In a NASA media release entitled ‘Electric Hurricanes’ it was suggested that because Emily, Rita and Katrina were all exceptionally powerful hurricanes, their sheer violence somehow explains their lightning. But in the same media release, Richard Blakeslee, from the Global Hydrology and Climate Centre, says that this explanation is too simple.
“Other storms have been equally intense and did not produce much lightning,” he says. “There must be something else at work.”
That “something else at work” is the electric Birkeland currents that power the hurricanes, operating in dark current plasma mode, so little or no lightning is observed.
Birkeland currents are really filaments of electric current that from magnetic attraction are free to rotate around each other, but at the same time coming closer together generates a short range repulsive force that insulates them from each other, thereby maintaining their identity and forming a twisting rope that as the filaments get closer, just like a spinning ice skater bringing in her arms, start to spin even faster. Paired Birkelands are really just electric whirlwinds or a plasma vortex.
The movement of hurricanes over the earth’s surface seems much like that observed for sunspots.
Kristian Birkeland showed the gross features of sunspots in his Terrella experiments where electric discharges, from a donut of plasma around the magnetised sphere, move from mid to low latitudes on the sphere as the electric current increased.
The sun’s plasma torus in UV from the SOHO Mission.
The simplest model for the 22 year magnetic sunspot cycle involves modulation of the electrical power input from the galaxy to the solar circuitry which seems to behave like a secondary winding on a transformer responding to varying DC currents to produce a magnetic field which switches polarity.
The earth is linked to the sun by enormous magnetic flux ropes (or Birkeland currents), and from the behaviour of the auroras and sunspot activity it is entirely likely that the earth’s weather might also be an electrical phenomenon linked to the magnetosphere.
Birkeland rope
Louis Hissink
Perth
We Live in an Electric Universe, Part 1
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/003038.html
We Live in an Electric Universe, Part 2
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/003047.html
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
http://plasmascience.net/tpu/AtHomeChall.html
Claims that, “space probes have yet to penetrate beyond the plasma sheath of the solar system, the heliosphere… What lies beyond the heliosphere? Is the space there really empty, or will we find more plasma there? The plasma model asserts that we certainly will find plasma in the interstellar space…Such a view is contrary to the mainstream cosmological model, which holds that plasma should not be a pervasive presence in interstellar and intergalactic space.”
But NASA seems not to hold this “mainstream cosmological model:”
“The pressure exerted by the solar wind depends on both density and magnetic field; because both these get increasingly weaker as the gas spreads out from the Sun, so does the pressure. But another gas, extremely rarefied, fills space outside the solar system, the “interstellar medium.” One may well expect the solar wind’s expansion to end wherever its pressure balances that of the interstellar gas.
Some cautions need to be observed, though. First, the balancing pressure can only come from interstellar plasmas…”
http://www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/wtermin.html
Seems like NASA expects interstellar space to be a plasmatic environment.
Also at the plasmascience. net link above:
“The plasma modelers readily admit that they offer no proposal about the universe’s origin and age. That issue, as well as the size of the universe, lies beyond their horizons of experimentation and simulation. Nonetheless, at the beginning of the twenty first century, electrical engineers are marshaling a growing body of evidence that points to the necessity of integrating plasmas into the core of cosmological thinking.”
Louis, Louis, Louis.
I find it really irritating that you claimed in part one that the plasma universe was endless, infinite in time and no origin was necessary and that this was derived from the plasma model. So, naturally enough, you ran into a lot a flak.
I have no problem with “integrating plasmas into the core of cosmological thinking.” I have a problem with your wild-eye characterization of plasma science.
Wes
I have never claimed the plasma universe was endless, infinite in time of no origin and that was derived from the plasma model. I merely opined that the universe seems to have always existed, as do many plasma scientists, since it’s the only alternative to creationism.
Wild eye characterisation? No point discussing further Wes, you are clearly in the business here of shooting the messenger.
Yes, you did make those claims and others, such as observations of extreme gravitational phenomena are utterly bogus. You implied that those claims were derived from plasma theory.
I think if you had simply laid out the plasma science rather than making unsubstantiated claims for it, time and grief could have been saved and minds that were closed would have been eager and open to learn new things.
Louis why did you say that the Big Bang Theory was totally on the outs with the Plasma theorists?
Not according to Hannes Alfven’s paper, “Cosmology in the Plasma Universe: An Introductory Exposition”
“…we should try to adopt the “Big Bang” cosmology to the plasma universe model…”
http://plasmascience.net/tpu/downloads/CosmologyAlfven.pdf
I don’t find anything objectionable in his approach. Does he seem to doubt that the state of cosmology is finished business? Yes. But his approach is evolutionary, not revolutionary.
Wes – “I don’t find anything objectionable in his approach. Does he seem to doubt that the state of cosmology is finished business? Yes. But his approach is evolutionary, not revolutionary.”
Neither do I. I agree that including plasma and electromagnetic effects to the other knowledge that we have of gravity will produce a more complete picture of the universe.
Trying to ascribe everything to it is just plain wrong.
Wes,
Provide quotes to prove your allegations instead of wild accusations that I did.
