Thanks, Greg. I'll try to check it out. But I don't think ARIans much hunger or search for truth. I always do.

Yes, they are very well written by Lockitch and well worth reading by you too. I was corrected and shown why instantaneous connection exists, and does not mean faster than light speed is necessary. The mechanism is the magnetic field extending around charged bodies. I am a fan of the Electric Universe theories and his explanations overlap with that. Pulsars etc are objects of debate still, I don't think their superfast rotation explains their regular radio emissions, I think the emissions are caused electrically. This has been observed on the laboratory scale. But it's a minor quibble.

Greg -- Is it worth reading? Have you read it? Did those two essays teach you anything important?

Ok, so you haven't fitted the vid into your schedule as yet. Hey, their sliminess can't be infinite.

Not for a nano-second do I trust the Randroids on quantum mechanics or relativity. This is where their religiosity really serves them ill. Their deliberately-blind and braindead loyalty to Rand leaves them little love and room for genuine truth-seeking. They could be lying to us literally anywhere. Could be obvious or subtle, clear or opaque, high or low, quick or lengthy, blatant or sneaky, etc. Their intellectual sliminess and untrustworthiness is essentially infinite.

Hey Y'all,

One of the biggest seeming paradoxes in modern physics is the fact that two "entangled" particles with indefinite spin will always show an opposite spin when observed, no matter how far apart they are. For example, if you took a pair of entangled electrons and sent one to the Moon, then check the spin on the one on earth, you could state with absolute certainty that the electron on the moon had the opposite spin.

Einstein argued that this could not be the case because it implies faster-than-light communication between particles. So he suggested that the particles already had opposite spins before you separated them, so when you observe them at a distance, you are just seeing the results of what happened when they were entangled in the first place. But Einstein was proven wrong about this through experiment.

This is what makes quantum entanglement such a quandary. It has been proven through experimentation that particles do not possess a spin until you measure them. It has also been proven through experimentation that entangled particles always show opposite spins when they are observed. This doesn't cause much of a problem for physicists in terms of their theories or experiments, but it does create a problem for laymen trying to conceptualize what is going on here.

This is an article out of Cornell University that attempts to explain the problem in layman's terms. I don't think they do a very good job, but it does shed some light. And they provide references to more technical sources for those interested.

http://curious.astro.cornell.e...

My reading of a recent article by Keith Lockitch sheds more light on the subject of instantaneous connection. It's by the magnetic field surrounding the charged body, such as the Sun, which is permanent to the extent relative to the body's mass/makeup.

So if we imagine the universe as an interconnected lattice of 3D electromagnetic fields this does elucidate and provide an elegant solution. I will find the article, (couldn't tonight) but he did explain this at OCON 2018 in the video posted here. I must have missed his "magnetic field" explanation there.

[edit, article links below, thx Dan Edge.]

https://newideal.aynrand.org/g...
https://newideal.aynrand.org/g...

RE: "Objectivism has an absolutist perspective on metaphysics. It can be tempting to assume that Objectivist metaphysics leaves no wiggle room for spacetime wiggling. And when we see that scientists have detected ripples of curved space-time it can be tempting to assume that this is automatically ruled out on metaphysical grounds and to dismiss the whole thing as nonsense."

What is an "absolutist" perspective on metaphysics?

Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Appendix Contents, Philosophy of Science, Philosophic vs. Scientific Issues, pg.293 (1990)

" Ayn Rand:
"...
The only thing that concerns philosophy is that we can say: whatever it is, it will have to be what it is, and no contradictions claimed about it will be valid
...
[i]t isn't the job of philosophy to tell us what exists, it's only to tell us what has to be true of everything that exists and what the rules by which you can claim knowledge
..."

Space-time isn't even a description of what is, but a mathematical model, i.e. something which is utilized because of (and insofar as) its predictive power holds, not the descriptive. Newton's laws work, i.e. they have predictive power, up to a certain degree. The same goes for Einstein's. Neither are written into existence à la Plato's metaphysics, they are not ontological, i.e. concrete, entities; abstract, i.e. epistemological, "entities" do not exist apart from consciousness.

... would someone here please care to define "space-time"?

From OCON 2018

Keith Lockitch in a video published by the Anti-Rand Institute on 18 Aug 2018 admits that his preferred understanding of theoretical physics, and his interpretations of information received from various electronic detection devices, conforms to the standard model.

This is interesting because the standard model--of conventional thinking--has failed to be a reliable predictor of observed phenomena. We are still told that the Universe has an age. "Gravitational waves," barely detectable, so infinitesimal that a cough in an observatory will skew the results, are supposedly a remnant of an imagined Big Bang [local or not], first proposed by a Catholic priest, and relate to an ever expanding Universe [but we'll still have 365 days a year, except when leaping]. Black holes supposedly suck all in, with no talk of a resulting reverse bang, and conversely a Big Bang can result from a dense primordial atom.

At the end of Keith's presentation one person brings up my preferred theory of the Electric Universe.

Keith Lockitch: Black holes are sometimes described as objects which have infinite density but we know they're can't be an actual infinity so there must be something wrong with that idea. Are black holes even real? Or is all of this rationalism on steroids? It can be tempting for people to be dismissive of this whole area of physics, especially some Objectivists. Objectivism has an absolutist perspective on metaphysics. It can be tempting to assume that Objectivist metaphysics leaves no wiggle room for spacetime wiggling. And when we see that scientists have detected ripples of curved space-time it can be tempting to assume that this is automatically ruled out on metaphysical grounds and to dismiss the whole thing as nonsense.

Question: "I have a question which may go a little bit to philosophy in physics. I came across a book a decade ago that referenced Hans Alfven a Nobel laureate in physics who rejected his own idea and promoted his new idea that instead of gravity being the primary force that it was actually electricity and that when electricity passes through plasma that was what creates gravity. The book was by Wallace Thornhill called the Electric Universe Theory. My question is do you have any thoughts about the Electric Universe Theory and any alternate theory that might augment the fundamental principle of gravity and how physics should treat that philosophically?"

