Subject: The Big Bang

Tony Hollick (anduril@cix.compulink.co.uk)
Tue, 4 Nov 97 03:00 GMT0


John Clark wrote:


> >The velocity of light is (approximately) constant at 'c',

> The speed of light in a vacuum is EXACTLY c for ANY observer.

[1] A photon is absorbed and emitted by electrons as it passes
through a glass block. The photon is decelerated, held, then
re-emitted. Unless you believe that instantaneous transition from
rest to 'c' is possible, the photon _must_ travel at intermediate
velocities.

[2] Your mistake is in the focus on (mythical) 'observers' rather
than on objective reality. If you plot the ineluctably necessary
positions of emitting charges and photons in 'position space', you
see quite clearly that the relative velocities are often quite
other than 'c'. Just take the known initial and terminal points,
and plot the intermediate positions and thence velocities. Simple,
innit? Invariant Mass, Length and Time.

"A child of five could understand this. Will someone please send
for a child of five!" -- Grouch Marx, 'Duck Soup.'

> >but only _relative to the emitting charge_.

> Relative to anything.

Obviously absurd. Relative to an adjacent photon in a coherent
laser beam? Or a parallel 'near-luminal' electron beam? C'mon...

> >In a Galilean framework (i.e. 'position-space', which is _logically
> >inescapable_

I hope not, because if so that means logic must be inconsistent. We know
from experiment that Galilean or even Newtonian physics is wrong.

"Classical Mechanics is everywhere exactly 'right', wherever its
concepts can be applied." -- Werner Heisenberg.

Name six 'experiments' -- I dare you!!!

> >once you abandon locality -- see Bell, Aspect etc.),

> Aspect proved experimentally that Bell's inequality is violated and that
> means weird quantum effects that move instantly and do not weaken with
> distance do exist, but as these effects can carry neither energy nor
> information I don't see the relevance to the Big Bang or General
> Relativity.

You fail to understand the problem, then. Once you say that two
events are absolutely (not relativistically) simultaneous, you have
'position space.' Special and General Relativity _cannot survive_
the loss of relativististic simultaneity. See Popper, "The
Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery" [1983] ferinstance,
for the exact arguments. Popper argues that this would necessitate
a return to Lorentz. Following R.A. Waldron [1977], Walter Ritz
[1908] etc., I argue it necessitates a return to the ballistic
theory of light, in a Galilean framework.

> >velocity addition is clearly demonstrable as well as being logically
> >necessary.

> Rubbish.

<Sigh>. OK, so you can't understand the problems with your own
theories...


> >there is a constant process of absorption and re-emission as photons
> >travel from A to B

> The index of refraction is a measure of how much a substance will slow down
> light, water is pretty dense so light is only about 80% as fast as in a
> vacuum for example.

Notice the absurdity you're slipping into there. Water
(ferinstance) is tiny molecules enormously widely spaced. The
charges and neutrons are tiny particles enormously widely spaced.The
space is a _perfect vacuum_ (except for the photons).

Are your photons now travelling sub-luminally in a vacuum, pray?

> >This (along with photon-photon interaction -- see Jean-Paul Vigier
> >et. al.) is the cause of the cosmic (Hubble) redshift, which is of
> >course directly proportional to the distance stellar photons have to
> >travel to get here.

> And now you enter the Twilight Zone. All elements produce a unique set
> of emission and absorption lines in their electromagnetic spectrum, a
> redshift means that the information on the relative position of these
> lines is preserved, they're just "shifted" to a longer wavelength. There
> are only 2 things known to science that can produce a redshift:
>
> 1) The Doppler effect.
>
> 2) Gravity. (an effect discovered by Einstein by the way)

Never seen a sunset? Filters? etc. etc. etc... >:-}

> The huge redshift seen in distant galaxies does not produce fuzzy lines
> but sharp ones, so the gravitational field would not only have to be
> enormous but also constant over thousands of light years, over an entire
> galaxy. Nothing known to science can produce a gravitational field like
> that. It also seems very strange that the gravitational field of all
> objects is proportional to their distance from a small planet called
> Earth.

You're not a Kuhnian, are you? Instead of addressing my arguments,
you insist on addressing your own! I never suggested gravity as a
cause! >:-}

> You claim to have found a third way to produce a redshift, some sort of
> mysterious inter galactic gas, well that's jim dandy, but until you can
> show me the stuff and let me watch it do its thing in the lab your theory
> remains just that, gas.

Now you've found some 'third ways' too! And you can hardly deny the
presence of a 'cosmic soup' between the stars. You've already
conceded its existence.


> >No way, Jose! As Leibniz pointed out, the same facts can be
> >explained by an indefinitely large number of different theories.

