Ned Wright's TBBNH Page (B3)

This post continues the discussion of 'Ned' Wright's website "Errors in The
Big Bang Never Happened."

Several people have independently pointed me to Ned Wright's website "Errors
in The Big Bang Never Happened." One of those was the sci.physics.research
moderator -- who used this website as justification for refusing any mention
of TBBNH -- or any references contained therein. The crank.dot.net site
lists "Ed (sic) Wright's invaluable page detailing the errors in ... Eric
Lerner's arguments from The Big Bang Never Happened." So I guess it's time
to discuss "Ned Wright's TBBNH Page. Last modified 4-May-2000, © 1997-2000"
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/lerner_errors.html


Ned separated his site into three sections:

A: Errors in Lerner's Criticism of the Big Bang
B: Errors in Lerner's Alternative to the Big Bang
C: Miscellaneous Errors


Now to the details of Ned's argument B (Lerner's alternative to the Big
Bang) :
================================================
What alternative does Lerner give for the Big Bang? Since the Big Bang is
based on

1.the redshift of galaxies
2.the blackbody microwave background
3.the abundance of the light elements

Lerner should give alternative explanations for these three observed
phenomena. What are his alternatives?
=============================================== =


This is part 3:
================================================
Lerner's model for the light elements

Lerner wants to make helium in stars. This presents a problem because the
stars that actually release helium back into the interstellar medium make a
lot of heavier elements too. Observations of galaxies with different helium
abundances show that for every 3.2 grams of helium produced, stars produce 1
gram of heavier elements (French, 1980, ApJ, 240, 41). Thus it is not even
possible to make the 28% helium fraction in the Sun without making four
times more than the observed 2% heavier elements fraction,
=============================================== =

I'd like to deal with the study proffered by Ned in some detail. However, I
don't want to do it in this post, as it will make it even longer, and
detract from the core issue: 'Errors' in TBBNH. So I will point those who
are interested to 'French's Primordial Study,' posted in parallel with these
'Ned Wright's TBBNH Page' posts.

The published results of the French study include two numbers used by Ned in
his comments on TBBHN:
1) (He/H)_0 = 21.6%
2) delta Y / delta Z = 3.2

The first value is derived from a linear fit to the 14 data points.
However, as noted in the parallel thread, the second value is NOT based on
the data obtained from the 14 study galaxies. It is calculated based on the
'observed' ratio of 2% heavy elements to 28% Helium found in the Orion
Nebula in other studies. (This happens to match the numbers that Ned
provided for the Sun.) The value of 3.2 was back-calculated from the Orion
Nebula values to the 'primordial' ratio (#1) by explicitly assuming the 'big
bang' was correct.

French worked backwards from the local, currently observed value. In effect
assuring that the answer comes out right in the region we can measure well.
(And I do not imply that this was the 'purpose' of the change in method.)
However, if we actually USE the data in Figure 6 in French, coupled with the
elemental spectrum found in the very same references used by French to
obtain the total for the Orion nebula, we find a completely different story.
(See the 'French's Primordial Study'.)

Ned uses French's 'primordial' mass fraction of 21.6% +- 1.5%. To get to
Solar/Orion Nebula Mass ratio of 28%, 6.4% helium must be generated.
Resulting in 6.4% / 3.2 = 2% heavy elements. Which is not at all
surprising, because that's what French used for a starting assumption in the
calculation of the 3.2 ratio. However, Ned falls afoul of his own
calculation when he addresses the halo stars:

================================================
and making the
23% helium with only 0.01% of heavier elements seen in old stars in the
Milky Way halo is completely out of the question.
=============================================== =

In order to get from the observed, 'primordial' 21.6% He to 23% He in the
halo stars, the Big Bang model would need to produce 1.4% He from stars. And
this would result in 1.4% / 3.2 = 0.4% fraction heavy elements. Yet, Ned
only 'observed' 0.01%. Ned's halo stars suffer an error of ten times
'worse' than Lerner when using the same reference for the same purpose --
but for the Big Bang theory. The basic problem is mixing data sources in
the French study.


Aside from specific issues with the methodology in the French study,
galaxies of 'uncertain nature', cannot be considered definitive of the
history of the Milky Way -- which is at the core of Lerner's theory in
TBBNH. Ned simply ignores the details of how TBBNH makes light elements --
except to mention 'stars.' Indeed, stars are the source of much of the
light elements, but there's that bit about the details about the type and
distribution of stars that Lerner discussed.

TBBNH discusses the source of elements on pages 266 and 267.

"Existing stars cannot have produced the 24 percent of the universe that is
helium. At the rate they currently produce energy from fusion, only 1 or 2
percent of their hydrogen should have been burned to helium in the twenty
billion years that our galaxy has existed. Therefore, say Big Bangers, the
rest derives from a primordial explosion."

