Slashdot Mirror
Spiraling Magnetic Signal Shows Up In the Cosmic Background
pln2bz writes "Astronomers looking for confirmation for emissions from early stellar formation in the cosmic microwave background radiation instead found a signal indicating large amounts of unaccounted-for spiraling magnetic fields in space, but without any accompanying infrared emissions. The discovery possibly dredges up the claims of plasma cosmologists like Eric Lerner, who claim that the intergalactic medium is a strong absorber of the CMB with the absorption occurring in a fog of narrow filaments. These filaments are the result of plasma's natural tendency, as observed within the plasma laboratory and in novelty plasma globes, to form braided, ropelike structures which are collimated by coiled magnetic fields."
This news is too nerdy to understand. Can someone explain it in more detail?
Had to go look at the Electric Universe's webpage (won't link to it now; the curious can drive traffic). I see no mention of anything like this structure predicted on any sort of scale like this, though they post-hoc claim that galactic-sized spiraly bits can be explained with their theory. Probably their page is in need of revision, though, with these new findings...
The universe really is made out of spiral energy!
Maybe it's the explanation for the problem these hippies' are having? No, on second thoughts, the problem is that they're hippies.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Interpretation of the extragalactic results (the real source of the OP) :
http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.0559
Note that the above paper does not mention the "wildly speculative" spiraling magnetic fields idea.
Extragalactic results in general :
http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.0555
Galactic results
http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.0562
A description of the instrument :
http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.0546
...which is "what are the implications of this discovery with regards to the development of FTL travel and subsequent discovery of green alien chicks in bikinis?"
I suspect that there are a lot of slashdotters who aren't strong on Cosmology and won't be bothered looking up the significance of the CMB on Wikipedia (I must say the Wikipedia article is particularly dense and won't be the easiest for non-specialists to digest).
So in a nutshell, the CMB is the the radiation we see in every direction of the sky. It's a little more complicated but you can think of it as the afterglow of the big bang. (Note: That is an over-simplication. To understand it better you have to look at a timeline of what happened after the big bang, especially hyper-inflation and recombination).
The reason it's so important is that it is the result of and thus put limits on the conditions at the time of the Big Bang. Since we don't have time machines and can't observe the universe from the outside, it is a critical piece of observational data against which we test our theories.
It is a particularly important piece of the puzzle when trying to work out what's going on with regards to dark matter because the amount of dark matter and the way in which it formed must be consistent with conditions that produced the CMB we observe.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Experimental data speculation + crackpot plasma theory = Slashdot science?
That the universe is a big giant plasma ball that hasn't been played with in a while... so what happens when someone plugs us back in and touches the glass again?
Three letters spring into mind - DNA
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
Please recall that Mr pln2bz is an Electric Universe fanatic, pretending to be an objective outsider who was swayed by the Thunderbolts' persuasive arguments.
Please take those claims with a healthy grain of salt. For whatever reason, the Electric Universe movement is heavily laden with kooky pseudoscience.
I'm not saying you should discredit it completely. Just treat it with a skeptical eye and separate the reasonable EM phenomena from the ridiculous claims.
He has a history of posting any story that can possibly be interpreted as supporting the electric universe theory, along with his speculations as to why the story proves EU correct. Just saying...
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The whole of astrophysics and cosmology is laden with kooky psuedoscience. The large number of observations that just won't fit and out-there patches to rescue models that should really be considered as having been falsified should tell you as much.
If you doubt that, consider the following observations: the over 1M Kelvin hot solar corona (where is that energy coming from?), the dark centers of solar spots (should the inside of the sun not be hotter instead of cooler?), the angular clustering of high-redshift quasars with "foreground" galaxies (less than one-in-a-million chance of emerging from the isotropic distribution dictated by Big Bang cosmology).
Could be somebody up there pulled the handle and we're just starting the spin down the bowl?
Bullshit. Where is the quantitative explanation for the (obviously magnetodynamic) solar cycle? Whence the twisted plasma filaments edging solar spots? http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/3306886.html?page=1&c=y Not well understood at all.
Um, it is not the energy density that is the issue but rather the required energy flux. Over half of the massive UV, EUV, and X-Ray coronal emissions are radiated out into intersteller space. This requires continuous extreme heating of the corona to sustain.
Wrong. The energy is produced inside the corona. The energy production mechanism has been verified in the laboratory. Just create a Helium and Hydrogen plasma and see what strange things happen: http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0509/0509127.pdf.
Zerkshop, be careful with your open mind. It will get you into trouble in the physics discipline. As you get older, you will come to see that cosmology is unfortunately no place for people with open minds like yourself. The best tactic is to learn your studies as hard as you can, but keep your opinions of "fringe" scientific readings to yourself. I wouldn't even let your professors know that you're reading this stuff. It could very well affect your upward mobility within your field.
(As for psy trance, I would propose that psytrance has largely been killed off by dubstep. A lot of people who used to listen to psytrance have discovered that dubstep is a far more melodic and danceable drum&bass. I highly recommend it!)
What you've noticed with wikipedia is like watching the Hatfield-McCoy family feud through a pinhole in a fence. The theory of the Electric Universe has been barred from wikipedia by the likes of Leroy Ellenberger, scienceapologist and various other BAUT/talk.origins "authorities". These authorities are actually defenders of conventional wisdom. They do not believe in building new cosmological models because they try to tear them all down before any are ever built. Everybody seems to take their cue from the Bad Astronomy and Universe Today website, run by Phil Plait, where people who create new astrophysical paradigms are set before a panel of like 6 or 8 astrophysicists and burned at the stake on every single minute detail imaginable. What that effectively does is spur people to try to develop mathematics-based models. What we need to be doing, however, is questioning our mathematical models. We need to be taking a closer look at our physical fundamentals within the discipline of physics. The EU Theorists are doing this. We need to be asking tough questions about things like galactic rotation, observations of the photosphere, filamentary structures in space, stellar observations that are enigmatic to the Standard Model, etc.
The fact that people cannot go to wikipedia to understand what the theory says makes it pretty damn difficult for people to learn what the theory says and whether or not its wrong. We've been struggling for years now just to be allowed to explain to people what the theory says on wiki. Online vigilantes have worked tirelessly to prevent it, even though they frequently have to violate their own precious wikipedia rules in order to do so. We can in fact point to published literature, some of it by Nobel Physics laureates like Hannes Alfven, and some of it peer-reviewed to support our interpretations for astrophysical imagery. The Electric Universe debunkers spend much of their time trying to use high school electrostatics to disprove that the math can be made to work when modeling the Sun as a glow discharge. But, so long as the prominent features of the two match up, isn't it obvious that the math can be made to work? And why do they think that people are taught plasma physics in high school? Electrostatics can be used to disprove the behavior of a plasma glow discharge in the laboratory. Can we really count on it to help us in cosmology, or in the study of astrophysical plasmas -- which constitute 99.999% of all visible matter in space?
Unfortunately, and not by choice, the only places to understand EU Theory are at http://www.thunderbolts.info, http://www.holoscience.com and in their books "The Electric Sky" by Don Scott, and "The Electric Universe" by Wal Thornhill. I would in particular point to the writings of Wal Thornhill, who is largely self-taught on the subjects of astrophysics and plasma physics. Wal has proven himself to be very well read on the subject of glow discharges -- better than most professional astrophysicists -- and this has been the key in formulating a new plasma-based cosmology. The more you read of Wal Thornhill, the more you will likely come to respect him as I have. He's been playing the role of scientific heretic for a very long time now. He knows ALL of the criticisms dished at him by now, and he's
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.