On 12 May, 19:53, Craig Markwardt
wrote:
sean writes:
On 11 May, 08:50, Craig Markwardt
wrote:
sean writes:

...

It is worth noting how the swift team and other cxontributors to the
gcn network supply posts which contradict themselves and show that
beamed theory and SR and the standard model cannot explain GRB`s.

It is worth noting that your comments are erroneous. Specifically...

Note gcn6389 where a redshift of 3.5 is `observed` .

You are in error. In fact, the authors say, "the red color might
suggest a redshift of z 3.5." So they (a) never said "observed";
(b) used very tentative language implying low confidence, because (c)
it's not a spectral redshift but a photometric one taken several hours
after the burst.
I note no response to your mis-quotation of GCN #6389.
But they did `observe` How else could they have `suggested`. In fact
this is your mistake . In the first line of the copy of 6389 they
type..."We observed.."
... THen in gcn 6392
the incompetent swift team calculate a redshift of 5. As if it were
a meaningful calculation as most objects obserevd by swift and any
astronomer is usually 5.

Your comment is irrelevant. Whether or not most objects observed by
Swift have a redshift of 5, the rare ones that *do* have a redshift 5
are very interesting for many reasons. Thus
it is relevant to

know the approximate redshift of a given burst, regardless of the ones
that have come before.

I note no response.
Ill say it again then. The 3 seperate attempts at redshift
determination
were contradictory and all ultimately incorrect. In fact the grb has
no redshift
and like all others can be matched to one of the local ISM , provided
their is no
significant contamination from an unrelated galaxy in the grb`s FOV.
I note your irrelevant and unsubstantiated ad hominem attack on the
Swift team.

To compound the general incompetence of the observers posting to gcn
comes gcn 6398.
Here they calculate that the redshift is 2.3.

...

True, but the measurement reported by Jakobsen et al (GCN #6398) is by
a different and much more reliable technique (i.e. a high resolution
spectrum).

I note your continued ad-hominem attacks without any substantiation.

Do you get the differences in the levels of confidence in the
following statements?
* "the red color might suggest a redshift of z 3.5." #6389
* "the UVOT ... indicates a redshift of less than 5." #6392
* "a firm upper limit of z 2.3 can be placed on the redshift" #6398
Because if you can't, it might be a good time to take a refresher
course on the English language.

It seems that little has changed: you continue to make
unsubstantiated, erroneous, and irrelevant claims, and now you appear
to be adding ad hominem attacks as well. Congratulations on your
consistency.

CM

First of all one only has to look backat any of your posts in the last
few years to see
good examples of unjustified ad hominem attacks made by yourself. If
anything my post above is the exception. Whereas your filth is the
rule. ...

I note you did not substantiate your claim of "filth."
Take your unwarranted character smear regarding how you think my
English
needs improving. You `substantiate` this with the suggestion that I
misread `suggest` incorrectly as `observe`.
But I point out earlier this is an unsubstantiated character smear
as in fact it is you who needs to brush up on any English skills.
Because 6389 clearly has the words... "we observed" in its copy.
The words you say dont exist
Thats your substantiation
If you cut the unsubstantatiated personal smears youll get a polite
response from me.
... Not least because as my earlier post on this thread shows..In
many cases in the past you claimed that my predictions were incorrect
and were without proof (and you usually include a ad hominem attack
or two). In fact the supernova-grb connection and multi peaked
lightcurve predictions for all observed wavelengths I made years ago
that you claimed were untrue unsupported by evidence and without any
physics have since then been verified by not least of all, Swift
itself.

