Dark Energy, Schmark Energy

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof 

DARK ENERGY, SCHMARK ENERGY 

There is no excuse for the current mad rush to a messy consensus and the cockeyed conclusion that some weird stuff some call dark energy makes up the bulk of the universe. Dark energy is truly miraculous and qualifies as a supernatural explanation of deep space observations! 

Since there is no experiment that could confirm or deny the existence of dark energy, it cannot be considered as a contender. Extraordinary proof is out of the question but, it is among the most extraordinary claims ever made. Its disqualification as a viable hypothesis under the rubric of the Scientific Method means that we must start from scratch.  

Those with the ability must recalculate the main assumption that underlies the dark energy hypothesis. Let the theoretical chips tumble where they may and the intellectual trees drop where they will. 

This dark energy hypothesis is designed to explain just one observation that is currently looked upon from the so called "weird science" perspective. This particular peek at reality is from a point of view that is based on just one interpretation of the real distances to type 1a supernovae. They are now interpreted to be farther away than their redshifts would indicate. But, an estimate of the most serious interference to this interpretation, that there may be much more or much less "grey" dust in the early universe than was initially thought, must be in error. 

This currently calculated observational result and theoretic premise is that there was not enough extra dust to cause the redshift effect.  But, the effect itself is a result of an interpretation that may itself also be wrong. 

This apparent "phenomenon" is that since these exceedingly distant supernovae are farther away than the distances indicated by their redshifts, then the universe "must" have begun expanding at an accelerating rate in recent epochs. The only thing that we seem able to think of that might explain this strange interpretation is this unscientific postulate of dark energy.

 

For various reasons, all subsequent observational interpretations may well have been biased to favor the assumption of dark energy to begin with, so it may not be too surprising that they do indeed tend to prove it. 

There has been no effort to go back and reinterpret "grey dust" observations nor to recalculate the relative theoretic prevalence of "metals" in the earliest phases of the universe's development. If mathematical assumptions are changed sufficiently, the concentration of heavier nuclei could easily rise to the point that more dust formed than is now thought. Presto! There was much more dust present to dim the images and the supernovae in question are as nearby as their redshifts indicate. The manner in which the assumptions must be jiggered may well lead to a bigger paradigm shift, a more profound revolution, than dark energy itself. If weird science is for what governments will pay, a bonanza is waiting to be won. 

Furthermore, gravitational redshifts have been totally neglected. Relativistic redshift is distinct and is applied to the data. But, the young universe was very much more dense and its much more intense gravitational field would have influenced any light traveling on a trajectory that would tend to have it escape - that would have it end up in our eyes. 

Why there is not much more skepticism about the contradiction between luminosity distances and redshift distances in the first place completely escapes me! 

Still, some critics of dark energy do not seem to have a clue. For instance, some confuse Doppler redshifts with relativistic redshifts. It makes a difference! 

Regarding those extremely distant type 1a supernova results, there is indeed much more to Relativity than relativistic redshifts. The gravitational field in the early universe must have been VERY much greater than it is now. So an additional Einsteinian gravitational redshift should be added to all light traveling on an "outward" or escape trajectory, that is, toward our eyes in space and time. But this is not done. If this correction was carefully applied, then the redshift data would be translated to the same coordinates as the dim supernova results and the discrepancy would disappear. 

Regardless, dark energy is not necessary. How then do we account for a very nearly flat universe if dark energy does not add to the total mass/energy inventory? 

Easy. 

The observable universe would be situated within a polydimensional surface or "brane" of an extraordinarily large black hole or something much like a black hole that may be in motion. Its total dimensionality could well be significantly higher than superstring/M-theory implies. There may be evidence of 11 dimensions in our universe because our very existence means that this, our cosmos, resamples the superdimensional volume of the interior of this theoretically invisible "Dark Pit" or "Dim Seed". 

Clearly, it would not be not black. Still, no matter falls out of its event horizon, the surface where events occur, where things happen. No matter disappears into it, so, it does not generate a whole spectrum of radiation on the way in. The Dark Pit would be completely beneath visibility. But, we may deduce its presence and, perhaps, devise tests for the hypothesis of its existence.  

If we cannot do this, then it is a nonstarter and the idea must be rejected, in strictest accordance with the scientific method. 

