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- killymckill1, on 05/11/2009, -1/+50"First off, Newton was never "wrong" - he was "right as far as it was humanly possible to be in the seventeenth century." You have to remember that he defined all the motion he ever saw with a pencil, and when he discovered the math didn't exist he just spent a chunk of his life inventing it - meanwhile, you use a supercomputer system to watch cats falling out of trees."
sad but true I see so many people at work, watching dumb video all the time of people doing dumb things.... wait theres a lot of that on digg too .... - popzero, on 05/11/2009, -1/+36I believe they prefer to be called "Little Galaxies."
- kelmaster1, on 05/11/2009, -0/+15As science goes further and further down the rabbit hole there will be more discoveries that contradict what is commonly accepted in the scientific community. The scientific community accepts the most valid theory based on no contradicting evidence. That's how theories are based; they are accepted 'ideas' that have yet to be disputed. What IS accepted by the scientific community has changed over the years. Theories that we consider valid were ridiculed by the scientific community of their time.
If there is one thing I've learned from a science degree is that the world is incredibly complex and we have merely come up with ways of simplifying it. We have many theories, like gravity, electricity etc. We understand the effects and it's easily observable, but we still do not completely understand it. Knowledge and Understanding are two completely different things... - presidentraygun, on 05/11/2009, -0/+8In related news, apples started floating upward in orchards across the country today.
- XenoSNK, on 05/11/2009, -0/+6You see, words, are like bullets...
- RealmDown, on 05/11/2009, -1/+7Newton may have been wrong, but he sure has momentum.
- rchargel, on 05/11/2009, -4/+10See!!! You left-wing nut jobs. One small aspect in one of Newton's calculation for the explanation of orbiting bodies and the law of gravitational attraction is wrong. Therefore Creationism FTW!!!!
/s - though I feel obligated to say if you really need the '/s' than you are a dumb-ass. - jj101, on 05/11/2009, -0/+5It is truly amazing. What is far less amazing is your comment.
- BigManOnCampus, on 05/12/2009, -0/+4Hard to call someone who invented calculus over his summer break "wrong"
- archiesteel, on 05/12/2009, -0/+3pln2bz: that's because they are not wrong. Plasma cosmology has been discredited by the latest findings on the CMBR, which have pretty much confirmed the Big Bang model of cosmology.
At some point, you're going to have to accept that the ones persisting in an erroneous direction are the (very few) proponents of plasma cosmology.
Now, perhaps you'll finally tell me why you think the melting point of rocks is in the million of degrees... - indigothirdeye, on 05/11/2009, -2/+5A celestial mass orbiting another larger celestial mass? It could never happen.
- jj101, on 05/11/2009, -0/+3"The group's calculations show that these galaxettes can't contain any dark matter - but then, observations of the orbital speed of the same shows that they MUST contain dark matter, as the extant material isn't enough to explain their velocities."
This is the interesting bit. Why does the article not expand on this?. "The groups calculations" of what? Irritating. - DirtPile, on 05/11/2009, -0/+3I believe the more politically correct term is "Galaxies Who Will Never Succeed."
- jj101, on 05/11/2009, -0/+3Err. Ok. How about I put it like this. They are able to say that they "can't" and "must" contain dark matter. They are clearly basing these statements on something. I would have like to know more about what where those conclusions came from - I'm not asking them to reconcile the maths as clearly if that were easy there would be no article.
- dsmx, on 05/11/2009, -0/+3No the correct term is special galaxies.
- offrdbandit, on 05/11/2009, -0/+3"Why does the article not expand on this?"
Because they don't have any idea of how to explain it. - protogenxl, on 05/11/2009, -1/+4I'm with you, Marge. Lisa! Get in here. [Lisa walks in, chuckling nervously] In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
- 408train, on 05/12/2009, -0/+2i dont think this article really told us anything, but its good to get astrological awareness out there i guess...
- misterwrite, on 05/12/2009, -0/+2Dugg for: "Basing calculations on something you've never seen is always going to be tricky (try "divide by a unicorn"), but that's the entire point."
- DirtPile, on 05/11/2009, -0/+2C'MON!
- redrambler, on 05/12/2009, -0/+2Let me lay this out for all to see. I am an astronomer. There is a solid debate going on in astronomy right now as to weather the gravitational oddities that we see in galaxies (see rotation curve for more information) are attributed to matter that we can't see (dark matter) or that newton's theory of gravity was wrong.
