structure of clays in the soil has been measured and found to be significantly different from soil outside the circle.

It has been reported many times that batteries go dead when taken into a circle. Cameras have stopped working. Tractors have stopped running. Professinal video cameras have broken. One report talks about a whole town going dead. Magnetic fields have been detected. Compasses are erratic within a circle. Energy lines have been found by dowsing and electronic equipment aligned with the circles.

Perhaps the most elusive mystery are the BoLs. Balls of light which are regularily seen around crop circles. The sightings are numerous enough to prompt naming a hill, Golden Ball Hill, after them. The balls of light are typically described as semitransluesent basketball sized globes of light. They have been reported doing all sorts of things from chasing cars on a highway to playing tag with a helicopter. Usually they are seen hovering over a circle. In one video, a ball of light is seen hovering over a circle, then veering off toward an approaching tractor. And in the video, the farmer turns his head as the BoL passes over him.

Here is where the story goes wild. The Balls of Light are not imagined. Hundreds have seen them. They have appeared in photographs and videos. Many were hoaxed, but many appear not to be hoaxed. They have been reported in scientific journals. And even more, they have been reported all over the world. Balls of light have been reported by astronaults, pilots, police, air traffic controllers and in Mexico city by thousands at one time. It is not known if the balls of light of UFO fame are the same.

A ball of light looks like a ball made of light, but there is no known process which would create a ball out of light. An alternative explanation is plasma, the fourth state of matter consisting of inos, an atom stripped of electrns, and electrons flowing apart from each other yet together. Small balls of plasma called plasmoids have been created in th3 laboratory. Some of these experiments purportedly have created free energy. A plasmoid, however, is a very hot state of matter, and the balls of light seen in the fields do not appear to be seering hot. Eyewitness accounts describe the balls of light as a transleusent globe of colored light. Golden ball Hill in England is named after the golden colored BoL's that appeared there.

Many researchers have seriously investigated the crop circles. Peter Sorensen has videotaped nearly all of them in England. He recalls on his website how at first he didn't believe the circes were all hoaxed, but as time moved on he slowly came around the conclusion that "probably all of them are hoaxes". And then he adds "But the Balls of Light are real, I have seen them myself."

Perhaps the mystery of the crop circles is not about who made them, rather more what are the balls of Light seen so often around them? Are they same as the UFO's that have been sighted? If that is so, are the crop circles evidence of intelligent UFO's?

Next - black helicopters and crop circles

(notes)

A recognized researcher reports on his website a sighting of two black helicopters hoving over a field afterwhich a crop circle was found. Interestingly, he was able to discover yet another black helicopter doing the same thing. The two articles read identical...

This is bizarre.

to be continued

 I am a Professor in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University, with a joint appointment in the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics (PACM). My research group studies gas dynamics in a wide variety of astrophysical systems: from protostars to clusters of galaxies, mostly using numerical methods. As part of this effort, we develop, test, and apply numerical algorithms for astrophysical gas dynamics on high-performance computers. Use the links below to find out more about my group and what we do.

Research Group To find out more about members of the group and what they are working on, follow the link to their personal home pages.



Ian Parrish (Graduate Student) Studying anisotropic heat conduction in astrophysical plasmas.


Nicole Lemaster (Graduate Student) Studying the properties of supersonic MHD turbulence in molecular clouds.


Mike Sekora (Graduate Student) Developing numerical algorithms for radiation hydrodynamics based on higher-order Godunov methods.

[edit] citation - erroneous source!

Hi Tommy, did the following citation originate with you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Big_Bang&diff=prev&oldid=80752891

Regretfully the source doesn't match the citation! Please comment on:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Edwin_Hubble#Hubble.27s_opinion_about_redshift

Thanks in advance,

Harald88 17:12, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

-> What could have been the correct source of the citations above that answered Sandage's questions?

Harald88 17:09, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Following I have copied the correct test from Sandage's Hubble celebration paper here. Around 32 paragraphs in.

Copied from http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/diamond_jubilee/1996/sandage_hubble.html

Hubble concluded that his observed log N(m) distribution showed a large departure from Euclidean geometry, provided that the effect of redshifts on the apparent magnitudes was calculated as if the redshifts were due to a real expansion. A different correction is required if no motion exists, the redshifts then being due to an unknown cause. Hubble believed that his count data gave a more reasonable result concerning spatial curvature if the redshift correction was made assuming no recession. To the very end of his writings he maintained this position, favouring (or at the very least keeping open) the model where no true expansion exists, and therefore that the redshift "represents a hitherto unrecognized principle of nature". This viewpoint is emphasized (a) in The Realm of the Nebulae, (b) in his reply (Hubble 1937a) to the criticisms of the 1936 papers by Eddington and by McVittie, and (c) in his 1937 Rhodes Lectures published as The Observational Approach to Cosmology (Hubble 1937b). It also persists in his last published scientific paper which is an account of his Darwin Lecture (Hubble 1953).

Very interesting, seems that in the Hubble article, it was Einstein's opinion that was stated. I wonder who did that?

