Talk:Static universe

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[edit] NPOV concerns

I have come to look at this article in response to NPOV concerns that have been brought to my attention, presumably with the desire for comment. I have looked through the history and see that the article has been drastically changed since Jan 16, with a lot of information being taken out and different material being inserted. While I do not see the inserted material as inappropriate in its content, it does seem very POV in the way it is presented...especially when regarded in combination with what was taken out. That being said, I was very disappointed to see that no discussion had taken place on the talk page in regard to these major edits, and I was also unable to find any discussion regarding the edits on the user talk pages of the editors involved. So, pending proper discussion as per wikipedia policies and guidelines, I am reinserting the removed material. I am also going to, in the process, attempt to make both the removed material and the new material work together in a way that adheres to NPOV policy.

  1. Reinserted the paragraph about Eric Lerner. he has an aticle on Wikipedia, so he is obviously notable enough to mention, and there is a link provided to the petition which does indeed contain over 500 signers, more than 200 of them from the standard scientific community. Idid try to clean the paragraph up a bit, but I think it does need more work.
  2. I have reinserted relevant info from the removed intro, worked in in with the newer intro, and introduced it in a similar way to how other theories are introduced in their respective articles...This should maybe be standardized in the interest of both NPOV and style, as well as to facilitate comprehension when a reader is jumping back and forth between related articles.
  3. Removed the statement regarding Einstein's "greatest blunder"...this kind of comment must be cited. Als changed the wording regarding Hubble's research, as cosmology is almost completely theoretical, and should be represented as such...what I mean is that it isn't accurate to describe theories (even very likely and well supported theories) as discoveries. Discovery indicates something which is known with certainty. This comment on Hubble's law probbaly needs something to help it blend better and to describe why the redshift research is incompatible with Einstein's previous theories, but I will leave that to those who are more deeply involved in these topics.
  4. Reswapped the astrophysical aspects heading and content with the "these guys shouldn't question the most popular theory" commentary...the latter is inappropriate in that it describes those who seek alternative theories as disobediant children, even though questioning is what science is supposed to be all about! However, there does need to be some clarification in the introduction to these astrophysical aspects.

I have changed some other areas, more in how they are worded than in the content of them, and these will be evident in the article history. My reasoning is that wiki articles are not intended to tell the reader what they should believe, but rather to represent all views and allow the reader to decide for themselves. We must remember that popular theories, even long-standing ones, have many times been replaced by new theories. It often seems that science gets as bad as religion in trying to push certain views and having a closed mind to alternatives...I see that as very unfortunate, as I used to hold science in much higher regard almost solely on the fact that it is supposed to be based on open-mindedness and questioning even those things that are likely to be true.

Please remember to discuss large changes on the talk page first, particularly if you hold the view that certain scientists are "bad" because they question those theories "accepted by scientific consensus". bcatt 23:10, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad you had concerns and you brought them to the talkpage. However, your edits are misguided and I'll explain why:
  1. Reinserted the paragraph about Eric Lerner. he has an aticle on Wikipedia, so he is obviously notable enough to mention, and there is a link provided to the petition which does indeed contain over 500 signers, more than 200 of them from the standard scientific community. Idid try to clean the paragraph up a bit, but I think it does need more work. -- Lerner is an advocate of plasma cosmology and is currently a Wikipedia member editting that page. He has already indicated over there that he does not consider his model to be a static universe, but instead an "eternal universe" that is continually evolving. As such, we are going to have to remove the material about him unless you can find a source that conforms to verifiability.
  2. Removed the statement regarding Einstein's "greatest blunder"...this kind of comment must be cited. Als changed the wording regarding Hubble's research, as cosmology is almost completely theoretical, and should be represented as such...what I mean is that it isn't accurate to describe theories (even very likely and well supported theories) as discoveries. Discovery indicates something which is known with certainty. This comment on Hubble's law probbaly needs something to help it blend better and to describe why the redshift research is incompatible with Einstein's previous theories, but I will leave that to those who are more deeply involved in these topics. -- I get the impression that you aren't very familiar with the topic. While that's fine, drastically editting pages like this can be seen to be problematic. In particular, cosmology is not "almost completely theoretical" (in fact, there is an entire branch of observational cosmology) and the Big Bang remains the scientific theory that describes the current state of mainstream physical cosmology research. Fringe ideas do exist, but they need to be describe with an eye to undue weight concerns.
  3. Reswapped the astrophysical aspects heading and content with the "these guys shouldn't question the most popular theory" commentary...the latter is inappropriate in that it describes those who seek alternative theories as disobediant children, even though questioning is what science is supposed to be all about!... -- this reads like a lecture from a supporter of some nonstandard cosmology about regarding pathological skepticism. A neutral encyclopedia does not describe fringe ideas as mainstream when they aren't. This is apparently the attempt that you are going for.
I suggest that you do some more research on these subject, perhaps with an eye toward the development of the Big Bang theory. Einstein's static universe is part of that particular narrative and there are no verifiable sources I have seen that claim that there are still people today who view the universe as static in quite the same way. Thanks for your input!
--ScienceApologist 15:35, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The deleted information