The best exposition of Plasma Science’s position on the Big Bang was Eric Lerner’s book “The Big Bang Never Happened”. In it you will find reference to Alfven, Peratt etc. Read it and come back please.
In 1984 Cyclone Cathy made landfall on the Eastern side of Cape York, Australia… I know because I was sheltering in the Olive river just north of Portland roads…. The Cyclone at that stage was only a weak Cat. 2 or a strong Cat. 1. However it was the most intense electrical storm I have ever been witness to.
Constant lightning that lit up the mangroves all around us in a continuous strobe like effect. The thunder was awesome and continuous. The rain was heavy. It built up, crescendoed and faded away as the cyclone move over us… Cyclone Cathy passed over the cape into the Gulf of Carpentaria, then intensified into a cat 4 and belted the hell out of Gove on the Western side of the Gulf.
Just an anecdote to support that Cyclones do indeed have lotsa lighting.
As to the why…I’ll leave that up to youse mob.
Apparently Lightning discharges upwards from Clouds also and is of bigger and more potent range….
http://www.ee.psu.edu/faculty/pasko/Publications/lyons-jets.pdf
Curious ‘eh?
Louis, Some of your statements from Electric Universe part 1
“Neutron stars do not exist – they are impossible”
“Black holes are pure pseudoscience.”
“The Plasma Universe theory essentially states that the universe always existed”
“It rejects the Big Bang Theory”
“Do we know what the sun is? No, not yet, but it isn’t a fusion reactor”
“Time is simply the recognition of a steady, repeatable sequence of some physical event. It has no start, no end.”
You asked.
These type claims aren’t supported in the literature. Although plasma physics does have much to offer astrophysics, the claims above are premature and unsubstantiated.
After looking at:
http://www.plasmacosmology.net/electric.html
I can’t find any evidence or clear statement of anything other than colourful opposition to”big science.” Being opposed to big science is a fine sceptic stance. So far nothing more is being proposed as an alternative astrophysical cosmology than a kind of vague faith in electrical phenomena to explain everything.
Yet, when you look at the real work of plasma physicists they don’t seem to be making the same outrageous claims as their devoted acolytes.
In fact, they come across as pretty sane empiricists, with perhaps a bit of a chip on their shoulders for all the good press their colleagues down the hall get. Sounds like a pretty normal academic cocktail party to me. Louis, no more punch for you, unless you have a designated driver.
Although, it is a bit of a worry that most of the literature is so old, mostly 1980s and 90’s. Why is so little research being done today.
http://plasmascience.net/tpu/papers.html#COSMOLOGY
Notice that only the oldest papers on this list pertain to astrophysical cosmology. All the latest work is on far more specific and localized phenomena, including attempts to show that ancient petroglyph art was inspired by physical manifestations of plasma physics.
Read Hannes Alfven paper “The Plasma Universe” 1987
http://plasmascience.net/tpu/downloads/AlfvenPlasmaUniverse.pdf
It’s not controversial. I think there has been some confusion made by what Alfven means by a Plasma Universe.
He points out that our traditional view of the universe was “based on observations in the visual octave of the electromagnetic spectrum.” But now we have infrared, radio and x-ray observation that have given us a radically new picture of the universe.
He say, “…with some confidence we can assume that the X-y-rays we observe derive mainly from magnetized plasmas with electron energies in excess of some hundred eV. This means that it seems legitimate to call the picture we get from these wavelengths “the high energy plasma universe.””
“…this picture is drastically different from the traditional picture of the visual universe… light derives from solid bodies, (e.g., planets) but to a much larger extent from stellar photospheres which usually are in a state of low energy plasmas (< = 10eV). Hence visual universe is not far from a synonym to low energy plasma universe, but for the sake of convenience we shall use the term visual universe. We shall compare this with the high energy plasma universe, a term which we shall shorten to plasma universe.”
So the high energy plasma universe is the same universe that we are all so familiar with in 20 th century astrophysics. We are talking about the same things here. Only where Ender sees a Neutron Star, Alfen sees a plasma with greater than a hundred eV. Ender is using the semantics of the theorists, Alfen is simply making no assumptions at all, just an empirical observation.
The error is in that a few people have taken Alfen a bit too literally. When he says that the source of all X-y-ray is mainly magnetized plasmas with electron energies in excess of some hundred eV he is just being a good empiricist and making NO assumption behind what the causes of such high energy plasmas might be. He leaves that speculation to the theoretical blokes. He’s not denying that extremes of gravity might cause high energy plasmas or that high energies plasmas are all that is need to explain astrophysics.
In Alfven’s sense of the term, we most certainly do live in a plasma universe and it is not necessarily incompatible with physical and mathematical models which attempt to theorize what is the cause of those high energy plasmas. However, a greater understanding of plasma physic would go a long way to make those theoretical models more accurate.
Alfven has no issue with relativity, gravity, Hubble expansion, Doppler effects, inflationary scenarios. He sees the same universe as mainstream modern physics does, although through the specialty of his field.
Now back to the cocktail party!