Tommy Mandel


[edit] Please consider meeting me

You know, Tommy, we live in the same city, so if you want to talk to me directly that is possible. If this is something that intrigues you, you can contact me on my talkpage or you can send me an e-mail and we can chat face-to-face. --ScienceApologist 13:18, 6 November 2006 (UTC)


[edit] On formal systems

I'm putting this here rather than on the ArbCom case page:

The formulations (and support) for the general direction you're headed with the above exist in the literature, but I shan't get into it in any depth here, as this isn't the place for specifics or clarifications of that kind of depth. That said, formal systems are abstractions, entirely symbolic. (The form and the operations on those forms might be done in some kind set-space, for instance.) One often speaks of "Some set of class \mathbb{C} is closed under operator \oplus." (where \oplus is a placeholder for some operation such as union, intersection, addition, subtraction, or whatever operations are mappable in that formal system) for instance, which means "If set A is of class \mathbb{C} and set B is of class \mathbb{C}, then the resulting set after application of \oplus on those sets is also of class \mathbb{C}." It's entirely possible to prove, using such a formal system, such things as power sets, et cetera, without the need for a single observed instantiation (i.e., 32, 42, or 52). However, whether or not such pure maths map back to an observable phenomenon is not really the issue. There are more transcendental numbers than algebraic numbers, for instance, such that all of the myriad of transcendentals will never be observed to have the kind of empirical utility one finds with π or e.
It's a fascinating field. :-) (Or I hope it is or I've wasted a lot of my adult life!)
All best. -- QTJ(Talk) 22:10, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
Ahem and should the above statement "I hope it is or I've wasted a lot of my adult life!" ever become the subject of an RfC around this place -- I plead the fifth!!!! -- QTJ(Talk) 22:14, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

One of the problems is finding a way to express emergence mathematically. How can R(1+1)=11 be mathematically? Mathematics for some reason is very difficult for me, and talking about sets doesn't help me much, and then there are symbols for symbols. I would love to hear all your explanations, maybe I could learn it. My notation can be used in all conceptual fields because it starts out as a general archetypal form, the simplest form to be precise. Using this simplest form, a diagram can be derived. This diagram is also general. Particulars are added from any field, the resultant expression is specific to the particulars that were chosen. I haven't told you what it is yet, altho you could figure it out given what I did say. Two reasons, can't draw diagrams here, and ain't supposed to talk about it prior to publication. Do you know about theorems? I would like to learn how to state my notation as a theorem. I got as far as IF A, then B If (A,B), then R If (A,B)R, then C

Ah, sets. Believe me -- you're not the only person out there who finds sets and symbols that way. With me, it's numbers. Can't stand numbers, personally. ;-) Give me L=\{a^n|n \in \mathbb{N}\} over 1,2,3,4,... any day of the week.
Theorem: There shall always exist some article \mathbb{A} on ideal Wikipedia such that two arbitrary editors E1 and E2 can never agree that \mathbb{A} is perfect where "perfect" is here defined as "accepted by both as containing no contradiction to what is known by Ei to be absolutely true".
Proof: By arriving at a joke. Let \mathbb{W} be the set of all possible articles on Wikipedia. Let a \in \mathbb{W} be an article such that it contains some form of the text T:
If at least two people agree that this article is true, it is a lie.
If both E1 and E2 agree that the article is true, it is a lie, and thus not true, and thus not perfect.
If both E1 and E2 agree that the article is false, it is not perfect.
If either E1 or E2 state that the article is false, there is no agreement as to the article's truth, and thus the claim of the theorem still holds. Since the ideal state of \mathbb{W} is to contain a representation of all notable human knowledge, and since such an article must exist and be notable, in that this is simply an extension of a well known paradoxical statement, \mathbb{W} must contain some article that is, in essence T. QED
-- QTJ(Talk) 08:53, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
I hope I am not supposed to understand that..:-)

Tommy Mandel

I think in the Queen's English it reads: "Ya can never get two editors at Wikipedia who agree on every article, and even if you could, there'd still be at least one article that was hot air, so why bother." ;-) -- QTJ(Talk) 04:10, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please Unblock Me

Your request to be unblocked has been granted for the following reason(s):

Autoblock of 205.188.117.14 lifted.

Request handled by: Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:58, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

All autoblocks triggered by that one seem already to have been lifted, please try it out, you ought to be already able to edit again. Sorry for the inconvenience! Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:58, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ScienceApologist is doing it again

See Edwin Hubble ... Harald88 17:47, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I guess there is nothing we can do about it. The man owns that articles, and what he says goes. On the other hand he has given me good reason to dedicate the rest of my life to compiling the evidence against his favored theory. Obviously the issue is not to be decided here at Wikipedia, but it is coming. The only problem is that they are adept at turning evidence around such that they appear to have discovered it first. Tommy Mandel 05:30, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Top Problems with the big bang theory

[reprinted from Meta Research Bulletin 11, 6-13 (2002)]

Abstract. Earlier, we presented a simple list of the top ten problems with the Big Bang. 1 Since that publication, we have had many requests for citations and additional details, which we provide here. We also respond to a few rebuttal arguments to the earlier list. Then we supplement the list based on the last four years of developments – with another 20 problems for the theory.


(1) Static universe models fit observational data better than expanding universe models.

Static universe models match most observations with no adjustable parameters. The Big Bang can match each of the critical observations, but only with adjustable parameters, one of which (the cosmic deceleration parameter) requires mutually exclusive values to match different tests. [[2],[3]] Without ad hoc theorizing, this point alone falsifies the Big Bang. Even if the discrepancy could be explained, Occam’s razor favors the model with fewer adjustable parameters – the static universe model.


(2) The microwave “background” makes more sense as the limiting temperature of space heated by starlight than as the remnant of a fireball.

