There is the story that I start with when the topic of quantization of redshifts comes up.
Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies, p.112:
"A. The Quantization of Redshifts
In 1976, William Tifft of the Steward Observatory reported a long, careful series of measurements of binary galaxies. These are galaxies so close together and of such similar redshift that they are accepted as being physically associated, presumably orbiting around each other. The startling part of his report, however, was that the differences in redshift between members of these pairs of galaxies were quantized in steps of 72 km s [the galaxies were receding from the Earth in whole steps of velocities of 72 kms per second]...
It is amazing for me to recall now the cutting jokes, the ridicule with which this result was greeted. A graduate of Harvard with a Ph.D. from Caltech, Tifft had impeccable credentials and a record of serious, careful research. Nevertheless I was treated to some lunchtime conversation at Caltech in which an influential astronomer joked (well, everyone laughed) about retroactively cancelling his degree. Tifft's home institution stood by him, however, and he has continued to produce ground-breaking research with patience and dignity.
The initial aberrant result was well on its way to being buried, however, when a few years later a rather dramatic event occurred.
Tifft was on sabbatical in Italy and happened to be lecturing on the quantization result when a skeptical member of the class said, 'Here is a new list of more accurate redshifts from radio measurements of hydrogen; I am sure you won't find periodicity in here.'
Not only did the quantization appear in this independent set of very accurate double galaxy measurements, but it was the most clear cut, obviously significant demonstration of the effect yet seen. It is perhaps not very uplifting at this point to hear about the lack of reaction of the astronomers who had made the measurements or the difficulty in getting the significance of the results recognized and discussed. It is still a subject carefully avoided. The results were later reconfirmed by some optical measures in the Southern Hemisphere and then very strongly confirmed again by the large number of accurate measures in the independent sample shown in Figure 7-3.
Figure 7-3 presents the same data as shown in Figure 7-1 except that the bins into which the data have been divided are very much smaller. This is possible because those hydrogen measures are so accurate. We see that not only are the preponderance of companion redshifts positive, but that they are quantized in the previously predicted, and previously confirmed, values of 72 km s.
It would seem difficult, to put it mildly, to have an object with a redshift which is due to velocity and then to have this object simply disappear or dematerialize when it is not traveling at 72 km s or some multiple thereof. The quantization, in itself, therefore, establishes the existence of redshifts which are not caused by velocity."
Does it not at all bother you that Lemaitre was a Catholic priest?
A. L. Peratt, "Dean of the Plasma Dissidents," The World & I (May 1988), p.197:
"I was there when Abbe Georges Lemaitre first proposed this [expanding universe] theory. Lemaitre was, at the time, both a member of the Catholic hierarchy and an accomplished scientist. He said in private that this theory was a way to reconcile science with St. Thomas Aquinas' theological dictum of creatio ex nihilo or creation out of nothing...
Re: "Arp continued to publish papers supporting his views long after they'd become wildly heterodox. His last refereed paper was the year before he died, and his last invited chapter contribution was the same year he died. You're welcome to agree with him, if you like; that doesn't make you a science denier. Treating that view as equally well established does."
We can learn a lot about academia and science journalism by identifying the histories they refuse to tell.
Here's a very important one:
Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science
Halton Arp
"In the 1940's the largest telescope of its time, the 200-inch at Palomar, was conceived and built. Since Rockefeller and Carnegie were rival capitalists the Rockefeller Foundation could only give the money to California Institute of Technology rather than the Carnegie Institution of Washington where the world's leading astronomers were. Cal Tech, however had no Astronomy Department so an agreement was signed between the two Institutions that they would jointly operate the Observatory. The noted Carnegie astronomers such as Hubble, Baade, R. Minkowski then initially used most of the telescope time. Younger staff members were gradually included...
Quasars were discovered in 1963 and astronomers rushed to observe them because they assumed their high redshifts meant they were at great distances and that the nature of the universe would thereby be revealed...
... The Cal Tech radio astronomer who isolated the positions of the first quasars asked for telescope time to observe their spectra and obtain their redshifts. He was told only certain of the faculty could observe with the 200-inch telescope. Those select few went on to measure the spectra and reap the headlines and the original discoverer left the field in disgust...
There followed an interregnum of about 17 years in which the Cal Tech astronomy Department pressed for a larger and larger share of the telescope time. One must know that in the operating agreement for the Observatory that the Carnegie astronomers were appointed full faculty members at Cal Tech. Then in 1980 Cal Tech broke the agreement, taking over the 200-inch and severing the faculty appointments of the Carnegie astronomers. There were bitter protests by the suddenly discharged faculty (Appeals to the American Association of University Professors were not heeded)...
... it is not just a question of territorial expansion and control, there is also the question of eminence and prestige and the impossibility of being wrong...
This is how the elite body of astronomers, which is now the reigning authority in Astronomy, was formed. By now, of course, the students of Cal Tech have gone on to many other elite faculties and astronomers from Harvard, Princeton, Cambridge, etc. have arrived in Pasadena. So as with many self selected elites, their power has grown to be almost monolithic."
Re: "I'm not putting you on the spot to defend yourself, but I've read many of your electric universe posts and the main thing missing from all of them is any indication that your theory explains any observations better than the conventional scientific approach that gravity dominates the large-scale structure of the universe."
Plasma often behaves like a gas, except that it conducts electricity and is affected by magnetic fields. On an astronomical scale, plasma is common. The Sun is composed of plasma, fire is plasma, fluorescent and neon lights contain plasma.
"99.9 percent of the Universe is made up of plasma," says Dr. Dennis Gallagher, a plasma physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. "Very little material in space is made of rock like the Earth."