The mass of the Dim Seed or Dark Pit would be many times the total estimated mass of the observable universe, whatever may be required to make up for the total energy/mass deficit. The curvature of its surface would be very nearly flat, as theory and observation require, but not exactly flat. The tiniest variations from flatness, though they may show up within the error tolerances of measurements, could be real, in other words.  

In order to make its surface flat enough without exceeding the mass limit implied by the matter/energy shortfall, it would be spinning very fast. Residual anisotropy that has in fact been discovered that is not accounted for by our laboratorys' proper motion through the cosmos could be due to this rotation. This means that our universe would be spinning too, of course, and not necessarily at the very same rate or direction. By analogy, the spin rates of the sun are nonuniform. Precise measurements of the residual cosmic anisotropy (RCA) could nail down the probable spin rates. This idea may also have implications pointing to the real nature of mass and of matter itself. 

There may not have been a Big Bang either, this may imply. If this Dark Seed's dimensionality could include several orthogonal dimensions of time, its shape might still be like a flattened sphere or nearly flat pancake, but what is regarded as expansion of our universe, even acceleration of expansion, may just be due to its turbulent rotation in time. With a correct more detailed model, the properties of the Cosmic Microwave Background might be accurately predicted. Then the cyclic model of cosmogony may still make more sense. 

The idea of multiple dimensions in time is not such an outlandish proposal. All spatial dimensions may just as well be described as time dimensions because of the limit on the speed of light. The word "spacetime" means equivalence between space and time just as surely as E=mc^2 means equivalence between matter and energy. In certain cases like this, it may be more enlightening to think of certain dimensions in terms of a time reference instead of a distance or length definition. 

The Wiz's Dark "Horse Matter" is another even deeper and weightier mass of a different kind (and of a different color, of course). We all seem to like Alan Guth's inflationary universe scenario but we also seem to be unwilling to carry the implication of his ideas to their logical end. He postulates that the universe began as a quantum virtual particle that sprang into existence in an extremely high energy state largely because the whole field of spacetime was excited. It was a "false vacuum".  This quantum spacetime just naturally existed in such a very high energy excited state because, statistically, this is the most probable initial condition.

We cannot ignore the statistical nature of quantum mechanics here either. Analytically, not only must there be an antiparticle "out there" somewhere, the particle/antiparticle pair must generate interference particles, +/- and -/+. Statistically, they must be just as real as terra firma itself. For, as we all know, repeated observation, even of the surface of the Earth, gives only a statistical result. I can interpret what I see only because I have seen images like it several times before. I can regard a blue streak in the image as a river only because I have seen rivers up close and have even swum in them. If I compare my preceptions with those reported by others, the picture gains another layer of statistical importance. We gain a consenus only statistically.  

Furthermore, since we imply by this line of thinking that there is a reality outside this universe, there must be particles naught- and naught+,  -naught and +naught, representing the zeroth, or "nonexistent" states. Such entities may be nonexistent only from the perspective of a certain aspect of the meta-cosmos of which ours may be merely a subuniverse.  

They would all have mass. They should still be "close" enough for their gravitational influence to be felt within our particular version of this ultraverse. If a count is made of the possible quantum states that this scenario implies, the inferred energy/mass inventory, as a percentage, comes out just right. 

All this can be easily expressed algebraically. I have a discourse on the quantum operator algebra of this concept that shows that it is rigorously logical. I will furnish a copy on request.

Or else - to say the same thing, actually - the Many Worlds "multiverse" hypothesis may be true. But the number of interference and mixed existence states may be much larger than what I may imply above. The gravitational influence of Many Worlds would be felt within galaxies that rotate faster than we think they should. Either of these two approaches lead to the conclusion that we observe only a small fraction of the matter that is really there. That is, unless we do careful rotation rate studies on as many galaxies as we can. 

I am sure this has all been thought of before, but it bears repeating, especially because it solves problems that we never anticipated that it would. For instance, it answers the question of why there is not any antimatter in our universe. Well, there is, except that all we can see of one is its contribution to gravitational effects on the rotation rates of most spiral galaxies. 

And, it gives us a solid mechanism to explain those amazing galactic rotation rate profiles explicit in observations. These fit the concise mathematical treatment of the MOND effect (MOdified Newtonian Dynamics). Moreover, this mechanism does the job while preserving relativity.  