The expression “the temperature of space” is the title of chapter 13 of Sir Arthur Eddington’s famous 1926 work, 4 Eddington calculated the minimum temperature any body in space would cool to, given that it is immersed in the radiation of distant starlight. With no adjustable parameters, he obtained 3°K (later refined to 2.8°K 5), essentially the same as the observed, so-called “background”, temperature. A similar calculation, although with less certain accuracy, applies to the limiting temperature of intergalactic space because of the radiation of galaxy light. 6 So the intergalactic matter is like a “fog”, and would therefore provide a simpler explanation for the microwave radiation, including its blackbody-shaped spectrum.
Such a fog also explains the otherwise troublesome ratio of infrared to radio intensities of radio galaxies. 7 The amount of radiation emitted by distant galaxies falls with increasing wavelengths, as expected if the longer wavelengths are scattered by the intergalactic medium. For example, the brightness ratio of radio galaxies at infrared and radio wavelengths changes with distance in a way which implies absorption. Basically, this means that the longer wavelengths are more easily absorbed by material between the galaxies. But then the microwave radiation (between the two wavelengths) should be absorbed by that medium too, and has no chance to reach us from such great distances, or to remain perfectly uniform while doing so. It must instead result from the radiation of microwaves from the intergalactic medium. This argument alone implies that the microwaves could not be coming directly to us from a distance beyond all the galaxies, and therefore that the Big Bang theory cannot be correct.


None of the predictions of the background temperature based on the Big Bang were close enough to qualify as successes, the worst being Gamow’s upward-revised estimate of 50°K made in 1961, just two years before the actual discovery. Clearly, without a realistic quantitative prediction, the Big Bang’s hypothetical “fireball” becomes indistinguishable from the natural minimum temperature of all cold matter in space. But none of the predictions, which ranged between 5°K and 50°K, matched observations. 8 And the Big Bang offers no explanation for the kind of intensity variations with wavelength seen in radio galaxies.

(3) Element abundance predictions using the Big Bang require too many adjustable parameters to make them work.

The universal abundances of most elements were predicted correctly by Hoyle in the context of the original Steady State cosmological model. This worked for all elements heavier than lithium. The Big Bang co-opted those results and concentrated on predicting the abundances of the light elements. Each such prediction requires at least one adjustable parameter unique to that element prediction. Often, it’s a question of figuring out why the element was either created or destroyed or both to some degree following the Big Bang. When you take away these degrees of freedom, no genuine prediction remains. The best the Big Bang can claim is consistency with observations using the various ad hoc models to explain the data for each light element. Examples: [[9],[10]] for helium-3; 11 for lithium-7; 12 for deuterium; 13 for beryllium; and [[14],[15]] for overviews. For a full discussion of an alternative origin of the light elements, see 16.


(4) The universe has too much large scale structure (interspersed “walls” and voids) to form in a time as short as 10-20 billion years.

The average speed of galaxies through space is a well-measured quantity. At those speeds, galaxies would require roughly the age of the universe to assemble into the largest structures (superclusters and walls) we see in space 17, and to clear all the voids between galaxy walls. But this assumes that the initial directions of motion are special, e.g., directed away from the centers of voids. To get around this problem, one must propose that galaxy speeds were initially much higher and have slowed due to some sort of “viscosity” of space. To form these structures by building up the needed motions through gravitational acceleration alone would take in excess of 100 billion years. 18


(5) The average luminosity of quasars must decrease with time in just the right way so that their average apparent brightness is the same at all redshifts, which is exceedingly unlikely.

According to the Big Bang theory, a quasar at a redshift of 1 is roughly ten times as far away as one at a redshift of 0.1. (The redshift-distance relation is not quite linear, but this is a fair approximation.) If the two quasars were intrinsically similar, the high redshift one would be about 100 times fainter because of the inverse square law. But it is, on average, of comparable apparent brightness. This must be explained as quasars “evolving” their intrinsic properties so that they get smaller and fainter as the universe evolves. That way, the quasar at redshift 1 can be intrinsically 100 times brighter than the one at 0.1, explaining why they appear (on average) to be comparably bright. It isn’t as if the Big Bang has a reason why quasars should evolve in just this magical way. But that is required to explain the observations using the Big Bang interpretation of the redshift of quasars as a measure of cosmological distance. See [[19],[20]].
By contrast, the relation between apparent magnitude and distance for quasars is a simple, inverse-square law in alternative cosmologies. In [20], Arp shows great quantities of evidence that large quasar redshifts are a combination of a cosmological factor and an intrinsic factor, with the latter dominant in most cases. Most large quasar redshifts (e.g., z > 1) therefore have little correlation with distance. A grouping of 11 quasars close to NGC 1068, having nominal ejection patterns correlated with galaxy rotation, provides further strong evidence that quasar redshifts are intrinsic. 21


(6) The ages of globular clusters appear older than the universe.

Even though the data have been stretched in the direction toward resolving this since the “top ten” list first appeared, the error bars on the Hubble age of the universe (12±2 Gyr) still do not quite overlap the error bars on the oldest globular clusters (16±2 Gyr). Astronomers have studied this for the past decade, but resist the “observational error” explanation because that would almost certainly push the Hubble age older (as Sandage has been arguing for years), which creates several new problems for the Big Bang. In other words, the cure is worse than the illness for the theory. In fact, a new, relatively bias-free observational technique has gone the opposite way, lowering the Hubble age estimate to 10 Gyr, making the discrepancy worse again. [[22],[23]]


(7) The local streaming motions of galaxies are too high for a finite universe that is supposed to be everywhere uniform.