Big Bang proponents have left the mistaken impression that the only way to explain microwaves coming at us from all directions - the "cosmic microwave background" - is with a Big Bang. In fact, this is totally incorrect:
"High-power microwave generation on earth belongs exclusively to devices using relativistic electron beams... A relativistic electron beam that does not produce microwave radiation is unknown. These same basic mechanisms are likely to have their natural analogs in cosmic plasmas."
[Eric Lerner] First of all, the temperature of the microwave background - basically the amount of energy - was not what the Big Bang supporters had predicted. They had predicted a much higher temperature.
[Anthony Peratt] So, it was 50 degrees Kelvin that was being compared against the 2-5 degrees Kelvin from the steady state universe. This may not sound like much, but energy density - where we measure the absolute differences - the difference is four orders of magnitude: 10 x 10 x 10 x 10 difference. So, there is an enormous difference between 50 degrees Kelvin - a rather poor indicator of what is happening in the universe - and 3 degrees Kelvin.
A universe dominated by plasmas must be a filamentary universe. This claim was originally stated by Hannes Alfven in 1963 in a text titled "Cosmical Electrodynamics". He is referring here to cosmic plasmas:
"medium-density plasma (and perhaps also low-density plasmas) seem very often to be strongly inhomogeneous, exhibiting a filamentary structure which often may be parallel to the magnetic field."
"The suggestion that the universe be filamentary and cellular was generally disregarded until the 1980s, when a series of unexpected observations showed filamentary structure on the Galactic, intergalactic, and supergalactic scale."
Alfven predicted it, and anybody who has taken the time to learn the plasma-based model can see that without lots of filamentation at interstellar and intergalactic scales, there can be no plasma universe. That's because plasmas tend to form into filaments when they are conducting electric currents.
We should always be extremely careful to distinguish between the quantitative vs. qualitative aspects of scientific theory. The former is constructed from abstract equations, the latter is constructed from abstract concepts. Both are maps (or aspects of a map) trying to describe the real territory, i.e. the universe.
You are right in that the quantitative aspect of Relativity has an enormous amount of experimental confirmation. What you seem to be missing is that such a mathematical framework was not originally developed by Einstein. This seems to explain why, when you get into the mathematics of Relativity, you have to study Lorentz Transformation Equations, the Lorentz Factor, Lorentz boosts, the Lorentz group, Lorentz Symmetry and Lorentz Invariance.
E. T. Whittaker, notable mathematician and science historian, wrote a classical textbook about the history of electricity and electromagnetism. If you check out the book, you will not find a chapter titled "The Relativity of Einstein", but you will find one titled "The Relativity Theory of Poincaré and Lorentz", in which Whittaker wrote:
"It is clear, from the history set forth in the present chapter, that the theory of relativity had its origin in the theory of aether and electrons. When relativity had become recognised as a doctrine covering the whole operation of physical nature, efforts were made to present it in a form free from any special association with electromagnetic theory, and deducible logically from a definite set of axioms". [A History of The Theories of Aether and Electricity, Vol 2, pages 42-43].
The original version of the quantitative map of Relativity — that we may call Lorentzian Relativity — is based on a qualitative interpretation where the speed of light is variable, time is absolute, and there is a preferred frame for light that is typically undetectable due to confounding properties of nature, such as the change in the rate of clocks with velocity and the contraction of matter with velocity. On the other hand, Einstein later found a way to obtain the exact same quantitative map through a completely different qualitative interpretation, i.e., the speed of light is constant in all moving frames, the rate of time is variable, and the undetectable aether is irrelevant. The new qualitative interpretation by Einstein was in line with the philosophy of instrumentalism, i.e. the philosophical belief that we should make no distinction between unobservable entities and non-existent ones, even if observations only make sense in terms of levels of physical reality that are not easily measurable, or beyond measurement.
Most importantly, people seem to be largely unaware that the quantitative maps of Einsteinian Relativity and Lorentzian Relativity are — in effect — quantitatively indistinguishable. Generally speaking, experiment cannot decide between the two. In other words, the quantitative maps (the equations) are identical, while the qualitative maps are totally different...
In other words, every experiment confirming Relativity is evidence confirming Lorenzian Aether-Based Relativity, which is the original Theory of Relativity. Considering that we generally cannot distinguish between the two "versions" of Relativity by quantitative measures, we should focus more than ever on carefully studying the qualitative differences between them, and making our choice wisely.
The big picture of what has happened in cosmology is that a large theoretical structure was constructed before we ever actually went into space with probes designed to measure its properties. The first instrumented rocket was not sent to space until 1958
Re: "If he'd just put an ounce of two of that energy into learning science instead of peddling pseudo-science, he probably wouldn't be mocked as much."
Mockery comes with the territory of engaging new ideas in science. I'm not trying to avoid it.
What I do is track scientific controversies. I learn the models, as they've been stated by the theorists. I seek out the critiques of those models, so I can understand what the debate is. I resist the urge to judge the model before I've learned it. I also expose other people to the claims so that I can witness their reactions. I systematically seek out persuasive arguments. And over time, I track whether or not new observations can be interpreted as vindicating this competing model. What I've learned - through practice - is that we can use this process to differentiate legitimate groundbreaking science claims from pseudoscience.
I didn't actually make this process up. It's how universities teach critical thinking in humanities programs. This is what students are every day taught to do in elite schools like Harvard with literature: They read challenging texts, and through discussion, practice interpreting those texts from competing perspectives. The daily practice of tracking scientific controversies takes this same technique - a method which has already been shown to teach complex thought in the humanities for many years now - and applies it to science.
