Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
1 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,819 Year: 3,076/9,624 Month: 921/1,588 Week: 104/223 Day: 2/13 Hour: 0/1


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   The truth about the mainstream cosmologist establishment
JonF
Member (Idle past 168 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 106 of 132 (182802)
02-03-2005 9:04 AM
Reply to: Message 102 by compmage
02-03-2005 6:56 AM


Re: Two burning questions
Is this true that electric fields is not coverred in the cosmology curricula?
I don't know. What reasons or evidence do you have to believe that it's true?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 102 by compmage, posted 02-03-2005 6:56 AM compmage has not replied

  
compmage
Member (Idle past 5154 days)
Posts: 601
From: South Africa
Joined: 08-04-2005


Message 107 of 132 (182803)
02-03-2005 9:05 AM
Reply to: Message 105 by JonF
02-03-2005 9:00 AM


Re: Two burning questions
Well, that awnsers one question... though it is unfortunate that he had to leave the US in order to continue his work.
But I'm still very curious about the first question.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 105 by JonF, posted 02-03-2005 9:00 AM JonF has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 120 by JonF, posted 02-03-2005 10:35 AM compmage has replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 108 of 132 (182806)
02-03-2005 9:18 AM
Reply to: Message 104 by compmage
02-03-2005 8:49 AM


You remember wrongly - I wasn't prejudiced in FAVOUR of it enough to overlook obvious errors. So obviously it is entirely possible that the author of the website is doing exactly the same thing as you are and making wholly false accusations of bias because his claims do not stand up to critical examination.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 104 by compmage, posted 02-03-2005 8:49 AM compmage has not replied

  
compmage
Member (Idle past 5154 days)
Posts: 601
From: South Africa
Joined: 08-04-2005


Message 109 of 132 (182810)
02-03-2005 9:26 AM


Unless I know that mainstream cosmologists share all the knowledge of electric universe advocates in connection with electric fields and plasma, I can not possibly trust their opinion of the theory. You yourself shead very little light on any of the objections raised against main stream theory (other than doubting quotes and sources). People who live in glass houses shouldn't through stones.

Replies to this message:
 Message 110 by PaulK, posted 02-03-2005 9:43 AM compmage has replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 110 of 132 (182817)
02-03-2005 9:43 AM
Reply to: Message 109 by compmage
02-03-2005 9:26 AM


But you are quite prepared to assert that the Electric Universe propoenents are right even though they do NOT share relevant knowledge held by cosmologists (even knowledge that is readily available in popular level sources).
Moroever you havbe no problems asking for evidence from those who share other views but when YOU are asked for evidence then you start this same old routine of hostility and lies to avoid admitting that you don't have any.
And just as you falsely accuse me of bias - simply for not sharing your bias now you falsely accuse me of not backing up claims because YOU can't back up the claims that YOU make.
Well I don't back down when faced with this sort of verbal bullying. I WON'T stop asking awkward questions just because you react with hostility and lies.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 109 by compmage, posted 02-03-2005 9:26 AM compmage has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 116 by compmage, posted 02-03-2005 10:15 AM PaulK has replied

  
compmage
Member (Idle past 5154 days)
Posts: 601
From: South Africa
Joined: 08-04-2005


Message 111 of 132 (182820)
02-03-2005 9:49 AM


So what did I expect?
Lets take the statement : "Solar 'wind' is accelarating as it moves away from the sun. the electric model explains this, mainstream is at a loss."
You could've:
a) Refute that solar wind is accelarating.
b) Provide the mainstream explaination
c) refute the electric explaination
d) Accept they've got a point.
Instead you dwelled on a single quote, which you yourself admitted that it is not mentioned anywhere in the piece again, and therefore has no inpact on the theory what so ever.

Replies to this message:
 Message 112 by PaulK, posted 02-03-2005 10:00 AM compmage has not replied
 Message 115 by PaulK, posted 02-03-2005 10:08 AM compmage has not replied
 Message 131 by Sylas, posted 02-03-2005 9:19 PM compmage has not replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 112 of 132 (182826)
02-03-2005 10:00 AM
Reply to: Message 111 by compmage
02-03-2005 9:49 AM


Re: So what did I expect?
Or I could point out that I have not made any claim one way or the other on the matter. All I am asking for is evidence for the claims that YOU are putting forward. And that - according to you - is proof of extreme bias.
Look, it is NOT the case that I have to refute the claim or accept it. So far it's an unsupported assertion and I am under no obligation to do either. The obligation is on you to support it. The fact that you choose to make false accusations instead speaks volumes.
The fact is that you don't know if ANY of it is true. You know that it comes from an unreliable source. And you STILL insist that it should be accepted as true unless disproven. THAT is bias !

