Is Cosmology in Crisis?

Cosmology is in Crisis and this is because many people in Cosmology try to fit data into their preferred theories or they just ignore any evidence that contradicts their preferred theories. Well, the dam is about to burst on the Standard model and the Copernican Principle. Basically, it's religious in nature because these theories basically want everything to have a random distribution and the observed evidence just doesn't fit and if it doesn't fit, you must

First off is the Copernican Principle that says the earth or no place in the universe is special and everything is spread out randomly. Recent observations don't agree.

Most cosmologists will not admit it publicly, but perhaps over a beer they would tell you what is happening. Observations over the last 50 years, culminating with the Planck satellite results set modern science on a counter revolution leading closer to ideas formed 500 years ago. Today’s cosmology is based on two broad principles: The Copernican Principle (we are not in a special place in the universe) and the Cosmological Principle (The Copernican Principle, plus isotropy- the view from anywhere in the universe looks about the same). Starting with early studies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), and in recent years culminating with results from the COBE then the WMAP satellites, scientists were faced with a signal at the largest scales of the universe- a signal that pointed right back at us, indicating that we are in a special place in the universe.

Without getting overly technical, the Copernican and cosmological principles require that any variation in the radiation from the CMB be more or less randomly distributed throughout the universe, especially on large scales. Results from the WMAP satellite (early 2000s) indicated that when looking at large scales of the universe, the noise could be partitioned into “hot” and “cold” sections, and this partitioning is aligned with our ecliptic plane and equinoxes. This partitioning and alignment resulted in an axis through the universe, which scientists dubbed “the axis of evil”, because of the damage it does to their theories. This axis passes right through our tiny portion of the universe. Laurence Krauss commented in 2005:

“ But when you look at [the cosmic microwave background] map, you also see that the structure that is observed, is in fact, in a weird way, correlated with the plane of the earth around the sun. Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt us? That’s crazy. We’re looking out at the whole universe. There’s no way there should be a correlation of structure with our motion of the earth around the sun — the plane of the earth around the sun — the ecliptic. That would say we are truly the center of the universe.”

Most scientists brushed the observation off as a fluke of some type, and many theories were created to explain it away. Many awaited the Planck mission. The Planck satellite was looked upon as a referee for these unexpected (and unwelcome) results. The Planck satellite used different sensor technology, and an improved scanning pattern to map the CMB. In March 2013, Planck reported back, and in fact verified the presence of the signal in even higher definition than before!

Article

They said the universe she be expanding in a close to uniform way in all directions. Yet, observation tells us the expansion is happening faster towards a small constellation called Vulpecula.

Rong-Gen Cai and Zhong-Liang Tuo at the Key Laboratory of Frontiers in Theoretical Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing have re-examined the data from 557 supernovas throughout the Universe and recrunched the numbers.

Today, they confirm that the preferred axis is real. According to their calculations, the direction of greatest acceleration is in the constellation of Vulpecula in the Northern hemisphere. That’s consistent with other analyses and also with other evidence such as other data showing a preferred axis in the cosmic microwave background.

www.technologyreview.com...

If you want to see more about Vulpecula then check out my recent thread.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

There was a big discovery of gravitational waves that was supposed to support cosmic inflation. Not so fast.

Cosmic Deflation: Doubts Raised Over Blockbuster Big Bang Study

A major new study claimed to find direct evidence of the Big Bang and the theory of cosmic inflation. But now scientists aren't so sure. It was just weeks ago that astronomers announced a major, double-barreled discovery: using a super-sensitive microwave telescope known as BICEP2, they had seen evidence of gravity waves that roiled the cosmos before it was a billionth of a trillionth of a second old. That was part one; part two was that the observed gravity waves strongly confirmed the theory of cosmic inflation—that the entire universe went into warp overdrive, expanding faster than the speed of light for the tiniest fraction of a second.

It was Nobel-level work, no doubt about it—provided it was true. But from the moment it was announced at a high-profile press conference, outside scientists had their doubts. There was reason to suspect, they said, that the Harvard-led team might actually have detected nothing more exciting than interstellar dust in the Milky Way. And now a paper expected to go online today, written by Raphael Flauger, of New York University and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, puts those doubts in writing.

