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Another Problem With Big Bang?

*I'm* the religious fanatic, David? ROTFLOL!

And apparently, unlike some on this thread, I have absolutely no financial stake in whether Big Bang or Plasma Cosmology is correct. I'll probably have to pay taxes for cosmology research either way. I'd just like the research dollars to not be wasted like so many government dollars. :D

Well, I said it was an appearance thing. It may not be your intent.

Um, have you looked yet and seen where the stuff you were saying about dark matter and energy is very similar to what was said about the pi-meson before the photographic plates showed it was a possibility and not just theoretical?

And partcile acceleartor people don't really think of themselves as BBE consmologists. Those allusions are what make you seem to be a fanatic, that and the fact that you are bordering on a monolouge.

Speaking of government waste, do you think we need to spend so much on the 'defense' budget?
 
Doesn't matter since the point is that the high redshift quasar is on THIS SIDE of the low redshift galaxy in the central core region where no light can pass through the galaxy. Ergo, the Big Bang is dead. Redshift is not always an indicator of distance and velocity, as Big Bang cosmologists have assumed for decades and decades.
No you are assuming that the object is on this side of the galazy. this is hardly controversial, it is being discussed and not suppressed.

When they prove where it is then it will be taken that it is on this side.

It seems likely.

And that does mean the current structure will be re-evaluated.
Funny you should say that an alignment like that is unlikely given that Arp and others have detailed hundreds of unlikely alignments. A fact which the Big Bang community simply ignores or dismisses with a wave a the hand.
This is not some secret information being suppressed, but maybe I read more than most people. It has been discussed for a while.
Of course. But that will still force a reexamination of every redshifted object that has every been found and used in Big Bang explanations. And the size of the universe according to the Big Bang will likely shrink since the highest redshifted objects are usually quasars or highly energetic galaxies where electromagnetic effects on plasmas are most noticeable.
Shouldn't that read 'might' be most noticible? When the effects is established and the mechanism is understoof and tested then you can use the assertive 'are'. Again this is being studied and not suppressed, when the pi-meson was suggested, it met the same sort of resistance.
And a smaller universe means a younger universe ... and the age of the Big Bang universe is already too small to account for the age of some stars and other observations as I noted earlier. Ergo ... the Big Bang is in Big Trouble. :D
That i am not so sure of, the dating of those stars and clusters is still being debated.
If the model changes that is cool.
But do you know that Arp and his colleagues, who first discovered this, say they submitted their paper for publication and it was many months before the journal finally approved it.
What a bunch of whiners, are you sure they know much about research publication. I can understand if they were not presented as a letter in the journal. But gosh complaining about waiting months, when some people wait yeras? that is really proof of nothing more than a defalted ego.

Sorry, my father is very well respected in his field, but hios articles have to wait in line as well.
Scott says it was widespread dissemination of the result on the internet that forced publication.
I see, now you are using appeal to authority while tearing down appeal to consensus?
And by the way, according to Scott, as of July 2006 several other images of quasars in front of disks of low redshift galaxies have been published. I believe I linked a page with some of those examples earlier in this thread. :)

I know, I have already read about them, I can't really remeber but i think it has been around a while, even on Astronomy Picture of the Day. (I might be wrong)
 
Hey, Cuddles, not to be a nitpick, but cosmological redshift is not a Doppler shift. Yes, you can get redshifting from Doppler effects (a galaxy whizzing around a cluster, for example), but it is different from redshift caused by the expansion of the universe. The main qualitative difference is that you still get cosmological redshifting even if both objects are at rest. The numbers you get at the end of the day are different, and the bulk redshifting we see in the universe matches up with the cosmological prediction, not Doppler effects.

You've educated me many times in the past on this forum, and I though I would return the favor!
 
Hey, Cuddles, not to be a nitpick, but cosmological redshift is not a Doppler shift. Yes, you can get redshifting from Doppler effects (a galaxy whizzing around a cluster, for example), but it is different from redshift caused by the expansion of the universe. The main qualitative difference is that you still get cosmological redshifting even if both objects are at rest. The numbers you get at the end of the day are different, and the bulk redshifting we see in the universe matches up with the cosmological prediction, not Doppler effects.

You've educated me many times in the past on this forum, and I though I would return the favor!

Yeah, well, people would get jealous if I was right all the time.:duck:

For those who might be interested, Doppler shifts are caused during the emission or reception of waves (light, sound or whatever). A stationary object will emit waves with peaks a certain distance apart. An object moving away from you will be slightly further away each time it emits a peak, and so the wavelength of the wave is increased. For the cosmological redshift, the emitted wave is exactly the same however far away an object is. However, while the wave is travelling the space it is in is expanding so the peaks get pulled further apart, again resulting in a longer wavelength. One major difference is that the cosmological shift can only result in longer wavelengths (at least while the universe is expanding, if it collapses it could only cause a blueshift), while the Doppler shift can cause shorter or longer ones, depending on the direction of motion.

