Big Bang vs. Plasma Cosmology: Competing Approaches to the Cosmos

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While the "Big Bang" theory is certainly the entrenched incumbent paradigm, a scrappy underdog theory is waiting in the wings for its moment to shine. Its name is "Plasma Cosmology," and its proponents adopt a radically different view of the universe than that espoused by supporters of the beleaguered standard model's "Big Bang."

Whereas the Big Bang is predicated upon theoretical abstract mathematical extrapolations from Einstein's relativity theories (some extrapolations being more mathematically rigorous than others), Plasma Cosmology attempts to work from lab experiments and apply what is learned toward understanding the cosmos.

Unfortunately, Einstein left science in a precarious situation when he rejected Isaac Newton's vision of science based upon real-world experience and instituted a world based upon mathematical abstractions. David Harriman sums up the Einsteinian ripple effect on the sciences quite eloquently in his article Where Have You Gone, Isaac Newton?

Harriman speaks here of the endlessly malleable, parameterized mathematical equations in fashion today. Equations that often do not come from any actual observation, but from the fantastic imaginations of scientists. Mathematics is a symbolic language. It might be argued that science fiction can be written in any language, including math. Harriman elaborates further:

Further complicating the issue, some scientists wish to abandon the scientific method altogether and redefine science as nothing more than a mathematical probabilities game. Whatever happened to real science?

In a word, Einstein. Has the Einstein revolution gone too far? Some might say, in a word, "yes."

Current quandaries in astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology hint strongly that something is amiss. Though, nobody can quite put their finger on what.

Einstein argued against the concept of the black hole (as singularities in the field would invalidate his theory of relativity), yet today scientists claim to have observed them, weighed them, etc. Mathematician Stephen J. Crothers, sides with Einstein insofar as arguing against the existence of black holes. In fact, he claims that the derivations which lead to the notion of black holes are not mathematically rigorous.

Galaxies' rotational curves do not fit standard model expectations based upon the amount of matter visible in them (if one considers only the force of gravity as an organizing force in the universe). Thus, an unseen, unscientific fudge factor "dark matter" was introduced for the purpose of salvaging the gravity-only view of the universe by placing additional mass wherever it's convenient in order to make the equations work (even though nothing has actually been observed to warrant it). This hearkens back to the "fantasy physics" alluded to by Harriman earlier.

Not only was dark matter required to salvage theories, but an additional invisible, unscientific entity "dark energy" was required in order to smooth over data indicating that not only was the universe expanding but expansion was somehow accelerating rather than remaining steady or slowing down due to the tug of gravity!

William of Ockham must be rolling in his grave. Ockham's razor (or Occam's razor, as it is more commonly spelled), oversimplified, states that the simplest answer is to be preferred.

That currently theory is patched with so many inexplicable, inelegant kludges is cause to be worries about the state of the astronomical queen of the sciences.

However, not all is lost. There are still forward-looking, flexible free-thinkers left inside and outside of academia and industry.

Plasma physicist Eric Lerner of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics has penned a monograph entitled The Big Bang Never Happened: A Startling Refutation of the Dominant Theory of the Origin of the Universe. He is also currently involved in prototyping a plasma focus fusion device based upon a plasma physics interpretation of Herbig-Haro objects.

Australian independent researcher Wal Thornhill's Electric Universe model encapsulates and attempts to extend the field of Plasma Cosmology. He has recently co-authored a monograph entitled The Electric Universe, which elaborates upon the themes of plasma cosmology and the role he sees electric fields and currents playing in the plasma medium pervading the cosmos.

Electrical engineer Don Scott has published several notable peer-reviewed papers on plasma and electricity in the cosmos, A Solar Junction Transistor Mechanism and Real Properties of Electromagnetic Fields and Plasma in the Cosmos as well as a monograph entitled The Electric Sky, which also deals with several quandaries in the current astrophysical sciences and possible technical solutions to the same.

These researchers, among others, argue that many of the current erroneous views held the standard model and inelegant kludges used to patch it are rooted in outdated notions of the cosmos that largely exclude the discussion of of electric currents and plasma structures / behaviors observed in the lab from the discussion of astrophysics and cosmology.

However, they recognize that many of the of the assumptions precluding the discussion of electricity in space were formalized and solidified in the sciences before the current technological era. In essence, they are hold-overs from the days before plasma physics, before synchrotrons or computer modeling and certainly before it was revealed through radio astronomy (among other tools) that space is not the perfect vacuum of legend. Rather, space is teeming with a zoo of particles in the plasma state.

Some call plasma the 4th state of matter. Beyond solids, liquids and gases, exist super-heated materials stripped of one or more electrons (in some cases, stripped of all electrons). Plasma is highly conductive, due to the freedom of its charge carriers. However, it is not perfectly conductive. Based upon abundance (99.999% of the visible matter in the universe is in the plasma state), some scientists prefer to call plasma the first or dominant state of matter in the universe.

