Talk:Plasma cosmology/Archive 1

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Contents

Jul 2003 ~ Aug 2003

It's an active field of research, is it?

http://au.arXiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/plasma+cosmology/0/1/0/all/8/0

-- Tim Starling 07:53 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)


Looks like some ppl are looking into it .... http://arXiv.org/find/gr-qc,astro-ph/1/fr:+AND+plasma+cosmology/0/1/0/past/0/1 [BTW, you gotta do a full records search, not just a titles search] -- reddi 21:47 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)


Have to be careful. Of the 6 papers, 3 of them use standard cosmology.


These are examples of plasma physics and not plasma cosmology.

Observable phenomenon explained:

Ummm ... all those are facets of origins and structure of the universe ... explained by the theory ... cosmology is the science of the world and universe and it's parts .... so they are part of the cosmology ... or the order and course of all of nature nature. -- reddi 21:57 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)

What theory. How does plasma cosmology handle quasars differently than big bang cosmology? How does "the theory" that you talk about handle interstellar medium differently than what is standard astrophysics?

This article needs some serious work. The premise that many if not most astronomical phenomenon has something to do with magentic fields and plasma is not controversial and part of standard cosmology and astrophysics. The premise that the big bang never happened is non-standard, but there are some non-crankish people who seriously believe this.


Part of the problem is that the article is talking about five different things and confusing all of them.

--Roadrunner

The only phenomnon which plasma cosomology comes up with different approaches or results than standard cosmology is in the large scale structure of the universe. The idea that the interstellar medium is mostly plasma and controlled by magnetic fields is something that pretty most all astrophysicists believe.

--Roadrunner

This is still amazingly confused.

Most plasmas are electrically neutral at large scales. The sun is one big giant ball of plasma with huge magnetic fields, but its electrically neutral.

Also, you have one paragraph that says that its not generally accepted and then the next paragraph that it is.

Let me take a stab at this.

--Roadrunner

Actually no. Interstellar gas is at scales too small to be relevant cosmologically.

These are not about cosmology....

  • Physics of Solar System Plasmas., Thomas E. Cravens, Cambridge University Press; September 1997., 495 pages ISBN 0521352800
  • Sun-Earth Plasma Connections (Geophysical Monograph, Vol 109)., James L. Burch, Robert L. Carovillano, and Spiro K. Antiochos, Amer Geophysical Union, June 1999., 273 pages ISBN 0875900925

None of this papers have anything to do with plasma cosmology


This paper argues that the distribution of galaxies can be represented as a fractal. This paper assumes standard big bang cosmology.

This has nothing to do with astrophysics.

Ditto paper one. There's nothing in the paper that suggests that the author is talking about a plasma cosmology at all.

The following has nothing to do with plasma cosmology. The authors subscribe to standard big bang cosmology. I also happen to know one of the co-authors of the paper.

This has nothing to do with plasma cosmology. The fact that they are talking about quark-gluon plasma means that they are using standard big bang cosmology.

I'd be willing to give a short lesson on what is and isn't standard cosmology and how Alven's ideas are different, if I thought it would do any good.

In terms of actual, published, refereed journal articles that mention "plasma cosmology" in their title, abstract, or keywords, the INSPEC database for the past 40 years lists only five, none from the past six years:

  • Meierovich, "Limiting current in general relativity," Gravitation and Cosmology 3 (1), 29-37 (1997).
  • W. C. Kolb, "How can spirals persist?," Astrophysics and Space Science 227, 175-186 (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).
  • G. Arcidiacono, "Plasma physics and big-bang cosmology," Hadronic Journal 18, 306-318 (1995).

Of these, the Kanipe article is a brief review of arguments for and against Big Bang cosmology, not new research per se. Only the Arcidiacono paper specifically mentions Alfven. (The search finds only a conference paper by Alfven on plasma cosmology, no journal articles.)

The Web of Science databases finds a few more, but none after 1995.

  • E. J. Lerner, "Intergalactic radio absorption and the Cobe data," Astrophys. Space Sci. '227, 61-81 (1995)
  • A. L. Peratt, "Plasma and the universe: Large-scale dynamics, filamentation, and radiation," Astrophys. Space Sci. 227, 97-107 (1995).
  • E. J. Lerner, "On the problem of Big-bang nucleosynthesis," Astrophys. Space Sci. 227, 145-149 (1995).
  • 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).
  • A. L. Peratt, "Plasma cosmology," IEEE T. Plasma Sci. 18, 1-4 (1990).

(I can't read the abstracts for this database, so I don't know how relevant all of these articles are, but it's interesting that they almost all came from the same issue; must have been a special issue?)

Anyway, I hope this is helpful in your literature debate. Steven G. Johnson

It's not a coincidence. Around 1990-1995, there were a number of observations that started to make the big bang look a bit wobbly. The main ones were the age of globular clusters and the primordial helium abundance. Also the fact that no one had observed lumps in the cosmic background radiation was making people nervous.

Since then, all of the possible big bang killers have died out and there have been a lot of observations that seem to support the big bang, such as high resolution observations of the microwave background.

Something that would be interesting is if someone would try to see if plasma cosmology would explain the accelerating universe. I suspect that Alfven might try this if he were alive. Arp, Lerner, and Peratt deny that the redshift is due to expansion so they won't do it, but if someone could show that magnetic fields could cause cosmic acceleration, it would really cause most cosmologists to take the field seriously.

Roadrunner


Thanks for your contributions, Roadrunner.

The article contains the following passage:

Despite the importance of plasma in astrophysics, the standard model of the universe asserts that while electromagnetic forces may be important for describing local phenonmenon, they are not important at large cosmological distances. The reason for this is that unlike the other three forces which are attractive only, electromagnetism is both attractive and repulsive and over large cosmological distances, electromagnetic forces are believed to cancel each other.

This is surely referring to the electric force, which can indeed be either attractive or repulsive and experiences cancellation at large distances. However, ISTRT the magnetic force is the most important force in astrophysical plasmas, and it is of course neither attractive nor repulsive. I think the reason for cancellation at large distances is a bit more subtle than this paragraph lets on. -- CYD

Aug 2003 ~ Sept 2003

It is difficult to understand how Nikola Tesla's dynamic theory of gravity can be involved in this as Tesla never published his theory and there is no evidence he even wrote it down. The theory is referred to in that article an apparent contrivance from unsupported occult sources. I have flagged that link - The factual accuracy of this article is disputed. -- kiwiinapanic 06:23, 3 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Should this page be renamed? It is primarily about the Alfven universe model referred to in Non-standard cosmology. (Or should that be a redirect to here)? -- kiwiinapanic 07:10, 3 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I fixed the link on the non-standard cosmology page so that it properly redirects.

Removed statement about Plasma universe being widely accepted amount plasma physcists. That IEEE transaction reference not withstanding, it isn't.

Removed the statement about Alfven's model being more empirical because there are fewer "wiggle room" parameters.

If you can get Alfven's model and the standard cosmologies to predict galactic power spectrum, Alfven's wins. The current situation though is that you can't get the Alfven model to predict galactic power spectrum, but by tweaking the parameters you can get standard cosmology to match galactic distributions.

The next step is to find out what you have to tweak in order to get those distributions and see if those tweaks make sense. For example, if your tweaks include the presence of cold dark matter, and then you go look and you find cold dark matter, then you get a warm fuzzy feeling.

Roadrunner

Rewrote. Did a google search and Peratt's simulations are nowhere like the simulations that I'm talking about. The problem with Peratt's, is he does the simulation that then says "gee this looks like real galaxies" and that is not good enough to tell if you have a match or not.

Basically, what cosmologists try to calculate is the coorelation function. If I have a galaxy at point X, what is the chance that I can find a galaxy at distance r. Or if I have two galaxies at X and Y, what is the probablities that there is a galaxy at Z. This is something that you can calculate from observations. Think of it as a lumpiness factor.

