The Cosmological Constant: a New Law

[infamous]

Hubble himself had always remained suspicious of the Doppler interpretation well into the 1950s.

Expansion is an illusion: I agree, but doubtful to is it that matter is shrinking or expanding, or that there exists more dimensions than are observable. Daydreaming is fine but one must separate what is imagination and what is real in science.

 

I totally agree coldc...., just thought it might be of interest to you. I don't believe it is good science to dismiss anything offhand. Every idea and vision of reality deserves the test of experimental scrutiny. If I can find this link again I'll post it for your examination.

[coldcreation]

I totally agree coldc...., just thought it might be of interest to you. I don't believe it is good science to dismiss anything offhand. Every idea and vision of reality deserves the test of experimental scrutiny. If I can find this link again I'll post it for your examination.

 

 

yes, please post it, i'd like to check it out.....

[infamous]

yes, please post it, i'd like to check it out.....

This is not the link that I originally found but it is of similar content: http://www.martinelli.org/rexpansion/rExpansion.htm

[Tormod]

Seems to me someone is so eager to kill the Big Bang theory here that they fail to see that it is indeed a theory which is alive and thriving well. To say that it died in 1997 is not true, and does not belong in a scientific forum. It has in no way been proven wrong. That the expansion of the universe has increased (or not) is a theory based on observation. There are many explanations for different redshifts, obviously.

 

Distance in the universe is not measured in meters, but in parsecs and lightyears. The diameter of the observable universe appears to be around 28 billion lightyears. That fits perfectly with the observation of the age of the universe, which is 13,7 billion years, give or take a few hundred thousand years. Why is this?

 

It is interesting to read posts where someone are able to write that science must be taken seriously, yet at the same time suggest that matter is shrinking rather than the universe expanding. From a philosophical I am sure it is an interesting excercise.

 

However, the strange post by cold creation above displays a surprising lack of application of the scientific method.

 

A) Why would discordant proportions of redshift kill the big bang theory?

Who said that inflation predicted a flat universe?

C) Who said that a non-flat universe could not expand?

D) Who said that the expansion of the universe cannot change?

 

It takes more to disprove a theory than a display of theatrics in a science forum.

[Little Bang]

infamous, I'm interested in that link, please show it.

[bumab]

Distance in the universe is not measured in meters, but in parsecs and lightyears. The diameter of the observable universe appears to be around 28 billion lightyears. That fits perfectly with the observation of the age of the universe, which is 13,7 billion years, give or take a few hundred thousand years. Why is this?

 

I thought the observable universe was actually around 38 billion light years due to expansion.

 

Still completely agree with the post thought, Tormod.

[Tormod]

I thought the observable universe was actually around 38 billion light years due to expansion.

 

Still completely agree with the post thought, Tormod.

 

The observable universe will be slightly smaller than twice the amount of years, ie 13,7 billion years x 2. The observable universe has only expanded at the speed of light, whereas the "rest" of the universe, ie the universe that was inflated during the Big Bang, may have expanded at any rate faster than that. There is a rate given for it somewhere. It is this rate that has been found to have increased, AFAIK.

[Little Bang]

Tormod, if you remember where you found this rate please post it.

[bumab]

The observable universe will be slightly smaller than twice the amount of years, ie 13,7 billion years x 2.

 

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=0009F0CA-C523-1213-852383414B7F0147&pageNumber=5&catID=2

 

The whole article is pretty interesting, but this page applies specifically to the topic of the size of the observable universe. They claim about 46 billion light years, I have heard in the 30's as well.

 

The article also addressed the topic of galaxies receeding faster then the speed of light (although they are not moving faster then the speed of light, of course). That expains the redshift in the CMB.