The courses at Harvard were divided into two: one was the Humanities, the English, literature and so forth. They tended to be quite challenging and quite stimulating because there were quite a few good people. There was an ambience of intellectual creativity so the science courses were good too, but they were much more cut and dried. You had to bring your own stimulation to those courses. Again, in prep school, high school, no I guess prep school, again the literary ends were quite stimulating and the science courses began around a routine, you know, solid stuff, learning intrinsically, they did not have the same intellectual adventure as the Humanities courses.
The price of overly caring about whether or not people are mocking you is that you are not free to think for yourself. Learning to engage multiple working hypotheses is actually learning to "think like a scientist" - which should not be conflated with learning to "think what scientists think." These are two very different things: The former is a process for asking questions about the world or universe such that the answers are not already known, whereas the latter is simply learning to apply the consensus view models.
The science graduate programs today are not teaching people how to think. They're teaching people to be part of a scientific society. Inclusion into this society is determined not by whether or not you are critically thinking about what you're being taught - but rather to what degree you adhere to claims which are said to be "settled". This is actually what makes Big Science "efficient" - so don't get me wrong: there are actually systems-oriented reasons for why the programs are taught this way. It's helped to create this efficient technological capitalist system we live in.
But, there are both social and personal costs for this "efficient" approach to science: The social cost is that progress on big important questions will sometimes become completely stalled. Innovation always involves somebody diverging from the pack, so if you set the culture of your scientific society such that the independent thinkers are mocked as cultists, then you run the risk of eventually waging an ideological war on the next big idea. The personal cost of efficient schooling in science is that it tends to make the practice of science considerably mo
Re: "Pick up any planetary dymanics or solar system mechanics text written in the last 80 years and you'll be confronted by the reality of solar magnetic fields."
There are also clues in more recent observations that stars are connected by transmission lines:
Based on theoretical studies of how magnetism is generated in stars, it’s thought that the fully convective interiors of ultracool dwarfs can’t support large-scale magnetic field formation. This should prevent these stars from exhibiting activity cycles like the Sun. But recent radio observations of dwarf stars have led scientist Matthew Route (ITaP Research Computing, Purdue University) to question these models.
A Reversing Field?
During observations of the brown dwarf star J1047+21 in 2010–2011, radio flares were detected with emission primarily polarized in a single direction. The dwarf’s flares in late 2013, however, all showed polarization in the opposite direction. Could this be an indication that J1047+21 has a stable, global dipolar field that flipped polarity in between the two sets of observations? If so, this could mean that the star has a magnetic cycle similar to the Sun’s.
Inspired by this possibility, Route conducted an investigation of the long-term magnetic behavior of all known radio-flaring ultracool dwarfs, a list of 14 stars. Using polarized radio emission measurements, he found that many of his targets exhibited similar polarity flips, which he argues is evidence that these dwarfs are undergoing magnetic field reversals on roughly decade-long timescales, analogous to those reversals that occur in the Sun.
If this is indeed true, then we need to examine our models of how magnetic fields are generated in stars...
From a different article, reason to believe that stellar environments can exert influence upon stellar phenomena via "magnetic fields":
Haimin Wang, a distinguished professor of physics at NJIT and a co-author of the paper, said the observations will prompt scientists to revisit the mechanisms of flares - and the basic physics of the Sun - in a fundamental way.
'We used to think that the surface's magnetic evolution drives solar eruptions. Our new observations suggest that disturbances created in the solar outer atmosphere can also cause direct and significant perturbations on the surface through magnetic fields, a phenomenon not envisioned by any major contemporary solar eruption models. This has immediate and far-reaching implications in understanding energy and momentum transportation in eruptions on the Sun and other stars,' Wang said.
Henri Poincaré, at the conclusion of the preface to his book, 'Hypothéses Cosmogoniques', states:
One fact that strikes everyone is the spiral shape of some nebulae; it is encountered much too often for us to believe that it is due to chance. It is easy to understand how incomplete any theory of cosmogony which ignores this fact must be. None of the theories accounts for it satisfactorily, and the explanation I myself once gave, is a kind of toy theory, is no better than the others. Consequently, we come up against a big question mark.
I appreciate your perspective, and I think it's healthy. What does not seem healthy at all to me is overt hostility in the heart of Silicon Valley directed at this simple idea of applying laboratory plasma concepts to astronomical imagery. The Big Bang concept is a creation event dressed up in some of the most sophisticated mathematics humans have ever devised. The math is sort of like a gauntlet which experts plunge all detractors into: If you cannot perform these brain tricks, then you are not qualified to judge the idea. Well, no, actually I can plainly see that you've allowed a Catholic priest to insert his Bible genesis story into your scientific hypothesis. That doesn't necessarily mean that it cannot be true, but it should raise more red flags for people than it apparently does.
A completely rational response is to learn as much as you can about the mainstream ideas, but to also consider the critiques, and to learn about competing ideas sufficient to notice any raw, unfiltered, unexpected vindications. If you want to truly know where science is heading, pay special attention to the unplanned observations. The "experts" will oftentimes fail to even notice this stuff, and it may only become apparent once you've removed the conventional interpretation from the article you are reading.
Notice, e.g., there has been no discussion in the mainstream science journalism about Biot-Savart Law. Every single astrophysicist, cosmologist, astronomer and science journalist has failed to notice that those filaments appear to be interacting with one another. But, also realize that the SKA will become more powerful over time, and I am inclined to believe that they are going to notice those filaments twisting around one another over some pretty short timespans. So, how will people react to this? The realization of what is going on will be slow and incredibly awkward because people have decided that they can interpret these images without cultivating some understanding of laboratory plasmas. Only those who have taken the time to learn about laboratory plasmas will be equipped to interpret what we're about to witness, IMHO.