I've never heard of that theory before and that book that you talk about. The results that I'm talking about come from very standard and well accepted perspectives in physics. There are a lot on the outside of that, different ideas that people have proposed. Most of the time people who are trained in physics can poke holes in those kinds of ideas and so you have to be very careful. There are a lot of kind of fringe science. When Einstein proposed his Special Theory of Relativity, it took a long time before people could figure out that it wasn't self contradictory and were not paradoxes that people thought. So I would be very cautious about trying to draw too many conclusions about things.. I think the mainstream perspective is pretty well integrated and there's a lot of supporting evidence for it and I tend not too much on the fringes.

"The premise behind the theory is that if you incorporate electricity as the primary that it solves for a lot of the special cases where relativity is not sure where the answer is."

I don't know of the special cases where relativity isn't sure what the answer is. Einstein himself was trying to go beyond general relativity to develop a unified theory of gravity and electromagnetism and a lot of that is not considered to be very fruitful or worth pursuing.

"Should it, or alternate ideas, be considered at all or incorporated?"

Yeah.. the way science works is that if people propose alternate ideas and if there's something to them they get picked up and developed and worked with. A lot of theories proposed have no basis to them and rightly they're left to the fringes and that's where they persist.

"Thank you."

Fascinating, Greg!

When I was in college 40 years ago I loved cosmology. I still do. And to my teachers and classmates I repeatedly quoted a line from the British geneticist, biologist, and overall scientific genius JBS Haldane (1892-1964). In 1927 he said:

"I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

I still think exactly this!

Further observational evidence is being interpreted to support the alternative rational view of cosmology which challenges the Big Bang hypothesis of the primeval atom.

"The MeerKAT radio telescope was inaugurated in South Africa this past Friday, revealing the clearest view yet of the center of the Milky Way. What is especially surprising about the produced image are the numerous prominent filaments which seem to appear in the foreground. Herschel made a similar announcement just 3 years prior [below] that "Observations with ESA's Herschel space observatory have revealed that our Galaxy is threaded with filamentary structures on every length scale." Intriguingly, close inspection of yesterday's SKA image show these filaments twisting around one another, yet without combining — a phenomenon observable in most novelty plasma globes when the filaments are conducting electricity."

"The scenario that has emerged from the new Herschel data suggests that star formation proceeds in two steps: first, turbulent motions of the interstellar gas and dust create an intricate web of filamentary structures; then, gravity takes over, causing only the densest filaments to contract and fragment, eventually leading to the formation of stars."

"This pattern is very similar to that predicted from numerical simulations that model the process of star formation in molecular clouds. According to these simulations, interstellar material flows towards dense filaments along routes that are parallel to the direction of the local magnetic field, as was observed, so the new data indicate the importance of interstellar magnetic fields in shaping these structures."

arguing against scientific ideas as well-accepted as black holes and the Big Bang seems like it requires some special proof The proponents have had more than one hundred years to come up with some evidence, and all we have is readjustments atop the original; "epicycles" added to the creationist old banger to try and get it to work. I've just posted the letter to the editor by Wal Thornhill. He's one to follow.

Space-time can be thought of as a series of coordinates; x, y, z, t. Dots, or points. Events. We create that relationship. A series of events form a trajectory. But it isn't something you can twist or hold. You can't make waves in it. It isn't an it. It's a concept only. It isn't out there.

The problem with theoretical physics is that the funding goes to the standard model scientists and the "deniers" are shut out. Halton Arp was a scientist pioneer who raised his doubts and came up with better explanations.

The most obvious error in big bang cosmology is the downplaying of the role of electromagnetism. The circuitry throughout the universe is many magnitudes stronger than what we know as gravity.

Note the disclaimers throughout this typical summary: https://www.space.com/52-the-e...

The universe was born with the Big Bang as an unimaginably hot, dense point. When the universe was just 10-34 of a second or so old — that is, a hundredth of a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second in age — it experienced an incredible burst of expansion known as inflation, in which space itself expanded faster than the speed of light. During this period, the universe doubled in size at least 90 times, going from subatomic-sized to golf-ball-sized almost instantaneously.

During the first three minutes of the universe, the light elements were born during a process known as Big Bang nucleosynthesis. Temperatures cooled from 100 nonillion (1032) Kelvin to 1 billion (109) Kelvin, and protons and neutrons collided to make deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen. Most of the deuterium combined to make helium, and trace amounts of lithium were also generated.

Although the expansion of the universe gradually slowed down as the matter in the universe pulled on itself via gravity, about 5 or 6 billion years after the Big Bang, according to NASA, a mysterious force now called dark energy began speeding up the expansion of the universe again, a phenomenon that continues today.

The Big Bang

The Big Bang did not occur as an explosion in the usual way one think about such things, despite one might gather from its name. The universe did not expand into space, as space did not exist before the universe, according to NASA Instead, it is better to think of the Big Bang as the simultaneous appearance of space everywhere in the universe. The universe has not expanded from any one spot since the Big Bang — rather, space itself has been stretching, and carrying matter with it.

Since the universe by its definition encompasses all of space and time as we know it, NASA says it is beyond the model of the Big Bang to say what the universe is expanding into or what gave rise to the Big Bang. Although there are models that speculate about these questions, none of them have made realistically testable predictions as of yet.

In 2014, scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced that they had found a faint signal in the cosmic microwave background that could be the first direct evidence of gravitational waves, themselves considered a "smoking gun" for the Big Bang. The findings were hotly debated, and astronomers soon retracted their results when they realized dust in the Milky Way could explain their findings.

mysterious ripples

It turns out that atoms only make up 4.6 percent of the universe. Of the remainder, 23 percent is made up of dark matter, which is likely composed of one or more species of subatomic particles that interact very weakly with ordinary matter, and 72 percent is made of dark energy, which apparently is driving the accelerating expansion of the universe.

The shape of the universe and whether or not it is finite or infinite in extent depends on the struggle between the rate of its expansion and the pull of gravity. The strength of the pull in question depends in part on the density of the matter in the universe.

