Re: "The electric charge is repulsive and attractive. On a closed volume, like a galaxy, there would a net force of zero."
You're approaching the problem from the perspective of electrostatics (the science of pith balls). Since we are talking about laboratory plasma phenomena like charge mobility (which enables conduction) and double layers (which act as the circuit's structure), plasma physics is an electrodynamic phenomena -- in the spirit of electric circuits. It is literally possible -- and people have done this -- to model stars as a sort of transistor, galaxies as a component within an electric circuit (with the caution that we should not assume that the circuit is closed on itself), and to model the Birkeland current filaments as transmission lines (realize that the solar cycle is not specifically predicted by a thermonuclear Sun) -- and we know that this can possibly be a valid approach because of this dark matter problem -- because at the distances involved with interstellar space, gravity is just a tiny fraction of the force which would be necessary to produce the observed motions.
So, we have to be very careful when trying to think through what an electrical cosmology should be like. Plasma is the macro-scopic behavior of charged particles. You can think of it as a level up in complexity from electrostatics. It is an attempt to explain the collective behaviors of charged particles as they move through these very large "circuits" -- but truthfully, it is an attempt to do so without a complete picture of what is really going on at the smallest scales. (and that is why we must rely very heavily upon laboratory observations to arrive at accurate models in this domain).
I have in other threads in these comments explained at great length about how plasma filaments are a valid approach to solving the dark matter problem. I recommend looking at those explanations for a more direct answer to how this can be.
Re: "An engineering study of interstellar filaments is much more likely to advance fusion power projects than anything the physicists are likely to come up with in the next 25 years."
Yes, you're exactly right that the riddle of fusion power is likely to be unraveled by this line of investigation. Put another way, wherever we see an irrational aversion to exploration, we can guess that there may very well be answers to long-standing mysteries on the other side of those questions that these researchers find too awkward to ask.
To give a very direct example, a very simple experiment which is not widely understood by astrophysicists involves charge-loading a metal sphere in a vacuum. This extraordinarily simple experiment produces observable layers of charge. There have been attempts for a couple of decades now in journals like IEEE journal to classify these "double layers" as astrophysical entities. Since astro's refuse to read IEEE or model cosmic plasmas as electric circuits (fluids models cannot explain DL's), most astrophysicists are probably unaware of what a double layer is -- and I can surmise that because, if they did, they would not be invoking arguments about quasi-neutrality and Debye screening.
Why does this matter? Well, because if we simply imagine what the plasma should do, then we would have no reason at all to propose layering. Yet, that is the fact of the matter from this simple laboratory experiment, and it stands to reason that this layering can explain why the ionosphere is layered, and probably also has a lot to do with the inherent stability of the plasmoid itself.
Another example is Robert Townes, the inventor of the maser, the precursor to the laser.
How the Laser Happened: Adventures of a Scientist
by Charles H. Townes
"Before -- and even after -- the maser worked, our description of its performance met with disbelief from highly respected physicists, even though no new physical principles were really involved.
Their objections went much deeper than those that had led Rabi and Kusch to try to kill the project in its cradle; fully familiar with oscillators and molecular beams, these two never questioned the general idea. They just thought it was impractical and that it diverted departmental resources from basic physics and more sensible work.
Llewelyn H. Thomas, a noted Columbia theorist, told me that the maser flatly could not, due to basic physics principles, provide a pure frequency with the performance I predicted.
So certain was he that he more or less refused to listen to my explanations. After it did work, he just stopped talking to me.
A younger physicist in the department, even after the first successful operation of the device, bet me a bottle of scotch that it was not doing what we said it would (he paid up).
Shortly after we built a second maser and showed that the frequency was indeed remarkably pure, I visited Denmark and saw Neils Bohr, the great physicist and pioneer in the development of quantum mechanics. As we were walking along the street together, he quite naturally asked what I was doing. I described the maser and its performance.
'But that is not possible,' he exclaimed. I assured him it was. Similarly, at a cocktail party in Princeton, New Jersey, the Hungarian mathematician John von Neumann asked what I was working on. After I told him about the maser and the purity of its frequency, he declared, 'That can’t be right!' But it was, I replied, and told him it was already demonstrated.
Such protests were not offhand opinions concerning the obscure aspects of physics; they came from the marrow of these men’s bones.
These were objections founded on principle -- the uncertainty principle...
Engineers, whose practical tasks up to that time almost never brought them face to face with such esoterica as the uncertainty principle, never had a hard time with the precise frequency the maser produced. They dealt all the time with oscillators and cavities, based on a wide variety of physical phenomena, which produced rather precise frequencies. They accepted as a matter of course that a maser oscillator might do what it did. What they were not so familiar with was the idea of stimulated emission, which gave the maser its amplifying power.