It's easy to confuse the two, as I did in my last post, since the expansion of space is often thought of as objects moving away from each other. However, this is not technically the case and, as Frank says, the actual results aren't quantitively the same, even thought they are qualitatively similar.
 
Posted by Beachooser
It has photos that clearly show what appears to be a bridge linking NGC 4319 (a spiral galaxy with z=0.006) and Mark 205 (a quasar with z=0.07). Yet Mark 205 is supposedly 15 times farther away. At Arp's website

http://heritage.stsci.edu/2002/23/supplemental.html

Discusses this and apparently somebody cared enough to put the Hubble on it.

The figures do show some nebulosity lying between NGC 4319 and Mrk 205, as Halton Arp and other astronomers noticed many years ago. However, the question is whether this nebulosity implies that there is a real, physical connection between the two galaxies, or whether it is just a little bit of irregularity in the structure of NGC 4319 or Mrk 205, that happens to lie between the images. Notice that there are similar nebulous features on the edges of both objects in other places as well, not just between them. I don't think that these images demonstrate that there is a real connection between the objects, but you can make up your own mind.

"clearly show what appears" is not quite that clear, although it is a possibility.




This page at least discusses the ESO 1327-206 galaxy and quazar and says that the galaxy's spectrum is superimposed on the quazar.

http://www.astr.ua.edu/keel/agn/redshifts.html

And a google search for the Fornax quazars NGC 1097 A (of which there are a bunch) show more than just Arp being interested in it. hardly what i would call squelched.

And this article discusses the NGC 7320 and NGC 7320 C redshifts:
http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic0007.html

BeAChooser

Well now that I have, what are you going to do? Ignore it? Or admit you were wrong?
Your data is a hodge podge and you still haven't really done more than just lis a bunch of inconsistancies. That means what? Science. I still don't see this vast conspiracy of BBE scietists who run around building colliders.

So Arp wasn't lauded the way he wanted, people are listening now, what kind of reception did Guth and Gell-Mann get?

Some of the things you post are just your assertion of what they might show.
 
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I said that the simplistic argument that there is a lot of plasma is not enough because one can then make the simplistic counter argument that plasma is neutral.

If it was neutral, it wouldn't be plasma. You Big Bang proponents can't make your flawed logic that obvious. And it's just not fair that you get to make up things like Dark Matter and Dark Energy but we can't make up things like Super Plasma. :)

I tell you what ... let's do a little calculation.

You claim that the Debye length is the critical parameter and rules out the possibility of structures across intergalactic space where the distance between galaxies is in the millions of light years? Sources say the Debye length is about 10 meters in interstellar space (between stars in a galaxy) and 10000 meters in intergalactic space (between galaxies).

Yet, as I mentioned earlier, electromagnetically produced plasma filaments were observed even back in 1990 by the VLA that are 10+ light years thick and over 150 light-years long projecting out of the plane of our own galaxy. And the Japanese about that time found filaments arching about 700 light years above the galactic plane much like what plasma cosmologists predicted would be found. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ApJ/journal/issues/ApJL/v470n1/5187/5187.pdf states that "polarization measurements suggest that the internal magnetic fields are aligned with the long axis of these filaments." This is key feature of Birkeland Currents which lie at the heart of plasma cosmology theories.

And as already mentioned, the jet emerging from the galaxy M87, has been estimated to be 5400 light-years long. Presumably the density of the plasmas in that jet are comparable to the interstellar medium.

So let's see, if a 10 meter Debye length can have plasma structure that are 5400 lights years long, a 10,000 meter Debye length corresponding to intergalactic space perhaps can produce filaments that are 5 million light years long. That's the distance between galaxies.

Then we find even more impressive facts like these:

http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=6904521 "Magnetic fields in spiral galaxies ... snip ... Radio polarization observations have revealed large-scale magnetic fields in spiral galaxies. ... snip ... Long magnetic-field filaments are seen, sometimes up to a 30 kpc length."

Let's see, 1 kpc is 3259 light years. So 30 kpc is about 98,000 light years long! So now we have an electrically charge plasma filament that is nearly 100,000 light years long in a medium where sources say the Debye length is 10 meters.

If we assume the same scale is possible in intergalactic space, then we might expect to find filaments that are 10000/10 = 1000 * 100,000 light years = 100 million light years long. Filaments that long would account for the strings of galaxies that are observed.

OK, so according to you now even nuclear fusion doesn't work in the universe.

No, not according to me, according to people who seem to understand plasmas, electric currents and magnetic fields (and afterall, everything we see on and above the sun is current carrying plasmas and magnet fields). If you think you know all the answers, then tell us why if the energy is produced deep inside the sun by nuclear fusion, there is a corona?

Here's what a mainstream astronomer says: http://www.alma.nrao.edu/science/basics/solarwind.html "One of the great mysteries of the Sun is why it has a solar corona. At the height of the photosphere (the visible surface of the Sun), the temperature is ~5880K. The temperature then decreases with height for several hundred kilometers. But then something amazing occurs: at greater heights, the temperature increases, gradually at first, and then suddenly to ~3 million degrees! "

Can you do better than him? Or shall we look at what Plasma scientists suggest is happening on the sun (according to Donald Scott's book, "The Electric Sky"). I paraphrase and shorten his explanation ...