The first theory, dark matter, has generally been accepted by the astronomy community as the answer to where these oddities originate. Initially people did not like the explanation because it invoked "mystical explanation" as to why this was happening. If there was mass there, whey don't we see it? We have started to see dark matter however, in colliding galaxies. When the outer edges of two colliding galaxies run into one another, we see a huge source of x-rays when there was previously nothing there. This has been attributed to the collisions of the dark matter of the two galaxies colliding.
The second theory, called MOND (modified Newtonian dynamics) says there is no such thing as dark matter, and that every gravitational oddity is due to our misunderstanding of gravity. They play with the equation of gravity until it fits the data, and call it a theory. The issue with this is there is no physical mechanism or basis as to why you can manipulate the equation of gravity…they just do it, and people proclaim Newton wrong.
Hope people actually read this. I hope this has enlightened the digg community as to the underlying debate behind this article. - Antimatt, on 05/11/2009, -0/+2Personally, I don't believe in dark matter, and I think gravity is still largely misunderstood. This article, however, does not make any opinion.
- Bainemo, on 05/11/2009, -4/+6Buried for "intelligent design idiots". I don't believe in intelligent design, but I also don't believe in preaching your beliefs where they're not welcome. Don't care what they are.
- archiesteel, on 05/12/2009, -0/+2Too bad you spent so much time on a reply that no one (including me) will read.
I've already provided indication as to why the CMBR confirms the Big Bang theory and discredit Plasma Cosmology. You're probably still repeating your nonsense about galactic shadows and stuff.
At some point, you're going to have to recognize that your emotional attachment to failed theory is not healthy. In the meantime, don't bother spewing any more of your plasma BS. No one's interested. - Tiak, on 05/12/2009, -0/+2I would also like to point out that "massively impaired galaxies" is no longer an acceptable alternative to "little galaxies".
- ratherstupid, on 05/12/2009, -0/+2Well I hope nobody offers any sort of belief unless they're sure that everyone believes them 100%. How they're going to know that beforehand isn't relevant.
- BigManOnCampus, on 05/12/2009, -0/+1Funny how this was a successful troll, not sure it was even intended as one.
- archiesteel, on 05/13/2009, -0/+1"Neither of these things runs on gravity or are even affected at all by gravity when subjected to an electromagnetic field. Lightning is a plasma too, and yet, it completely ignores gravity (it travels in any direction it pleases)."
Please stop saying stupid things. They are not affected when subjected by an electromagnetic field because the electromagnetic force is *much* stronger than gravity at short distances.
Oh, and copper wires are definitely *not* considered to be a plasma, except by the dwindling minority of people who still believe in your false theory.
"No, lensing requires copious amounts of dark matter to work."
...which indicates that Dark Matter probably exists, since the lensing has been observed time and time again.
"You're just regurgitating what you've heard others say without actually thinking about it."
No, that's what *you're* doing. Pay attention, boy.
"We should be seeing the same thing here, regardless of what paradigm you subscribe to since NASA knows that galaxies form in gigantic strings"
...except that they don't. The largest galaxy survey today, SDSS, shows that the universe is homogenous on a large scale. Nowhere are the very large structures required by plasma cosmology. Again, the evidence contradicts you theory, and the rest of your argument falls apart.
"Snake oil takes all sorts of forms."
Please stop peddling yours, it's embarrassing. Do you really wish to have generations of future scientists laugh at your ignorance when they accidentally come across your unsubstantiated arguments?
You've lost. Go home and do something constructive with your life. - pln2bz, on 05/23/2009, -0/+1Re: "The "End of Greatness" is an observational scale discovered at roughly 100 Mpc (roughly 300 million lightyears) where the lumpiness seen in the large-scale structure of the universe is homogenized and isotropized as per the Cosmological Principle. The superclusters and filaments seen in smaller surveys are randomized to the extent that the smooth distribution of the universe is visually apparent. It wasn't until the redshift surveys of the 1990s were completed that this scale could accurately be observed."
I guess it goes to show that people will see what they want in images because when I look at the image you pointed me to, I see obvious signs of filamentation spanning the entire view.
Re: "Also, how do you explain that no proposal based on plasma cosmology has been published since the COBE results to explain the CMBR."
It's really much more obvious than you realize. Plasmas emit microwaves. This is an observational fact. There's no complex model spanning billions of years or involving invisible particles or forces required to justify it. It's based upon observation of plasmas within the laboratory.