You need to be careful before you glorify yourself. Your *actual*
claim was originally that light curves at different wavelengths were
stretched replicas of each other[*]. Simply seeing flares in X-rays
is *not* a confirmation of your "prediction" unless one can prove that
the X-ray light curve is a stretched version of the gamma-ray light
curve.
I made more than one `claim` But the two I refered to above didnt
include the stretching claim. Although I stick to that and expect it
to be confirmed sooner or later by one of your peers.
What is relevent here is that I said that as the gamma lightcurve was
multi peaked so were all the others.
It was you who said this was an incorrect prediction, not
backed by any observation and that any rebrightenings were within
chi squared power smoothing etc and not therefore`real` or provable.
Since then in xray and optical it is the norm to accept that there
are multiple rebrightenings or late time flares.
So I was right and you were wrong. And its there in the google posts
for all to see.
[*] "sean" Usenet po Nov 2001


... In case the meaning of this eludes your simple mind .. as far
back as 2000 you said I was wrong to claim that all grbs did not have
a supernova connection and that all lightcurves would show variability
and late time flares . In fact I was right. ...

You should check your facts, since your claims are erroneous. First,
you yourself didn't start posting until 2001 (see Usenet thread
above). Second, I simply have never posted anything about supernovae
related to gamma-ray bursts until 2006. So please, try to withhold
your persecution complex.
Well OK,.. 2001 for your general criticism of the model which includes
an
assumed critique of the SN-GRB connection.
So for the record...you specifically criticise by quote the
variability in 2001 and you criticise my predictions of
the SN -grb connection by at least mar 28 2005 post 80.
Which is well before 2007 when the first acceptance by your peers that
sN-grb connection isnt a given appeared in Nature. Or the 2006
seminal paper by Stanek regarding the incorrect use
of power law smoothing of lightcurves
I also created www.gammarayburst.com in *2000* according to my
records and it has essentially the same content now as then.
But this is obfuscation on your part as you try to distract from
the essential fact that you and others tried to prove that my models
predictions were incorrect and then had to accept later that my
predictions were correct and yours werent.
Markwardt writes on 07 Nov 2001:
: Also, as has been pointed out, trying to infer that something is a
: "peak" when the data are as noisy and as sparse as they are, is in my
: view a dubious practice. Simply "connecting the dots" will lead to *a
: possible* solution, but ultimately a very *low probability* one a
: priori.
:
: A more appropriate approach would be to start with a featureless model
: of the decline (say, a power law), then add a gaussian or some other
: simple parameterization of the putative peak. By computing the
: F-statistic, one can then find out how significant the additional peak
: is, statistically speaking, compared to the overall decline. If it's
: signficant at the 95% level, then it may be worth considering
: further.

To summarize: before you make extravagant claims, you should be able
to substantiate them with extravagant evidence. In the original
gamma-ray burst that you referred to long ago (GRB 970508), you made a
practice of picking out some statistical fluctuations and calling them
"flares." Both Martin Hardcastle and I called you on that dubious
practice.
Why was it dubious? I kept within any error margins supplied and
thats
considered acceptable. And the beamed models straight line power
decays also used upper and lower ends to fit its predictions. In fact
I would argue that your power laws actually pushed the error margins
more
than my variable interpretation. Consider that for most of the points
in my graphs I didnt have to `iron` out the variability to fit a
straight
line. Anyways since then it turns out that lightcurves indeed do have
multiple rebrightenings contrary to yours and hardcastles "call"
So the data I used and my methods werent `dubious` as you suggested.
Yours were. That is , beamed theory`s were. And still are.
After the launch of Swift, the situation is very different. Data from
very early times after the burst are now available, whereas they were
not before. The X-ray light curves *do* show flares, there is no
question. In other words, it is not possible to fit a smooth decay
with satisfactory goodness of fit (chi-square for example). The
present data *demand* more complicated time behavior models (in the
sense that simpler models can be statistically rejected), whereas the
older observations did not demand it.
This is exactly what I argued was the case 5 years ago. So Obviously
my interpretation of the variabilty in 970508 was correct and your
claims to the contrary were incorrect.Anyways Im glad you finally
admit
that my predictions made then have been confirmed.
Thats why I posted this to this thread. To set the record straight.
If you actually *read* my original post, it says exactly that: don't
add extra features unless simpler models are rejected by the data
statistically. Your original "flares" in 970508 were not really
statistically significant.
What are suggesting. That one shouldnt make correct predictions and
correct analysis of the data until the incorrect predictions and
incorrect analysis made by a flawed model like the beamed theory are
definitely proved wrong?
So much for scientific advancement.
Getting back to your original theory...