Now the state of the art of big bang cosmological simulations is that you can assume some thing about the matter interaction, and calculate what the resulting coorelation factors are. The calculations are good enough so that you can rule out some theories, like the idea that the universe is mostly baryons.

I don't know of anyone that has done anything like that with plasma cosmology. My guess is that if you tried and long range magnetic fields really were important, you'd end up with a very lumpy universe, and probably one that is much lumpier than what we observe.

Also looking at the Peratt's simulations, they don't look a thing like active galactic nuclei. They don't look much like real galaxies either.

Roadrunner

I believe this article is supposed to be about plasma cosmology. Peratt's research is fundamentally important in this field, and should be remarked upon in the article. His simulations very much resemble some radio isophotes of agn.

Above you said:

Removed statement about Plasma universe being widely accepted amount plasma physcists. That IEEE transaction reference not withstanding, it isn't.

On the contrary, most of the plasma physicists I come into contact with, the ones that think about cosmology anyhow, consider the plasma models far superior to standard models. However, I will refrain from placing the statement back into the article.

Also, the fact that Alfven's model is hard to manipulate due to its few free-variables is a testiment to the entire approach of plasma cosmology as being experimentally and empirically based. I do not see why the comment was removed, as it is important to note.

my two cents.

thanks, Ionized

reply -

Because having fewer free variables doesn't make it more empirical or experimentally based. The problem with Alfven's approach is that if it turns out that the most of the universe consists of exotic particles, then most of the universe consists of exotic particles. Assuming that there are no exotic particles and that the universe can be explained by table-top physics is a good starting point, but the problem is that no one has gotten any of the plasma cosmology models to work quite as well as the standard cosmologies, and the excuses used to explain why for example, we don't see a general glow of 511 Kev gamma rays are more ad-hocish than invoking cold dark matter.
Sure you can invoke the Leidenfrost effect, but then one needs to take the next step. Assuming that the universe does have a lot of antimatter and annihilation is being suppressed, what is the limit of observation before you start considering the possibility that you are just wrong. With Big Bang, you can set some limits, and people were getting really excited in the early 90's when we were reaching those limits, and not seeing anything. But then we did.
Also invoking unknown physics is not necessarily a bad thing. If you can't get a big bang model to work without cold dark matter, and then you see evidence of cold dark matter, then you get a nice warm fuzzy feeling. If a plasma cosmologist had in 1992, predicted a general acceleration of the universe, he would have been seen as nuts in 1992, but people would be taking him *really* serious now.
What plasma cosmologists need is some prediction that is totally nuts, that everything thinks is ridiculous until it is actually observed.
Roadrunner

If you believe plasma cosmologists have made no 'nutz' predictions, you are ignoring many of the predictions made by plasma cosmologists in the last 40 years. This includes the isotropy of the CMB, the lack of need for expansion, the possible formation of galaxies, and many other things. They lack verification not because the data is not there, but simply because it is being looked at from the standard paradigm.

Ionized - August 11th, 2003

reply -

Those aren't "nutty" predictions. You are explaining things that people are observing or think that they are observing. What I'm talking about is predicting something that is totally contrary to what people think that the observations are or would be. For example, if plasma cosmologists predict that there are stars with 100% helium, people would say this is stupid, because we can't see stars with 100% helium. Of course, if you star finding stars with 100% helium....
Also with the issue about data not being there. You start getting a nice warm fuzzy feeling when your theory makes predictions about data that you don't have that turn out to be sensible. One of the reasons people like the big bang was that in the late-1980's it became clear that the big bang wouldn't work if the cosmic microwave background radiation was isotropic. No one had ever observed anisotropy in the microwave background. Once people looked, it was there.
Hans Alfven *did* have a good point in critcizing prophetic cosmology. However prophets are worth listening to if their prophecies start coming true.
Roadrunner

Ok, one more from me. I don't think a theory has to only make predictions about data we dont yet have to be a good theory. If a new theory better explains existing data, it may be viable.

But you really pull a rabbit out of your hat if you predict something totally stupid that turns out to be true. If there was any plasma cosmology model before 1999 that predicted an accelerating universe, people would be looking very seriously at it right now. -RR
What you really want for a theory is something that predicts something totally stupid, that turns out to be true. -RR

On cmb isotropy: In plasma cosmology, the anisotropy of the cmb comes naturally from the spatial configuration of the inter-galactic filaments which absorb and re-emit the radiation. This accounts for the near isotropy and also for the small fluctuations, which in this view are more local than they are primordial. Ionized

It's really easy to come up with a mechanism for lumps. It's really hard to come up with a mechanism for lumps that have the right consistency. Big bang cosmology has gone way past "it is bumpy" and the name of the game now is to try to calculate how bumpy.
The problem with inter-galactic filaments is that one ought to seem some sort of emission spectra. Before explaining why there isn't an emission spectra, remember the rabbit I just talked about earlier.

User:Roadrunner

So what is the coorelation function (i.e. the lumpiness factor) that plasma cosmology predicts and how does it compare to observations. Inventing a mechanicism to create lumps simply will not do, you have to show that the amount of lumpiness is the same. Within the big bang the models have gotten good enough to rule out baryonic matter models because it produces lumpiness that is too high. -- Roadrunner

This is an odd statement

If Alfven where to know this today (i.e., that redshift may be caused by non-linear optical phenomena as radiation travels through a plasma), it is possible that he may not have postulated a local expansion.

Then it's possible he wouldn't.

Roadrunner

Sept 2003 ~ Feb 2004

RR, I understand your concerns about the coorelation function and will (eventually) do what I can to give an explanation as to why there are none published (that we know of.)
Do a literature search out of ApJ or arxiv. The web has made it pretty much impossible for there to be a large body of invisible astrophysical research.

User:Roadrunner

There are certainly many predictions made about the distribution of clusters and such, but maybe the same statistical methods are inapplicable in the plasma approach. In plasma cosmology, the universe is inherently cellular and filamentary structured, due to the dynamics of the plasma.
So it ought to be possible to statistically calculate the amount of lumpiness and compare to observations.-RR

This is not some contrived mechanism 'made up' to explain the clumpiness. It is experimentally derived, and can also be theoretically derived from the governing dynamics. Low and behold when the 'great wall' and superclusters where discovered, it made quite the stir within the big bang community that purports 'homogeneity'.

This is a *big* misunderstanding. The Big bang commmunity never purported homogenity. The way you do the Big Bang is to first *assume* that the universe is homogenous, which will get you the broad features of how the universe behaves. This is the equivalent to assuming a spherical cow. Cows aren't spherical, but it makes the math easier. The next step (which people started to do in the 1980's) is then to put in the lumps. In order to do this you have to make assumptions of what the lumps are made of. This pretty much rules out baryonic matter, and the consensus over the 1990's is that the lumps are made of cold dark matter which gets you more or less the correlation functions. The current research is on using the lumpiness of the cosmic microwave background to get a handle on how galaxies were formed. User:Roadrunner

However this was a confirmed prediction of the plasma cosmology. For now I will refrain from further modifying the article and do more research in order to display accurate information concerning this topic.


The universe is lumpy is not a good prediction of anything.-RR
I disagree: in the plasma approach, we assume nothing about the distribution of galaxies, only that plasma processes could be reponsible for that distribution. We dont assume homogeneity or lumpiness to make the math easy, we simply show that the lumpiness of plasma processes on the small scale extrapolate up to the larger, giving clumpiness of the universe (this is just an appproximate explanation of the actual method used of course.) In this way the plasma cosmology most certainly predicted the inherent cellular and filamentary structure of matter distribution in the universe. You lose me when you say this is not a good prediction, it is a very nice prediction.Ionized 20:04, Jan 28, 2004 (UTC)


On 'primordial abundances' - Here we have a simple paradigmatic difference, where there is no correlate for anything 'primordial' within plasma cosmology, from what I can tell so far. We start from current physics of the local space environment (that which is accessible to in-situ spacecraft experiment, along with laboratory experiment here on earth) and extrapolate up to larger scales (yes we are well aware of the speculative nature of this move, but as has been thoroughly discussed by the founders, these steps and their corresponding scaling laws have been experimentally justified so far.)
Which fails to account for the numerous ways that the universe now is different from the universe 5 billion years ago or 10 billion years ago. -RR

This means that the question of what is primordial and 'when' the entire universe began are not quite appropriate in the plasma paradigm. Asking us to predict primordial abundances leaves us stranded in this respect, as there is no way for us to show you that this question is somewhat meaningless in our minds. We can not predict a beginning to something when we think it has existed in different states forever. Once I further re-elucidate these concepts in my mind, I will make the appropriate addition to the article, explaining why Alfven's model and plasma cosmology as a whole does not really touch on anything primordial.