For those who need to know a little more about Blackholes etc, this link is interesting.
http://www.sjcrothers.plasmaresources.com/
Wes
“Yet, when you look at the real work of plasma physicists they don’t seem to be making the same outrageous claims as their devoted acolytes.”
Bit swee[ping isn’t it? And I’ve covered the list before.
As far as neutron stars are concerned, comprised of 100% neutrons, that stuff cannot exist, is only a postulate which I went into some detail before.
Black holes ?
“The first thing to note is that the alleged black hole point-mass singularity is actually a description of a centre of mass, and as such it is a mathematical artifice, not a physical object. This is the same in Newton’s theory of gravitation where the distance between two masses is in terms of the centres of mass thereof. But the centres of mass (the mathematical
artifice) are not the actual objects involved.
The second thing to note is that the black hole
point-mass singularity is alleged to be infinitely
dense, on the basis that the mass is non-zero and
fixed, but the volume goes to zero: in other words,division by zero, which is mathematical nonsense.
The third thing to note is that Special Relativity
forbids infinite densities because infinite densities imply infinite energies, or equivalently that a ponderable body can acquire the speed of light in vacuo, in contradiction of the physical basis of that theory (the related algebra is very simple – high school stuff). General Relativity cannot violate Special Relativity, since it is supposed to be a
generalisation of Special Relativity to accelerated configurations of matter, so General Relativity must also forbid infinite densities (and hence black hole singularities and hence black holes).
The fourth thing to note is that in the case of the fundamental alleged black hole, the description is alleged by a line-element (i.e. a fancy name for a distance formula) that involves just one alleged mass in the Universe (namely, the alleged source of a gravitational field), since the said distance formula is for a spacetime described by the field equations
Ric = 0 (because the energy-momentum tensor is zero).
So the alleged black hole can interact with nothing. Ric = 0 is not a two body situation, only, allegedly, a one body situation (and hence quite meaningless).
Newton’s theory is a two body situation in which more bodies can be, in principle, inserted. But this cannot be done in Einstein’s theory because his theory asserts that the curvature of spacetime (i.e. the gravitational field) is due to the presence of matter and that the said matter must be described by his energy-momentum tensor. His field equations are non-linear, which means that the usual ‘Principle of Superposition’ does not apply, so one cannot, by an analogy with Newton’s theory, merely insert ponderable
bodies into a given Einstein spacetime and then claim that they can interact. One needs a suitable
(non-zero) energy-momentum tensor to describe the
interaction of two (or more) bodies, and then a
solution to the field equations for that tensor. Thathas never been done (and there is no existence theorem by which we can even know if Einstein’s field equations admit of latent solutions for such configurations of matter). So all talk of black hole interactions is also nonsense (even if black holes were predicted by General relativity – but they aren’t). Furthermore, the black hole point-mass
singularity is introduced into its related distance formula a posteriori, bearing in mind that the distance formula was determined for Ric = 0, in which there is no matter by definition (the energy-momentum tensor is set to zero).
It should also be noted that nobody has ever found a black hole, despite the almost daily claims for discovery of yet another here or there. The alleged signatures of the black hole are a) an infinitely dense point-mass singularity and b) an event horizon. Nobody has ever found an infinitely dense point-mass singularity and nobody has ever found an event horizon, so nobody has ever identified a black hole anywhere. (To watch an object, or a photon, approach
an even horizon and hence to identify an event horizon would, according to the black holers, take an infinite amount of an observer’s time. But nobody has been around, and nobody will be around, for an infinite amount of time to watch an object approach, and hence identify, an event horizon.
This now raises the issue of the alleged Big Bang cosmology – but another time for that one.) Just try asking any astronomer or astrophysicist who has claimed discovery of a black hole, for the coordinates of its signature infinitely dense point-mass singularity or the event horizon, and you will get nothing but silence, of course.”
Wes,
Plasmacosmology does incorporate the graviational factor but when electromagnetic forces are 10^39 stronger than gravity, which force then dominates?
And the black hole comment I just posted above is additional information concerning the 3 body problem mentioned in a previous post. ( I am protecting the source since you and Ender seem interested in character assination than science, of which you seem to have some difficulty with. Incidentally I may aubmit posts here but they get edited by Jennifer to make them more readable, so think about that as well, please).
Oh this is interesting since we are into Black Holes:
“May 14th, 2008 from the Universe Today, science feed – Looking for Black Holes in … Water?
Written by Nancy Atkinson
Looking for Hawking Radiation in space is likely impossible with our current technology. But scientists here on Earth recently used flowing water to simulate a black hole and create event horizons, testing Stephen Hawking’s famous prediction that the event horizon creates particles and anti-particles.
Black holes resemble cosmic drains where space disappears like water draining out of a sink. Space seems to flow, and the closer one gets to the black hole, the faster it flows. At the event horizon, space appears to reach the speed of light, so nothing, not even light, can escape beyond this point of no return.
Researchers from the University of St. Andrews and the University of Nice used a water channel to create analogues of black holes, simulating event horizons.