It is clear that the X-ray flares seen by Swift *ARE NOT*
time-stretched replicas of the gamma-ray light curves.

In fact, the gamma-ray and X-ray light curves match up quite precisely
with no stretching, as shown by O'Brien et al (2006). Some of the
late-time flares seen in the X-rays are also clearly detected in
gamma-rays at the same time.

Furthermore, I have pointed out in the past that some bursts like GRB
041219A have contemporaneous optical observations which show that
there is prompt optical emission with "zero" delay ( = no stretching;
ref my post on 24 Apr 2005).
041219A is exceptional by any standards. Not least because it was
hundreds of seconds long,and more unusually had a precursor or trigger
that was at least 250 seconds before the main burst. So it gave ample
time for optical telescopes to observe while gamma is still observable
But you made up the prediction that they cannot be seen
in more than one wavelngth at one time in my model. I never claimed
this. My model states that lightcurves in different wavelengths can
overlap but not *peak at the same time*. I predict they peak at later
times in longer wavelengths.
And I note that gcn 2872 doesnt clearly state that optical fades in K
between the early 2 min observation and the one about an hour or
so later. So its not clear to me it has faded neccesarily during the
time gamma is still observed.
Also technically if pairitel observed for 533 seconds starting at
0149UT and the burst started at 0143UT then
pairitels observation is from about 150 seconds post trig to 700 sec
approx. Yet the burst peaked in gamma at about 250 sec. So my
prediction that gamma peaks earlier still holds with the available
data as pairitel cant specify when in the 150-700sec observation
the peak was in K. norfor gaht matter when it started.

Also looking at these two gcn below suggests that 2876 detects
an increase in K between 2872 and 2876.
2876 is the later observation and after gamma finishes.Which is
consistent with a peak in optical after gamma and not just after
gamma peaks.

gcn 2872
K 15.5 ~150 seconds-700seconds
gcn 2876
K 14.9 0.8 hours

And raptor at 0144 which is about a minute-minute &1/2 (?)or so into
the burst has a detection that is before pairitel (?)but at a
fainter
mag at 19~ in R. So its extrapolating a bit(R-K) but it seems to me
the afterglow rises at least till just after the burst peaks
in gamma and possibly to a peak an hour later.
And in 2894-5 2-3 days post trigger ,the radio curve has increased
in flux as my model predicts longer wavelengths like radio should do
relative to optical.
In fact according to my model that if this is a long
burst as it appears, and the detection in optical for about
at least a day after trigger represents the first small spike
in gamma from t0- t10. Then its possible that the main part of the
burst in gamma at 250 sec post trig will manifest itself as a
substantial rebrightening in optical at a later time If we
use my `wavelength stretching method` and stretch gammas
500sec lightcurve into a longer timeframe duplicate profile in
optical.
Looking at the bat lightcurves from swift ...If the first
peak in gamma was in the 1-10sec range and that represents optical
in the first 24 hours lets say...
Then extrapolating out this could imply that 10 sec in gamma
=1 day in optical in my model at a rough estimate. In which case
its possible that 250 seconds = 25 days later for a substantial
rebrightening in optical for at least a further 5-10 days to
35 days.
So I wonder.. did any robotic telescope take images of this
part of the sky with a good limiting mag at this time
at about 25-35days after trigger? Anything in fact from lets say
5-35 days would be worth investigating for a rebrightening
in optical.
Thus, the detection of late-time X-ray flares by Swift and prompt
optical emission does not support your "theory." In fact, since
*neither* the late time flares nor the prompt optical emission are
stretched replicas of the prompt gamma-ray burst emission, they would
tend to reject your "theory."
I dont see any direct comparison of individual xrt and bat
lightcurves
in this paper. the closest is fig 1 and here the 3 xrt/gamma
seem to always start just about the same time as BAT finishes.
Although its hard to read the detail in the graph as to whether
the XRT circles actually are on top of Bat or not. I assume
they arent.
References
O'Brien, P. et al. 2006, New J.Phys. 8 121 (astro-ph/0605230v1)

... Observations and papers
since then havve confirmed that these miguided theoretical predictions
made by you in support of beamed theory were not consistent with
observations or later analysis.

