Talk:Plasma cosmology/Archive 4

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

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Continuing to NPOV the article

The article as it currently stands is not NPOV nor altogether facutal. In particular, it gets a lot of things wrong with regard to standard models and makes bold claims not backed up by evidence. I started out by NPOVing the structure section, but the sections below this need to be refined as well. If somebody wants me to go point-by-point through my edits to this as I did for sections above this, I'd be happy to oblige.

I am also adding the totally disputed template to indicate the problems with the article.

--ScienceApologist 01:13, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I would like to see the points discussed. Just looking at the introduction, I see that statemtents like "Plasma cosmology explains the large scale structure and evolution of the universe,..." may come across too strongly for those who don't read the first sentence that "Plasma cosmology is a cosmological model...", and consquently may need moderating.

But I will object to any changes based on the personal judgements and interpretations of existing peer-reviewed papers; in other words, changes must be supported by peer-reviewed papers that directly address issue.

I will also object to additions of the type "The majority of scientists do not accept...", though I am happy for a quantification of this type to be includes ONCE.

--Iantresman 08:35, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Differences

Here is a link that defines the differences.

Point by point:

added "primordial" to indicate that the idea is that the clouds were there first before galaxy formation (in conflict with standard galaxy formation models)
Removed "perfectly formed" which is obviously a judgement call.
Changed "closely correspond to" to "stages looked like". Correspondence indicates some sort of measurement while Perrat's focus was all by eye.
"Additionally, Perrat claimed that his model could explain the galaxy rotation problem without invoking dark matter." in exchange for nearly a paragraph of writing on the subject. This is much clearer and spells out the idea very carefully.
" it demonstrated that electromagnetic processes could lead to the forms observed at a galactic scale" removed because the simulation didn't show that at all, rather it showed that one could simulate the galactic scale forms which is a restatement of what Perrat did in the first place.
"The fact that electromagnetic processes are important for angular momentum transport in disc and spiral galaxies is agreed upon by astrophysicists." -- unsupported and actually factually incorrect.
The Andromeda galaxy observations -- since plasma cosmology advocates completely reinterpret the context of this paper which was supposed to be about evidence for galactic canibalism, I removed the discussion. If the advocates want to contradict the main points of papers which they are going to use as evidence, let them publish their critique.
Lerner's quasar model was removed since it isn't about structure formation.
Removed "While big bang cosmology has difficulty accommodating the formation of very large structures (such as voids 100 Mpc or more across) in the limited amount of time available since the hypothesized origin of the universe," -- since this isn't a difficulty at all.
Removed "For this to happen, the plasma must be collisional. Otherwise, particles will just continue in orbits like the planets of the solar system. Given the characteristic ion velocity in the filament, calculated from instability theory, the collisional condition implies that objects of mass M = 1.8 n^-2 form from plasma of initial density n, where M is in solar masses and n in ions/cm³. This fractal scaling relationship (with fractal dimension equal to two) has been borne out by many studies on all observable scales of the universe.^[1] In addition, the numerical constant in the relation between mass and density, or equivalently, mass and separation of objects (M = 9.7 x 10¹⁰ R², where R is in Mpc and M is in solar masses) has been borne out by observation." for mainly cosmetic reasons. This is a poor restatement of the running power-law index that is important for standard structure formation, but it fails to admit several key points (such as the index "n" changes). It's better to include the claim that the structure is a fractal and leave it at that since the spectrum is claimed to be otherwise by mainstream scientists as indicated.
Removed "In the plasma model, where superclusters, clusters and galaxies are formed from magnetically confined plasma vortex filaments, a break in the scaling relationship is only anticipated at scales greater than approximately 3 Gpc. Naturally, since the plasma approach does not hypothesize an origin in time for the universe, the large amounts of time needed to create large-scale structures present no problems for the theory." -- this is unsourced and also seems to indicate that there is a problem of time in the Big Bang universe (which there isn't).

--ScienceApologist 13:13, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Light elements section

I've moved on to the light elements section. I culled quite a bit of material from the section, so I'd like to give my rationale. Here is a link to the differences: [2]

The structure formation theory allowed Lerner to calculate the size of stars formed in the formation of a galaxy and thus the amounts of helium and other light elements that will be generated during galaxy formation. changed to Eric Lerner calculated the size of stars assuming Perrat's formation model and thus the amounts of helium and other light elements. for clarity sake. We need to be clear that it is the plasma formation model (with all its limitations) that Eric "uses" (though exactly how this is used I have yet to understand and it isn't addressed very well, as far as I can tell).
These stars produce and emit to the environment large amounts of helium-4, but very little carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. -- removed. This flies in the face of a lot of stellar lock-box points about hydrostatic equilibrium. Unless a source can be found for stating that large stars emit large amounts of helium into their environment, we should keep this point out.
The plasma calculations, which contained no free variables, -- removed. Aside from not describing what is meant by a "free variable" I can only say that this sounds like a strange pot-shot at the parameter models of big bang nucleosynthesis. It doesn't lend any explanatory power to the paragraph so for NPOV reasons is removed.
The range of values predicted for ⁴He is from 21.5 to 24.8%. However, the theory is still tested by the observations, since the minimum predicted value remains a firm lower limit (additional ⁴He is of course produced in more mature galaxies). This minimum value is consistent with the minimum observed values of ⁴He abundance, such as H II region, UM461, with an abundance of 21.9±0.8%. -- a long-winded description seems to have real problems. First of all, it doesn't state from where the famed lower limit on Helium abundance is supposed to arise in plasma cosmology (it's patently obvious in Big Bang nucleosynthesis) and the percentage range quotes don't seem to add a thing to the article. We might include something about consistancy, but since the model doesn't explain what is meant by primordial in a "plasma" model, there is no way to evaluate the veracity of these claims. I am willing to include more about this if someone can provide details, but I'll note that there isn't much in the way of references to this point.
In addition cosmic rays from these stars can produce – by collisions with ambient hydrogen and helium – the observed amounts of deuterium and lithium-7. change to In addition cosmic rays are postulated to produce – by collisions with ambient hydrogen and helium – the observed amounts of deuterium and various isotopes of lithium. This is a unique feature of plasma cosmology -- it demands that this stuff is created only by cosmic rays. Indeed, the abundance of these light elements is very difficult to measure as can be seen from the big bang nucleosynthesis page and cosmic ray influence has been suggested to be an important pollution of relic abundances. Since later on it is claimed that lithium-6 is also created by cosmic rays, I changed the statement to lithium in general.
Deuterium production by the p + p → d+π reaction has been predicted by plasma theory to yield abundances of the order of 2.2×10^-5. This prediction was made in 1989, at a time when no observations of D in low-metallicity systems were available and the consensus values for primordial D from big bang theory were 3–4 times higher. Yet this predicted value lies within the range of observed "primordial" D values, although somewhat below the average D values. -- culled as a artifact sidebar to current understandings. There are a number of problems. First there is a claim that pp production of deuterium is "predicted by plasma theory" which is preposterous. It is a standard particle physics reaction and is present during BBN as well. Secondly, the references to 1989 shouldn't have any bearing on the article except to say that there hasn't been much activity in developing plasma cosmology since then. Claims that the BBN prediction was "higher" are very misleading. The BBN prediction is based on parameters which were not well constrained in 1989 so the error bars on the prediction did indeed reach down to what is now considered primordial abundance. It may be good to point out that plasma cosmology advocates have only calculated D abundances but not Lithium abundances, but I think it's better to just put out their mechanisms as simple points-of-order since such things as the cosmic ray flux and the effectiveness of such particles to produce the various light elements are not entirely well-determined (and so, given the right assumptions I have no doubt you could calculate practically any D-Li abundance you needed).
In its present form, the absolute abundance of ⁷Li has not been calculated in the plasma-stellar theory of light elements. However, the theory unambiguously predicted (as has the big bang theory) that the abundance depends on the C, N and O abundance from stellar nucleosynthesis and subsequent observations have verified that prediction. Observations of the abundances of ⁶Li – which is also generated by cosmic rays, but is destroyed much more readily in stars – are also consistent with a cosmic-ray origin for ⁷Li. -- culled. See points above about Lithium calculations. Much of this paragraph is just talking about things that haven't been done or are unknown and it makes bold claims that are stated rather glibly as fact.

--ScienceApologist 16:01, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Ian Tresman's attempt to attain "normalcy"

Pathological science is a fair link and a criticism easily leveled against many of the proponents of plasma cosmology in the face of the criticism they have either ignored or been virulent in poorly attacking.

The prose on the Electric Universe is important so that the reader know that there is a separation between the two. In particular, it is important to state that the Electric Universe is much more outside the scientific mainstream than plasma cosmology.

---ScienceApologist 14:59, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

If it's so important to delineate the relationship between Plasma Cosmology and Electric Universe, then it should be put in one or the other of the articles. There should be little or no commentary in See Also lists. --Art Carlson 19:12, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I am fine with this edit. Perhaps we'll add the rest of the prose to the Electric Universe (concept) page. --ScienceApologist 20:57, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Continued cleanup

I have continued to cleanup the article now with a redo of the microwave background section. Upon request, I'll provide (as above) a detailed accounting of what changes I made but since no one responded to my explanations above I'm only going to do this if someone specifically requests this. --ScienceApologist 15:21, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

I have finished with the redshift section. I removed the information about the Tolman test since 1) Lerner has not published his paper yet and 2) there seems to be some question as to whether his paper is reasonable considering the other Tolman test paper by Lubin et al. Lerner has not responded to my final queries for info so the paragraph is removed until an NPOV description of what the research actually shows is given. I also tried to clean-up prose related to other discussions of redshift and removed points. I will gladly offer, in turn, rationale for the edits as offered above. Please let me know if you would like to see them. --ScienceApologist 20:21, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

With this, I think we are fairly close to having an accurate article on Plasma Cosmology. Objections should be noted, however. Please let me know. --ScienceApologist 20:21, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Several places in the article, including your latest edits, isotropy is mentioned. Are you sure that shouldn't be homogeneity (physics)? --Art Carlson 20:46, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I think you may have a point, though it seems to me that both may be required for a linear Hubble Relation. Please change it where you see fit. --ScienceApologist 21:51, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

The vandalism of a valid article by grad student"science apologist" needs to be removed whenever it occurs. I hope others will help in reverting to this valid and objective version until Joshua can be banned again, I hope for good.--Eric Lerner200.83.204.54 01:41, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm responding only to the word "vandalism" (again). Assuming (but not asserting) that Mr. Lerner is correct scientifically, then this paragraph from the Wikipedia:Vandalism policy applies:

Bullying or Stubbornness
Some users cannot come to agreement with others who are willing to talk to them on an article's talk page, and repeatedly make changes opposed by everyone else. This is a matter of regret—you may wish to see our dispute resolution pages to get help. However, it is not vandalism.

Art LaPella 03:04, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but I don't think I'm likely to be banned for my contributions any time soon. I am more than willing to discuss my contributions and am even willing to explain why I did what I did to every section. However, wholesale reversion such as this does not seem appropriate to me. I will add Eric Lerner's newest contributions to his RfC as I do not think such action is becoming of a member of Wikipedia. --ScienceApologist 14:49, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Joshua, you don't know the first thing about astronomy and certainly not about the subject of this article. I just gave a seminar on the topic at the European Southern Observatory. You are not worth arguing with. So I will just eliminate your totally ignorant changes until you move on to mess up some other part of Wikipedia. Eric Lerner

I wish I had known earlier about the talk at ESO. I would have come. If you wouldn't mind telling me who you were visiting, I'll go have a chat with them. As to today's edits, I don't think you can expect to stay away from the page for two months, during which several editors have worked on the article, and expect to revert wholesale to an earlier version. If you want your edits to stick, pick out the most important topic, make limited changes, defend them if necessary in Talk, then move on to the next most important topic. --Art Carlson 10:37, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Eric, give it a rest. –Joke 02:01, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Please. –Joke 02:46, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

No way--this will continue until you leave this article alone. I will not allow you to censor this subject. If you want to add 'but critics say' that's fine. But if you keep deleting plasma cosmology so people can't learn about it, I will reinstate it . Censorship has no place in science. You guys have no business dealing with science. Get lost.Please.Elerner 02:58, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Please discuss ScienceApologist's changes constructively on the talk page. –Joke 03:15, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm puzzled. "If you want to add 'but critics say' that's fine", but the "Critics...point out" sentence was removed as part of Mr. Lerner's latest revert. The distinction between those two is too fine for me. I was equally puzzled how anyone here, even me, could be unaware of "the first thing about astronomy" - anyway, this debate really depends more on philosophy than scientific details. Art LaPella 03:47, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I am making an offer to resolve this dispute. Alternatively, I would offer to get it mediated, but JS, Joke and the rest would have to agree for this to happen. My proposal is simple--none of you remove what I write in this article, either factual material or interpretation of the facts, and I won't remove what you write. (The only exception is if you write along the lines of "plasma cosmology advocates claim" rather than "critics of plasma cosmology claim".)In addition, both sides will agree to provide citations if the other requests it. That way, NPOV can be preserved, but censorship of facts or views you guys don't like is avoided.

You all may consider yourselves experts on the Big bang or what is wrong with plasma cosmology, but you certainly are not experts on what plasma cosmology is and what its advocates say. I am. Among other things, I'm currently a visiting astronomer at the European Southern Observatory, where these issues are actively under discusssion. If you think you can keep things hushed up, you are wrong.

Part of this proposed agreement is the re-instatement of everything that Joshua has deleted. You can reply to your heart's content, but don't try to censor.

Also part of the agreement is that both sides can cite arXiv:astro-ph as a source. Everyone in astronomy does--you can check references in even the biggest publications.