The scientists sent waves against the current, varied the water speed and the wavelength, and filmed the waves with video cameras, looking for the place in the channel where the water begins to flow faster than the waves, which would be the event horizon. Over several months the team painstakingly searched the videos for clues.
They used a 30-meter-long water channel with a powerful pump on one end and a wave machine on the other, which is normally used to test the environmental impact of currents and waves on coasts or the hulls of submarines.
While the water didn’t create anti-particles, the researchers may have seen “anti-waves.” Normal waves heave up and down in the direction they move, whereas anti-waves do the opposite.
One of the researchers, Professor Ulf Leonhardt said, “It is probably impossible to observe the Hawking radiation of black holes in space, but something like the radiation of black holes can be seen on Earth, even in something as simple as flowing water.”
“We definitely have observed these negative-frequency waves. These waves were tiny, but they were still significantly stronger than expected. However, our experiment does not completely agree with theory and so much work remains to be done to understand exactly what happens at the event horizon for water waves.”
Their research will be published in the New Journal of Physics.
Original News Source: University of St. Andrews Press Release
Comment: It seems astrophysics has indeed found it self in a bizarre mathematical cul de sac. By manipulating water turbulence they can mimic a black hole???????
This raises the moot point of who is not in their tree.
J.Hansford,
Thanks for the additional evidence for cyclone lightning and the other Lyons reference.
Appreciated.
Academic Publishing: quick note – if you want to get your Plasma theories published, always make sure that it is a minor addition to the prevailing theory.
This politicisation of science will be pursued further on the Henry Thornton Site as a result of Sir Wellington Boots request I comment on some web blog commentary.
Wes,
looking back at your first post, in which you note that NASA does not hold to the plasma universe model only shows how superficial your study was.
Astrophysics funding is dominated by the Big Bangers, and the plasma people, much like the climate sceptics, have to be polite to get their results published; they do so in the IEEE journals.
As I pointed out before, get a copy of Eric Lerners book (previously cited) to get a good idea of what is going on in astrophysics and cosmology.
As Oliver Cromwell pleaded with his political opponents, (paraphrasing him), Please, I beseech you to even contemplate the possibility that you might be wrong.
Coming from a devout Christian, that is a significant admonition all those centuries ago.
How good is that book again http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/lerner_errors.html
and what are all those images of black holes if they’re not black holes?
Creep,
getting out of your depth, better look at your link and produce some data to support it in the absence of wild eyed rhetorisim.
Fail.
“Further, an increase in the intensity of solar cosmic rays is followed by a decrease in all other cosmic rays, called the Forbush decrease after their discoverer, the physicist Scott Forbush. These decreases are due to the solar wind with its entrained magnetic field sweeping some of the galactic cosmic rays outwards, away from the Sun and Earth. The overall or average rate of Forbush decreases tends to follow the 11-year sunspot cycle, but individual events are tied to events on the Sun, as explained above.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray
And Creep, from the basic physics, one cannot see a black hole.
Total failure.
It might be useful, here, to envisage “solar winds” as electric currents, or the motion of charged particles.
Well, this is what I am interested in, relating the work by the Danish on cosmic rays, to the idea of an electric universe.
So how do the solar winds relate to Louis’ magnetic field?
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2470
Lief Svalgaard thread at climate audit is a huge link resource for the cosmic ray theory, quite unintuitive. Naturally, it has been not surprisingly ignored by the mainstream media.
spend a few hours sorting it out. Good stuff.
And Wes, isn’t cosmic ray theory about electricity?
Didn’t think you’d engage Louis. I wasn’t claiming to have any expertise. I was just asking. Your inability to answer means as usual you don’t know and go the ad hom which you so pretentiously protest about and fake the glass jaw routine.
I was also asking what all the recent press announcements suggesting they have some pictorial or other evidence of black holes (including jets from memory) were about. They must have had, in your estimation, some reasonable alternative explanations or misconceptions.
Your continual inconsistencies and ducking and weaving on your utterly pretentious threads is an embarrassment. It’s obvious that you are definitely out of your depth. I know you fancy yourself on this topic but it’s far from convincing. I don’t think you understand near anything of this complex subject and are simply an eccentric kook.
Anyway Wright appeared to have made a comprehensive technical rebuttal and you have had good opportunity to suggest why he was wrong.
And Wes – you’d notice how Lief has not indulged either side especially our friend Archibald. I see many frustrated by him sticking to the science.
Perhaps someone can tell me how nothingness could ever have existed.
The creation of something from nothing is a religious assumption, not a scientific one. Scientists must believe in causality else they are NOT scientists. So how can ANY scientist believe in the big bang hypothesis?
An expanding universe is illogical ……… is it expanding into itself? How would there be colliding galaxies even?
How can people believe that gravity is an attraction when in fact it can only be a push. If we open our eyes and mind a bit we would understand that the universe is just full of material constituents that PUSH each other ….. it’s a universe full of pushers. (…. also no negatives or minus numbers exist)
The BB high priests denigrate the work of Hubble and Humason. When they found out about the Hubble-Humason redshifts, they decided that those must be Doppler redshifts, to serve as the first and only proof of the big bang expansion. This is the barefaced lie because Hubble, in actual fact, was a life long doubter of velocity alone being the cause of cosmological redshifts. ALSO there is voluminous evidence that redshift is not about velocity alone and that quasars are intrinsically redshifted objects ejected from lower redshifted galaxies.