Re: "Lastly, evidence does not support conclusions from the article, scientific books are being rewritten with revolutionary ideas much more then in the past: general relativity (time is not constant), quantum theory (all is waves of probability), quantum chromodynamics, expansion of the Universe, black holes, evaporating black holes, cosmic microwave background radiation, string theory, quantum field theory, gravitational waves, accelerating expansion of the Universe, Higgs field and Higgs bozon - if this is stagnation, then I do not know what is not."
The mistake that people make is to completely ignore critiques of modern science. Critique serves a purpose for science of helping us to identify what is true; if you remove it, then all you can do is accept the claim as valid. It's only through a process of surveying all critiques that we can begin to formulate meaningful judgments about what is and isn't likely to be correct.
Newton, Einstein & Velikovsky: Celestial Mechanics, Electromagnetism, Solar System Instability & Cosmology
By Charles Ginenthal
pages 257-266
"Space Inflation and the Invention of the Higgs Boson
The universe supposedly began when a singularity or black hole that had all the mass, electricity and space in it for some unknown reason exploded. Alan Guth received a Nobel Prize for explaining what happened next, which came to be known as 'inflation.' At 10^-36 seconds after the Big Bang, the universe expanded exponentially beyond the speed of light. It was not the matter that expanded outward, but the space that contained this matter that expanded; since matter cannot, according to Einstein, travel faster than the speed of light, the way to get the matter to expand throughout the universe was to have the space between it expand. Science writer, Marcia Bartusiak, outlines the development of Guth's inflationary concept that was very quickly accepted by the scientific establishment because, as we will see, like Dark Matter, it was needed to make the Big Bang theory work.
'Guth did not start out to do cosmology. Working with a Cornell University colleague, Henry Tye, he was trying to determine if most current grand unification theories in physics -- theories that attempt to unify the forces of nature -- might give rise to monopoles (hypothetical particles of magnetic charge). The two particle physicists concluded that monopoles would be generated and proceeded to see how many might be produced in the Big Bang. So many would be created that 'we began to wonder why the universe was here at all,' said Guth 'Their tremendous weight would have closed the universe back up [by causing it to implode back into a black hole] eons ago.'' [41]
Because what they found would not allow the universe to expand to its present size after about 13.7 billion years -- some way had to be found to get out of this impasse, as Bartusiak further explains:
'Guth and Tye eventually surmised that monopole production could be curtailed if the early universe 'Supercooled' as it expanded -- [Supercooling allowed] the forces of nature in effect staying unified for a while as temperatures plunged, just as water can sometimes supercool and remain liquid below its freezing point. The notion of [there being an] inflation was encountered when Tye casually reminded Guth to check how this supercooling might affect the infant universe.
Guth carried out the initial calculations at his home office on the night of December 6, 1979. He started at about 10^-35 seconds into the universe's birth... His equations told him that supercooling would endow the universe with a tremendous potential energy. A pressure contribution to gravity became so substantial that it reversed the effect of gravity, causing the tiny universe to balloon outward at a superacceleration rate for a miniscule (~10^-35 second or so), stretching space-time [with all the protomatter of the Universe contained in it outward] by a factor of 10^-30 or more. When this supercoole
This business of reconsidering observations in the light of a completely new set of assumptions and hypotheses is hard work, so wherever you might see people coming to a snap judgement about an entire cosmology after having read one or two debunker essays, realize that the mind sees the amount of work involved with learning it and may try to find shortcuts which it can use to justify a more lazy approach.
Those who take the time to learn the new idea are richly rewarded because once you pick up this new toolbox, you will start to see how one single observation can very often be interpreted in more than one manner, based upon these two worldviews. If you can mentally position yourself like this for each ongoing controversy you encounter, then you are watching science unfold at its cutting edge, as a scientist would. Over time, if you track the controversy for long enough, all of the many bits of context start to fill in, and you can come to understand this current historical moment - why it happened, where the two worldviews diverge, how each side will argue it. At this point, you may even be able to make some predictions about what is to come.
This practice of tracking controversies over many years is the only reliable way to make accurate predictions about these complex issues. Tracking controversies is a skill which a person can become better at over time. In terms of psychology, it's called the subject-object transition: You take something which you have been subject to for many years, and you practice looking at the same observations from a different - equally valid - perspective, just long enough to now manipulate that thing as an object. You can literally make yourself smarter by practicing this subject-object transition. It's a mental muscle of sorts, and one of the highest forms of thinking - thinking like a scientist.
Re: "Unfortunately, I'm not seeing proof, I'm currently seeing conjecture."
The logic is straightforward. Each claim I am about to make can be backed up with references. I'm going to spare myself the burden of doing that in this particular instance so that I can focus upon providing you with "the big picture" of what is going on - because I will completely agree that there is so much new information here that it can be overwhelming. If you want to see the references for these claims, follow me on Twitter
The Electric Universe is a cosmology that adds a number of conjectures to "plasma cosmology" or Peratt's preferred term, "plasma universe" (I personally prefer the phrase "electrical cosmology" as a general term to refer to any one of them). Plasma cosmology and plasma universe are a bit older than the EU, so the EU benefits from being able to incorporate more modern observations. The most important thing that you need to know is that all of these terms share one bedrock belief in common: the idea that scientists can - and very much should - use laboratory plasma observations to inform their astronomical inferences.