Finally, as part of the deal, the warning signs get removed from the article. Since everyone will have thier say, the result will be neutral.Elerner 16:03, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

I won't agree to this. Wikipedia is not a platform for your interpretations. It is a simple violation of WP:NOR. Your constant removal of the flags is also a violation of consensus as you are the only editor that doesnt want them there. --DV8 2XL 17:08, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Then you are saying you want to censor. Everything that I have written has been published elsewhere. None of it is original to this Wiki article, so NOR has nothing to do with it. You and JS and Joke by you continual reverts are deleting stuff purely becuase it contradicts your ideas. Not NPOV at all.Elerner 17:36, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Eric, I understand your frustrations. I don't think this is the way forward, however. If you disagree with ScienceApologist's edits, then please explain, one change at a time, what is wrong with them. He has offered to carefully explain the reasoning behind his edits, and indeed did so for many of them in January, above, but failed to elicit a response from anyone. I understand that it is frustrating and time-consuming to do so, but that is the way Wikipedia works, but discussions and establishing consensus, not by agreeing on formal rules like you propose, which rarely work or yield readable articles. Our reverting your changes has nothing to do with censorship, but rather it is because you refuse to discuss them reasonably on the talk pages. You don't own this article, and neither does SA, but I have to say, in this debate he comes off looking a lot better. –Joke 17:42, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Incidentally, while I can't speak for the others, I would be perfectly open to mediation. –Joke 17:45, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Frankly Elerner, I think you are the one driven by faith in this matter. But sure let's go to mediation. --DV8 2XL 18:00, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Fine, but we need Joshua and the two Arts, too. I don't want to mediate with just some of you. In the meantime, I will make sure that the version that I think is NPOV has footnotes to everything, and add them if it does not, so there is no question of NORElerner 19:42, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

I am ammenable to mediation. Might I suggest User:Sdedeo as a mediator? --ScienceApologist 19:45, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Eric, could I suggest that if you redo your version of the Plasma Cosmology page that you put your proposal here: Talk:Plasma cosmology/Elerner Proposal? I would be fine in refraining from editting such a version so that you can create what you would consider the ideal article on the subject free of the influence of other editors such as myself. --ScienceApologist 19:53, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think Eric's suggestion, although there is some merit in it, is a workable way to produce a quality article. Looking over the edits in question, I don't see any of the form "plasma cosmologist's claim ..." that he disagrees with, that is, there appears to be little or no distortion of the position taken by plasma cosmologists. I do see a number of questions of fact that are disputed. These cannot be settled by having two separate sections. I and other editors value Eric's contributions, being, as they are, "from the horse's mouth". But he cannot "own" the article any more than any one else can. -- Mediation is fine with me. I will cooperate as much as I can. --Art Carlson 20:38, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

User sdedeo is not on the mediation committee, and his involvement with Templeton Foundation, a group that encourages the injection of theology into cosmology, would disqualify him in my view even if he were on the committee. I suggest user:improv who is on the committee. Also, I've just carefully read the whole Wiki policies, and you guys are violating many. In particular, you are consistently deleting material that is sourced to "reliable sources"--peer reviewed journals--, and either not justifying the deletions or using original arguments that are not sourced to the literature. Deletions are supposed to be "last resort"! In addition, you are trying to determine what is "true"(which we probably won't agree on in a lifetime) as opposed to what is verifiable--in other words, sourced to the literature. The Wiki policies clearly mandate that when two different POVs are present in the literature, they have to be represented in the article. One can't be deleted, as you have repeatedly done.Elerner 22:05, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Mediation doesn't just have to be with someone on the Mediation Committee, though if that's what you prefer: that's what you prefer. I was simply recommending someone who would be familiar with the subjects we would be discussing.
What evidence do you have that User:Sdedeo is "involved" with the Templeton Foundation? Just because he editted content there doesn't mean he is necessarily involved.
You need to be careful about what you call "deletions". In particular, sometimes imposing summary style can look like deletion, but it is actually different. Removing content is never acceptable without explanation, but there are times when it is editorially justified. --ScienceApologist 22:15, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

--ScienceApologist 22:15, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

I saved a new version, which contains refs. to peer-reviewed journals for all disputed parts. If you delete these without showing that these are not reputable sources, --for exmaple by another revert--you are violating wiki policy.Elerner 01:42, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Then put back the {{totallydisputed}} tag - removing it while asking to go to mediation is dishonest. You are also labouring under a false impression if you think 'peer-reviewed journals' only publish that which has been checked for fact --DV8 2XL 01:55, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Sure, put the tag back on, just don't revert all my changes. Please read Wiki policy. Wiki editors are not supposed to determine the truth, just what can verified by reference to reputable sources. If you disagree with my sources, you can cite your own and add them to the article. But you can't use your own arguments, which have never been published elsewhere, as a reason for deleting my verifiable statements. Elerner 02:02, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Please don't presume to lecture me on wiki policy - you youself apply it only when it to your advantage. I'm putting the tag back on. --DV8 2XL 02:14, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I would point out that part of the reason changes were made was because many of the comments were not verifiable. This criticism seems hollow since there has been no discussion when I tried to justify individual edits above. --ScienceApologist 13:37, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Way up on this page, Mr Lerner stated that wanted everyone, including me, to go to mediation with him. I'm not real sure how to define "go with", as I often decide it would be better to let these cosmology discussions proceed without me at the moment. But I would cooperate with mediation. Art LaPella 06:01, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Eric Lerner's proposal

I placed the content that Eric Lerner was working on under his proposal at Talk:Plasma cosmology/Elerner Proposal as per my above suggestion. --ScienceApologist 13:41, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

deletion of material

Joshua continues to use reverts to delete material without any justification on this page. The material is all verifiable in that it was published in peer-reviewed pubs. It is just stuff he does not want the Wiki reader to see.Elerner 17:55, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Eric, the consensus on this page seems to be that we should stick with using SA's version as the basis for future edits, particularly as you have made absolutely no effort to address the issues he has raised above on the talk page. But if you want to work on your version, SA has created a sub page you can use. –Joke 18:42, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

No, since I am one of the editors on this page, and I disagree emphatically, there is no consensus. Also, the version I am using was the stable version for some time. Joshua started to change it after I was no longer editing. I stopped editing since it seemed that a finished article was arrived at.

I have answered Joshua's objections repeatedly. They are based on his own interpretations and analysis and, by wikipedia's rules, can't be used to delete material that is verifiable, i.e., already published in reputable sources. If you look at his major deletions, you will see that either he gives no justification, or it is purely his own opinion of plasma cosmology, with no citation of such criticism in the literature.

I have said repeatedly that if he wants to add references to work that says something else, that's fine. But by the rules, he can't delete material that he personally disagrees with.Elerner 19:32, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

This is why mediation is necessary. Unfortunately, Eric seems to be of the opinion that his prose are inviolable and cannot be editted or vetted which goes against the groundrules of Wikipedia. Eric still has not responded to the points I raised above (which were, until the end, done edit by edit). --ScienceApologist 19:40, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Your points are your original research into the matter. Mine--that you deleted-- are summaries of published material. If you find some published critiques of what I have summarized, we might have something to discuss. (Although even then you would have a ways to go to justify deleting material rather than adding counterpoints.)Under wiki rules , as well as common sense, I don't see any reason to discuss your personal misunderstandings of astronomy--your original research. You are not my grad student, thankfully.

The issue is not my prose. You are not correcting my grammar. You are censoring verifiable material that you personally find offensive.Elerner 20:27, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

The quote from the wiki rules is this:

Verifiability" in this context does not mean that editors are expected to verify whether, for example, the contents of a New York Times article are true. In fact, editors are strongly discouraged from conducting this kind of research, because original research may not be published in Wikipedia.

What Joshua is doing is determining, on the basis of his own supposed expertise whether what is published in, say, IEEE Transactions in Plasma Science, or Astrophysics and space Science, is true. That is exactly what the rule above prohibits. All he can do under the rules is find a similarly reputable source that contradicts the sources I cited. Or he can point out that something I say is not in the cited sources. Of course that might require reading them.Elerner 20:35, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Your points are your original research into the matter. Mine--that you deleted-- are summaries of published material. -- I disagree. I think many of the "summaries" are biased interpretations of published materials as I outlined above. I also don't add any novel points that I know of, but I'd be happy to consider what you have to say about individual edits.

The issue is not my prose. You are not correcting my grammar. You are censoring verifiable material that you personally find offensive. -- I am editting your prose which is what Wikipedia is all about. You may think some of my edits are problematic and unjustifiable, but I find it hard to believe that you find them all to be this way. Please let me know which parts of my edits/explanations you disagree with.

Or he can point out that something I say is not in the cited sources. Of course that might require reading them. -- this is mostly what I'm trying to do as can be seen by my above comments (thus we need content mediation).

--ScienceApologist 20:46, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

No, Joshua, they are summaries, for the most part, of material that I or my colleagues have published in various peer-reviewed publications, so it would be very hard for it to be a biased summary. That includes my references to other work--the same references and interpretations you will find in my published articles. You are disagreeing with things that I have published. And you are doing so using your own arguments, because you can't find published material that refute my arguments, that say "plasma cosmology is wrong about X because..".

For example, you take arguments on light elements that I have lifted almost verbatim from my published articles, you put forward your own arguments why that material is not "true", generally giving no citations, and then use this as a justification to delete my material.

I disagree with all your deletions. They completely violate the NOR rule.Elerner 21:30, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I find it strange that you keep using the term "peer-reviewed publications" as if where some sort of talisman, when I believe you are the author of this article: "Fraud Shows Peer-Review Flaws". Industrial Physicist. --DV8 2XL 21:49, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I did not write the rules for wiki. Nonetheless, they have to be applied the same in all cases. I would be the first to agree that the peer-review system is deeply flawed. But if the rule is verifiability and for science that means peer-reviewed, Joshua is clearly violating it.

As I said before, I would be perfectly willing to include all astro-ph as citations for either side. They are not peer reviewed, but they are routinely cited in astronomy journals.Elerner 22:39, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Writing for an encyclopedia does involve a certain amount of synthesis of published information and evaluation of the strengths and relevance of certain references. Not all peer-reviewed literature carries the same weight, and while there are other indicators that can be used, like citations, writing an encyclopedia article does ultimately require some interpretation and informed judgment. Peer review is often used, in lieu of something better, as an essential minimum standard for inclusion. (Interestingly, some pivotal papers, like Salam's famous electroweak paper, were never reviewed.)

I read what Joshua wrote above, and I don't see anything that could be considered original research. It was mostly restatements of well-known facts. Strictly speaking, you're right, we don't have a consensus here, we have a supermajority of editors thinking that we should keep the version that has gone uncontested for a long time, and not revert back to your old version from early December. While the mediation is ongoing, I think this is the reasonable stable version to use, particularly since you have repeatedly shown that you are totally unwilling to address any of the points raised by ScienceApologist. Instead of an edit war, why not work on refuting or discussing these points? I find it tiresome that these discussions with you seem to degenerate into attacks on people's credentials and tiresome, repetitive quotes from policy. –Joke 23:37, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

If you look back to December, I've replied at length to Joshua. He is giving his own interpretations, not facts, and has not once justified removing large portions of the description of what plasma cosmology is, other than that he disagrees with the papers cited. Elerner 00:04, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

How could you have replied in December to comments he made in mid-January? Please see #Differences. –Joke 00:08, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

If Joshua wants to cite some references for his opinions, we might have something to discuss. But if I were to correct every error he makes, I would not have time to do any work. Neither you nor he have any evident expertise in this field. So the wiki restriction that content and reasons for inserting or removing content have to be verifiable is a reasonable one. In any case, it is just as much of a rule as three-revert.Elerner 00:25, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

What insolence! Joshua has legitimate questions about your interpretations of these published results - he doesnt have to provide counter reference - the onus is on you to show that your views are the generally accepted ones of the papers in question --DV8 2XL 00:43, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Eric, don't be a dick. The many other editors with whom I have worked on Wikipedia can attest to my competence in cosmology, as can those with whom ScienceApologist has worked. If you feel otherwise, that's fine, but keep it to yourself. –Joke 01:02, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Incidentally, how does SA required a reference for a comment like "Lerner's quasar model was removed since it isn't about structure formation." You can disagree or say it should have been moved instead of removed, but it's abundantly clear to me that it is an editorial comment being made, not one to which the verifiability policy applies. –Joke 01:09, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Ah yes, "you're a dick!" demonstrates your high level of cosmological competence and clever rhetoric. Clearly the sort of arguments that I should spend my time answering.

DV8--since the papers that I am summarizing are mostly my own, it would be peculiar indeed to say that the onus is on me to prove that I am not misinterpreting my own work.Elerner 01:47, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

A case-by-case analysis of the edits I made will show that while some of the papers being summarized were Mr. Lerner's, not all of them were and certainly sometimes the summaries seemed unencyclopedic. --ScienceApologist 15:24, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Eric, I think you're being intentionally obstinate in not responding to SA's comments, such as the one I quoted above, which is manifestly not your work and not an issue of verifiability. I cited the tongue-in-cheek "don't be a dick" policy for a reason – because I'm tired of you making snarky insinuations about the competence of other editors rather than making a good-faith attempt to improve pages by discussion and establishing consensus. I can only hope you won't be so intransigent in mediation. –Joke 16:57, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

I smell a sock drawer. Jon 06:37, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

You do? –Joke 16:11, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

As I proposed to carry out the mediator's suggestion, I have undone Joshua's deletions, but included the three new or revised criticisms in his version. Please don't just revert these changes.Elerner 02:13, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I do not interpret this as in-line with the mediator's suggestion. Please stop reverting my changes without responding to my points above. Thanks,--ScienceApologist 13:18, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi all, I am a latecomer struggling to make sense of some of the past discussion here (not always easy since of course I am comparing comments to the current version of the page; this is a flaw in current wikitechnology). But let me jump in here with a proposal which might help smooth the ruffled waters.

In general, I think a wise, fair, reasonable and maximally WP:NPOV way to handle controversial assertions is to try to keep WP out of the messiest details. I think that in case of a controversial subject like this (which I guess some feel should be called protoscience and others feel should be called pseudoscience), the WP article should focus on providing historical context (e.g. in this case the writings of Arp) and a summary of the basic issues, with links to other (similarly NPOVed) WP articles for more background. Then, in an External links section, curious readers can be referred to the most comprehensive known pro and con websites. As for the very long list of references, I don't think WP articles should read like formal review articles, especially since in this case any review would probably be either strong pro or con. So I'd like to see Eric make a list of pro citations (and maybe even con citations, why not?) at his website(s), and choose just a handful to include in this article. Let's all remember that Wikipedia articles should not read like grab-bags of masses of disorganized information.

It seems to me that a thorough rewrite of the present version along these lines would make for a much more readable article, one which is much more useful for the general reader who has heard of this controversial topic and wants to get a quick overview. Then if the reader decides for himself that he wants to learn more details, he can follow the links, download pro and con papers listed at said links, and so forth.

Does everyone agree to let me rewrite the article to a much more readable/slender form as per above, or should we proceed to mediation?---CH 03:36, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Orphaned references

If these belong in the article, then they should be the reference to something:

G. Arcidiacono, "Plasma physics and big-bang cosmology", Hadronic Journal 18, 306-318 (1995).
J. E. Brandenburg, "A model cosmology based on gravity-electromagnetism unification", Astrophysics and Space Science 227, 133-144 (1995).
J. Kanipe, "The pillars of cosmology: a short history and assessment". Astrophysics and Space Science 227, 109-118 (1995).
W. C. Kolb, "How can spirals persist?," Astrophysics and Space Science 227, 175-186 (1995).
B. E. Meierovich, "Limiting current in general relativity" Gravitation and Cosmology 3, 29-37 (1997).
C. M. Snell and A. L. Peratt, "Rotation velocity and neutral hydrogen distribution dependency on magnetic-field strength in spiral galaxies", Astrophys. Space Sci. 227, 167-173 (1995).

I'm leaving them here for now. If anyone knows what they belong with, then please reinsert them to the article as footnotes. –Joke 16:37, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

By the way, can someone provide a reference for plasma cosmology demonstrating that the quadrupole and octopole of the CMB should align with the Virgo cluster? –Joke 17:09, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

There are more references needed, and I indicated them on the page. --ScienceApologist 19:01, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I have made detailed edits to the last version, up to the beginning of the microwave background section. I will make additional ones shortly. I am describing and defending them here. I trust they will not just be wholesale reverted.

I added two references that had been deleted. In the structure formation section, I eliminated the inaccurate word “primordial” , which refers to the wrong theory. In this section and throughout, I eliminated the loaded word “claimed which implies skepticism, and substituted the neutral word “concluded”. I clarified the discussion of the constant velocity curves found in Peratt's simulations.

I deleted the tun-sourced description of hierarchical galaxy formation. If someone wants to put this back, it has to be attributed to specific researchers. It's popular model, but if you want to include it, you can't claim it to be a “current “ model—it is the view of specific researchers who need to be cited. I then slightly edited the big-bang dark matter reference for clarity.

I found that the reference was less clear than before. I tried to reword it. --ScienceApologist 15:33, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I added back in a couple of sentences explaining the physical basis for the fractal predictions. I think it very important that physical arguments be stated clearly in popular articles. Otherwise it seems a total mystery where predictions come from. In addition, I included, duly sourced, the important arguments that the Big Bang does not allow enough time to form large structures. Whether you agree with it or not, this is a point made repeatedly in plasma cosmology papers.

I added in the point here that this argument contradicts hundreds of papers. --ScienceApologist 15:33, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I also added back some parts of the light elements section. It is totally unjustified to entirely delete the evidence for this theory.