The signal may still be from the dawn of time, he writes. But it might equally well be what Princeton University astrophysicist David Spergel calls “schmutz” (in precisely that language: it’s what the Urban Dictionary defines as the Yiddish term “used by Jewish mothers to identify that you’ve got some kind of crap on your face.”) “At this point,” says Spergel, “I’m convinced that they haven’t made a discovery.”

time.com...

We will know more later this year and it could be gravitational waves or it could be dust. I'm personally hoping for gravitational waves.

You have an Indian Scientist named Abhas Mitra who challenged Stephen Hawking on Black Holes and was basically looked at as a kook. Hawking recently came out and essentially agreed with Mitra in part.

An Indian theoretical physicist who questioned the existence of black holes and thereby challenged Stephen Hawking of Britain at last feels vindicated. But he is sad.

Abhas Mitra, at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Mumbai, was perhaps the first and the only scientist who had the guts to openly challenge Hawking of Cambridge University who is regarded by many as the modern-day Einstein.

For over 30 years Hawking and his followers were perpetuating the theory that black holes -- resulting from gravitational collapse of massive stars -- destroy everything that falls into them preventing even light or information to escape.

Mitra, four years ago, in a controversial paper in the reputed journal, Foundations of Physics Letters, showed that Hawking's theory was flawed. He proved black holes couldn't exist because their formation and existence flouted Einstein's general theory of relativity. Except a handful, the majority of mainstream scientists

CONT'D

dismissed Mitra's conclusions even though, till now, no scientist has contradicted him in writing. Mitra invited several notable black hole theorists including Hawking and Jayant Narlikar of India to criticise his work but no one replied.
Naturally, Mitra now feels vindicated following Hawking's own admission two weeks ago at a conference in Dublin, Ireland, that there isn't a black hole "in the absolute sense."
In essence, Hawking's "new" black holes never quite become the kind that gobble up everything. Instead, they keep emitting radiation for a long time -- exactly what Mitra showed in his paper.
Hawking's about-turn has vindicated Mitra. But, in retrospect, he feels sad about the treatment he got at home while trying to take on Hawking all by himself.
Too "embarrassed" to be associated with a man who challenged Hawking, even Mitra's close colleagues avoided him and he became an outcast. To add insult to injury, BARC authorities removed Mitra from the theoretical physics division on the excuse that this division was meant only for those doing "strategic research."

ia.rediff.com...

This guy has an interesting take on these things. Here's more about him from Wiki:

Though Mitra stresses that the `Black Hole’’ solutions are correct, his contention is that Black Hole masses, arising from relevant integration constants, are actually zero. His peer reviewed paper published in Journal of Mathematical Physics of the American Institute of Physics supports this contention by showing that Schwarzschild black holes have M = 0.[27] If so, (i) The so-called massive Black Hole Candidates (BHCs) must be quasi-black holes rather than exact black holes and (ii) During preceding gravitational collapse, entire mass energy and angular momentum of the collapsing objects must be radiated away before formation of exact mathematical black holes. And since the formation of a mathematical zero mass black hole requires infinite proper time, continued gravitational collapse becomes eternal, and the so-called black hole candidates must be Eternally Collapsing Objects (ECO).[28][29][30][31] Mitra’s peer reviewed papers describe why continued physical gravitational collapse should lead to formation of ECOs rather than true black holes, and the mathematical ``black hole’’ states can be achieved only asymptotically.[32][33][34][35][36] An ECO is essentially a quasi-stable ultra-compact ball of fire (plasma) which is so hot due to preceding gravitational contraction that its outward radiation pressure balances its inward pull of gravity. Some American astrophysicists[37][38][39][40][41] claimed to have verified this prediction that astrophysical Black Hole Candidates are actually ECOs rather than true mathematical black holes. The corresponding Harvard University Press Release[42] acknowledges Mitra's original contribution in this context.

en.wikipedia.org...

He's also against the Big Bang, Dark Energy and Inflation.

I do think that the shortcomings of these theories is telling us that we're on the wrong track when it comes to the nature of reality.