In the laboratory, plasmas exhibit filamentation, hub-and-spoke structures which connect those filaments into electrical networks, plasma double layers, critical ionization velocities, and a host of other fundamentally electrodynamic and circuit-oriented behaviors. Astrophysicists today refuse to consider the full toolbox of laboratory plasma observations when they make inferences about cosmic plasmas, and they decide to do so even though a host of outstanding problems can be solved with these tools.
Perhaps the best example relates to the situation with double layers. Double layers have been observed both in the laboratory and in space - yet astrophysics graduate students are still not taught what they are. A very simple privately-funded experiment can be performed whereby a metal sphere is charge-loaded within a vacuum. A series of layers will appear given sufficient charge density, and these layers can unexpectedly hold tremendous heat. In fact, the heat profile very much mimics the inverse-temperature enigma of the solar corona - suggesting that an answer to that predicament is readily available if only the graduate programs would simply teach the concept to students.
The ionosphere is an example of a double layer. Notice that it can be used to reflect AM waves. A significant suggestion has been indirectly made by Wal Thornhill that the very reason for the Fermi Paradox is because life originates within a sufficiently strong double layer that all radio communications are blocked. Conceptually, this would make a lot of sense because double layers can insulate the incubator from all of the violence of cosmic plasmas.
A similar protection is afforded to us here on Earth by the Van Allen radiation belts - another spot where double layers have been observationally confirmed.
Look at Tunguska: Where is the impactor? We can see that a catastrophic event occurred, but there is no object to point to as the cause. That problem disappears once double layers are considered, for then we need only assert that the double layers of two charged objects came into contact with one another, releasing a substantial amount of energy. No impactor is required, and this is basic plasma physics applied to the planetary sciences.
Double layers can also accelerate charged particles. You have an unusual source for cosmic rays? Double layers offer a new tool to address that.
You can also think of double layers as a system which the fourth state of matter uses to create structure: At the root of the plasma filament, with its concentric counter-rotating cylinders, is the concept of the double layer. The different layers of the Sun can be explained with double layers (Don Scott
Re: "Every test ever implemented that could prove or disprove Relativity has always come out in its favor. Make a test that it can't pass and then you'll have a leg to stand on. Until there is a test that shows Relativity to be wrong, we will continue to assume it's correct, and every test that it passes will reaffirm how correct is actually is."
Re: "Discussion EU isn't a discussion of logic, it's a discussion of zealous belief attempting to poorly masquerade as science."
My "zealous belief" at least roots in an unexpected observation from just this past Friday where we can see cosmic plasmas behaving as laboratory plasmas. Yours roots to a creation event.
The actual problem is that people do not understand what a plasma is - and yet, it is today widely recognized in the graduate programs that 99% of what we see with telescopes is matter in the plasma state. That's an overt problem with the science journalism which needs to be addressed.
The bedrock claim put forward by the Thunderbolts Project - the claim which all proponents of EU will agree on - is that we can apply laboratory plasma physics principles to the interpretation of cosmic plasmas. Nobel laureate Hannes Alfven made the point repeatedly that laboratory observation of plasmas must be at the root of our attempts to understand cosmic plasmas:
"In retrospect, it seems clear that Alfvén considered his early theoretical assumption of frozen-in magnetic fields to be his greatest mistake, a mistake perpetuated first and foremost by mathematicians attracted to Alfvén's magnetohydrodynamic equations. Alfvén came to recognize that real plasma behavior is too 'complicated and awkward' for the tastes of mathematicians. It is a subject 'not at all suited for mathematically elegant theories.' It requires hands-on attention to plasma dynamics in the laboratory. Sadly, he said, the plasma universe became 'the playground of theoreticians who have never seen a plasma in a laboratory. Many of them still believe in formulae which we know from laboratory experiments to be wrong.'
Again and again Alfvén reiterated the point: the underlying assumptions of cosmologists today 'are developed with the most sophisticated mathematical methods and it is only the plasma itself which does not 'understand' how beautiful the theories are and absolutely refuses to obey them.'"
If you don't believe that we should use laboratory observations of plasmas to explain cosmic plasmas, then how else do you propose we interpret these extraordinary cosmic filaments which appear to be electrodynamically interacting with one another?
High-power microwaves here on Earth are produced by plasma instabilities in electron beams - in other words, electric currents over plasma. COBE and WMAP, by contrast, are pitching a creation event as the cause for the microwaves coming at us from all directions. You might want to take a step back, and think more deeply about what is going on here - and especially your own role in the light of this information about microwaves which I can plainly see you were not aware of.
Re: "Scientists are very competitive by nature and they pursue all sound ideas."
You might try reading actual critiques of modern science, like The Twilight of the Scientific Age:
"Creativity is blocked. It seems that the system gives the message that no ideas are needed. It seems the system, through its higher authorities, is saying that science only needs to work out the details. It is accepted that the basis of what is now known is correct, that present-day theories are more or less correct and only manpower is needed to sort out some parameters of minor importance. A Copernican revolution is totally unthinkable within the current system."
- Martín López Corredoira, Cosmologist / Astrophysicist / Philosopher / Published 50 Academic Papers, Often as Lead / Academic Whistleblower
If you are looking for something more comprehensive, then read The Electric Sky. If you want something more technical, then read Physics of the Plasma Universe. You can find copies of the latter floating around online if you prefer to not pay for it.
It's not a strike against the EU that it's a challenge to pick up; it's testament to how wrong the existing theories are that so much has to change. But, you already knew that (5% universe and all of that...)