EM radiation is due to two oscillating fields: an electric field, E, and a magnetic field, B. If at any given point in space E and B are oscillating back and forth in directions that are at an angle to each other in space (these two lines define a plane) and are in time phase with each other (ideally), THEN there will be radiation at right angles to the plane defined by E and B. The strength and direction of this is called the Poynting vector - it gives the direction at which the radiating wave is traveling away from that point. The frequency of the oscillation of E and B determines the frequncy of the radiated wave - whether it is to be rf, light, x-ray, or whatever.
All the above boils down to the fact that charges, moving in a magnetic field, put out "electromagnetic radiation" - especially in a cosmic plasma, where we have Birkeland currents where charges spiral along within the magnetic field. That's why cosmic plasmas give off EM signals.
Astrophysicists can be somewhat clueless when it comes to sources for electromagnetic radiation. Consider, for instance, John Barrow's claim that, "These microwaves could only have originated from a universe that was expanding like ours." from Science & Spirit magazine, Jan-Feb '05 (www.science-spirit.org), p. 45, 3rd column. It demonstrates a complete lack of understanding for microwave sources. If they only read literature outside of their Astrophysical Journal, they'd see quite plainly that Birkeland Currents generate microwaves as well ...
Microwave Generation from Filamentation and Vortex Formation within Magnetically Confined Electron Beams, A. L. Peratt and C. M. Snell, Physical Review Letters, 54, pp. 1167-1170, 1985.
In fact, there is a saying among those who work with charged particle beams, e.g., Birkeland currents, that 'a charged particle beam always creates microwaves.'
End of story. The fact that we're having to review these basic facts is really problematic. I mean, why in the world would you ignore a fundamental property of something that we can see in the laboratory in order to justify an event that people claim to have occurred billions of years ago? Is there even any common sense that can justify it? - redrambler, on 05/12/2009, -0/+1Even that article only has a 1/2 a sentence as to the dwarf galaxies not containing dark matter:
'theoretical calculations tell us that the satellites created cannot contain any dark matter'.
Which make me think less of the article. Its going from "calculation" which I thought were based on observations to "theoretical calculation" (ie. modeling) which could have all sorts of errors and assumptions in them. - archiesteel, on 05/13/2009, -1/+2"What I'm saying here with regards to supergalactic filamentation is actually completely uncontroversial."
It's also outdated. Look at the SDSS results: no large-scale filamentation. It's simply not there. Each new observation confirms the Big Bang model and invalidates Plasma Cosmology. But please, keep burying your head in the sand.
"But, at least you can take some comfort in the willingness of lots of people to share in your willful ignorance."
Except it's not ignorance, no matter how much you wish it so.
Let go of your emotional attachment to a failed theory. - archiesteel, on 05/12/2009, -0/+1Enough with your plasma cosmology bullcrap already.
- archiesteel, on 05/12/2009, -0/+1"Actually, I think that your admission that you do not read what the critics are saying is pretty much what I was seeking out."
No, it's because I have *already* read about Plasma Cosmology, and how it was discredited to the point where no one seriously consider it a viable alternative.
"I'm speaking more to the record than to you at this point in time."
No, you're not. You're simply too vain to realize you're wasting your time on a failed theory.
"When we begin to break through to the public in larger numbers (which is inevitable and already happening),"
It's not. Plasma cosmology has *lost* credibility over the past decade. The new CMBR data was the final nail in the coffin. Stop acting in such a delusional manner.
"scientists will be referring back to discussions here on Digg.com, on Slashdot and on the Bad Astronomy and Universe Today forum (at least where the threads have not been deleted) to understand why people were not more receptive to the theory to begin with."
OMG do you realize how pompously self-important you sound?
"When they do that, they will find people like yourself, who refused to read no matter what logical arguments were put forth."
No, they'll find people like yourself and wonder why some people would cling to false theories when the evidence against them was so compelling.
"It's called the Village Venus Syndrome. If you lived in a small village that had a girl in it (pretty or not), as a small boy you might imagine that she's the prettiest girl in the world. So long as you never went into the City and observed other girls, you'd likely maintain the belief that she's the most beautiful girl in the world. After all, you have nobody really to compare her against."
No, it's called looking at the various theories and figuring out which one is the most likely. The evidence is there: the Big Bang model is much more probable than the Plasma model.
"By restricting your own access to information in an intentional manner, you actually decide what to believe."
I don't restrict my own access. I've read up on conventional cosmology and plasma cosmology, and I've made a rational choice based on the available data. You, on the other hand, haven't - which is why you're clinging to an improbable theory that has less and less followers every day.
"It is not a logical process, as a scientist would undergo, but rather an emotional attachment based upon a preference for what's familiar to you."
You are describing your own thought process here, not mine.