I tried to summarize this. I don't think that anything of vital importance to the summary was left out, but I could be mistaken. --ScienceApologist 15:33, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

At the beginning of the microwave background section, I deleted the un-sourced reference to the Big Bang predicting the equality of the energy density of the CBR and that of the energy produced by H-to -He fusion. SA should not waste time looking for a reference to back this up, because it is wrong. As any Big Bang cosmologist could explain, the energy density of the CBR decreases as the fourth power of the universe's scale factor, while the energy density of the energy produced by fusion is proportional to the baryonic matter density, which decreases as the third power of the scale factor. In the Big Bang view, the ratio of the two quantities varies with time and so cannot be equal, except by coincidence at a particular moment. This error indicates the necessity to stick to sources.

Actually the sentence indicates an equivalence of total energy not of energy density. If you want to reword the sentence to imply something else, be my guest -- however, as the statement is right now it is correct. --ScienceApologist 15:33, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

More changes later.Elerner 23:53, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Progress! Who thought it was possible? I can more or less agree with these changes, although I might dispute some wording later on. (In particular, saying that "many studies" support fractal structure seems debatable, especially when it seems to me that most people in the field believe that SDSS shows exactly the opposite...) It should be easy to find a reference for hierarchical structure formation, so that should go back. As far as I am aware, there is indeed some (mainstream, even) controversy about structure formation in the big bang, with voids being too empty compared to CDM simulations. I'm not sure what the status of this is, probably SA knows better than me. –Joke 00:04, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Suggesting that "plasma cosmologists" is a neologism, and replacing it with "proponents of plasma cosmology", is ridiculous. It's removal blatantly violates Wiki's NPOV policy, (See Word ownership). What's the possible motive for its removal? Is it supposed to imply that plasma cosmologists aren't "real" cosmologists. Perhaps the average reader won't understand a simple construct that uses the word "cosmologist" in a "strange" context? --Iantresman 01:29, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Ian, take a deep breath, please. I originally wrote the sentence I rephrased. It is meant to imply nothing. Reinsert it if you will, I just thought it sounded better the other way. It seemed awkward to me, because it makes it sound as if the cosmologists are made of plasma. –Joke 01:34, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to over-react, I assumed the criticism was that it was a neologism, and I'm used to ScienceApologist not accepting words because he considers them to be too "new" --Iantresman 09:58, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I have eliminated inaccuracies in the description of published papers on the CBR. Since there was a disagreement over what Lieu concluded from his data, I put in a direct quote. I also added to the Lubin -Sandage paragraph the important information that the sample used was different and at lower redshift.

I corrected the footnotes, but this needs more work and is missing some. I deleted the giant-sized Lubin-Sandage footnote which is totally out of proportion to everything else.Elerner 02:23, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Eric, I would appreciate it if when you edit the footnotes you don't mess them up! And why the deletion of the couple sentences about GR? I have to say, this edit leaves me feeling much less sanguine. –Joke 02:33, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Can someone migrate to cite.php? The footnotes are a total hash. –Joke 02:49, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

What disturbs me about these last edits is that they were largely verbatim copy and paste from your old version, without much care or attention to detail. I can't see much reason for that. –Joke 03:05, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

That explains how the typo reappeared. Art LaPella 04:06, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I will work on the footnotes this evening. There is no justification for reverting my editing, which I have justified. Again, important data is being censored. The production of deuterium for example, answers a key objection of BB advocates that "only the BB can produce D."

In addition, SA is moving on to try to introduce new, uncited inaccuracies, such as that PC is a "static universe" theory, when it explicitly is an evolving universe theory.

I omitted to mention the justification for dropping the GR reference. It can be changed to be more accurate along the lines: "GR thoery indicates that a homogenous unvierse should either expand or contract, although the rate may be too small to observe at present. There is no known solution for a universe with a fractal distibtution of matter at all scales." If you check your sources, they will all include the homogeniety assumption.134.171.161.166 15:42, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Have you read Hawking and Ellis? Do you know what the Raychaudhuri equation is? You're talking about the state of knowledge in GR in the 1950s. –Joke 15:46, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I have tried to clean up the article as best I can and merge Elerner's and SA's edits. The footnotes are still a shambles. I also can't say I'm happy about how Elerner's edits seem largely to be reverting SA's edits for clarity to his old text, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of it went, again. I'm done for now. –Joke 16:06, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Footnotes now work. Don't break them any more and don't revert to an old version. –Joke 16:46, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I tried not to. If I mess up, please go ahead and revert me, Joke. --ScienceApologist 18:10, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that this kind of contentious discussion could be largely avoided if both "sides" chose a few citations and left it to the pro and con websites to provide comprehensive lists of publications, as per my proposal above. ---CH 03:39, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Evolving, static, and eternal universes

Eric rightly points out that there is a difference between his idea and the traditional static universe ideal of a universe that doesn't evolve. However, what I cannot ascertain is what he means by "evolution" (indeed, the plasma cosmology citations don't seem to indicate much about this). We need to be clear. I inserted a redlink to an "eternal universe" page. The obvious examples of eternal universe include steady state universes, static universe, and most nonstandard cosmologies with the exception of those weird suggestions by creationists. The Big Bang obviously has versions that are both eternal and ones that are not, but it's all speculation. So should we venture out and try to describe this on the eternal universe page? Should we merge with static universe? Opinions, options, desires, perspectives? --ScienceApologist 18:16, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

If you look at the difference between the two versions, SA's revisions are all very biased and not NPOV at all. For one thing he contiually tries to denigrate plasma cosmologists substituting the loaded “claimed” for my neutral “concluded”. He substitutes “these people” for “these physicists” implying, absurdly, that he as a lordly grad student can pass judgement on working scientists, including a Noble Laureate in physics. I think these ad hominem slurs should just be banned.

SA is also persisting in adding in new unsourced sentences such as the one that asserts that hundreds of papers show simulations producing voids 100 Mpc across. There are hundreds of papers on simulations but not one that shows voids 100 Mpc across. IF he finds one, he can cite it.

The rest of SA's changes are purely reverts of my edits, including re-inserting unsourced errors like his boner about helium and the CBR.

I think the rule must be that statements that are sourced to the literature can not be removed. Statements that are not sourced to the literature are to be removed if challenged.

Sources must be cited accurately. In SA's source cited for voids in simulations there is NO mention of voids as large as 100 Mpc. In fact the same authors cited, in astro-ph/0011212 (I don't have the published source)explicitly compare one well-known data set that shows large voids and conclude that the chance it results from the simulations SA cites or any CDM simulations is less than 10^-3. SA should read the sources that he cites. It is a useful thing to do.Elerner 23:27, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

The Virgo Consortium link has a void visible in the simulation that is of the order of magnitude we are discussing. --ScienceApologist 00:00, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Ian's edits

The Cygnus Loop, whose filamentary structure plasma cosmologists consider has characteristics of an interstellar Birkeland current: (1) A plasma medium (2) Filamentation (3) Braiding, twisted "rope-like" structure. (Alfvén, *Cosmic Plasma*; Peratt, "Evolution of the Plasma Universe")

I've added the illustration of the Cygnus Loop, as an example of a filamentary structure that plasma cosmologists consider has the chracteristics of a force-free Birekeland current. I've provided two citations.

Concerning Peratt's galaxy simulation, I've modified the statement "The simulation did not contain gravitational forces, so was not realistic." since the realism is disputed, and hence a "lack of realism" is a point of view. It would be like suggesting that all astronomical calculations excluding electromagentic forces were also not realistic. So I've replaced the statement with one describing the rational for excluding gravitation forces, and left the reader to decide whether it is realistic. --Iantresman 01:20, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Ian, if you want the image included, please provide a reference to a plasma cosmology paper that describes the Cygnus Loop as such an example as was requested in the talk archives for this page.

I'm going to edit the sentence you dispute to reflect the fact that Perrat himself said it wasn't accurate.

--ScienceApologist 02:50, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Let's spoonfeed this one statement at a time; let me know which one(s) you have a problem with, and I'll get a source

Plasma physicists know that when an electric current passes through a plasma, it may cause filamentation.
Plasma cosmologists believe that when an electric current passes through a cosmic plasma, it may also cause filamentation.
Plasma cosmologists believe that examples of such filamentation are seen across many scales, from superclusters, clusters, galaxies, nebulae, stars, planets (and the laboratory).
Plasma cosmologists believe that the filamentation seen in nebulae is caused in the same way.
Plasma cosmologists consider cosmic filamentation to be force-free filaments.
Plasma cosmologists also call force-free filaments, Birkeland currents.
Plasma cosmologists consider the filamentation in nebulae to result from force-free currents (ie Birkeland currents)
The Cygus Loop is part of a nebula.
The Cygus Loop has been described as having a filamentary structure.
The Cygus Loop has been described as having a "ropelike" filamentary structure.
The Cygus Loop includes plasma.
Plasma cosmologist Anthony Peratt has confirmed that "The filamentary structure of nebulae, such as the Rosette nebula, and, the Cynus Loop in the Veil nebula, are actually Birkeland currents, ie. force-free currents?"[3]
Hence, the Cygnus Loop is an example of a filamentary plasma structure.
--Iantresman 11:10, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

And here's a specific examples that mentions that Cygnus loop and Birkeland currents, on a Web page from Alderbran, a group associated with the Plasma Physics Group of the Department of Physics of the Czech Technical University. --Iantresman 11:34, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

And here's yet another reference regarding the Rosette elephant trunk (that's a nebula, like the Veil Nebula), in which the authors write of "Helical structures in a Rosette elephant trunk .. The helical magnetic structures imply the presence of electric currents along the trunk axis. These currents should form a nearly force-free geometry .." [4] --Iantresman 01:20, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Sounds convincing, and I hope ScienceApologist will answer one way or the other. Of course the issue is whether plasma cosmologists really say that, not about whether the clouds are just weird shapes like the Face on Mars. Art LaPella 02:40, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Have a look at what plasma cosmologist Anthony Peratt wrote here specifically about the Cygnus loop, and then have a look at what others say about other nebulae, such as the Rosette elephant trunk mentioned above.

Perhaps Eric, as a plasma cosmologist, could confirm whether the image above and its caption are accurate --Iantresman 09:58, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I think what Science Apologist is objecting to, is that the Cygnus Loop, whatever its nature, is of far too small a scale to be relevant to cosmology. The point is somewhat tricky because it seems to be an important argument of plasma cosmologists that certain phenomena like Birkeland currents are observable at all scales. If they play a role in laboratory, solar system, and inter-stellar scales, why shouldn't they also be important at galactic, inter-galactic, and cosmological scales? I think it's a bad argument because the jump from nebula to cosmos is huge and because the evidence for the existence of Birkland currents outside the solar system is weak. I'm not too concerned one way or the other about the picture here, but I'm heading over to the Cygnus Loop article to clarify the positions. The multitudes who know more astrophysics than I do are invited to join me there. --Art Carlson 11:41, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

ScienceApologist has not mentioned anything about relevance to cosmology, only that there was no specific citation. I think I've provided that in spades. A jump from nebula to cosmos may well be large, but the article does mention filamentary structure down to lesser scales. In this respect, I think it provides a suitable illustration of Birkeland currents (a) on a much larger scale than people are used to (ie. auroral Birkeland currents), and (b) because plasma cosmologists consider many features to be scaleable, a nice example of a typical cosmic Birkeland current. --Iantresman 14:04, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Incorrect. Please check the talkarchives. --ScienceApologist 00:02, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I will check this out shortly. In the meantime, I have again removed SA's biased words, again substituting the same neutral language for both plasma cosmology and Big Bang advocates. This way when a term is used for one side, it is used equally for the other.SA should not revert unless he can justify his biased terms. I also edited some minor inaccuracies like the date of origin of PC. In the structure section, I grouped BB arguments together.

I also added a new reference about matter in clusters. I will try to carefully add the reference itself in the right place.Elerner 18:11, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Eric, your edits effectively revert contributions and introduce preposterous bias. This is seeming to me to be more and more of a violation of good faith. Please do not continue this out-and-out bias advocacy. Discuss changes carefully, please. --ScienceApologist 00:02, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Clearly the Cygnus caption is accurate. I notice that both sides are inconsistent in their capitalization of Big Bang. It should be one way of the other throughout.Elerner 18:16, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

These remarks of mine, previously added to this page, were deleted, I assume inadvertenly , by Art LapellaElerner 23:45, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Sorry. Art LaPella 03:45, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

In further editing up to the redshift section, I have again removed SA's error about helium and the CBR. How many times does this have to be done? I removed repetition in the light elements section and flat-out inaccuracies. More laterElerner 18:39, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I've given up capitalizing all of Wikipedia's "Big Bang"'s because it's also inconsistent in Google. When I come back I'll decide if this particular article should be one way or the other. Art LaPella 18:59, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Eric continues to add unsourced ideas, bias into the article

While decrying my bias, Eric continues to add his unsourced opinions to the article preventing the editting from moving forward. His inability to work with other editors is tiresome and needs to be addressed. I have reverted his edits for now and request he justify them point-by-point here on the talkpage as I did for previous edits I made. Thanks,--23:21, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I justified my edits just above. SA has not justified his. The revert war just continues.Elerner 23:49, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I count the above statement as a bald-faced lie. --ScienceApologist 23:57, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

SA is now deleting well-sourced material that is central to understanding plasma cosmology and that has been an undisputed part of the article for months. Elerner 00:15, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

SA's latest edit attempt

In an attempt to initiate a truce. I scrapped the old version and started from the version that Eric Lerner had. I still have major problems with this version, but at least the more glaring problems were removed. I will attempt to summarize my edits here:

I removed a large section about the development of MHD. I understand the motivation for wanting to include this, but let's stick to the plasma cosmology of the 1960s as it was described in the above paragraph.

changed "rarely neglible and often" to "sometimes". Sometimes electromagnetic forces are considered important. Sometimes they aren't. This is a point of disagreement but I believe my version to be neutral.

changed "thus naturally becomes" to "can therefore become" because not all plasmas are inhomogeneous in this fashion on all scales.

clarified when plasma filamentation is used, because it is used outside of the suggestions of the plasma cosmology folks.

Changed two "Perrat concluded" to ~~"Perrat claimed" simply because the conclusions are controversial.~~ more neutral wording regarding how Perrat explained findings.

cleaned up "plasma filamentation theory" wording to better conform to a readable style.

Made a new paragraph for predictions of structure formation.

added a point about Lerner's quasar model being in absolute contradiction with standard models.

changed the wording of the stellar nucleosynthesis section (one note: primordial hydrogen is not discussed by this page -- why not?)

Added two instances of references neeeded for the nucleosynthesis section.

Removed some backhanded attacks at the Big Bang nucleosynthesis "free variables" as per discussion above.

Removed rhetorical question "But what would convert this radiation into the extremely smooth and isotropic 2.7 K black-body radiation of the CMB?" as a bad-form editorial point. It didn't add anything to the description anyway.

Removed "In 2004-2005 additional evidence supported the existence of some medium that scattered and re-emitted the CMB." This kind of weasly wording leads people down the wrong path. Lieu did not have plasma cosmology in mind when he did his study.

Removed "far less angular scale" and replaced with "less" since the errors are not well known, and the conclusion is still up for editorial comment.

Changed "critics" to "most of the scientists who have offered such analyses" in an attempt to remove weasel wording.

Reorganized the paragraph on Tolman test. There are still problems with this, but at least now it doesn't repeat itself.

Those are my edits. Please discuss them beneath the bullets if you think any are particular onerous.

--ScienceApologist 00:39, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Regarding your points above, "Perrat concluded" is not controversial. If Peratt concludes that the moon is made of green cheese, then if that is what he concludes, then it is describing neutrally, his point of view.

Yes, but he also claimed this then as well. I think the problem with "concluded" is that it makes it sound like a banal and uncontroversial statement that is the sort of "natural result" of a data analysis. Since the "conclusion" of Perrat's paper is disputed, it is more appropriate to use the word "claimed".