If the density of the universe exceeds a specific critical value, then the universe is "closed" and "positive curved" like the surface of a sphere. This means light beams that are initially parallel will converge slowly, eventually cross and return back to their starting point, if the universe lasts long enough. If so, according to NASA, the universe is not infinite but has no end, just as the area on the surface of a sphere is not infinite but has no beginning or end to speak of. The universe will eventually stop expanding and start collapsing in on itself, the so-called "Big Crunch."

If the density of the universe is less than this critical density, then the geometry of space is "open" and "negatively curved" like the surface of a saddle. If so, the universe has no bounds, and will expand forever.

If the density of the universe exactly equals the critical density, then the geometry of the universe is "flat" with zero curvature like a sheet of paper, according to NASA. If so, the universe has no bounds and will expand forever, but the rate of expansion will gradually approach zero after an infinite amount of time. Recent measurements suggest that the universe is flat with only a 2 percent margin of error.

It is possible that the universe has a more complicated shape overall while seeming to possess a different curvature. For instance, the universe could have the shape of a torus, or doughnut.

Expanding universe

In the 1920s, astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered the universe was not static. Rather, it was expanding; a find that revealed the universe was apparently born in a Big Bang.

After that, it was long thought the gravity of matter in the universe was certain to slow the expansion of the universe. Then, in 1998, the Hubble Space Telescope's observations of very distant supernovae revealed that a long time ago, the universe was expanding more slowly than it is today. In other words, the expansion of the universe was not slowing due to gravity, but instead inexplicably was accelerating. The name for the unknown force driving this accelerating expansion is dark energy, and it remains one of the greatest mysteries in science.

Greg -- You write:

"There are no black holes, there was no Big Bang, there can not be 'a fabric of spacetime.' Spacetime is imaginary. It only exists on whiteboards. This is fraud and grandiose folly."

This is all news to me! With all due respect, it sounds like something a Randroid, conspiracy theorist, or religious fanatic might say. Who are the best scientists or intellectuals who think along these lines? Where are their websites and what are the best essays or books which refute what they evidently regard as cosmic pseudo-science?

I'm skeptical about string theory and even aspects of quantum mechanics and space curvature (to the extent I can actually follow along and care). No Schrodinger's cat or quantum entanglement for me! But arguing against scientific ideas as well-accepted as black holes and the Big Bang seems like it requires some special proof and counter-claims/explanations which I'm not currently familiar with.

Published in the Canberra Times, Letter to the Editor, Wednesday 18th October, 2017.

I see Brian Cox, professor of showbiz and science fiction is soon to present in Canberra on the cosmos with its “dark energy and black holes," etc.

Meanwhile real scientists are searching for a paradigm shift away from “mathemagics”, which routinely employs the concept of infinity to “prove” anything you like.

A black hole, for instance, has finite mass concentrated at its “singularity”. The singularity has zero volume and infinite density.

The black hole has no gravitational force, only space-time curvature. There is infinite curvature at the singularity, which means infinite gravity.

Think about that. A finite mass is located in zero volume, it has infinite density and it has infinite gravity.

Do you think any such thing exists?

A black hole has never been observed. If a theorist is unable to discover real objects, which cause the observed effects, it is unscientific—indeed it is fraudulent—to invent unreal objects and present them as a “factual” discovery of the cause of those effects.

More than a billion dollars has been spent on gravitational wave detectors so far but it is reported that the European Space Agency is planning a multibillion-dollar probe to be launched in about 17 years that would look for gravitational waves from space.

Clearly we don’t understand gravity yet.

How about some real investigative reporting in physics instead of showbiz?

There’s a great deal of public money to be saved, not least on Cox’s show.

Wal Thornhill, Chapman.

Further at http://www.holoscience.com/wp/...

Let me explain myself. These guys have discovered how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It's a scientific lolly scramble and the reward goes to the most breathless, cynical, hyper–superlative description. There are no black holes, there was no Big Bang, there can not be "a fabric of spacetime." Spacetime is imaginary. It only exists on whiteboards. This is fraud and grandiose folly. Note that they come up with their scenario and then try and find a fit. And that fit is not able to be disproved—like the fairies in my garden. Einstein himself was unhappy with derivatives of his equations, and he was not a rational philosopher so he uses non–concepts as if they are real.

someone explain in English what on earth they are talking about? what is a hard science? what is a soft science?

(Ra is doing a Bsc and the expert on this sort of thing; I always feel so ignorant and a dickhead when the talk gets around to science, alas haha! ...)

Brilliant discovery! How can humans today be so ultra-smart when it comes to the hard sciences, and so ultra-dumb when it comes to the soft sciences?

“Physicists have announced the discovery of gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of spacetime that were first anticipated by Albert Einstein a century ago.”

“.. instruments so sensitive they could identify a distortion in spacetime a thousandth the diameter of one atomic nucleus across a 4km strip of laserbeam and mirror.”

“.. the scientists listened for 20 thousandths of a second as the two giant black holes, one 35 times the mass of the sun, the other slightly smaller, circled around each other.”

“By the end of the 20 millisecond snatch of data, the two had accelerated to 250 times a second before the final collision and a dark, violent merger."

““This observation is truly incredible science and marks three milestones for physics: the direct detection of gravitational waves, the first detection of a binary black hole, and the most convincing evidence to date that nature’s black holes are the objects predicted by Einstein’s theory.””

“The scientists detected their cataclysmic event using an instrument so sensitive it could detect a change in the distance between the solar system and the nearest star four light years away to the thickness of a human hair.”

“And they did so within weeks of turning on their new, upgraded instrument: it took just 20 milliseconds to catch the merger of two black holes, at a distance of 1.3 billion light years, somewhere beyond the Large Magellanic Cloud in the southern hemisphere sky, but it then took months of meticulous checking of the signal against all the complex computer simulations of black hole collision to make sure the evidence matched the theoretical template.”

“The detector was switched off in January for a further upgrade: astronomers still have to decipher months of material collected in the interval. But – given half a century of frustration in the search for gravitational waves – what they found exceeded expectation: suddenly, in the mutual collapse of two black holes, they could eavesdrop on the violence of the universe.”

“Prof B S Sathyaprakash, from Cardiff University’s school of physics and astronomy, said: “The shock would have released more energy than the light from all the stars in the universe for that brief instant. The fusion of two black holes which created this event had been predicted but never observed.””

https://www.theguardian.com/sc...