> I sense desperation, I can't think of any other reason you would invoke
> the name of a man dead for 300 years to dismiss with a wave of your hand
> hard experimental data obtained in this very decade.

You must be sensing your own desperation, then. I merely assigned
the appropriate priority to Leibniz -- try addressing the
problem-situation he raised, rather than how long ago he pointed out
this rather obvious and inescapable problem. 'Hard experimental
data' can no more refute his argument than your thumping the
table...

> I also note that in my last post whenever I mentioned a scientific fact
> in favor of the Big Bang your only rebuttal was to tell me to read
> books by various philosophers but that just doesn't wash. It's science
> that must give marching orders to philosophy not the other way round.

Philosophy has priority -- physics used to be known as 'natural
philosophy', remember? All is but a woven web of guesses...


> >Oh, c'mon!!! The cosmologists are 'explaining away' astronomical
> >artefacts older than the estimated age of the Universe all the
> >time!!!

> Yea yea, I've heard it a million times, cosmologists are hiding evidence and
> engaged in a huge conspiracy of silence...

They discuss the problems (usually, away) in their journals,
actually.

> ... probably related to the JFK assassination...

Lee Harvey Oswald was a salaried FBI employee at the time he (also)
shot Kennedy. Texas Attorney-General Waggoner Carr gave full
details in sworn testimony to the Warren Commission. It's in the
Warren Commission Report... Employee number and salary details...

> UFOs

You mean, 'black projects', of course?

> and that car that runs on water.

Here's a little quiz:

".2 MeV protons shot into lithium-7 atoms at room temperature and
pressure produce a fusion reaction ( Li7 --> Be8 --> 2 alpha
particles ) releasing 17 MeV of surplus -- fusion --energy."

True or false? Wanna bet? >:-}

> >it's the interstellar debris which is scattering the stellar
> >radiation, giving rise to the uniform background. It accounts for it
> >very well, actually.

> Does it produce a blackbody spectrum? Is the temperature close to 2.7 degrees
> Kelvin?

In a word -- YES

> >You've been reading too many childrens' histories of physics!

> I need your help to explain something

Always happy to help ... >:-}

> I can't ask momey or daddy because it's past my bedtime and I'm not
> supposed to be playing with the computer this late. If I'm wrong then at
> least one of the following 3 things must be true but I can't figure out
> which one:
>
> 1) The Big Bang was known at the turn of the century and popular because
> those naughty logical positivists loved it so much.
>
> 2) The Big Bang did not become popular in the 60's.
>
> 3) Despite the fact that The Big Bang theory was the only one that
> predicted universal blackbody microwave radiation and said how hot it
> would be, when evidence for it was actually found nobody was impressed
> and most of the advocates of competing theories did not conceded
> defeat.

1> is fairly true -- read Pais' book. There were very few people in
the 'paid cosmologist' business back then. A few hundred.

2> Fashions come and go...

3> Wrong. You fail to understand the power of Methodological
Scientific Research Programmes (try reading Imre Lakatos, [1978]).

> >TRUTH has a central regulating role in values AND facts.

> Science is about what is, morality is about what we want, confusing the
> two is disastrous to both.

'What is' is clearly a matter of truth or falsity. Truth content is
_central_ to science.

> Consider Lysenko's nitwit communist genetics or the social darwinist's
> nitwit morality.

We're agreed there! Two degenerating Research Programmes
'entrained' people into serious error.

> >If General Relativity depicts a four-dimensional Parmenidean Block
> >Universe, within which nothing ever changes, and in which free will
> >is a delusion, I _choose_ to say 'to Hell with it.'

> Don't get me started on free will, I spent months debating that topic on
> this list.

Reprise your argument(s), please. New arrivals are here....


> >"The statement 'God exists' has meaning, and it may even be true.
> >But since there is no conceivable observation which could _refute_
> >such a statement, it is _unscientific_." -- Bryan Magee, 'Popper.'

> OK, but what does that have to do with the price of eggs? The Big Bang
> can be refuted, at least in theory, but nobody has done it yet.

I have. Lerner has. Exactly how many of us have to? >:-}

> >He [Einstein] thought GR was wrong, and spent decades trying to
> >come up with 'a more realistic theory'

> Nonsense. Like all scientific theories General Relativity does not cover
> everything, it says nothing about the strong or weak nuclear forces,
> Einstein spent the last 20 years of his life trying to extend it into
> those areas and he failed, but that certainly doesn't mean General
> Relativity is wrong.

<Sigh>. Read Pais...