The big difference from the standard model is that plasma cosmologists don't believe the energy is being produced in the sun, but is a result of a difference in charge between a positively charged sun and a negative current carrying interstellar medium. This model was developed by a now deceased engineer named Ralph Juergens back in 1979.

The plasma in the photosphere is in arc mode, emitting brilliant white and ultraviolet light. The chaotic granular behavior seen on the surface of the sun is similarly to anode tufts seen in plasma cells on earth. The brownian motion of the +ions in these solar tufts produces the 5800 K temperatures that are measured.

The high voltage plasma in the photosphere is separated from low voltage plasma in the lower corona by the chromosphere (another region whose existence the standard nuclear model cannot explain). The chromosphere contains a Double Layer and this is where most of the radio-frequency noise emitted from the sun comes from. Radio noise is a DL property.

The photosphere is where the +ions have their highest electric potential energy and a relatively low kinetic energy (that chaotic side to side motion of the granules). As the ions flow out of the sun due to the voltage gradient, they accelerate outward. They also loose some of their side to side motion and de-thermalize, accounting for the moderate drop in temperature (to about 4000K) just above the surface.

As the +ions pass into the transition zone at the top of the chromosphere (about 2000 km out from the surface), they move beyond the intense outwardly directed E-field force that is accelerating them. They now have very high kinetic energy so collisions between them are violent. X-ray emissions from such collisions have been observed in this region.

Re-thermalization takes place "analogous to the turbulent white water that boils up at the bottom of a smooth laminar water slide". This is what raises the temperature into the millions of degrees. These ions then become the solar wind and again the acceleration of the solar wind beyond the corona is clearly another electrical phenomena.

The standard nuclear model has no comparable explanation. It can't explain the temperature profile or solar wind. In fact, Scott says Dr Peter Gallagher of the Big Bear Solar Observatory has said "Understanding the physics of coronal heating and the solar wind acceleration remains one of the unsolved problems of solar physics."

And the explanation that the standard modelers invoke in an attempt to explain coronal heating include magnetic reconnection which Donald Scott shows is simply impossible according to well known (and well verified) laws of electromagnetism established over hundreds of years. It apparently isn't rocket science.

Tell us, if convection cells that take 150,000 years to transport energy from inside the sun to the surface are stable (which is what standard model theorists claim), why do the granules on the surface (which show the upper extent and size of the these cells) change shape, appear and disappear in mere hours? I think the electric sun model explains that better.

Where the heavy elements in the sun's spectral lines come from is not easy to explain in the standard model. The usual explanation is that they come from exploding stars and the sun was just formed with these elements already present. But as I pointed out previously, if this sort of process is occuring than young stars like ours should be more metal enriched than the stars we see 10 billion light years away. But that isn't the case. The plasma cosmologists explain the heavy elements as the result of fusion most likely occurring in the double layer of the Chromosphere and in the corona.

Here's another mystery. Why are the sunspots cooler than what surrounds them? Now plasma cosmologists say that sunspots are places where tufting is not occurring. They are holes in the photosphere where one can see deeper into the sun. And if the energy is being produced on the surface, the deeper regions should naturally be cooler. But in a model with nuclear fusion occurring deep in the sun, why would this be? Standard model theorists must claim "strange magnetic waves" or "tangled magnetic fields" below the surface to offer an explanation.

Now of course, there's a lot more to the electric sun model than that and a lot more solar and near solar phenomena that it explains ... and that in most cases, the standard model cannot explain except by again bending the known laws of physics.

For example, do you think special relativity is also wrong?

I make no claim one way or the other. I haven't looked at it. This thread is focused on whether Big Bang is right. If you want to start a thread on special relativity be my guest. But I have no interest in discussing it here since it isn't germane to the topic.

And now that I've told you that, let's see your comments on the other sources I cited ... the LANL source, the Astrophysical Journal article, and the book by Anthony Peratt. Or will you just ignore them like you've been trying to do?

Listen, your quote said: 'were the predictions of a plasma universe, as developed at the end of the Nineteenth Century'. This doesn't make sense, because the plasma universe is from the 1960s.

Fine, I already agreed with you when I said "But you are correct, it wasn't until about the 60's those working on plasmas really started focusing on stars, galaxies and the cosmos."

the fallacy of saying that electromagnetism is old and thus good.

But study of electromagnetism is old (compared to that of say Dark Matter and Dark Energy *physics*) and it is good (we use it all the time in our daily lives). Maxwell's laws are quite good. The understanding of plasma laid down by Birkland, Langmuir, Alfven and others is quite good. On the other hand, I think I agree with Donald Scott when he call's Dark Matter, FAIRIE DUST: Fabricated Ad hoc Inventions Repeatedly Invoked in Efforts to Defend Untenable Scientific Theories. ROTFLOL!
 