So can you explain the fact that older stars appear to have less helium than younger stars and very little content of anything heavier than helium? --RR


So far I like the way the article is beginning to shape up. Your additions have helped me remember that I must be comprehensive in my explanations, and considerate of the standard view when making responses. -- Ionized

Continuing references to "most" and "almost all" astrophysicists, have been changed back to "many". To truly determine that most or almost all astrophysicists are indeed supporters of the standard Big Bang would require one to perform a large statistical measurement from a true sample of all real astrophysicists out there. Surely this has not been done. A more neutral wording is "many". I understand that for a theory to be the standard, then the majority must follow it, but this is supposed to be a neutral ground.

If you want a statistical sample, you can do a quick count of the articles published in the last year at archivx.org or of papers in Astrophysical Journal at adswww.harvard.edu. If among all of those authors and papers, you come up with more than 10 authors in the last year that implicitly support plasma cosmology, you can change the almost all to most. If you can show that 25% of the articles implicitly reject the big bang, you can change the most to many.
Just because virtually all astrophysicists think something is wrong doesn't mean that it is wrong, there are numerous cases of everything thinking something was wrong and it turned out to be correct (i.e. if you had a theory in 1995 that said that the expansion of the universe was accelerating then pretty much everyone would have thought you were nuts), but it does mean that virtually astrophysicists think that it is wrong. One thing that is important in these articles is not to suggest a controversy when none exists. --User:Roadrunner

Also, since this is an article about plasma cosmology and NOT the big bang (there is a separate article about the Big Bang within wiki), I have added more things that are actually concerning plasma cosmology (a little more about Arp, a little more about Alfven, and a little more about redshift.)

I appreciate your addition about the scattering RR. I realize that I should have been more specific when I talked about the redshift before. I specifically was referring to forward scattering mechanisms, because, just as Roadrunner has pointed out, they are the only mechanisms which truly have some merit when it comes to astrophysical application. The article is now modified to reflect this. Non-linear forward scattering mechanisms are a very recent laboratory based experimental development (within the late 1990's), and the theoretical treatment is harsh but does exist.

So how does line broadening affect emission lines from distant galaxies? I'm really curious. -RR

You can see a list of articles and associated abstracts relevant to plasma cosmology, including abstracts concerning the scattering, at: http://www.phylab.mtu.edu/~rolewis/seminarbib.html I put this togethor late 2002 while preparing for a seminar that I gave to undergraduates and professional astrophysicists. Ionized

And this is a very small fraction of the thousands of journal articles published every year, and most of the papers are dated (essentially any cosmology paper that is more than five years old is obsolete). The problem with Alfven's and Arp's work is that history has passed them by. Alfven's model and Arp's speculations made a lot of sense in the 1960's, but they have generally ignored the huge amount of data that has come in since then.
The notion that quasars are not distant made a lot of since when Arp first started writing papers because in 1970, no one had any idea how one could possibly generate that much energy. We think we have a good idea now (i.e. frictional heating of matter falling into a black hole) which also nicely explains why there don't seem to be any nearby quasars (the black hole eats up all of the gas). This of course implies the truly absurd and stupid idea that galaxies mostly have supermassive black holes in them. Which is a utterly nonsensical idea until you look and start seeing them. User:Roadrunner

RR, You absolutely MANGLE my posts, and remove pieces of the article which are an important part of plasma cosmology history.

I made two changes. The first was to move Halton Arp to plasma cosmology. As far as I can tell Arp's work has nothing to do with plasma cosmology.

http://www.haltonarp.com/?Page=Abstracts&ArticleId=2

I also noted in the article the fact that almost all astrophysicists think that it is all wrong. This is a very important point. I also deleted the lines about "standard" cosmologists. This makes it seem that there is a significant community of "non-standard" cosmologists, which there isn't. -RR

RR, the link to Halton Arp you posted above is the least credible paper, and the ONE paper on his site that has the least to do with cosmology! Did you choose that one on purpose? Perusal of his other papers, and the many he has published in ApJ and other journals will show that his observations have very much to do with cosmology.Ionized 19:50, Jan 28, 2004 (UTC)


Just how on earth do you expect me to even want to continue contributing to this article when no matter what I do, you come back and claim its all wrong? Maybe I should go to the Big Bang article and start working some magic like you have been doing here. By the way, we dont see black holes we see effects which the standard community attributes to black holes... Reddi, I wish you luck. As for me, I have a degree to finish and dont have time to fight with omniscient Big Bangers. Ionized 02:48, Jan 28, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks ... I'll go with the experiments [on which, as far as I can tell, is what Plasma cosmology rests firmly on]. JDR We have to learn again that science without contact with experiments is an enterprise which is likely to go completely astray into imaginary conjecture -- H. A.

p.s. - I cant believe you have the guts to tell me to do research, where do you think my partial abstract list even came from? Maybe if you would do some of your own research (on actual plasma cosmology) you would find the articles by Peratt and others that show that an observation of the emission spectra of an intergalactic filament has actually been made.-Ionized

There are lots of observations of emission spectra of intergalactic filaments. The problem with using intergalactic filaments to explain bumps in the cosmic microwave background is that you don't see emission lines in them. The CMB looks like redshifted continua. What I was asking was that if the redshift were due to plasma filaments, shouldn't that affect the spectra of galactic emission lines coming from behind those filaments?
Also answering no it doesn't because ... is a good answer. I don't know is also a good answer. User:Roadrunner

I don't know. Please consult the papers by Peratt and the papers by Lerner directly.-Ionized 19:50, Jan 28, 2004 (UTC)

About COBE results supporting plasma cosmology results. Need to go into a bit more detail. -RR

Exactly why do you expect me to explain why COBE results can support plasma cosmology, when you dont explain why COBE supports the BB? If you can put something into the article saying without reason that COBE supports BB, then I sure as heck can add a small comment that COBE can also support plasma cosmology. Please read Lerner, he goes into detail why CMB anisotropy can support PC, in published papers and in his book.-Ionized 03:52, Jan 28, 2004 (UTC)

The removal of the section on Arp is insulting and a direct attack on the article. Just because YOU do not see how his research connects with plasma cosmology, does not mean that his research does not connect with plasma cosmology! Now another paragraph must be introduced explaining the need for local redshifting mechanism, and just how do we do that without mentioning Arp's empirical observations? (I never said I agree with Arps understanding of his data, just that I agree with his data, and it is in fact the empirical observation itself that is relevant, not Arp's analysis of the data.) In fact, when I spoke with Arp, he urged me to develop a theory of low-mass plasmas, which gain mass with time. I don't really believe at this stage that such a theory (Arp's variable mass hypothesis) is necessary in order to integrate his observations with plasma cosmology. But mentioning his observations IS important to do. Hence I urge that higher powers intervene and place the paragraph back into the article (or at least let me reintroduce something similar, I would just do it but I KNOW that RR would simply erase it again.) The same thing was tried with Peratt simply because it was RR's opinion that his model didn't look like a galaxy. No, it doesn't, it looks like radio isophotes of active galactic nuclei in different stages of development. Peratt is one of the most important figures in plasma cosmology, and I am glad to see that his name remains in the article. Ionized 03:48, Jan 28, 2004 (UTC)

