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Galaxy cluster at z=1.4 challenges BBT



 
 
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  #1  
Old March 3rd 05, 08:23 PM
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Default Galaxy cluster at z=1.4 challenges BBT

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio news this morning
carried an interview with Chris Mullis about a galaxy cluster,
discovered initially with X-rays and then confirmed
spectroscopically with the VLT.

http://www.astro.lsa.umich.edu/~cmul...rch/xmmuj2235/

Discovery of an X-ray-Luminous Galaxy Cluster at z=1.4
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0503004

The interview should soon be available at:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/brkfast/

Chris Mullis et al. say their technique could be used to find
many such objects with relative ease.

. . . XMMUJ2235.3-2557 is likely more massive
than RDCS1252-29 (previously the most massive, distant
cluster known at z = 1.24).

They estimate the cluster is 9 billion light years away. In
the interview Chris Mullis indicated that he thought the cluster
must have begun forming 11 billion years ago. He referred to
the age of the Universe as being 13.7 billion years.

He indicated that this cluster is a major challenge to theories
of galaxy formation - which will need to be revised in order to
account for them forming and collecting themselves into clusters
so rapidly.

I think that a better approach would be to question the Big Bang
Theory. All we need to disprove it is a mechanism by which
light is redshifted 1 part in about 15 billion per year of
travel in the intergalactic plasma. See

http://astroneu.com/plasma-redshift-1/

for such theories and discussion of problems with the BBT and
some alternative theories, concerning:

Heating and acceleration of stellar coronae and winds.

How galaxy clusters do not resemble the shapes one would
expect to result from gravitational formation, but rather
the liquid between bubbles in a foam. I propose the void
IGM is heated to extreme temperatures by a plasma redshift
(I plan to reformulate this as sparse particle redshift)
of distant starlight, creating high enough pressures,
despite the very low density, to push galaxies (and their
more massive surrounding coronae) into the cluster or
supercluster shapes we observe.

Plasma (sparse particle) redshift occurring close to quasars -
so the Lyman forest is local to the quasar. This would also
explain the failure to find the transverse proximity effect
with a foreground quasar - a failure which directly challenges
the Doppler / expansion assumption about redshift on which the
Big Bang Theory is based.

A theory of dark matter in galactic halos consisting of black
dwarfs and their collision fragments. This would be
impossible if the galaxies are less than 14 billion years
old or so, since (according to conventional theories, which
I think are probably fine) stars would take too long to cool.
However, if we we abandon the BBT and consider that galaxies
are probably much older than this, with some as-yet unknown
source of matter/energy, then they could be old enough to
generate collapsed and cooled stars with a mass exceeding that
of the luminous stars. I propose how these would eventually
wind up in widely dispersed elliptical orbits around a spiral
galaxy - so explaining the long-standing problem of galactic
rotation curves.

Pointers to Jerry Jensen's critique of the conventional
analysis of supernova light curves. This conventional finding
of time dilation would need to be disproven in order to
abandon the BBT.


- Robin http://astroneu.com http://www.firstpr.com.au
  #2  
Old March 11th 05, 12:51 PM
jacob navia
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One more data point in the same direction:

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publ..._universe.html
What did the universe look like when it was only 2 to 3 billion years=20
old? Astronomers used to think it was a pretty simple place containing=20
relatively small, young star-forming galaxies. Researchers now are=20
realizing that the truth is not that simple. Even the early universe was=20
a wildly complex place. Studying the universe at this early stage is=20
important in understanding how the galaxies near us were assembled over=20
time.

Jiasheng Huang (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) said, "It=20
looks like vegetable soup! We're detecting galaxies we never expected to=20
find, having a wide range of properties we never expected to see."

"It's becoming more and more clear that the young universe was a big zoo=20
with animals of all sorts," said Ivo Labb=EF=BF=BD (Observatories of the=20
Carnegie Institution of Washington), lead author on the study announcing=20
this result.

Using the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) aboard NASA's Spitzer Space=20
Telescope, the astronomers searched for distant, red galaxies in the=20
Hubble Deep Field South-a region of the southern sky previously observed=20
by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Their search was successful. The IRAC images displayed about a dozen=20
very red galaxies lurking at distances of 10 to 12 billion light-years.=20
Those galaxies existed when the universe was only about 1/5 of its=20
present age of 14 billion years. Analysis showed that the galaxies=20
exhibit a large range of properties.