You are correct that on issues related specifically to redshift, there exists a sort of consensus amongst critics of the Big Bang on Halton Arp. I highly recommend checking out Halton Arp's books - and especially the first one he wrote. His work was always very much driven by observation, and I think history will agree that Arp's claims were well within the bounds of acceptable science. It seems that he was simply swept up in a historical moment where the academic elites decided which direction cosmology would go. And if you dig into the details of what happened around the 82/83 (?) timeframe when CalTech literally took over the Palomar telescope, breaking its agreement with the Carnegie, it becomes clear that Arp wasn't even the only one who was shafted. That is history which the science journalists refuse to tell, and one of many important omissions which are undermining the public's ability to see the big picture here.
All of these histories which the science journalists are refusing to recount will eventually become common knowledge, and the landscape of the space sciences will look very different in hindsight.
It is the best explanation on the Internet for why GPS cannot validate Einstein's Relativity. I should know because I've been searching for an effective rebuttal for many years now. The signal-to-noise on this topic is disgusting, and mainstream science journalists tend to be the worst offenders. The damage done to science is incalculable, for this GPS myth leaves the false impression that entirely valid scientific domains are pseudoscience.
I recommend going to controversiesofscience.com, click elephant, then select a category of controversy cards to sort through. These are very important topics.
Notable that it comes from slashdot; I live in the heart of Silicon Valley, and this has never once been on the radar. Go online, and everything is different. Oftentimes via anon's.
Slashdot Mirror
There is the story that I start with when the topic of quantization of redshifts comes up.
Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies, p.112:
Does it not at all bother you that Lemaitre was a Catholic priest?
A. L. Peratt, "Dean of the Plasma Dissidents," The World & I (May 1988), p.197:
Re: "Arp continued to publish papers supporting his views long after they'd become wildly heterodox. His last refereed paper was the year before he died, and his last invited chapter contribution was the same year he died. You're welcome to agree with him, if you like; that doesn't make you a science denier. Treating that view as equally well established does."
We can learn a lot about academia and science journalism by identifying the histories they refuse to tell. Here's a very important one:
Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science
Halton Arp
Re: "I'm not putting you on the spot to defend yourself, but I've read many of your electric universe posts and the main thing missing from all of them is any indication that your theory explains any observations better than the conventional scientific approach that gravity dominates the large-scale structure of the universe."
Let's review the situation then:
NASA: Plasma, Plasma, Everywhere
Such acknowledgements are common enough that we can list out all of the references.
Big Bang proponents have left the mistaken impression that the only way to explain microwaves coming at us from all directions - the "cosmic microwave background" - is with a Big Bang. In fact, this is totally incorrect:
Then there is the problem with the CMB temperature predictions:
A universe dominated by plasmas must be a filamentary universe. This claim was originally stated by Hannes Alfven in 1963 in a text titled "Cosmical Electrodynamics". He is referring here to cosmic plasmas:
Peratt noted:
Alfven predicted it, and anybody who has taken the time to learn the plasma-based model can see that without lots of filamentation at interstellar and intergalactic scales, there can be no plasma universe. That's because plasmas tend to form into filaments when they are conducting electric currents.
Like many of Alfven's successful predictions, it was ignored:
lol, realize that Meglon never even responded back in July to Juan Calsiano's explanation to him of Relativity's true origin as the study of aether and electrons:
The big picture of what has happened in cosmology is that a large theoretical structure was constructed before we ever actually went into space with probes designed to measure its properties. The first instrumented rocket was not sent to space until 1958
Re: "If he'd just put an ounce of two of that energy into learning science instead of peddling pseudo-science, he probably wouldn't be mocked as much."
Mockery comes with the territory of engaging new ideas in science. I'm not trying to avoid it.
What I do is track scientific controversies. I learn the models, as they've been stated by the theorists. I seek out the critiques of those models, so I can understand what the debate is. I resist the urge to judge the model before I've learned it. I also expose other people to the claims so that I can witness their reactions. I systematically seek out persuasive arguments. And over time, I track whether or not new observations can be interpreted as vindicating this competing model. What I've learned - through practice - is that we can use this process to differentiate legitimate groundbreaking science claims from pseudoscience.
I didn't actually make this process up. It's how universities teach critical thinking in humanities programs. This is what students are every day taught to do in elite schools like Harvard with literature: They read challenging texts, and through discussion, practice interpreting those texts from competing perspectives. The daily practice of tracking scientific controversies takes this same technique - a method which has already been shown to teach complex thought in the humanities for many years now - and applies it to science.
Arp himself has noted this difference in how science and humanities are taught:
The price of overly caring about whether or not people are mocking you is that you are not free to think for yourself. Learning to engage multiple working hypotheses is actually learning to "think like a scientist" - which should not be conflated with learning to "think what scientists think." These are two very different things: The former is a process for asking questions about the world or universe such that the answers are not already known, whereas the latter is simply learning to apply the consensus view models.
The science graduate programs today are not teaching people how to think. They're teaching people to be part of a scientific society. Inclusion into this society is determined not by whether or not you are critically thinking about what you're being taught - but rather to what degree you adhere to claims which are said to be "settled". This is actually what makes Big Science "efficient" - so don't get me wrong: there are actually systems-oriented reasons for why the programs are taught this way. It's helped to create this efficient technological capitalist system we live in.
But, there are both social and personal costs for this "efficient" approach to science: The social cost is that progress on big important questions will sometimes become completely stalled. Innovation always involves somebody diverging from the pack, so if you set the culture of your scientific society such that the independent thinkers are mocked as cultists, then you run the risk of eventually waging an ideological war on the next big idea. The personal cost of efficient schooling in science is that it tends to make the practice of science considerably mo
Re: "Pick up any planetary dymanics or solar system mechanics text written in the last 80 years and you'll be confronted by the reality of solar magnetic fields."