If deep space observations constitute quantum statistical effects, such observations must include an aspect of Heisenberg uncertainty. The unseen Multi-Quantum or Many Worlds phantom galaxies would not all rotate on the same axis nor in exactly the same positions nor orientations. Surely, a simple, straightforward statistical distribution of directions, rates and orientations could be found that precisley duplicates the MOND phenomenon. A distribution of  such distributions would enable hypotheses that explain just exactly why some galaxies fail to show the effect. So, the exceptions would prove the rule, perhaps. 

Remember, this discussion refers to both dark energy and dark matter. Reference is made to an hypothetical Dark Pit and to a quantum multiverse.  They must be aspects of the same entity. But, I have finally run out of words to describe it! Surely, if these ideas have any merit, superstring theory will have something to say about it. Can superstring theory handle a mere brane with 11 dimensions? Is this theory scalable? Am I talking about the inneffable M-theory?  

Returning to reality, why neglect easy solutions like this in favor of complex and difficult ad hoc postulates that raise more questions than they solve? 

In future posts I will explore this and present my most favored model for the inflationary expansion of the universe. It shows how the data should properly be interpreted. 

The main thing, though, is that dark energy is unnecessary. 

 

Origin of the Universe in a Nutshell

Click on the title of this post to navigate to the site where this quote originates:

"I have done my own studies on the Origins of the Universe and as far as our Origin is concerned it can only be theorized and not conclusived. Scientific Investigations had lead to some convincing theories but nothing more. As I posted before what we need to find is the ORIGIN OF SPACE which will lead to the ORIGINS OF ALL THINGS. The Oigins of the Universe is NOT THE ORIGIN OF SPACE. The Universe is like a guest of Space -- it occupies it. I believe that somehow science is missing an oversight. I will tried to explain it again --- space is an entity which at one time contain nothing -- it was empty. This means that after so much time, in our sense of time, something came to occupied it. That something was a pollution to the whole of Space. The problem that I'm having is, just how this something came into being --- thats my problem................................"

* * * * *

FluFlu writes that the stuff inside the universe must be separate from the universe itself. The matter and energy within it are of a different sort from the space it occupies. This is the classical view.

But, the Theory of Relativity, under intense scrutiny since 1905, has shown that matter, energy, space and time are all of the same fundamental essence. Space-time includes matter and energy by means of its plasticity and metamorphic talent. It is still called a "theory" only because we have not yet been able to observe the inner workings of other universes that might possess this same thread in their fabric. If we ever do observe other universes and we can discern such a thread, Einstein's theory will be referred to as the "Law of Relativity". It might be subsumed by some greater theory or law, but this has happened before to Newton's Laws, for instance, which were circumscribed by the "Theory" of Relativity. But they are still called laws.

The only theory in science that is more thoroughly confirmed is Quantum Theory. It too is called a theory only because we do not have instances of other universes to study wherein we can find this as a common thread. We should ignore the technicality because it is clear that "Quantum Law" governs the very nature of existence itself.

To be or not to be. That is the quantum question. Theoretically, there cannot be other universes that do not follow quantum law.

According to the current "standard model" of the universe and its origin, the expanding horizon that we can see with our telescopes may be extrapolated back to even earlier times. Due to the smooth nature of the trajectory that the universe seems to follow, this extrapolation can be extended almost to the very beginning. To do this, it helps to postulate an initial exponential "inflationary" expansion.

But, we cannot extrapolate all the way to t = 0, due only to another technicality. This limit is "theoretically" imposed by the idea that when the universe's history is run backward in time to the point when it must have been so very extremely dense and hot, then the basis for our normal intuitive understanding of physical laws breaks down, apparently.

But, I think that, solely for purely aesthetic reasons, physicists do not like to extrapolate the history of the universe to a point when it was smaller than a tiny distance derived from the definition of Planck's constant and younger than a fraction of a second smaller than a "Planck time". Well, O.K. It may not be necessary to go further than this anyway, but still, we do it.

According to the inflationary expansion hypothesis, the universe began when a virtual "point particle" materialized in the false vacuum and it failed to annihilate with its antiparticle, or else such annihilation is unecessary when virtual particles materialize in the vast energy sea of the false vacuum. Another view may be that there are orthogonal timelines to our own and annihilation simply has not and never will occur on our timeline.

