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a reply to: ErosA433
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. The article referred to them as "cosmic" particles which implied a non-earthly origin, but I think you make an interesting point that maybe an earthly source shouldn't be ruled out at this point. After all, it's unknown until it's known.

I don't know how much dark matter these mystery particles might account for, but it seems possible they might account for some portion of it.

Yeah the detectors in question are looking at cosmic rays in the case of ANITA which is a balloon experiment, and primarily Neutrinos in the case of the ice cube detector.

So they are trying to match up events with enormous energy seemingly coming upward through the earth. There are lots of unknowns. Ultra high energy neutrinos have been observed in ice cube, but the flux isn't that high, so there is great uncertainty in terms of if the physics matches expectations.

For ANITA it will be charged particles coming from above or below. It is certainly strange to see an abundance of high energy charged particles coming upward as a complimentary measurement to ice cube. I can think of as i say, only a few ways it could work with what id call established physics, so it certainly might be a doorway to something new.

On dark matter, certainly it would be interesting and a sterile neutrino is indeed one such candidate particle. It could also be an example of a supersymmetric particle being produced in the ice or the Earth which either decays or causes some kind of scattering or high energy hadronization before it hits the ANITA detector when it was flying.

Definitely worth further investigation

its stuff like this which allowed us to discover gamma ray bursts... while sure that was mostly cold war nuke detection, but it was this kind of "Hey we get this signal and, yeah we have checked and think its coming from space." and suddenly you open up an entirely new area of science.

a reply to: ErosA433

The article does say it could be something mundane.

But. There does seem to be genuine excitement about a possible new particle.

The article says they might be able to tune the LHC to "unlock more physics".

Will the Anita results (if correct), give researchers the information needed to tune the LHC? Will the LHC be able to be tuned to detect the particle?

What other possible experiments might also detect this?

On the more mundane side. Could it be a particle from a supernova/quasar/neutron star. Or even our own sun? We are at the low point in the 11 year solar cycle. Maybe there will be more of these particles detected over the next 6 years as the cycle peaks.

I can actually confirm that it is cool, but mundane. I was talking with a colleague over lunch and he mentioned a seminar (which I will attend in about an hour) discussing the MiniBooNe experiments final results, which show a hint for a sterile neutrino.

I remembered the above and said, hey do you remember that ANITA result, was it ever solved? And his answer was "Oh that thing? Yeah that keeps popping up in news outlets, but it was solved like... two years ago"

I asked "CCQE?"

The reply "Yep, pretty much."

So what that is is Charge current quasi elastic scattering, It is basically when a neutrino undergoes a W exchange with a nucleon and produces the partner lepton. This can occur anywhere in the ice, and is not guaranteed to be observed by icecube, but can be observed by ANITA if the interaction occurs at a shallow ice depth.

The nice part of this is that there was a follow up observation and there were events observed that can be tracked back to ice cube, and so you can see events in both detectors, that totally fit with the previous data set. What it proves, which is pretty cool is that there is PeV + source of neutrinos out there in the universe.

a reply to: ErosA433

Thanks ErosA433.

So the claims in the article over threatening the SM and being a DM particle are a stretch. And a couple of years old.

You made a thread about the WIMP experiments earlier this year.

The next set of tests will be at higher power. And more xenon than previous tests. Then you will go to lower power after those tests are done. (If i remember correctly).

Will they eventually use PeV+ settings? I know your looking for WIMPs. And. PeV+ would not be a WIMP. (Correct me if i'm wrong).

Did you get any hints from where/how these particles originate? I know it said "cosmic". And.It's maybe not a good question.

a reply to: blackcrowe

Well its not so much about power, more about the mass of the particle you are looking for and the kinematics when it comes to WIMP searches.

Right now, the most competative detectors are using Xenon or Argon as their target materials, this really gives you good experimental reach in the range of about 50-150 GeV/C^2 but thats not the total coverage, the detectors do give you sensitivity at higher mass but its just not as good.

Lower mass WIMP searches are very hard because you have less observable energy. All is not lost though as there are detectors out there that are sensitive mostly in the low mass region.