The 2.7K degrees background radiation does NOT support the BB hypothesis of finite universal causality. All BBers predicted much higher values.
Worship of finite universal causality is not about love of forensic evidence because worship can only misinterpret or ignore or deliberately distort evidence.
The BB alpha/omega idea is simply another worshipped religion with its fingers of teddy (god) pointing to Earth, because it interprets everything as if we are the centre of the universe. ….. how pre-Copernican? How self assuring? How anthropocentric does it get?
Worship embodies a psychosis and can only create false versions of the world that clash with the reality. It creates through intellectual dishonesty absurd beliefs.
Let’s be quite clear about this ……… there is not a skerrick of scientific evidence to support this big bang cosmology and nor will anyone in the future find anything because it is plainly illogical. The BB only exists through its powerful priest class and intellectual dishonesty. Of course, the downside is that future historians of science will judge this era insane. I’m concerned that the global warming alarmists have a similar arrogant, distorted position.
“And Wes – you’d notice how Lief has not indulged either side especially our friend Archibald. I see many frustrated by him sticking to the science.”
They should all just come here, you can claim to be an expert in anything here and someone is sure to believe you.
We seem to have stalled here, principally because the usual suspects, (Wes, Creep, Ender, SJT, et al) not having any training in the physical science, are lost for words.
Perhaps we should give them some time to collect their thoughts and give them a benefit of, tempory, doubt
No – you’ve been asked reasonable questions and YOU are on the run. You are the supposed expert. Answer some fair questions and spare us the bluff.
Well Creep,
enumerate them and I will try.
The word “electric” is a limiting one. Perhaps saying we live in an energetic universe would be better. Scientists don’t even know what lightning is, nor can they explain its behavior.
There exists a high energy universe (obviously) and there is new evidence that the interaction between solar and cosmic plasma clouds could be fundamental to cloud formation rates in the Earth’s atmosphere and thus to climatology.
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/influence-of-cosmic-rays-on-the-earth.pdf
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/sky-experiment_2.pdf
I would like to thank Louis for bringing the plasma universe to our attention. I learned a heck of a lot. It’s a shame that the thread went off the rails with unnecessary and unsubstantiated claims.
Kieran posts are off topic. The thread was never about the premise of “Big Bang” cosmology per se, although your OT posts helped sidetrack the thread into a debate about whether plasma cosmology provides a working alternative theory to BB. And it turns out it doesn’t:
http://plasmascience.net/tpu/AtHomeChall.html
“The plasma modelers readily admit that they offer no proposal about the universe’s origin and age. That issue, as well as the size of the universe, lies beyond their horizons of experimentation and simulation. Nonetheless, at the beginning of the twenty first century, electrical engineers are marshaling a growing body of evidence that points to the necessity of integrating plasmas into the core of cosmological thinking.”
Even the most modest appraisals of what plasma physics has to offer the mainstream “big science” is quite a good yarn in and of itself. No aggrandizement was needed for this tale.
The facts are stranger than fiction.
“We seem to have stalled here, principally because the usual suspects, (Wes, Creep, Ender, SJT, et al) not having any training in the physical science, are lost for words.
Perhaps we should give them some time to collect their thoughts and give them a benefit of, tempory, doubt” – Louis Hissink
Louis Hissink I find this an enormous cop out on your part. There are contributors here asking valid questions and bringing up relevant points. You are either dismissing them outright, ignoring them or addressing them with ad homs. If you have a personal issue with these people fine, but kindly be professional and address their queries, because it appears you really do not know anything about science or what you are posting on. It’s all well and good to continually claim you are nothing but the messenger, but clearly you are delivering on things you are in agreement with. Back up your beliefs and treat all contributors with some respect.
Roger Grace
I have copped an enormous amount of flak from some here, I have apparently failed utterly the test Wes has assigned me, Ender reckons I am a crank, and I do not sit in front of the computer 24 waiting to post.
Especially when the contributors hide behind pseusonyms.
The answers to their questions are readily aviable on the internet at the web resources I have pointed to. Tony Peratt’s is the most important one.
A poster here said that scientists don’t know what lightning is. Some scientists don’t but the plasma physicists do.
SO let’s do some research and familiarise ourselves with the theories of the plasma universe. The reading material is there in abundance.
I have tried to answer questions and all I get is abuse.
So sorry Roger, I am not copping out – I am just not playing the game Creep and others want to play here.
Wes, my post was not OT although philosophical. My comment is that worship needs to be disassociated with love. Love always maintains the critical functions of the mind the source of real breakthroughs and understanding, but worship effectively is designed to strip away critical functions and create obedient stooopids. How else can we understand both your own and this general acceptance of the fictional BB hypothesis? i.e. a fictional view of life implies fictional people.
It is simply a breath of fresh air to read Louis’s topics and his many responses which reflect a love to open one’s mind and a love to open one’s eyes and have a good look at what we have. Let’s have more of the love of questioning and the love of opening the eye of reason using our intelligence?