Birth of the maser required a combination of instincts and knowledge from both engineering and physics.
Physicists working in microwave and radio spectroscopy, which demanded engineering as well as physics skills, seem to have had the necessary knowledge and experience to both appreciate and understand the maser immediately. Rabi and Kusch, themselves in a similar field, for this reason accepted the basic physics readily. But for some others, it was startling.
I am not sure that I ever did convince Bohr. On that sidewalk in Denmark, he told me emphatically that if molecules zip through the maser so quickly, their emission lines must be broad. After I persisted, he said, 'Oh, well, yes, maybe you are right,' but my impression was that he was simply trying to be polite to a younger physicist..."
Re: "The suggestion is that in order to resolve the debate, you should learn what the debate actually is about, and how to evaluate the claims made on all sides. You do that by learning physics."
Notice what is missing from your process:
(1) Critiques by academic insiders about systemic problems in academic research
(2) Important context from histories of science
(3) Cognitive biases inherent to our expectations about what the answer should look like
(4) Sociological patterns of behavior
(5) Politics in our system of peer review, where ideas are judged by whether or not they support the existing theories
(6) How we are training academics (can it be shown that independent thinkers do not survive this training?)
(7) Tracking of the controversy over time, to see if unexpected vindications occur
Re: "It is pretty rare for someone outside of a well established field to make a major contribution."
This is probably a good time to bring up the history of the discovery of radio waves from space.
The Invisible Universe: The Story of Radio Astronomy
Gerrit L. Verschuur
Second Edition
"1.2. The Birth of Radio Astronomy...
2.1. Caught between Two Disciplines
In 1933 John Kraus, then at the University of Michigan, attempted to detect the sun by using a searchlight reflector to focus the radio waves. He failed because the receiver was not sensitive enough. This was the first use of a reflector-type radio telescope. At the Serendipity meeting, Kraus stated that meaningful accidental discovery occurs only as the result of 'being in the right place with the right equipment doing the right experiment at the right time.' Another noted astronomer, R. Hanbury Brown, added that the person should 'not know too much,' otherwise the discovery might not be made!
This summarizes a very interesting phenomenon. Many research scientists, especially the theoretically inclined, 'know' so much that their chance of making a lucky or creative discovery may be severely curtailed. If we know too much, our vision is sometimes narrowed to the point where new opportunities are not seen. Jansky knew a little astronomy, but not enough for it to get in his way and cause him to reject the possibility that radio waves originating in the cosmos might be real.
Grote Reber, a professional engineer and radio ham in his spare time, was one of the few people who recognized the interesting implications of Jansky’s discovery. Reber was certainly not hampered by any astronomical prejudices about whether or not the cosmic radio waves could exist. Instead, he was interested in verifying their existence and followed up on Jansky’s work. To this end, Reber built the world’s first steerable radio dish antenna (Figure 2.1) in his backyard and mapped the Milky Way radiation during the period 1935–1941. Figure 2.2 shows an example of Reber’s data. He pointed out that the new field of radio astronomy was originally caught between two disciplines. Radio engineers didn’t care where the radio waves came from, and the astronomers
... could not dream up any rational way by which the radio waves could be generated, and since they didn’t know of a process, the whole affair was (considered by them) at best a mistake and at worst a hoax.
The very essence of research is that once an observation is made it requires some understanding and interpretation in order to formulate a plan for making further observations. It was initially very difficult for astronomers, entirely ignorant of radio technology, to interpret or understand the significance of Jansky’s or Reber’s epoch-making discoveries.
Jesse Greenstein, of Caltech, one of the few astronomers who did get involved before World War II, summed up the dilemma confronting the astronomer of those prewar days:
I did not say that the radio astronomy signals would go away someday, but I didn’t know what next to do.
How could anyone know what next to do? The mystery of where the radio waves originated was a profound one, not easily solved. Significant new technologies had to be combined with astronomical knowledge in order to carry out radio astronomical research. If the science was to flourish, either astronomers had to learn about radio engineering or radio engineers had to learn astronomy. The new science therefore grew slowly..."
Re: "It's offensive to use people like Jeff in your argument. He's put in the work. And the physics community ended up supporting him."
And since then, both scientists and science journalists have refused to even mention him -- as if none of it ever even happened. And now that somebody has mentioned his sacrifice in an obscure area of the Internet, you appear enraged that they have done so. One would think that the largest freedom-of-expression case in North American physics deserves more mention.