I personally see the universe as non physical consciousness or what some may call a non physical wave function that's a reality. This wave function contains all probable states as actual information in the form of qubits. This means, that Scientist will always find some support for many of their theories because all of them are essentially true on a quantum level. This is why you can read 100 different theories with all of these Scientist pointing to evidence that might support their theory.

Here's more about the non physical wave function.

Counterfactual quantum cryptography, based on the idea of interaction-free measurement, allows Bob to securely transmit information to Alice without the physical transmission of a particle. From local causality, we argue that the fact of his communication entails the reality of the quantum wave packet she transmits to him. On the other hand, the travel was not physical, because were it, then a detection necessarily follows, which does not happen in the counterfactual communication. On this basis, we argue that the particle's wave function is real, but nonphysical. In the classical world, the reality and physicality of objects coincide, whereas for quantum phenomena, the former is strictly weaker. Since classical cryptography is insecure, the security of quantum counterfactual cryptography implies the nonphysical reality of the wave function.

arxiv.org...

I think until we accept consciousness as being fundamental to the universe there will be this continued back and forth.

Great post . I love this kind of stuff but but not the math .I guess I use Arithmetic and it gets me by . Listening to Stephen Crothers: The Parallax Effect on Short Hair | EU2014 he might agree with some of what you have posted .

a reply to: neoholographic

I read most of your post. Great job on detail.

I'm pretty sure a lot of the facts are off tho.

The glaring one I noticed was black holes. Black holes have been confirmed and observed. The argument with hawking a over black holes was if they emit radiation or not... Not weather or not the exist. But what did hawking do when proven wrong? Admit it and move on. That's how science works.


I think any theory that needs a large scale scientific conspiracy for it to work isn't logical. If you need everyone else to be lying for the data to match your "standard model" to work... Then it doesn't work.


For a large scale conspiracy in the scientific community to stay secret would require buying off most of the MIT and other science university students. It would require every up and comming cosmologist or astro physicist to be turning down riches and Nobel fame just to keep some long dead guys theory going. The guy who disproves something gets just as famous as the guy who's theory he's disproving. So all day long I could buy science got some thing wrong....but I can't buy a scientific community sized conspiracy .

a reply to: neoholographic

I'm not blasting you here. Just a thought.


I find the assumption that consiousness is. THE driving force of the universe to be really egotistical.

Were the only consious creatures we know about. Out of all the space available we are the only really important part? We can't survive in 99.99999999% of the universe to even observe it.

Then add in the fact you can't have consious beings until like a billion years after the Big Bang. So how can you have consious need the universe to be created, but the universe needs consiousness to be created?


Honestly most of these theories are people trying to mix there religion into a standard physics model. Even if there religious beliefs arnt an organized religion.

How many threads are you going to create on this same topic? Dark energy and dark matter pose a much bigger crisis for cosmology than this nonsense ever will.

a reply to: ArtemisE

First, he didn't say black holes don't exist. He said they never form a true singularity. So they're always collapsing and radiating energy and therefore a true event horizon never forms.

Secondly, it's egotistical too assume consciousness only exist because of us. There's no evidence that consciousness is an emergent property of the material brain. In fact, Roger Penrose says consciousness is fundamental to the universe at Planck scales.

So consciousness wouldn't have to wait a billion years because it exist at the smallest scales of space-time.

Also, what is a billion years? Does that have any real meaning? There's still a debate about the nature of time with some Scientist saying time doesn't exist.

a reply to: neoholographic

Cosmology is in Crisis and this is because many people in Cosmology try to fit data into their preferred theories or they just ignore any evidence that contradicts their preferred theories.

Yep. Bunch of back-slappers developing consensus over their buddy's guess work. Anyone who falls for the spin ... well, let me not call names.

The way I see it ... who cares? Just don't ask for any more of my tax dollars. We're not getting to the stars anytime soon ... and trying to BS me the way they do often elicits a not so pleasant response.

a reply to: neoholographic

I don't think consciousness being a product of the brain is egotistical. I think that's the logical assumption being it comes from the brain. IMHO that's the 1 +1=2 answer... Now that's not me saying that consiousness isn't exactly what you/your guy think. I'm just saying that assuming it's a product of the brain is your logical starting point.