Likewise, of plasma cosmologists consider electromagnetic forces to be important and "rarely neglible", then that is what should be described. Of course if the articles implied that everyone believed that electromagnetic forces to be important and "rarely neglible", then that would not be accurate. --Iantresman 01:25, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

The article did imply that "everyone" believed it to be that way, as far as I could ascertain. Read the current version and see. --ScienceApologist 01:29, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Cygnus loop

Regarding the Cygnus loop issue and its caption, ScienceApologist, please specify your objection labelled "incorrect" as it ignores by efforts to clarify the situation. Are you objecting to the lack of citation, the accuracy of the caption, or the relevance to plasma cosmology? I have provided comments to all these issues above. --Iantresman 00:44, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Art Carlson pointed out that the Cygnus Loop might not rightly be described as "cosmological". I'd like to see a reference to a self-described paper on cosmology that uses the Cygnus loop as an example of a Birkeland current. That's it. --ScienceApologist 00:48, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

You will find Birkeland currents mentioned in Peratt's paper "Evolution of the Plasma Universe: I & II. " (1986). Peratt writes: "This paper and its sequel investigate the observational evidence for a plasma universe threaded by Birkeland currents or filaments" [..] In Part I of the paper, Peratt writes (p.640): "B. Birkeland Currents in Cosmic Plasma .. filamentary structures are found in the following cosmic plasmas, .. In the interstellar medium and in interstellar clouds there is an abundance of filamentary structures, e.g., the Veil nebula,". Part II of the paper discusses Peratt's theory on galaxy formation. (my emphasis). --Iantresman 01:19, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

So let me propose the neutral caption: Anthony Peratt wrote in his 1986 paper "Evolution of the Plasma Universe" that the Veil Nebula is an example of a location in the interstellar medium where there is "an abundance of filamentary structures". I would have no issue with including that as a caption, but it would then be a good idea to tack it onto an image of the Veil Nebula as a whole rather than this part of the surface which is arguably a shock-structure and has been evaluated as such. I'm sure there are plenty of Veil Nebula images you can find. --ScienceApologist 01:24, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

The Cygnus Loop. Plasma cosmologists argue that its interstellar filamentary structure has characteristics of a force free "Birkeland" current, (ie. a filamentary "rope-like" structure in plasma medium), which is significant in the formation of structure across a wide range of scales. (Peratt, "Evolution of the Plasma Universe")

Irrespective of whether the Cygnus Loop has been evaluation as a shock, or not, is irrelevant. Plasma cosmologists have evaluated it otherwise. This is an article on their point of view.

Fact: Plasma cosmologist Anthony Peratt confirmed that "The filamentary structure of nebulae, such as the Rosette nebula, and, the Cynus Loop in the Veil nebula, are actually Birkeland currents, ie. force-free currents?[5]
Fact: Plasma cosmologist Eric Lerner also agreed with the accuracy of the original caption (see above)
Fact: Peratt's paper on galaxy formation (ie cosmology), suggests that filamentation such as that found in the Veil nebula (and hence the Cygnus loop), are Birkeland currents, and is RELEVANT to cosmic processes across a wide range of scales.
I have proposed an alternative caption, which as far as I can see, is factually accurate, and makes it very clear that it is a plasma cosmologist point of view --Iantresman 17:14, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, Ian. When I turn to an encyclopedia article on some subject, I certainly do not want to only hear what advocates think. The subject has to be put into relation to the rest of human knowledge and beliefs. I feel I was misled when the caption only mentioned Birkeland currents. I am glad I now know that the mainstream has a very different explanation, whoever is right. --Art Carlson 17:29, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I would agree that a general articles on nebulae, or filamentation, should mention alternative views on their formation. But this is an article on plasma cosmology, and its view. I'm sure that ScienceApologist could present "standard" views for nearly every sentence in the plasma cosmology article, and plasma cosmologists have an answer for those, and so ad infinitum? --Iantresman 18:28, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I thought you were in favor of presenting the evidence and letting the reader make up his own mind. How is he supposed to evaluate the claims of plasma cosmology without being told that there is another explanation for this observation? I find this image especially deceptive because it is so easy to forget that there are things that look like filaments without being filaments. --Art Carlson 21:16, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

How does a reader evaluate any subject? They check the references. How does the reader know there are other explanations? They read-up on the subject. Want to find out about alternative redshift theories, don't read the redshift article. Where does someone find out about the theory of redshift quantization, "non-cosmological redshift", "intrinsic redshift" or the Wolf Effect; none of these terms are mentioned in the redshift article. Yet all of us reading this paragraph are at least aware of them.

Are there things that look like filaments without being filament; Are there things that look like shocks, without being shocks? Do shocks cause filamentation, or are filaments shocked by some other cause? Of course, but the article is not the place to discuss it. The one thing I do know, is that plasma cosmologists consider the Cygnus Loop to be a filamentary Birekeland current. Is it really a Birkeland current, or a shock, or something else? Who knows. It's not for us to decide. --Iantresman 00:30, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Galaxy formation and evolution mentions nothing about the possibility of alternate theories; there's not even a mention of the Galaxy rotation problem. I'm sure it was just an oversight. --Iantresman 00:44, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

All of Ian's "fact" wrangling is irrelevant. I've stated what I believe to be a neutral caption and a proposal for a different image. If Plasma Cosmology advocates want to believe that this image indicates a filament rather than a surface, I don't really care, but since there is no published reference that states this particular image is representative of such, therein lies the rub. --ScienceApologist 20:41, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

The caption is verifiable (I've given the reference). Two plasma cosmologists have confirmed the illustration is suitable; I even have dozens of mainstream references also identifying the Cygnus Loop as filamentary [6], and you personally won't accept it. --Iantresman 00:30, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Edit war fallout

SA's edit on 00:16 re-inserting the biased word "claimed" for the neutral word "concluded" is a simple revert--his fourth in 24 hours. So he has violated the three-revert rule. Will the rule be applied to him? I will address his edits Monday.Elerner 00:50, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Technically, it wasn't a simple revert, but as this page has been embroiled in controversial edits and this was after I tried to stop edit warring, am I to conclued that my appeals for a truce have fallen on seemingly deaf ears? --ScienceApologist 00:54, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Three revert rule states that "Reverting in this context means undoing the work of another editor. It does not necessarily mean going back into the page history to revert to a previous version". But I don't understand why Elerner wants to emphasize this point. Here's my scorecard:

Elerner: "re-eliminated SA's errors and bias. How many times does this have to be done?"

SA: "reverting Eric Lerner's unjustified introduction of bias into the article"

Elerner: "eliminating SA's unjustified revert (second today)"

SA: "eliminating SA's unjustified reverts"

Elerner: "again eliminating SA's unjustified reverts"

SA: "reverting Elerner's unjustified revert"

Elerner: "reverting SA's continiung unjustified reverts (last time today)"

My score: Elerner 4, SA 3. Your score may differ for many technical reasons. Even if you can reverse the score, the 3RR policy also states:

Intent of the policy

The three-revert rule is not an entitlement, but an "electric fence"; the 3RR is intended to stop edit wars. It does not grant users an inalienable right to three reverts every 24 hours or endorse reverts as an editing technique. Persistent reversion remains strongly discouraged and is unlikely to constitute working properly with others. Art LaPella 04:35, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I will be editing stuff, but I have a small comment on the footnotes, which remain a mess. Part of the problem is that people are inserting references not as place-holders for footnotes that are coming, but as commentary--"you should footnote this". They are clearly out of control. Second, in some cases references are warranted, but they are to sources that have already been referenced. In a normal document, this would result in an out-of-numerical order footnote, like a second reference to (9) following a reference to (15). I assume there is a way to do this in Wiki but I do not know it. Does anyone else?

I do suggest the footnotes be left to last.Elerner 23:13, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I think that means that you already know about this problem I was so proud of discovering: The reference now numbered 15 says "See, for example, the Virgo Consortium's large-scale simulation of "universes in boxes" with the largest voids reaching such sizes." But footnote 15 is in a paragraph about low density plasma, and void size is mentioned in the previous paragraph. Art LaPella 00:10, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree that it is out of control. I'll try to look through at some point and see if there are any that really need priority. There is a way to do the out-of-numerical order footnote, but it is a pain in the ass. I can't remember it off the top of my head, but there must be information at Template talk:ref or Template talk:note. –Joke 23:32, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I have made mainly grammatical changes to the structure section. People should really look closely before reverting. By the way, has anyone actually looked at Peratt's comparisons? It really is not controversial that they resemble galaxies morphologically. The photos of galaxies and the simulations can be laid on top of one another with practically no difference visible.I will see if an illustration is available on the web.Elerner 23:29, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Is that a statement about the 3-d form, a projection, or a slice of the simulation data? --Art Carlson 10:00, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

It's good. I fixed your spelling. –Joke 23:32, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

First, the phrase "rather than being due to energetic photons driving universal nucleosynthesis," in the CBR section again implies, incorrectly that there can be a BB explanation for this correspondance, when in fact the BB view is that it is a meaningless coincidence.

Second, the radiation from stars which is mainly UV has to be first converted by dust to IR.

I think my version of the absorption evidence is comprehensible, while the other version is not.

I have re-inserted the quote from Lieu as it makes clear what his view, and re-inserted a connection, otherwise lacking between this paragraph and the preceeding one.

The octopole qudurpole alignment is in a map of fluctuations, not total radiation. There is less variation--the CBR is smoother-- in the Virgo and anti-Virgo direction, it is not cooler.Elerner 00:00, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

On surface brightness, I have again eliminated "claims" which only get applied to PC not to BB statments. Also, I used data from the HUDF not the HUDF. I reinserted a sentence that explains the relation between the predictions of the two theories. Finally, I deleted the last sentence, because you will have to wait for people to respond in print to my work. Don't worry, they will.

I have also reninserted that I answered the argument about SN in the paper.Elerner 00:21, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Gravity argument, part N

I deleted again the clearly biased "conclusion" that expansion is overwhelmingly supported by the evidence. Also, I would ask to see an actual quote from any paper that concludes that a universe with a fractal distribtuion of matter has to expand or contract. It has never been done. All derivations assume homogenity--in other words a definite density that is not dependent on scale. A fractal universe has a density that depends on the scale on which it is measured. Density asymptoticaly approaches zero on larger and larger scales.Elerner 00:21, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I have little response to your other comments. However, as for your last one, READ HAWKING AND ELLIS, CHAPTER 10. I've told you twice before. They prove it in at least two different ways, neither of which assume homogeneity. The first proof assumes the Copernican principle insofar as it assumes that the cosmic microwave background is isotropic throughout the universe. The second discards the assumption, but assumes that the cosmic microwave background was isotropized (is that a word?) by scattering somewhere on out past lightcone (i.e. there is matter on the past lightcone). Just because you have never heard it, doesn't mean it has never been done: it was done in the sixties. How many times do I need to repeat myself? If you want quotes, ask, but quit reverting my edits. –Joke 01:06, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I have been working on these changes. Aside from obvious edits, I removed the Lieu quote which I moved into a footnote some time ago (just like the Lubin and Sandage quote, etc...). I also removed the "large-scale" from fluctuations as that is implied by quadrupole and octopole, dewikied octopole for which it's hard to imagine what kind of article one might write, changed "strongly implied" to merely implied, changed "adsorbed, or to be more precise, scattered" to "scattered" for concision, "contended" to "contend" (correct this if it is wrong), and removed the superfluous "In the 1990's". I also rephrased the standard description of quasars to make it clear that people don't believe that they're powered by, say, Hawking radiation. –Joke 01:20, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I think I am done now. I removed the Tolman surface brightness test power law, as I don't think it adds anything to have the equation, and those who are interested can easily find it. I reinserted the sentence about galaxy morphology, but tried to make it more clear that this is the "standard" theory. I reinserted the GR stuff, which I urge you not to remove again until we have been through this on talk. –Joke 01:27, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Look, it's too late tonight for more edits, but the sentence on quasars is just wrong. AGN and quasars are the same things, one is not the core of the other. The only thing distinguishing AGN from quasars is an arbitrary cut-off in absolute luminosity. Quasars are, by definition, AGN brighter than so-and-so many ergs/sec.Elerner 02:11, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Fixed. –Joke 02:14, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

By the way, here are some papers of Hawking, Penrose and Ellis that describe the theorems in GR in great detail. –Joke 02:36, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the references. But you really have to read them more carefully yourself as they do contain several important assumptions in addition to GR, so they are by no means a derivation of the expansion of the universe from GR alone, which is not possible.

The 1968 paper about the CBR is not at all concerned with proving the expansion of the universe. It ASSUMES the expansion of the universe in order to conclude that an expanding universe must have begun in a mathematical singularity. If you look at assumption(d) you will find that it is the assumption that at some time in the universe's past it was within its Schwarzchild radius. Hawking then points out that if the universe is expanding, you can use the scattering of the CBR to demonstrate that there was enough matter ,at high enough redshift, to produce a Schwarzchild radius. Assuming the expansion is very different than proving it.

The 1970 paper makes the same assumptions but adds the additional one that the cosmological constant is zero or negative. It also explicitly says that one of the assumptions is that if you look at an object receding, it will at some point start getting bigger, which is a testable statement about the universe, not at all something implied by GR. It is indeed tested by the surface brightness data.

So neither paper support the assertion that expansion is a consequence of GR.

You really don't have to know tensor calculus to understand why a fractal universe does not expand under GR and why every derivation of the expansion assumes homogeneity. The basic FRW metric uses in its basic equations the average density of matter in the universe. The deceleration rate at any moment is linked to that density. In a fractal universe the density is undefined and if you take larger and larger regions, the density drops towards zero. In the limit of an infinite fractal universe the deceleration parameter is zero. Such a universe will remain at rest if it was ever at rest.Elerner 03:46, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

You are correct. I did not read the references, I just gathered them and posted because I thought it would be a handy way to find the requisite theorem available on the Internet. It turns out that they prove a somewhat different thing. The references explictly prove that inhomogeneous and anisotropic universes are singular. While you are correct to say that the average density of a fractal universe is zero, the (local) expansion or contraction of any universe containing matter is a simple consequence of the Raychaudhuri equation. Just because the universe, averaged over sufficiently large scales isn't expanding, doesn't mean the local expansion is zero. In Hawking and Ellis, chapter 10 (in particular, the second proof that the universe is singular, that requires that the CMB was scattered or emitted by matter on our past light cone) it is shown the universe is singular without any of these assumptions, although the singularity could be in the future. I'll write more tomorrow. –Joke 04:24, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Moreover, this has been known for a long time. The Einstein static universe failed for this reason. Even if you have a perfectly balanced Friedmann equation, local over- and under- densities begin to contract and expand, respectively, and cause the universe to evolve. –Joke 04:41, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I have checked H&E again and remain perfectly convinced that their theorem applies to the case of plasma cosmology. Their only assumption is that the optical depth (to infinity) along our past light cone is greater than 0.2 and that most of the scattering that makes up the CMB originates from further away than redshift 0.3 (approximately 1 Gpc) since we resolve individual galactic sources at these distances. To reduce this distance by a factor of ten, the optical depth to infinity would have to go up by the same factor. They say

We shall assume that the approximate black body nature of the spectrum and the high degree of isotropy of the radiation indicate that it has at least been partially thermalized by repeated scattering. In other words, there must be enough matter on each past-directed null geodesic from us to cause the opacity to be high in that direction. We shall now show that this matter will be sufficient to make our past light cone reconverge.