Here's a very interesting paper.

We can also deduce the consequences for a source in continual acceleration, such as the Sun in our solar system. The Sun’s path around the solar system barycenter induced by planetary perturbations causes excursions of over a million kilometers, and the barycenter is sometimes outside the physical body of the Sun. So the Sun’s field must be continually updated at all distances to infinity. Surely, this updating requires the propagation of causal agents from the source. And since the source is continually accelerating, the regeneration of the distant field must likewise be a continuous process, requiring propagation. However, propagation involves delays, and even in the solar system, we have observationally ruled out delays as great as lightspeed propagation would produce. For example, the solar eclipse experiment is sensitive to delays in the continual updating of the Earth’s field by the Sun as they both affect the Moon, and update speeds of at least 20c are required.

Gravitational waves could exist but the conventional explanation must be wrong. This is because the Big Bang contradicts their own GR theories. The primordial atom would act like their imaginary black holes; nothing could escape.

One of many possibilities (the one favored by this author) is that one day we will discover the particle or wave serving as the carrier of the gravitational force. If such entities, dubbed "gravitons", exist, they must necessarily be of a much finer scale than current quantum particles. It therefore seems likely that they would have negligible scattering effects on light over cosmological distances, although light traveling through such a resisting medium of gravitons would necessarily lose energy and be redshifted. In such a case, we would expect to see light from galaxies redshifted in proportion to their distances from us, just as observed; yet there would be no expansion of the universe. The perfect cosmological principle would be obeyed.

This particular notion of gravitons also answers the dilemma for general relativity faced by Einstein -- Why doesn't the universe collapse from its own gravity? If these hypothetical gravitons have a finite cross-sectional area, then they can only travel a finite distance, however great, before colliding with another graviton. So the range of the force of gravity would necessarily be limited in this way. Curiously, if the mean flight distance between collisions for gravitons was about 2 kiloparsecs (about the diameter of the core of many galaxies), then the limited range of the force of gravity would give rise to a change in the inverse square force law over distances larger than 2 kiloparsecs. The predicted form of this change happens to imitate just what we observe in the behavior of galaxies that has led big bang astronomers to hypothesize the existence of "dark matter" in ever greater quantities to account for the rotation and clustering of galaxies on these large scales. In other words, if this graviton conjecture is correct, there would be no need of invisible dark matter to explain large-scale behavior of dynamical systems. More details of this alternative model are published elsewhere by this author.

What of the cosmic microwave radiation and the light element abundance predictions, often touted as successful predictions of the big bang model? These points have been critiqued in detail elsewhere and that discussion is beyond the scope of this paper. To make a one-sentence summary about each point: The big bang made no quantitative prediction that the "background" radiation would have a temperature of 3 degrees Kelvin (in fact its initial prediction was 30 degrees Kelvin); whereas Eddington in 1926 had already calculated that the "temperature of space" produced by the radiation of starlight would be found to be 3 degrees Kelvin. And no element abundance prediction of the big bang was successful without some ad hoc parameterization to "adjust" predictions that otherwise would have been judged as failures.

As a final note on the question of the universe's expansion, it should not be forgotten that it is not even certain that the universe is presently expanding (as opposed to contracting) even within the context of the big bang theory. Sumner has recently argued that the new space introduced by the expansion must dilute the permittivity of the vacuum, which in turn must alter the frequency of electrons around atoms. This affects observed redshifts twice as strongly as the speed of expansion. When this consideration is factored into the equations, it turns out that the present universe is actually collapsing, not expanding, under big bang premises!

So we see that, despite the widespread popularity of the big bang model, even its most basic premise, the expansion of the universe, is of dubious validity, both observationally and theoretically.

The idea of instantaneous waves makes as much sense to me as round squares. How can a wave travel from point A to point B without a delay?

"Near-" implies delay. I agree that gravitational effects travel and that a delay exists. So we are, it seems, actually in agreement. All that needs to be settled between us then is the speed of propagation. That requires agreement on a mathematical theory consistent with all observable facts. What is the mathematical theory you subscribe to which incorporates a delay in physical interactions and is consistent with all observable facts?

Given the evidence in the link posted in your last comment I trust that you accept the existence of gravitational waves?

"The existence of gravitational waves is a possible consequence of the Lorentz invariance of general relativity since it brings the concept of a limiting speed of propagation of the physical interactions with it. Gravitational waves cannot exist in the Newtonian theory of gravitation, in which physical interactions propagate at infinite speed." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...)

Terry

The near instantaneous force is observable by deduction. For example; planets have orbited our Sun and have exhibited long term stability. Light takes more than 8 minutes to reach here from the Sun. How does gravity act faster by magnitudes? How could the planets feedback to their centres of attraction at merely the speed of light? They would be attempting to reach a mass which had since moved, and would spin out of their orbits. The same is demonstrated between galaxies, which is near instantaneous. There must be many fast moving smaller particles responsible for this, some have named them gravitons as a catch-all.

http://pc.blogspot.co.nz/2014/...

I could not resist reading your post. I resently watched a program on the subject of Dark Matter. Thank you for further information that you have given. I do wonder about this. Will they ever have a grip on it?

If for every positive there has to be a negative?

Life from outerspace? It makes a lot of sense when you think about how planets are formed and the fact that the earth was pelted repeatedly with meteorites. This is easy for me to wrap my brain around due to the facts of what we know.

Dark matter is odd. The idea dates from around 1932. It was needed to explain observational anomalies. They had a theory, their Platonic form, and invented dark matter to make their calculations fit observations. So the more they looked, the more the theory had to be modified. The gravitational relativistic model has since thrown up many more inexplicable possibilities, which spring to life on blackboards.

They don't know what to look for because they don't know what it will look like. They know it's near invisible because it only shows up when another one of their calculations fails to meet with observation. They should downgrade gravity's role, and upgrade to theories relating to the role of currents through plasma. If I remember correctly, these modern physicists calculated that the outer stars in spiral galaxies would travel much faster. This was incorrect last time I looked. They travel around those galaxies at similar or same speed. This demonstrates the Maxwell equation-type electric model.