"Overall, we're seeing young galaxies with lots of dust, young galaxies=20
with no dust, old galaxies with lots of dust, and old galaxies with no=20
dust. There's as much variety in the early universe as we see around us=20
today," said Labb=EF=BF=BD.

The team was particularly surprised to find a curious breed of galaxy=20
never seen before at such an early stage in the universe--

*old, red galaxies that had stopped forming new stars altogether.*

Those galaxies had rapidly formed large numbers of stars much earlier in=20
the universe's history, raising the question of what caused them to=20
"die" so soon.

The unpredicted existence of such "red and dead" galaxies so early in=20
time challenges theorists who model galaxy formation.

"We're trying to understand how galaxies like the Milky Way assembled=20
and how they got to look the way they appear today," said Giovanni Fazio=20
(CfA), a co-author on the study. "Spitzer offers capabilities that=20
Hubble and other instruments don't, giving us a unique way to study very=20
distant galaxies that eventually became the galaxies we see around us now=
..."

The study will be published in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical=20
Journal Letters.

This press release is being issued in conjunction with the Observatories=20
of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

---------------------------------------------
Emphasis in
*old, red galaxies that had stopped forming new stars altogether.*
added by me.

How can an old galaxy form and die in only 2 Bill years?
Assuming a rotation rate identical to the milky way, it has
the time to make only 8 turns abd it is already dead and old...

Every months we have discoveries like this:
*There's as much variety in the early universe as we see around us today*

The scopes have arrived at the immediate neighborurhood of the
supposed big bang and there is not the slightest hint of a bang
to see.

jacob
  #3  
Old March 14th 05, 05:01 PM
Max Keon
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jacob navia wrote:

One more data point in the same direction:


http://www.universetoday.com/am/publ..._universe.html
What did the universe look like when it was only 2 to 3 billion years
old? Astronomers used to think it was a pretty simple place containing
relatively small, young star-forming galaxies. Researchers now are
realizing that the truth is not that simple. Even the early universe was
a wildly complex place.


The complex evolutionary state of the "early" universe described
in your post certainly can't be logically justified within the
scope of the BBT. While researchers are out there realizing the
"truth", they should also realize that continually upgrading the
theory to incorporate emerging, and damning evidence, will only
serve to further embarrass the entire physics community.

One theory has so far passed every test, with flying colors.

-----

Max Keon
  #4  
Old March 15th 05, 10:13 AM
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jacob navia wrote:

How can an old galaxy form and die in only 2 Bill
years?


One can envision lots of mechanisms; all it takes is
something to sweep the galaxy clear of dust and gas
from which to create more stars.

A glancing collision with a larger galaxy could do
that.

The "big enough" jet from another galaxy's massive
black hole could perhaps do that, hosing away the
dust but leaving the existing stars.

Flying through a dust-thick extensive unconsolidated
cloud at relativistic relative velocities could
probably do that too; the stars would bully on
through, but the galactic dust between them would be
stopped in its tracks.

Once you stop forming stars, the blue ones die their
quick deaths, and soon only the longer-lived red
ones remain, and the galaxy looks "old" only because
it no longer has any surviving blue stars to make it
look "young". That is just as should be expected if
you take out the loose dust by _any_ mechanism.

There's nothing "contradictory to the big bang
theory" about finding a _few_ anamolous objects.

The universe is plenty big enough for a few highly
unlikely happenings nontheless to have occurred.

The more data we find, the more fractal-like the
universe seems, and fractals provide lots of room
for extremal cases.

Finding the anomalous objects to be the _prevalent_
types would certainly be worrisome to the BBT; any
theory which finds mostly exceptions to its
predictions hasn't long to live.

Assuming a rotation rate identical to the milky
way, it has the time to make only 8 turns a[n]d it
is already dead and old...


Which is completely irrelevant to the issue.

Every months we have discoveries like this:
*There's as much variety in the early universe as
we see around us today*


Yep; like every other theory of the real world,
things grow more interesting the better your ability
gets to resolve details in the data.