This sounds a lot like your model of the CMB to me. Appropriate quotes are hard to find, but I encourage you to look at the book. The result is on pages 354 and 355. –Joke 19:00, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

You are still entirely missing the point of Hawking's old papers. I do not have any way of accessing this book, but from your description Hawking is just repeating the derivations he published in his papers. They in no way support the sentence “an expanding universe appears to be supported by the overwhelming balance of evidence in cosmology and is an unambiguous prediction of general relativity”. For this sentence to be true, an expanding universe would have to be predicted by GR WITHOUT OTHER ASSUMPTIONS. But Hawking is not even trying to derive expansion from GR. He is trying to prove that, ASSUMING an expanding universe, the universe must have begun with a mathematical singularity. Assumption (d) of the first paper, which is present in all the other papers, is an assumption that the universe is expanding and that it at some time had enough matter density to form a Schwarzchild surface.

He uses the CBR to argue that assumption (d) is supported by observations. He knows it can't be derived from GR—it is in no way a prediction of GR. So he is trying to prove it from the observation of the CBR. That alone invalidates your use of his articles to defend your sentence, which is plain wrong from either a BB or PC standpoint.

Even as observational evidence he is using the CBR to argue that, within the context of an expansion, that a singularity is unavoidable . He specifically uses the dependence of the CBR energy density on redshift, which is only valid if the universe is expanding. Again he is assuming, not trying to prove, expansion. So your sentence is unsupported by any source, as well as being wrong.Elerner 04:24, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

It's you who is entirely missing the point. Don't tell me what the book says. Get it yourself. It's not that hard to find, if necessary amazon.com has it, or I'm sure you can find it in the library at the ESO. That the universe has to expand locally in the presence of matter is completely obvious from GR as it is an unavoidable consequence of the Raychaudhuri equation. That has been understood for almost as long as GR. Hawking went further and showed that such a universe must have a singularity, and hence cannot be eternal. That is why I am using his book. But regardless of that, in his proof he assumes no redshift dependence of the CMB, he assumes no expanding congruence of geodesics (which isn't the same as assuming an expanding universe, by the way). Of course GR without other assumptions does not generically predict singularities: Minkowksi space has no singularity. The sentence has context! –Joke 15:57, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I should point out that this is not just a problem for plasma cosmology. It is well known that even cosmic inflation has problems because of this: it is known that GR predicts a singularity in the past of cosmic inflation, so eternal inflation does not resolve the "first cause" problem of the big bang (see e.g. [7]). And that applies to an almost completely empty, de Sitter-like universe. So this is by no means merely a problem with your model. –Joke 18:24, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Gravito-electrodynamic

A clever point about the subject of the paper, but Perrat's simulations were admitted by him in the paper to not include gravity and thus not fully realistic. Thus, removed. --ScienceApologist

Citation please. --Iantresman 14:13, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I've done some more homework, and deleted the statement about Peratt not include gravity, unless you can substantiate it with a post-1991 citation indicating (a) that it is not included (b) that Peratt suggests that because of this, his simulation is not "wholly realistic".

Peratt mentions that "It is the purpose of this paper to continue the investigation of the dynamics of the denser interacting plasmas pinched within the filaments by means of the electromagnetic and gravitational force laws. [..] This approach to the study of cosmic plasma is labeled "gravito-electrodynamic.", AND, Chapter 8 "Particle-in-Cell Simulation of Cosmic Plasma" has a subsection "8.7 Gravitation", in his book, Physics of the Plasma Universe (1991) discuss gravity as applied to his PIC simulation. --Iantresman 19:50, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

The statement was written originally by Lerner [8], as is now almost exactly the same. He is an authority on these things. I find your vague quotes unconvincing. –Joke 20:53, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

The hypocracy! So now Eric's an authority, but it hasn't stopped a few editors from ripping his article it to shreds.

Peratt might not have originally included gravity in his simulation. Peratt never admitted that consequently his simulation was not wholly realistic, that was Eric's logical conclusion.

Irrespective of who wrote the sentence, if YOU can't produce a verifiable source that is not self-referencing, then don't include it; otherwise it is in contravention of Wiki policy. --Iantresman 22:18, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think Peratt ever described his simulations as unrealistic. They did not have gravity in them, at least not the first ones. I'll check at some point with him.Elerner 04:24, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Look, galaxy formation obviously needs at least some gravitational contribution to be realistic, as gravity is a force that is, according to plasma cosmologists, at least comparable to electromagnetism on galactic scales. In any case, it should be a simple question to resolve, do the simulations we've linked to include gravity, or do they not? –Joke 16:11, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, gravity is included in the simulations. See quote and confirmation below --Iantresman 17:30, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Dishonesty

I've removed the unattributable statement "Perrat admitted the simulation could not be wholly realistic, as it did not contain gravitational forces.".

To repeatedly attribute such as statement to Peratt, without a verifiable source (either published or otherwise), is DISHONEST. No wonder some of you guys hide behind pseudonyms... no accountability, no responsibility, no understanding of verifiability --Iantresman 09:47, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Ian, no personal attacks, please. –Joke 15:47, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

It's an observation, not a personal attack. The statement is DISHONEST. The pseudonyms indeed means no accountability, and no responsibility. And since no-one is able to supply a reference, AND is happy to include a suspect statement without a citation must show no understanding of verifiability. --Iantresman 16:27, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Ian, all I'm in favor of is keeping the status quo, which was written by Lerner who is more of an expert than anyone else here, until we either contact Peratt or find a definitive reference. It is a personal attack. That's obvious, just as are SA's comments that you're a "nonscientist layman." I understand verifiability perfectly well, and I think I'm perfectly accountable for my past errors, which I've admitted. My reasons for remaining anonymous are my own, and no business of yours. –Joke 16:31, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Lerner did not write, or even paraphrase that, "Perrat admitted the simulation could not be wholly realistic". Eric himself felt that the simulations might not be "wholly realistic". How can an understanding of verifiability be compatible with the "Perrat admitted" sentence not being verifiable!

Peratt's paper "Evolution of the Plasma Universe: II. The Formation of Systems of Galaxies" [Abs | PDF] makes it CLEAR that gravity is used in his simulations, to expand the quote (p.763) given above, explains:

It is the purpose of this paper to continue the investigation of the dynamics of the denser interacting plasmas pinched within the filaments by means of the electromagnetic and gravitational force laws. That this is possible is due largely to the advent of the particle simulation of dynamic systems in three dimensions on large computers, allowing the computation of up to many millions of charge and mass particles according to their respective force laws. This approach to the study of cosmic plasma is labeled "'gravito-electrodynamic" (my emphasis).

I have already contacted Peratt in order to clarify my understanding of his papers. Here are the exact words (which are technically unverifiable): "Can you mention whether you take gravity into account, in your PIC code simulation of interacting Birkeland currents in the formation of spiral galaxies,". Peratt replies: "Yes, gravity is included and discussed in my book, p.299." (my emphasis) --Iantresman 17:19, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Ok, fair enough, that satisfies me. Try not to attribute to maliciousness what could equally well be attributed to accident or misunderstanding. These histrionics impede progress. –Joke 17:29, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, sorry if that's how it came across, but when you feel that you think you've pointed out the obvious on more than one occassion...

By the way, do think that mainstream astrophysical simulations are wholly accurate if they exclude (a) magnetohydrodynamics (b) Hall-magnetohydrodynmics --Iantresman 17:45, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

No. Well, I can't comment about exactly what kind of simulations are valid for what things in studying galaxies and stars, I do know that thermal, electromagnetic and radiative phenomena have to be taken into account when studying galaxies. That's why simulations of cold dark matter, which are generally used in cosmology to study the large scale structure of the universe, can only be used to predict where galaxies will form, not what they will look like. –Joke 17:49, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I have been following this debacle for weeks now and I am of the firm opinion that ScienceApologist seems to be doing anything he can to impede the dissemination of information regarding plasma cosmology. He appears unethical. I can only guess at his motivations. I wonder who he works for. --ottojack 12:43, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Note regarding verifiability

We have now waited some weeks and have no movement forward on references. This is fair warning to editors that I'm going to start commenting out prose that have citations with no reference. --ScienceApologist 15:19, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Your double standards disgust me. You're quite happy to include a statement that is allegedly attributed to Peratt, but you are unable to verify, and you personally decide on whether the verifiable quotes are "suitable", and remove them if you don't approve. --Iantresman 16:24, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Ian, nobody cares if you're disgusted or not. SA, let Eric go through them first before commenting them out. As he mentioned above, some of them need references to already referenced work. Why not list the statements here first and let him respond? –Joke 16:36, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Yoo hoo, Joke, I again refuted your use of the GR reference, yet you just reverted it with no justification on the talk page. The expanding universe is not a prediction of GR, generic or otherwise, and your references do not back up the sentence. Nor is the "overwhelming evidence" part verifiable unless you say "most cosmologists believe that...". Otherwise this is just the 'voice of God' and he can't be referenced either. As to references, I got not reply on how to cite things twice. I guess I will just repeat references as needed. Elerner 19:13, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I told you, look at Template talk:ref and Template talk:note. It's not very simple. And my reply is above, and has been for some time. Pay attention, please. –Joke 19:23, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Besides, how can you refute something you haven't even read? –Joke 19:23, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

#1 Assumption

I also preferred the previous #1 Assumption, but since I couldn't find an EXACT referenced footnote, amend it. But if people are satisfied with the previous version, and feel that the footnote is satisfactory, I'm happy to revert. Strictly speaking, the reference does not say that EM forces are equal in importance; but it does say that they may be more important for ions.

Previous	Amended
Since the universe is nearly all plasma, electromagnetic forces are equal in importance with gravitation on all scales	Because electromagnetic forces can be much stronger than gravity, they have a greater effect on charged particles (such as those in a plasma). Since most of the visible universe is considered to be plasma, electromagnetic forces are considered very important in ionized interplanetary and interstellar matter

--Iantresman 22:34, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

What do the Raychaudhuri and singularity theorems say about plasma cosmology?

Joke, this is physics we are talking about, not magic. Gravitation never causes an expansion, neither in Newton's equations nor Einstein's. Remember all those papers that talked about finding the deceleration of the expansion due to the matter density? Gravitation leads matter to clump together, it does not cause it to explode apart. Nor, in GR, does matter cause the expansion of space. You can only get expansion of space by assuming an initial condition of expansion. If you start with matter at rest, you get a contraction. You can get expansion by reversing time, but that still means you are assuming an initial condition of expansion.

I am not going to spend $50 on a book to argue with some anonymous nerd on the Internet. I don't have to. You need to demonstrate by quotes or something that your source says what you say it does. Wiki policy is clear that it is up to the person citing to give a real reference, not those challenging.

You can't find a version of Hawking proof that does not assume the existence of a closed Schwarzchild surface. For good reason. It is only when matter agglomerations have escape velocities approaching c that GR effects become anything but subtle corrections on Newton's laws. That is why assuming homogeneity is so important. If you have a homogeneous universe, with a definite average density, then for a large enough radius you can get an escape velocity of c.

However, if you have a universe with fractal dimension 1 or less, the escape velocity will never approach c on any scale.

As for the Raychaudhuri equation , basically all that says that, in the absence of rotation, a gravitationally contracting body will continue to contract without limit (in the absence of other forces). But that does not tell us a lot about the real universe, where we do have rotation and other forces. In such a real universe, gravitational contraction can form many objects that last for billions of years that are not singularities.

So again, you have the book. Come up with a quote that proves your point, and you can have your sentence(at least the part about GR). Until then, I'll change it or delete it as un-sourced.Elerner 01:45, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

O, to lament the time-dependent scale factor! For matter in DeSitter like universes, it looks so much like "initial conditions". But our poor plasma cosmology bretheren have fallen into the same traps of the aether advocates who argued that wave equations always had to have media in order to be physically meaningful. Similarly the above argument outlined is that spacetime has to have physical energy-density and pressure terms in the stress tensor in order for GR to be physically meaningful (i.e. GR only admits contracting equations unless you have a Newtonian "escape velocity"). --ScienceApologist 02:03, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, if you take the present distribution of matter in the universe, and evolve it into the past with the Einstein equations, you find that the matter starts to contract together. That is due to the time reversal invariance of the laws of physics. If you extrapolate far enough into the past, you find that the universe was denser. Now look at it going forwards. Gosh, it looks like it is expanding. Call that initial conditions if you will. It doesn't make it any less true. As for the Raychaudhuri equation, if you choose a congruence of geodesics with initially vanishing vorticity, the vorticity vanishes all the way along the congruence: it is absolutely true, it doesn't say anything about the absence of other forces. It is talking about the local behavior of space defined as the behavior of congruences of geodesics.

I can assure you that the theorem doesn't assume a damn thing about homogeneity or the existence of a closed Schwarzschild surface, but obviously you are not going to believe me until I find a sentence where Hawking and Ellis write "this theorem doesn't assume a closed Schwarzschild surface or homogeneity." Well, don't hold your breath, because they don't find it necessary to mention this fact, and I don't feel like it is necessary to transcribe the whole argument.

Eric, I am tired of this argument. If you are indeed at, or near, an academic institution, go and avail yourself of the library. Until then, drop it. I'm not your scribe and I've done enough explaining. And: no personal attacks. –Joke 02:28, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

ESO does not have it here. I think it hilarious that you two think you can prove what the history of the universe is from equations--no observation needed! How Aristotelian of you.

Anyway, I think it is great progress if all we disagree on is down to one sentence.Elerner 03:06, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Elerner wrote I am not going to spend $50 on a book to argue with some anonymous nerd on the Internet. What is the book in question, please?

Eric, I am not in the least anonymous, and whatever book you were referring to, I probably can readily consult it. I am familiar with the Raychaudhuri equation (in fact, I wrote this WP article), so while I can't tell from the above exactly what the argument is about, I am confident I can concoct some NPOV summary in my proposed rewrite.

If the basic point of contention concerns assumptions in various singularity theorems, writing a good WP article on that is already near the top of my list of priorities, and perhaps should be in hand before rewriting this. In which case I would propose a moratorium on arguing about this article until I can write an article on the singularity theorems and rewrite this article. What do you say? ---CH 03:49, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi, the book is Hawking and Ellis, the statements are visible in this [9] edit (although see also the GR footnote) and the theorem in question is Theorem 2 of Hawking and Ellis, as applied on pp. 354–355, which I believe uses condition 4(iii) of said theorem. Other information can be extracted from #Gravity argument, part N above. –Joke 05:37, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

"S. W. Hawking and G. F. R. Ellis, The large-scale structure of space-time (Cambridge, 1973) especially §10.1. " I agree another opinion on this book would be helpful. I also wanted to make sure everyone saw this sentence before we decide anything drastic: "Anyway, I think it is great progress if all we disagree on is down to one sentence.Elerner 03:06, 23 February 2006 (UTC)". Art LaPella 06:16, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Since matter's alteration of space is only manifested in the deceleration parameter, it seems strange that Eric persists in his argument. After all, a Milne Universe expands without any distribution of matter at all! --ScienceApologist 12:44, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

First, something on which we can probably all agree is a really really good book. Eric, if I understand the above correctly, you don't own a personal copy of Hawking & Ellis. I would urge you to buy one through amazon or whatever; this is one of the most important books ever published on things gravitational, and I am sure you will find it very useful. I'd offer (in fact, I have offered) the same advice to everyone with a serious interest in gravitation physics or cosmology. It's well worth $50 or whatever.

Second, I am finding this rather hard to follow, probably because I can't find the sentence everyone is talking about, but it seems that part of the disagreement might arise from some kind of confusion over whether someone or other meant Raychaudhuri's equation or the Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems in this place or that. BTW, in congruence (general relativity), I derived the propagation equation for the vorticity tensor (in the case of vanishing acceleration, so suitable for dust), which Joke referenced above (vanishing vorticity and all that).

I have the impression that one commentator might believe someone said above that the Raychaudhuri equation requires a trapped surface (in the WP articles just cited I gave a complete derivation, which should convince any doubter that it does not!), but as far as I can see no-one said this. Surely the dispute is over whether or not the relevant singularity theorems require a trapped surface, and if so, what that entails for the present discussion. And more generally, over what general relativity has to say. I assume Eric has no quarrel with our current gold standard theory of gravitation, because I have the impression he wants to apply it to buttress his claims.