Strangely enough, prior to the advent of Einstein, in the early part of the 1900's it was apparently quite permissible to to speak of empirically observed discharges in rarefied gases and compare those to features and structures seen in space through telescopes of the day.

As early as 1862, Benjamin V. Marsh had suggested that auroral streamers and comet tails may be of electrical origin.

In 1902-1903 Kristian Birkeland ventured to the north in order to observe and report upon the auroras. In 1908, Birkeland published a monograph The Norwegian Aurora Polaris Expedition 1902-1903, in which he detailed measurements and empirical lab tests supporting a conclusion that the auroras may be an electrical phenomenon and suggesting that a number of other processes may have electrical interpretations of interest to the sciences. Birkeland also offered his own electrical interpretation of comets.

However, history and science soldier bravely onward. Birkeland was joined by such distinguished peers as Irving Langmuir and Hannes Alfvén. Other plasma physicists and electrical engineers have carried on where Alfvén left off, empirically testing in the lab and then extrapolating and scaling the result up to solar, galactic and cosmic scales.

One of plasma's great qualities is that its structures and behaviors do in fact scale over colossal orders of magnitude. Much the same structures seen on the small scale will also appear on the large scale. In some ways it gives the universe a very fractal structure, with self-similarity quite evident at many scales.

Of late, it seems that astronomers utilizing the standard model have run up against a number of observations that have left them with a sour taste in their mouths. In fact, Karl Popper would probably say that aspects of the standard model have been falsified on several occasions.

An unusual theoretical extrapolation of Einstein's relativity leads to the conclusion that "gravitational waves" (not to be confused with gravity waves) may warp the very "fabric of spacetime" (itself a conflation of three units of distance with one unit of time, which uses a completely different metric than the other three "dimensions").

Several large and expensive projects are currently underway to attempt a verification of "gravitational waves." LIGO (the American Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) and VIRGO (the European counterpart) are the two leading contenders and joined forces back in February of 2007 (Germany's GEO600 also joined) to increase their odds of a detection.

However, to date, there have been no positive signals for gravitational waves.

For all LIGO's sophistication and technical prowess, it ran continuously for an entire year in triplicate but returned a null result (no gravity waves detected).

LIGO also recorded data in full science mode during gamma ray burst (GRB) 070201.

LIGO investigators paint a rosy picture of the results, despite LIGO's failure to detect any gravitational wave signal.

LIGO was also put to use in an effort to probe the dynamics of the Crab Pulsar.

Once more, a null result was returned (no gravitational waves were detected, despite LIGO's adequate sensitivity for the task). However, the LIGO team once again went on to whitewash the results and paint a rosy picture.

[quote="http://mr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR13154.html"]"We can now say something definite about the role gravitational waves play in the dynamics of the Crab Pulsar based on our observations," says David Reitze, a professor of physics at the University of Florida and spokesperson for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. "This is the first time the spin-down limit has been broken for any pulsar, and this result is an important milestone for LIGO."

Michael Landry adds, "These results strongly imply that no more than 4 percent of the pulsar's energy loss is due to gravitational radiation. The remainder of the loss must be due to other mechanisms, such as a combination of electromagnetic radiation generated by the rapidly rotating magnetic field of the pulsar and the emission of high-velocity particles into the nebula."[/q]

A pertinent question to interject at this point would be "How do we tell the difference between an interesting null result, a null result that tells us nothing and a null result that invalidates the theory being tested by the observations?"

It is a dangerous precedent to to use a negative result to make a positive claim of proof or high confidence toward some hypothetical premise. When is a null result simply a null result?

In short, LIGO has probed a GRB and achieved a null result for gravitational waves. It has probed the the Crab Pulsar, with a precision that would have detected a gravitational wave from the hypothetical neutron star if its surface was distorted by only a few meters, and achieved another null result for gravitational waves. Furthermore, on its S5 data gathering run LIGO was in continuous operation, in triplicate, for an entire year {!} but still failed to detect any gravitational wave signals.

Taken as a whole, these failures may inevitably add up to a refutation of gravitational waves derived from Einstein's equations. Nonetheless, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has decided to throw an additional $250M after the LIGO project to upgrade its sensitivity by a factor of 10 which will increase by a factor of 1000 the number of gravity wave candidates that can be surveyed.

For all the expenses incurred, the LIGO team has best start producing some actual results. Since the current LIGO setup is sensitive enough to detect gravity waves produced by a hypothetical neutron star deformed by only a few meters, the increase in sensitivity afforded by the NSF's generosity should make detections a routine occurrence. If not, it does not bode well for gravitational wave theory. Further results (or lack thereof) are anxiously awaited.