Re: "Go away back to the corners of the internet and know that you can't compete with people like me."
The reality of the situation is that people are trying to diagnose your community's failure to identify 95% of the universe's matter, so that we can reconstruct a new framework from the ashes of the old.
What is the nature of the problems which have led us to this dead end? Which claims should we keep, and which deserve replacement? Are there mistakes at the deepest levels of our conceptualization of the problem? Those who are thinking at this level are actually operating at a level above you: You are operating at the level of models, whereas people who are reconstructing cosmology from this dead end are operating at the level of paradigms.
You and I know that the questions you can ask at the model level are bounded by the constraints of the accepted assumptions and starting-point hypotheses; what we are pointing out is that you should start the difficult work, with us, of hedging on this dark matter problem. Your approach is to have everybody walk into this dead end, hand-in-hand, without any plan B. What we are arguing is that given what we know today, it is actually quite reckless to just push forward without consideration that the dark matter problem may be evidence for a mistake at the level of assumptions and hypotheses. Your demand is that we always double down on the original idea each time that we see a possible problem or suggestion of an alternative solution; what I am proposing is that this behavior is typically labeled as reckless and usually associated with the behavior of an addicted gambler, unable to admit that they may be wrong.
Re: "These are absolutely ideas that are discussed in physics departments."
Here's a simple challenge, Goldsmith, which goes straight to the point. Why not list out for us the papers and texts that you've learned about the Electric Universe from?
I wouldn't put the situation in exactly those terms, but I do think you are very close to the thinking I see amongst others on these topics. Put another way, our understanding about what is happening at the largest scales can certainly have an inordinate influence upon how we conceptualize the smallest scales. When I look at the behaviors of plasma, I cannot escape the fact that Irving Langmuir lent the term to these observations for the very reason that the fourth state of matter appeared to him like blood plasma -- alive. So, imagine that we were to conceptualize either the universe or the plasma in it to be a form of life; then that could certainly inform us about how to interpret these vessel-like filaments, as well as stars and galaxies. In this view, the galaxies would be akin to the creature's organs, and stars would be like their cells. And our expectations that space must be homogeneous would have to be completely thrown away. Observations of quasars, for instance, would seem to actually argue against homogeneity. No matter what inference you adopt with respect to quasars -- be it mainstream or the less accepted Halton Arp interpretation -- they would seem to be a fundamentally unique state for matter in the universe. In electrical cosmology, this would be because it is a gestative state, since electrical cosmology defers to the work of Halton Arp on quasars.
Many mainstream scientists would seem to imagine that there is no value to constructing an alternative framework like this, and what would actually be fair about their rejection -- from an innovation sense -- is if they were to sign a pledge to never use any technology which emerges from these explorations (their children as well).
Re: "There were also 10,000 crackpots who were just wrong. We don't remember those guys, though I expect you can find a couple thousand of them on YouTube these days."
You seem to want your audience to conclude from this that there is no value to tracking scientific controversies, in order to identify which against-the-mainstream claims are valid. It is akin to arguing that since gold nuggets are somewhat rare, we should not mine for them.
Re: "Ultimately, you need look no further than a picture of our fucking sun, and tell me how the magical plasma universe prevents that thing from becoming a massive ball of gravitationally collapsed fusion fire."
If this is your process, then I can tell you that you've completely misjudged the complexity of this controversy.
Don Scott has published a very detailed explanation of the operation of the Sun from an electrical cosmology perspective. Your process does not appear to involve learning the model he has put forward, and so I would kindly suggest that if you'd like to participate in the debate, that the first step is to learn the model.
The mistake of the mainstream approach has been to base the cosmic plasma models more upon what we imagine the plasma should do, based upon principles, than upon what we observe that the plasma does do within the laboratory. Since the Alfven story is not told in academia, the story which would teach this lesson remains completely unknown -- and so people continue to repeat the same mistaken logic. Put another way, when science journalists refuse to be objective, by refusing to tell the stories that mainstream scientists find awkward, there are real-world consequences for the public's conversations on these topics. It basically entraps the public into an ideology.
Re: "Gravity and the electric force both fall off with distance squared (other forces fall off faster)."
I see this sort of argument all of the time, and to be honest, it's evident that you've not learned enough of the debate to identify where the point of contention is.
The idea that has been put forward is not based upon these simple principles; it's a hypothesis which has been constructed from modern observations of actual plasmas in actual laboratories. So, in that regard, we have a complete disconnect here: You've decided that you can argue against an argument which you've not taken the time to learn.
The actual argument which has been put forward is that, in the laboratory, what we observe plasmas doing is forming filaments which have a tendency to pair up.