When Relational Mechanics is extendedf into the realm of the nucleus
(as it will be), it will become the Third Revision, "Relational
Dynamics." Quantum Chromodynamics is densely packed with
absurdities. Busting up QCD will be great fun! >:-}

> >His theory is methodologically flawed and empirically falsified.

Empirically falsified? In his first paper Einstein predicted that the
precession of Mercury's perihelion should shift by 43 seconds of arc a
century more than Newton says it should. It does.

[ FX: "RTFM!!!" ]

From my Relational Mechanics paper on:

http://www.agora.demon.co.uk

<quote>

{X1} Mercury's Perihelion Advance
============================

While it was for a long time the strongest argument for it, this is not
now considered a corroboration of Einstein's theory. There was an observed,
long-standing and acknowledged anomaly between the classically predicted
movement of the planet Mercury (circling the Sun in a nearly "closed" or
stationary ellipse, with a small perihelion advance caused by the gravitation
of the other planets) and the observed advance of the perihelion (Mercury's
closest approach to the sun), a difference of 43 seconds of arc
(approximately 0.012 of a degree) per century. (Ritz's, Weber's and
Neumann's theories of gravity as a propagated far-action also give
approximately this result).

The existence of another - intraMercurial - planet, "Vulcan", was
suggested as a cause, but no planet "Vulcan" was found (sorry, fellow "Star
Trek" fans). However, in 1970, the American astronomer Robert Henry Dicke
suggested a (partial, 10%) classical cause for the anomaly as due to the
oblateness of the Sun (a flattening at the poles caused by rotation). And
the force of gravitational attraction is only a uniform central force for
orbits lying in the equatorial plane of the sun; Mercury's orbit lies 7
degrees off the plane of the ecliptic. The sun's equatorial rotation on its
axis is 25.38 days; Mercury circles the Sun in 88 days. The sun's magnetic
force and atmosphere extends far past Mercury; so does the "solar wind."
There is a rotating accretion disc of particles, gas and dust extending on
the plane of the ecliptic from the sun. The other planets affect Mercury's
rotation. Light-pressure from sunlight acts on the planets.

Most significantly; the sun's magnetic force transfers the Sun's angular
momentum to Mercury; this will continue to advance Mercury's perihelion,
until the Sun's angular velocity and Mercury's orbital velocity become more
nearly synchronized. Compare this with Larmor precession.

Since general relativity predicts an additional 45" +/-5 per century
precession advance without allowing for any of these factors, it is hardly
likely to be correct. The observed precession is also at variance with that
calculable using special relativity, as are other anomalies within the solar
system (e.g. abberances in the moon's motion). Interested readers may also
want to read E. Gerjuoy, "Feasibility of a non-relativistic Explanation for
the Advance of the Perihelion of Mercury;" American Journal of Physics, 24:3
[1956]. Recent microwave measurements of solar system distances were
reported to be .5% different from previous measurements. This indicates
opportunities for further interesting discoveries. There have been no
successful measurements of any velocity of propagation for gravitational
force.

</quote>

> In the same paper Einstein said that light from a star that just grazes
> the surface of the sun should be deflected by 1.75 seconds of arc. It is.

<quote>

{X2} Eddington and Cottingham's Hyades Starlight Deflection Observations
===================================================================

Johann Georg von Soldner, in [1801], calculated the bending of light
rays grazing the sun's disk. (Also referred to in Stanley L. Jaki,
"Foundation of Physics" 8, [1978]). A hundred years later, Einstein repeated
the prediction that starlight passing by the Sun would be deflected by the
sun's gravity, so that the apparent distance between stars either side of the
Sun when viewed during an eclipse would be smaller.

According to Will, a deflection of 0.875 seconds of arc for
gravitational deflection only was calculated by von Soldner, using Classical
Mechanics and a hypothetical light velocity of around 300,000 km. per second.
Einstein's special relativity predicted .83 on Newtonian grounds (Einstein
[1920]); his general relativity 1.75; in [1919], it is asserted that
Eddington and Cottingham, in only one of sixteen photographs, measured 1.98 +
or - 0.12; 1.61 + or - 0.15: and six months later on November 6 that year,
Frank Dyson announced further results of 1.72 + or - 0.01 and 1.82 + or -
0.15. Eddington staged a publicity coup, announcing this at the Liverpool
Physical Society, causing Oliver Lodge to walk out. Similar as well as
different observations have been made since that time. This evidence is now
considered to be inconclusive with regard to Einstein's theory.

If a ballistic theory of light is accepted, so that light has mass and
is therefore subject to gravity, then the Eddington eclipse observations of
[1919], rather than requiring acceptance of Einstein's 'curved-space' theory,
provided further data to calculate the properties of starlight from the
Hyades, and the forces governing its travel, as well as the characteristics
of the Sun. The moon's gravity also deflects light, as was shown by Warren
Marrison, January 24, [1925].