There's lots of cool things about consciousness that point to more. The double slit experiment. Our interactions with random number generators. All kinda stuff. But you shouldn't start your theory from conciousness being the primeval source with out major proof it is.

a reply to: neoholographic

Also time does mean something. It's measurable and has been as long as we can check back. Theories that fit all possible senerios," like god did it" aren't considered science. It has to be testable.

a reply to: ArtemisE

Where is your evidence that consciousness is a product of the material brain? Saying it just makes sense to you has zero scientific meaning. It makes no sense to me and there's no evidence to support it.

When has a quantity called time been measured? Time is just something we use to locate things in space or we use it in order to make sense of the world. The debate is still on going in the scientific community. Here's more:

Efforts to understand time below the Planck scale have led to an exceedingly strange juncture in physics. The problem, in brief, is that time may not exist at the most fundamental level of physical reality. If so, then what is time? And why is it so obviously and tyrannically omnipresent in our own experience? “The meaning of time has become terribly problematic in contemporary physics,” says Simon Saunders, a philosopher of physics at the University of Oxford. “The situation is so uncomfortable that by far the best thing to do is declare oneself an agnostic.”

The trouble with time started a century ago, when Einstein’s special and general theories of relativity demolished the idea of time as a universal constant. One consequence is that the past, present, and future are not absolutes. Einstein’s theories also opened a rift in physics because the rules of general relativity (which describe gravity and the large-scale structure of the cosmos) seem incompatible with those of quantum physics (which govern the realm of the tiny). Some four decades ago, the renowned physicist John Wheeler, then at Princeton, and the late Bryce DeWitt, then at the University of North Carolina, developed an extraordinary equation that provides a possible framework for unifying relativity and quantum mechanics. But the Wheeler-­DeWitt equation has always been controversial, in part because it adds yet another, even more baffling twist to our understanding of time.

“One finds that time just disappears from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation,” says Carlo Rovelli, a physicist at the University of the Mediterranean in Marseille, France. “It is an issue that many theorists have puzzled about. It may be that the best way to think about quantum reality is to give up the notion of time—that the fundamental description of the universe must be timeless.”

discovermagazine.com...

I don't want to turn this thread into a debate about time but you're wrong. The nature of time and whether time exists is an on going debate.

a reply to: neoholographic

How about brain scans that light up when you think. The accidents to the brain that have changed someone's consiousness...

a reply to: neoholographic

I know this is a one size fits all explination too, kinda like god did it, but I think the only thing that makes real sense is "matrix" theory. That this is all one big "computer" program and we are like the ISO's from tron legacy....or maybe just part of the program. We are all energy after all.

a reply to: ArtemisE

Consciousness is not "thought", it's a sense of being... With your definition of consciousness, I could say the blinking lights in my computer are an indicator of its consciousness.

As far as time goes... Take a look at how humanity defines the world around itself. We have words to define objects and concepts. We use symbolism to define the constants within mathematics. The fact that we remember acting and reacting, gives rise to the need to measure those actions and reactions, which ultimately drives us to the creation of a measurement system for human interaction (time). If we could not remember the past or have hopes and dreams for the future, time would not exist for us. It exists simply out of our necessity to try and define this experience we call life. Math doesn't truly exist either, it's a conceptualized ruler.

We could argue scientific theories based on time dilation and the like, but it is altogether relative to the subjective nature of the existence we are creating around ourselves. I believe we perceive time because we create it, even unbeknownst to our own selves. At the end of the day it's all in our heads; there is nothing tangible or significant about it, unless we tell ourselves that it's tangible and significant.

Anyway, that's my two cents

a reply to: neoholographic

Science does not exclude God, or there being a general conscience of some sort in the Universe. What it does is it merely excludes the possibility of any man being able to fathom, or even understand any of it. And thus, by stating to know it's purpose, will or claiming to be on a discussion level with it, as a profet or other ... is merely a voice of personal arrogance, and an uppheaval of oneself.