"Our human egos are the weakest link in the interpretive sciences. You exemplify the problem perfectly."
You have some gall talking about ego when your own is reaching astronomical proportions.
"You have to understand that I've already dealt with 100 people just like yourself on these same topics."
Which proves you are close-minded, and have an emotional attachment to your failed theory. The fact that it's marginal makes you feel special, and that's what you like about it, even though evidence is mounting against it.
The only rational choice is to go with the most probable theory, and that's not what you're doing.
"As for myself, I know precisely what I'm doing. I've read both theories. I know which one is correct."
Such arrogance. Too bad for you you're wrong.
"You shouldn't really imagine that you can even hold an opinion on either theory until you read criticisms of both."
I have.
"You refuse to go through that process."
I don't.
"It's your own unfortunate choice."
It's a rational choice. Occam's razor. You chose to go with your own emotional leaning instead of going with the likeliest explanation, despite the fact that your pet theory has been losing a lot of ground in the past decade. That is your own unfortunate choice. - archiesteel, on 05/12/2009, -0/+1"But you define the most probable theory as that espoused by the largest number of scientists."
No, I define the most probable theory as the one that is most consistent with observable data.
Meanwhile you go on about wild theories about plasmas not being affected by gravity when everything indicates they are. You even go so far as to claim other observations (such as gravitational lensing) are wrong just because they would invalidate your theories.
In any case, the data about the CMBR from COBE has driven the final nail in Plasma Cosmology's coffin by shoing the radiation is isotropic, confirming the prediction of the Big Bang model.
But please, feel free to continue wasting time on a failed theory. The rest of the scientific world has moved on, making Plasma Cosmology irrelevant. Your incessant postings about it here on digg will not change this basic fact. - gkiltz, on 05/12/2009, -0/+1They don't "NIX" it!
They simply point out a flaw in the way we interpret it! - pln2bz, on 05/12/2009, -0/+1Plasma cosmology is nothing more than laboratory plasma science applied to the interpretation, simulation and mathematics of astrophysical imagery. It makes sense because the matter in space is mostly matter in the plasma state (99%). We discovered that back in the 50's when we first sent probes up, although astrophysicists have been slow to realize (or accept) the implications.
If you're against laboratory science, then you might want to stop using computers and all of the technology that surrounds you. Your plasma television, your fluorescent lights and your neon lights have nothing at all to do with gravity. Plasma is used in our tv's and lights for its electromagnetic properties. It's a contradiction that you would be against electrodynamics. We see the same process (sputtering) that was used to create microchips in action on the surface of comets. Coronal mass ejections are the sudden interruption of electrical power along a transmission line on the surface of the Sun. Pulsars are nothing more than a relaxation oscillator between two binary stars -- one of the simplest electronic circuits that can be made. The solar wind is being accelerated no differently than the way in which an old cathode ray television set creates your image (with an electric field accelerating charged particles). Plasma filaments are electrical transmission lines (aka Birkeland Currents) -- not voids created by imperfections in the Big Bang explosion -- which, of course, we are told wasn't even an explosion in the first place.
Everywhere you look, we are offered hyper-complex explanations that require the conjuring of black magic like dark matter, dark energy and black holes in order to mathematically work. The public accepts these things because they are rarely spoken to honestly about how the models aren't working very well, but also because the stories are crammed down their throats everywhere they look on cable television. We can all go into work the next day and have something to talk about. But, at some point, our lack of concern for what is true and not will affect our quality of lives. By simplistically accepting everything we are told by astrophysical authorities, we relinquish our rights to advanced technologies and predictive models, for no better reason than astrophysicists don't want to even imagine that they might have been wrong for the past 100 years.
There is a great need for skeptics, and those who refuse to accept the need for them are the greatest impediment to scientific progress. Nature is ultimately more creative than we imagined she could be. To think that she wouldn't figure out electricity is quite foolish. - thanakar, on 05/12/2009, -0/+1You missed his point, he could have presented the article without the backhanded slap to those groups he didn't like.
- Tiak, on 05/12/2009, -1/+1Because this article is just responding to other articles which made much out of the finding and proclaiming that Newton was wrong... Sort of like this one which I was able to find within 3.8 seconds of starting looking:
http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=EN_NEWS&A ... - offrdbandit, on 05/12/2009, -1/+1Gotta love idiots with no understanding of the physics involved burying posts that are over their heads.