Take the time to learn the geometry of the claim by thinking about the pictures here, here and here -- which become progressively more complex.
It takes a little bit of mental effort to understand, but a person does not have to be a physicist or a mathematician to discern from these diagrams that there is a long-range attraction between these filaments, as well as a short-range repulsion.
Now, realize that plasmas are observed to scale over enormous distances. This is not based upon somebody imagining this as a principle (that would be absurd); the scaling is observed. So, what that means is that in a vague sense -- with some caveats -- we can scale this process up to the galactic regime. The observations of ESA's Herschel can fairly be called a vindication of this claim, as well.
One implication of this geometry is that the electric force can be extended to any distance we observe the filaments extending to. There is no known limit -- which is why this is a perfectly valid, and very physical, explanation for the dark matter problem.
Another important implication -- which is intriguing, honestly -- is that the universe appears to be a plasma fractal. There is repetition of structure happening across vastly different scales -- and this fact has not yet been adequately stated by science journalists to the public. It certainly bears great meaning for what the universe actually is.
Re: "Oh so you admit you can’t solve a simple physics problem."
I recommend that you take your time and re-read what I have posted, because I did not at all admit that that I can't solve some physics problem. I provided you with a perfectly valid geometry, based upon laboratory plasma physics principles, for resolving the dark matter problem without having to invoke any new matter.
Re: "But the way those guys presented their theories, usually heavily leaning towards the 'buy my book' path before all else, as well as their intense paranoia towards anybody with a legit background in astrophysics always left them looking just a wee bit off."
I hear what you're saying: You have expectations for what a competing theory and presentation should look like, and this doesn't look like your expectations.
What I am arguing for is that, in terms of process, we can more meaningfully judge controversial scientific claims by systematically tracking scientific controversies. By that, I mean (1) learning the arguments of the debate; and then (2) watching for any vindications which might occur for the against-the-mainstream idea; and (3) preferably, doing this in a group of people, so that the work is distributed. I've proposed a new social network to crowdsource this information in an EdgeScience article which details the origin of the idea.
The problem with your existing process is that we do not actually know what state the correct answer currently is in. When popularity does not align with validity -- i.e., when there are observable biases on a topic -- then the state of a valid line of investigation can be immature. Some people -- and this includes actual scientists -- will try to cast that as reason to believe that the idea is not correct, but then they use that judgment as a reason to stop paying attention. What I'm suggesting is that this is not a rigorous approach for identifying what is and isn't true. There is a way to deal with these situations which is much less prone to error: tracking controversies.
Re: "Dumbass, at the same vast distances, so are electricity and magnetism."
Forgive my cynicism, but I see that we have now arrived at the point where people are ignoring the implications of the geometry of the plasma filament. The plasma filament presents a perfectly valid solution to the distance problem because of its inherent long-range attraction and short-range repulsion between separate filaments. What this means in practice is that the electric force is then extended to whatever distance -- basically infinite -- that the filament extends to.
For many years, a number of "debunkers" have attempted to undermine this solution to the dark matter problem by claiming either that plasma is quasi-neutral (and hence non-conductive) or that the electric force is shielded at some distance (Debye screening). The Thunderbolts Group has soundly rebutted the quasi-neutrality argument here, and I've personally documented three exceptional violations of Debye screening here.
In a sense, these earlier arguments are basically voided by this new mainstream admission of light-years long filaments of plasma currents, but since the reporting by mainstream science journalists on these topics is so confused, the memo never seems to be received by the "debunkers".
Re: "Your electric universe theory utterly fails to explain the vast majority of accepted theory. That’s why is complete bullshit."
What I have observed over the past ten years of tracking this controversy is a refusal to actually learn the debate. Look at your process: You are not even actively tracking this controversy, then you are going online to tell people who are that they are wrong. You and I both know that you could not even name the books that a person would need to read in order to get a handle on the subject.
When the experts refuse to track controversies, eventually they just stop being the experts. You can hate the messenger who then subsequently informs you of the vindications which you are refusing to track, but ultimately, it was your decision to refuse to track this debate which has brought us to this point.
Re: "Or, you know, angular momentum from before formation being conserved..."
It always amuses me when a person who is obviously scientifically inclined has been convinced that the answer to a physics problem is a creation story.
Realize that if the Earth was just an inch from the Sun, the next nearest star would typically be around 4 MILES away (!). Your first mistake was in refusing to conceptualize the vast distances of space. At these distances, gravity is just a localized force -- much like the Van der Waals. There is no sprinkling of dark matter into this vast intervening space that will magically transform the universe's weakest force into its organizing force. Dark matter is cosmology's dead end, and you've arrived at this dead end by refusing to question the science journalists, who are honestly behaving more as advocates for the theories than as impartial journalists.