That doesn't necessarily invalidate the larger
theory.

What would be absolutely mind boggling would be if
the _opposite_ were the case, if all the new
instruments' resolving power were a waste of effort,
because nothing new or unexpected or interesting at
all were there to be seen.

The scopes have arrived at the immediate
neighborhood of the supposed big bang and there
is not the slightest hint of a bang to see.


You mean besides the cosmic microwave background
radiation that already confirms the BBT to several
decimals of precision?

That _is_ the Big Bang, granted you aren't going to
see it in an optical telescope, which would be
looking among the wrong
wavelengths for the Big Bang in any case.

Were you looking for some _other_ Big Bang?

If so, why?

One more than suffices, I would think.

xanthian, amused that _every_ theory finds its
_inevitable_ gathering of naysayers.
  #5  
Old March 15th 05, 12:14 PM
jacob navia
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Default

wrote:
jacob navia wrote:


How can an old galaxy form and die in only 2 Bill
years?



One can envision lots of mechanisms; all it takes is
something to sweep the galaxy clear of dust and gas
from which to create more stars.

A glancing collision with a larger galaxy could do
that.

The "big enough" jet from another galaxy's massive
black hole could perhaps do that, hosing away the
dust but leaving the existing stars.

Flying through a dust-thick extensive unconsolidated
cloud at relativistic relative velocities could
probably do that too; the stars would bully on
through, but the galactic dust between them would be
stopped in its tracks.


Relativistic relative velocities???

One of the fastest moving galaxies (NGC 1427A ) is falling into the
Fornax cluster at ... 600 Km/sec.
(
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/new...leases/2005/09)

To accelerate *A GALAXY* to relativistic speeds would require so
much energy that I can safely bet that there will never be an
observation of such an object. Besides, the high speed of the
galaxy should be *noticable* in its spectra, either in an increased
or decreased red/blue shift.

This looks like a desperate explanation. Yes; it is *possible* but...
is it likely?


Once you stop forming stars, the blue ones die their
quick deaths, and soon only the longer-lived red
ones remain, and the galaxy looks "old" only because
it no longer has any surviving blue stars to make it
look "young". That is just as should be expected if
you take out the loose dust by _any_ mechanism.


Just 2 Billion years?
A sun-like star lives 10 Billion years. Even if there weren't
any new star formations, sun-like stars should go on for quite
a while. Supposing this "encounter at relativistic speeds" takes
place 1 Bill years after the bang, we should see a lot of blue
stars 1 Billion years later, not enough to make the galaxy red.


There's nothing "contradictory to the big bang
theory" about finding a _few_ anamolous objects.


Sorry but this is *one* from many examples discovered.
Old galaxies with iron in it, galaxy clusters at
9 Billion years
(http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-re.../pr-04-05.html)
and *many* others.

The universe is plenty big enough for a few highly
unlikely happenings nontheless to have occurred.


Probably. The point is, the more "unlikely" events we find, the
more unlikely the theory becomes, that is my point. I am not
saying that this is 100% impossible to explain with BB theory, just
that BB theory becomes more and more unlikely as more facts are
known.

Ptolomeus rotating spheres model could ALWAYS accomodate new
observations by making a NEW sphere. But at some point people
just preferred the new model because it was simpler...

Now, the big problem here is that there isn't any Galileo
around :-)

The more data we find, the more fractal-like the
universe seems, and fractals provide lots of room
for extremal cases.


Finding the anomalous objects to be the _prevalent_
types would certainly be worrisome to the BBT; any
theory which finds mostly exceptions to its
predictions hasn't long to live.


That's exactly my point.


Assuming a rotation rate identical to the milky
way, it has the time to make only 8 turns a[n]d it
is already dead and old...



Which is completely irrelevant to the issue.



No. Galaxies are flat, and to get flat they have to
rotate for some time to flatten themselves isn't it?

Every months we have discoveries like this:
*There's as much variety in the early universe as
we see around us today*



Yep; like every other theory of the real world,
things grow more interesting the better your ability
gets to resolve details in the data.


I agree

That doesn't necessarily invalidate the larger
theory.