This message is a reply to:
 Message 111 by compmage, posted 02-03-2005 9:49 AM compmage has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22394
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 113 of 132 (182828)
02-03-2005 10:02 AM
Reply to: Message 104 by compmage
02-03-2005 8:49 AM


Hi Hanno2,
Addressing Message 102 first:
Hanno2 writes:
Very well, if that is the case, then I'd like awnsers on two major charges made by the author:
quote:
Why do conventional astronomers and cosmologists systematically exclude electric fields and currents from not only their consideration, but fromtheir curricula?
http://www.electric-cosmos.org/electricplasma.htm
What evidence has Mr. Scott provided that this is true? If you pick up any elementary astronmy book it will tell you about plasmas. And a simple search of the Internet indicates that plasmas, electric fields and currents are not ignored by astronomers and cosmologists. For example, here are links to a technical paper about electric discharges and to an article about space instruments that includes a section describing a plasma measuring device:
So when you ask the question, "Is this true that electric fields is not coverred in the cosmology curricula?" the answer is no, it is not true. Mr. Scott is correct that his theories about electric discharges being responsible for impact craters, the power of the sun, pulsars and so forth, are not currently accepted by the scientific community, but his assertion that electric fields and currents are excluded from consideration within the field appears to be contradicted by the evidence.
Hanno2 writes:
quote:
Instead of nominating him for a prize (and simultaneously reexamining their assumption that "redshift equals distance"), Arp was (and continues to be) systematically denied publication of his results and refused telescope time. One would at least expect the "powers that be" to immediately turn the Chandra X-ray orbiting telescope, the Hubble space telescope, and all the big land based telescopes toward Arp's exciting discoveries in order to either confirm or disprove them once and for all.
http://www.electric-cosmos.org/arp.htm
There is no central authority assigning time on large telescopes. If Halton Arp is unable to get telescope time then it is because his applications to all the different large telescopes have all been turned down. If he's truly applied to all the large telescopes then that represents many individual decisions by different grant committees.
Poking around the Internet for definitive information about Arp's banning wasn't very enlightening. You can find article after article saying that he'd been banned, but there are no details about who banned him. Most articles just say he was banned, though some say it was just from the large American telescopes, and one says he went to Germany to continue his research.
Arp's photographs don't appear at all persuasive to me, but if you think otherwise then start a thread to discuss them.
Moving on to Message 104:
And a "ban" does not have to be formal to exist. Paul, from as far as I can remember, you were EXTREMELY prejudiced against this theory from the beginning. I hope I'm wrong, but I believe you've entered this debate with the believe that "they had to be wrong".
Paul isn't the only one prejudiced from the outset against the ideas from the electric cosmos website. There are lots of ideas out there, and to be a good scientist you have to have a good nonsense filter. The electric cosmos website follows a specific formula that is very familiar, we all see it all the time. The car industry is colluding with the oil industry to keep 100 mpg cars off the market. Free energy is ours, except the government is keeping it all under wraps because of the economic impact. The military is keeping secret the crash of an alien spacecraft in Area 51 a half century ago. The secret of aging has been solved, but the benefits are being made available to only a few in order to prevent a population explosion.
The impression that the electric cosmos website tries to give of an entire field hindering research in potentially productive areas places it firmly in the conspiracy theory genre. Because most discussions here are based upon evidence, we don't usually spend much time on these. Most of our focus is on the science side of topics that can be supported by evidence and reasoned argument.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 104 by compmage, posted 02-03-2005 8:49 AM compmage has not replied

  
Sylas
Member (Idle past 5261 days)
Posts: 766
From: Newcastle, Australia
Joined: 11-17-2002


Message 114 of 132 (182830)
02-03-2005 10:06 AM
Reply to: Message 102 by compmage
02-03-2005 6:56 AM