If it was neutral, it wouldn't be plasma.

It's quasineutral, it is neutral from the outside, at large scales.

You claim that the Debye length is the critical parameter and rules out the possibility of structures across intergalactic space where the distance between galaxies is in the millions of light years?
No, that's a strawman. You said that there is a lot of plasma, so the cosmology must be dominated by plasma, without further argument (at least at first). I said that this is not enough, because at large scales plasma is neutral, so the two overly simplistic arguments (lots of plasma + neutrality) sort of cancel. If there is to be an effect, you must provide better arguments than the abundance of plasma, that's all. I didn't offer the concept of Debye length as a proof that such structures are impossible, just as a way of forcing you to give better evidence for your claims.

No, not according to me, according to people who seem to understand plasmas, electric currents and magnetic fields (and afterall, everything we see on and above the sun is current carrying plasmas and magnet fields).

I know several plasma physicists, somehow I don't think they don't believe in nuclear fusion as a source of energy for the stars.

Maybe tomorrow I'll say something more about this issue.

For example, do you think special relativity is also wrong?
I make no claim one way or the other. I haven't looked at it. This thread is focused on whether Big Bang is right. If you want to start a thread on special relativity be my guest. But I have no interest in discussing it here since it isn't germane to the topic.
Well, if you don't believe in relativity at all, then any talk about an advanced application such as cosmology is futile. What's more, if you don't know relativity you can't possibly have an oppinion on cosmology. So either you don't know relativity and then we are wasting our time here or you don't believe in it and then we are also wasting time and should start by discussing that.

Arguing about cosmology without knowing relativity would be like arguing about plasmas without knowing the Maxwell equations.

But study of electromagnetism is old (compared to that of say Dark Matter and Dark Energy *physics*) and it is good

Yes, but it is not good because it is old, as the phrasing of some of your quotations suggests.
 
Now, up for debate is WHICH cold, weakly-interacting non-standard-model particle it is.
My ex wife.

Ba dump Tsch

Guys and gals, this thread is a joy. I have tried a few times to discuss and explain dark matter to my son. Being not too expert on the topic, I am not doing so hot a job at getting it across. I have a few more ideas to help me now, thanks to you all. I think dark matter isn't an intuitive concept for most laymen.

BAC: without this thread, I would not have had a chance to be exposed to plasma cosmology. All of your ROTFLOLs, "desperate," and "naive" darts tossed at various respondants asied, and the assertion that money is being wasted in some fields of research, I am glad for your advocacy of this as a means to looking into something new. So thanks for that.

Here's a thought to ponder. In any number of fields, the initial research is less than productive, or is only modestly productive, until a breakthrough is achieved. Your disappointment with some of the results of 30 years of research into one particular area need not be translated into a decision to toss the baby out with the bathwater, which is what your suggestion is regarding the false dilemma between researching more on dark matter OR more in plasma cosmology. I think that already, given what is being looked into regarding plasma, if your various references are any indication of activity, plasma is being looked into. Perhaps the key to getting better grants, be they government or private donations, is better representation of the observations that do support the theory, and as any grant application has to have, a better sales job. Is the world of academe and exotic research competitive, and loaded with interpersonal disagreements and science politics? Yes. Has been for a long time. (See Einstein's later years and his debates with the other one hundred pound brains on various problems in relativity.)

I too am interested in the four numbers asked for, as a point of comparison to what Frank has raised.

One of you folks (Yllanes?) is doing research on plasma flow in reactors, which funnily enough is what my Energy Conversion prof at the Naval Academy was doing, or had done, thirty years ago. (Chinese guy, I'll have to go back and find his name if I can, or if I still have those old notes and books.) He'd be in his mid to late 1970's now. We were at the undergrad level, so what he was doing was a bit of PFM to us.

Has the state of the art advanced in that field?

DR
 
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Yeah, well, people would get jealous if I was right all the time.:duck:

For those who might be interested, Doppler shifts are caused during the emission or reception of waves (light, sound or whatever). A stationary object will emit waves with peaks a certain distance apart. An object moving away from you will be slightly further away each time it emits a peak, and so the wavelength of the wave is increased. For the cosmological redshift, the emitted wave is exactly the same however far away an object is. However, while the wave is travelling the space it is in is expanding so the peaks get pulled further apart, again resulting in a longer wavelength. One major difference is that the cosmological shift can only result in longer wavelengths (at least while the universe is expanding, if it collapses it could only cause a blueshift), while the Doppler shift can cause shorter or longer ones, depending on the direction of motion.

It's easy to confuse the two, as I did in my last post, since the expansion of space is often thought of as objects moving away from each other. However, this is not technically the case and, as Frank says, the actual results aren't quantitively the same, even thought they are qualitatively similar.
So there are two “shifts” involved that effect the light we see from distant stars. The Doppler shift, caused by the relative motions of distant stars and Earth; and the cosmological shift, caused by the light being “stretched” on it’s journey to Earth by expanding space. How is it possible to know what percentage of which “shift“ causes the result we see?
 