In other news, a pulsar binary appears to have recently shot down leading theories of how such things form. A millisecond pulsar was not expected to orbit a sun-like star, nor to have a highly eccentric orbit.

To boil it down, a pulsar was found in a compromising position. It was doing an elongated dance with the wrong kind of star, something scientists would have never expected of a well-behaved pulsar!

Karl Popper would call this a falsification of the standard model's view on stellar evolution, which not only failed to predict the configuration but appears to have explicitly forbidden it! If theory says a thing shouldn't happen, scientists are in agreement about the theory and its implications, but and the event happens anyway, it doesn't bode well for the theory in question.

In a technically unrelated story, another star system has gotten the standard model into hot water. In this case, a newly discovered "young binary" system appears to be defying expectations of uniformity between the stellar siblings.

Once again, it appears that actual behavior does not match theoretical expectations requiring another  trip "back to the drawing board." This continuing lack of predictive success is beginning to wear on many outside observers.

Perhaps it is time to begin looking at competing alternatives that can offer additional tools to enable higher accord with actual data. All without having to invoke any "new physics" du jour, such as dark matter and dark energy or black holes, neutron stars and other convenient concentrations of mass necessary to fudge the gravitational numbers.

However, be forewarned that it may be a bumpy ride as terms sometimes unfamiliar to defenders of the standard model are introduced, such as: double layers, field-aligned currents (Birkeland currents), current sheets, z-pinches, glow discharges, filamentation, synchrotron radiation, dense plasma focuses.

While these may be new to the uninitiated, they are not without precedent in the technical literature. Some of them may have been mentioned previously in the astrophysical literature, but have only been recognized as being of secondary or tertiary importance. Plasma Cosmology, or Thornhill's Electric Universe model extension thereof, places more importance on the possibility of the electric force's primacy over gravity in cases where locally non-neutral bulk charged particles interact with magnetic and/or electric fields.

However, Plasma Cosmology also recognizes that where charges have been locally "neutralized," gravity rightfully takes over primacy of interactions. Hence Nobel prize-winning plasma physicist Hannes Alfvén's poignant one-liner, "gravitational systems are the ashes of prior electrical systems." More on that shortly.

The Australian researcher Wal Thornhill, mentioned previously, recently outlined his plasma-based view of galaxy formation quite succinctly.

More technical peer-reviewed papers by an independent plasma physicist at Los Alamos National Lab, quantitatively detailing research on galaxy formation from a plasma cosmology perspective, are also available: Evolution of the Plasma Universe: I. Double Radio Galaxies, Quasars, and Extragalactic Jets and Evolution of the Plasma Universe: II. The Formation of Systems of Galaxies.

In fact, the supercomputer simulation work done at Los Alamos has apparently achieved high degrees of success modeling astrophysical processes and specific morphologies of astronomical objects, using strictly plasma and electricity at cosmic scales in the simulations.

Not only that, but the rotation curves of galaxies, which gravity-only astronomers extolling the virtues of the standard model's "Big Bang" have so many problems with (hence the need for hypothetical "dark matter" placed everywhere to salvage their falsified models), appear to show good agreement with the simulations factoring in only plasma and electric forces.

William of Ockham would be proud to see such a simple formulation account for such varied specific structures and processes!

Furthermore, the electrical plasma model of galaxy formation also expects that galaxies will form along cosmic-scale filaments of plasma. In fact, the model expects that galaxies may form like beads on a string. Recent findings appear to support that conclusion.

Also noted in the technical papers, a process known as Marklund convection may be responsible for the sorting of elements by ionization level. Thus the more neutral elements will tend to be pulled together and concentrated such that gravity will thereafter be the dominant force between those more-or-less "neutral" elements. This process appears to be in agreement with Alfvén's contention, noted earlier, that gravitational systems are the end result of the actions of electrical systems.

While Plasma Cosmology has not been around as long as the Big Bang model, nor as widely read, thus it is also not as highly developed, it appears to offer possible solutions to a number of long-standing problems in astronomy ("dark matter" may be a wholly unnecessary fiction).

In light of some recent failures of the Big Bang theory and and predictive successes based upon plasma / electrical theories, it may be wise for astronomers to take a long hard introspective look at their models' track records and then see whether the insights available under an electrical plasma interpretation may be useful in resolving current astrophysical conundrums.

It may require setting aside some preconceived notions about the "vacuum" of space and of "charge neutrality" in space. However, in light of the conductive nature of the plasma that fills most of space, it is not unreasonable to consider the possibility that currents may flow through it. Recent reports also note that charging and discharging processes happen on a more regular basis than expected in space. A few electrical processes have yet to be fully recognized. But, perhaps in re-examining existing preconceptions, these issues will work themselves out in the end.

See also:
A Fractal Distribution of Matter in the Universe May Topple the Big Bang. If So, What's Next?
An Argument for the Consideration of Electrodynamics in Cosmology