There are also clues in more recent observations that stars are connected by transmission lines:
From a different article, reason to believe that stellar environments can exert influence upon stellar phenomena via "magnetic fields":
Re: "The current flows predicted by the debunked EU theory have not been observed."
(they infer "turbulence" as the cause of the 27 star forming filaments, which plainly appear to branch off of one another! lol!)
Henri Poincaré, at the conclusion of the preface to his book, 'Hypothéses Cosmogoniques', states:
I appreciate your perspective, and I think it's healthy. What does not seem healthy at all to me is overt hostility in the heart of Silicon Valley directed at this simple idea of applying laboratory plasma concepts to astronomical imagery. The Big Bang concept is a creation event dressed up in some of the most sophisticated mathematics humans have ever devised. The math is sort of like a gauntlet which experts plunge all detractors into: If you cannot perform these brain tricks, then you are not qualified to judge the idea. Well, no, actually I can plainly see that you've allowed a Catholic priest to insert his Bible genesis story into your scientific hypothesis. That doesn't necessarily mean that it cannot be true, but it should raise more red flags for people than it apparently does.
A completely rational response is to learn as much as you can about the mainstream ideas, but to also consider the critiques, and to learn about competing ideas sufficient to notice any raw, unfiltered, unexpected vindications. If you want to truly know where science is heading, pay special attention to the unplanned observations. The "experts" will oftentimes fail to even notice this stuff, and it may only become apparent once you've removed the conventional interpretation from the article you are reading.
Notice, e.g., there has been no discussion in the mainstream science journalism about Biot-Savart Law. Every single astrophysicist, cosmologist, astronomer and science journalist has failed to notice that those filaments appear to be interacting with one another. But, also realize that the SKA will become more powerful over time, and I am inclined to believe that they are going to notice those filaments twisting around one another over some pretty short timespans. So, how will people react to this? The realization of what is going on will be slow and incredibly awkward because people have decided that they can interpret these images without cultivating some understanding of laboratory plasmas. Only those who have taken the time to learn about laboratory plasmas will be equipped to interpret what we're about to witness, IMHO.
Re: "Lastly, evidence does not support conclusions from the article, scientific books are being rewritten with revolutionary ideas much more then in the past: general relativity (time is not constant), quantum theory (all is waves of probability), quantum chromodynamics, expansion of the Universe, black holes, evaporating black holes, cosmic microwave background radiation, string theory, quantum field theory, gravitational waves, accelerating expansion of the Universe, Higgs field and Higgs bozon - if this is stagnation, then I do not know what is not."
The mistake that people make is to completely ignore critiques of modern science. Critique serves a purpose for science of helping us to identify what is true; if you remove it, then all you can do is accept the claim as valid. It's only through a process of surveying all critiques that we can begin to formulate meaningful judgments about what is and isn't likely to be correct.
Newton, Einstein & Velikovsky: Celestial Mechanics, Electromagnetism, Solar System Instability & Cosmology
By Charles Ginenthal
pages 257-266
This business of reconsidering observations in the light of a completely new set of assumptions and hypotheses is hard work, so wherever you might see people coming to a snap judgement about an entire cosmology after having read one or two debunker essays, realize that the mind sees the amount of work involved with learning it and may try to find shortcuts which it can use to justify a more lazy approach.
Those who take the time to learn the new idea are richly rewarded because once you pick up this new toolbox, you will start to see how one single observation can very often be interpreted in more than one manner, based upon these two worldviews. If you can mentally position yourself like this for each ongoing controversy you encounter, then you are watching science unfold at its cutting edge, as a scientist would. Over time, if you track the controversy for long enough, all of the many bits of context start to fill in, and you can come to understand this current historical moment - why it happened, where the two worldviews diverge, how each side will argue it. At this point, you may even be able to make some predictions about what is to come.
This practice of tracking controversies over many years is the only reliable way to make accurate predictions about these complex issues. Tracking controversies is a skill which a person can become better at over time. In terms of psychology, it's called the subject-object transition: You take something which you have been subject to for many years, and you practice looking at the same observations from a different - equally valid - perspective, just long enough to now manipulate that thing as an object. You can literally make yourself smarter by practicing this subject-object transition. It's a mental muscle of sorts, and one of the highest forms of thinking - thinking like a scientist.
Re: "Unfortunately, I'm not seeing proof, I'm currently seeing conjecture."
The logic is straightforward. Each claim I am about to make can be backed up with references. I'm going to spare myself the burden of doing that in this particular instance so that I can focus upon providing you with "the big picture" of what is going on - because I will completely agree that there is so much new information here that it can be overwhelming. If you want to see the references for these claims, follow me on Twitter
The Electric Universe is a cosmology that adds a number of conjectures to "plasma cosmology" or Peratt's preferred term, "plasma universe" (I personally prefer the phrase "electrical cosmology" as a general term to refer to any one of them). Plasma cosmology and plasma universe are a bit older than the EU, so the EU benefits from being able to incorporate more modern observations. The most important thing that you need to know is that all of these terms share one bedrock belief in common: the idea that scientists can - and very much should - use laboratory plasma observations to inform their astronomical inferences.
In the laboratory, plasmas exhibit filamentation, hub-and-spoke structures which connect those filaments into electrical networks, plasma double layers, critical ionization velocities, and a host of other fundamentally electrodynamic and circuit-oriented behaviors. Astrophysicists today refuse to consider the full toolbox of laboratory plasma observations when they make inferences about cosmic plasmas, and they decide to do so even though a host of outstanding problems can be solved with these tools.