What would be absolutely mind boggling would be if
the _opposite_ were the case, if all the new
instruments' resolving power were a waste of effort,
because nothing new or unexpected or interesting at
all were there to be seen.


The scopes have arrived at the immediate
neighborhood of the supposed big bang and there
is not the slightest hint of a bang to see.



You mean besides the cosmic microwave background
radiation that already confirms the BBT to several
decimals of precision?


There was a discussion in sci.astro about "overaveraging"
and the whole "wrinkles in the face of god"
story. I remain a sceptic about that. But yes, there
is no alternative explanation to the cosmic background.

The problem is that it could very well be that we just
do not know what the Cosmic Background *is*, and we see it
as we can: as a "BB " relic.

That _is_ the Big Bang, granted you aren't going to
see it in an optical telescope, which would be
looking among the wrong
wavelengths for the Big Bang in any case.


I am not so stupid to believe we could "see" the big bang.
Of course not. But its immediate neighborhood should have
*some* marks of such a "bang" having happened relatively shrtly,
i.e. 500 Mill years...

Were you looking for some _other_ Big Bang?

If so, why?

One more than suffices, I would think.

xanthian, amused that _every_ theory finds its
_inevitable_ gathering of naysayers.


And, an established theory will find its inevitable
gathering of people that will stick to it no matter what.

jacob
  #6  
Old March 15th 05, 03:16 PM
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[Mod. note: please could all posters try to remain polite and focussed
on the scientific issues rather than on scoring points -- mjh]

jacob navia wrote:
wrote:
jacob navia wrote:


How can an old galaxy form and die in only 2
Bill years?


One can envision lots of mechanisms; all it takes
is something to sweep the galaxy clear of dust
and gas from which to create more stars.


A glancing collision with a larger galaxy could
do that.


The "big enough" jet from another galaxy's
massive black hole could perhaps do that, hosing
away the dust but leaving the existing stars.


Flying through a dust-thick extensive
unconsolidated cloud at relativistic relative
velocities could probably do that too; the stars
would bully on through, but the galactic dust
between them would be stopped in its tracks.


Relativistic relative velocities???


Notice that I supplied _three_ mechanisms, and
rather than respond to the grist of any of them,
you wasted your effort jumping on a badly chosen
word. This isn't productive to understanding the
phenomena, at all.

One of the fastest moving galaxies (NGC 1427A ) is
falling into the Fornax cluster at ... 600 Km/sec.
(
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/new...leases/2005/09)

You'd have a lot less misunderstandings if you'd
resist jumping crowingly and unthinkingly on a
misused _word_, and work out the _math_ for
yourself. If a 600 kmps galaxy hits a 0 kps dust
cloud, a good guess would be that the galaxy's
internal dust falls behind at 300 kmps. How long
does it take to sweep such a galaxy clean of dust?

Well, a galaxy is roughly 10^18 km across, if I
haven't lost a decimal, and 300 kmps is roughly
10^10 km/year, so 10^8 years would suffice, only a
tenth of a billion: lots of time to have cleaned out
a galaxy 2 billion years old.

To accelerate *A GALAXY* to relativistic speeds
would require so much energy that I can safely bet
that there will never be an observation of such an
object. Besides, the high speed of the galaxy
should be *noticable* in its spectra, either in an
increased or decreased red/blue shift.


Yada, yada, yada... You're arguing with the hand.

This looks like a desperate explanation. Yes; it
is *possible* but... is it likely?


If you had bothered to work out the math for
yourself using the data _you_ supplied, you'd know
the answer is in the affirmative. This habit of
failing to do your own homework isn't helping you
understand the issues, at all.

Once you stop forming stars, the blue ones die
their quick deaths, and soon only the
longer-lived red ones remain, and the galaxy
looks "old" only because it no longer has any
surviving blue stars to make it look "young".
That is just as should be expected if you take
out the loose dust by _any_ mechanism.


Just 2 Billion years?


A sun-like star lives 10 Billion years. Even if
there weren't any new star formations, sun-like
stars should go on for quite a while. Supposing
this "encounter at relativistic speeds" takes
place 1 Bill years after the bang, we should see a
lot of blue stars 1 Billion years later, not
enough to make the galaxy red.