- hereticoftruth, on 05/12/2009, -2/+2If dwarf galaxies are moving too fast to be in orbit then most likely it is because they are not in a closed orbit. And if the outer arms of galaxies are moving at about the same speed as the inner arms, then maybe the arms are being spewed out from the center of the galaxy at the same speed like a water sprinkler. Why fault Newton for being wrong when your erroneous assumptions arise from ignoring Newton's laws? Those dwarf galaxies are doing a flyby just like you are doing a Newtonian flyby in your misinterpretation of what you have observed. Why invent dark matter and dark energy to support your errors? Such behavior is not an asset to a real scientist.
- pln2bz, on 05/12/2009, -2/+2Half of the battle is understanding that skepticism must be applied to conventional, dominant theories in the same manner that it is applied to challengers. Astrophysicists mainly interpret astronomical imagery and create simulations that attempt to explain possible explanations. What they rarely do, unfortunately, is question what they've been told. This is a major problem because obviously there are errors somewhere. The gravity-based models just don't work as well as they are claimed to work. Not only is G the hardest "constant" to pin down to a specific value (see http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=q1q6sz ... but there are just too many concepts in astrophysics today which lack any experimental validation. The entire theory now completely requires those invisible forces and particles in order to explain very basic observations like galactic rotation curves, gravitational lensing, incredibly huge filamentary strings of galaxies, etc.
There's very little in the way of investigative journalism going on in the astrophysical discipline right now. The only poigniant criticism that I've been able to find myself is that coming from the Electric Universe theorists. They're oftentimes ridiculed, but rarely investigated sufficient to be understood by their critics. What they say is actually very simple:
Space is mostly filled with matter in the plasma state. This was discovered in the 50's. Many of our current astrophysical theories were devised prior to this discovery. Einstein, for instance, had no clue about this when he was coming up with Relativity. When it was discovered that the fundamental state of matter in the universe was not like those down here on Earth, it should have inspired a dramatic reconsideration of what the universe's dominant force is. We should have more carefully considered the notion that gravity is a side-effect of electromagnetism because plasmas are inherently electromagnetic phenomenon within the laboratory. Instead, what happened is that astrophysicists deprived the plasma of its electromagnetism in their models. They claimed that the plasma had frozen-in-place magnetic fields, no resistance (like a superconductor) and that it could instantaneously charge-neutralize. The fact is that nowhere on plasma's voltage-current curve does the voltage ever go to zero. At all points in a plasma, there exists some voltage -- hence an electric field, a resistance and an electrical current. In every other discipline, magnetic fields are the result of electric currents. Astrophysicists like to imagine that they can infer their own causes for the magnetic fields. And they continue to use these erroneous plasma models to this day, even though the man who invented their plasma mathematics -- Hannes Alfven -- has publicly spoken out about the errors.
When you fix this modeling error, and you treat the cosmic plasmas as we observe them to be in the laboratory (rather than what you would learn in an astrophysics textbook), then you will notice that fundamental plasma physics concepts that we see in the lab appear in space as well -- including Birkeland Currents (filamentary plasmas) and z-pinches (the bipolar morphology). Astrophysicists do not recognize these objects in space because they are fed an ideology that plasmas in space can be modeled as gases, that charge separation cannot happen in space and that electricity in space cannot do things of importance. But, we see magnetic ropes all over the place -- connecting the Sun to the Earth (courtesy of THEMIS), coming out of the Milky Way's core (the double helix nebula), etc. Gerritt Verschuur, for instance, has mapped out hydrogen filaments in our local neighborhood and even correlated them to WMAP hotspots (meaning that the CMB could possibly have a local origin). Magnetic ropes are called Birkeland Currents in the laboratory and they cannot be the result of gravity. When you see a magnetic rope, you know it's electrical because winds, fluids and gases do not twist around themselves like that. The rotation can only result from electromagnetism.
Getting astrophysicists to admit to 100 years of mistakes is really quite impossible. That's actually a far more difficult problem than understanding what we're seeing in space. Our biggest impediment is in fact our own human egos. - Semblance, on 05/11/2009, -2/+2This is not accurate. It's just more of the same stuff from folks who are fans of alternative gravity. These people don't like dark matter, which is currently the consensus opinion.
- archiesteel, on 05/15/2009, -1/+1As usual, you twist facts in order to make them fit your failed theory. There *are* filamentary structures, but not at the scales predicted by Plasma Cosmology.
In fact, once you look far enough the universe becomes isotropic, and the "clumpiness" gives way to homogenous distribution.
"The "End of Greatness" is an observational scale discovered at roughly 100 Mpc (roughly 300 million lightyears) where the lumpiness seen in the large-scale structure of the universe is homogenized and isotropized as per the Cosmological Principle. The superclusters and filaments seen in smaller surveys are randomized to the extent that the smooth distribution of the universe is visually apparent. It wasn't until the redshift surveys of the 1990s were completed that this scale could accurately be observed."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_Greatness#End_ ...
