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What would you say if I told you.... (caution: some may find the contents of this post disconcerting)
Posted on: October 1, 2008 - 9:35am
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What would you say if I told you.... (caution: some may find the contents of this post disconcerting)
Theist badge qualifier : Gnostic/Philosophical Panentheist
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P.S. I haven't read the paper, only the abstract and some news articles on it, so I'm not, right now, trying to endorse the idea in any way by posting I just found it interesting.
Theist badge qualifier : Gnostic/Philosophical Panentheist
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But the universe doesn't have a center. Everything is receding from everything else, and local units (galaxies) are held together by gravity, which is stronger. It's like a giant raisin bread. From the perspective of every raisin, the expansion is receding from it, hence it is the center of expansion. But it is not. In a diverging vector field (I use the term "diverging" in a strictly technical sense to mean the closed flux density over an infinitesimal volume), for example, the same principle applies. There is no center of divergence.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
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Deludedgod said it better than me, but I'd like to take a try. I took issue with the first paragraph of the paper. I can't understand much of the technical jargon used, but I do understand the principle of redshift and other basic concepts. From our perspective distant objects appear to be redshifted because they are moving away from us, everything (the exception being what is local to us) is moving away from us. Only, however, because it is our perspective. We are the centre of our perspective and for that purpose the centre of everything, especially taking into account that from here we can see only some 13 billion light years away and what is beyond is invisible; we are the centre of our own sphere of vision. From any other possible point in the universe (unless very close to the 'edge'?) it would seem that you are at the centre. But there is no objective 'centre' of the universe if everything is moving away from everything else and largely doing so uniformly.
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
Where'd you find that quote DG, that's not in the original paper, or is it?
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No, it's from Krauss. He was discussing the same thing.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Yeah, actually if you read the the first page, Thomathy, you'll see they've noted that an observer will find themselves central to their field of observation. That, in particular, evidently isn't what challenges the copernican principle, I am gathering, rather, that the emptiness needs extend symmetrically a certain distance from the earth to account for the specific observation of accelerating expansion, inasmuch as our small part of the universe sits central to a particular time space condition marked out by a peculiar local emptiness.
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What I am really having trouble figuring out is if the objects that appear to have redshift appear so outside of the void or within it and how big the void is? (Does the void encompass visible space or is it relatively small and can we see beyond it and that's what makes distant objects appear to be accelerating away from us?)
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
So the "flux capasiter" is possible? All I need is a Dallorian, a couple bannana peals and beer cans?
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
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Well...the term "flux capacitor" doesn't really mean anything at all. The formal definition of "flux" is the rate of flow of a substance over a surface. This the generalized definition. The second specific definition refers to magnetic flux. The magnetic flux can be though of as the sum magnetic field strength in a region. Field strength can be visualized as the density of field lines, so magnetic flux over a region equates to the total amount of field lines in a certain specified region. A "capacitor" on the other hand, has to do with electric circuits. They're made out of parallel charged plates, which can store an electric field. A capacitor can store charge until necessary. In a circuit with a resistor, capacitors impede the flow of charge over time. As current flows, capacitors become more charged. As they become more charged, they oppose the flow of current more, until they act like a large resistor.
So, yeah, the makers of Back to the Future (terrible movie IMHO) just took two words which nobody knew the meaning of, and presto, magical ability to travel through time.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
"So, yeah, the makers of Back to the Future (terrible movie IMHO)" ~ DG
Umm, I thought it quite funny and entertianing, like the "Twilight Zone" etc, but yeah, I am still but a child, who will most certainly never grow up.
Anyhoot, thanks again Eloise and RRS, wow stuff ! My brain feels funny, Imfo overload.
Where am I ??? 
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The unit h^1.Mpc represents the distance scale, in Megaparsecs (divided by an error factor for Hubble's constant), of the best fit void for the model. So basically the paper is suggesting a bubble that has a magnitude in the scale of just under a Giga parsec (about 2.7 billion light years give or take factor of h^-1) pretty vast in terms of our order of magnitude, but on the scale of the universe a relatively ordinary sized percentage. Such a size would include the whole milky way and it's neighbouring galaxies.
Edit: I just noticed your other question about the location of the High z Supernovae referred to in relation to the void. Type Ia supernovas give useful distance measurements on scales greater than a billion ly (events that happened billions of years ago in galaxies far far away) and these have been observed at scales up to 11 Billion ly away from us so yeah, the High redshift supernovae referred to are outside the bubble.
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I just read through the article and had a brief look around the web, I admit I'm not qualified to debunk the work of an Astrophysics Prof at Oxford but,
This doesn't seemed to have been published in a peer reviewed journal.
This doesn't seem to have been peer reviewed at all.
I have never designed astronomical instruments but I did do basic physics, it seems like they are effectively trying to use refraction to create this 'void' but this would have been detectable given the number of instruments we have observing light from all over the universe. They have not actually bothered to collect any data from any telescopes to back up this hypothesis despite their being gargantuan amounts of data available to an astrophysics group at Oxford University.