Give me strength. Go look up the lifetime for blue
stars, please. You are off by factors containing
multiple digits.

There's nothing "contradictory to the big bang
theory" about finding a _few_ anomalous objects.


Sorry but this is *one* from many examples
discovered. Old galaxies with iron in it, galaxy
clusters at 9 Billion years
(http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-re.../pr-04-05.html)
and *many* others.


Yep, but lots of _single_, different, anomalies
aren't an issue; among "billions of billions" of
galaxies, even the most (within reason) unlikely
events have had time to happen "somewhere, once" by
purely statistical arguments based simply on the
huge number of objects the universe contains. It is
when they are happening "everywhere, often" that you
start to worry about your theory.

The universe is plenty big enough for a few
highly unlikely happenings nontheless to have
occurred.


Probably. The point is, the more "unlikely" events
we find, the more unlikely the theory becomes,
that is my point.


No, the more _identical_ unlikely events we find,
the more danger those events present to the theory.

The more detailed our data investigating capability
becomes, the more _kinds of_ *unique* unlikely
events we can pull out of the data, and that means
there are lots more _unique_ anomalies reported with
every sensing device improvement; but that, again,
is merely an expected result.

Worry when some one contradicting _kind of_ anomaly
starts to dominate the findings, not when new kinds
of anomalies arrive with each sensor improvement.
That's exactly why we pay the big bucks for the
better sensors: so we can winkle the strange and
interesting stuff out of the mostly bland data.

I am not saying that this is 100% impossible to
explain with BB theory, just that BB theory
becomes more and more unlikely as more facts are
known.


Think about what you just wrote.

But at some point people just preferred the new
model because it was simpler...


So far as I know, the Big Bang Theory, with
Inflation, remains by far the most parsimoneous
explanation of the universe as we see it today, and
all the statistical flukes in the world aren't
contradicting that impression; numerous statistical
flukes are an _expected finding_ in such a large
data set.

Now, the big problem here is that there isn't any
Galileo around :-)


I think we need more pressingly to bring back
William of Occam.

The more data we find, the more fractal-like the
universe seems, and fractals provide lots of room
for extremal cases.


Finding the anomalous objects to be the _prevalent_
types would certainly be worrisome to the BBT; any
theory which finds mostly exceptions to its
predictions hasn't long to live.


That's exactly my point.


But you fail to do the math, and so miss making your
point; gut arguments don't work well for arguing
where the numbers involved defy correct intuitions.

Assuming a rotation rate identical to the milky
way, it has the time to make only 8 turns a[n]d it
is already dead and old...


Which is completely irrelevant to the issue.


No. Galaxies are flat,


That is not true in general; spiral galaxies are
flat, elliptical galaxies are, surprise, elliptical.

At the distances where a whole galaxy takes up a
couple of pixels on your sensing device, deciding
whether a galaxy is a certain shape is
"interesting", and has to be based on its spectrum,
not its outline in your sensing device.

But in the cases under discussion, the spectral
anomalies are _already_ an issue, and make trusting
spectral analysis to determine really subtle stuff
like "is the spectral spread appropriate for an
elliptical galaxy, or for a spiral one", a dodgy
choice. That's the level of math I'll _happily_
defer to the experts.

and to get flat they have to rotate for some time
to flatten themselves isn't it?


Which is still irrelevant to the issue of why they
are blue light deprived. Most certainly, they don't
have to "flatten" to be galaxies-at-all.

The scopes have arrived at the immediate
neighborhood of the supposed big bang and there
is not the slightest hint of a bang to see.


You mean besides the cosmic microwave background
radiation that already confirms the BBT to
several decimals of precision?


There was a discussion in sci.astro about
"overaveraging" and the whole "wrinkles in the
face of god" story. I remain a sceptic about that.
But yes, there is no alternative explanation to
the cosmic background.


Then why on earth did you make your previous
statement?

The problem is that it could very well be that we
just do not know what the Cosmic Background *is*,
and we see it as we can: as a "BB " relic.


Yep, that's this big problem with science, you get
this raw data, and then you come up with some
"cooked" interpretation of that data. That's where
we get the documents called "PhD theses".