Assuming everyone agrees with the preceding paragraph, the standard starting point for discussing this kind of issue is section 8.2 of Hawking & Ellis, so we might have to suspend further discussion until Eric can obtain a copy of this wonderful book. (Maybe ask around and borrow a copy?) I say this because the conditions of their Theorems 2,3 are rather technical and just typing in the statements won't help without the multipage illustrated discussion of the conditions. Or if Eric is willing to take my word for what the theorems say I can just start in.---CH 12:05, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Time to archive more of this page?

I created a red link to another archive since this page is so incredibly unwieldy, then thought better of it re the RfC. So I'll leave the red link but defer populating that page until the RfC runs its course. ---CH 04:19, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Lieu's stuff

I missed the point where Joke removed the reference to Lieu's belief. To make it clear, I included a quote from the guy. We need a reference now to a Plasma Cosmology person who disputes Lieu's interpretation of his own work. Unless this happens, we have to take out the plasma cosmology conclusion as unverifiable. --ScienceApologist 13:21, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Peratt's galaxy formation simulation

Prompted by the addition of the image, I'm afraid I have to insist on the question that went unanswered above: Is that a statement about the 3-d form, a projection, or a slice of the simulation data? It makes a big difference whether the plasma simulations produce 3-d structures that resemble galaxies, or whether the data can be sliced or projected in such a way that the resulting 2-d image resembles a 2-d image of a galaxy. --Art Carlson 09:18, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Good question (which I missed first time around). On reading through Peratt's paper, Abstract Full text (PDF), he mentions that the still images are cross-sectional views, and, he writes in his Abstract the ".. application of fully three-dimensional electromagnetic particle-in-cell simulations to filamentary plasmas ..". As for the "depth" profile, I'll need to do some more homework. --Iantresman 11:07, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Peratt writes: "The axial extent is determined either by the length of the "micro-pinch" within the filament .. these are typically comparable to the filamental width.", though it would still be intersting to know the profile. --Iantresman 11:28, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I'm sure it's not the final word, but that seems to be a sizeable problem. It sounds like Peratt is talking about an extended filament that breaks up into galaxies with a separation along the string comparable to the diameter of the galaxies. Real galaxies are usually not ordered in lines (although they may be) and tend to have a separation equal to tens to thousands of times their diameters. --Art Carlson 11:32, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Peratt writes on his Amimation page that "The simulation pertains to two gaussian tapered disks..." --Iantresman 11:35, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, my last comment was not meant as a reply to yours, just extra info. I need to find out the distance between pinches (and hence galaxies). --Iantresman 11:40, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Proposed NPOV rewrite

OK, now I see User:Sasquatch has already agree to mediate and this is in motion. I dunno how my offer to NPOV and slenderize the existing article could fit into this. ---CH 03:57, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Even so, I hope no-one mightily objects to my proposal that in principal, Eric and Ian could move detailed exposition of their side of the most contentious issues to their own websites, and someone like me could rewrite the whole article to be WP:NPOV by offering a short summary followed by links to relevant pro and con sites. I take it Eric and Ian are well aware that plasma cosmology is not exactly at the center of contemporary mainstream cosmology. Bearing in mind that WP is an encyclopedia, not Reviews of Modern Physics or whatever, I hope they would agree that the articles here should stress mainstream viewpoints, while ensuring that interested readers can easily find the clearest/most comprehensive websites discussing dissident viewpoints. If we can all agree to these simple principles, I think we can all avoid future grief by letting me slenderize this article inaccordance with my suggestions here and above.---CH 12:28, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I mightily object in principle. Actually quite a few people have worked for a long time to get this article into shape. Your offer to re-write is NOT welcome.

While I was doing some actual physics last week, I notice that Joshua (ScienceAplogist) has been up to his normal tricks, and has, for one thing, replaced an actual quote from a peer-reviewed article by Lieu with a made-up, unverifiable quote supposedly from some radio show Joshua supposedly heard.

CH, if you are not anonymous, please provide your actual name. While you can be sure I do not take your word for anything, nor is it Wiki's policy to do so, the issue about Hawking et al discussed is simple. Does Hawking "prove" that GR, without any other assumptions or observations, implies an expanding universe, as the sentence in the current version of the Plasma Cosmology article states? My take is NO.Elerner 02:42, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I've moved this thread to the end since I'm sure it will become current.

I think you need to provide some examples of where you think that the article is not written from a neutral point of view; several editors have been working on this for many months now, and the current article is the result.
Regarding shortening the article, I totally disagree. The article should NOT express mainstream viewpoints, this is an article about the plasma cosmology viewpoint. Wiki policy on Undue Weight specifically mentions that ::"None of this, however, is to say that tiny-minority views cannot receive as much attention as we can possibly give them on pages specifically devoted to those views. There is no size limit to Wikipedia." --Iantresman 13:57, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

This is an unfortunate misinterpretation of policy, in my opinion. My reading of the policy is that it concerns whether minority views should be included at all, or in detail - addressing a concern similar to Wiki is not paper. This does not mean that the article is to be written from that viewpoint. In fact, from that same policy, we have "But even on such pages, though a view is spelled out possibly in great detail, we still make sure that the view is not represented as the truth". So the article should be about a minority viewpoint, but still written from a neutral, and thus in this case mostly mainstream science, point of view. --Philosophus 06:36, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Wiki policy makes it clear that "There is a minority of Wikipedians who feel so strongly about this problem that they believe Wikipedia should adopt a "scientific point of view" rather than a "neutral point of view." However, it has not been established that there is really a need for such a policy,". In otherwords, we don't take the "mostly mainstream science, point of view".

The big question then, is do we write about the subject, or from the subject's points of view, or do these amount to the same thing? Certainly, we write about the subject in a neutral point of view. And certainly we don't present anything as truth.

I'm pretty sure that the best way to write about a subject is to find an expert in that subject, who by definition, will probabably write about it from their point of view. I think this is pretty clear from reading articles such as Redshift which is a rather uncritical piece... no mention of "intrinsic redshift", nor "redshift quantisation", nor "non-cosmological redshift", as if their very mention were thought crimes.

I think the best way to clarify this issue is to provide some specific examples of where you think the article deviates from neutrality? --Iantresman 10:07, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Eric, I am hardly anonymous. My name is Chris Hillman and you can examine my geneology here.

You wrote actually quite a few people have worked for a long time to get this article into shape. I appreciate that, and the point of my proposal is that this work would certainly not go to waste. I do feel it was inappropriate to do it at WP however. I disagree with Iantresman's reading of WP policy. WP:NPOV dictates avoiding POV pushing. But to be maximally helpful to readers, encyclopedia articles should above all be readable, and in case of controversial topics discussed in a wiki, I think the best way of keeping an article on a controversial topic readable is to keep it short and to shove detailed discussion of the controversial points off onto personal webspages by linking to partisan websites. Actually, since at present AFAIK there is only one website which briefly critiques plasma cosmology, and several which argue in favor of it in great detail, it seems that any debating disadvantage from being, as it were, a minority party, is rather balanced out.

I have the impression that Joshua (Science Apologist?) offended you by editing an article you had worked hard on while your attention was elsewhere. To some extent that's the wiki way, and wiki practice favors resolution of disputes by negotiation. Edit wars are frowned upon. In any case, it seems to me that you also have something to gain by my proposal: you can avoid future grief regarding endless warring over the content of the present article.

Again, my proposal is to grind this down to stub, after you have saved all your work up to now, say by picking your favorite version from the history page, or even better, copying your favorite version to User:Elerner/Plasma cosmology and editing your preferred version in peace. I even volunteer to help you htmlify or latexify your article so that you can put it up at your own website in the form you desire.

On casual inspection, I couldn't find the alleged claim that Hawking "proves" that GR, without any other assumptions or observations, implies an expanding universe, but I would not agree with that as you stated it (bear in mind that I am not reading this in context). First, (need I really say this?) I would not argue that any physical theory trumps observation. Second, since I have read the book by Hawking & Ellis I urged you to obtain, I know that the singularity theorems, which I think you are implicitly referring to here, do have conditions which might not apply to every cosmological model. Maybe this will help persuade you that I have no intention of railroading you; I am hoping to find a compromise which will be agreeable to all. I believe that by far the simplest way to do that is to persuade you to take your detailed arguments to your personal website and let me rewrite the article in a shorter WP:NPOV form which attempts to fairly describe the controversial points but avoids detailed discussion. In fact, looking over the first few bars, it seems to me that one failing of the present article is that it fails to clearly point out that some claims made by plasma cosmology proponents are more controversial than others.

How about this?

I write in my user space a draft of my proposed replacement, with a link to the Ned Wright site and to your website, and perhaps a handful of the most authoritative and most relevant printed references. For background, I would probably cite a paper I imagine you might like, M. J. Disney, [The Case Against Cosmology], Gen. Rel. Grav.32 (2000): 1125.
You write in your user space a draft of an essay or whatever arguing your case, with as much detail and as many references as you want.
You examine my draft. If you agree that it offers a fair and honest outline of both noncontroversial and controversial claims from plasma cosmology, I have even volunteered to help you latexify your version so that you can move it to your website, whereupon I would replace the current version with my slenderized version and add a link to your essay. If not, you could negotiate changes with me on the talk page of my draft version until you are willing to accept my draft slenderized article.

I believe that once tempers cool, I can write a version you will not find terribly displeasing. That's why I am willing to run the risk that you will refuse to progress beyond step 3. Are you willing to at least try this? Again, please bear in mind that you would save endless arguing here, and your views would certainly not be censored since the slenderized WP article would prominently link to your essay with whatever citations and detail you wish to provide. FYI, I've experimented with a variety of methods to try to make WP more encyclopedia; most of them have not worked very well. Ian Tresman is right about one thing: WP does seem to be an expression of populist/libertarian ideals which tend to run counter to scholarly values, which are neccessarily (in effect if not in intent) conservative and elitist. But presumably Ian also would like to avoid endless and ultimately pointless arguing here at WP. These days I like to say less is more. For example, it more likely that the casual reader will read as far as the links section if the article is short and readable. I think most readers are likely to be annoyed by any POV pushing they spot, and confused by contradictory edits breaking up the flow of ideas.---CH 08:31, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I'm pretty sure that Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy dictates avoiding POV pushing of us editors. This is not the same as describing the point of view of a subject neutrally. The policy does say that "... significant points of view are presented". I think the section The neutral point of view summarises it quite nicely.

Perhaps the best compromise solution is (a) highlight a specific examples of a section of the current article on Plasma cosmology that does not conform to Neutral Point of View (b) Rewrite the one section --Iantresman 11:14, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I think the article is fine as it is--not perfect but OK. So your help is not needed. Have fun elsewhere.ByeElerner 06:13, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Ian, I don't understand the distinction you were trying to make.

But perhaps it doesn't matter, since Eric's rather huffy comments seem to express a poor opinion of my offer of assistance in resolving this content dispute. Since my offer would have depended upon his agreeing to give my proposal a try, I'll withdraw it. I guess I'll have to bow out of this discussion, since I feel Eric has more or less refused to accept me as a user who might have useful contributions to make here. It was never really worth the trouble I offered to take above, but I am very concerned by the implications for the future of WP of the kind of dispute we've seen here. Oh well, I tried.---CH 04:06, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I would like to thank you for your willingness to help. Mediating a dispute is a lot of work and usually thankless in the best of circumstances. If one side - Eric - is uncooperative, it is useless, so I think you are making the rational decision. But too bad for this article in particular and Wikipedia in general. --Art Carlson 10:12, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Cleaning up Joshua's mess

I re-instated again the early history of PC which traces to Aflven's pointing out the limitations of MHD. I put back in "big bang theory" since the theory itself relies on new physics, such as inflation and baryon non conservation to be even vaguely consistent with obervations. I replaced Lieu's interpretation of his own data in his own paper, while eliminating Joshua's unverifiable quote.

I also eliminated Joshua's unfactual description of the open letter on cosmology. A glance at the signers list will show that it can not be described as 'plasma cosmology advocates". Would that there were several hundred of those! But there are not.

I'll return to the GR reference next time I'm at the library. No doubt we will now have a series of reverts by Joshua.Elerner 03:14, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh yes, I also removed the refernce to "largest voids" since the reference given does not refer to them. And I changed "most astronmers" believe WMAP problems are due to foreground to "some astronomers" becauses there is no reference to a peer-reviewed poll of astronomers and the issue is clearly actively debated with lots of papers on both sides.Elerner 03:23, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Response to Eric's rationale and why I reinstated everything but one point:

- - I don't mind the early history including Alfven's ideas about the "limitations" of MHD, but the prose did not indicate this and rather seemed to indicate that MHD was somehow part of plasma cosmology. Since it is really separate I removed the prose, and will try to instate sentences that indicate a divergeance from Alfven's much more famous ideas.

The prose is quite clear that the later work came out of Alfven's clear recognition of the limitations of the MHD approach, which he had developed. Anyone who is literate can see that.EL

Too bad the prose is irrelevant. EL ignores my point again. --ScienceApologist 04:07, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

The prose is only irrelevant in your opinion. It seems perfectly relevant to a description of plasma cosmology to me. Please describe here for our benefit why you think it is irrelevant. Jon 14:15, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

The point is that we are writing according to Wikipedia:Summary style. There is no reason to include MHD here especially because pc advocates explicitly don't use it. --ScienceApologist 18:51, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

- - It's the Lambda-CDM model that relies on new physics. The Big Bang itself is strictly a GR-based expanding FLRW metric.

Nope, the Big bang includes inflation, which is new physics. Without inflation the Big Bang predicts a grossly anisotropic CBR because of the horizon problem and would be in gross contradiction to observations. Also the Big Bang requires baryon non-conservation, which is new physics. Otherwise nearly everything would have annihilated itself. EL

Nope, the Big bang need not include inflation. Besides expanded versions of Lambda-CDM include parameters for inflation as well. --ScienceApologist 04:07, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

- - The quote is totally verifiable as stated in WP:V.

Your quote refers to an entirely different paper by Lieu on a completely different subject. EL

Ostriker-Vishniak vs. Sunyaev-Zeldovich, touche. However, the gesture is later and the same: Lieu believes the Big Bang. --ScienceApologist 04:07, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

- - Many of the people on the list aren't even astronomers and some aren't scientists. The ones that we are interested with for this page are the plasma cosmology advocates.

Ridiculous. Read the list. An insignificant fraction have ever commented about plasma cosmology. Here are some of the institutions that signatories are associated with; Armenzano Observatory; Astronomical Institute, St. Petersburg State University; Danish Space Research Institute; Escola Municipal de Astrofísica, Brazil ; European Southern Observatory; Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics; High Altitude Observatory, NCAR ; Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica ; Max-Planck-Institute Fur Astrophysik; Observatoire de Lyon; Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden; Service d'Astrophysique, CEA; Space Research Institute, Russia; Special Astrophysical Observatory of RAS; Università di Bari ; Cambridge University; College de France; Cornell University; Indian Institute of Technology; Padua University; Los Alamos National Laboratory; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Jet Propulsion Laboratory--EL

Ridiculous snowballing. Many of the people who signed haven't ever taken an astronomy class in college -- the list is a meaningless charade. --ScienceApologist 04:07, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

- - The reference given does refer to voids of the order of magnitude of the largest.

Absolutely not true. Provide a quote. I read these references. --EL

Then you missed the fact that their voids were dozens of megaparsecs in length? --ScienceApologist 04:07, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

- - The foreground arguments regarding low-ls seem to have the preponderance of papers in the community. There are astonishingly few papers written arguing that this represents a problem for vanilla banana. I often get the impression that Eric is a selective reader of the journals. Not surprising, but this kind of advocacy shouldn't be tolerated as an editorial excuse.