The sun's corona extends past Mercury's orbital path; the sun's
chromosphere extends 10,000 km from the sun's surface. A gas-lens effect
therefore deflects starlight passing through it. This is complicated by
extreme acoustic effects imparted to the chromosphere by events on the sun's
surface. The "solar wind" of particles (mostly protons) extends outward
indefinitely. The sun's intense magnetic and electrical forces can cause
deflection of light (the Zeeman and Stark effects). There may also be a
"diffractive" as well as a gravitational deflection. And the cooling of
Earth's atmosphere during the eclipse period must affect measurements by
altering the atmosphere's refractive index.

</quote>

> General Relativity predict that time runs slower in a gravitational field,
> such as on the surface of the Earth than it does in open space far from
> any large mass. Because it's a scientific and not just a philosophical
> theory it can give you numbers and tell you exactly how much slower, just
> use the following formula:
>
> __________
> / v^2
> / 1 - ---
> \/ c^2
>
>
> If you plug in v as the Earth's escape velocity at the surface, about 7
> miles per second, and c as the speed of light in a vacuum, 186000 miles a
> second, you find that a clock on the Earth's surface is only running
> 99.99999993% as fast as a clock in deep space. This has been confirmed
> experimentally and has become important commercially. Global Positioning
> Satellites contain atomic clocks and send out timing signals, they enable
> a receiving station to calculate his position within a few inches, if
> General Relativity was not taken into account this would not be possible,
> instead we have a multi billion dollar industry.

<Sigh>. Here, you have to understand a most basic methodological
point. If I assert that -- in a gravitational field -- the
frequency of a quartz clock slows, due to gravitational force
modifying the structure of the quartz molecules and the electron
orbits, that's not the same as saying 'time itself slows down.'
That's your same old positivist dreck again.

The frequency reduction is an empirical question -- the explanation
for it is quite another matter.

Relational Mechanics handles GPS just fine.


> The gravitational field on the second story of a house is a little
> weaker than it is on the first story 10 feet below, General Relativity
> predicts that time will run slower down there, 3 parts in 10^16 slower.
> Incredibly even this tiny difference has been detected experimentally,
> and it was done more than 30 years ago, using the Mossbauer effect for
> which he received the Nobel prize.

Same positivist argument again. You say 'time slows': I say the
clock slows. In Relational Mechanics, _all the metrics_ (Mass,
Length and Time) are _invariant_. It's a great theoretical
strength, invariance. Einstein's positivism focused him on physical
constants ('c', Planck's constant, Boltzmann's constant).

> > Relational or Faradayan or Newtonian or Graviton-mediated
> > gravitational force gets along just fine in a Euclidean
> > framework.

> Yes, and they get along just fine with your philosophy, but they don't
> agree with experiment, in such a confrontation the victor is clear. Your
> philosophy may insist that an instrument produce a certain reading but if
> it stubbornly refuses to do so then its time to find a new philosophy.

You don't get it. I'm saying that there are no such disagreements
with experimental results. One of the burdens I cheerfully
shoulder is knowing your theories much better than you do. >:-}

> >What the hell are you talking about? GR?

> Give that man a cigar.

Actually, I gave up smoking the day Yul Brynner died (he left a --
televised -- film clip saying he was dying from smoking a hundred
ciggies a day, and asked his fans to stop smoking in remembrance of
him. I stopped right there and then. 11 October, 1985).

> By the way, if as you say the universe is infinite in all directions and thus
> is infinitely old and has an infinite number of stars, how do you explain
> Olber's Paradox. Why is the sky dark at night?

Good question. The key is the (average) ratio of stars to volume of
space in the Universe. The 'cosmic soup' scatters the starlight,
and gravitational accretion reconstitutes the photons back into
stars again. It's a true 'steady-state' system. Perpetuum Mobile
-- there's 'no way out of the system.'

No 'entropic heat-death' in this, our Relational Mechanics Universe,
thank you! Strike the Second Law of Thermodynamics...

> >An infinite Universe has nowhere to expand _into_. Right?

> Wrong.

Yeah? Infinity into infinity = zero.

> Incidentally, the universe does not expand into space, space itself is
> expanding.

Now we confront the faintly ridiculous spectacle of a neo-positivist
arguing sternly that 'nothing' (i.e. empty space) can expand! >:-}

[ FX: "When will they ever learn?" ] >:-}

/ /\ \
--*--<Tony>--*--

http://www.agora.demon.co.uk
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/la-agora