For reference, the following is the information that ScienceApologist deleted from the article, twice:

[edit] Basic description

The theory of a static universe is the rival theory to an expanding universe and all of it's subvarieties. The different types of expanding universe theories are big bang, continuous creation, and oscillatory universe. Big bang is the most popular theory.

In the time of Albert Einstein, the most well-known proponent of static universe was Fritz Zwicky, who proposed the 'tired light' theory as an alternative explanation of the red shift. In contrast, the proponents of the expanding universe theories interpret the red shift as being the result of the doppler effect, due to universal expansion, or due to an intergalactic 'dark energy' which causes the universe to expand.

In modern times, the greatest proponent of a static universe is Eric Lerner, who rallied over two hundred like-minded physicists to sign his petition against the big bang at http://www.cosmologystatement.org .

[edit] Astrophysics of the static universe

There are multiple astrophysical aspects in the static universe model. The main aspects are described as follows:

  • Hydrogen is re-created by quasars (extremely massive black holes) via the re-combination of their matter with photons. This has been observed to occur, in which quasars have been seen to spew out massive jets of hydrogen gas, often enough to eject the quasar from the galaxy that it originated in.
  • Photons that travel intergalactic distances pass through transparent gas clouds (in which they are absorbed and re-emitted by electrons), and pass by gravitating bodies, both of which cause their frequency to decrease with distance.
  • A cosmic microwave background radiation is caused by microwave emissions from the transparent gases that absorb energy from the stellar photons.
  • When photons interact with intergalactic gas, the time between absorption and re-emission is variable. That causes the photons to be somewhat spread out over time. That spreading is equal in all directions of astronomical observation, in contrast to the big bang, in which this spreading must be of different extremity from different directions, due to the universe having a definite center. That time-spreading that is equal in all directions has been observed to occur in distant supernovae.
  • Interaction of the photons with the intergalactic gas and gravitating bodies causes distant objects to be blurred. This has been observed to occur.

[edit] Many static universe proponents are anti-Einstein

The article associates a static universe with Albert Einstein. There are some static universe proponents that like to associate themselves with Einstein so as to give themselves extrinsic authority. However, most static universe proponents consider Einstein to be the creator of the big bang belief, due to his clever strawman tactic in the general theory of relativity, in which Einstein made the obvious false assumption that a static universe is dependent upon a precise balance of forces (as opposed to a regulatory mechanism, which is described in the deleted astrophysics section). Therefore, the article should make no positive association between Einstein and the static universe model, though a negative (oppositional) association is not inappropriate. GoodCop

Do you have any sources which indicate this? --ScienceApologist 04:24, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What to do with a fact that stationary universe passes 4 tests that Big Bang doesn't pass?

There is an unpleasant fact that Einstein's stationary universe passes (hopefully accidentally) tests

  1. for predicting Hubble redshift in vicinity of 70 km/s/Mpsc,
  2. at the same time predicting density of space as 6x10-27kg/m3 while observations show (5.5 ± 4.5)x10-27kg/m3,
  3. accelerated expansion (dH/dt)/H02 as -0.5 while observations show -0.45,
  4. "anomalous" acceleration of Pioneers as 7x10-10m/s2 while observations show (8.7 ± 1.3)x10-10m/s2.

