That the universe has no end and no beginning and we know extremely little about it.
Immanuel Velikovsky, scientist or twit?
- Thread starter #juan
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Extremely little eh. On one level I feel that's right and on another I feel it's wrong. I think it has to do with the word know. Ya know what I mean?
Fair enough.
Is that what you mean by getting back to me on this? You ignore all the scientific evidence and arguments, fasten on one comparison made about the thought processes and style of argument of creationists and fringe scientists, then write an ad hominem attack based on that? Is that it? And you can say "us scientists" to Les as if you were one of them? You don't think like one, you don't write like one, and I don't believe you are one. You've previously referred to working with wires and resistors and whatnot; I think at most you're a technician, not a scientist.
Here's a clue Beave. If the Velikovskians and the Electric Universe theorists want to be taken seriously as scientists, they have to produce detailed, specific, quantitative analyses of their claims. They have not done so, I've been unable to find anything like that, not even on Donald Scott's Electric Sun web site, and as a Ph.D in electrical engineering he certainly should be able to do that. On the Birkeland current that supposedly powers the sun, for instance, what's its amperage, how much power does it carry, what is the size of the magnetic field it generates, what is the source of the EMF that drives it, what keeps it stable in the absence of a guiding wire against the well-known pinch and sausage and layering instabilities in plasma currents... And you accuse me of avoiding the issues.
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With respect to the big bang and the derivied nonsence invented to support the fantasy there is no scientific evidence to avoid Dexter. If in fact there was evidence of the hands on type you would already have produced it.
You display an adherance to some invisable qualifying medium, dark no doubt,that allows you to determine who is and who is not a good scientist thus far seemingly based solely on who believes the gospel of the big bang. Every question you listed above has been answered and answered for the most part many years ago whereas not the simplist piece of empherical evidence has been presented in support of black holes or dark matter.
Hot of the Press
The Weakening Gravity-Dominated Cosmos Theory
Jan 21, 2009
Neutron stars and their rapidly spinning pulsar manifestations are among the most outlandish creations bogging down modern astrophysics.
Over the forty years since the spinning neutron star model has been proposed for pulsars, the astrophysics community has been regularly forced to update the rotational speed limit and has met with a long list of “surprises” in new observations. There have been a number of issues:
* pulsars spinning faster than theoretically believed possible (XTE J1739-285 at 1122 Hz)
* pulsars spinning more slowly than theoretically predicted (PSR J2144-3933, once every 8.5s)
* pulsars with too much mass, in the wrong orbit, and with the wrong binary companion (J1903+0327)
All these observations were contrary to predictions but have not been credited as falsifying the accepted theory of pulsars. However, some of the most important predictions with neutron stars and pulsars concern their role as gravitational wave generators (as predicted by the General Theory of Relativity).
Indeed, millisecond pulsars (whose theoretical upper speed limit of ~750Hz is supposedly throttled by the gravitational waves they generate) are significant gravitational wave generators. Luckily, the $400M LIGO installation is built to measure just such gravitational waves from pulsars and neutron stars (not to mention black hole collisions).
So if inspiralling neutron stars, or millisecond neutron stars, do not generate gravitational waves, either Zwicky and Baade’s vision of neutron stars is wrong or Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity is incorrect, or both are wrong.
The Weakening Gravity-Dominated Cosmos Theory
Jan 21, 2009
Neutron stars and their rapidly spinning pulsar manifestations are among the most outlandish creations bogging down modern astrophysics.
Over the forty years since the spinning neutron star model has been proposed for pulsars, the astrophysics community has been regularly forced to update the rotational speed limit and has met with a long list of “surprises” in new observations. There have been a number of issues:
* pulsars spinning faster than theoretically believed possible (XTE J1739-285 at 1122 Hz)
* pulsars spinning more slowly than theoretically predicted (PSR J2144-3933, once every 8.5s)
* pulsars with too much mass, in the wrong orbit, and with the wrong binary companion (J1903+0327)
All these observations were contrary to predictions but have not been credited as falsifying the accepted theory of pulsars. However, some of the most important predictions with neutron stars and pulsars concern their role as gravitational wave generators (as predicted by the General Theory of Relativity).