Not believing in naked singularities is not the same as not believing in singularities.

But you believe in a naked singularity. It's called the Big Bang.

Quote:
But now astronomers use blackholes to explain the material seen flying out from galaxies and quasars.

Non sequitur, this has nothing to do with the no hair theorem.

Perhaps but it is curious that objects that were supposed to be invisible and swallow everything they encountered are now repeatedly invoked by Big Bang enthusiasts to explain all manner of material and energy being ejected from galaxies and quasars.

BH have accretion disks, when matter is falling in it can emitjets of EM radiation.

Astronomers have only interpreted their observations as a black hole with an accretion disk. They haven't actually seen the nature of the object in the center of that disk. What if plasma cosmologists can explain all the same phenomena using physics that can be demonstrated in the lab? Ever hear of a guy named Occam? :)

http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn9620-mysterious-quasar-casts-doubt-on-black-holes.html "Mysterious quasar casts doubt on black holes, 27 July 2006 ... snip ... Rudolph Schild of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, led a team that observed a quasar situated 9 billion light years from Earth. A quasar is a very bright, compact object, whose radiation is usually thought to be generated by a giant black hole devouring its surrounding matter. A rare cosmological coincidence allowed Schild and his colleagues to probe the structure of the quasar in much finer detail than is normally possible. Those details suggest that the central object is not a black hole. "The structure of the quasar is not at all what had been theorised," Schild told New Scientist. ... snip ... A well accepted property of black holes is that they cannot sustain a magnetic field of their own. But observations of quasar Q0957+561 indicate that the object powering it does have a magnetic field, Schild's team says. For this reason, they believe that rather than a black hole, this quasar contains something called a magnetospheric eternally collapsing object (MECO). ... snip ... The researchers found that the disc of material surrounding the central object has a hole in it with a width of about 4000 Astronomical Units (1 AU is the distance between the Earth and the Sun). This gap suggests that material has been swept out by magnetic forces from the central object, the researchers say, and must therefore be a MECO, not a black hole. "I believe this is the first evidence that the whole black hole paradigm is incorrect," says Darryl Leiter of the Marwood Astrophysics Research Center in Charottesville, Virginia, US, who co-authored the study.'

Now, of course, the above astronomers are so engrained to inventing new objects or forces to explain any observation they can't explain, and so prone to ignoring what plasma cosmologists say, that they failed to notice that plasma cosmologists had already described and modeled the physics of an object that would fit the observations. :)

The article then states that "Chris Reynolds of the University of Maryland, in College Park, US, says the evidence for a MECO inside this quasar is not convincing. The apparent hole in the disc could be filled with very hot, tenuous gas, which would not radiate much and would be hard to see, he says. "Especially if you're looking with an optical telescope, which is how these observations were made, you wouldn't see that gas at all," he told New Scientist."

I only point this statement out because it calls what must be plasma ... "gas" and thus this astronomer also misses the physics of what is going on. :)

Leiter responds to Reynolds criticism by noting "this scenario would leave other things unexplained, however. The observations show that a small ring at the inner edge of the disc is glowing, which is a sign that it has been heated by a strong magnetic field, he says." It might also be a sign that plasma cosmologists are right. :)

There are other reports that suggest Big Bang astronomers don't really know what is going on in black holes.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060124_spacetime_dent.html is a report that in 2005 two unusual X-ray frequencies were detected coming from an extremely energetic light source, GRO J1655-40. Astronomers say it is black hole, gradually consuming the matter of a companion star. The emissions were strange because scientists recorded identical emissions nine years earlier. They wondered if the blinking x-rays were “related to how matter accumulates around the black hole”.

The scientists suggested that material "siphoned from the companion star builds up steadily in an accretion disk around the black hole. This process continues for several years. While the accumulation is taking place, the black hole consumes very little gas from the disk" and emits very little x-rays. But every few years, "something—scientists aren’t sure what—triggers a sudden binge fest on the part of the black hole, causing it to guzzle down most of matter in the disk within a period of only a few months”.

But NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer recorded something curious. Among the X-ray frequencies observed in 1996 were one at 450 Hz and one at 300 Hz. The same two frequencies were observed again in 2005. "Because it’s very hard to get gas to behave the same way twice, it argues strongly that these frequencies are being anchored by the black hole’s mass and spin”, study co-author Jon Miller of the University of Michigan told SPACE.com.

Notice how they call it gas, not "plasma"? And I bet plasma cosmologists could argue that the same plasma phenomena-related that occurred the first time could produce output at the same frequencies.

Now, of course, the black hole-minded astronomers had to come up with an explanation that would fit their model. “Because the black hole is so massive and spinning so fast, it warps spacetime around it”. The authors suggest that the particles moving in “warped spacetime” near the black hole exhibit two types of motions, each producing a unique frequency. “One motion is the orbital motion of the gas as it goes around the black hole. This produces the 450 Hz frequency. The lower 300 Hz frequency is caused by the gas wobbling slightly due to the spacetime deformations”.