Life from the stars? Sure, why not?

Dark matter as these scientists explain, is quite odd to me. They don't know what to look for because they don't know what it will look like. It seems to me that they are following in theory opposites. I would not shoot down the possibility that it exists and eventually it may be found.

As for the the building blocks for life having arrived on meteorites? Why not? In the end the climate on this planet was entirely right for life to form, evolve and develope. Doubtful it would have happened on any other planet in this solar system. Throughout the galaxy is another story.

"The hunt for dark matter just keeps getting more confusing. Today scientists released findings from the first three months of the Large Underground Xenon experiment, which looks directly for the invisible particles thought to make up dark matter.

Many physicists hoped that the highly anticipated results would clear up the situation surrounding dark matter experiments, which have so far led to contradictory conclusions about the nature of the mysterious substance. Some thought that LUX might show them which way to go, narrowing the types of particles they might pursue. Instead, the experiment turned up empty.

“Basically, we saw nothing. But we saw nothing better than anyone else so far,” said particle physicist Daniel McKinsey of Yale, a member of the LUX collaboration.
But scientists have no idea what dark matter is nor what possible exotic properties it might have. It could simply be that assumption is wrong and nature is more complex than the simplest models would suggest. Still, Feng acknowledges that the LUX results are starting to eat away at the predictions of some theories.

“It’s getting uncomfortable,” he said. “One of my favorite models [of supersymmetry] is getting excluded. There’s a little wiggle room left, but it’s getting very close.”

http://www.wired.com/wiredscie...

Unintentional humour: "It’s really tricky for scientists to go about finding something like that. But these are clever folks and they’ve built an array of impressive detectors trying to sense a dark matter particle."

Greg,

You wrote:

[Me:] "As already stated, I differentiate between the perceived universe and the actual universe."

[You:] "You're assuming that different laws of matter-interaction could exist elsewhere. Have you not heard of induction?"

I see I made an error that I will correct.

When I wrote that "The universe in its pre-Big Bang state was not even necessarily subject to the same set of physical laws as applies to the universe in its present state" what I should have written was "the perceivable universe" in each case. I did not mean to imply that physical laws themselves have changed. The physical laws of the universe apply, naturally, to whatever state it is in. Same state, same laws. If another equivalent "primordial atom" with the same physical properties existed elsewhere within the actual universe, then the pre-BB set of physical laws would apply to it too.

Your two main objections to my version of the BB theory were that the universe the Hubble telescope sees 11 billion years ago is similar to today as if the inference was that there has been no expansion, and that gravitational theory does not work at large distances. I dealt to the former with my analogy of the observable changes on a timescale following a nuclear explosion which would demonstrate that to expect to see a radically different universe 2.8 billion years after the initial inflation is a non-sequitur. Re the latter objection, as stated, I am assuming that unperceived matter may exist outside of our field of vision rather than invisibly existing within our field of vision, the latter being assumed by the concept of dark matter. My assumption would explain the breakdown in gravitational theory at large distances because the unobserved matter is acting at a distance upon the matter we are able to observe.

[Me:] "how can one possibly test and potentially falsify the existence of such a ubiquitous and instantaneous force? How are you not postulating the unfalsifiable? "

[You:] "Great question. It is deduced by observation as mentioned, and you are correct - near-instantaneous could only be postulated within our locale by calculation rather than observation."

Ayn Rand wrote that "The process of observing the facts of reality and of integrating them into concepts is, in essence, a process of induction. The process of subsuming new instances under a known concept is, in essence, a process of induction."

So let me get this right. You are "postulating" the existence of a "non-observable" instantaneous force, and conceptualizing it by deduction? Forgive me but clearly I am confused about or mistaken as to what you are claiming. Help me.

Terry

This surely begs the question that those performing the calculations are assuming they know of everything that exists and inputting the mass and velocity of everything that exists into their calculations. Yes it does, they make up all sorts of things, as per my theme.

As already stated, I differentiate between the perceived universe and the actual universe. You're assuming that different laws of matter-interaction could exist elsewhere. Have you not heard of induction?

there is more to the universe than we perceive Of course. But it won't behave differently to what we'd ["we" as in: not mainstream Standard Model science] expect.

how can one possibly test and potentially falsify the existence of such a ubiquitous and instantaneous force? How are you not postulating the unfalsifiable? Great question. It is deduced by observation as mentioned, and you are correct - near-instantaneous could only be postulated within our locale by calculation rather than observation. But that isn't novel. I haven't looked up my sources for that one tonight. I returned here to post this following interesting news.

Scientists have traced a unique new map of the first light of the universe, and raised profound questions about the Big Bang.

Planck is a European Space Agency mission with a huge scientific following.. [Set to background country hick music]; Professor of Astronomy, Haverford College, Bruce Partridge:

..Planck is the first instrument to survey the entire sky with any sensitivity at all.

The result of such precision is that Planck has given us our best ever view of the cosmic microwave background. It’s a view that’s left the great minds here at Cambridge in England spinning with ideas.

[Could have asked us here @ SOLO]

George Efstathiou, Professor of Astrophysics, University of Cambridge:

What we think happened was that the Universe went through a, a phase where it accelerated faster than the speed of light. And so, a tiny little patch could expand incredibly fast, and make the Universe, you know, the entire Universe that we see today. You start off with a small patch, and, it inflates, and it becomes very, very large.

That concept is known as inflation and it’s being challenged by the observations that have been made by Planck.

We see these strange patterns that are not expected, you know, in inflationary theory, the simplest inflationary theories, and so there’ s a real possibility that we have an incomplete picture. Um, it may be that, ah, that we’ve been fooled; that inflation, um, didn’t happen, and, you know, you know, that ah, it’s perfectly possible that um, there was some phase of the universe before the Big Bang actually happened where you can track the history of the Universe to a pre-Big Bang period.

George Efstathiou is another consummate bullshitter, and this is evident from his language: “The potential for a paradigm shift.” On second thoughts, at least he's open about it.

You wrote:

"When longer distances are involved, gravity's force cannot account for the suspensions of celestial bodies relative to each other."