Also, how do you explain that no proposal based on plasma cosmology has been published since the COBE results to explain the CMBR.
Face it, plasma cosmology has failed to live up to its early promises, and in order to make it consistent you are forced to reject an increasing number of established theories. I'm all for keeping an open mind, but when something is this unlikely, chances are it's just isn't true.
You should really let go of your emotional attachment to this failed theory. - redrambler, on 05/11/2009, -3/+3There was only one line in the article that spoke to there not being dark matter in these galaxies:
"The group's calculations show that these galaxettes can't contain any dark matter"
I would be interested to see these calculations, as the entire article proclaiming that "newton was wrong" hinges on that one line. If there was dark matter, it would perfectly account for the discrepancy noted in the article. I would caution anyone reading this article against taking it at face value without a better description as to why. - pln2bz, on 05/12/2009, -3/+2Gravity is likely a side-effect of electromagnetism. Astrophysicists are just very resistant to the notion of admitting to 100 years of mistakes ...
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=89xdcm ... - pln2bz, on 05/12/2009, -2/+1Re: "The evidence is there: the Big Bang model is much more probable than the Plasma model."
Occam's Razor was never intended to mean a poll of scientists. It applies to the simplest physical explanation for an observation. For instance, when we observe the solar wind failing to decelerate even as it passes the planets, the simplest explanation is that the acceleration is the result of an electric field -- which in turn can only result from a positive charge accumulation on the Sun. But since astrophysicists don't believe that the Sun can accumulate charge, they refuse to actually acknowledge Occam's Razor in this case. They'd rather explore more exotic theories because those theories don't threaten the notion that plasmas can be mathematically modeled as gases, winds or fluids, subject to the force of gravity. If you propose that the Sun has an electric field, then that suggests that the Sun can accumulate electrical charge and possess a voltage. Within the presence of these electromagnetic forces, gravity would not dominate the movement of charged particles.
Occam's Razor is only being applied by astrophysicists when it suits them. Clearly, it is simpler to refer to established electrodynamics than to invent new particles and forces to explain each enigmatic observation. Were it not for the desire to pretend that plasmas can be modeled as gases, fluids or winds to begin with, none of this complication would even exist at all. Their mathematical models for plasmas are the very thing that make space appear as complicated.
Re: "The only rational choice is to go with the most probable theory, and that's not what you're doing."
But you define the most probable theory as that espoused by the largest number of scientists. This is a major problem for me because their models require the existence of huge amounts of invisible forces and particles in order to work.
And yet, space is filled with matter in the plasma state. We should be able to study it within the plasma laboratory. When we see correlations between space and the laboratory with regards to plasmas, it makes complete sense that we should investigate those similarities. All of the features of the Sun match the features of the plasma glow discharge, including the solar wind acceleration and the inverse-temperature corona enigma -- the two most perplexing observations of the Sun from the perspective of the thermonuclear Sun model. - pln2bz, on 05/13/2009, -2/+1Re: "They are not affected when subjected by an electromagnetic field because the electromagnetic force is *much* stronger than gravity at short distances."
Spherical plasma shells are indeed screened by charges of the opposite polarity. This is called Debye shielding. But, you're ignoring the plasma filaments that have by now been observed to exist on ALL scales -- including interplanetary, interstellar, intergalactic, galactic and even supergalactic. Once it became clear that space was 99% matter in the plasma state, Hannes Alfven predicted in 1950 that the universe's shape should be filamentary. It was one of the earliest predictions made in regards to the shape of the universe. This suggestion was generally disregarded until the 1980s, when a series of unexpected observations showed filamentary structure on the galactic, intergalactic, and supergalactic scales. But when his prediction was confirmed as valid, nobody gave him any credit for it. Instead, they interpreted the voids between the filaments to be remnants of the Big Bang. And yet, plasmas naturally form filaments in the laboratory. It's one of their most fundamental behaviors! We don't need to imagine that the universe exploded or expanded in order to explain it one bit.
Plasmas form filaments on all scales of the cosmos. People have actually mapped them out, and we can tell that they're transmitting electrical power at astounding rates because of their critical ionization velocities (CIV). When the interstellar plasma filaments, for instance, hit neutral gases, they will max out at some critical velocity. This critical velocity changes depending upon the atoms or molecules of the neutral gas. What we observe are all of the critical velocities for the universe's most common elements -- which confirms that the hydrogen filaments are conducting currents full-blast through our neighborhood.