So, by stating "religion" or any Godliness in anything ... you thereby remove the value of your arguments, as their foundation is wrong.

a reply to: neoholographic

I find this part of your article very funny:

“ But when you look at [the cosmic microwave background] map, you also see that the structure that is observed, is in fact, in a weird way, correlated with the plane of the earth around the sun. Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt us? That’s crazy. We’re looking out at the whole universe. There’s no way there should be a correlation of structure with our motion of the earth around the sun — the plane of the earth around the sun — the ecliptic. That would say we are truly the center of the universe.”

Out of the trillions and trillions of objects in the universe, it's impossible for Earth's orbit to align with this axis.....by random chance?

Hogwash.

IF the Earth's axis aligned with it's orbit around the sun, AND that orbit aligned with the sun's axial spin, AND the sun's axial spin aligned with the galactic plane, AND the galactic plane aligned with this "evil axis".....THEN they might be on to something.

But it's not like that.

The Earth's axis is off by 23 degrees with it's orbit about the sun, the Earth's orbit (the ecliptic plane) aligns with this "evil axis", but is over 7 degrees of inclination with the sun's equatorial (spin axis) plane. The sun's spin axis is 67 degrees of tilt from the galactic (the Milky Way's equator) plane......

So only one of those things line up: Earth's orbit about the sun......

And that means the Earth's orbit is the center of the universe? Because there is absolutely no way that out of all thing things that are in the universe, that the random chance of that happening......could allow it to happen?

Talk about REALLY clutching at straws here.........

I agree cosmology has a lot wrong. You got to consider the fact we may look like center of universe because we are the center of our observations. This could be true for any civilization in any galaxy. We are on the inside looking out. Go outside and look in may present a very different set of facts and observational data. Until we build warp drive we can't go out and look.

We have to stop thinking of the universe as primarily conscious, we evolve into that. The universe primary state is unconscious. How would that change the thinking of consciousness within quantum theory?

a reply to: eriktheawful

Well that settles it!

Excuse my sarcasm, but that's not how science works. Science makes predictions and the predictions stated that their shouldn't be any alignment with earth or any one place in the universe. This is what the theories predicted. Not that you will find an alignment of the universe with the rotation of the earth around the Sun. Science can't just say, oh well. There theories didn't predict this and this isn't just any theory. It's the standard model which many Cosmologist support.

So your not debating just me, but scientist like the rabid atheist Laurence Krauss who is the author of the quote you posted. He said:

“ But when you look at [the cosmic microwave background] map, you also see that the structure that is observed, is in fact, in a weird way, correlated with the plane of the earth around the sun. Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt us? That’s crazy. We’re looking out at the whole universe. There’s no way there should be a correlation of structure with our motion of the earth around the sun — the plane of the earth around the sun — the ecliptic. That would say we are truly the center of the universe.”

Again, this is a quote from Laurence Krauss.

The reason why they call it the axis of evil is because it counters the standard model and the Copernican Principle. There shouldn't be correlation of structure with earth or any other place in the universe. This is what the theories predicted.

You need to look at the data from WMAP and Planck and then read the theories that predicted a totally different observation that wasn't seen.

You're not understanding what you're reading. They call it the axis of evil because it doesn't fit with what predictions said they should see. Their shouldn't be any correlation of structure and why earth? They saw the randomness on a quantum scale but when it got to a classical scale where they expected to see a random distribution, they saw correlation of structure and with earth's rotation around the sun. Why earth and how did this happen?

I wouldn't be surprised if they came up with dark gravity or something else dark to try and explain this.

a reply to: neoholographic

Grab six dice.

Roll them, while telling me that not one of them will EVER come up with a 5.

Now get a million dice with 360 faces, and tell me that never will one pop up with 0 (or 360) degrees.

Now make that a billion dice with 360 faces.

now make it 10 billion, a hundred billion, a trillion, a hundred trillion (should I keep going on?)

And tell me and others that never....never, ever, ever, will any of them land on 0 or 360 degrees.

If you (and this scientist) can do that with a straight face, then you both are in the wrong line of work.

You should both be politicians or lawyers.