Indeed, millisecond pulsars (whose theoretical upper speed limit of ~750Hz is supposedly throttled by the gravitational waves they generate) are significant gravitational wave generators. Luckily, the $400M LIGO installation is built to measure just such gravitational waves from pulsars and neutron stars (not to mention black hole collisions).
So if inspiralling neutron stars, or millisecond neutron stars, do not generate gravitational waves, either Zwicky and Baade’s vision of neutron stars is wrong or Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity is incorrect, or both are wrong.
Really? You haven't pointed me to them, despite being asked repeatedly, and I haven't been able to find them. The only calculation related to them that I've been able to find clearly demonstrates, using nothing more difficult than second year EM theory, that an electric current cannot possibly be what powers the sun. All I find at the sites you point me to are post hoc rationalizations, qualitative claims, a sneering condescension towards the scientific consensus, and an element of paranoia over their ideas being suppressed. That's not the way to win a scientific argument.
At this point I will say that my characterization of Velikovsky as a twit was a bit harsh. I will say that Velikovsky was not nearly the great scientist as he imagined himself to be. He considered himself to be kind of compatriot of Einstein. He was, but only because he and Einstein were roughly the same age. Any similarity ends there. Velikovsky went public with his incredible story of Jupiter spitting out Venus and Venus's alleged close encounters with both Earth and Mars even though it went against every atom of cosmological thinking at the time. It has been said that Velikovsky made a few correct predictions for the wrong reasons. In my mind this does not make him right. He richly reserved a swift kick in the ass but alas, he has been dead for twenty eight years........Let him rest in peace///
I haven't pointed you to them? I think I know better, no I know I know better how to win a scientific debate, we at the plasma end of it would simply boil some water electricly and enjoy several million cups of tea while you lot fumbled about with calculators and runic scribblings producing absolutly nothing but excuses faiery stories and hot air. Scientific consensus! What in hell good is that when it's based on a completely incomprehensible unproductive theroy that's been demonstrated several thousand times to be completely nonpredictive.
Once you read a bit about the electric universe the conventional stuff is a really good laugh, especially the way they move dark matter arround to meet the needs of unpredicted observations. You do know Dexter that sometimes when things are complicated to the point of inaccessability except through a decade of post graduate theological indoctrination into what is essentially a cult, it may actually be that relativity don't work.
There is of course the interdisiplineary aspect of the debate which is of itself very interesting with respect to history mythology and archeology geology chemistry everything really, nothing can be properly studied in isolation. Anyway cutting edge scienentists like me are used to being very patient with the layperson who may have rusty facaulties and deeply entrained religious ideas,like magic holes in space.
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Don't get me wrong here. I am nothing but a self taught amateur astronomer.
I have a degree in mechanical engineering for whatever that is worth.
Mr. Sagan's reputation can stand on it's own feet even if he no longer can.
As far as Velikovsky is concerned, I think he finished himself with any serious astronomers once he published his bumf about Venus popping out of Jupiter.
Well Juan all I can suggest is suspension of bias which is of course absolutly necessary when following the scientific method. There is no possible way that accreation was responsible for the formation of any bodies in space. The notion that spin and gravity could be imparted somehow to primordial dust clouds defys not only science but the imagination, no proposed initiator has ever been taken beyond the wild guess stage. While on the other hand matter is routinly reorganized out of plasma in the lab in standard recognized forms and has been for three quarters of a century. Just such planetary birthings are recorded hundreds of times in archeology and history. Mythology is of course connected to the observable phenomenom, there is very good reason for all the celestial stories. The ancients far from being savage superstitious people were actually engaged in the science of astronomy in every corner of the planet and at every period of recorded history with verifyable results. Take for instance the Mayan long calender and think about the inherant math that Dexter leans on so much. It's not smart or possible to divorce the rest of thier observations from that demonstratable competence let alone the engineering executions. It's common these days to disregard the past as some vast reserve of superstitious retards and plead monternity for science but that is demonstratably false, we can witness science at work in arrow heads thatched rooves medicine agriculture, science is not new nor is the method.
Related LinksLIGO
GEO
LIGO Sheds Light on Cosmic Event
PASADENA, Calif.-- An analysis by the international LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) Scientific Collaboration has excluded one previously leading explanation for the origin of an intense gamma-ray burst that occurred last winter. Gamma-ray bursts are among the most violent and energetic events in the universe, and scientists have only recently begun to understand their origins.