Prove it. Count the papers. There are tons that say the non-Gaussianity is in the real data and can't be MW contamination. Also, for your sentence to be true, it would have to be the opinion of "most astronomers" not most people who have published papers in the field. But it is not true in either case. --EL

Well, of the last 15 or so I read on astro-ph in the last year, I can recall less than half making a claim that the CMB is a local phenomenon because of this. --ScienceApologist 04:07, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Therefore, I reverted since Eric has made some rather underhanded reverts as per his usual "game-playing". Please address the issues I outlined above rather than reverting from the hip. Talking about these things is always better than edit warring.:--ScienceApologist 14:50, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

For the above reasons, I have reverted all of Joshua's reverts.Elerner 05:54, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

For the above reasons I have reverted EL's POV-pushing. He should really go back and get a graduate degree, don't you think? --ScienceApologist 04:07, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot guys, I put in a lot of work and you just come along an delete it. If you had a reason then I'd say good luck. I don't know who is doing the writing, but it sounds a lot like a big bang theorist who is playing games with the oppositions game plan. A big bang theorist has no right, talking ethics, to mess with plasma. First of all Plasma is not a gas, It is made of ions and electrons, not just electrons, and is a fourth sate of matter along with gases, liquids and solids. Whoever is doing the writing here is obviously trying to sabatage plasma theory. Why don't you go play with the big bang gang where you come from? I'll tell you why, because the evidence is mounting everyday that the big bang is not correct, that black holes are impossible, that redshift is quantized, and not indicative of Expansion, and so obvious if one looks, that matter is streaming OUT from the center of Galaxies. They are scared to death but the truth will out. Tommysun 05:12, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments and edits, Tommysun. I did make some small edits on your definition of plasma. Plasma can, and often does also contain neutral atoms, so it does not always consist of ions and electrons exclusively. In fact a small number of ions and electrons, with mostly neutrals, can still produce a plasma. The main thing is that it is conductive.

Also, plasma formation theories do not mainly have outward flows of mater. That is more like Chip Arp's matter-creation theories.Elerner 05:34, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

POV pushing is what User:Tommysun's edits are best described as. Increasingly, so are EL's. Having already driven off another attempt at compromise (see my talk page) we're just going to have to let them understand that their pompous editting is in violation of Wikipedia policy. --ScienceApologist 18:54, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

ScienceApologist (joshie) has fuq'ed this page up ... it's too bad, sign that wikipedia POV pushers like him cannot keep a NPOV. J. D. Redding

Carefuly, Reddi, you'll end up in a third round of arbitration. --13:18, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I think you fellows are reading more into this POV than should be there. What is wrong about writing about plasma cosmology from the point of view of plasma cosmology? When I, as a reader, which is what WP is all about, pull up a page on a subject, I want to know about that subject from the POV of those involved in the subject. If I am presented with a POV of the opposition then I have the feeling that I have been duped. When I looked at this page, immediately I sensed to was written from the POV of the standard theory, by someone whose first language is not english, and is, in part, factually incorrect. Where is the source that states plasma is a gas? That electrons move in plasma?? And saying that plasma is freely moving electrons-separated from atoms is a description of electricity. And how come quantized redshift is not to be found in this article? And how come Hubble's own quotes about his to-the-death refusal to accept expansion as an explanation for the redshift are being repeatedly deleted out? And since when did majority rule become the basis of scientific research? Or worse, science reporting? As a reader, I take the ommission of Hubbles POV, and in spite of this,the mainstream subsequent "assumption" that redshift does show expansion, deceiving, and when done by a scientist outright criminal theft of knowledge. I have read a hundred times that Hubble proved redshift means expansion, but there is no proof of expansion, just assumptions. Assumptions are good for mathematics, but they make an ass out of u and me... when taken too literally.

SA, in my view, you are obviously anti-plasma, and your editing serves only to confuse the issue. I think that you are a big bang ganger sent here to insure plasma knowledge does not get understood. Is that true? Why would they do that? Maybe because they are scared. Scared because the evidence is mounting up, and all they can do is delete it whenever they can. That may work for a while, but it keeps mounting up.

All of you, plasma is not a theory, it is not in competition with gravity, it is not a POV, it is not conjecture, plasma is a fact of life just like liquid is a fact of life. Plasma will not replace gravity. Nor does gravity exclude plasma. It is unfortunate that the equations of gravity do not take plasma, and electromagnetic fields, into account. Nevertheless this omission does not constitute scientific evidence that plasma and EMF are irrelevant.

Not to change the subject, but there are two ways the motions of a galaxy can be interpreted. One way, the standard way, is that matter flows inward toward the center of a galaxy. The other way is that matter flows outward from a galaxy. So what do we observe? According to the papers I read, astronomers observe great outflows of matter/energy. To explain this, theorists "assume" a black hole is responsible for the outflow. They haven't seen a black hole, but now whenever they see great outpourings of matter they claim they found a black hole. Sorry, this reader is not that dumb. Tommysun 04:19, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

As usual I leave the scientific questions to the scientists. However, you didn't mention that people who think plasma cosmology is malarky should get any say at all. Wikipedia policy clearly requires both sides be represented. The issue is how much say each side should get. Oh, and next time you criticize someone's English, it would be wise to capitalize that word. Art LaPella 05:11, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I think this issue is at the heart of all the "problems", and has not be resolved to my satsifaction, despite my trying to get it clarified for the last six months from various sources.

There is no doubt, that in general articles, that Neutral Point of View requires all sides to be presented. For example, I would expect an article on Physical cosmology to be "representing views fairly and without bias."[10]. Except that it doesn't. All "non-standard" views are extracated, and moved into an article called "Non-standard cosmology". Likewise in the Redshift article, all mention of "Intrinsic redshift", "Non-cosmological redshift", "Redshift quantization" are extracted, with editors effectively denying their existence of these phrases (although they seem to be very familiar with them, themselves)

However, when an article describes a SPECIFIC point of view, we get to a grey area. An article on politics would cover Democracy, Communism, Dictatorships perhaps. But would an article on Communism include the Democratic point of view, and vice versa? Then we end up with two similar articles comparing Communism to Democracy?

I would argue that an article on "Standard cosmology" is written mainly from its point of view, and likewise, an article on "Non-standard cosmology" would be written from its point of view. That is not to say that we don't mention other points of view, but we don't turn both articles into a debate.

Wiki policy does mention that while an "... article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints, in proportion to the prominence of each. [..] None of this, however, is to say that tiny-minority views cannot receive as much attention as we can possibly give them on pages specifically devoted to those views. There is no size limit to Wikipedia" (my emphasis) --Iantresman 10:25, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Ian, I see this suggestion as a direct controvening of Wikipedia policy. It would be a major cultural shift in the goal and presentation of this encyclopedia to enact your suggestion. Part of giving tiny minority views attention is offering a description of them in NPOV manner, that is to say we do not exclude criticism. --ScienceApologist 13:20, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

So show me one critical statement in the Redshift article? Where is the neutral description of "Intrinsic redshift" or "Non-cosmological redhsift"? Where is the mention of Arp, someone who just about every astronomer has heard of in relation to redshifts? I see this as a direct controvening of Wikipedia policy. And that's the problem, we have no clarification of Wiki NPOV policy, except conflicting statements --Iantresman 13:53, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Discuss redshift at Talk:Redshift. --ScienceApologist 14:56, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Don't duck the question, answer it. It's only rhetorically about the Redshift article, as you know full well. Jon 10:29, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

SA, in my view, you are obviously anti-plasma : User:Tommysun, in my view you are obviously an incompetent editor who knows very little about the subjects on which you are trying to inject a POV based not on verifiable fact or Wikipedia style guide or policies but on your own prejudices. No one here is "anti-plasma". No one here denies plasma exists. You seem to have some warped view over what exactly the controversy is, but I welcome you to explain your edits rather than heaading off on such tangents. By the way, you should keep your paranoid conspiracies regarding the Big Bang gang to yourself. It makes you sound a bit fanatical. --ScienceApologist 13:15, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Tommysun, I request that you re-enter your edits on my version to eliminate SA's nonsense. But please, plasma cosmology does not state overall matter flows are outwards from galaxies. There are such flows along the jet, but the amount of mass is limited.Elerner 18:46, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi Eric, haven't found out how to find your version yet. When I do, I will add my edits. I know that "plasma cosmology" in general does not regard matter flowing outward, but the astronomers pictures show matter atreaming outward. Asimov wrote that Oort calculated outflow from a galaxy to be about one solar mass per year. Asimov says this would mean that the galaxy would no longer be around after many billions of years, so he proposed at that time that a cyclic mechanism was at work. Plasma provides a mechanism for moving matter outward that is not invisible. Tommysun 16:31, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

The only nonsense I see here is the fact that Eric continues to refuse to engage in meaningful discussion. --ScienceApologist 18:49, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Yo, it's not the discussion that is the problem as I see it, it's that you are changing what Eric is saying, and that is rude if not illlegal and I don't blame him one bit for being frustrated. It would not matter much if you knew what you were talking about, but the way you talk is is as if you are anti-plasma. You are hurting the cause of plasma more than any big bang ganger could do.

So here we go...I contend that plasma is not a gas. It is well known that plasma is a state of matter such as solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. It is not correct to classify plasma within the catagory of gases. It is also very misleading and the unsuspecting reader may take this to be true. Here is how Wilipedia defines plasma of the kind we are talking about -- "Plasmas are the most common phase of matter. The entire visible universe outside the solar system is plasma: all we can see are stars. Since the space between the stars is filled with a plasma, although a very sparse one (see interstellar- and intergalactic medium), essentially the entire volume of the universe is plasma (see astrophysical plasmas). In the solar system, the planet Jupiter accounts for most of the non-plasma, only about 0.1% of the mass and 10−15 of the volume within the orbit of Pluto. Alfvén also noted that due to their electric charge, very small grains also behave as ions and form part of a plasma (see dusty plasmas"

So, this would scare the hell out of any standard theorists, beause it is saying that almost everything is made of what they have no inkling about.

Next, your article gives the reader the impression that "astronomers" do not accept non-standard theories. Think about this, isn't this significant? But it is not true.

Big Bang Theory Busted By 33 Top Scientists 5-27-4

"Our ideas about the history of the universe are dominated by big bang theory. But its dominance rests more on funding decisions than on the scientific method, according to Eric J Lerner, mathematician Michael Ibison of Earthtech.org, and dozens of other scientists from around the world. An Open Letter to the Scientific Community Cosmology Statement.org (Published in New Scientist, May 22-28 issue, 2004, p. 20)

The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed-- inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples. Without them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory.

In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, RAISE SERIOUS QUESTIONS ABOUT THE VALIDITY OF THE UNDERLYING THEORY."

I'm sure you are well aware of this, you (SA) choose to pull the comment about "they get all the money because they run the show" and turn it around to say that "almost all funding is directed toward standard theories" Have you read Thomas Kuhn Yet? In short paradigmic influences determines what the referee's will allow.

Now, the significant problem in all cosmologies is redshift. And you want to delete that and go discuss it elsewhere? Brilliant! The one fact that is going to bring down the standard theory and you want to ignore it. Tell me you aren't a big banger, you haven't ya know. I'm going to give you a brief summary of the research

Let's start with one of the first papers ---

W. G. Tifft Steward Observatory University of Arizona Tucson, Arizona 85721 Abstract. "The Lehto-Ti t redshift quantization model is used to predict the redshift distribution for certain classes of quasars, and for galaxies in the neighborhood of z = 0:5. In the Lehto-Ti t model the redshift is presumed to arise from time dependent decay from an origin at the Planck scale; the decay process is a form of period doubling. Looking back in time reveals earlier stages of the process where redshifts should correspond to redictable fractions of the speed of light. Quasar redshift peaks are shown to correspond to the earliest simple fractions of c as predicted by the model. The sharp peaks present in deep eld galaxy redshifts surveys are then shown to correspond to later stages in such a decay process. Highly discordant redshift associations are expected to occur and shown to be present in the deep eld surveys. Peaks in redshift distributions appear to represent the spectrum of possible states at various stage of the decay process rather than physical structures. 1. Introduction Modern cosmology presumes to understand the cosmic redshift as a simple continuous Doppler-like effect caused by expansion of the Universe. In fact there is considerable evidence indicating that the redshift consists of, or is dominated by, an unexplained effect intrinsic to galaxies and quasars. In this paper we discuss and relate three lines of such evidence including evidence for characteristic peaks in the redshift distribution of quasars, the issue of associations between objects with widely discordant redshifts, and redshift quantization associated with normal galaxies." More at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/astr/2003/00000285/00000002/05138613

Then the confirmation follows----

Further Evidence for Quantized Intrinsic Redshifts in Galaxies: Is the Great Attractor a Myth?

M.B. Bell1 and S.P. Comeau1 ABSTRACT "Evidence was presented recently suggesting that the Fundamental Plane (FP) clusters studied in the Hubble Key Project may contain quantized intrinsic redshift components that are related to those reported by Tifft. Here we report the results of a similar analysis using 55 spiral (Sc and Sb) galaxies, and 36 Type Ia supernovae (SnIa) galaxies. We find that even when many more objects are included in the sample there is still clear evidence that the same quantized intrinsic redshifts are present and superimposed on the Hubble flow. We find Hubble constants of Ho = 60.0 and 57.5 km s-1 Mpc-1 for the Sc and Sb galaxies respectively. For the SnIa galaxies we find Ho = 58. These values are considerably lower than the value of Ho=72 reported by the Hubble Key Project, but are good in agreement with the value Ho = 60 found for intermediate redshifts using the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect. Evidence is also presented that suggests that the presence of unaccounted for intrinsic redshifts may have led us incorrectly to the conclusion that a "great attractor" is needed to explain the velocity data. The 91 galaxies examined here also offer new, independent confirmations of the importance of the redshift increment zf = 0.62."

more at http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0305112

And then another confirmation----

A statistical evaluation of anomalous redshift claims

Author: Napier W.M.1 Source: Astrophysics and Space Science, 2003, vol. 285, no. 2, pp. 419-427(9) Publisher: Kluwer Academic Publishers Abstract: "Claims that ordinary spiral galaxies and some classes of QSO show periodicity in their redshift distributions are investigated using recent high-precision data and rigorous statistical procedures. The claims are broadly upheld. The periodicites are strong and easily seen by eye in the datasets. Observational, reduction or statistical artefacts do not seem capable of accounting for them."

So, is that enough to convince you that redshift quantization and its implications should be mentioned on these pages? Deleting it would be incompetant editorship , wouldn't you say?

Dn't know where I got this from, but does it matter?

"This is true regardless of which hypothesis is more nearly correct, since ignoring useful, viable hypotheses or discordant data teaches unscientific behavior."

Now, back to redshift. Again your reearch on alternative redshift explanations is lacking, and for an editor, inadequate at least. You see, the people who work with light have something interesting to say http://laserstars.org/summary.html

(I am including this as information, not placing it on the entry page)

Emission line stars that emit laser light

Problem : Quasar Redshift

"When the spectrum of the star-like object 3C 273 was first observed in 1963, it was found to have one strong emission line and one medium/weak strength line. The problem was, however, that these lines were at wavelengths where no strong lines were expected from laboratory spectra. It has been a traditional assumption in astronomy that the intensities of lines in astronomical sources will be similar to those in the laboratory under ordinary excitation conditions. Schmidt assumed that these two lines were redshifted hydrogen-a and hydrogen-ß lines, and obtained a redshift of 0.157. Subsequently, when other such objects with broad emission lines were discovered (3C 48, 3C 191 etc) they were also labelled quasars and the spectra were similarly interpreted on the redshift hypothesis. In conjunction with Hubble's law it meant that quasars were very distant objects. This in turn led to the well known difficulties concerning their energy generation mechanism, optical variability, lack of correlation in the redshift-magnitude diagram, superluminal motion etc.