SO basically the state of play right now is -> High mass, still a couple of generations of detectors till we have covered most of the parameter space, Low Mass, probably the same story, couple generations in order to hit the limit.

The limit in this case is the neutrino floor, which is the point at which neutrino scattering becomes a dominant background.

When I was discussing PeV+ energy, it is that there are a few processes that can accelerate particles to that kind of energy, Dark Matter on the other hand is thought to be non-relativistic, the evidence being that it seems to clump. If it was produced at , and still has PeV scale energy, it wouldn't clump.

It doesn't however mean that it cannot be produced at high energy. If you have a WIMP particle that has mass 150GeV, to produce it you have to have a collision at that energy or double, in the rest frame... very approximately. Now its more complicated actually as it could be a stable particle that does not have a direct production path, but is rather a decay product. So that was one of the search plans for the LHC and super symmetry. It was thought that if it was within the physics reach of the LHC, it would be possible to directly produce super symmetric dark matter. In your detector you would basically have a vast amount of missing energy and momentum since the dark matter particles, once produced would simply leave the detector and depart zero energy. You would have evidence for a high energy collision in the form of Jets and hadronization, but a huge chunk of missing energy.


Where are dark matter particles coming from? Unknown, most theory believe them to be relic particles from the big bang... these PeV energy particles? Probably originate from compact stellar objects undergoing producing shock front acceleration of particles, or active galactic nuclei.

a reply to: ErosA433

Thanks again ErosA433.

I know my questions were poor.

Thanks for understanding. And for providing the answers.

Hopefully a couple of generations of detection doesn't sound too far away.

As for DM clumping. I understand from Prof Lisa Randall video's. It will be clumped as a disk at the centre of our own galaxy. For example. We can't see our own centre to observe it even if we had the instruments to observe it directly.

Will the JWST help in the search for clumped DM in the centres of galaxies? Where the angle is better. Or maybe by it's observation of the earliest stars/galaxies?

It looks like the 2020's are going to be possibly very exciting. By which time. I will hopefully be able to understand it more clearly.

Whichever way it goes. It looks like the answers might not be too long off.

originally posted by: blackcrowe
a reply to: ErosA433
I know my questions were poor.

Not at all! You had questions and put it on the table the best way you could.

Hopefully a couple of generations of detection doesn't sound too far away.

Currently the detectors are roughly Tonne scale, the next gen will be about 20-50 Tonnes, after that scale up by about another factor of 10, so 200-500Tonnes. The good part of Liquid Noble detectors is that they scale up very easily, its really only a matter of cost. Xenon detectors will probably not make it beyond the next generation, they will be far too expensive to operate due to the cost of Xenon itself. That stuff is so expensive. Argon on the otherhand is almost free in-comparison and has the added bonus of extremely good pulse shape discrimination.

As for DM clumping. I understand from Prof Lisa Randall video's. It will be clumped as a disk at the centre of our own galaxy. For example. We can't see our own centre to observe it even if we had the instruments to observe it directly.

Most theories have the dark matter in diffuse clumps roughly galaxy sized. Imagine a sphere or ellipsoid in which a galaxy sits and rotates. It doesn't have to have a simple shape though, it can be toroidal also. Most of the evidence is that in general for spiral galaxies, the central bulges behave in a manner that is expected, its really the arms that cause issues with fast rotation. it suggests that the arms sit in a soup of material providing extra gravitational attraction to the centre. A simple and elegant way of doing this is the dark matter halo model as described above.

Will the JWST help in the search for clumped DM in the centres of galaxies? Where the angle is better. Or maybe by it's observation of the earliest stars/galaxies?

The James Webb will hopefully be an amazing instrument and open new doors to us, the specs and mission look pretty awesome. I has lots of IR instruments which will allow it to easily reach into the galactic centre region with better clarity than we have ever had. It sitting at the L2 Lagrangian point along with the sun shield to give it unprecedented IR sensitivity... it is definitely an exciting prospect. We may get sensitivity to observe cool stellar objects and get a better picture of how many brown dwarfs are out there, depending on what the mission goals are.