Perhaps the best example relates to the situation with double layers. Double layers have been observed both in the laboratory and in space - yet astrophysics graduate students are still not taught what they are. A very simple privately-funded experiment can be performed whereby a metal sphere is charge-loaded within a vacuum. A series of layers will appear given sufficient charge density, and these layers can unexpectedly hold tremendous heat. In fact, the heat profile very much mimics the inverse-temperature enigma of the solar corona - suggesting that an answer to that predicament is readily available if only the graduate programs would simply teach the concept to students.
The ionosphere is an example of a double layer. Notice that it can be used to reflect AM waves. A significant suggestion has been indirectly made by Wal Thornhill that the very reason for the Fermi Paradox is because life originates within a sufficiently strong double layer that all radio communications are blocked. Conceptually, this would make a lot of sense because double layers can insulate the incubator from all of the violence of cosmic plasmas. A similar protection is afforded to us here on Earth by the Van Allen radiation belts - another spot where double layers have been observationally confirmed.
Look at Tunguska: Where is the impactor? We can see that a catastrophic event occurred, but there is no object to point to as the cause. That problem disappears once double layers are considered, for then we need only assert that the double layers of two charged objects came into contact with one another, releasing a substantial amount of energy. No impactor is required, and this is basic plasma physics applied to the planetary sciences.
Double layers can also accelerate charged particles. You have an unusual source for cosmic rays? Double layers offer a new tool to address that.
You can also think of double layers as a system which the fourth state of matter uses to create structure: At the root of the plasma filament, with its concentric counter-rotating cylinders, is the concept of the double layer. The different layers of the Sun can be explained with double layers (Don Scott
It's remarkable that you provided no specific example in these three paragraphs to illustrate your point.
Re: "Every test ever implemented that could prove or disprove Relativity has always come out in its favor. Make a test that it can't pass and then you'll have a leg to stand on. Until there is a test that shows Relativity to be wrong, we will continue to assume it's correct, and every test that it passes will reaffirm how correct is actually is."
You guys just go into endless circles with this mistaken logic. Juan Calsiano explained in crystal clear detail why there is no substance to what you are saying. If you disagree, please respond to his explanation.
Re: "Discussion EU isn't a discussion of logic, it's a discussion of zealous belief attempting to poorly masquerade as science."
My "zealous belief" at least roots in an unexpected observation from just this past Friday where we can see cosmic plasmas behaving as laboratory plasmas. Yours roots to a creation event.
The actual problem is that people do not understand what a plasma is - and yet, it is today widely recognized in the graduate programs that 99% of what we see with telescopes is matter in the plasma state. That's an overt problem with the science journalism which needs to be addressed.
Re: "Pretty much everyone agrees that at The Beginning, their was nothing but energy."
The origin of this idea is clearly the Bible, no?
The bedrock claim put forward by the Thunderbolts Project - the claim which all proponents of EU will agree on - is that we can apply laboratory plasma physics principles to the interpretation of cosmic plasmas. Nobel laureate Hannes Alfven made the point repeatedly that laboratory observation of plasmas must be at the root of our attempts to understand cosmic plasmas:
If you don't believe that we should use laboratory observations of plasmas to explain cosmic plasmas, then how else do you propose we interpret these extraordinary cosmic filaments which appear to be electrodynamically interacting with one another?
High-power microwaves here on Earth are produced by plasma instabilities in electron beams - in other words, electric currents over plasma. COBE and WMAP, by contrast, are pitching a creation event as the cause for the microwaves coming at us from all directions. You might want to take a step back, and think more deeply about what is going on here - and especially your own role in the light of this information about microwaves which I can plainly see you were not aware of.
Re: "Scientists are very competitive by nature and they pursue all sound ideas."
You might try reading actual critiques of modern science, like The Twilight of the Scientific Age:
- Martín López Corredoira, Cosmologist / Astrophysicist / Philosopher / Published 50 Academic Papers, Often as Lead / Academic Whistleblower
If you are looking for something more comprehensive, then read The Electric Sky. If you want something more technical, then read Physics of the Plasma Universe. You can find copies of the latter floating around online if you prefer to not pay for it.
It's not a strike against the EU that it's a challenge to pick up; it's testament to how wrong the existing theories are that so much has to change. But, you already knew that (5% universe and all of that ...)
You are correct that on issues related specifically to redshift, there exists a sort of consensus amongst critics of the Big Bang on Halton Arp. I highly recommend checking out Halton Arp's books - and especially the first one he wrote. His work was always very much driven by observation, and I think history will agree that Arp's claims were well within the bounds of acceptable science. It seems that he was simply swept up in a historical moment where the academic elites decided which direction cosmology would go. And if you dig into the details of what happened around the 82/83 (?) timeframe when CalTech literally took over the Palomar telescope, breaking its agreement with the Carnegie, it becomes clear that Arp wasn't even the only one who was shafted. That is history which the science journalists refuse to tell, and one of many important omissions which are undermining the public's ability to see the big picture here.
All of these histories which the science journalists are refusing to recount will eventually become common knowledge, and the landscape of the space sciences will look very different in hindsight.
It is the best explanation on the Internet for why GPS cannot validate Einstein's Relativity. I should know because I've been searching for an effective rebuttal for many years now. The signal-to-noise on this topic is disgusting, and mainstream science journalists tend to be the worst offenders. The damage done to science is incalculable, for this GPS myth leaves the false impression that entirely valid scientific domains are pseudoscience.
I recommend going to controversiesofscience.com, click elephant, then select a category of controversy cards to sort through. These are very important topics.
The streamers detect one another for the same reason that this happens. It's physics.
Notable that it comes from slashdot; I live in the heart of Silicon Valley, and this has never once been on the radar. Go online, and everything is different. Oftentimes via anon's.