Re: Two burning questions
Hey, Hanno1.
Your reply was linked to my post, but the quotes seem to come from Message 99 by Percy.
I was simply wondering if what you said in Message 98 was really true; that explanations of sped up galactic motions without appealing to unobserved stuff would cause you to admit that maybe, electrical forces do not play such a big role in the universe after all.
So I showed you that the conventional dark matter explanation is indeed backed up in the last few years with the first observations of dark matter by gravitational lensing. There are still lots of questions, but we are at least at the point now of actually measuring and mapping the dark matter halos that had been predicted decades earlier.
Any comment?
But in the meantime, I will respond to your other remarks, which are apparently quoted from the electric-cosmos page.
quote:
Why do conventional astronomers and cosmologists systematically exclude electric fields and currents from not only their consideration, but from their curricula?
Because they are not actually all that important in cosmology, by comparison with gravity.
More correctly, electric and magnetic fields are considered in astrophysics and astrophysics courses, but not the notions of the electric cosmos website, which are quite simply bad science. Magnetic and electric fields in the Solar System, for example, are very important, and an essential part of any course looking at the Sun in any detail. But the electric cosmos page proposes the major source of power output is not fusion, but a Birkeland current. This was never a serious model, and it has always been in conflict with the evidence.
Tim Thompson is an astronomer at NASA/JPL, and has produced a page that responds to this electric-cosmos page, and particularly the electric-sun model. It is On the "Electric Sun" Hypothesis. The point to watch is how much Tim knows about electric fields and currents in space. This is normal, for an astronomer.
You also mention Halton Arp’s denial of telescope time.
quote:
Instead of nominating him for a prize (and simultaneously reexamining their assumption that "redshift equals distance"), Arp was (and continues to be) systematically denied publication of his results and refused telescope time. One would at least expect the "powers that be" to immediately turn the Chandra X-ray orbiting telescope, the Hubble space telescope, and all the big land based telescopes toward Arp's exciting discoveries in order to either confirm or disprove them once and for all.
There are indeed two sides to that story! Arp is not exactly a retiring fellow, and has actively fostered his image as a martyr who was arbitrarily cut off from access to telescopes for fear his discoveries would upset the applecart. It no doubt looks that way to his supporters.
Time given for Arp is time taken away from someone else. The competition for time on the big telescopes is intense, and it needs to be justified. Arp has one view of the matter, and his supporters take this to extremes, as if it is a foregone conclusion that he was shut up by a fearful establishment who did not want him to upset the applecart.
The other view is that there were real questions about the quality of his proposals. He was advised that his work was "lacking focus and specific goals", and that it was becoming repetitive. He actually had quite a lot of time, but he was applying for more simply to "look for more quasar-galaxy anomalies", and the Time Allocation Committee apparently eventually felt that enough was enough; the quality of the observations and the vagueness of the project did not justify yet more time.
The most complete account of the whole dispute, which presents both sides of the matter without a clear resolution, is The Redshift Controversy: Exposing the Boundaries of Acceptable Research; notes for a course at UC Irvine.
The more serious misrepresentation is the implications that others avoiding looking at Arp’s phenomena. In fact, the big telescopes have looked at Arp’s anomalies in considerable details, and they have pretty much disproved them once and for all. Arp won’t recognize that, but it’s been done even so. Arp considers to have found physical connections between objects with very different red shifts. Further examination shows that there is no connection; they are merely nearby in the sky. Arp’s analysis has had some serious statistical flaws, some of which he has acknowledged. He simply does not have a persuasive case, and has not had it now for decades.
The major dispute concerns association of NGC 4319 and Mrk 205. Google for it; and you can see just how much attention has been lavished on it. Arguments went to and fro for years. But the trend is that with better and better observations, the case for physical association has gradually become less and less.
The electric-cosmos page is particularly stupid on this. On the very page that asks why Hubble is not used to check out Arp’s notions there is a reference to the Hubble images of unprecedented clarity that do not show the presumed link. The electric-cosmos loon prefers to use smaller less detailed amateur photographs and continues to insist on a link. That is his right but it is pretty much insane to ask why Hubble has not tried to resolve this. It has.
The same goes for the alleged red shift quantization. It isn’t there. The electric-cosmos response to this is simply wrong; but this one is now pretty much sewn up.
Arp still publishes his ideas just fine, by the way.
Cheers -- Sylas

This message is a reply to:
 Message 102 by compmage, posted 02-03-2005 6:56 AM compmage has not replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 115 of 132 (182831)
02-03-2005 10:08 AM
Reply to: Message 111 by compmage
02-03-2005 9:49 AM