The LIGO project, which is funded by the National Science Foundation, was designed and is operated by the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the purpose of detecting cosmic gravitational waves and for the development of gravitational-wave observations as an astronomical tool. Research is carried out by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, a group of 580 scientists at universities around the United States and in 11 foreign countries. The LIGO Scientific Collaboration interferometer network includes the GEO600 interferometer, located in Hannover, Germany, funded by the Max-Plank-Gesellschaft/Science and Technologies Facilities Council and designed and operated by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics and partners in the United Kingdom.
Each of the L-shaped LIGO interferometers (including the 2-km and 4-km detectors in Hanford, Washington, and a 4-km instrument in Livingston, Louisiana) uses a laser split into two beams that travel back and forth down long arms, each of whic
DB: This is one of the funniest stories today. The gravity detector didn't work so they're going to build a bigger one. See if you can pick out the corporate spin and the management hype slathered over the announcement of nothing, and that's exactly what the press release was about, nothing cuz that's what they found.
I have no trouble with a cloud of dust and debris orbiting a central point. Nor do I have trouble with that same ball of material gathering mass and collapsing into a ball because of gravity and retaining angular momentum as it spins on it's axis. I'm sure most planets were formed in exactly this way
Surely you know that gravity is simply a function of mass and doesn't have to be imparted.
I got no problem with gravity as a function of mass. I do have doubts about the dust and debris orbiting a central point long enough though.
Planet Birthing
The protoplanetary disk model also assumes that planets can accrete by collisions of particles in the disk. A recent study of hyper-velocity impacts between small objects, which assumes very different orbits of those particles, showed that the crater formed was larger than the impactor with the result that fragmentation rather than accretion is the rule. Also, objects in similar orbits about a central mass merely swap places without colliding. For example, two moons of Saturn, Epimetheus and Janus, swap orbits every 4 years or so. These problems have resulted in a spate of additional ad hoc requirements to be added to computer models. For example, the matter in the disk must have been hot and “squidgy” to allow particles to stick together.
In fact, the very term “accretion disk” used by computer modellers begs the question about the origin of such disks observed elsewhere in the galaxy. When we see objects with strong gravitational fields ejecting huge masses of material at great speeds we must consider the possibility that we are observing “expulsion” disks. After all, it is not clear what is responsible for energetic expulsions if we are looking at systems governed solely by gravity. Explanations based upon magically conjured and trapped magnetic fields merely shove the problem out of sight within the central star or hypothetical black hole. And without exception they ignore the electrical origin of magnetic fields.
So what? That doesn't mean accretion can't happen, there might be low velocity impacts among particles in similar orbits. Not all impacts are going to be hyper-velocity impacts, and once a gravitationally accreting object gets large enough the hyper-velocity impacts of small particles will no longer be enough to fragment it. A 1 meter wide impacter at hyper velocity could do a lot of damage, but it wouldn't fragment the earth no matter how fast it was going.
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Occam's razor works against it, big time. The idea has a very low probability. The literature on modeling all points to dismal results. The plasma model however has been observed in action and many photographs are available. The accreation process has no start, in fact it dosen't even have process. It's such a sloppy assumption that it shouldn't count as a theroy. It shouldn't really be taken seriously.
The Orion Nebula is a great example of clouds of dust and gas eventually accreting more matter and drawing together by gravity to finally form stars. Orion is virtually a nursery for new stars. Many of those new stars will have planets, smaller, but they formed in exactly the same way
Pretty broad generalizations there Beave, and that's not what I find when I google ¨planet accretion simulation.¨ There are tens of thousands of analyses modeling various aspects of the accretion process, subject to assorted assumptions about density gradients and particle sizes and so on. I`m no expert in this area, but a quick look at a more or less random selection of them in the first half dozen pages of the google listing does seem to suggest that they can correctly reproduce what we observe.
I'm no expert either but just a little reading throws great doubt on the process as far as I'm concerned. There is a great deal of assumption associated with initiation, there is no defined beginning point and it is stressed that dispersion is as likely if not more likely than accretion. So in total it's not a very convinceing theroy to me.