While that interpretation retains good predictive
capability, it remains "the accepted theory". As
soon as it loses that ability, it lands "in the
dustbin of history". Right now, Big Bang theory is
in no danger at all of landing in the dustbin,
however much it annoys some folks religious or
math-deprived intuitive notions.

That _is_ the Big Bang, granted you aren't going
to see it in an optical telescope, which would be
looking among the wrong wavelengths for the Big
Bang in any case.


I am not so stupid to believe we could "see" the
big bang.


And yet you go right on to insist on exactly that:

Of course not. But its immediate neighborhood
should have *some* marks of such a "bang" having
happened relatively shrtly, i.e. 500 Mill years...


You write like you expect to see the Big Bang from
some exterior vantage point. We're inside it, and
the cosmic background microwave radiation is there
to be seen in every direction we look. It precisely
satisfies your need for "some marks".

It helps to remember, too, that the Universe spent a
good while after the Big Bang, being totally opaque.

300,000 years sticks in my mind, and I refuse to
go look it up to confirm that. Astronomy is an
"also interesting" for me, not something that
dominates my intellectual life, so my
willingness to invest time into it is pretty
limited.

Between the point where it changed phase to be
transparent, and the point where gravity had enough
time to work to produce some stars, there's probably
a big bunch of "nothing at all to look at" out
there, so don't expect to be finding the
astronomical equivalent of "fossils of soft bodied
organisms" where there are none.

It's like the hole in the data before 10^-34 seconds
or whatever the figure is; some stuff is plain
impossible ever to "see"; _lack_ of data isn't much
persuasive in favor of _any_ theory.

And, an established theory will find its
inevitable gathering of people that will stick to
it no matter what.


Right. The ones who win are the ones who do their
own homework. Pretending blue stars will last ten
billion years just because yellow ones do, rather
than bothering to look up the right answer, punches
some pretty large holes in your arguments from the
vantage of more clueful observers. That reduces both
any chance _you'll_ understand reality, and any
chance you'll prevail in pressing your version of
"how things went" on those who think _they_ do.

FWIW

xanthian.
  #7  
Old March 16th 05, 01:05 PM
jacob navia
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wrote:
[Mod. note: please could all posters try to remain polite and focussed
on the scientific issues rather than on scoring points -- mjh]


I agree with that.

Relativistic relative velocities???



Notice that I supplied _three_ mechanisms, and
rather than respond to the grist of any of them,
you wasted your effort jumping on a badly chosen
word. This isn't productive to understanding the
phenomena, at all.


OK, OK.

Since I have *also* a badly choosen word (I spoke about "blue"
stars instead of just "bright" stars, I will acccept your point.
:-)


One of the fastest moving galaxies (NGC 1427A ) is
falling into the Fornax cluster at ... 600 Km/sec.
(
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/new...leases/2005/09)


You'd have a lot less misunderstandings if you'd
resist jumping crowingly and unthinkingly on a
misused _word_, and work out the _math_ for
yourself. If a 600 kmps galaxy hits a 0 kps dust
cloud, a good guess would be that the galaxy's
internal dust falls behind at 300 kmps. How long
does it take to sweep such a galaxy clean of dust?

Well, a galaxy is roughly 10^18 km across, if I
haven't lost a decimal, and 300 kmps is roughly
10^10 km/year, so 10^8 years would suffice, only a
tenth of a billion: lots of time to have cleaned out
a galaxy 2 billion years old.


OK, so your scenario is
t=0 Start of collision with non moving dust/gas cloud,
galaxy speed 600 Km/sec

t= 10^8 Million years. Galaxy loses all the dust
and material to form new stars, that stays behind
separating from the galaxy at 300Km /sec.

Supposing that the collision (t=0) is 1 000 mill
years after the BB, we have 900 million years left.

True, huge stars and many blue stars live only a few
million years, OK, so after 900 Mill years most of
them disappear. The galaxy loses its blue component
in its spectra. Main sequence stars are not affected at all,
and bright stars (those that live at least 1 Bill years)
are not affected at all.

My point is that only 900 Mill years after the crash,
most bright stars (stars slightly larger than the sun,
but still in the main sequence) should be around, and the
total looks of the galaxy should not be so red as observed.