It looks like the 2020's are going to be possibly very exciting. By which time. I will hopefully be able to understand it more clearly.

Whichever way it goes. It looks like the answers might not be too long off.

Indeed! Sooner rather than later I also am super excited for this mission to kick off

a reply to: ErosA433

Thanks ErosA433.

Expense is always an issue. It's handy having a lower costing alternative. Especially when it comes with an added bonus. It's more like a bargain.

As for the theories of the shape of DM. Maths based with clues from observations. Like gravitational lensing etc. I suppose. And to prove the theories require experiments.

The experiments and whatever apparatus is needed have to be invented based on what's known and a theory. That's cool.

Hubble, Kepler and now the Chanrda x-ray Observatory. All fantastic inventions. Unfortunately. They're all having issues.

Which brings us back to the JWST. Not only does it promise so much by way of observations etc.

Even the location of the JWST will be amazing in itself. A million miles beyond the moon. Sat holding it's position in space. That is just cosmic.

There's definitely plenty to look forward to. Who knows what's around the next corner.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

I thought this worthy to pass on:

Yesterday, while working on my aether paper I got an email from Jean de Climont alerting me to the growing importance of aether science. He posted a link to a 24 minute video. I watched the whole thing, and took some notes about the few biggest flaws. I replied to mention the flaws. One is that the video claims that moving electrons won't create a magnetic field. A second is promotion of the aether drag hypothesis. I also sent him links to my work, as I didn't know if he was aware of them. He replied that he didn't want to debate issues and I need not reply again, and that he was aware of my work as he had prepared the world wide list of alternate theories. It has 2400 pages of authors listed, with between 4 and 5 authors per page.

When I worked out Maxwell's equations from aetherial postulates, J.D. Jackson (the text book author), recommended I converse with the NPA rather than himself. So I joined the NPA, hoping to meet serious scientists. Indeed, there were a few. But mostly it was some real nutty stuff. Like magnetic fields not being caused by moving electrons, or that there is no gravity it is just that the earth's surface is accelerating outward (and the earth growing) at about 10 m/s/s. Apparently there are over 10,000 contributors to such "alternate theories".

What hope does a serious alternative have? With so much noise, all signals will have a hard time not getting lost.

originally posted by: delbertlarson
What hope does a serious alternative have? With so much noise, all signals will have a hard time not getting lost.

At least you admit the problem, which is a good start, when you say things like 'most people who disagree with relativity are sort of nuts, but I'm one of the few who can be taken seriously'. Bernard Haisch had a worse problem, where he said he's the only person in his entire field of trying to extract energy from the vacuum who is not a nut, and even he is not sure his device would work but he thinks it has enough theoretical foundation to test it if someone will fund the testing. He's probably right that he's the only non-nut in his field, and while I can't prove his device won't work, I wouldn't fund it and I have reason to think it won't work based on what I've seen of the way nature operates.

Being on a list of alternative theorists isn't so bad as long as you aren't also on a list of known cranks and crackpots, which unfortunately someone named D Larson is firmly on such lists as a well known (deceased) crank and since you're obviously not deceased, it's not you. He left a legacy though called The International Society of Unified Science, Inc., which is based on ideas about nature that are easily proven false, which is why they are justifiably put on this listing of cranks which mentions that society and the other D Larson:
www.crank.net...

But you aren't even listed as D Larson in the online version of that book by Jean de Climont, it spells your name as Delbert Larsen. But before you go asking them to correct the spelling, maybe you should think about changing your name to avoid being confused with that other D Larson who WAS a crank? Just kidding, have them correct it if you want. Did you know you were on that many lists?

There's another problem. Even if you're a theoretical physicist with an alternative theory, and you've managed to avoid ending up on lists of cranks or crackpots like the other D Larson, the fact is that even the alternative theories of respectable theoretical physicists are more often than not wrong, and they can't all be right because they often disagree with each other. One alternative physicist who put this in perspective was Garrett Lisi when presenting his proposed theory of everything, which is based on some beautiful mathematical symmetry of nature (which we already have a hint that it's not so symmetrical because if it was, we wouldn't be here, right? It's only because of of nature's apparent lack of symmetry known as the baryon asymmetry problem that we even exist). Lisi is the first person to admit he may be wrong when at 16:10 in his video, he says this:

Predicting how nature works is a very risky game. This theory and others like it are long shots.
One does a lot of hard work knowing that most of these ideas probably won't end up being true about nature. That's what doing theoretical physics is like. There are a lot of wipeouts.