So - No peer review, no research, no data. Just a hypothesis. With no evidence to support it and no attempt to even try and find evidence to support it.
Thank you critical thinking...
Well, it was published in Physical Review Letters volume 101 issue 13. Then it was submitted to arXiv a couple of days before Eloise started the thread. Subsequently, it has been cited in two further papers (which I don't have time to read right now). So yah, it has been refereed and published in a respectable source. It has been noticed by other people and commented on. Perhaps I will find the time to do more of a follow-up after work.
What I can note is that it is an entry in a developing field of science and it is really not all that earth shaking to find that scientists on the bleeding edge of research sometimes find confusing data that is not easily interpreted.
For example:
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0012222v1
Basically, they did the same thing except that they used AGNs for a candle. They pretty much confirmed that the Copernican principle holds at the largest scale.
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I'm pretty sure it was a joke, too. Just like "transparent aluminum" or "photon torpedo" in Star Trek.
Or, y'know ... "hydrogen economy". All sort of phrases to laugh at.
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fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
Making things up and the theory of large numbers: Transparent Alumina. (Yeah, not exactly the Trek fictional substance, but close enough for a smile.)
"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray
I find it quite funny when theists point to a seemingly possible, and I say seemingly, because when you peal their argument it is merely an apologetic attempt to prop up their myth.
There is a false gap argument that theists attempt in saying, "Look at this flaw", therefor my mythical fictional super hero fills in the gap.
The only thing that debunking something does is debunk it, in no way does debunking something through scientific method defalt to a naked assertion as being true. It merely means the data on that given claim was faulty.
God does not exist merely because you find a flaw in data. Thor didn't exist because people at the time didn't know what lightning actually was. Ra, the sun god believed by the ancient Egyptians for 3 thousand years, did not exist because humans didnt know what the sun was made of.
So I am not fooled by any stretch of a theist bringing up this perception issue in relationship of the unverse or it's mechanics of motion. To me it is nothing more than an attempt on the theists part to say, "Pay no attention to my myth behind the curtain".
It is the same pathetic backpeddling people have attempted in saying, "Energy cannot be created or distroyed, so therefor Jesus survived rigor mortis".
I am no scientific genious by any stretch, but I can smell a gap argument with a blindfold through a feild of skunks.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Is everything not still moving away from the singularity point of the big bang? Can astronomers map the expansion of the universe and find this point? Why would this point not be considered the center of divergence?
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Because it is not a point in space-time.
To put it another way, the observations indicate all that galaxies recede from each other such that we can extrapolate backwards to them having been very close together, but it doesn't really mean anything to ask where this point is located since it isn't really located anywhere. Galaxies are moving away from each other, not from some initial point in space time. It's the space time itself that expands.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Well, it would be a fairly trivial exercise to think of a model of the universe that works like that. However, the problem is that you stop there. In science, one does not simply think of something that “sounds about right”, one must then think further about what the consequences of that model imply.
Before getting on to that, I would like to observe that before the expansion of the universe was even thought of, it was already well established that cosmological thought requires one to consider a four dimensional model of the universe. So in any sense that you could perform that bit of mental gymnastics, the big bang would lie in the same direction as last Thursday.
Now, if we were to ignore General Relativity, as I suspect you are doing, the consequences of a three dimensional universe would have been obvious to astronomers by the late 1930's. Since your model really does not have a leg to stand on, I am not going to bother trying to work out the math but a very obvious feature that might show up in such a universe could be:
Gravitational slowing of the expansion of the universe from a finite initial speed. This would be a huge problem on many levels.
For one, Hubble's constant would be a variable that evolved with the age of the universe. That would produce an immediate and clearly obvious disruption in our measurement of the red shifts of distant galaxies. Even though I happen to be friendly with my local astronomer, I really doubt that I could talk him into telescope time to confirm that. That being said, the observations to confirm Hubble's constant would be trivial.
The visibility horizon of the universe would (probably) not be an issue. We might be able to see diametrically across the entire universe. Also, the big bang should appear as an infinitely bright point in some direction in the sky.
OK, let's stop right there as the visibility of the big bang is the death of your model. The basic fact is that we can “see” it via radio telescopes. Here is where your model completely falls apart:
The big bang is not some infinitely bright point somewhere in the sky. The fact is that what we do see is a uniform dull glow from everywhere in the sky. This is exactly what we would expect from a universe where General Relativity holds and is in fact, one of the confirmations of General relativity.
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LOL, Brian just for the record I'm not making any argument at all. Note the thread title (Asking, simply, for reactions, not conviction) and the second post I made where I openly disclaim endorsing any particular point of view here.
That said, I recognise that you aren't claiming any scientific expertise but are you aware of what the Copernican Principle states? Debunking it implies anthropic privilege which is disturbing just in itself, no need to insert a god in order to stir existential controversy there, that would be overkill.
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