Astrophysicists like to imagine that charge separation cannot happen in space. And yet, we have numerous experiments that demonstrate that CIV is indeed real and it does indeed separate charges.
Re: "...which indicates that Dark Matter probably exists, since the lensing has been observed time and time again."
Again, you appear to not realize any of the criticisms of the lensing itself. This subject could possibly fill books by itself. Just keep in mind that your lack of reading on this subject does not mean there is no debate. There is plenty.
Re: "...except that they don't. The largest galaxy survey today, SDSS, shows that the universe is homogenous on a large scale. Nowhere are the very large structures required by plasma cosmology. Again, the evidence contradicts you theory, and the rest of your argument falls apart."
What I'm saying here with regards to supergalactic filamentation is actually completely uncontroversial. Listen to NASA, from http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/ ... ...
"GIANT GALAXY STRING DEFIES MODELS OF HOW UNIVERSE EVOLVED
Wide-field telescope observations of the remote and therefore early Universe, looking back to a time when it was a fifth of its present age (redshift = 2.38), have revealed an enormous string of galaxies about 300 million light-years long. This new structure defies current models of how the Universe evolved, which can't explain how a string this big could have formed so early.
The string is comparable in size to the "Great Wall" of galaxies found in the nearby Universe by Dr. John Huchra and Dr. Margaret Geller in 1989. This is the first time astronomers have been able to map an area in the early Universe big enough to reveal such a galaxy structure."
The Great Wall was another structure observed to be too large to exist. More recently, we observe galaxies that are too young to have had time to generate their magnetic fields. From http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2008/10/ ... ...
[begin quote]
"In a stretch of the universe 6.5 billion light years away, astronomers have detected a young galaxy with a bizarrely strong magnetic field that is making them question the accepted theory of how galactic magnetic fields form. “This was a complete surprise,” said [lead researcher] Arthur Wolfe…. “The magnetic field we measured is at least an order of magnitude larger than the average value of the magnetic field detected in our own galaxy” [SPACE.com].
In the current dynamo theory of magnetic field formation, large galaxies develop strong magnetic fields through a slow and gradual process. Astrophysicists think these fields are slowly built up from smaller ’seed fields’ that surround the charged particles blasted out by supernovae. Over billions of years, the galaxies’ slow spin whips up these particles and acts like a dynamo to align and amplify the fields [NewScientist].
This galaxy, known as DLA-3C286, is too young for that process to have already occurred."
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Dynamos are another unseen entity that props up the Big Bang Theory. Their first mistake was their belief that they could propose their own causes for the magnetic fields. In every discipline OTHER than astrophysics, magnetic fields are the result of electric currents. Dynamos are mathematical entities. Nothing more.
But, as you can see, there is a trend here that's occurring: Whenever we look into deep space, we see things that shouldn't be there according to your Big Bang. How many times are we expected to experience this until we start to be skeptical?
What you're not getting about the CMB is that the accuracy of the image is just not that great. It's a bit like taking a photograph through a semi-transparent filter of some sort. The technology is still advancing on those images, so to raise the current images up as some sort of Holy Grail that possesses the traits that you expected is completely premature. You could have just as easily looked down the wrong end of the telescope and said the same thing. But not only that, there are no filaments in the image to speak of. And since we know that space is pervaded by filaments, these filaments would absorb the CMB in some manner. So, to argue that you WANTED to see a homogenous image is really kind of silly. Upon what basis did you want that? It contradicts every other large-scale image we've ever made of the sky.
But, at least you can take some comfort in the willingness of lots of people to share in your willful ignorance. Nobody seems to really care much that there are all of these problems -- which is testament to the strength of ideology in the face of enigmatic observations. What's really sad though is all of the time and money we waste acting surprised every time we see the same thing. It's supposed to be the definition of a crazy person, actually, to try the same thing over and over again, only to get the same "unexpected" results. - pln2bz, on 05/14/2009, -2/+1By the way, I think I meant to say earlier that plasma is *like* copper wire. I realize that copper wire is solid, not plasma. What happens inside of a copper wire is very similar to what happens in interstellar space. You can actually use some of the same concepts (like Debye length) to understand semiconductor physics and plasma physics. That's because they are both conductors involved in electric circuits.