Sometimes all you can do is laugh at all the speculation they pile on top of other speculation to justify, in the end, the ultimate speculation ... the Big Bang.

Here's what plasma cosmologists say about this case. Plasmas carry electric currents, and at those focal points where currents pinch down to form stars, infrequent but catastrophic releases of energy may occur. Anthony Peratt says in electric discharges flickering electromagnetic radiation is commonplace. “The flickering comes from electrical changes at the observed load or radiative source, such as the formation of instabilities or virtual anodes or cathodes in charged particle beams that are orders of magnitude smaller than the supply.” So if a flickering is interpreted by a distant observer to be both the “source and supply,” Peratt notes, the results will not only be bizarre, they will lack a basis in any verifiable physics.

By the way, I don't know if you are aware of this, but the gravity-only crowd has some serious problems explaining how accretion disks form planets around stars and even the stars themselves. There are severe problems in getting a rotating nebula to collapse gravitationally to form a star in the first place. I got the following from a link at www.earth.rochester.edu that unfortunately is now defunct.

"The Law of Conservation of Momentum states that the angular momentum in a system must be conserved. This means that the angular momentum in a system must remain the same, unless it is transferred to an outside force. The amount of angular momentum in a system depends on how much mass there is and how spread out it is. This applies to the solar nebula theory in that, if mass is suddenly transferred to the center of the system by gravity, the angular momentum must somehow remain the same. To compensate for the contraction of the mass, the system starts spinning faster. An earthly example of this is the spinning figure skater. As the figure skater pulls her arms (mass) inwards, she starts spinning faster. Angular momentum is conserved. This presents a problem for the solar nebula theory in that, by the conservation of momentum, the sun should be spinning much faster. The sun contains 99% of the mass in the solar system. According to the conservation of angular momentum stated above, since most of the mass is contained within the sun, it should also be spinning very fast. Yet the sun currently contains less than 1% of the angular momentum in the solar system. If it followed the rules as stated above, it should spin 400 times faster than it currently does."

The answer to this problem lies, not surprisingly, with electromagnetic forces and plasmas. Stars and galaxies are mostly made of plasmas. Ergo, if electromagnetic effects have a large effect on plasmas (and they do), then it seems reasonable that they will have a large effect on the process of formation of objects from those plasmas. In fact, one of the most important effects described by plasma cosmologists is to shed excess rotational energy that would otherwise prevent the formation of stars and galaxies.

In 1972, Alfven, a Nobel prize winner in physics, and his colleague, Gustaf Arrhenius, developed a detailed model of solar system formation which uses plasma filaments -- "superprominences," they called them -- to transfer the angular momentum from the sun to the plasma from which the planets formed ... and because the filaments pinch the plasmas together in the process, they even sped up planet condensation. Alfven's model is now widely accepted as the correct answer. Here is a good description of what happens taken from the above now defunct (sorry) link.

"This problem is addressed by the interaction of the sun's magnetic field with charged particles. As the proto-sun spins, it pulls the lines of magnetic force with it. The force lines resist the spinning motion of the sun and thus form a spiral about the sun. Charged particles are captured by the magnetic field, and cause a drag to form along the magnetic force lines. These charged particles, in turn, drag along the gas and other particles in the infant solar system. In this way, the problem of angular momentum is solved. Angular momentum is transferred from the proto-sun to the outlying gas and dust, slowing the spin of the sun down in the process."

Quote:
But now astronomers use blackholes to explain the material seen flying out from galaxies and quasars. And have had to alter the theories of magnetic fields to make that work ... in ways that contradict our understanding of magnetic fields for the past 100 years and which still haven't been demonstrated in the lab.

This is false, show me were they alter the theories of magnetic fields to make black holes work.

Not black holes, per se, but they violate what we know from a 100 years experience to explain how black holes throw matter and energy out in jets.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/radiojets_991025.html "Two superheated jets of plasma shooting in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light are making a hot case for the existence of a black hole in the direction of the center of the Milky Way. ... snip ... The jets -- which were some of the fastest fountains of material ever detected -- were revealed by recent radio observations conducted by Robert Hjellming, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Soccoro, New Mexico. ... snip ... he basic picture that Eikenberry and his co-workers have developed is that matter in a black hole's accretion disk may be warping its magnetic fields. ... snip ... "Basically, as you're dumping material on, it's spiraling in, and that tends to tangle up the magnetic fields," Eikenberry said. "What may happen is, once you get the magnetic field too tangled, it will just reconnect suddenly," he offered. "It'll just sort of untangle itself and, in doing so, release a whole lot of energy."