In the early 1990s, we learned that the average redshift for galaxies of a given brightness differs on opposite sides of the sky. The Big Bang interprets this as the existence of a puzzling group flow of galaxies relative to the microwave radiation on scales of at least 130 Mpc. Earlier, the existence of this flow led to the hypothesis of a "Great Attractor" pulling all these galaxies in its direction. But in newer studies, no backside infall was found on the other side of the hypothetical feature. Instead, there is streaming on both sides of us out to 60-70 Mpc in a consistent direction relative to the microwave "background". The only Big Bang alternative to the apparent result of large-scale streaming of galaxies is that the microwave radiation is in motion relative to us. Either way, this result is trouble for the Big Bang. [[24],[25],[26],[27],[28]]


(8) Invisible dark matter of an unknown but non-baryonic nature must be the dominant ingredient of the entire universe.

The Big Bang requires sprinkling galaxies, clusters, superclusters, and the universe with ever-increasing amounts of this invisible, not-yet-detected “dark matter” to keep the theory viable. Overall, over 90% of the universe must be made of something we have never detected. By contrast, Milgrom’s model (the alternative to “dark matter”) provides a one-parameter explanation that works at all scales and requires no “dark matter” to exist at any scale. (I exclude the additional 50%-100% of invisible ordinary matter inferred to exist by, e.g., MACHO studies.) Some physicists don’t like modifying the law of gravity in this way, but a finite range for natural forces is a logical necessity (not just theory) spoken of since the 17th century. [[29],[30]]


Milgrom’s model requires nothing more than that. Milgrom’s is an operational model rather than one based on fundamentals. But it is consistent with more complete models invoking a finite range for gravity. So Milgrom’s model provides a basis to eliminate the need for “dark matter” in the universe at any scale. This represents one more Big Bang “fudge factor” no longer needed.


(9) The most distant galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field show insufficient evidence of evolution, with some of them having higher redshifts (z = 6-7) than the highest-redshift quasars.

The Big Bang requires that stars, quasars and galaxies in the early universe be “primitive”, meaning mostly metal-free, because it requires many generations of supernovae to build up metal content in stars. But the latest evidence suggests lots of metal in the “earliest” quasars and galaxies. [[31],[32],[33]] Moreover, we now have evidence for numerous ordinary galaxies in what the Big Bang expected to be the “dark age” of evolution of the universe, when the light of the few primitive galaxies in existence would be blocked from view by hydrogen clouds. 34


(10) If the open universe we see today is extrapolated back near the beginning, the ratio of the actual density of matter in the universe to the critical density must differ from unity by just a part in 1059. Any larger deviation would result in a universe already collapsed on itself or already dissipated.

Inflation failed to achieve its goal when many observations went against it. To maintain consistency and salvage inflation, the Big Bang has now introduced two new adjustable parameters: (1) the cosmological constant, which has a major fine-tuning problem of its own because theory suggests it ought to be of order 10120, and observations suggest a value less than 1; and (2) “quintessence” or “dark energy”. [[35],[36]] This latter theoretical substance solves the fine-tuning problem by introducing invisible, undetectable energy sprinkled at will as needed throughout the universe to keep consistency between theory and observations. It can therefore be accurately described as “the ultimate fudge factor”.



Anyone doubting the Big Bang in its present form (which includes most astronomy-interested people outside the field of astronomy, according to one recent survey) would have good cause for that opinion and could easily defend such a position. This is a fundamentally different matter than proving the Big Bang did not happen, which would be proving a negative – something that is normally impossible. (E.g., we cannot prove that Santa Claus does not exist.) The Big Bang, much like the Santa Claus hypothesis, no longer makes testable predictions wherein proponents agree that a failure would falsify the hypothesis. Instead, the theory is continually amended to account for all new, unexpected discoveries. Indeed, many young scientists now think of this as a normal process in science! They forget or were never taught that a model has value only when it can predict new things that differentiate the model from chance and from other models before the new things are discovered. Explanations of new things are supposed to flow from the basic theory itself with at most an adjustable parameter or two, and not from add-on bits of new theory.


Of course, the literature also contains the occasional review paper in support of the Big Bang. 37 But these generally don’t count any of the prediction failures or surprises as theory failures as long as some ad hoc theory might explain them. And the “prediction successes” in almost every case do not distinguish the Big Bang from any of the four leading competitor models: Quasi-Steady-State [16,[38]], Plasma Cosmology [18], Meta Model [3], and Variable-Mass Cosmology [20].