Since he's also a surfer, the wipeouts analogy is apt, and he might have wiped out by now since I don't think the LHC found the particles he predicted, but I don't think he is a crank either, it's just that as he said, even the non-cranks usually turn out to be wrong, and it has to be that way since they all have different ideas which are mutually exclusive in many cases so they can't possibly all be right. That doesn't mean we should give up trying to find flaws in our theories, as they undoubtedly need tweaking at least, but like the example I gave in a prior answer of a clock being off by "90 billionths of a second over a 79-year lifetime", sometimes the errors might be subtle and we might not have done the right experiments with enough precision to prove the flaws in existing models, or in other cases we know existing models have flaws but we don't know how to agree on a model that can fix the flaws, like we don't have an agreed fix for the baryon asymmetry problem as far as I know.

Jean de Climont seems like a crank, and it seems like you agree. I watched part of his video and how moving electrons first create a magnetic field until they are turned 90 degrees in a glass tube then he claims they don't create a magnetic field after making the turn and he would show us the proof except he has a problem with his glass tube and he can't get another glass tube, is my understanding of his convoluted "dog ate my homework" non-proof type of "proof". It reminded me of Searle saying his antigravity machine worked so well it flew off into outer space never to be seen again. It apparently didn't occur to him to build another one and chain it down to the floor this time. Likewise, did it ever occur to Jean de Climont to get another glass tube if he had problems with his first one? It doesn't seem to have occurred to him.

I hadn't heard of the earth expanding such that an acceleration of 9.8 m/s^2 is realized, but I did know that flat earthers often proposed such acceleration of the flat earth as an alternative to gravity, though of course they have no explanation for what might cause such acceleration, or why satellites don't show such a drastic asymmetry in the frequency of the CMB, but to them satellites that measure CMB are fictitious anyway so they don't need to consider such data. There is asymmetry in the frequency of the CMB, but it's more in line with things like the motion and rotation of the Milky Way, instead of a steady 9.8 m/s^2 acceleration since whenever they think it began.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Thanks for the thoughts. I saw the typo about the spelling of my name, and believe it was the NPA that made the original typo. That is perfectly OK with me.

I have long realized that I might be wrong. No doubt about it. I was extremely excited about my first effort at The ABC Preon Model about 35 years ago when I was in my twenties. Yet even then I was cautious, as I realized there was a lot I still didn't know. I predicted no Z at the SLC, and for quite a while they failed to find it. But then they did. It took quite a while to find that I had my masses off by a factor of two. I then published the ABC Preon Model, and it predicted no quarks above a certain mass. Then the top was found above that mass and I thought the model was perhaps wrong. However I eventually realized that we don't really see a top since it decays so quickly and the model is entirely consistent with what we do see. Only now do I think there is so much evidence in its favor that I believe it is likely an accurate description of nature.

I guess my main complaint is that both the nuts and the non-nuts have one problem in common. They seem to write a lot and read very little. For the nuts, I get something from them occasionally and take time to go into it until I find several flaws and then I respond. The nuts reply that they aren't interested in my reply and go back to doing what they do. The non-nuts will look for the first few discrepancies with standard dogma and dismiss my work before thinking about it and then get back to doing what they do. It is very, very hard to get heard above all the noise. With so many nuts (apparently 10,000 of them) I can see why the non-nuts don't think about my work long enough to realize its value - but it is killing science not to consider all viable alternatives.