Even more disturbing fact is that these predictions could be obtained merely with simple Newtonian approximation and therefore by every phisicist or even high school student. Luckily the way of getting them is not published in any reliable source (thanks God!) since otherwise the physicists could lose all the confidence in mathematical physics and the regular citizens could lose confidence in science. Praise the editors of scientific journals for saving our jobs. 217.153.176.243 23:27, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

All of this is orginal research and as such will not be appearing in the article. --ScienceApologist 22:24, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why proponents of static universe don't use Einstein's theory?

Why not to use Einstein's theory of gravitation to prove that the universe is stationary while just a glance at Einstein's gravitation reveals why the universe has to be stationary if the principle of conservation of energy is valid (unfortunately the contemporary General Relativity can't be used since the expansion has been built into its metric making it contradicting Einstein's gravitation and the principle of conservation has been lost and so obviously the original General Relativity, still without the expansion of space, has to be used).

It's just a 20 minutes calculation, which I keep showing to everyone who's intereted, mostly to physicisct at my university, and to astronomy students there, for over 20 years (exactly 22 since I noticed it in February 1985 and sent it to Nature then) so the math has been tested over and over on hundreds of rather smart people, and all of them are as bewildered as I am.

Would kindly someone explain to me why scientists behave so irrationally that having a ready to go Einsteinian solution they don't use it but talk and talk, about plasma, about tired light, etc. as if there were a big mystery somewhere there. Jim 18:35, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New Evidence

I am very dissapointed to find that this article hasn't been updated or cited properly:

1) One of Einstein's last theories dealt with a "big bang/steady state" universe, as shown in the article. What the srticle doesn't say is that Einstein during his proof of such a universe, and during his addition of the cosmological constant, Einstein made a high school error in his theory by not prooving, in one of his formula's, that there was a non-zero. All of the sentences afterwards were flawed because they were under the assumption of a non-zero. Einstein later commented about this that it was his "biggest blunder." So the quote "biggest blunder" in the article is taken out of context twice.

2) It also states that there is a scientific concensus: "A very small number of proponents of the static universe continue to promote nonstandard cosmologies in defiance of scientific consensus..." There is no scientific consensus of what the universe will be doing. Some say it will all end in a big crunch, others a big rip (heavily promoted by the history channel), and even more say that we might have multiple universes with different dimensions (string theory).

3) The article makes it sound as if there is no scientific basis for an idea for a static or steady state universe. The problem with that is, that there is new cosmology suggesting that there is what einstein called a cosmological constant; in new evidence there has been a rebirth in the idea of a cosmological constant, and that gravity, iver long distances, repels. This could possibly lead back to a conclusion of a oscilating, static, or even a steady state universe.

People who think we know everything about the universe don't know anything. They don't know how complex, even gravity, can be in the universe. We have no idea: how much mass is in the universe, how dense it is, what dark matter and dark energy are and if they even exist, and how will it end or not. We are still recieving new information about our universe; even today something so complex could seem possibly trivial to future generations. That's my two cents. look here for more information Jake 21:43, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stability

Isn't the Einstein static universe unstable? Any small increase in a will tend to make da/dt positive, and the universe will then diverge towards infinite expansion. Any small decrease in a will tend to make da/dt negative, and drive the universe to collapse. It is like a pencil balanced on its point; with any deviation from the equilibrium point leading to positive feedback and an increasing divergence either for expansion or collapse. —Duae Quartunciae (talk · cont) 08:12, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Separate article on Einstein static spacetime ?

I have a suggestion that this article be split so that Einstein's static universe solution be described in more detail in a new article. Views welcome. Thanks. MP (talk•contribs) 18:53, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think this is necessary. If the article becomes too long, we can split them, but there is no reason to split them now. ScienceApologist 22:15, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
For the record, I agree with the redirect. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Beast of traal (talk • contribs) 00:51, 2 January 2008 (UTC)