For the most part, these four alternative cosmologies are ignored by astronomers. However, one web site by Ned Wright does try to advance counterarguments in defense of the Big Bang. 39 But his counterarguments are mostly old objections long since defeated. For example:

(1) In “Eddington did not predict the CMB”:

a. Wright argues that Eddington’s argument for the “temperature of space” applies at most to our Galaxy. But Eddington’s reasoning applies also to the temperature of intergalactic space, for which a minimum is set by the radiation of galaxy and quasar light. The original calculations half-a-century ago showed this limit probably fell in the range 1-6°K. [6] And that was before quasars were discovered and before we knew the modern space density of galaxies.

b. Wright also argues that dust grains cannot be the source of the blackbody microwave radiation because there are not enough of them to be opaque, as needed to produce a blackbody spectrum. However, opaqueness is required only in a finite universe. An infinite universe can achieve thermodynamic equilibrium (the actual requirement for a blackbody spectrum) even if transparent out to very large distances because the thermal mixing can occur on a much smaller scale than quantum particles – e.g., in the light-carrying medium itself.

c. Wright argues that dust grains do not radiate efficiently at millimeter wavelengths. However, efficient or not, if the equilibrium temperature they reach is 2.8°K, they must radiate away the energy they absorb from distant galaxy and quasar light at millimeter wavelengths. Temperature and wavelength are correlated for any bodies in thermal equilibrium.

(2) About Lerner’s argument against the Big Bang:

a. Lerner calculated that the Big Bang universe has not had enough time to form superclusters. Wright calculates that all the voids could be vacated and superclusters formed in less than 11-14 billion years (barely). But that assumes that almost all matter has initial speeds headed directly out of voids and toward matter concentrations. Lerner, on the other hand, assumed that the speeds had to be built up by gravitational attraction, which takes many times longer. Lerner’s point is more reasonable because doing it Wright’s way requires fine-tuning of initial conditions.

b. Wright argues that “there is certainly lots of evidence for dark matter.” The reality is that there is no credible observational detection of dark matter, so all the “evidence” is a matter of interpretation, depending on theoretical assumptions. For example, Milgrom’s Model explains all the same evidence without any need for dark matter.

(3) Regarding arguments against “tired light cosmology”:

a. Wright argues: “There is no known interaction that can degrade a photon's energy without also changing its momentum, which leads to a blurring of distant objects which is not observed.” While it is technically true that no such interaction has yet been discovered, reasonable non-Big-Bang cosmologies require the existence of entities many orders of magnitude smaller than photons. For example, the entity responsible for gravitational interactions has not yet been discovered. So the “fuzzy image” argument does not apply to realistic physical models in which all substance is infinitely divisible. By contrast, physical models lacking infinite divisibility have great difficulties explaining Zeno’s paradoxes – especially the extended paradox for matter. [3]

b. Wright argues that the stretching of supernovae light curves is not predicted by “tired light”. However, one cannot measure the stretching effect directly because the time under the lightcurve depends on the intrinsic brightness of the supernovae, which can vary considerably. So one must use indirect indicators, such as rise time only. And in that case, the data does not unambiguously favor either tired light or Big Bang models.

c. Wright argued that tired light does not produce a blackbody spectrum. But this is untrue if the entities producing the energy loss are many orders of magnitude smaller and more numerous than quantum particles.

d. Wright argues that tired light models fail the Tolman surface brightness test. This ignores that realistic tired light models must lose energy in the transverse direction, not just the longitudinal one, because light is a transverse wave. When this effect is considered, the predicted loss of light intensity goes with (1+z)-2, which is in good agreement with most observations without any adjustable parameters. [ NOTEREF _Ref4051228 \h \* MERGEFORMAT 2,[40]] The Big Bang, by contrast, predicts a (1+z)-4 dependence, and must therefore invoke special ad hoc evolution (different from that applicable to quasars) to close the gap between theory and observations.


By no means is this “top ten” list of Big Bang problems exhaustive – far from it. In fact, it is easy to argue that several of these additional 20 points should be among the “top ten”:

· "Pencil-beam surveys" show large-scale structure out to distances of more than 1 Gpc in both of two opposite directions from us. This appears as a succession of wall-like galaxy features at fairly regular intervals, the first of which, at about 130 Mpc distance, is called "The Great Wall". To date, 13 such evenly-spaced "walls" of galaxies have been found! 41 The Big Bang theory requires fairly uniform mixing on scales of distance larger than about 20 Mpc, so there apparently is far more large-scale structure in the universe than the Big Bang can explain.

· Many particles are seen with energies over 60x1018 eV. But that is the theoretical energy limit for anything traveling more than 20-50 Mpc because of interaction with microwave background photons. 42 However, this objection assumes the microwave radiation is as the Big Bang expects, instead of a relatively sparse, local phenomenon.

· The Big Bang predicts that equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created in the initial explosion. Matter dominates the present universe apparently because of some form of asymmetry, such as CP violation asymmetry, that caused most anti-matter to annihilate with matter, but left much matter. Experiments are searching for evidence of this asymmetry, so far without success. Other galaxies can’t be antimatter because that would create a matter-antimatter boundary with the intergalactic medium that would create gamma rays, which are not seen. [[43],[44]]

· Even a small amount of diffuse neutral hydrogen would produce a smooth absorbing trough shortward of a QSO’s Lyman-alpha emission line. This is called the Gunn-Peterson effect, and is rarely seen, implying that most hydrogen in the universe has been re-ionized. A hydrogen Gunn-Peterson trough is now predicted to be present at a redshift z » 6.1. 45 Observations of high-redshift quasars near z = 6 briefly appeared to confirm this prediction. However, a galaxy lensed by a foreground cluster has now been observed at z = 6.56, prior to the supposed reionization epoch and at a time when the Big Bang expects no galaxies to be visible yet. Moreover, if only a few galaxies had turned on by this early point, their emission would have been absorbed by the surrounding hydrogen gas, making these early galaxies invisible. [34] So the lensed galaxy observation falsifies this prediction and the theory it was based on. Another problem example: Quasar PG 0052+251 is at the core of a normal spiral galaxy. The host galaxy appears undisturbed by the quasar radiation, which, in the Big Bang, is supposed to be strong enough to ionize the intergalactic medium. 46