For my theoretical issues it may not be all that important if my works are ignored. But my larger concern is my main practical effort on ECOFusion. I "left science" to devote close to a decade on an idea I had to cleanly and inexhaustibly fuel the world. So far I've had enormous trouble getting that considered seriously too. So I took a break starting about four years ago to return to some theoretical ideas that I had left behind. I knocked out a new ABC Preon Model paper with many more predictions; finished an idea I had on a new Absolute Quantum Mechanics, and am now extremely close to finishing up an improvement of The Aether that will not only lead to a derivation of Maxwell's Equations but the Lorentz Force Equation as well. Once that is done I have always planned to return to an attempt to promote ECOFusion. I don't want ECOFusion to continue to be ignored. Even during the past four years I continued to try to get publicity, but I can't even get that. At least not yet. The noise is drowning out my voice. An activist has been working to get the word out for many months now, and still no luck.

In a somewhat related note I was saddened to hear of the passing of Paul Allen. He had been funding colliding beam fusion. If they would apply electron cooling to that idea and significantly overhaul the parameters it has a chance. (That is what ECOFusion is.)

Well thanks again. You largely do what I wish more did. You have considered my thoughts. You have challenged them. You don't necessarily agree, but you haven't totally rejected them, and you helped with valuable comments on that attempt to write up Absolute Theory for Wikipedia. All good stuff.

I guess accelerating expansion of the universe and the story that what's beyond the Hubble horizon is receding at many times lightspeed is mainly based on redshift data. But some physicists have disputed that, saying that part of the redshift could be due to filtering by H2 in space, and that while astrophysicists account for the one hydrogen ion per cubic centimeter in space, they don't consider the existence of H2, since, unlike the hydrogen ions, it's undetectable by radioastronomy and is ignored. But Paul Marmet, the main proponent of that argument, died several years ago and in his absence has been called a crackpot, even though he was president of the Canadian Physics Society. But with all those hydrogen ions in space hungry for electrons, and the solar wind consisting largely of electrons, and hydrogen atoms lucky enough to gain electrons looking to mate with others, there must be some H2. And it has been observed in rare cases of astronomical events capable of lighting it up. Are they accounting for it now? Has this been resolved in recent years?

Discovery of H2 in Space Explains Dark Matter and Redshift

A quick web search produces this paper by his son:
A Survey of Red-Shift Mechanisms

He describes why his fathers model (among others) does not work, but also proposes his own model.

Thanks, moebius. Great paper. His new model looks good, but if correct will probably take a long time to be accepted.

originally posted by: ErosA433
I remembered the above and said, hey do you remember that ANITA result, was it ever solved? And his answer was "Oh that thing? Yeah that keeps popping up in news outlets, but it was solved like... two years ago"

I asked "CCQE?"

The reply "Yep, pretty much."

Thanks. That's interesting to know, but disappointing that the writer who recently published the article seems to have no clue it was solved like two years ago!

a reply to: delbertlarson
When you start with the Box perspective that "all models are wrong, some are useful", you're not really "married" to any current model and are always looking for a better one. But, some people find the current models so useful they might stop looking, which might happen more with engineers than it does with physicists. Engineers just need a model that solves their problem and if the current mainstream model does that even if it's "wrong", it's still useful, and most notably a lot still use Newtonian model since it's close enough instead of relativity which has more accuracy that is not needed in many applications. But you're right, even the physicists looking for better models have a lot to sort though to find it, or if they are a theoretical physicist they might rather come up with their own new model.

originally posted by: xpoq47
Thanks, moebius. Great paper. His new model looks good, but if correct will probably take a long time to be accepted.

So you understand it? I don't understand where the second photon is coming from and where he is getting the angle θ of the second photon, can you explain that? From p40:

"Each interaction of a photon with a second photon, incident at a relative angle θ on an electron, produces a red-
shift of the photon which is then emitted in the direction of the second photon."

The paper makes reference to a 2004 paper by Ari Brynjolfsson which has similar ideas about the source of red-shift (though I don't recall it requiring a second photon at some angle θ), and the Brynjolfsson paper asserts steady-state universe, no expansion, no big bang, which is presumably also implied by Marmet's model though I didn't find Marmet explicitly stating that.