Feb 2004 ~ March 2004

While it is good to have external resources, I truly think that the last link in the links section, the matter-antimatter plasma cosmology site, should be removed. It is the least significant site, proclaiming that the big bang has already been replaced. It also gives no new information concerning plasma cosmology that has not been more completely discussed in Wiki or on the other external links that are listed. Frankly, inclusion of the matter-antimatter link does more to discredit plasma cosmology then help it. Now, the other links, which I rearranged in better order of significance, do a much better job of explaining plasma cosmology. Reddi, what do you think? I know you put that link there and I want your opinion on its removal before I remove it. - Ionized 18:31, Feb 8, 2004 (UTC)

It don't matter (to me @ least) on the lnks (whatever you think is best) ... just another one IMO (I think it's a company that's selling something ...) it's got "some" rudimentry info in it ... others may chime in though [mabey not] ... JDR (ps. mabey make a rv notice of the location in the summary line (ie., the http))

I would like to remove the accuracy dispute. I agree that the NPOV dispute can remain, but as far as I am concerned, this page now more accurately reflects the facts and history of plasma cosmology. Claims concerning plasma cosmology which are not in accord with historical or physical fact are minimal, if they exist at all. Claims concerning the standard model which may be innaccurate, really dont belong in this article anyhow, except for a minimized section and the usual NPOV disclaimers (which there are copious amounts of in this article.) However, I believe of course that this article still needs a ton of work, hence I will not remove the accuracy tag until it is even further improved. Indeed, if this page is inaccurate, the Big Bang page should have an accuracy dispute tag too, since it makes claims which are not historically accurate. RoadRunner, I see now that moving Arp to non-standard was in fact a GOOD idea, even though I initially viewed it as an attack on this article, and an insult to the scientific method in general. A reference to his observations still needs to be reintroduced to this article, but by moving Arp to non-standard, further elucidation of his observations and concepts has been made possible. The non-standard article is a good ground to contrast the similarities and differences between the non-standard models. - Ionized 00:41, Feb 10, 2004 (UTC)

as long as there is no other objection ... rv it ... [though see if anyone comments about it and rm it in a few days, just to be sure (that's what i'd do)] ... as long as no one objects, rv it ... I believe there isn't a stated policy on that [eg. how to rv tags] JDR [though this is not what some do in other article ... they rv it when they like (as recent experience has shown me)]

March 2004 ~ June 2005

On reverting Rncox's edit: elctromagnetic forces are not quite the same as electrostatic and magnetic forces (you also have electrodynamic forces, which gets this a bit long). EMF (sort-of-synonym for voltage) actually stands for electro-motive force, and electromagnetic radiation (light/photons) are in fact closely related to electromagnetic force. So I think it makes sense to stick with electromagnetic forces; this is also, in my opinion, accepted usage. -Rafaelgr 02:55, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)


Major Figures?

I don't understand the 'Major Figures' section. What does, say, Max Born have to do with plasma cosmology? Even Buneman -- does he have any relationship with plasma cosmology in particular or just plasma physics? I also wish the article was a bit better at indicating sources for particular points. I may try to do something about this once I understand the subject well enough. -?


Since I didn't put in Max Born, I can't give you an answer, and I indeed wondered myself why he was in the list. Please do not remove Oscar Buneman, without his computational techniques and developments in the field of plasma physics, Plasma Cosmology itself would either not be around, or would be much less developed anyhow, since parts of it rely heavily on computation. An example being that methods developed by Buneman where used to some extent by Peratt in modelling large scale Birkeland currents. This article is indeed far from where it should be. I have a small list of things I would like to change over the summer, including expanding the work by Peratt, and showing how his work was actually inspired by early experimental work in the 1960's. Please make a list of what points you would like sourced, so that it can be discussed, and so that I can help you in locating the correct citations. Overall, it must be remembered that the general principles concerning Plasma Cosmology are based primarilly on laboratory and local space environment work, so that indeed anyone working on the general principles of plasma physics in the lab or on computer, or in space physics, is in an indirect way a contributor to the Plasma Cosmology. This point was expressed by Alfven himself at least once. -Ionized 02:46, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)
As a follow up on Max Born- born indirectly contributed by advocating non-Big-Bang cosmologies. This is also discussed in the Assis and Neeves paper I referred to in non-standard cosmology talk page. I also just now found that Peratt has basically said the same thing.. here is what Peratt writes
Max Born. Nobel prize for Physics...Together with scientists like Regner, Nernst (the father of the third law of thermodynamics), Finlay-Freundlich and Louis de Broglie, Born advocated a third model of the universe that helped lay the foundations of a cosmology that today forms the bulkwork of the Plasma Universe. Born, in a 1953 edition of Nachrichten, brought forth the seriousness of Finlay--Freundlich's few--degree temperature prediction for interstellar space and suggested radio astronomy as an arbitrator between expanding and infinite cosmologies, noting that they differed orders of magnitude in energy density. It is noteworthy that Born's manuscript was printed 12 years before the Penzias–Wilson radioastronomy measurement. We quote from the opening of Born's paper:
Freundlich glaubt zeigen zu können, dass die übliche relativistische Deutung der R.-V. durch die Beobachtungen nicht best\"atigt wird, wogegen die Formel [$\Delta \nu / \nu =-AlT^4,\ A=2\cdot 10^{-29}$ $cm^{-1} grad^{-4}$] mit allen bekannten Tatsachen in Einklang ist, einschlie{\ss}lich der Nebelflucht (Hubble-Effekt), sofern man dem Weltenraum eine Temperatur von wenigen Graden beilegt. Ein solcher Widerspruch gegen die auf einfachsten \"Uberlegungen beruhende relativistische Erkl\"arung ist nat\"urlich eine sehr bedenkliche Sache. Trotzdem schien es mir angebracht, die Freundlichsche Formel ein wenig zu analysieren; dabei bin ich zu dem Schlu{\ss} gelangt, da{\ss} die Formel eine einfache wenn auch seltsame Deutung erlaubt, bei der \"uberdies Zusammenh\"ange mit einer anderen Gruppe von Erscheinungen, nämlich der Radioastronomie, nahegelegt werden.
This text can be found at this URL: :http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/people/history.html
So, I am still in doubt on some of the contributors in the section, some are quite obviously non-major (which is why I long ago added a comment about this under the section heading.) What should we do about this? -Ionized 03:08, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)
I think the first thing is that the 'figures' section should explain what each figure has to do with plasma cosmology; I think the only entries that do this right now are Lerner (who happens to be a friend of mine), Alfven, and Peratt. Once it's been clarified what the relationship with the subject, we can talk about who belongs there. I think that it confuses things unnecessarily to include people, and from Ionized's comments Born and Buneman fit in this category, who are neither proponents of plasma cosmology or people who made a direct contribution to it; the article ought at least to make this distinction. I think as thing stands this list looks like a very dubious attempt to attach big names to the theory and consequently makes the article less credible. I think if no-one more knowledgable comes forward to sort this out I will eventually try to separate the list into two categories along these lines. -Rafaelgr 02:33, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Keen to contribute

I've been following this topic closely since Lerner published "The Big Bang Never Happened" in 1990 (with a title like that, who am I to leave it on the library shelf unread?!) and monitoring this and related pages for a while.

This is not a plug, just a heads up - I've just bought the DVD of the newly released Universe film by Randall Meyers from http://www.universe-film.com/ which nicely summarises much of the dissenting opinion from within cosmology and astrophysics, eg. Peratt, Lerner, Alfven, Arp, Hoyle, Assis, Narlikar, Pecker, et al.

Whilst I'm not necessarily buying all of the viewpoints expressed, I found a couple of particularly interesting points that arise in the film.

One is Lerner's concise explanation in under 2 minutes of how the CMB temperature and smoothness can be explained as the absorption and reemission of radiation by dust as IR, and how that explanation predicts a more rapid distance-related decline of galaxy emission in the radio spectrum compared with IR (that is, at increasing distances, galaxies appear to emit less radio while their IR emission is held constant). This is the same effect as trying to see distant on-coming car headlights in a fog.