"But there's a simpler answer, as I discussed in Chapter One. The larger a
star, the hotter its interior and the faster it burns its nuclear fuel. If,
in the early stage of galactic formation, a generation of stars considerably
heavier than the Sun formed, they all would have burned up in a few hundred
million years, exploding as supernovas and scattering large quantities of
helium."

"There was now good reason to believe that the first generation of stars WAS
more massive. In my models, as in Peratt's, stars would form inside, and in
front of, the filamentary spiral arms as they rolled through the surrounding
medium. The mass-area ratio shows that as a plasma's density increases, the
size of the objects formed from it decreases. So as the galaxy contracted,
the largest stars would have formed first and smaller stars with longer
lives would have formed only when the density had risen."

"Conventional theorists object that the most massive stars, giants that
culminate in a supernova, ALSO generate large amounts of oxygen and carbon.
Yet the universe is only about .5 percent carbon and 1 percent oxygen, less
than would be expected if such stars produced all the 24 percent helium."

{Note that Ned Wright's argument is exactly the one identified by Lerner as
the standard argument of 'conventional theorists.' So it is specious of Ned
to present this argument as if Lerner hadn't thought of it. Lerner
addresses it as follows:}

"My model provided a natural answer to this objection. As the filaments of
the spiral arms slice throught the plasma, they produce a shock wave, like
that of a supersonic aircraft. Within the compressed material of this shock
wave stars will form, as pinched currents flow through it. For stars more
massive than ten or twelve times as massive as the Sun, this process will
continue outward from the plane of the galaxy -- the plane of the filaments'
motion -- until they blow up as supernoas, scattering oxygen and carbon.
This will disrupt the shock wave that contributes to star formation, thus
confining it to a rather narrow disk. Not many of those very massive stars
will form, so oxygen and carbon production will be limited."

"But stars with less mass than this will not explode. These more sedate
stars will blow off only their outer layers -- pure helium -- not their
inner cores, where the heavier elements are trapped. As these medium-sized
stars, four to ten times bigger than the Sun, form in the dense, inner
regions of the galaxy, the shock wave will spread through the entire
thickness of the galaxy. Consequently, helium production will far outweigh
that of oxygen and carbon."

"This model predicts the amounts of helium, carbon, and oxygen that a
variety of galaxies will produce. The results are in close agreement with
observation -- almost any galaxy would prduce about 22 percent helium, 1
percent oxygen, and .5 percent carbon. It is only after all these stars
have burned that density will rise sufficiently for still lighter,
longer-lived, and dimmer stars like our Sun to form (Fig. 6.16)."

Ned simply ignored the above solution and presented the 'standard
argument' -- as if Lerner had never written a line. Now let's look at Ned's
other argument.

================================================
But a further problem is that stars make no lithium and no deuterium. Lerner
proposes that these elements are made by spallation in cosmic rays. But the
cosmic rays have 80 deuterium nuclei for every lithium nucleus (Meyer, 1969,
ARAA, 7, 1) while the Universe has about 6 million deuterium nuclei for
every lithium nucleus. So if the lithium is entirely due to spallation in
cosmic rays, the Universe is still missing 99.99% of the observed deuterium.

Lerner's arithmetic once again fails by a large margin.
=============================================== =

The paragraph in TBBNH (p 267) is this:

"Certain rare light isotopes -- deuterium, lithium, and boron -- cannot have
been prduced in this way, folr they burn too easily in stars. But the
cosmic rays generated by early stars, colliding with the background plasma,
WILL generate these rare substance in the correct amounds as well. (This
was an idea that scientists such as Jean Adouze (sic Audouze) in France had
independently been aruguing for.) There is simply no need for a Big Bang to
produce any of these elements."

Again, Ned has simply ignored the available evidence presented (Audouze),
and provided a simplistic statement that equates the content of current
cosmic rays at Earth with the integrated past production of deuterium and
lithium by reactions between past cosmic rays and the background plasma.
Quite simply, Audouze provides a good fit for cosmic-ray generation of
lithium. But the results of Audouze exist whether the BB is correct or not.
Which gives the BB a problem, because the BB then underestimates lithium.

So, it seems both A-K and BB have a problem at the moment. The A-K may (if
Ned's simplistic calculation is correct) underestimate deuterium. The BB
will overestimate lithium. This appears to be tie for the moment. It
simply means we don't know everything yet. But it's sure not indicative of
an 'error' in TBBNH.


Again, Ned has created a process that doesn't exist anywhere in TBBNH as a
strawman. Ned has ignored the collision process that creates nuclear
reactions, renames it 'spallation', and assumes that this is simply slowing
of cosmic rays.


See "Ned Wright's TBBNH Page (C) for Lerner's 'miscellaneous errors'.

A courtesy copy of this post is provided to Ned Wright.

greywolf42
ubi dubium ibi libertas