This is highly relevant ……
Lesson 1 …. Don’t become a worshipper.
Lesson 2 … Love is the source of real breakthroughs and understanding.
Louis I am not claiming any expertise in cosmology, astronomy or plasma science. Just some lay reading.
And yes the concept of black holes, big bangs, parallel universes, string theory, quantum mechanics, dark matter, plasma science, and relativity are probably quite removed from the 3D, seemingly linear, small-world, time-slow environment experienced by humans evolving on African savannas. No wonder we would have trouble pondering such things.
But I was curious.
From my limited knowledge I thought Big Bang theory had some considerable “evidence” – as if you ever totally prove such a thing. But I was interested in your reaction to the refutation I tabled above about your suggested book on Big Bang being false.
Secondly it seems every day there are press announcements by significant science institutions that claim to have imaged – perhaps indirectly or circumstantial – but claimed evidence of black holes. So I was interested in your reaction as to why they are likely to be mistaken and what they are actually observing. Presumably they wouldn’t be making these claims completely flippantly?
Louis – “We seem to have stalled here, principally because the usual suspects, (Wes, Creep, Ender, SJT, et al) not having any training in the physical science, are lost for words.”
Hay sunshine – I butted out of this converstation ages ago. Yes the plama universe is interesting however your understanding of it is pathetic.
No I do not have any training in the physical sciences and in this subject neither do you. A degree in Geology does not make you an astrophysicist. In this specialty you are a geologist with a hobby in astrophysics not a qualification.
Due to my lack of training I read what the people with training write and listen rather than make up my own interpretation that I am not qualified to do. I try to source information from more than one source to make sure that what the experts are writing is as close to the truth as possible.
Nothing in any of the writings of the physicists you reference is ANY support for your wilder interpretations. They are yours alone it appears you cannot even defend them and then get upset when people ask for explanations.
Goes back to what I tell my kids – If you can’t take it don’t dish it out.
A Creep,
The ever increasing barrage of Black Hole discoveries these last few years, along with the latest project of simulating a black hole in water which I referred to earlier in this thread, clearly shows that science has gone off the rails.
This happens when science is not based on a sound empirical footing. Take black holes for example – these were never observed in the first place but created as a mathematical entity to make gravitational theory work in describing the rotation of a galaxy. (Basically they are a point at the centre of gravity of a galaxy, a case of reifying a mathematical singularity). A link I posted earlier, details the issues of black holes in simple lay terms; the author furthermore opines:
“The notion of black holes is due entirely to erroneous mathematics, principally in the failure to realize the significance and role of Gaussian curvature. The black holers (and big bangers too) are completely ignorant of Gaussian curvature in their equations. Their claims violate elementary differential geometry and so they are demonstrably false. General Relativity is mathematical physics, involving differential geometry”.
One of the biggest problems in science is divorcing it from religion. The hard physical sciences like electrical engineering, chemistry and physics, are not influenced by religion and things work as they are intended. However sciences with theological implications such as astronomy, archaeology and geology are dominated by the deductive, or Socratic, method of reasoning in which scientific truths are established by reasonable persuasion and not from experiment. (Reasonable persuasion includes abstract mathematics which is simply a shorthand version of speech).
The Socratic method of reasoning is essentially consensual, in which, according to Plato, truth is discovered by self-reflection and rational thought. In this process one starts with a presumed law of nature – an obviously correct (accepted) generalisation about the way things work – and deduces its logical consequences. A hypothesis arrived at this deductive method is promoted to the status of a theory when and if a large enough body of experts accepts it. This is known as an application of the Socratic Method, also sometimes called the “dialectic method”. Once such a theory is accepted it is not easily rejected in light of conflicting evidence. It is however often modified – made more complicated.
There is one flaw in this method – what if your “obviously correct” basic premise is wrong?
Science places first priority on the empirical method. The deductive method is (should be) secondary and used to derive testable consequences from empirically generated hypotheses. Inverting these priorities makes science into a pseudo-religion, in which revelations of truth take precedence over wordly observations of fact.
The real problem is that much of political life is dominated by the Socratic mind set, in which truths, whatever they be, are agreed on by consensus. SJT recognised this when pointing out that the capitalists sensing a victory in AGW are now assaulting astronomy, but didn’t realise that the difference was not so much political, (capitalist vs socialist) so much as a difference based on a mode of thinking.
You will find that the majority of climate sceptics are strict empiricists, not libertarians or whatever, though that association would be accurate since these political positions are empirical (I oppose socialism purely on the basis that its stated goals are unachievable by the means proposed, and for no other).
So why so many announcements of new black holes, programs to simulate black holes? Why does the media report all of this? Apart from an classic example of the Peter Principle, in which work expands to consume the available budget, it is also a classic example of group-think in which new discoveries are simply confirmations of the faith. Anything is possible in a purely deductive, abstract science and the media reports it dutifully, being part of the system. System?