My favorite part of the cold fusion debate was when the hot fusion researchers held a "wake for cold fusion" party before they had even taken all of the data. The flyers for that party have been published online.
Re: "I think you're spending a lot of time looking at web forums and not spending any time learning actual physics."
So, your suggestion for resolving the debate seems to be that I should just study one side of it.
Re: "Being a professional physicist doesn't keep me from still appreciating science fiction."
A crucial part of the process of untangling controversial science is to become fluent in the critiques of modern science. One of these critics wrote a stunning critique of what it means to be a "professional"
Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-battering System That Shapes Their Lives
Jeff Schmidt
(p41, 2001)
"Professionals generally avoid the risk inherent in real critical thinking and cannot properly be called critical thinkers. They are simply ideologically disciplined thinkers. Real critical thinking means uncovering and questioning social, political and moral assumptions; applying and refining a personally developed worldview; and calling for action that advances a personally created agenda. An approach that backs away from any of these three components lacks the critical spirit... Ideologically disciplined thinkers, especially the more gung-ho ones, often give the appearance of being critical thinkers as they go around deftly applying the official ideology and confidently reporting their judgments. The fact that professionals are usually more well-informed than nonprofessionals contributes to the illusion that they are critical thinkers."
MR: "When you first thought of writing this book, you were in graduate school, right?"
JS: "Yes, that’s right. I got interested in the topic when I was going to professional training myself, getting a PhD in physics at the University of California, Irvine. It seemed like the best of my fellow graduate students were either dropping out or being kicked out. And by ‘best,’ those were the most concerned about other people and seemed less self-centered, less narrowly-focused, most friendly people... they seemed to be handicapped in the competition. They seemed to be at a disadvantage not only because their attention was divided, but because their concerns about big picture issues like justice and the social role of the profession and so on, caused them to stop and think and question, whereas their unquestioning gung-ho classmates just plowed right through with nothing to hold them back. As I mentioned, there’s about a 50% drop-out rate for students entering University programs in all fields; and what I found was that this weeding out is not politically neutral. To put it bluntly, the programs favor ass-kissers. I don’t know if that’s an acceptable term on KFAI, but that’s the fact of the matter...."
Jeff Schmidt was actually fired by the AIP for publishing this book. He had up to that point been one of Physics Today's best editors for 19 years. He sued the AIP (and won), and the case became North American physics' largest freedom-of-expression case in its history. I get the impression that many professional physicists have somehow failed to notice the book. But, either way, no, I completely disagree that I have made a mistake by choosing to not become a physicist. In fact, that decision has allowed me a freedom to study both sides of scientific controversies, as well as a freedom to diverge from the consensus view when the evidence is plainly suggesting that the consensus view is just plain wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Re: "The electric charge is repulsive and attractive. On a closed volume, like a galaxy, there would a net force of zero."
You're approaching the problem from the perspective of electrostatics (the science of pith balls). Since we are talking about laboratory plasma phenomena like charge mobility (which enables conduction) and double layers (which act as the circuit's structure), plasma physics is an electrodynamic phenomena -- in the spirit of electric circuits. It is literally possible -- and people have done this -- to model stars as a sort of transistor, galaxies as a component within an electric circuit (with the caution that we should not assume that the circuit is closed on itself), and to model the Birkeland current filaments as transmission lines (realize that the solar cycle is not specifically predicted by a thermonuclear Sun) -- and we know that this can possibly be a valid approach because of this dark matter problem -- because at the distances involved with interstellar space, gravity is just a tiny fraction of the force which would be necessary to produce the observed motions.
So, we have to be very careful when trying to think through what an electrical cosmology should be like. Plasma is the macro-scopic behavior of charged particles. You can think of it as a level up in complexity from electrostatics. It is an attempt to explain the collective behaviors of charged particles as they move through these very large "circuits" -- but truthfully, it is an attempt to do so without a complete picture of what is really going on at the smallest scales. (and that is why we must rely very heavily upon laboratory observations to arrive at accurate models in this domain).
I have in other threads in these comments explained at great length about how plasma filaments are a valid approach to solving the dark matter problem. I recommend looking at those explanations for a more direct answer to how this can be.
Re: "And there it is - the conspiracy theory claim."
Is it really though? You can read Tim Thompson's rant here.
Which part of this involves a conspiracy?
Re: "An engineering study of interstellar filaments is much more likely to advance fusion power projects than anything the physicists are likely to come up with in the next 25 years."