From Donald Scott's book "The propositions that magnetic fields lines "open up," "merge,"or "recombine" are fallacies. They result from an error (violation of Maxwell's equations) compounded by another error (the mistaken belief that the lines are real 3D entities in the first place). ... snip ... Solar astronomers describe the magnetic field of the Sun as having "lines that extend outward, never returning to the solar surface." They also propose that magnetic field lines "reconnect" as a means of transporting energy across the temperature minimum, from the solar interior out to the intensely hot lower corona. "Reconnection" is invoked to explain how material can be ejected outward from the solar surface in Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs). These proposals are so crucial to the accepted explanations of observed phenomena -- and so wrong -- that we must examine them in detail. The primary motivation for writing this book was astronomers' repeated assertions of these flawed concepts, assertions that any undergraduate EE student would immediate recognize as false." And he then proceeds to spend a entire chapter showing why they are demonstrably false. :D

Scott notes that Hannes Alfven (a Nobel Prize winner who knew a LOT about this subject) condemned the "merging" and "reconnecting" concepts thus: "The most important criticism of the "merging" mechanism is due to Heikkila who, with increasing strength has demonstrated that it is wrong. In spite of all this, we have witnessed at the same time an enormously voluminous formalism building up based on this obviously erroneous concept. Indeed, we have been burdened with a gigantic pseudoscience which penetrates large parts of cosmic plasma physics."

Dr Anthony Peratt, a graduate student under Alfven, said "I just noticed the term Alfvenic reconnection. Read Alfven's "Cosmic Plasma" on "reconnection." He says it deserves no attention. He would be spinning in his grave had he [seen] this [his name associated with reconnection]."

Scott ends his chapter on this with this: "As of this writing, vast sums of research money are being poured into investigations of "magnetic reconnection. In March of 2005, a worldwide conference was held on the topic. The organizers said, "The recent development of astrophysical observations has revealed that the universe and astrophysical objects are much more dynamic than had been thought. They often show flares, bursts, jets, and high-energy particles, and most of them are more or less related to magnetic reconnection." Make no mistake about it - open magnetic field lines and magnetic reconnection cannot and do not occur. They simply do not exist. Astrophysicists who do not understand magnetic fields irresponsibly propose these invalid concepts. But no one is at liberty to fabricate non-existing "new" properties of magnetic fields no matter how convenient these new properties might be for propping up outmoded theories. That solar [BAC - and I would add Big Bang supporting] astronomers feel free to promote these fictions speaks volumes about the state of astrophysics today."

You were saying? :D

Of possible interest:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/v426j6441q34102t/ " Elementary ideas behind plasma physics, Walter*J.*Heikkila ... snip ... This contribution is in support of Alfvén''s use of circuit theory to advance the understanding of complex plasma physical problems, such as magnetic reconnection; these ideas have often been mis-understood. Circuit analysis is not a full description of the physics, being a scalar relationship. However, it is suitable for dealing with energy relationships and cause and effect, and it is fully capable of showing fallacies behind various fashionable ideas, including steady-state reconnection."

Quote:
And by the way ... isn't it the contention of some Big Bang proponents that the whole universe came from a naked singularity at one point ... something Wheeler said was ... well ... impossible?

This is actually a good question and it has an answer. I don't have time to write it now, because it is a bit subtle

I bet it is. ;)

but in the meantime, here's a link to the sci.physics FAQ which explains it.

Well, first, I don't see the term "naked singularity" mentioned.

Second, it appears that the reason given for the Big Bang not becoming a Black Hole is "it is expanding rapidly near the beginning". Are they talking about inflation? Because if they are, they are using a gnome to explain the problem away.

In any case, the existence of a singularity is not important to the Big Bang model

It seem Yllanes and Cuddles are tossing out anything related to the Big Bang theory that gives them trouble in this debate. ROTFLOL!

The Big Bang itself is the least important prediction of standard cosmology. The important thing is that the universe is expanding and that the visible universe was very small a long time ago.

So why is plasma cosmology fought so vigorously by you. It says that too. Only plasma cosmologists don't have to dream FAIRIE DUST, Dark Energy, unexplainable events like Inflation, change the laws of magnetism, and ignore a host of cosmic data to do it. :D
 
BAC, could you explain to me why the quasar has to be in front or inside the pinwheel galaxy?

They say the core (what's behind the quasar) of this type of galaxy is very dense and filled with opaque clouds so that no light from a distant quasar could get through.

Also, if this thing is that unique and unusual, why is it being called a quasar and not being considered something that somehow gives a faux redshift reading?

It's called a quasar because it looks like a quasar and has a redshift like a quasar. But in any case, the claim has been that redshift is ONLY a measure of distance and recession and could not be due to any other process or phenomena. This case proves that simply isn't true which puts all claims about the redshift/distance relationship in doubt and especially puts claims that high redshifted quasars are the most distant objects in doubt. This would have dramatic impact on the established picture of the universe.
 
They say the core (what's behind the quasar) of this type of galaxy is very dense and filled with opaque clouds so that no light from a distant quasar could get through.

Couldn't "they" be wrong about this, though? Maybe I'm dating myself :rolleyes:, but way back when I first read up on distance measurements, the textbooks said it was done by paralax measurements. Is that still the case? That would semm to me to be a fairly indisputable method of establishing exactly which is more distant. Has anyone done this for this quasar yet?