This surely begs the question that those performing the calculations are assuming they know of everything that exists and inputting the mass and velocity of everything that exists into their calculations. As already stated, I differentiate between the perceived universe and the actual universe. All that the inconsistencies of gravitational theory at longer distances implies, logically, is that there is more to the universe than we perceive. That is not an argument for dark matter, rather, it is an argument merely that more exists than we can presently perceive, either within the distance of our field of perception (which the theory of dark matter assumes) and/or further afield. A "near-instantaneous electrostatic force" that acts across distances of millions of light years is, by my reckoning, an arbitrary assertion when one approaches the question of gravitational theory with the correct premise: that we may not be able to perceive everything that exists (at the macro scale). Apart from EU theory being unnecessary if the correct(ed) assumptions are used with conventional theory, how can one possibly test and potentially falsify the existence of such a ubiquitous and instantaneous force? How are you not postulating the unfalsifiable?

Terry

Imagine light as it travels from one galaxy to the next. It travels at a speed that can be calculated to take days or years. What we call gravity is thought to be the predominant force. But gravity only operates extremely weakly when compared to electromagnetism. When longer distances are involved, gravity's force cannot account for the suspensions of celestial bodies relative to each other.

A plausible theory that accounts for the relative long-distance interaction between galaxies, an attraction/repulsion, which accounts for placement, or spacing, is that there is a near-instantaneous electrostatic force. I fully realise that this is not acceptable in the mainstream, but it is only through my long-held doubt with the conventional standard model that I look for reasonable theories.

Thornhill's description of gravity as being a result of electromagnetic forces is entirely plausible, when compared with conventional theories. The planets orbiting the sun are exhibiting this near-instantaneous interaction, as well as a before-time veering-off when a proximate orbitor approaches, thus balancing the solar system.

I won't guarantee this though.

The relationship between chemistry and biology is becoming ever closer, as human knowledge increases. It may not be long before brilliant scientists can take a handful of inorganic chemicals, organize and energize them in some fashion, and then bring them to life!

Greg,

Thanks for the link.

Apart from the near universal dismissal by the greater scientific community, two things stand out on my first look at the EU theory that makes me think that it is a crackpot theory: the assertion that sub-particles travel more than a billion times faster than the speed of light, and the assertion that craters on Earth and the Moon are not meteorite or even any sort of impact craters but rather some sort of electrical arc scarring.

What evidence is there for these two claims?

Since this thread was about your debunking of the BB theory, I should point out that you have not debunked the idea yet when I have added my own assumptions in from what you have posted. Perhaps we should exhaust that first?

Terry

Watch this for better theories. Just been posted so it's an up to date summary from Thornhill.

"The universe is everything, not just what we perceive. There is not more than one universe."

Precisely my point. Science can only study what can be perceived. To speak of the beginning of the actual universe is meaningless. To speak of the beginning of the the perceivable universe however – or to be more precise, the beginning of the expansion of the perceivable universe - is not. You are still begging the question of the perceivable universe begin the actual universe, i.e. of it being all that exists, and begging the question of the expansion of the perceivable universe being the literal creation of the universe. Neither premise is mine. Recall I write that "I take liberty to assume that that primordial atom constitutes the starting point of the perceivable universe." My premise is not LeMaitre's premise.

Just as science cannot objectively claim to perceive all that exists, nor can it objectively claim to know anything at all about what it cannot perceive. The BB theory essentially theorizes the beginning of perceivable relations between things, not the beginning of things themselves, nor even the beginning of relations between things.

So, looking the your list of arbitrary claims you say I am making:

"existed as a singularity" (this is not arbitrary, it is deduced from that observable evidence of red shift and the expansion of what exists);
"just like with atoms within the perceivable universe" (I was not postulating that the primordial atom was literally like atoms within the perceivable universe, I was merely giving you an analogy, namely, that 99.999999+ percent of expansion in a nuclear explosion happens in the first seconds after splitting the atom, which is to demonstrate that what the universe looked like 12 billion years ago is not evidence against the BB, unless, perhaps, contraction could be shown to be happening then)
"reacted with something else" (it is no more arbitrary than to claim what we perceive did not or does not react with anything else", i.e. with what we cannot perceive, if anything);
"the initial expansion" (so long as there is evidence of expansion, and there is, then this is consistent with a theory of initial expansion and thus not arbitrary)
"and then claiming the Law Of Identity will allow that. That priest can’t have it both ways. He’s already said there wasn’t something else" (. You are correct that LeMaitre's premise is a violation of the Law of Identity. There is nothing I can see that violates the Law of Identity if you retain the theory while changing the premise that there may have been something else.

Terry

Edit 12:14pm 20.08.13:

Some notes:

“a something that was different from matter, but from which all matter ultimately materialized.”

From your link: “One of the reasons of this momentous idea was that, like many other physicists, Lemaître was impressed by the new theory of quantum mechanics.”

Dennis May, one of few worth reading on this topic, at OL: “The Big Bang theory requires both General Relativity and QM [the two great modern theories] in order to work. Einstein was an early poster child of the extreme leftist media and those embracing social relativism. QM from the beginning embraced bad philosophy and the orthodox have fought every step of the way to this very day to empower that bad philosophy using lies and distortions promoting a particular unnecessary interpretation of QM. Some of the most famous supporters of the Big Bang approach and General Relativity are also extreme leftists [Hawking].

“A primeval atom alone all by itself is next to nothing.” Lawrence Krauss, theoretical physicist witchdoctor named his book: A Universe From Nothing. So though he is as dishonest with the book’s title as he is with its content, he is trading on the commonly held BB trope.

“Firstly, we are not talking about an "atom" in the sense of what an atom is today. Nor are we assuming that it is the "only existent". Your link: “Lemaître dared an even more provocative assumption, which was however partly a logical prolongation of the theory of the expanding universe: if the universe is today expanding, in the past it was much smaller and denser; one remote day, it was thus condensed into a “primeval atom”, whose successive fragmentations due to quantum processes made it such as it is now.”

Sounds like there was one, by the priest’s reckoning.