Yes, our political life and its reporting is dominated by adherents of the dialectic method, sometimes belittled by Paul Keating’s description of them as the “chattering classes”. Science today is principally government funded science and subject to funding and the barrage of announcements is mainly to maintain the perception that “we are doing good works and need to be funded to continue it”.
But if you start looking at some of the url’s I link to, and make the effort to study the material therein, you might realise that mainstream science is not always what it seems.
Take the announcement (http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=4215). An impolite conclusion might be that the plasma people have it right.
“Trujillo’s team found that significantly more spiral galaxies spin with their axes aligned with the filaments they are embedded in than would be expected by chance. Although the researchers can reject random orientation with 99.7-percent confidence, they need more data to specify the range of orientations. The work appears in the 1 April issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters
Pasted from ”
???? The filaments might be enormous galaxy sized Birkeland Currents????
Ender
list my wilder assetions please so I may know what they are.
Ta
As a convert to Microsoft’s new software program “OneNote” it seems that links are not faithfully reproduced. It is here:(http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=4215
Well the media are reporting press releases from our august institutions. Louis while I appreciate the philosophical dissertation I was after something a tad more technical as to why they’re wrong. Presumably our astrophysicists are not totally bereft of some critical faculty?
AC
In terms of black holes, for example, how more technical do you wish me to get?
“get??” Go !
(pre-empting AC)
AC
Do your understand what a mathematical singurality is?
Yes but I wasn’t after a dissertation on why the mathematics doesn’t add up. Moreover where our press releasing astrophysicists have gone wrong.
AC,
The reason is fairly simple, astrophysicists don’t study electrical theory much – they leave it to electrostatics and magnetism.
Hannes Alven proposed the theory of magnetohydronamics and suggested that magnetic fields could be frozen in plasma. Further experimental work by him showed that this was totally wrong – and he said so in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in 1970. But the astrophysicists ignored him, and we now have the situation today when its now become pseudoscience unfalsifiable explanations are offered.
Wheeler, the inventer of black holes said:
“To me, the formation of a naked singularity [a black hole] is equivalent to jumping across the Gulf of Mexico. I would be willing to bet a million dollars that it can’t be done. But I can’t prove that it can’t be done”. What he is actually saying is that YOU can’t prove that black holes don’t exist, so I am free to use the concept as often as I like.
It is a non-falsifiable hypothesis. It’s the fallacy of argumentum ad ignorantium, when it is argued that it must be true because it hasn’t been proved false.
It’s like you elderly aunt postulating that her pot plants were knocked over by invisible garden gnomes – if you allow her to do that, then she will be prompted to use that explanation for other inexplicable things.
What if instead of locating a “naked singularity” in space, Wheeler announced he discovered a “Lebesgue integral” at the centre of a globular cluster? Should you ask him what colour it might be?
The problem seems to be that astrophysics needs a non-electrical mechanism to explain galactic energies and now they are invoking “super massive black holes”. They reckon that there might ve 300 million super massive black holes in the visible universe. What they are really saying is that estimate that there are 300 million naked singularities in space.
But if we all agree that these things exist, then they must exist. This is the problem in astrophyics AC, it’s a consensual belief system in which the proponents have forgotten the scientific method.
Simple summary of the history of black holes
http://www.ptep-online.com/index_files/2006/PP-05-10.PDF
More on black holes
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2008/arch08/080502sea.htm
So what is an explanation for “observed jet”.
Louis you posted answer on other thread. Thanks – these are the sort of alternative explanations I’m looking for. Now you’re on target.
in regard to the Sun being a fusion reactor – an astronomer named Oliver Manual, who I ran into by accident, sent me this: http://www.omatumr.com/abstracts/gong-2002.pdf
It seems that the isotopes of the crud that the sun spews out are the same as the crud that is found locked in meteorite samples. Which is to say that the Sun’s fusion reactor isn’t fusing anything.
He was pretty exited about NASA’s Genesis probe finding an abundance of “strange oxygen” in the solar wind. Here’s a write up on the findings in Nature: (forever hidden from my curious eye by pay per view gate) http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080313/full/452259a.html
Strange oxygen is the stuff we breath. The stuff that the Sun is emmitting, due to ridged parameters necessary to maintain the standard fusion reactor model, have to be primarily a different isotope – or should I say charge? – then was found in the Genesis experiment.
THE search for extraterrestrial life does not contradict belief in God, the pope’s chief astronomer says, and some aliens may even be innocent of original sin. !!!!!!!!!!!!
“As an astronomer I continue to believe that God is the creator of the universe,” Jose Gabriel Funes said in the Vatican mouthpiece, the Osservatore Romano.
Even if “we don’t currently have any proof… the hypothesis” of extraterrestrial life cannot be ruled out, said Father Funes, a Jesuit priest who directs the Vatican’s observatory at Castel Gandolfo, near Rome.
“Just as there are a plethora of creatures on Earth, there could be others, equally intelligent, created by God,” he said.
Original sin, which by Christian tradition occurred in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit of a particular tree, refers to the fallen state from which humans can be saved only by God’s grace.
Asked about the difficult theological question, Father Funes said: “If other intelligent beings exist, it’s not certain that they need redemption.”