{snip}


While that interpretation retains good predictive
capability, it remains "the accepted theory". As
soon as it loses that ability, it lands "in the
dustbin of history". Right now, Big Bang theory is
in no danger at all of landing in the dustbin,
however much it annoys some folks religious or
math-deprived intuitive notions.


OK. OK I would invite you to this meeting, posted in this
same discussion group:

This is an announcement for the 1st Crisis in Cosmology Conference
(CCC-I) which will be held in Portugal in the period 23-25 June 2005.
All information can be obtained from http://www.cosmology.info

Best regards,
Jose B. Almeida


Please note that I am in *no way* related to that
but I think that's at last a step in a good direction.


That _is_ the Big Bang, granted you aren't going
to see it in an optical telescope, which would be
looking among the wrong wavelengths for the Big
Bang in any case.



I am not so stupid to believe we could "see" the
big bang.



And yet you go right on to insist on exactly that:


Of course not. But its immediate neighborhood
should have *some* marks of such a "bang" having
happened relatively shrtly, i.e. 500 Mill years...



You write like you expect to see the Big Bang from
some exterior vantage point.


NO!
I just expect to see a different environment 500 million
years after such a bang, than what we actually see. I would
expect no galaxy clusters, nor galaxies with a lot of iron,


We're inside it, and
the cosmic background microwave radiation is there
to be seen in every direction we look. It precisely
satisfies your need for "some marks".

It helps to remember, too, that the Universe spent a
good while after the Big Bang, being totally opaque.

300,000 years sticks in my mind, and I refuse to
go look it up to confirm that. Astronomy is an
"also interesting" for me, not something that
dominates my intellectual life, so my
willingness to invest time into it is pretty
limited.

Between the point where it changed phase to be
transparent, and the point where gravity had enough
time to work to produce some stars, there's probably
a big bunch of "nothing at all to look at" out
there, so don't expect to be finding the
astronomical equivalent of "fossils of soft bodied
organisms" where there are none.

It's like the hole in the data before 10^-34 seconds
or whatever the figure is; some stuff is plain
impossible ever to "see"; _lack_ of data isn't much
persuasive in favor of _any_ theory.


And, an established theory will find its
inevitable gathering of people that will stick to
it no matter what.



Right. The ones who win are the ones who do their
own homework. Pretending blue stars will last ten
billion years just because yellow ones do, rather
than bothering to look up the right answer, punches
some pretty large holes in your arguments from the
vantage of more clueful observers. That reduces both
any chance _you'll_ understand reality, and any
chance you'll prevail in pressing your version of
"how things went" on those who think _they_ do.

FWIW

xanthian.

  #8  
Old March 16th 05, 01:05 PM
Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply
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In article , jacob navia
writes:

Ptolomeus rotating spheres model could ALWAYS accomodate new
observations by making a NEW sphere. But at some point people
just preferred the new model because it was simpler...


No. As Fourier pointed out, ANY periodic motion can be thought of as
consisting of a sum of sinusoidal motions of various periods, so in that
sense, yes (I bet Ptolemy didn't know he was doing Fourier synthesis).
However, this applies just to TRANSVERSE motions. Ptolemy's model
predicts completely different RADIAL motions than that of Copernicus or
Kepler so, as soon as you can measure the distance to a planet, you can
falsify Ptolemy's model.

As for the rest of the discussion, I think you need to define "big bang
theory" before going any further. A common mistake is to define "big
bang theory" to mean more than it actually does. Even if these
additional details really are falsified by some observations, it just
means that these additional details are falsified, not the "core" of the
big bang theory.
  #9  
Old March 17th 05, 10:49 AM
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jacob navia wrote:

OK, so your scenario is


t=0 Start of collision with non moving dust/gas
cloud, galaxy speed 600 Km/sec


t= 10^8 Million years. Galaxy loses all the dust
and material to form new stars, that stays behind
separating from the galaxy at 300Km /sec.


Supposing that the collision (t=0) is 1 000 mill
years after the BB, we have 900 million years
left.


Well, no, whether consciously or not, you're still
manipulating the data to make things come out the
way you want.