Yes, you're exactly right that the riddle of fusion power is likely to be unraveled by this line of investigation. Put another way, wherever we see an irrational aversion to exploration, we can guess that there may very well be answers to long-standing mysteries on the other side of those questions that these researchers find too awkward to ask.
To give a very direct example, a very simple experiment which is not widely understood by astrophysicists involves charge-loading a metal sphere in a vacuum. This extraordinarily simple experiment produces observable layers of charge. There have been attempts for a couple of decades now in journals like IEEE journal to classify these "double layers" as astrophysical entities. Since astro's refuse to read IEEE or model cosmic plasmas as electric circuits (fluids models cannot explain DL's), most astrophysicists are probably unaware of what a double layer is -- and I can surmise that because, if they did, they would not be invoking arguments about quasi-neutrality and Debye screening.
Why does this matter? Well, because if we simply imagine what the plasma should do, then we would have no reason at all to propose layering. Yet, that is the fact of the matter from this simple laboratory experiment, and it stands to reason that this layering can explain why the ionosphere is layered, and probably also has a lot to do with the inherent stability of the plasmoid itself.
I see a number of physicists here, but I've yet to see them make any technical arguments related to these debates. Have you?
Another example is Robert Townes, the inventor of the maser, the precursor to the laser.
Re: "The suggestion is that in order to resolve the debate, you should learn what the debate actually is about, and how to evaluate the claims made on all sides. You do that by learning physics."
Notice what is missing from your process:
(1) Critiques by academic insiders about systemic problems in academic research
(2) Important context from histories of science
(3) Cognitive biases inherent to our expectations about what the answer should look like
(4) Sociological patterns of behavior
(5) Politics in our system of peer review, where ideas are judged by whether or not they support the existing theories
(6) How we are training academics (can it be shown that independent thinkers do not survive this training?)
(7) Tracking of the controversy over time, to see if unexpected vindications occur
Re: "It is pretty rare for someone outside of a well established field to make a major contribution."
This is probably a good time to bring up the history of the discovery of radio waves from space.
Re: "It's offensive to use people like Jeff in your argument. He's put in the work. And the physics community ended up supporting him."
And since then, both scientists and science journalists have refused to even mention him -- as if none of it ever even happened. And now that somebody has mentioned his sacrifice in an obscure area of the Internet, you appear enraged that they have done so. One would think that the largest freedom-of-expression case in North American physics deserves more mention.
Re: "Go away back to the corners of the internet and know that you can't compete with people like me."
The reality of the situation is that people are trying to diagnose your community's failure to identify 95% of the universe's matter, so that we can reconstruct a new framework from the ashes of the old.
What is the nature of the problems which have led us to this dead end? Which claims should we keep, and which deserve replacement? Are there mistakes at the deepest levels of our conceptualization of the problem? Those who are thinking at this level are actually operating at a level above you: You are operating at the level of models, whereas people who are reconstructing cosmology from this dead end are operating at the level of paradigms.
You and I know that the questions you can ask at the model level are bounded by the constraints of the accepted assumptions and starting-point hypotheses; what we are pointing out is that you should start the difficult work, with us, of hedging on this dark matter problem. Your approach is to have everybody walk into this dead end, hand-in-hand, without any plan B. What we are arguing is that given what we know today, it is actually quite reckless to just push forward without consideration that the dark matter problem may be evidence for a mistake at the level of assumptions and hypotheses. Your demand is that we always double down on the original idea each time that we see a possible problem or suggestion of an alternative solution; what I am proposing is that this behavior is typically labeled as reckless and usually associated with the behavior of an addicted gambler, unable to admit that they may be wrong.
Re: "These are absolutely ideas that are discussed in physics departments."
Here's a simple challenge, Goldsmith, which goes straight to the point. Why not list out for us the papers and texts that you've learned about the Electric Universe from?
I wouldn't put the situation in exactly those terms, but I do think you are very close to the thinking I see amongst others on these topics. Put another way, our understanding about what is happening at the largest scales can certainly have an inordinate influence upon how we conceptualize the smallest scales. When I look at the behaviors of plasma, I cannot escape the fact that Irving Langmuir lent the term to these observations for the very reason that the fourth state of matter appeared to him like blood plasma -- alive. So, imagine that we were to conceptualize either the universe or the plasma in it to be a form of life; then that could certainly inform us about how to interpret these vessel-like filaments, as well as stars and galaxies. In this view, the galaxies would be akin to the creature's organs, and stars would be like their cells. And our expectations that space must be homogeneous would have to be completely thrown away. Observations of quasars, for instance, would seem to actually argue against homogeneity. No matter what inference you adopt with respect to quasars -- be it mainstream or the less accepted Halton Arp interpretation -- they would seem to be a fundamentally unique state for matter in the universe. In electrical cosmology, this would be because it is a gestative state, since electrical cosmology defers to the work of Halton Arp on quasars.