· An excess of QSOs is observed around foreground clusters. Lensing amplification caused by foreground galaxies or clusters is too weak to explain this association between high- and low-redshift objects. This apparent contradiction has no solution under Big Bang premises that does not create some other problem. It particular, dark matter solutions would have to be centrally concentrated, contrary to observations that imply that dark matter increases away from galaxy centers. The high-redshift and low-redshift objects are probably actually at comparable distances, as Arp has maintained for 30 years. 47

· The Big Bang violates the first law of thermodynamics, that energy cannot be either created or destroyed, by requiring that new space filled with “zero-point energy” be continually created between the galaxies. 48

· In the Las Campanas redshift survey, statistical differences from homogenous distribution were found out to a scale of at least 200 Mpc. 49 This is consistent with other galaxy catalog analyses that show no trends toward homogeneity even on scales up to 1000 Mpc. 50 The Big Bang, of course, requires large-scale homogeneity. The Meta Model and other infinite-universe models expect fractal behavior at all scales. Observations remain in agreement with that.

· Elliptical galaxies supposedly bulge along the axis of the most recent galaxy merger. But the angular velocities of stars at different distances from the center are all different, making an elliptical shape formed in that way unstable. Such velocities would shear the elliptical shape until it was smoothed into a circular disk. Where are the galaxies in the process of being sheared?

· The polarization of radio emission rotates as it passes through magnetized extragalactic plasmas. Such Faraday rotations in quasars should increase (on average) with distance. If redshift indicates distance, then rotation and redshift should increase together. However, the mean Faraday rotation is less near z = 2 than near z = 1 (where quasars are apparently intrinsically brightest, according to Arp’s model). 51

· If the dark matter needed by the Big Bang exists, microwave radiation fluctuations should have “acoustic peaks” on angular scales of 1° and 0.3°, with the latter prominent compared with the former. By contrast, if Milgrom’s alternative to dark matter (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) is correct, then the latter peak should be only about 20% of the former. Newly acquired data from the Boomerang balloon-borne instruments clearly favors the MOND interpretation over dark matter. 52

· Redshifts are quantized for both galaxies [[53],[54]] and quasars 55. So are other properties of galaxies. 56 This should not happen under Big Bang premises.

· The number density of optical quasars peaks at z = 2.5-3, and declines toward both lower and higher redshifts. At z = 5, it has dropped by a factor of about 20. This cannot be explained by dust extinction or survey incompleteness. The Big Bang predicts that quasars, the seeds of all galaxies, were most numerous at earliest epochs. 57

· The falloff of the power spectrum at small scales can be used to determine the temperature of the intergalactic medium. It is typically inferred to be 20,000°K, but there is no evidence of evolution with redshift. Yet in the Big Bang, that temperature ought to adiabatically decrease as space expands everywhere. This is another indicator that the universe is not really expanding.] 58

· Under Big Bang premises, the fine structure constant must vary with time. 59

· Measurements of the two-point correlation function for optically selected galaxies follow an almost perfect power law over nearly three orders of magnitude in separation. However, this result disagrees with n-body simulations in all the Big Bang’s various modifications. A complex mixture of gravity, star formation, and dissipative hydrodynamics seems to be needed. 60

· Emission lines for z > 4 quasars indicate higher-than-solar quasar metallicities. 61 The iron to magnesium ratio increases at higher redshifts (earlier Big Bang epochs). 62 These results imply substantial star formation at epochs preceding or concurrent with the QSO phenomenon, contrary to normal Big Bang scenarios.

· The absorption lines of damped Lyman-alpha systems are seen in quasars. However, the HST NICMOS spectrograph has searched to see these objects directly in the infrared, but failed for the most part to detect them. 63 Moreover, the relative abundances have surprising uniformity, unexplained in the Big Bang. 64 The simplest explanation is that the absorbers are in the quasar’s own environment, not at their redshift distance as the Big Bang requires.

· The luminosity evolution of brightest cluster galaxies (BGCs) cannot be adequately explained by a single evolutionary model. For example, BGCs with low x-ray luminosity are consistent with no evolution, while those with high x-ray luminosity are brighter on average at high redshift. 65

· The fundamental question of why it is that at early cosmological times, bound aggregates of order 100,000 stars (globular clusters) were able to form remains unsolved in the Big Bang. It is no mystery in infinite universe models. 66

· Blue galaxy counts show an excess of faint blue galaxies by a factor of 10 at magnitude 28. This implies that the volume of space is larger than in the Big Bang, where it should get smaller as one looks back in time. 67


Perhaps never in the history of science has so much quality evidence accumulated against a model so widely accepted within a field. Even the most basic elements of the theory, the expansion of the universe and the fireball remnant radiation, remain interpretations with credible alternative explanations. One must wonder why, in this circumstance, that four good alternative models are not even being comparatively discussed by most astronomers.


Acknowledgments

Obviously, hundreds of professionals, both astronomers and scientists from other fields, have contributed to these findings, although few of them stand back and look at the bigger picture. It is hoped that many of them will add their comments and join as co-authors in an attempt to sway the upcoming generation of astronomers that the present cosmology is headed nowhere, and to join the search for better answers.