If you are asking: "does the existence of 'red
galaxies' at BB + 2Gyears discredit BBT", you
have to be asking "can they happen _at all_ by any
mechanism consistent with BBT". Pushing the starting
point of the dust cleanout to BB + 1Gyears for no
particular reason is biasing the "yes/no" answer for
no particular reason. You don't get to do that.

You want to take the earliest possible time for a
galaxy to exist, assume, on statistical arguments,
that it has an extremal speed, run it through one or
the other "scraper" to denude it of dust and gas,
and ask "how early can that possibly happen"; before
deciding whether there should still be lots of
midsequence stars around to add their color to the
average light seen.

For one thing, a "partial scraper" operating at the
_same time_ as the stars were forming might have
biased them almost all to be small ones.

Essentially, in another scenario, all you need is
some unknown mechanism to make the vortices in the
consolidating stardust closer spaced and smaller;
I'm guessing there are many possible sources of
turbulance in the early universe; proximity to a
quasar might be one such.

True, huge stars and many blue stars live only a
few million years, OK, so after 900 Mill years
most of them disappear. The galaxy loses its blue
component in its spectra. Main sequence stars are
not affected at all, and bright stars (those that
live at least 1 Bill years) are not affected at
all.


My point is that only 900 Mill years after the
crash, most bright stars (stars slightly larger
than the sun, but still in the main sequence)
should be around, and the total looks of the
galaxy should not be so red as observed.


Well, except, again, that you've ripped an
additional 1Gyear off that 0.9 Gyear without any
explicit justification, and that's time to dim down
a bunch more stars.

Anyway, we can dispute that part until the moderator
grows bored with the discussion, but the larger
issue is that the universe is _complicated_, and
trying to use events occurring 2Gyears after the
big bang to discredit the big bang is a pretty dicey
approach. There's just too much time for catenations
of post-BB events we don't understand yet to have
mucked with the data, to claim that data from that
late in time is still clean enough for a backward
look that contradicts the plentiful much earlier
pro-BBT data we _do_ have. The cosmic background
radiation itself, even, IIUC, is a limited view only
back to that 300,000 (or whatever) years after the
event, when the universe first became transparent.

There's still time even by then for lots to have
happened that we don't understand as well as we
understand that the BB happened at all, to have
mucked about with the data _we_ get to see.

Pretty much, I think, you're forced, in looking at
the consolidated matter of the later universe, to
concede the BB, and get on with the task of trying
to understand all the googleplexes of unlikely
things that have occurred forever after that point,
and to trying to winkle out what _they_ were, and
why _they_ have had the effects they've had on what
we see.

Trying to argue against the big bang right now is
like trying to argue against evolution; the other
team has all the data on its side.

xanthian.
  #10  
Old March 18th 05, 01:50 PM
Max Keon
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jacob navia wrote:

wrote:
jacob navia wrote:

-----
-----

The scopes have arrived at the immediate
neighborhood of the supposed big bang and there
is not the slightest hint of a bang to see.



You mean besides the cosmic microwave background
radiation that already confirms the BBT to several
decimals of precision?


There was a discussion in sci.astro about "overaveraging"
and the whole "wrinkles in the face of god"
story. I remain a sceptic about that. But yes, there
is no alternative explanation to the cosmic background.

The problem is that it could very well be that we just
do not know what the Cosmic Background *is*, and we see it
as we can: as a "BB " relic.


Since the validity of the BB theory is very much in question, I
assume that arguments posed by alternative theories are now
open for discussion?

The contents of this link
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~mkeon/cmb.html
is an extract from a theory which describes a universe that
originated from absolutely nothing, and it provides an alternative
explanation for the CMBR. But without some prior understanding of
the theory the link may not make much sense. To make things even
more difficult, the concept itself is almost incomprehendable
because there are virtually no parallels that can be drawn from our
understanding of how we fit into the structure of the universe that
can be compared with it.

Describing such a universe is no less difficult than it is to
comprehend, so don't expect too much if/when you visit. And spare
a thought for me.

-----

Max Keon

[Mod. note: Just in case people aren't aware of the policy,
`alternative theories' have always been up for discussion on s.a.r.,
but they should be discussed in a scientific (and polite!) way. A
descent to personalities (by either side) or arguments that blatantly
ignore the experimental evidence are likely to run foul of the
moderation policy -- mjh]
 




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