Another is the photographic and other data of Arp, brilliantly portrayed and jaw-dropping when seen in moving pictures, that shows the consistent relationship between quasar fields and nearby galaxies, in particular the decreasing redshift of the quasars with increasing distance from the associated galaxy. Part of this sequence was the brightness/redshift chart for galaxies, which shows the strong relationship that Hubble deduced his distance law from, but the same chart for quasars shows NO SUCH RELATION. We are forced to conclude that there is a non-distance component to quasar redshift, but it seems nobody wants to know.

Not really wanting to add fuel to fire here, but this whole issue seems to come down to dogmatism and a refusal to look down Galileo's telescope. If data do not fit our theory, then it is our duty to question everything, including all assumptions, until they do. Inventing ever more exotic epicycles with no supporting observational data just straps everyone to the hospital bed.

Cheers, Jonathan 2004.07.30 10.52 NZST


It seems that while there are a few of us out there that have put all these observations together in order to create a more wholistic cosmological view, there also remains the majority who will never understand, and indeed never attempt to, so stuck they are in the dogmatism of the Big Bang. Alas, what to do?
I would suggest reading some recent books on cosmology (Donaldson's Modern Cosmology is good) to understand precisely why most astrophysicists don't take plasma cosmology seriously. I've posted the standard reactions to the point that Lerner and Peratt bring up in the talk page of nonstandard cosmology.
The basic problem is this. Most people cannot figure out how to get the CMB from dust and remission. If you have dust and reemission you will have large amounts of polarization (you do see some due to compton scattering but not nearly the amount that you see with dust). Also you get a perfect black body in any direction you see, and it's really hard to see how dust will cause that. Also, I read Lerner's ApJ 1990 and it was a pretty abysmal paper. He takes Saltpeters galaxy survey and does some correlation calculations and doesn't consider at all any of the obvious reasons for that coorelation (such as the possibility that distant galaxies have different ages).
I for one tend to take long periods of vacation from this struggle, periodically re-immersing myself into the hogwash only to again find that the standard view concurs all. There are few real scientists left, pioneers willing to be shunned in order to propose the truth. I gave a seminar on Plasma cosmology to a group of fellow astro-physicists and physicists, i was surprised that it was well-received. Other times it is not. But when you show full pictures of a plasma instability at the lab scale, planetary, stellar, and galactic scales, differing only in time and size, it is difficult to ignore. anyhow, this current article has been changed so many times that I really dont feel like touching it anymore.
And plasma processes are extremely important at non-cosmological scales. The trouble is that large scale structure of the universe don't have the signatures that one normally sees in plasma processes. To give just one example, plasma processes tend to be extremely non-thermal, you just don't easily get black body radiation from something that is undergoing EM interactions. To give another, the power spectrum for large scale structure is all wrong for EM processes. (in layman's terms, the lumpiness is wrong.)
If you or anyone else can show how you can get the right amount of lumpiness (or anything close) out of any plasma cosmology, this is definitely worth an ApJ paper. No one has. The problem with every plasma cosmology text that I've seen is that is asks people to visually compare lumpiness and ignores that there are some pretty standard mathematical means to measure lumpiness, and when you compare "lumpiness coefficients" you don't get anything close to observations. One of the signatures of L-CDM is that there are "lumpiness peaks" and I don't know of any plasma process that comes anything close to that. -- Roadrunner 13:49, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)


it is still absurdly written and in need of help, but when i change it correctly it tends to revert by people who have no apparent clue about this subject. people who have not talked to arp or peratt or lerner and learned first hand. such is wiki! - Ionized 17:23, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)


Well, I'd like to help to rework this into a balanced NPOV article. As long as we are stating that it is a non-standard view and that it is not supported by mainstream astrophysicists, then we have covered that POV. All we have to do is describe what plasma cosmology is, and explain each point (double layers, pinching, filament aggregation, CMB as IR fog, cosmic ray source, etc.) without going into much in the way of Big Bang bashing. We can even state that the theory is still incomplete. I'd be keen to put this article through Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution if necessary so that we can get enough breathing room to hammer out the article. If we remain objective and focused then we can revert edits from Neds who don't understand the material.

I still find it hilarious when learned astrophysicists still write articles about being "baffled" by the latest observations - such as the latest Chandra results that show 100,000,000 degree "gas" throughout the entire galactic centre, and try to attribute it to shockwaves from supernovae or black holes or whatever. - Jonathan 2004.09.01 01.38 NZST

I like your proposal about actually explaining Plasma cosmology in this article, starting with your list of phenomena we could define. When I first found this article it had been taken over by Big Bang proponents. It is far more npov then it used to be, however I believe the big bang should not be mentioned more then once, and only with a link to that article. It has been attempted before. However, most contributions are disputed, removed, reworded (poorly and/or wrongly), etc. Many excuses are used to remove relevant information, from being 'non-encyclopedic' to simple censorship from the standard community. Im soon to give another presentation on the subject of plasma cosmology, and the momentum from that may carry over into working on this article again. It is nice to see others interested in helping the article along properly. By all means, we could begin to add sections concerning Double Layers, Birkeland currents, plasma instabilities on large and small scale, scaling practices between laboratory - similation - astrophysical plasmas, CMB as IR fog, pinching including neutral and non-neutral matter aggregation, redshift as a local non-linear phenomena, and much more. The problem remains of holding off the onslaught of article reverts that the standard community would impose. But I dont think arbitration is necessary, yet. - Ionized 04:04, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. I think much of the wind can be taken out of the sails by beginning each sentence with "Plasma cosmology explains this by..." or "Plasma cosmology proposes that...", since that way, there is no challenge to Big Bang, and we hopefully end up with a much more neutral POV. If there are people who just can't cope with alternative explanations and feel the need to change things, we can just revert it until either they give up, go away or we take it to dispute. By clearly stating that it is a non-standard cosmology and an attempt at an alternative to the Big Bang at the beginning we can COA. - Jon 07:37, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I went ahead and made some changes that I had been wanting to do for a while. I hope that it is not necessary to add a pre-amble and disclaimer to all of our sentences, as the entire 2nd paragraph is already one big disclaimer, added by the proponents of BB. I think it is best to focus on adding content concerning the models of Alfven, Peratt, and Lerner. Once this is more complete, we may add a section on Arp and how his observations can fit in and confirm plasma cosmology results. From here on out if I see something changed that I strongly believe was correct, I will revert it and/or re-write again. Right now this article only barely mentions Peratt and Lerner, however, their work has improved and in some cases entirely replaced sections of Alfvens model (for instance Lerner's plasmoid approach to galaxy and quasar formation outright denies the need for anti-matter/matter collisions in the core of galaxies, which is what Alfven had proposed.) So we should definitely keep going with this. -Ionized 15:16, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)

I've been working on a Tired light article, which you may want to review, although a couple of weeks ago I discovered that someone else has already done a Tired light effect article; not sure what to do, possibly contact contributors and do a merge...? - Jon 13:39, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This is not a Big Bang page

So we're going to simply ignore the evidence.
No, we are simply trying to explain what Plasma Cosmology is. Unfortunately, people such as yourself are offended by this and feel the need to keep censoring it. I'm trying to completely rewrite it offline anyway, as it is fairly unstructured at the moment. The String theory page is a better example of article writing.

Look nooby, whoever you are, we get this all the time. Get yourself a log in and discuss. Your points are valid, but don't just wade in. We're attempting to explain plasma cosmology with a NPOV.