The false vacuum acts like a huge quantity of superheated water. And the universe, remember, is a quantum entity: a particle or wave packet that is governed by quantum principles.

Quantum science is statistical in nature. It expresses events and processes in terms of probabilities. The appearance of a virtual particle is far more likely to occur in a very high energy state than in a lower one. This is because there are an infinite number of possible very high energy states while the number of potential lower energy states is limited by the fact that one arm of the infinite progression is cut off at zero. And, remember, the false vacuum is already a vast reservoir of almost infinite energy.

So, when the universe materialized, it instantly acted like a particle of dust in a cauldron of superheated water. This superheated "fluid" began to change phase. The initial catalytic high energy particle and a parcel of the false vacuum began to expand from a point, or from very near a point, to occupy a much larger and larger volume. Energy continuously transferred from the false vacuum to the new true vacuum of space as we know it, helping to fill it with energy in the form of extremely high energy light photons. As the universe expanded further, it began to cool, as expansion normally cools the contents of a system. High energy, intensely dense photons can indeed behave this way, as laser esperiments show.

And, its entropy also began to rise dramatically. When it had cooled far enough, various forms of matter began to condense out of that still small, dense volume of intense light. When it had cooled further, electrons suddenly were able to couple with protons, or with deuterium and helium nuclei, to give a dense neutral gas that was finally transparent to light itself. Previously, the matter/energy soup had been opaque.

The light that was present when this recombination process was complete is now detectable as the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB). The light that had not condensed into matter was initially of very high energy, distributed according to a Maxwell distribution. The maximum in this distribution is now red-shifted down into the microwave region. But, because it exists within a very broad distribution, there are still a few remnants of this light that are presently still of an extremely high energy. This may be the source of some of the high energy cosmic rays that have been detected.

The hydrogen, deuterium and helium went on to form stars and galaxies while the universe expanded further. Some of the stars where so enormous that they "burned" their hydrgen/deuterium nuclear fuel very quickly and exploded as supernovae.

The cores of supernovae get so hot during this event and their existence in this state is limited in time so much that heavier elements like boron, nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, sodium, iron and all the rest of the elements of the periodic table were able to form and become isolated. Once they were suddenly exposed to the lower density and temperatures of intertellar space, the heavier elements were "frozen out" and preserved. This residue of heavy elements mixed with leftover hydrogen and deuterium to form new stars. After several cycles like this, the newer stars had enough of these elements to become surrounded by protoplanetary disks of dust. From this dust came the planets, including our Earth and all its life.

Yes, as Carl Sagan mused, we are stardust: from this dust we came and to dust we shall return

Origin of the Universe

Take a peek at http://cs.astronomy.com/asycs/forums/t/32309.aspx and http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cosmologyandcosmogony/ for a spirited debate on the validity of the HBB theory. The Astronomy forum on cosmogony is a discussion of which I have got really tired recently. I am seeking change-over to an exchange about the implications of a quantum dynamical hypothesis for an inflationary initiation of the HBB.

There seems to be no recognition of such implications. If the universe really did begin as a point particle, called an "inflaton", that appeared in a "false vacuum" by virtue of the tendencey of quantum particles to simply materialize out of nothingness along with their antiparticles, then many questions seem to be settled. But, new ones appear, as is usually the case in science.

For instance, virtual quantum particles that appear out of nothing along with their antiparticles annihillate each other almost instantly. They are called virtual because their lifetime is so brief and they cannot be detected directly. The existence of virtual particles can be proven by studies of muon decay in powerful particle accelerators and by other means. For a virtual particle to remain in existence and become detectable in its own right, it must appear at the event horizon of a black whole, as has been shown by Steven Hawking.

The particle and antiparticle fail to mutually annihilate because one falls into the black hole and the other escapes. If the universe began as such a virtual particle, does this imply that it is or was near the event horizon of an ultramassive black hole?

Our universe may still be in the vicinity of our antiparticle, our anti-universe. It may remain close enough for the gravitational fields of both to overlap. There is much evidence that the reason gravity is difficult to incorporate into unified field theories, grand unified theories or "theories of everything" is that it is unlike the other forces. It can "leak" out of our universe and thus appear to be a very weak force when, in fact, it is the strongest of all the forces. There are quantum phenomena that would allow our universe and our anti-universe to remain near each other for a long time, say, 13.7 billion years, without mutual annihilation.