The universe is like a big puzzle and we try to fit the pieces together, and the entire paper seems to be missing one important piece, which may be beyond the scope of the paper, but nonetheless it's one important reason why the big bang model seems to be the best way to fit the pieces together. The missing piece is the metallicity of the universe. Observations like this one are consistent with the big bang model but would be difficult to explain with steady-state models which claim the red-shift is not due to an expanding universe like Ari Brynjolfsson claimed:

Astronomers find clouds of primordial gas from the early universe

"The lack of metals tells us this gas is pristine," Fumagalli said. "It's quite exciting, because it's the first evidence that fully matches the composition of the primordial gas predicted by the Big Bang theory."

That's not explicitly about red-shift, but unless you look at all the pieces including metallicity-related evidence such as that, you're not forming a model that does the best job of explaining all possible observations. From what I've seen, no steady-state model has done a plausible job of explaining metallicity observations, which is one of numerous reasons why the best mainstream idea at the moment seems to be the big bang, which does seem to explain metallicity observations well.

Louis Marmet doesn't directly say his father was a crackpot, but it's inferred in his paper that his father was wrong as moebius said, and his father is on the list of cranks I linked for Delbert Larson saying it's at least a good sign that he didn't end up on the cranks list with his alternative ideas, alongside folks like Dewey Larson who is on the cranks list.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

originally posted by: ErosA433
I remembered the above and said, hey do you remember that ANITA result, was it ever solved? And his answer was "Oh that thing? Yeah that keeps popping up in news outlets, but it was solved like... two years ago"

I asked "CCQE?"

So you understand it? I don't understand where the second photon is coming from and where he is getting the angle θ of the second photon, can you explain that? From p40:

"Each interaction of a photon with a second photon, incident at a relative angle θ on an electron, produces a red-
shift of the photon which is then emitted in the direction of the second photon."

He just mentioned "background light intensity Ibkg emitted by all other galaxies," but he goes into greater detail in section 3.3 of a 2009 paper, if I'm reading it correctly:

Optical forces as a redshift mechanism: the “Spectral Transfer Redshift”

About the metallicity, I haven't really looked for explanations more prosaic than the big bang. So I don't know, and I'm not prepared to call it swamp gas.

originally posted by: xpoq47
He just mentioned "background light intensity Ibkg emitted by all other galaxies," but he goes into greater detail in section 3.3 of a 2009 paper, if I'm reading it correctly:

So, just a random photon from anywhere, not the same source.

About the metallicity, I haven't really looked for explanations more prosaic than the big bang. So I don't know, and I'm not prepared to call it swamp gas.

But my point was maybe you should consider both metallicity and redshift when looking for an explanation of a broad canvas of observations. If you're trying to isolate just looking at redshift and ignoring metallicity, that's not the big picture.

If you're saying you think Marmet has a good idea in saying the cause of redshift is not expansion of the universe but a tired light theory, does this not imply that the universe is not expanding, thus there was no big bang, thus how can you be talking about the big bang as a means to explain metallicity? It seem you have a contradiction on your hands with this approach, or else I'm misunderstanding you.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

I look at accelerating expansion of the universe and the big bang as extraordinary claims requiring rigorous investigation of alternative explanations for the data. There are issues with metallicity, as well, like stars containing nothing more massive than helium and dated (probably mistakenly) at more than 14.5 billion years, but there could be extenuating circumstances with those stars. But if another explanation for the redshift can be proved, basing those extraordinary claims solely on metallicity to me seems insufficient to hold up in court.

Also, gravity as a pushing force is a tough nut to crack, but if it is the case, then couldn't that explain expansion of our universe (if the fabric of space outside our universe is less dense) better than a big-bang scenario? And if there was a big bang, shouldn't gravity as a pulling force be slowing the expansion? Why is it accelerating?

By the way, I stopped posting at ATS in 2014 after I received a threat by PM from a member who had been trying to hustle me by PM and I kept responding by simply expressing lack of interest. My first report to management was ignored. Then I tried the supermoderator, who told me it wasn't against the rules (not true, since the section on threats is perfectly clear and claims zero tolerance). I asked to have my account deleted. He refused. I asked to have my threads locked. He complied. I told him I wouldn't be posting anymore. Their only action was to then disable my PM server, which I didn't request. It is still locked, even though it probably contains legit PMs that I never saw.

originally posted by: xpoq47
a reply to: Arbitrageur

I look at accelerating expansion of the universe and the big bang as extraordinary claims requiring rigorous investigation of alternative explanations for the data. There are issues with metallicity, as well, like stars containing nothing more massive than helium and dated (probably mistakenly) at more than 14.5 billion years, but there could be extenuating circumstances with those stars. But if another explanation for the redshift can be proved, basing those extraordinary claims solely on metallicity to me seems insufficient to hold up in court.