Many mainstream scientists would seem to imagine that there is no value to constructing an alternative framework like this, and what would actually be fair about their rejection -- from an innovation sense -- is if they were to sign a pledge to never use any technology which emerges from these explorations (their children as well).
Re: "There were also 10,000 crackpots who were just wrong. We don't remember those guys, though I expect you can find a couple thousand of them on YouTube these days."
You seem to want your audience to conclude from this that there is no value to tracking scientific controversies, in order to identify which against-the-mainstream claims are valid. It is akin to arguing that since gold nuggets are somewhat rare, we should not mine for them.
And how do you suggest that we test such an idea?
Re: "Ultimately, you need look no further than a picture of our fucking sun, and tell me how the magical plasma universe prevents that thing from becoming a massive ball of gravitationally collapsed fusion fire."
If this is your process, then I can tell you that you've completely misjudged the complexity of this controversy.
Don Scott has published a very detailed explanation of the operation of the Sun from an electrical cosmology perspective. Your process does not appear to involve learning the model he has put forward, and so I would kindly suggest that if you'd like to participate in the debate, that the first step is to learn the model.
If, as a culture, we equate thinking differently with insanity, then that would seem to offer no rational process for escaping big mistakes in the sciences. The simple fact is that "Over the past 15 years, for example, experiments designed to detect individual particles of dark matter have become a million times more sensitive, and yet no signs of these elusive particles have appeared." So, if our process is to culturally isolate those people who are trying to approach the problem differently, we have to accept the possibility that if the dark matter problem exists at the level of starting-point hypotheses or assumptions, then the problem will never be solved.
The mistake of the mainstream approach has been to base the cosmic plasma models more upon what we imagine the plasma should do, based upon principles, than upon what we observe that the plasma does do within the laboratory. Since the Alfven story is not told in academia, the story which would teach this lesson remains completely unknown -- and so people continue to repeat the same mistaken logic. Put another way, when science journalists refuse to be objective, by refusing to tell the stories that mainstream scientists find awkward, there are real-world consequences for the public's conversations on these topics. It basically entraps the public into an ideology.
Re: "Gravity and the electric force both fall off with distance squared (other forces fall off faster)."
I see this sort of argument all of the time, and to be honest, it's evident that you've not learned enough of the debate to identify where the point of contention is. The idea that has been put forward is not based upon these simple principles; it's a hypothesis which has been constructed from modern observations of actual plasmas in actual laboratories. So, in that regard, we have a complete disconnect here: You've decided that you can argue against an argument which you've not taken the time to learn.
The actual argument which has been put forward is that, in the laboratory, what we observe plasmas doing is forming filaments which have a tendency to pair up. Take the time to learn the geometry of the claim by thinking about the pictures here, here and here -- which become progressively more complex.
It takes a little bit of mental effort to understand, but a person does not have to be a physicist or a mathematician to discern from these diagrams that there is a long-range attraction between these filaments, as well as a short-range repulsion.
Now, realize that plasmas are observed to scale over enormous distances. This is not based upon somebody imagining this as a principle (that would be absurd); the scaling is observed . So, what that means is that in a vague sense -- with some caveats -- we can scale this process up to the galactic regime. The observations of ESA's Herschel can fairly be called a vindication of this claim, as well.
One implication of this geometry is that the electric force can be extended to any distance we observe the filaments extending to. There is no known limit -- which is why this is a perfectly valid, and very physical, explanation for the dark matter problem.
Another important implication -- which is intriguing, honestly -- is that the universe appears to be a plasma fractal. There is repetition of structure happening across vastly different scales -- and this fact has not yet been adequately stated by science journalists to the public. It certainly bears great meaning for what the universe actually is.
Re: "Oh so you admit you can’t solve a simple physics problem."
I recommend that you take your time and re-read what I have posted, because I did not at all admit that that I can't solve some physics problem. I provided you with a perfectly valid geometry, based upon laboratory plasma physics principles, for resolving the dark matter problem without having to invoke any new matter.
Re: "But the way those guys presented their theories, usually heavily leaning towards the 'buy my book' path before all else, as well as their intense paranoia towards anybody with a legit background in astrophysics always left them looking just a wee bit off."
I hear what you're saying: You have expectations for what a competing theory and presentation should look like, and this doesn't look like your expectations.