When quantum particles, which are also quantum wave packets, are detected statistically or even individually, they appear as waveforms and as their interference waveforms as well. In the case of whole universes, these may be regarded as humongous collective quantum states of all the matter and energy that they subsume. Then, there are quantum States A and interference State B for our particle, our universe's waveform, and States A' and B' for our antiparticle or anti-universe. Furthermore, these interference states, in order to be mathematically well described, must be able to hybridize. They can thus form the superpositions of states: A+B, A-B, A'+B', A'-B', A+A', B+B', A-A', B-B', B'+A, B'-A, A'+B, A'-B. Now, gravity can leak between all these states, there being 16 in all. So, the quantity of matter and energy in any one state may be only 1/16 th of the total. This is 0.0625 of the whole. Or else, maybe it is only about 0.04 of the total, depending on how you add up the States and the individual components of the States. If one eliminates the null states, those having a (-) sign, as possessing no gravitational field, one arrives at either 1/22 or 1/10 of the whole that any one state would contribute snd this would represent 0.045 or 0.10 of the whole. If one takes only the primary States into account then only A, B, A' and B' would superpose. Any one of them contributes 1/4 or 0.25 of the whole. There might be other reasonable combinations.

From our perspective within, say, State A, for instance, we can detect the existence of the whole by various means but we can account for as much as, say, 0.25 of it through the inventory of matter and energy in our universe. Maybe we can account for only 0.04 of it. Regardless, we are tempted to postulate some form of Dark Energy and Dark Matter to make the balance sheet work out right. We do this because we are not used to thinking in terms of the quantum dynamical metaphor and because we simply cannot see these other States. They are invisible and intangible.

The mystery of the "missing antimatter" is also accounted for in this scheme. There is no antimatter in our universe because it was all gathered into existence within our anti-universe and its interference wave, the States A' and B' and, perhaps, the other superposed States with primed components.But, there is no Dark Energy or Dark Matter. And, because this "missing mass" is all in some other universe, forever seperated from us by all means except through gravity, we will never be able to detect any of it directly.

Dark Matter is accounted for by MOND, modified Newtonian dynamics. The superposition of States requires that a small constant should be added to the right side of Newton's equation for his Law of Gravity. This small constant represents the "missing matter" in galaxies and galactic clusters. It results from leakage of the gravitational field between the superposed States, which may be so similar that they have galaxies and galactic clusters in almost the same positions but in different orientations. In other words, they are not quite congruent. So, the leakage appears as a smeared out, blurry, spherically distributed small but finite contribution to these cosmological objects' gravitational fields.

The matter and energy inventory of our universe does not balance because we have not taken into account the superposition of States. Statistical analysis of the distribution of energy in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) shows that it is projected upon the sky as if from a flat surface. This implies that the geometry of the universe is flat, not curved like Einstein thought. For it to be flat, however, means that there is an enormous amount of matter and energy in the universe that is unaccounted for. Dark Energy was postulated as a source of this "missing mass", energy having a mass-equivalence through Einstein's famous equation. This idea gained traction when some supernovae were observed at enormous distances. Their brightness showed that they are further away than their red-shifts might indicate if the Hubble constant is applied. This means they are receding faster than is expected. The interpretation has been that this discrepancy amounts to acceleration of our universe's expansion NOW, in the more modern era, even though the more rapidly receding supernovae are observed to have existed THEN, in the most distant past.

It is a backward interpretation that succeeds only because it is perfectly backward and therefore it works - sort of. But, then it runs into reality. To explain this acceleration, Dark Energy was invoked as an ad hoc bandaid to patch the wound that this "observation" made in the s0-called "standard model" of the universe and its origin. So, Dark Energy fills the universe with its "missing mass". But, its nature is unknown and it appears to be an untestable hypothesis. There are conjectures about it - that it may be a new kind of field called "quintessence" that results in cosmological objects repelling each other when they are placed at great distances or that it may result from Einstein's cosmological constant. Ignored is the possibility that the data are being misinterpreted.

Instead, we are all supposed to be happy with an almost supernatural explanation for what amounts to sloppy hypothesizing.