Can you cite even *one* instance where I said that the "beamed" theory
must be true in all cases? In fact, I don't believe I *ever* argued
in favor of any "beamed" model, since I was occupied debunking your
erroneous and unstantiated claims on their face.
You were defending the use of powerlaw to describ and explain decays
in the context of beamed theory. And I was saying theis was incorrect.
And yopu were saying I was wrong and had no proof.
So as far as the record goes,.. in principle you were defending
beamed theory and the use of power law decays to explain afterglows
even if you never issued a formal legal document stating this.
And as far as debunking my "***** claims". Yes ,.. you were
attempting to show that there was or would never be seen any
variability in lightcurves
But as more recent data shows your (and Hardcastles) debunk failed
and it was my models predictions not neamed theories that have
become the accepted norm.
In fact you admit as much earlier in this post...
(Craig)...
"After the launch of Swift, the situation is very different. Data
from
very early times after the burst are now available, whereas they were
not before. The X-ray light curves *do* show flares, there is no
question. In other words, it is not possible to fit a smooth decay
with satisfactory goodness of fit (chi-square for example). The
present data *demand* more complicated time behavior models (in the
sense that simpler models can be statistically rejected), whereas the
older observations did not demand it."

... It was you who got it wrong and it was
my predictions from that time which have not only been confirmed but
stood the test of time. The same goes now for your `scientific` rating
scheme for redshift analysis. If you you think that the redshift is
definitely or firmly2.3. then you got it wrong earlier when you or
others claimed your science gave indicated it 2.3.
If your science cant tell the difference between 2.3 or greater than
2.3 then Id say your science is about as incorrect and flawed as it

...

Since I was not an author of any of the GCN circulars mentioned, I was
neither wrong nor right.

As George Dishman and I have pointed out before, the GCN system is for
rapid dissemination of (sometimes tentative) results. Thoene's lack
of a V-band detection would indeed *suggest* a higher redshift, but
with low confidence because of the less reliable measurement
technique. The later reports of a detection in V-band (which came
from earlier-time observations) ruled out the high redshift
possibility. Your problem is that you are seeing everything in black
vs. white, us vs. them terms. In fact, scientists cannot always make
rock-solid claims in the face of incomplete data, but in the case of
rapid phenomena like GRBs, it is better to make a tentative claim than
no claim at all.
I that case I suppose it was OK for me to make my claims on whatever
data
I had available at the time back in 2001. Or are you suggesting its OK
for your fave... beamed theory, to make claims on tentative data
but not OK for my theory to do so beven if it turns out that the
predictions beamed make are incorrect and mine correct?
My memory from english class is this line you inadvertantly
seem to paraphrase.." All pigs are equal but some are more
equal than others."
I still assert that if you can't tell the difference between tentative
low-confidence claims, and firm or rock-solid claims just based on the
English language, you have some serious problems.
Go back and read 6389. It has the word `observed` in the copy.
for a correct explanation of how there is no grb supernova connection
(contrary to the incompetent claims of beamed theorists like
Markwardt )see..

Since "Markwardt" is not a "beamed theorist," and is not even a
"theorist," your claim is non-sensical. What kind of theorist would
you claim is like a non-theorist?
Im glad to see you are finally distancing yourself from beamed
theory.
6 years after I told you to.

Sean
www.gammarayburst.com

and for grb researchers see gammaraybursts explained at...
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=jaymoseleygrb