This is baloney. Plasma cosmology is not a scientific theory in the sense that a) predictions it has made were not observed and b) the current incarnations of the theory make NO predictions whatsoever.
really is that so.. hmmmmm... in fact predictions have been observed. such as the large scale currents in intergalactic space. in fact it does make predictions, such as the cmb being a local effect due to kirchoff's law as filaments absorb and re-emit the radiation. in fact there are more predictions, which need to be addressed in the article eventually. please sign your name when you interupt the flow of anothers post. -Ionized 03:19, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

Gaps in plasma cosmology need to be integrated into the text, not just plonked in the middle otherwise it reads like the transcript from a drunken brawl at a bad physics faculty party. I don't vandalise Big Bang pages, I expect the same courtesy from you. Cheers, Jon 14:27, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

No doubt! The bottom line is that this page does need severe work, and WE KNOW THIS. So if you want to add about the newer WMAP results, do so in a section that is not in the opening pre-amble!!!!! Im amazed at how much people expect PC to already explain everything when it is obvious we must continue to develop the field. Unlike BB people, we dont simply invoke ad-hoc effects.. so it is not so easy to say "WMAP is easily explained by...". And unlike BB, there is little to no funding in this field, which translates to little to no research. Of course with the opening of the "Center for Magnetic Self-Organization" by the DOE and NSF in September 2003, this may begin to change slightly. If you want to add to the article do so in a non-disclaiming manner, as we are utterly sick of being treated like monkeys in a cage, or something... -Ionized 14:50, Sep 16, 2004 (UTC)

The fact is that plasma cosmology is ad hoc because it is dealing with models that have no observational evidence. For example, the use of MHD is fine in contexts of magnetic fields even through intergalactic space: but denial of the basic neutrality of astrophysical plasmas on large scales is about as well-founded as denying that the stress-energy tensor is related to the curvature of spacetime. I have yet to meet a plasma cosmologist who was willing to discuss rationally on this subject. Alfven proposed his model before there was a lot of evidence and since evidence has come down the tube since then, it hardly seems reasonable to portray this as a viable theory. It's simply an idea, like steady-state theory, that has outlived its usefulness.
The fact is that not all plasmas are neutral, at any scale. Lets not forget what a plasma is: conductive assemblies of charged and nuetral particles, along with magnetic and electric fields, which collectively act to exhibit non-linear effects over time.-Ionized 03:19, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)
Another thing, it absolutely AMAZES me that people can still claim that plasma cosmology has no observational evidence, when IN FACT it is entirely based first and foremost on quite real observations made right here in the laboratories of earth and earth's near space environment (yes thats right, satellites and rockets are laboratories too.) Throw in some observationally and theoretically derived scale invariants, take note of what is not invariant and what other forces are involved, and low and behold you have an OBSERVATIONALLY based cosmology. And sure enough, the scaling brings predictions, which match observations... whoa is this too much for people?-Ionized 03:24, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

Thankyou, finally some discussion. Nobody is denying the overall neutrality of space plasmas. What seems to be denied by most cosmologists is the fact that currents within plasmas can concentrate matter extremely effectively through a positive feedback mechanism. Currents flowing in the same direction are attracted together by their magnetic field into still stronger ropes of current. Tiny anisotropies in a plasma cloud quickly resolve into a network of filaments, which is overall neutral. In fact, plasmas cannot exist without evolving into such structues. They could produce the Great Wall without invoking superstrings, dark matter, dark energy or inflation. The problem with all of this is if it takes a hundred billion years to build the Great Wall from a giant plasma filament, how does PC explain the Hubble redshift? This is still unclear.

Of course matter is overall neutral, but the denial is on the part of cosmologists who consistently believe that because that is so, they can ignore EM on large scales. This is like saying that plasma within those little desktop plasma lamps is overall neutral, but we have to come up with some other mechanism than EM in order to explain why it is pinching it into filaments.

More generally, just because 95% of people believe something does not make it right. 95% of people at one time thought the earth was flat and the sun was a burning planet made of coal. Invoking an entire zoo of bizarre phenomena such as hyperinflation, WIMPs, dark energy, superstrings and neutrino double beta decay to support an assumption seems a little Aristotlean when there may be a simpler explanation closer to hand with a little more work.

If you can get the right amount of lumpiness in CMB and the galaxy distributions to come out with "a little work" go ahead. Let's be clear, pretty much every astrophysicist I know finds this zoo of assumptions to be somewhat disturbing, and if you could get something simpler that fit the data, people would jump on it in a second. The trouble is that no one has succeeded in getting anything simpler to work.

The latest from the Max Planck Institute is that dark matter cannot be neutrino mass, as 0.44 eV is too small.

That dark matter probably is not neutrinos has been known for some time. You can't get a neutrino-dominated universe to come out with the right "lumpiness factor". Neutrinos tend to smooth things out too much. Now there are people who are working on combined neutrino/cold dark matter models. Roadrunner 14:00, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This is not a scientific page

I think only to be fair, one should have the disclaimer that these ideas are outside the realm of science in that they are positing either a) no falsifications of the theory or b) no coherent objections to the standard theory other than incredulity.

I would tend to disagree. The Alfven model of plasma cosmology did "play by the rules" and its worth mentioning for historical reasons. It really looks good if you restrict yourself to the information that was available in 1965. Roadrunner 14:12, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Okay, I can accept that. I think we should have the historical mention of the Alfven model be the major feature of this page since it was, like steady state, proposed and then abandoned for good reason. Lerner doesn't play by the rules and the attempt to make Lerner's nonsense sound like science is misleading.


For example, Lerner believes that dark matter is ad hoc and uses as his evidence that the "only" evidence for it is in galactic rotation curves. He also out-and-out lies about the fact that dark matter models do explain the sturcture observations in our universe in terms of correlation functions and the matter power spectrum. Linear growing modes allow for structure as we see it, that's a mathematical tautology. Lerner's dispute of that is about as reasonable as disputing that the inverse sine is a multivalued function.

Basically, the biggest problem with plasma cosmology is that the people advocating it don't take the time to learn about standard cosmology enough to provide the critique they're aiming for. I'm not inclined to accept that people should just be allowed to posit an incomplete theory and then announce, for example, that the "Big Bang is wrong". That's about as reasonable as allowing a person who observed the deviations in Mercury's orbit declaring before GR that "Newtonian Dynamics is wrong". It's just plain ridiculous.

One interesting contrast to this is quasi-steady state models. The few people who are involved in QSSM do at least understand what it is they have to do in order to get people to take it seriously.

The Big Bang starts out with three assumptions: 1) The cosmological principle (tested in at least three cases and found to be true on cosmological scales) 2) the Copernican Principle (found to be true inductively) and 3) the universality of physical laws (found to be true to some parts in 10^7 at least to distances of billions of light years). From these and ONLY these assumptions combined with standard physics and observations of our universe (for example the Hubble recession) the Big Bang falls out. It is mundane in that way. It is not a controversial subject except to those who do not understand it.

Which brings me to the final point: that plasma cosmology just doesn't approach the table in the proper way. No doubt that astrophysical plasmas may be interesting things, but to claim that they explain every cosmological observation in a new paradigm is just laughable. When this was pointed out in the history of this article, plasma cosmologist fundamentalists immediately deleted it. They aren't about allowing for a fair comparison within the article because to approach the subject with the incredulity of incompleteness smacks of favoritism to standard models to them.

Well, I've got news for them, that's the way science works. If you cannot explain something using your model then it is only fair that you are up-front about it. Hiding behind these edits claiming this is "not a Big Bang page" is disingenuous.