[edit] Getting closure

My dear Tommy, I am only willing to carry on discussions with you if they eventually come to a conclusion. Looking over this page, I am reminded of college bull sessions that wander all over creation without getting anywhere. That's all right for college freshman, but I don't have time for that any more. I would like to distill here what I think are the most important and unassailable points of these discussions. I would appreciate it if you could take a clear stand on them. I hope we can at least come to partial agreement. After that we can decide if there is any point in continuing this conversation. --Art Carlson 15:04, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

* The majority of astronomers believe that the experimental observation of Hubble's law essentially proved that the universe is expanding (whether or not that is actually so).

I don't think you can use Hubble's law as proof for expansion without proving FIRST that Hubble's law actually measures Expansion. But I accept the wording and intent you wrote.

* If the majority of scientists in a particular field verifiably have an opinion on the probable explanation of a phenomenon in that field, Wikipedia has an obligation to report at least that view (without asserting its truth).

Right away, only by citing a source asserting that. No editorial synthesis is allowed regardless of truth.

* Therefore the statement in the Hubble's Law article is appropriate, that Hubble's Law "today serves as one of the most often cited pieces of evidence in support of the Big Bang." (or similar wording).

I certainly can't argue with that, but there is a really big difference between Hubble's law provides evidence for expansion, and Hubble proved expansion

* Some prominent proponents of plasma cosmology assert that that theory is in practice ignored (in terms of funding and critical discussions) by the mainstream community (leaving open the question of why the mainstream does that, and whether it is by active intent or through ignorance or sociological factors).

When I first read this I thought "good job." But rereading it tells me there are several loaded statements in there

* Some popular university and graduate level textbooks on cosmology make no mention of plasma cosmology, and in this discussion not a single textbook has been cited that even mentions plasma cosmology.

The lack of evidence is not evidence of the lack...Do you take that lack of mention as a sign of enlightened intelligence? Could be that plasma cosmology is unknown and too new to be in the texts.

* Therefore it is appropriate that the article on plasma cosmology report that it is "mostly ignored by the professional cosmology community" (or similar wording).

ONLY IF you can support that assertion with a peer reviewed reputable journal article. Regardless of how you arrived at that conclusion, ultimately you must find and provide a source. Even if it is clearly obvious to you, your own convictions must not appear in the article.

* Eternal inflation is a cosmological theory that postulates that there was no beginning in time.

I can understand this only in terms of Now. Now, it has been said by Schroedinger, is the only thing that has no beginning and no ending, hence "eternal." Therefore it follows, correct me if I am wrong, if it didn't happen now, it never happened. To turn that around, if it happened, it can happen now. I don't know whose theory this belongs to, but it is a structural fact of nature that what is happening is happening now. And that all that ever happened, happened now. So my postualate is that if it ever happened, it is happening now. And there is the difference betweeen the big bang theory and all the rest -- the big bang does not have a place to create new matter, hence, if they are right, matter is not created Now.

* Eternal inflation may reasonably be described as a big bang theory because it is a cosmological theory that postulates that some 13 billion years ago, the universe was dense enough and hot enough that nucleosynthesis occured and has been expanding ever since.

Realistically it is one of many Inflation theories, none of which has risen to the favorite accepted view. And while I have no problem with the postulation, I have a problem with the postulate becoming the standard theory and then the most widely accepted theory, then the correct theory. I question, however, why does nucleosynthesis have to have occured in the past? Aren't you then saying that all the matter that will be produced has been produced? If so, would the creation of matter falsify that hypothesis?

* Therefore it is not entirely accurate to assert without additional qualification that "Any big bang theory must necessarily postulate a beginning in time."

I'm working my way up the list, it says big bang not necessarily a beginning. I know you are saying this regarding eternal inflation. But Why in the &&&& did they keep the same name which is a picture of what most people have experienced when something goes bang? I would venture to bet that most of the world believes that the big bang theoy meant the Universe started from a point and went bang - the original idea which has been falsified hence inflation theory whioch somehow creates a Universe without the bang.

* No one in this discussion has asserted that plasma physics or plasma astrophysics (as opposed to plasma cosmology) is in any way unimportant, ignored, or discredited.

True, BUT what is being asserted by SA is that plasma astrophysics and plasma cosmology are somehow so different that plasma cosmology does not use the information from plasma astrophysics, and therefore what can be said about plasma astrophysics cannot be said of plasma cosmology. Wittgentstein said that meaning of a word is set by from the context it is used in, a game. When the article demeans the subject, this demeaning is obvious to a knowledgeable reader. What SA did is remove the connection between the study of astrophysical electromagnetic plasma's and the study of Cosmological electromagnetic plasmas. He very carefully removes evidence that makes a difference for one reason or the other. He removed the graphic on plasma scalability a very important observation of plasma behavoir from the article because it wasn't attributed correctly, but scientific graphs are not works of art, they are like a word in picture form, what matters is what the graphic is saying. ScienceApologist eliminated yet another. In it's place SA et al, inserted the suggestion that plasma cosmology is an old idea not worthy of scientific consideration. Is it perhaps because SA and friends realize the significant of EMF and are in the provess of claiming it as their owm? Let us mark where plasma is mentioned in the big bang theory.