Why do so many distinguished scientists take Dark Energy seriously? It is because they can see no other way past the conundrum that they have themselves created out of whole cloth. They are all trained in quantum mechanics and dynamics but the implication to cosmogony of this, the most well-tested theory in all of science, is so anti-intuitive that they refuse to consider it. So, they go for a hypothesis that is even more anti-intuitive.

Well Stanley, NOW look at the fine mess that you've got us into!

* * * * *

In a future post I shall explain how the assumption that the Hubble constant is indeed a constant has helped get us all into this mess.

You can see which are the leaders of the herd by watching for the ones who are out front when the stampede changes direction. If we look for the leaders at the time when acceleration became popular and when Dark Energy was first proposed, we can tell who might really be responsible for this joke. Then, we might be able to tell better why this mistake has propagated so far for so long. The Science Citation Index might be useful for this. One of its features is a list of citations by scientists and how often that citation was cited by other scientists in their own papers. It is difficult for me to spend much time in libraries. But, I shall find out if the SCI is available online. In another future post, I shall report on my finding.

Dark Energy Debunked Still More

Re: Dark Energy Debunked

O.K. Suppose the expansion of the universe is accelerating against all previous hypotheses that it should be decelerating. How could it be?

Well, Dark Energy is one explanation. Dark Energy is supposed to act, physically and mathematically, like negative pressure. It is as if the universe was immersed in a big vacuum, except that it is already a vacuum. But, it may be what is called a "false vacuum" with many more quantum entities seething just below the level of detectability (without huge accelerators probing muon decay, that is).

The true vacuum would act on our false vacuum universe the same way that a vacuum would act on a balloon, and, as the membrane got thinner, it would weaken. This is because the tension or overall force had surpassed the elastic limit and the expansion rate of the balloon would therefore accelerate. The tension seems to have surpassed the elastic limit of our universe about 9 billion years ago, it is said.

But this is just analogy. It is meaningless if it does not lead to a testable result or deduction. We cannot apply a force to the universe as a whole nor to spacetime. We cannot stretch spacetime in an experimental apparatus.

Perhaps spacetime stretches naturally as a result of the expansion that has already gone before. Then, as the receding galaxies recede faster from one another depending on their distance, it constitutes increased stretching of spacetime. As a matter of fact, the relativistic redshift is said to result from a "stretching" of spacetime.

But, I am only restating my analogy in different words (dodging or begging the question). This is not experimental or observational proof.

We need to put spactime in a sort of tensiometer to stretch it until it deforms more rapidly or else breaks. We need to find a way to rip spacetime. And hope that we do not tear a hole in the universe that will swallow us up!

This is all unproductive speculation. It would be more productive to follow the lead that this Dark Energy conclusion, reached by reductio ad absurdum, has given us. Carrying an argument to its extreme this way, to the point where an absurd contradiction occurs, is a standard method of proving logical falsehood.

Dark Energy proves itself false.

Let's work on this!

Then the calculations that indicate that the theoretic prevalence of heavier nuclei in the early universe are wrong, and the premises leading to this conclusion of too few heavy nuclei, need to be revised. Furthermore, the premises behind the interpretations of observations of too little "grey dust" that is made of such heavy nuclei (Be, B, C, N and O with traces of Mg, Al and Si) must also be wrong. There is a goldmine of research opportunity here!

Yes, scientists have made an 180 on the deceleration/acceleration trajectory of their thinking. And, yes, there could indeed be 1,000 million big bangs and other even weirder local parcels in a truly infinite universe. So, what is so special about it, even if our packet of the universe's expansion rate is accelerating. Who gives a rat's ass?

Well, we do, because we are here. And we do indeed live in a universe that just happens to have physical constants that support its existence and the existence of intelligent life. Presuming that we are indeed intelligent, that is. So, it matters to us because such conundrums fascinate. The irony is irresistible.

Another explanation of accelerating expansion is that spacetime is exploding. The negative pressure that shows up in relativistical equations is itself only relative. From the outside, looking in - even with an explosion - the pressure is negative. Just as energy is negative if it is released from the inside to the outside. The result is the same as before.