“The point is whether or not the Law of Identity is breached by the Big Bang theory” I don’t mind you introducing this as a main point, but my purpose is to point out the contradictions in the Big Bang, its predictive worthlessness, and its series of ‘epicycles’ invented to keep it circulating. They are still searching for the matter which they need to explain the supposed expansion. They call it dark. Everything the witchdoctors get stuck on is “dark.”

“Further, your assuming that "nothing surrounds it"” This is the opposite of my claims - claims based on natural philosophy and logic - not computations based on pseudo-science and unrelated to observation. So your few sentences following don’t follow. The universe is everything, not just what we perceive. There is not more than one universe.

Science Needs Natural Philosophers:

“Those who regard philosophy as a ‘soft’ and unscientific discipline, in contrast to the ‘hard’ and scientific fields of mathematics and physics, have accepted a Big Lie. The ideas of mathematicians and physicists can be no more objective or certain than the philosophic ideas on which they depend. Philosophy is the discipline that tells us how to be objective and how to achieve certainty. Without a theory of knowledge, how would mathematicians or physicists know the relationship of their concepts and generalizations to reality? It is the inductive science of philosophy that teaches the ‘hard’ scientist how to be scientific.”
—Leonard Peikoff in The Logical Leap by David Harriman

“If the universe were to have once existed as a singularity, as LeMaitre hypothesized, but that singularity, just like with atoms within the perceivable universe were to have reacted with something else which we cannot presently perceive to cause the initial expansion of the currently perceivable universe, then I do not see how that is in any way in breach of the Law of Identity” It’s a breach of scientific method.

It amounts to making several arbitrary claims;
existed as a singularity;
just like with atoms within the perceivable universe;
reacted with something else;
the initial expansion;
and then claiming the Law Of Identity will allow that. That priest can’t have it both ways. He’s already said there wasn’t something else.

To begin, big bang cosmology dismisses the physics principle of no creation from nothing. It then proceeds with the falsehood that Hubble discovered the expansion of the universe. He didn’t, he found the apparent redshift/distance relationship (actually a redshift/luminosity relationship), which to his death he did not feel was due to an expanding universe.

This misrepresentation is followed by the false assumption that the evolution of an expanding universe can be deduced from Einstein’s unphysical theory of gravity, which combines two distinct concepts, space and time, into some ‘thing’ with four dimensions called “the fabric of space-time.” I should like to know what this “fabric” is made from and how matter can be made to shape it? Space is the concept of the relationship between objects in three orthogonal dimensions only. Time is the concept of the interval between events and has nothing to do with Einstein’s physical clocks. Clearly time has no physical dimension. David Harriman says, “A concept detached from reality can be like a runaway train, destroying everything in its path.” This is certainly true of Einstein’s theories of relativity.

Marcus, the concept universe is straightforward. I think Terry's non sequitur may have skewed you. This is about falsifying the theory, and all its add-ons.

...your objection to the Big Bang event (not that it necessarily happened) is equivilant to a general objection to the concept of "universe", and therefore a general objection to the laws of identity.

If you wish to refute the theory you need to come with something better than "something must exist outside the primeval atom".

Greg,

Thanks for your reply.

I speak exploratively here, and as a devil's advocate to your claims, because this is not a subject I am familiar with, but am interested in.

"a singularity is almost nothing isn’t it?"

How is a something "almost" a nothing? I understood you accepted the false reasoning.

"We must squeeze our minds into the only existent, the atom, and pretend it is all, and nothing surrounds it."

Firstly, we are not talking about an "atom" in the sense of what an atom is today. Nor are we assuming that it is the "only existent". That would be begging the question. It is, to use the actual term used by Georges LeMaitre who originated the Big Bang theory, a "primordial atom". I take liberty to assume that that primordial atom constitutes the starting point of the perceivable universe. What was the "primordial atom" or "single quanta" made of? Not as you suggest (a present day atom), but rather a "huge atomic nucleus, with an extremely large atomic number corresponding to the total mass of the universe, and acting like a quantum number" … "As [LeMaitre] explained later, the word "atom" had to be taken in the Greek sense, as something completely undifferentiated and deprived of physical properties." (http://link.springer.com/artic... page 2916) .

Now, LeMaitre likely rationalized his position to justify his theistic beliefs while reconciling them with science, but that is not the point. The point is whether or not the Law of Identity is breached by the Big Bang theory, or need be.

Further, your assuming that "nothing surrounds it" begs the question that the perceivable universe is all that there is to the universe in its totality, to 'existence' as such. Whilst it would be arbitrary for me to postulate in any way whatever exactly what, if anything, exists beyond the perceivable universe, to dismiss the possibility that there may be more to the universe than what is perceivable to us is, I submit, equally arbitrary in the context of identifying a "beginning" to said perceivable universe. If the universe were to have once existed as a singularity, as LeMaitre hypothesized, but that singularity, just like with atoms within the perceivable universe were to have reacted with something else which we cannot presently perceive to cause the initial expansion of the currently perceivable universe, then I do not see how that is in any way in breach of the Law of Identity. For me to postulate that that is what happened, even as a possibility, would be arbitrary, so I am not here postulating it, rather, I am merely pointing out that there need not be a logical inconsistency with the Big Bang theory if one's premise is that the perceivable universe need not necessarily be the universe in its totality without any further assumptions about what constitutes the remainder of the universe, or even if there is a remainder.

"a something that was different from matter - Do they really say that?"

Yes. Per above, "something completely undifferentiated and deprived of physical properties". What this means is that neither space nor time (nor space-time) exists in such a state.

"A became B."

Begging the question, as I point out above.

"The article: The universe is estimated to be 13.82 billion years old. But its inhabitants appear to be fully formed. I must surmise that there was not only the first instantaneous exception but another – after the original expansion - a sudden majestic halt in said expansion suspending the galaxies in their relative locations."

There is still a couple of billion years within which a lot can happen. And in the context of coming from a timeless state (within itself), that is a long time. Think how much "expansion" happens in the initial instant after fragmenting a present day atom through a nuclear explosion. What happens during the first second is 99.999999+% of the experienced "expansion", is it not? To look back and conclude that just because there is not much happening after the first few minutes compared to what must happen in the first second does not lead one to conclude that the first second didn't happen.