Well that's your opinion, but did you actually read the Durham researchers' material before performing your WMAP censorship?
I work with members on my team.
Sounds impressive.
They are greatly dissatisfied with LCDM models.
Not exactly. They are trying to fit the parameter model. It doesn't seem to be a good fit (one to two sigma off). They are not dismissive of concordance models. I have changed it back.
Fine, have it your way. Thank you for not vandalising the article though.
Nobody is denying plasma cosmology is incomplete, but so is the standard model. Dark matter has not been found, despite what you might believe.
By this logic you might as well say that iron stripped of all its electrons hasn't been found, despite what you might believe. Dark matter isn't found in laboratories, but the calculated cross sections are too small to be seen. If we had seen these particles in the lab then they wouldn't be "dark" matter.
We are only inferring its existence from mathematical conjurations that are orders of magnitude out from observed values, yet it has eluded detection.
Actually, this isn't true at all. Our "inferences" (which is a loaded term because EVERYTHING in science can be said to be inference. After all, who has physically "seen" an atom for example). There is evidence for dark matter in gravitational lensing which is not an inference at all. If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck, well you get the picture.
No WIMPs.
Cross-sections are too small. You're behaving like someone who would have said that the top quark didn't exist before it was seen in the lab.
No neutrino mass.
Incorrect. The solar neutrino problem's solution demands a mass for the neutrino. Just not enough to be a contribution to the universe's omega.
No double beta decay.
Who cares? That's not fundamental to all supersymmetry theories anyway.
No strange nuggets.
Again, a throwaway statement. Particle physicists may or may not find the Higgs' boson, but CDM exists or there is some phenomenon that approximates it to such an extent that it's going to have to be a perspective effect if there is a new theory that will replace the CDM model. Brane cosmologies might work in this regard, for example.
MOND is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
MOND is basically dead unless they can explain lensing.
And most of all, CMB anisotropies that occur in regions of local galactic cluster concentrations, just as a local scattering effect would PREDICT.
You obviously don't know what you're talking about with respect to CMB anisotropies. The anisotropy correlations are of a certain KIND, not just "in general". S-Z effect occurs in a particular way as a distortion of the BB that is either a Y-distortion or a secodn-order redshift distortion. This in NO WAY invalidates the WMAP results.
If they existed *only* in regions of galactic clusters, then there would be something interesting. As it is, not.... Also, how do you get a blackbody spectrum from an EM scattering process? This is an honest question. -- Roadrunner 14:08, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
You cannot, Roadrunner. That is the point I am trying to make. The anisotropy analysis of the two plamsa cosmologists is just plain based on ignorance.

Actually, William Peter and Eric Lerner were studying energetic plasma generators in the laboratory and found that they acted like a perfect blackbody.

As a "non-Physicist" very interested in this debate, I'm asking both parties not to smudge the facts in this article towards either side too much, so readers can gauge the actual situation & review the evidence & arguments. Decius 12:32, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Figures in plasma cosmology

IMHO the section Figures in plasma cosmology is grossly misleading, as a lot of the names are very indirectly involved with plasma cosmology and I assume never endorsed. By including, those helped, ... or indirectly, to develop this field, nothing but an argument by authority, and faked one to be more precise, is achieved. I suggest to remove the entiere section, and all persons directly involved with plasma cosmology to be included and wikilinked from the prose. --Pjacobi 18:23, 2005 May 25 (UTC)

It should be made sure that no scientist is misrepresented as a Plasma cosmologist if he is nothing of the kind. Decius 05:26, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

Criticisms

I think this article has a lot of problems with it that have nothing to do with whether or not plasma cosmology is a good physical model. Here they are:

  • The overview section. It contains many ambiguous, unreferenced statements. It could be made less controversial by making these statements more precise and using the references. For example
It can be shown that the electromagnetic forces are several orders of magnitude greater than the gravitational forces in certain plasmas and that the electromagnetic forces can have a longer range than gravitational forces.
This statement has absolutely no content. Nobody would be surprised to hear that electromagnetic forces are stronger than gravitational forces in a tokamak. Moreover, electromagnetic forces and gravitational forces both have exactly the same range, since they both have the same inverse-square nature.
On the largest scales, evidence that plasmas exhibit external forces on physical objects such as galaxies is the same as that which has led standard model researchers to derive the existence of both dark matter and dark energy.
This sentence is very difficult to understand. Does it mean: Big Bang researchers have been led to postulate dark energy and dark matter for many of the same reasons that plasma cosmologists assert that there are long-range interactions due to plasmas in the universe?
  • It is not clear what model is being described. I suggest that Alfvén's model be described in the first section, with criticisms by cosmologists, and followed by the more recent modifications.
  • The sections on Arp and Velikhovsky need to go to separate pages. They have little if anything to do with plasma cosmology. Alfvén accepted that the redshift was a genuine Doppler shift.
  • The "Figures in plasma cosmology" section is really bad. Why is everyone who ever worked on plasma physics included, along with David Bohm and Max Born? It makes no sense. It might as well be titled "List of names the authors thought to compile."
  • Finally, as far as I'm concerned, the major problem with Alfvén's model is that it violates the Copernican idea that we should live nowhere special in the universe. In order to be compatible with the isotropy of X-ray and CMB data, as I see it, one would have to live, by chance, at the absolute center of the matter-antimatter explosion. Without this, it is not clear to me how the model can even get off the ground. This is not mentioned as a criticism.

I was thinking about making some of these changes, but I'm not interested in a pointless revert war, so I thought I'd test the waters. –Joke137 23:21, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hi there, I tried contributing to this article, but prickly anonymous physics students kept vandalising it so I gave up. Pity really, because PC has some very interesting ideas, though I've no idea what Velikovsky has to do with plasma cosmology either. I'd like to completely rewrite it from scratch and make it as npov as possible, but it is difficult because PC is incomplete and very much still in progress, which makes it vulnerable to attack. The biggest stumbling block I found in the attempt was that one has to provide a background critique of standard cosmology (from the point of view of PC theorists) in order to introduce it and provide the starting point of its development. This critique, no matter how it was worded, seemed always to be distasteful to Big Bang apologists and the subject of attack. --Jon 10:48, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Actually, Velikovsky is somewhat related to the issue of plasma cosmology. Many of his recent followers have integrated a corrupted form of plasma cosmology into their crackpot catastrophism "theories," thus bringing into the world the "Electric Universe." As the author who commented about the EU model on the Plasma Cosmology page, I was trying to point out the difference between "standard" PC and the neo-Velikovskian's EU concept. Basically, the Electric Universe supporters have applied plasma cosmology to places that it was never applied to by Alfven, Peratt, Lerner, et al. They've used it to support their notions of interplanetary lightning bolts, electrical comets, weather, and of course their "electric star theory." They've also adopted Halton Arp's non-expanding universe model. Why this is, I don't know; maybe it's just part of their overall oppostion of the Big Bang. The end result is a nonsensical mishmash of Velikovskian pseudoscience and a hacked-up version of two non-standard cosmologies.

As I mentioned on the Plasma Cosmology page, neither "mainstream" plasma cosmologists like Lerner and Peratt nor non-expanding universe advocates like Arp support the neo-Velikovskians' "theories." In fact, they don't even seem to be supportive of each other. Arp supports a cosmological model practically identical to the Quasi-steady State Theory, and has stated (in a personal email correspondence with me, at least) that he has had trouble accepting plasma cosmology. Neither his website nor any of his books have ever even mentioned Alfven or plasma cosmology, even in passing. Likewise, plasma cosmologists have supported other explanations for redshifts instead than Arp's. Alfven himself supported the notion of an expanding universe and had his own expansion theory based on matter-antimatter reactions. Peratt's website and Lerner's book have given other explanations. Lerner has stated on his website that "I concluded that "the question of the Hubble relationship remains unanswered" (p.279) and that none of the possible explanations were without problems, a conclusion that still stands." Neither Lerner nor Peratt have mentioned Arp or his theories in their attempts to explain redshifts. — Jason 02:21, 26 July 2005 (EST)

Do Lerner and Peratt agree with each other? –Joke137 17:42, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

  • AFAIK, they do agree with each other on practically all issues regarding cosmology. I've read both Peratt's website and Lerner's book (I became quite familiar with their ideas some five years ago), and I noticed no fundamental differences between the ideas in the two. They have been considered the main advocates of plasma cosmology since the passing of Alfven, with whom they were close associates of (Peratt was also Alfven's student, IIRC), and no distinction has ever been made between the ideas of the two. If Lerner and Peratt do disagree, it is most likely on minor issues, and not anything notable. — Jason 00:47, 27 July 2005 (EST)

June 2005 ~ present

Since I haven't seen a real respnse to my comments on it some time ago or Joke137's more recent ones, I've gone ahead and edited the Figures section, removing any who didn't have a direct connection to plasma cosmology, as opposed to plasma physics in general. I've left a few who were ambiguous. Rafaelgr 18:43, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Looks good, thanks for doing that. --Jon 05:46, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Physical cosmology Table

Physical cosmology

edit

I felt that the Physical cosmology table is not appropriate on a Plasma Cosmology page. It is appropriate on the Physical cosmology page where people would expect a summary. It is worth mentioning Physical cosmology in the introduction as an alternative to Plasma Cosmology. But it would be a good idea, and appropriate to have a summary table on Plasma Cosmology. Ian Tresman 11:55, 2005 Jun 30 (GMT)

Hey 204.56.7.1 whoever you are, please get yourself a login --Jon 3 July 2005 00:11 (UTC)

For interested parties, there is a decent article in the 2 July 2005 New Scientist on page 30 covering non-standard cosmology. Jon 05:05, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Please forgive the new comer....