It's called a quasar because it looks like a quasar and has a redshift like a quasar. But in any case, the claim has been that redshift is ONLY a measure of distance and recession and could not be due to any other process or phenomena. This case proves that simply isn't true which puts all claims about the redshift/distance relationship in doubt and especially puts claims that high redshifted quasars are the most distant objects in doubt. This would have dramatic impact on the established picture of the universe.

Could it be possible that this is not a quasar but some even more esoteric body not previously encoutnered?
 
I have to strongly second what Darth Rotor wrote. Many thanks to all the cosmologists/astronomers who have posted so authoritatively on this thread. It is a joy to read even though there is conflict. :)

By the way, astronomers have finally been able to see Alfven waves near the Sun and believe they are the reason why the corona is so much hotter than the Sun's surface. Probably has nothing to do with the discussion but I think it's downright awesome.
 
I clicked on the link but nothing came up.

I have no problem at all here:

http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/science/mcquasar.asp

But since you keep having a problem and you are too lazy to search with the browser for articles on NGC 7319, let me help you by providing another that discusses this issue in depth (and also has plenty of images):

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ApJ/journal/issues/ApJ/v620n1/60493/60493.html "A strong X-ray source only 8" from the nucleus of the Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 7319 in Stephan's Quintet has been discovered by Chandra. We have identified the optical counterpart and show that it is a QSO with ze = 2.114. ... snip ... In the last few years, observations from Chandra and XMM-Newton have shown that there are many discrete, powerful X-rayemitting sources that lie close to the nuclei of spiral galaxies, often apparently inside the main body of the galaxy (Foschini et al. 2002a, 2002b; Pakull & Mirioni 2005; Roberts et al. 2001; Goad et al. 2002). Typical separations are from 1' to 5'. Since they are emitting at power levels above ~10^^38.5 ergs s^^-1, they cannot be normal X-ray binaries. They have been called ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) or intermediate-luminosity X-ray sources (IXOs; Colbert & Ptak 2002). It has been concluded that these sources are either binary systems with black hole masses in the range 10^^210^^4 M, or X-rayemitting QSOs. Burbidge et al. (2003) suggested that these sources were likely to be QSOs with a wide range of redshifts. If this is the case, the fact that they are all very close to the centers of the galaxies strongly suggests that these sources are physically associated with these galaxies and are in the process of being ejected from them. This is a natural conclusion following from earlier studies by Radecke (1997) and Arp (1997), who showed that there is a strong tendency for QSOs to cluster about active spiral galaxies. Many cases of this kind have been found (e.g., near the active galactic nucleus [AGN] galaxies NGC 1068, 2639, 3516, and 3628). The typical separations between these QSOs and the galaxies in these cases are 15'-20'. It is clear that if the separations are smaller than this, as is the case in general for ULXs, there will be an even greater likelihood that the QSOs and galaxies are physically associated. Colbert & Ptak (2002) gave a list of 87 IXOs that lie within 5 of the centers of galaxies. Recent spectroscopic studies (Arp et al. 2004) have shown that three IXOs in this list plus 21 other cases that fit these IXO criteria are already known to be normal QSOs. ... snip ... 5.1. Is the QSO behind NGC 7319? *It is not surprising that interstellar Na D1 and D2 absorption lines are seen in the spectrum of the QSO. If the ejected gas and the QSO lie near the plane of the disk, however disrupted that may be, we would still expect about half the possible optical depth of gas between the QSO and the observer. However, we have no way of knowing whether the amount of gas observed here represents the total column of gas through the system, half, or even less. One obvious question suggests itself, namely, does the color of the QSO indicate that it is inordinately reddened and therefore obscured as if it were a background object? Of course, that would require smooth conditions in NGC 7319 and a precise value for the unreddened color. However, we can make an empirical test by selecting 32 QSOs in a large sample region of the Hewitt-Burbidge catalog (Hewitt & Burbidge 1993) that have redshifts 2.0 z 2.2. The average redshift is z = 2.09 and the average (B - V)ave = 0.26 ± 0.18 (mean deviation). So we see the measured B - V = 0.43 for the QSO is somewhat reddened but within the average deviation. However, if we compare the B - V of this ULX with fainter apparent magnitude QSOs from the Hewitt-Burbidge catalog we find that it is ~0.1 to 0.2 mag bluer than average. It is also true that the continuum of the QSO is approximately flat at a flux level ~10-17 ergs cm-2 s-1 Å-1 all the way into the far red."

In short, they think it is a quasar and it is in front of a low redshift galaxy.

They also ask the question whether it's an accidental superposition and they conclude "In our view, the very low probability of a chance superposition is yet more evidence in favor of the view that this QSO is at the distance of NGC 7319."

My answer is that it does not.

Well then you must be a whole lot smarter than the folks who put out the article I cited above. :D
 
BeAChooser, I'm still waiting for my 4 numbers. You responded to my initial request in a very long-winded fashion. I only asked you to repost the 4 numbers, alone. This should not take you long.

Cheers,
TV's Frank
 

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