Solution : Laser Action

Theoretical and experimental investigations in physics in the next decade showed that when a high temperature plasma rapidly expands (for example, in vacuum) the resulting cooling leads to a population inversion in the lower levels of the atom, and this can lead to laser action. Also, it is well known that in certain types of stars (Wolf-Rayet, P Cygni); matter is ejected more or less continuously. This led Varshni to propose the following realistic model of a quasar: A quasar is a star in which the surface plasma is undergoing rapid radial expansion giving rise to population inversion and laser action in some of the atomic species. The assumption of the ejection of matter from quasars at high speed is supported from the fact that the widths of emission spectral lines observed in quasars are typically of the order of 2000 - 4000 km/sec. The ejected matter can form a nebulosity around the quasar or dissipate into space, depending on the rate of mass loss, how long the ejection has been going, the surroundings of the quasar etc. Laser action is enhanced if the hot plasma ploughs into this colder gas. Thus no redshifts are required to explain the strong emission lines. This model is called the plasma-laser star (PLAST) model."

I suppose you would call that a violation fo POV. Well, I also have this personal correspondance which verifies the above,

"People working with lasers study a lot of light matter interactions, in particular "parametric effects" which are coherent (that is the wave surfaces remain clean, no blurring of the images) and do not change permanently the state of the matter (the refraction is the simplest parametric interaction; the other require several beams). Obtaining these effects (frequency multiplication, frequency combinations...) requires generally complicated experiments, for instance getting the same wavelengths for two frequencies by the use of a crystal. But simple experiments are obtained using "ultrashort light pulses". This means usually femtosecond pulses, but the definition of ultrashort pulses given by G. L. Lamb Jr is "shorter than all relevant time constants", so that ordinary incoherent light may be considered as made of ultrashort pulses if the "relevant time constants" are longer than the time-incoherence of ordinary light, some nanoseconds. This requires a low pressure gas, and a resonance whose period is larger than some nanoseconds, that is a frequency of the order of 100 MHz. It is very difficult to find such a resonance in a well polulated state of a molecule. In astrophysics, it seems that only neutral atomic hydrogen in states 2S and 2P (say H*) works.

Where the physico-chemical conditions allow the presence of H* on the path of the light, there are anomalous frequency shifts; these conditions are:

i) Temperature T > 100 000 K and sufficient pressure. Works close to the kernel of the quasars.

ii) T > 10 000 K and Lyman alpha pumping to the 2P state. It is the most common case : works close to the quasars (very red objects, Arp's observations ... Explains the Lyman forest of the quasars. Who remarked that the fundamental periodicity 0.062 is found in the spectrum of hydrogen, the redshifts which puts the Ly beta and gamma lines to the alpha being 3*0062 and 4*0.062 respectively ?

iii) Cooling of a plasma of hydrogen (for instance solar wind : explains the "anomalous acceleration" of the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes by a transfer of energy from the solar light to the microwaves. Explains that the anisotropy of the "CMB" is bound to the ecliptic)

iv) Raman pumping in the symbiotic stars."

So, Arp is right. There are galaxies at the same place with different redshifts. All ya need is one Halton!

Have you looked into the CMBR? Going to talk about that too when I get around to it. Seems like the big bang prediction was way off but the generic prediction was right on, and well before Gamow

Here is one of the latest papers...

History of 2.7 K Temperature Prior to Penzias and Wilson(1) André Koch Torres Assis* & Marcos Cesar Danhoni Neves**· · Instituto de Física "Gleb Wataghin", Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 13083-970, Campinas-SP, Brasil, e-mail: assis@ifi.unicamp.br

- Departamento de Física, Universidade Estadual de Maringá, Av. Colombo, 5790, 87020-900, Maringá-PR, Brasil, e-mail: macedane@yahoo.com

"We present the history of estimates of the temperature of intergalactic space. We begin with the works of Guillaume and Eddington on the temperature of interstellar space due to starlight belonging to our Milky Way galaxy. Then we discuss works relating to cosmic radiation, concentrating on Regener and Nernst. We also discuss Finlay-Freundlich's and Max Born's important research on this topic. Finally, we present the work of Gamow and collaborators. We show that the models based on an Universe in dynamical equilibrium without expansion predicted the 2.7 K temperature prior to and better than models based on the Big Bang. PACS: 98.70.Vc Background radiations 98.80.-k Cosmology 98.80Bp Origin and formation of the Universe Key Words: Cosmic background radiation, temperature of intergalactic space, blackblody radiation 1. 2. Introduction 3. In 1965 Penzias and Wilson discovered the Cosmic Background Radiation (CBR) utilizing a horn reflector antenna built to study radio astronomy (Penzias and Wilson 1965). They found a temperature of 3.5± 1.0 K observing background radiation at 7.3 cm wavelength. This was soon interpreted as a relic of the hot Big Bang with a blackbody spectrum (Dicke et al. 1965). The finding was considered a proof of the standard cosmological model of the Universe based on the expansion on the Universe (the Big Bang), which had predicted this temperature with the works of Gamow and collaborators.

In this paper we show that other models of a Universe in dynamical equilibrium without expansion had predicted this temperature prior to Gamow. Moreover, we show that Gamow's own predictions were worse than these previous ones. " more at http://www.dfi.uem.br/~macedane/history_of_2.7k.html

Actually there are numerous papers giving reasons for the CMBR, other than a remnant of a past event.

Now, back to your "astronomers do not accept plasma..." I have this reference --- Big Bang Theory Busted By 33 Top Scientists 5-27-4

Our ideas about the history of the universe are dominated by big bang theory. But its dominance rests more on funding decisions than on the scientific method, according to Eric J Lerner, mathematician Michael Ibison of Earthtech.org, and dozens of other scientists from around the world. An Open Letter to the Scientific Community Cosmology Statement.org (Published in New Scientist, May 22-28 issue, 2004, p. 20)

The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed-- inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples. Without them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory.

In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, RAISE SERIOUS QUESTIONS ABOUT THE VALIDITY OF THE UNDERLYING THEORY."

Do you want a list of those scientists? Maybe yo can find some who don't know what they are talking about.

Now, I know black holes are not mentioned, but they should be because plasma cosmology has a different take on it. But to cut to the chase, here's the paper

http://xxx.arxiv.org/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0503/0503200.pdf

It reads: "Event horizons and closed time-like curves cannot exist in the real world for the simple reason that they are inconsistent with quantum mechanics. Following ideas originated by Robert Laughlin, Pawel Mazur, Emil Mottola, David Santiago, and the speaker it is now possible to describe in some detail what happens physically when one approaches and crosses a region of space-time where classical general relativity predicts there should be an infinite red shift surface. This quantum critical physics provides a new perspective on a variety of enigmatic astrophysical phenomena including supernovae explosions, gamma ray bursts, positron emission, and dark matter., 1. INTRODUCTION The picture of gravitational collapse provided by classical general relativity cannot be physically correct because it conflicts with ordinary quantum mechanics."

You see, "most cosmologists" are trying to explain the huge amounts of matter moving outward in terms of matter moving inward. And this is the big difference between the big bang standard theory and what I call the generic theory. The big bang theory has matter moving inward toward the center of a galaxy. The dominant force is gravitation. Whereas the other opposing view is that matter is moving outward, the dominant force is electromagneticdynamics.

OK, I am not the only one with this view. Here's a reference of historical interest ---

"In the late 1950’s when the prestigious Armenian astronomer, Viktor Ambarzumian was president of the International Astronomical Union he said that just looking at pictures convinced him that new galaxies were ejected out of old. Even now astronomers refuse to discuss it, saying that big galaxies cannot come out of other big galaxies".

Sorry I don't have the source but I can tell you how to find it...

Maybe Arp is right, this is from his website ---

"But to get down to the fundamental assumptions involved, I remember an Astrophysics lunch at Cal Tech about 30 years ago. Stephen Hawking sat across the table from several of us who were discussing observations of ejection of new galaxies from the compact nuclei of active galaxies. Nothing of this ever crept into Hawking’s assumptions about Black Holes. Only very recently has he abandoned his dictum that nothing comes out of Black Holes and famously now concedes that a ”little bit” does come out. Meanwhile, in the many intervening years, stunning new evidence has emerged on the White Hole propensities of nature. Its only failure I can see is not getting into the press releases.

Halton Arp Max-Planck-Institut fuer Astrophysik 85741 Garching Germany

Keep in mind that a black hole is just a conjecture required to explain outflowing matter which is all they see.

Now, the question is matter moving i or is matter moving out? Because the big bang says that all matter was created at the beginnning, that assumption leads to the conclusion that galaxies are collecting this matter and thus must be moving matter inward. But observations show matter is moving outward... well the way they explain it is that they cannot think of any mechanism that would move matter outward so they hypothesize a black hole that is sucking matter in, the excess forced out by radiation at the accretion disk. The black hole concept is an assumption based on inadequate knowledge

Here's a reference -- PLASMA COSMOLOGY Technical overview II Dr Charles Bruce FIEE, FIP, FRAS

Dr Charles Bruce was an expert in high voltage electrical engineering and a Fellow of The Royal Astronomical Society. In the 1940s he made a remarkable proposal that is still ignored by mainstream astronomy to this day. His proposal supports the electrodynamic paradigm.

Bruce identified cosmic jets, solar flares, magnetic fields and high temperatures in space as electrical discharge phenomena.

"And even if one regards the electric fields as merely another postulate, it has the great advantage that it is the one postulate which, in my view, renders all the others unnecessary." C. E. R Bruce, Electric Fields in Space, Penguin Science, 1968

So, your behavoir Scientific Apologist, had better not be scientific, because if you are what science has come to, then you are no different from any run of the mill religion. And you are one of the high priests...

Eric, how can I combine my edits with yours so that I can revert the whole section without having to rewrite the article every evening?

And what would you think about joining with me in a new cosmology called Generic cosmology which would be a organized system of SELECTED alternative concepts gathered together as a whole in one place. Just like gravity doesn't explain everything, plasma doesn't explain everything. (I have papers saying that gravity is a kind of electromagnetic field which would mean that gravity is an aspect of plasma...)For example, there are situations in which gravity is in fact the dominant force, even in a 99.9% plasma environment.

PS. Everyone is writing that plasma is a gas. Even NASA. This is poor writing, techically incorrect and very misleading. There may very well be neutral atoms in plasma flow, just like there is dust in air and ice in water, but that is no justification for calling liquid a solid. If anything it would be better called a plasma slurry.

So here we go again...

I can't explain all of ScienceApologist's reverts (in a way he would like), but I know it isn't because he hasn't heard this stuff before. After months of this debate, most of the speech above sounds awfully familiar. You might have mentioned that Wikipedia is intended to report prevailing opinions, not to decide the truth for ourselves, and most astronomers really do oppose non-standard cosmology (if they didn't, it would therefore become standard cosmology). Art LaPella 05:07, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Whoa. –Joke 05:29, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh God. If you need me I'm in the pub getting drunk... Jon 10:13, 9 March 2006 (UTC) There was a time I would have gone through and responded to everything point by point, but I don't think that is necessary. You need to read the archives both here, at nonstandard cosmologies and at Big Bang. After you've read those archives and have seen that all of your points have been addressed then we can talk. What's more, many of your "sources" are original research coming from "personal communication", etc. That is forbidden here at Wikipedia. --ScienceApologist 13:39, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Cleaning up Joshua's mess

I re-instated again the early history of PC which traces to Aflven's pointing out the limitations of MHD. I put back in "big bang theory" since the theory itself relies on new physics, such as inflation and baryon non conservation to be even vaguely consistent with obervations. I replaced Lieu's interpretation of his own data in his own paper, while eliminating Joshua's unverifiable quote.

I also eliminated Joshua's unfactual description of the open letter on cosmology. A glance at the signers list will show that it can not be described as 'plasma cosmology advocates". Would that there were several hundred of those! But there are not.

I'll return to the GR reference next time I'm at the library. No doubt we will now have a series of reverts by Joshua.Elerner 03:14, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh yes, I also removed the refernce to "largest voids" since the reference given does not refer to them. And I changed "most astronmers" believe WMAP problems are due to foreground to "some astronomers" becauses there is no reference to a peer-reviewed poll of astronomers and the issue is clearly actively debated with lots of papers on both sides.Elerner 03:23, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Response to Eric's rationale and why I reinstated everything but one point:

- - I don't mind the early history including Alfven's ideas about the "limitations" of MHD, but the prose did not indicate this and rather seemed to indicate that MHD was somehow part of plasma cosmology. Since it is really separate I removed the prose, and will try to instate sentences that indicate a divergeance from Alfven's much more famous ideas.

The prose is quite clear that the later work came out of Alfven's clear recognition of the limitations of the MHD approach, which he had developed. Anyone who is literate can see that.EL

Too bad the prose is irrelevant. EL ignores my point again. --ScienceApologist 04:07, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

The prose is only irrelevant in your opinion. It seems perfectly relevant to a description of plasma cosmology to me. Please describe here for our benefit why you think it is irrelevant. Jon 14:15, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

The point is that we are writing according to Wikipedia:Summary style. There is no reason to include MHD here especially because pc advocates explicitly don't use it. --ScienceApologist 18:51, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

- - It's the Lambda-CDM model that relies on new physics. The Big Bang itself is strictly a GR-based expanding FLRW metric.

Nope, the Big bang includes inflation, which is new physics. Without inflation the Big Bang predicts a grossly anisotropic CBR because of the horizon problem and would be in gross contradiction to observations. Also the Big Bang requires baryon non-conservation, which is new physics. Otherwise nearly everything would have annihilated itself. EL

Nope, the Big bang need not include inflation. Besides expanded versions of Lambda-CDM include parameters for inflation as well. --ScienceApologist 04:07, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

- - The quote is totally verifiable as stated in WP:V.

Your quote refers to an entirely different paper by Lieu on a completely different subject. EL

Ostriker-Vishniak vs. Sunyaev-Zeldovich, touche. However, the gesture is later and the same: Lieu believes the Big Bang. --ScienceApologist 04:07, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

- - Many of the people on the list aren't even astronomers and some aren't scientists. The ones that we are interested with for this page are the plasma cosmology advocates.

Ridiculous. Read the list. An insignificant fraction have ever commented about plasma cosmology. Here are some of the institutions that signatories are associated with; Armenzano Observatory; Astronomical Institute, St. Petersburg State University; Danish Space Research Institute; Escola Municipal de Astrofísica, Brazil ; European Southern Observatory; Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics; High Altitude Observatory, NCAR ; Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica ; Max-Planck-Institute Fur Astrophysik; Observatoire de Lyon; Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden; Service d'Astrophysique, CEA; Space Research Institute, Russia; Special Astrophysical Observatory of RAS; Università di Bari ; Cambridge University; College de France; Cornell University; Indian Institute of Technology; Padua University; Los Alamos National Laboratory; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Jet Propulsion Laboratory--EL

Ridiculous snowballing. Many of the people who signed haven't ever taken an astronomy class in college -- the list is a meaningless charade. --ScienceApologist 04:07, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

- - The reference given does refer to voids of the order of magnitude of the largest.

Absolutely not true. Provide a quote. I read these references. --EL

Then you missed the fact that their voids were dozens of megaparsecs in length? --ScienceApologist 04:07, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

- - The foreground arguments regarding low-ls seem to have the preponderance of papers in the community. There are astonishingly few papers written arguing that this represents a problem for vanilla banana. I often get the impression that Eric is a selective reader of the journals. Not surprising, but this kind of advocacy shouldn't be tolerated as an editorial excuse.