Re: So what did I expect?
quote:
Instead you dwelled on a single quote, which you yourself admitted that it is not mentioned anywhere in the piece again, and therefore has no inpact on the theory what so ever.
And THIS little piece of misrepresentation deserves seprate treatment.
When you say that I "dwelled" on a single quote you mena that I would not let you drop ithe issue and ignore it.
And the reason you want to ignore it is that it speaks directly to the knowledge and understandiung of the author of the website. THe fact that he misunderstands the quote and uses it to make a groundless attack on Wheeler IS relevant. It shows that his knowledge of cosmology is lacking AND that he is prepared to make groundless attacks without bothering to understand the issues. These are prof that the website is NOT a reliable source and its claims cannot be accepted as automatically true. And that is information you DON'T want us to know - hence the false accusations to try and suppress the truth.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 111 by compmage, posted 02-03-2005 9:49 AM compmage has not replied

  
compmage
Member (Idle past 5154 days)
Posts: 601
From: South Africa
Joined: 08-04-2005


Message 116 of 132 (182833)
02-03-2005 10:15 AM
Reply to: Message 110 by PaulK
02-03-2005 9:43 AM


Paul. I take it you are a scientist, right? Well, I made no secret that I am a lay person. I found a theory that made me doubt mainstream cosmology. If you are a scientist, you should've set the record straight, and explain to me why they are wrong and you are right. Instead, you've been avoiding the arguements raised with questions, making me do the scientist job. Scientists must explain to lay people, not the other way around.
Percy, on the other had, did a real great job. (Thanks Percy, I appreciate your effort.) Though I'm not quite convinced yet, I'm also going to do more reading about it. I need to find the awnsers. I'm on a knife's edge, and might go either way. Percy's approach, not Paul's, will be the deciding factor on which way I go.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 110 by PaulK, posted 02-03-2005 9:43 AM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 118 by PaulK, posted 02-03-2005 10:26 AM compmage has replied

  
NosyNed
Member
Posts: 8996
From: Canada
Joined: 04-04-2003


Message 117 of 132 (182836)
02-03-2005 10:17 AM
Reply to: Message 102 by compmage
02-03-2005 6:56 AM


Curricula
Is this true that electric fields is not coverred in the cosmology curricula?
I think someone is going to have to supply the details of what they expect to be covered. Many cosmolgists are physicists. I know that even at the undergraduate level they will have covered electromagnetic field theory in some considerable depth. This is, in some schools at least, extended in grad school at the master's level.
I'm not sure there is a lot to cover after that as they specialize in cosmology. What is it that is missing?
This message has been edited by NosyNed, 02-03-2005 10:18 AM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 102 by compmage, posted 02-03-2005 6:56 AM compmage has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 121 by compmage, posted 02-03-2005 10:35 AM NosyNed has replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 118 of 132 (182838)
02-03-2005 10:26 AM
Reply to: Message 116 by compmage
02-03-2005 10:15 AM


No, I'm not a scientist. I'm a lay person just like you. Most of what I know I got from reading popular-level books. And I have to say that if you had come here simply asking questions instead of claiming to have "The Truth" then you would have had a different reception. Championing a view that you cannot support is a very foolish thing to do.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 116 by compmage, posted 02-03-2005 10:15 AM compmage has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 119 by compmage, posted 02-03-2005 10:30 AM PaulK has not replied

  
compmage
Member (Idle past 5154 days)
Posts: 601
From: South Africa
Joined: 08-04-2005


Message 119 of 132 (182841)
02-03-2005 10:30 AM
Reply to: Message 118 by PaulK
02-03-2005 10:26 AM


Granted.
I must admit I felt a bit adventurous with my first post.
This message has been edited by Hanno2, 02-03-2005 10:32 AM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 118 by PaulK, posted 02-03-2005 10:26 AM PaulK has not replied

  
JonF
Member (Idle past 168 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 120 of 132 (182844)
02-03-2005 10:35 AM
Reply to: Message 107 by compmage
02-03-2005 9:05 AM


Re: Two burning questions
though it is unfortunate that he had to leave the US in order to continue his work.
What makes you think he had to leave the U.S.? There are many scientists who would jump at the opportunity to work at the Max Plank Institute! Your parochiality is showing.
As is the reliability of your sources.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 107 by compmage, posted 02-03-2005 9:05 AM compmage has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 122 by compmage, posted 02-03-2005 10:41 AM JonF has replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024