Except it is more like the original "phase change" that the "false vacuum" underwent at the time of the Big Bang. When water begins to boil, the expanding bubble drinks in more vapor at an accelerating rate because its surface area is increasing so rapidly that it ensnares more and more liquid, allowing it to turn into vapor. The false vacuum returns to its ground state, the true vacuum state, releasing energy that goes to accelerate the expansion rate. The bubble of spacetime that is our universe increases in size at an exponentially increasing rate, like a bubble of steam that grows larger so fast that it almost explodes out of the tea kettle.

These two scenarios are called the "quintessence" hypothesis and the "cosmological constant" hypothesis, respectively. Not only do we have to prove Dark Energy exists, but we have to distinguish between these two alternatives!

It would be much simpler to suppose that the premises underlying theoretical calculations and observational interpretations about the disparity between luminosity distances and redshift distances to far off type 1a supernovae are wrong.

Another alternative would be that the universe is growing. Spacetime may be reproducing itself and it is doing so at the usual exponentially increasing rate typical of a population of living organisms. The spacetime population underwent an initial accelerating increase initially (the BB), slowed down when waste products (like neutrinos) accumulated and sped up again when the volume increased sufficiently (and neutrino density decreased enough) for a new growth spurt to begin. Perhaps the conclusion should be, from this if it is true, that the universe is alive!

Gary Kent

Inflationary Quantum Hot Big Bang

So many people believe the Hot Big Bang hypothesis (HBB) because there is an overwhelming amount of incontestable evidence in its favor. There will be Nobel Prizes for some investigators who were most responsible for its discovery and proof.

Those who disbelieve and diss the work that has already lead to its acceptance by the vast majority of physical scientists continually demonstrate, they truly prove well beyond any reasonable doubt, nothing more than their own ignorance!

There are at least three utterly independent lines of logic that support the Hot Big Bang hypothesis of cosmogenesis. The first is measurements of cosmic distances by redshifts, by relativistic redshifts, no less, by the way. The second is measurement of cosmological distances by means of luminosity.

If the speed of light is not constant, the only plausible objection to the redshift conclusion put forth so far, then the luminosity data acts to back the same argument. If luminosity somehow gets disqualified, the redshifts take up the burden. One has to debunk BOTH simultaneously to have a hope of knocking the HBB off its pedestal.

But wait! There is the data from at least three separate probes of the cosmic microwave background. This huge data set also suppports the HBB hypothesis. Furthermore, the very existence of the cosmic microwave background is near perfect proof of the HBB hypothesis all by itself!

There is not the chance of a snow storm in Hades to cross-off all three lines of reasoning without self-contradiction.

Specially designed spectrometers are used to measure redshifts. They may use electronics or photographic film and involve the use of prisms or diffraction gratings. They depend on measurements of wavelength.

But, on the other hand, light intensity for photometric luminosity measurements can be done with a simple photocell or it may use photographic film or light sensitive transistor sensors. The latter are arrays of a particular kind of light sensitive Charge Coupled transistor logic gate assembled as a single Device on a small silicon crystal wafer or "chip" - CCDs. The relative brightness of identifiably defined bright stars or galaxies is used to calibrate the method. It is completely independent of wavelength.

These three approaches each have interferences and weaknesses that have to be accounted for. But, they result in measurements that have been subjected to mathematical, rigorous statistical error analysis which tells the investigator how good her data is and how reliable her conclusions from it may be. This depends on an accurate assessment of where there may be certain kinds of error or inaccuracy in the data. Taken one step at a time, however, this is not so very difficult to do.

In the physical sciences, measurements that are within 95% confidence limits are the norm. This means that all subsequent measurements done in the same way will be likely to give results that deviate very far from the average only 5% of the time. Confidence limits of 98% are common.

But outright interferences are another matter. These much degrade the reliability of many astrophysical measurements. But, investigators are certain that they have identified all potential killer interferences. It would be the near impossible task of detractors to somehow reinstate them for all three lines of argument. This too must be done without self-contradiction.

But, of course, they do not do this. Instead, they rely on specious and hairbrained substitute hypotheses of their own. They prove nothing at all except the naysayers' total ignorance of the true nature and proper practical application of the scientific method.

Either kind of distance measurement results in descriptions of both nearby and very distant galaxies as receding from one another at a rather constant rate. Edwin Hubble was the first to reason that one may extrapolate from this apparently constant recession rate, called H naught or H subscript zero, to earlier times when the galaxies must have been much closer together.