Do any of you follow this web site, http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/00current.htm ? They appear to work with http://www.plasmacosmology.net/, and regularly post "latest news". Of particular interest to me, were the extensive predictions by plasma cosmology (of July 2/3) made before Deep Impact's encounter with Temple 1, July 3/4; the double flash of first an electrically equalizing discharge between Temple and the 800 lbs copper impactor just above the surface, and only then followed by the physical impact event. And, that the impact itself would be far more "energetic" than the standard model could predict by mass and speed alone (NASA personnel did express unanimous surprise over the size and intensity of actual event).... This would seem uniquely noteworthy to wikipedia's plasma cosmology. Would anyone like to dialogue with me about such an addition to this article?

My "dog in the fight", is that this article in the "non-mainstream" category and its subsequent mainstream counter voice, seems a bit overbearing. It appears that plasma physics has made considerable contributions to a model which encompasses many other anomalies, those often laboriously "explained away" where the standard model has trouble. Specifically, the role plasma plays in material and event acceleration, (also seen in the near instantaneous increase in brightness of Temple 1's coma/corona). Although I am not familiar with the level of detail addressed by plasma cosmology as to RF, radiant energy, kinetic or sensible energy, or any of energies latent forms, I non-the-less have an idea that aetherometry may in-fact mesh quite nicely in many ways, with plasma cosmology. Thoughts anyone? TTLightningRod 18:22, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Sure, but bear in mind that this is a plasma cosmology page, the operative word here being cosmology. solar and planetary space physics, whilst interesting and related by dint of involving plasma, doesn't really qualify. Also, some of the EUM stuff is positively whacky and highly speculative. Jon 22:15, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
By "EUM", you mean "electrical universe models", right? Do you find the suggestion of a relationship between a plasma cosmology model, coinciding with the predictability/reproducibility of bench-top laboratory plasma physics, as unappealing? ("Alfvén stressed the importance of the cellular and filamentary nature of plasmas at any scale, from the laboratory to the galactic.")
The links I offered to thunderbolts and plasmacosmology.net have been making accurate predictions for both cosmological and local phenomenon. Additionally, aetherometry has been suggesting an "ambipolar" component, just as plasma cosmology discusses a hypothetical ambiplasma... (from context, these two concepts seem largely interrelated between two fields of study which have evolved otherwise isolated from each other.) Both fields, and their terms, are considered "whacky" by mainstream for being contrary to the Big Bang consisting mostly of thermonuclear dynamics and "pull only" gravity, (while electromagnetic functions are considered insignificant by comparison). So I'm just not sure which you mean as "whacky and highly speculative"?
A deeper reading of both fields offers even more food for thought. Plasma cosmology addresses scaleability, Birkeland currents and the observed phenomenon of acceleration and deceleration of material via plasma, aetherometry discusses this as well. This acceleration is thought even by mainstream to be outside, or beyond the ability of gravity to effect. Such as the interplay between galaxies, to the bit smaller, Deep Impact/Temple 1.... Again, your thoughts? TTLightningRod 10:54, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
The solar physics, electric star model, and so on are interesting, but still speculative. I smell Velikovsky in the motivation, and unfortunately just because the universe may turn out to be governed by plasma physics as PC maintains, does not necessarily mean that Worlds In Collision is vindicated, or that Egyptian flood myths are true, or that the Earth once orbited Saturn. Jon 05:47, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
Again you lost me, what's with the stuff about "Velikovsky" (whom I've never read), "PC"(?), "Worlds In Collision is[n't] vindicated", Egyptian flood myths, or Earth orbiting Saturn?...... What does any of that have to do with NASA's Deep Impact into Temple 1? I was wondering if it was of interest to people working here in plasma cosmology. Do you want to talk about that, or some kind of "motivation" prejudice? Can I offer you a glass of water? TTLightningRod

question

From the introduction:

While the Big Bang model of cosmology suggests that the early universe was composed entirely of plasma from reheating until recombination, plasma cosmology proposes that many cosmological processes that are explained through gravitational physics in Big Bang cosmology are in fact electromagnetic in nature. A tenative list of such properties include scaleability, Birkeland currents (electric currents), double layers (charge separation), filamentation, plasma instabilities, and current circuits.

What on earth does the sentence in italics mean? The only thing I can see that ordinary cosmology would argue is not a plasma phenomenon is filamentation. And what are "current circuits"? Perhaps it is not these phenomena that are disputed, but when they are applicable to astrophysics?

Moreover, why doesn't the page explain, in a simple way, how plasma cosmology differs from the big bang? Here are some questions that could be answered

  • Was there a big bang in plasma cosmology?
  • Is the universe expanding in plasma cosmology?
  • Does plasma cosmology accept general relativity as the fundamental theory of gravity?
  • What is the role of gravity in plasma cosmology? (i.e. are galaxies held together by gravity?)

Joke137 20:34, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

  • I agree with you. I think the page overlaps several areas of interest, which are not exclusive to plasma cosmology. For example, space plasmas should really have its own page, which as you rightly point out, is standard astrophsyics, although perhaps some of Alfvén's views on electric circuits, etc. might be contentious, and still not necessarily have anything to do with cosmology. Ian Tresman 17 Jul 2005. 15:00 GMT
  • Regarding your specific questions, I'm not sure that there is a consus, but perhaps it could be phrased that "Some plasma cosmologists believe that... because... ". Ian Tresman 17 Jul 2005. 15:10 GMT

Here, I've tried to fix things up a bit. I wrote an astrophysical plasmas page, which says as much as I reliably know about the subject (not much, actually). I moved the Hannes Alfvén to ambiplasma, but left what is, I think, a nice paragraph in the intro about how Lerner and Peratt started with this model.

If you disagree with any of my changes, please don't do a wholescale revert. I've tried to keep the same meaning and sense of all the statements, although

  • I did put in that Lerner's CMB model isn't known to predict a thermal spectrum, because as best I know that is true.
  • I also think Oskar Klein did his work after Alfvén, in 1971 – that is the only Klein reference I can find – so I have changed that on both this and the ambiplasma page.
  • I put that the Alfvén model has been discarded because it doesn't predict isotropic microwave and X-ray backgrounds, which have been observed with precision.

I tried to rewrite most things for elegance and concision. —Joke137 21:52, 17 July 2005 (UTC)


I'd like to make some changes to the Plasma Cosmology article as follows:

  • To move from Ambiplasma to this article the "Alfvén's model" text, including "Alfvén's Cosmic Plasma" back to this article. Alfvén's model is a core part of plasma cosmology.
  • To move most of the Ambiplasma text in the introduction of this article to the Ambiplasma page. It has certainly fallen out of favour (or was never favour in it in the first place), and since it is not considered part of plasma cosmology, I don't think this is not a place for it. It will still be mentioned, but with a link to the Ambiplasma page.

--Iantresman 18:49, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

11 Sep 2005 Introduction

Made a number of change as follows:

  • Updated the introduction, moving information from the last paragraph to the entry on Ambiplasma.
  • Moved the section "Alfvén's Cosmic Plasma" from Ambiplasma.