They could “have remained in full friendship with their creator” without committing the original sin, he said.
If not, extraterrestrials would benefit equally from the “incarnation”, in which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, assumed earthlings’ flesh, body and soul in order to redeem them, which Father Funes called “a unique event that cannot be repeated”.
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,23696486-5013016,00.html
Wow !! That clears that up.
Wonder where the Vatican is up to on black holes and Big Bang.
Alarmist Creep
The jets are due to synchroton radiation from extremely energetic electrons spiralling along magnetic field lines – in other words a galaxy sized Birkeland current. This current is the driving engine of the galaxy which rotates as a homopolar motor.
First observed by astronomer Geoffrey Burbidge in 1956, confirming predictions by Hannes Alfven and Nicolai Herlofson in 1950, and Josif Shklovskii in 1953.
“The real problem is that much of political life is dominated by the Socratic mind set, in which truths, whatever they be, are agreed on by consensus. SJT recognised this when pointing out that the capitalists sensing a victory in AGW are now assaulting astronomy, but didn’t realise that the difference was not so much political, (capitalist vs socialist) so much as a difference based on a mode of thinking.”
That’s exactly what I did say, Louis. Having realised how successful they are at attacking one line of science, they are now moving onto another. The attack on science has expanded it’s horizons.
SJT
Socratic reasoning in science is actually pseudoscience, that is why we attack it.
There is no such thing as consensus in science.
pre-earthquake aurora…
Earthquake light, 30 mins before
Another impeccable source…
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light
But there’s a catch Louis – most people who fancy themselves “doing a Galileo” aren’t – they’re actually wrong or deluded. A few will – most won’t. True?
A Creep
You still don’t understand that consensus science isn’t science but pseusoscience.
Galileos frequently appear in the halls of pseudoscience because they have evidence that contradicts the consensus. Hence the frequent immolation of society’s Galileos on the stake or these days by calling them deluded or some other technique of marginalising them.
So no, AC, most aren’t delusional or wrong – its the consensus behind pseudoscience who are.
Forrester
One reason so little data is collected is because no one in geophysics or geoscience believes in the electrical connection. This is particularly so with the deployment of remote sensing instruments so the data can be exmained at leasure in areas far away from the action.
Some of us in geoscience are starting to realise that earthquakes are possibly subterranean elecrtric discharges or thunder.
In Western Australia the last signficant earthquake was the Mekkering one, (I think) and on of the faults which appeared on the land surface (Near Wooleen Station in the Gascoyne region) had a vertical movement of about hald a metre or so (I’m not sure of the details) which I learnt from Brett Pollock, owner of Wooleen.
The big problem for geology is that this part of the crust is deemed to be stable archaeon crust – there isn’t a subduction zone within cooee of the place, so how did the earth sink 1/2 a metre in this tectonic setting.
There is so much we don’t know about geodynamics that its sometimes embarassing listening to some of the standard explanations.
AC – neat reference to Galileo below
“You may wonder — if the data from the last decade show the Earth is not getting warmer, and the climate models have been making incorrect predictions — why are so many in the political and media classes continuing to shout about the dangers of global warming and insisting the “science” is settled when the opposite is true. (You may recall that Copernicus and Galileo had certain problems going against the conventional wisdom of their time.)
The reason people like Al Gore and many others are in denial is explained by cognitive dissonance. This occurs when evidence increasingly contradicts a strongly held belief. Rather than accept the new evidence and change their minds, some people will become even more insistent on the “truth” of the discredited belief, and attack those who present the new evidence — again an “intelligence” failure.
Finally, many people directly benefit from government funding global warming programs and care more about their own pocketbooks than the plight of the world’s poor who are paying more for food. This is not an “intelligence” but an “integrity” failure.
Source: http://washingtontimes.com/article/20080518/COMMENTARY/673994116/1012
The bit you don’t get is that most would-be Galileos are wrong. Deluded and wrong.
Sorry that’s it.
Occasionally a genius will break the consensus. e.g. with Heliobacter and stomach ulcers – science picks itself up – gets on board and moves on. Change occurs.
But a good check is to check whether you think you have lots of secret knowledge that beats the system. You’re either a true genius or a nutcase. Time will decide.
Nobody minds testing novel ideas – rechecking old assumptions – but don’t start spruiking till you have the goods and have the results confirmed !
If I may offer a defense for Wes, he is correct in saying that most plasma physicists/cosmologists believe the universe to be temporally infinite. So does Eric J. Lerner, who says so in his book, “The Big Bang Never Happened.” Lerner was an associate of the late Hannes Alfven, the father of plasma cosmology.
The ancient cultures were impacted destructively from close orbits with Mars and the newcomer, that being the final capture of Venus. Human sacrifice, was practiced in many distance cultures at the same time, as it says ‘they danced in battle over the sky.’
Tesla,s tower, provided a circiut between the ionosphere with available regulated current.
The electrical discharge provides opportunities, no need for most mining however a deep horizon abiotic ‘oil well’ in a desolete area could suffice. Power stations can adjust slowly to integrating this new power source.
Like this topic.