Well, that's a little bit of agreement.
  • We more or less agree that it's OK to say that most scientists believe in the Big Bang because of Hubble's law.
  • Although you admit that proponents of PC say they are ignored, and that PC is not even mentioned in textbooks and review articles, you think that is not enough evidence to say that PC is ignored. You bring a wonderful Catch 22: To say that PC is ignored requires a peer-reviewed reference; but if there is a peer reviewed reference to PC, then it is not ignored; therefore it is never possible to say that PC is ignored.
Let's forget the symbolics which can mean anything we want it to mean, plasma cosmology is about plasma from the perspective of evolution of the Universe. SA wants to make PC a cult science, something of the past and long falsified, THEN he intends, and you are in on this too, to incorporate all the plasma research calling it plasma astrophysics. Don't play games with me.
  • On eternal inflation you completely give up answering the question, which doesn't stop you from writing many lines of incomprehensible irrelevance.
It is Inflation that is incomprehensible, metaphysical, impossible to verify and derived from what abounts to multiple hypothesis e.g., cosmological redshift means expansion and expansion mean Inflation. What about now is incomprehensible to you?
  • You agree that the issue is the status of plasma cosmology, not that of plasma physics or plasma astrophysics, but you do it so reluctantly that I suspect you will forget it as soon as you turn around.
I think this whole semantical thing about plasma cosmology is crap. The idea is to broaden it encompassing the varied perspectives from different scales. Instead you and your friends have raped it of all the subtle nuances which make it more than interesting. I am not the only one questioning the big bang theory. I read a report that the majority of those who are not astronomers do not believe in the big bang. No wonder when one constructs a theory out of invisible stuff. So when the big bang fails, something will have to be there to take it's place. Plasma is already in place. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out where this is headed.
My personal summary is that the cost-benefit ratio of this discussion is miserable and not likely to improve. After spending an awful lot of time, I have hardly convinced you of anything and you have convinced me of nothing. I'm afraid I have to cut my loses and bow out now. I wish it could have been otherwise. Is there anything else I can do for you on my way to the door? --Art Carlson 22:08, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

You are the only editor during my short experience with Wikipedia to actually dialogue with me. You have unconvinced me of the notion that the editors are all the same. I don't know what that is worth to you, but it was a great relief for me. As long as there is one, there is hope. Tommy Mandel 04:01, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Have you considered whether Wikipedia is the right place for you? You have said yourself that you do not aspire to become a wikieditor. The way you determine and defend the truth is partly at odds with the principles of Wikipedia. You have a point of view that you feel called to express and defend, but much of the mechanism of Wikipedia is deliberately designed to suppress individual points of view. You have been unsuccessful in changing the views of other editors, and you have managed to make only minor edits stick. I can't imagine that it is very satisfying for you to hang around here, or that you feel very productive in trying to edit Wikipedia. --Art Carlson 08:52, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

We certainly agree now. Wikipedia is not like home to me, and it obvious from the start that I am not welcomed. I must say I have learned a lot, Most of my prior experience was with scientists and professors, we don't talk like they do here. I have inter-met fools, both educated and uneducated, and many misguided editors, but I also have inter-met highly intelligent and respectful people here too. The problem is probably because the wise ones work in the background while the fools want to take center stage. I fully agree with the principles of Wikipedia, but there are too many ways to circumvent policy. I am not a follower, I have no interest in the mainstream view. I do not believe there is such a thing in real science, instead I strive to find the horizons of knowledge where the real knowledge takes the form of questioning. I have learned a lot about the big bang theory here, I hardly paid much attention to it before. I am not at all impressed, it is as if the whole scenario is made up. If I read the original authors, I am told they have formulated a hypothesis but if I read the version being promoted by the popularizers, the big bang is a fact. And that is what is being promoted here, what is caled the mainstream view. I think the effort to eliminate most of the research in plasma cosmology borders on evil intent, and what is scary is that those who are evil have a large following. I would like to say this, I have raised many questions in hopes of creating a dialogue, there's a list of them in the archives and I have asked many questions here. I don't think any of them have been answered Tommy Mandel 22:07, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Look what I found, Art, from the talk page at astrophysical plasma article --

When I squint at them, Plasma Universe and plasma cosmology look pretty similar. I'm beginning to think that plasma cosmology should be merged with Plasma Universe, and both kept out of standard cosmology and astrophysical plasmas (except for a link). --Art Carlson 08:25, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Cosmology is to astronomy, what Plasma Cosmology is to the Plasma Universe. The latter includes those theories/ideas that do not fall into Plasma cosmolgy. --Iantresman 11:34, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Not exactly. In the standard view, the distinction between cosmology and astrophysics is relatively clear. Cosmology is stuff that happened in the beginning - primordial fluctuations laying the seeds for large scale structure, inflation, nucleosynthesis, decoupling of the radiation which we now see as CMB. Astrophysics covers processes that are happening now, although possibly with some secular variations (changes in metallicity, changes in the number of AGNs). In the plasma religion, there is no beginning, so there is no temporal transition, and plasma phenomena are scaled from the laboratory up to the largest dimensions, so there is no spatial transition. It is practically a tenet of the "plasma universe" that there is no distiction between astrophysics and cosmology. --Art Carlson 13:07, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Unless, of course, matter can be created now. And if it is true that extra energy can be gotten from plasmoids, imagine what a star can do. A very much simpler theory comes from the theory that matter is produced today in contrast to the complicated theory that all matter was created at one time in the past. Tommy Mandel 22:07, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

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