Terry

Terry. You have outed me as a straw man manufacturer here. Yes, alright, but hey – a singularity is almost nothing isn’t it? A primeval atom alone all by itself is next to nothing. Or the closest thing to it. I’ve done it again there. Nothing wouldn’t be an it. Existence exists, and non-existence is not an equal and opposite. Let’s imagine the primeval atom, that dense little bastard; what would exist around it? It couldn’t be nothing. We can induce from current knowledge that there are no voids, not even tiny ones that an electron microscope struggles to measure. We must squeeze our minds into the only existent, the atom, and pretend it is all, and nothing surrounds it. I wonder why the same scientists propose black holes. Where light can’t escape their gravitational grip. That lonely atom wouldn’t be able to go bang. Or have exceptions been made in this special case? Yes; as you mention The universe in its pre-Big Bang state was not even necessarily subject to the same set of physical laws. This is not a tidy solution. It only adds to their contradiction. So, there had to be something cuddling this atom, a electromagnetic field at least - unless it really was an exceptional atom, which I doubt - and once stated, is acknowledgement that it wasn’t alone after all. Ockham’s razor would steer me to believe there were not differing laws of physics in the olden times. I’m unfruitfully scraping for a causative agent. One that would fuel its explosive expansion.

a something that was different from matter - Do they really say that? There is no end to the convolutedness of this creation myth - from which all matter ultimately materialized

A became B.

The link you provided, while interesting, does not mention incompatibility with the Big Bang theory. If the Hubble telescope sees that far back, then by the theory, those galaxies should have been infantile. The article: The universe is estimated to be 13.82 billion years old. But its inhabitants appear to be fully formed. I must surmise that there was not only the first instantaneous exception but another – after the original expansion - a sudden majestic halt in said expansion suspending the galaxies in their relative locations. But either Hubble’s classification scheme is out of kilter or the Universe must be a lot older than the calculations founded on his red-shift expansion misinterpretation.

Big Bang theory is thus not incompatible with the Objectivism I submit that it really is and for the reasons given. That's why I say "bollocks on stilts." I could go on but this will do for now.

Greg,

You wrote:

"It is preposterous to think that everything expanded from nothing."

Big Bang theory doesn't postulate that the universe started from "nothing". It postulates that the universe once was a singularity - a "primeval atom" - prior to its "expansion", which means it was still a something, but a something that was different from matter, but from which all matter ultimately materialized. The universe in its pre-Big Bang state was not even necessarily subject to the same set of physical laws as applies to the universe in its present state.

Big Bang theory is thus not incompatible with the Objectivism (and specifically, the Law of Identity). The link you provided, while interesting, does not mention incompatibility with the Big Bang theory. I'm curious to know what makes you think that it is "bollocks on stilts", and what theory you support in it's place, if any.

Terry

The Big Bang theory, and the standard model of physics is nothing more than Platonic wishful thinking. It is preposterous to think that everything expanded from nothing. Yet these brainy physicists calculated backwards that from the errant Hubble red shift, we were all spinning eternally outward from a point.

Bollocks on stilts.

"The diversity of galaxies in the early universe was as varied as the many galaxy types seen today, a massive Hubble Space Telescope photos survey reveals."

"The Hubble photo survey found that the assorted range of galaxy types seen today were also present about 11 billion years ago, meaning that the types of galaxies seen today, which astronomers described as a "cosmic zoo," have been around for at least 80 percent of the universe’s lifespan. The universe is estimated to be 13.82 billion years old.

"The Hubble Sequence underpins a lot of what we know about how galaxies form and evolve — finding it to be in place this far back is a significant discovery," Lee said.

http://news.yahoo.com/galaxy-a...

Terrestrial origin, a remnant of one of the many asteroid impacts in Earth’s history, or that the structures are not biological and have a different explanation.

Fascinating stuff. Of course we know that the truth is that an omnipotent super being who is everything got bored and decided to carve a space out of himself to create the universe and then rigged it so that man would evolve in his image although he is non-material and transcendent.

Oh and his son was a carpenter...

But are they saying that the origin of life on earth was due to a cosmic event?

No, not exclusively. If confirmed as extraterrestrial, they will be saying it helped soup up the ancient chemical mix. It is possible that life on Earth was wholly of terrestrial origin, but near impossible to prove. To do so would require omniscience. Over the course of billions of years Earth has collided with material. The moon could be an agglomeration of leftover bodies.

I look forward to confirmation that, just as here, life can originate elsewhere. That will be more satisfactory than a probability based induction.

As I understand the argument for life on earth, it is that when the great ice sheet that covered the earth melted it mixed with the salt water underneath and formed the first protozoa. Is this no longer believed to be true?
It could be true. Life would also have been assisted with “foreign” matter. Simple protozoa resemble simple algae.

The first article says something along that line; “While scientists have discovered basic organic molecules, such as amino acids, in numerous meteorites that have fallen to Earth, they have been unable to find the more complex molecular structures that are prerequisites for our planet's biology. As a result, scientists have always assumed that the really complicated chemistry of life must have originated in Earth's early oceans.”

The second link refers to another article in Technology Review. It says that these findings have yet to undergo peer review (for what that’s worth). It says there are two options. Terrestrial origin, a remnant of one of the many asteroid impacts in Earth’s history, or that the structures are not biological and have a different explanation.

I haven't read the link b/c I don't have time right now. But are they saying that the origin of life on earth was due to a cosmic event? As I understand the argument for life on earth, it is that when the great ice sheet that covered the earth melted it mixed with the salt water underneath and formed the first protozoa. Is this no longer believed to be true?

This thread will be a repository for information from discoveries which counter the arrogant Earth-centric eccentric views of goblinites.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetw...

"I think the discovery of an unequivocal microbial structure such as a diatom, deeply trapped in the rock matrix, proves beyond doubt that this life existed in the parent comet from which the meteorite was derived," Wickramasinghe told Sri Lanka's The Island news site in January. "The highly intricate and woven patterns on the outer shells of diatoms are impossible to generate by any other process than biology.... The cosmic ancestry of humans becomes ever more securely established."