At a prior time, when it was less heretical to discuss the subject of electric currents in space, you'd see statements like this in the physics books:
"The interstellar gas generally behaves as a conductor and it follows that there may be electric currents anywhere." -- Cosmic Electrodynamics by Dungey (1958)
Revelations since that time have only confirmed claims like these. The filaments are not there by chance. - pln2bz, on 05/14/2009, -2/+1Here is the SDSS Galaxy Map (on their homepage) based upon non-Arp interpretation of redshift. It's filamentary just like all of the others ...
http://www.sdss.org/includes/sideimages/sdss_pie2. ...
Here is the SDSS image (on their homepage) of the local filaments in our neighborhood ...
http://www.sdss.org/includes/sideimages/fos_dr6_ma ...
The article that I read which accompanied these results reads as follows. From http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/New_Milky_Way_Ma ... ...
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The halo of stars that envelops the Milky Way galaxy is like a river delta criss-crossed by stellar streams large and small, according to new data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II) ...
While the largest rivers of this delta have been mapped out over the last decade, analysis of the new SDSS-II map shows that smaller streams can be found throughout the stellar halo ...
"Even with SEGUE, we are still only mapping a small fraction of the Galaxy," said Schlaufman, "so 14 streams in our data implies a huge number when we extrapolate to the rest of the Milky Way."
If each velocity structure were a separate stream, Schlaufman explained, there would be close to 1,000 in the inner 75,000 light years of the Galaxy. However, these structures could arise from a smaller number of streams that are seen many times in different places.
"A jumble of pasta" is the way Columbia University researcher Kathryn Johnston described her theoretical models of the Milky Way's stellar halo.
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That covers filaments for the largest images we have of the universe (the supergalactic) and the halo coming out of the Milky Way (the intergalactic). There are also filaments in the Milky Way's galactic core, emanating from the core (the double helix nebula), in between stars (Verschuur's research), and between the Sun and the Earth (interplanetary), courtesy of THEMIS, as well as, of course, in the Sun's corona emanating off of its surface. That means there are filaments traversing the entire universe, on every single scale that we observe.
Here's why it matters:
Within the laboratory, separate plasma filaments carrying current will possess both long-range attraction and short-range repulsion with the strength of the electric force with one another (which is 10^39 stronger than the force of gravity). The long range attraction is a result of parallel axial currents, while the circular (or helical) currents within the filaments (as the electrons gyrate along the axial magnetic field) contribute to the short-range repulsion. This combination causes the filaments to twist around one another without combining. In many instances, the twisting is difficult to see in the imagery -- in which case it appears as just a filament.
We cannot directly observe electrical currents in space. Where they do exist, plasma physics principles suggest that we could detect them in a few distinct ways. We can observe the twisted bundles of magnetic fields that the accompanying electric currents generate. Alternatively, since ions are sucked into the transmission line and transferred to remote distances, we can also observe the sorting out of periodic table elements (Marklund convection) that naturally results. That's because these ions can both emit and absorb electromagnetic radiation (from radio to x-ray, and even microwave and infrared). By contrast, gases would otherwise disperse in space without any organizing force. Cohesive magnetic rope structures cannot be generated with the radial geometry of gravity. Neither are they the hallmark characteristic of winds, fluids or (non-ionized) gases. Observations of long-range cosmic magnetic ropes, in particular, are without question testament to the transfer of electrical current over plasmas.
Lacking any professional training in what a Birkeland Current is, astrophysicists have deployed a scattered assortment of terminology to describe them. "Flux ropes", "magnetic ropes", "magnetic flux ropes", "field aligned currents", "plasma ropes", "plasma cables", "magnetic cables", "current constrictions", "plasma rays", "electrical tornadoes" and even "magnetic slinkies", "spaghetti" and "elephant trunks" may all show up in searches through astrophysical journals. All of these terms suggest the same morphology and unique underlying cause. In the absence of any education on what a laboratory Birkeland Current looks like, and equipped with ideologies that specifically forbid them, astrophysicists are uniquely incapable of identifying these structures within astronomical imagery.
Birkeland Currents extend the reach of the electric force to limitless distances across the cosmos. The conventional dismissal of this fundamental plasma morphology in the cosmos is what inspires the erroneous conclusion that gravity is the universe's dominant force.
Now, you're starting to understand plasma physics, and why it's important. We see Birkeland Currents everywhere we look. We know why they form from laboratory experimentation. They extend far beyond the reach of gravity. That means that the electric force is the dominant force. Debye shielding confines the plasma cell, but plasma cells are connected by Birkeland Currents. It's really that simple.
Add to that the fact that two twisting Birkeland Currents can *naturally* form spiral galaxies that match the fixed disc galactic rotation curves we see in space, and you're starting to understand why people care. -
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