What I am arguing for is that, in terms of process, we can more meaningfully judge controversial scientific claims by systematically tracking scientific controversies. By that, I mean (1) learning the arguments of the debate; and then (2) watching for any vindications which might occur for the against-the-mainstream idea; and (3) preferably, doing this in a group of people, so that the work is distributed. I've proposed a new social network to crowdsource this information in an EdgeScience article which details the origin of the idea.
The problem with your existing process is that we do not actually know what state the correct answer currently is in. When popularity does not align with validity -- i.e., when there are observable biases on a topic -- then the state of a valid line of investigation can be immature. Some people -- and this includes actual scientists -- will try to cast that as reason to believe that the idea is not correct, but then they use that judgment as a reason to stop paying attention. What I'm suggesting is that this is not a rigorous approach for identifying what is and isn't true. There is a way to deal with these situations which is much less prone to error: tracking controversies.
Re: "Dumbass, at the same vast distances, so are electricity and magnetism."
Forgive my cynicism, but I see that we have now arrived at the point where people are ignoring the implications of the geometry of the plasma filament. The plasma filament presents a perfectly valid solution to the distance problem because of its inherent long-range attraction and short-range repulsion between separate filaments. What this means in practice is that the electric force is then extended to whatever distance -- basically infinite -- that the filament extends to.
For many years, a number of "debunkers" have attempted to undermine this solution to the dark matter problem by claiming either that plasma is quasi-neutral (and hence non-conductive) or that the electric force is shielded at some distance (Debye screening). The Thunderbolts Group has soundly rebutted the quasi-neutrality argument here, and I've personally documented three exceptional violations of Debye screening here.
In a sense, these earlier arguments are basically voided by this new mainstream admission of light-years long filaments of plasma currents, but since the reporting by mainstream science journalists on these topics is so confused, the memo never seems to be received by the "debunkers".
Re: "Your electric universe theory utterly fails to explain the vast majority of accepted theory. That’s why is complete bullshit."
What I have observed over the past ten years of tracking this controversy is a refusal to actually learn the debate. Look at your process: You are not even actively tracking this controversy, then you are going online to tell people who are that they are wrong. You and I both know that you could not even name the books that a person would need to read in order to get a handle on the subject.
When the experts refuse to track controversies, eventually they just stop being the experts. You can hate the messenger who then subsequently informs you of the vindications which you are refusing to track, but ultimately, it was your decision to refuse to track this debate which has brought us to this point.
Sincerely,
A generalist who tracks controversies.
Re: "Or, you know, angular momentum from before formation being conserved ..."
It always amuses me when a person who is obviously scientifically inclined has been convinced that the answer to a physics problem is a creation story.
Realize that if the Earth was just an inch from the Sun, the next nearest star would typically be around 4 MILES away (!). Your first mistake was in refusing to conceptualize the vast distances of space. At these distances, gravity is just a localized force -- much like the Van der Waals. There is no sprinkling of dark matter into this vast intervening space that will magically transform the universe's weakest force into its organizing force. Dark matter is cosmology's dead end, and you've arrived at this dead end by refusing to question the science journalists, who are honestly behaving more as advocates for the theories than as impartial journalists.
Observation of concentric cylinders of electric currents in AGN jets is certainly a problem for mainstream science, as this is exactly what was predicted in a 2015 paper by Electric Universe theorist, Don Scott.
Please tell us why anybody should try to model such an observation with fluids equations. Seems like a complete waste of time to me.
What is this overt bias against electricity in space doing in the tech industry?
My favorite part of the cold fusion debate was when the hot fusion researchers held a "wake for cold fusion" party before they had even taken all of the data. The flyers for that party have been published online.
Re: "I think you're spending a lot of time looking at web forums and not spending any time learning actual physics."
So, your suggestion for resolving the debate seems to be that I should just study one side of it.
Re: "Being a professional physicist doesn't keep me from still appreciating science fiction."
A crucial part of the process of untangling controversial science is to become fluent in the critiques of modern science. One of these critics wrote a stunning critique of what it means to be a "professional"
Here's another ...
Jeff Schmidt was actually fired by the AIP for publishing this book. He had up to that point been one of Physics Today's best editors for 19 years. He sued the AIP (and won), and the case became North American physics' largest freedom-of-expression case in its history. I get the impression that many professional physicists have somehow failed to notice the book. But, either way, no, I completely disagree that I have made a mistake by choosing to not become a physicist. In fact, that decision has allowed me a freedom to study both sides of scientific controversies, as well as a freedom to diverge from the consensus view when the evidence is plainly suggesting that the consensus view is just plain wrong.