You may assign whatever relevance you wish to metallicity observations, however in reply to your comment that "...if correct will probably take a long time to be accepted.", my expectation is that there is a near zero probability that scientists would even consider throwing out a model that explains redshift and metallicity in favor of one that only explains redshift but can't even begin to explain metallicity.

In the past some stars were calculated to have ages older than the age of the universe, like 25 billion years old, which would mean they existed before the big bang. This did create tension in the model but our understanding of stellar evolution has since improved and now I'm not aware of any age estimates of stars with error bars that don't allow for consistency with the big bang theory. There's HD 140283: A Star in the Solar Neighborhood that Formed Shortly After the Big Bang which is interesting because the age estimate using the then latest stellar evolution models puts it at 14.5 +/- 0.8 billion years old but the authors interpret that to mean the star formed soon after the big bang, not before it. It's still an interesting case for astronomers to study because there are some possible reasons the center of the error bars is older than the universe, one of which is that our stellar models need more refinement. Some other possibilities could be that the star might not have followed the normal path of stellar evolution for various reasons, in which case it may or may not be possible to determine what the deviation was, if there was such a deviation. Still, the authors of that paper note this which you seem to want to discount due to your prejudice against the big bang:

There is a remarkable accordance (within their respective uncertainties) between the age of the Universe inferred from the CMB, the age of the chemical elements (Roederer et al. 2009), and the ages of the oldest stars. The difficulty of determining accurate abundances, especially [O/H], will continue to limit the accuracy of stellar age determinations for the foreseeable future, including the era when accurate distances out to a few kpc are obtained from Gaia (Perryman et al. 2001).

That wasn't always the case, so as our knowledge has advanced our models have become better and more self-consistent now that we no longer have big problems with stars older than the universe, though our models are probably still flawed in some ways yet to be determined; we are still learning.

Getting back to Louis Marmet's tired light idea, he dismissed Ned Wrights tired light criticism that “The tired light model does not predict the observed time dilation of high red-shift supernova light curves” by saying that "This is not so for the tired-light mechanisms which are completely independent of the frequency of light". I don't really understand how Louis Marmet thinks his particular tired light model predicts the observed time dilation of high red-shift supernova light curves.

Also, gravity as a pushing force is a tough nut to crack, but if it is the case, then couldn't that explain expansion of our universe (if the fabric of space outside our universe is less dense) better than a big-bang scenario?

I wouldn't characterize gravity as a pushing force as "a tough nut to crack", I'd say it's the opposite of what we observe.

And if there was a big bang, shouldn't gravity as a pulling force be slowing the expansion? Why is it accelerating?

Say hello to 1998! That's what everybody expected to find before the 1998 observations of supernovae were analyzed. The accelerating expansion was a big surprise to everybody who expected gravity to be slowing the expansion to varying degrees just as you suggest. Some people say we don't know why it's accelerating but I think it's more accurate to say we don't have any good models to predict it, because most seem to think it's accelerating because the vacuum has a very very small but non-zero amount of energy per unit volume referred to as the "cosmological constant". Space is so big that when you add that all up it ends up being the biggest mass-energy component of our current mainstream model, called "dark energy".

By the way it was also partly because of these 1998 and subsequent papers that some tension was reduced between the age of the oldest stars in the universe and the age of the universe, due to improvements in determination of the Hubble Constant.

Their only action was to then disable my PM server, which I didn't request. It is still locked, even though it probably contains legit PMs that I never saw."

No worries, I almost never use PMs anyway, except to reply to a few PMs that people have sent me first. One high school student PMed me his theory which he didn't want to post publicly for example and asked for my feedback, but other than cases like that I generally don't use them.