But, Fred Hoyle hypothesized that this could be happening in a universe that constantly renews itself by the steady formation of new stars and galaxies through quantum fluctuations that produce new hydrogen atoms. This is called the Steady State Hypothesis (SSH).

The only real alternative, so far, to the SSH, is the HBB. This hypothesizes that by extrapolating backward in time far enough, the galaxies would have had to spring from an apparently infinitely dense, infinitely hot, single point, a singularity. We cannot comprehend what this means so, philosophically it is undesirable.

The sudden appearance of the universe as a single, ultradense point of some kind of quantum hybrid between matter and light (which would have had to be more like light) resulted in what is the misnomer of the "Hot Big Bang". This hypothetical HBB is NOT an explosion. It is the appearance of a bubble of matter/energy in a pure vacuum of spacetime somewhat similar to the phase change that occurs when water boils to form bubbles of steam.

It is quite well established that a "pure" vacuum is anything but empty. Quantum mechanics is the best, most fully validated principle or set of principles in all of science. Experiments are going on all the time in hundreds of laboratories all around the world that have yet to find any discrepancy. We are constantly learning new things about it, however.

Because of the spectacular success of quantum mechanics, it is quite plausible that the universe resulted from a quantum fluctuation in an otherwise empty vacuum of spacetime. This notion has further implications too. For instance, formation of a long lived virtual particle means production by a high energy state vacuum called a "false vacuum". Virtual particles are ordinarily produced in particle/antiparticle pairs that self-annihilate almost immediately. The main way that virtual particles produce real particles that last a substantially long time is by means of their location very very near the event horizon of a black hole. This implies that the observable universe may be part of a much larger polydimensional surface of an even larger black hole that is undergoing expansion.

The potential observation of some sort of direct evidence for this could help solve the problem of missing mass without invoking dark energy. The data seem to imply that the total mass inventory of the full universe may be many times the experimentally verified mass inventory for the observable universe.

By the way, Fred Hoyle's SSH has been shown to be false. For one thing, the power law or energy distribution that the CMB would have to follow would be all wrong.

There is a much higher probability that a "particle" or matter/energy bubble will appear by quantum fluctuation in a very very high energy state than at a lower one by mere statistical chance. So, it is plausible that the universe began in such an extremely energetic condition that it enclosed the stupendous quantity of matter/energy that we see today.

Quantum particles are often characterizable as single points whose exact location cannot be well known. Still, they are describable as points. Statistically, this is not a problem. But, we have only one universe to study. It is mathematically incorrect to apply probabilistic principles to individual events. So, we have a subtle philosophical problem here.

Nonetheless, I think that the HBB has a lot going for it and Alan Guth has solved the most serious objections to the idea with his inflationary universe scenario. Philosophically, the inflationary HBB is now the most tenable scenario of cosmogenesis.

The universe did not have to arise from an infinitely dense and energetic origin, only from an exceedingly high and intense one. There is no objection from a religious perspective either.

Cosmogony and cosmogenesis cannot be discussed adequately and our brothers' question cannot be answered fully unless we include a word about philosophy and the religious perspective on this question. Only an intolerant atheist would disagree.

This thread cannot and should not be restricted to atheists!

God said (it was written into the nature of spacetime) "Let there be light!". And there was light. Or a light-like "stuff" that begat the whole rest of creation. It is written that God spoke. His Word was His Son and vice versa, as St. John declared. We share in the nature of the Son of God, therefore in the nature of God Himself.

We are Responsible, as God is Responsible for the existence of spacetime and for the existence of existence itself. Some philosophical concepts can indeed be referred to themselves, after all.

This is the real metaphorical significance of Jesus' whole message! You can indeed believe in theistic evolution of both life and the universe itself. Christians have nothing to fear from modern science as long as they keep an open mind.

http://neocosmology.blogspot.com/

http://neochristianity.blogspot.com/

http://hometown.aol.com/nuchristianrabbi/

http://www.luckyboyproductions.org/ Available May, 2007.

I hope that it may be judged that this comment has enough "redeeming social and intellectual importance" that these citations to my websites may be forgiven. They are not advertisements. I do not sell anything.

Gary Kent