[Little Bang]

bumad, that article was enormously interesting. It kind of fits some of what we are discussing in [ A Thought Experiment. ]

[coldcreation]

I realize that the majority of physicists believe in some form of big bang origin. I do not. If there is no opposition to the doctrine then it risks running amok, as it has for some time now. Proof is the latest craze of new physics required to fix the problems (M-theory, string theory). (For those who do not know, new physics is untested physics, not bounded by any natural laws, in other words, it’s not physics yet). I did not invent the problems. They are well known and have been since the Belgian Priest (Abbé) George Lemaître (the Father of modern cosmology) brought the primeval atom to fame: the age problem, the flatness problem, the horizon problem, the galaxy formation problem, the monopole problem, the singularity problem, the antimatter problem, the entropy problem.

 

By making Genesis compatible with general relativity, Lemaître certainly succeeded in calming the dismay or threat caused to the Church by the developments in the cosmology department. But his mythical tragedy crucially lacks the inherent sense of reason found in, for example, the laws of thermodynamics. His primeval atom is broken by forces that can neither be fully understood nor overcome by rational prudence. Call it what you will: a cryptic malevolent, a hidden God, blind fate, or the brute fury of Chi.

 

And now the latest problems: there is no galaxy formation era visible where it was supposed to be in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field images. 95% of the universe is missing (70% of the universe must be made up of dark energy, 25% of dark matter, and 5% of known material). The expansion seems to be accelerating. The cosmological constant is calculated to be 120 orders of magnitude to high... “requirements seem bizarre, though. Some constant that is naturally enormous must be cut down by 120 orders of magnitude, but with such precision that today it has just the right value to account for the missing energy” (Caldwell and Steinhardt (2000)). That figure is the most grotesque blunder in the history of physics. The small thermal fluctuations (the observed isotropy) in the cosmic microwave background do not correspond to a universe predicted by the standard model (nor to inflation).

 

Those who believe in the hot big bang cold-dark-matter scenario have failed miserably over the years to solve these problems.

Inflation was designed to overcome the problems, but: the exponential expansion of a very early phase of the theory requires new physics. There is absolutely no guarantee that false vacuum can exist in nature. On the contrary. All the evidence shows that a false vacuum is impossible.

 

The supposed accelerating expansion is a much more problematic than one may think. The massive vacuum energy required to drive a universe to expand faster than gravity can slow it down simply does not exist. Real vacuum energy it is very small. It is called zero point energy ZPE, or ground energy. ZPE gravitates just like other mass-energy. The new cosmological constant will not work It’s so ugly it repels itself.

 

Tormod writes of the big bang expansion, “the theory is alive and thriving.” That depends on belief. Halton Arp, Fred Hoyle and many others have pointed out alternative views.

 

Recall that Einstein’s cosmological constant (lambda) was introduced to stabilize the universe. Bringing it back far from excludes the possibility that Einstein had not introduced it for the right reason. I will soon show that Einstein had not been mistaken, that there is a mechanism responsible for generating equilibrium called lambda and it is a universal constant directly attached to the gravitational interaction, ie., there is an identifiable physical mechanism responsible for spacetime curvature (gravity). Without lambda it will be difficult, if not impossible, to identify. There is no new physics involved, no expansion, no contraction, no shrinking matter, no expanding bladder and no kooky energy.

 

The standard interpretation of lambda as a repulsive force of the vacuum is erroneous. Even if that interpretation were correct there is no law of nature that describes what is acting, what is repulsive, what kind of force it is; antigravity, kooky energy, dark energy or some unknown 5th force of nature. General relativity is the theory of choice for elucidating this problem. There is a solution.

 

To say that the big bang is dead belongs in a scientific forum. Recall a previous quote by S. Hawking: here it is again: “The new inflationary model was a good attempt to explain why the universe is the way it is. However I and several other people showed that, at least in its original form, it predicted much greater variations in the temperature of the microwave background radiation than are observed. Latter work also cast doubt on whether there could be a phase transition in the very early universe of the kind required. In my personal opinion, the new inflationary model is now dead as a scientific theory, although a lot of people do not seem to have heard of its demise and are still writing papers as if it were viable.” (Hawking, 1988, p. 132)

 

He launches His attacks from an observational stance by introducing natural elements (the CMB, the Doppler redshift) and references within the mainstream language of modern cosmology, e.g., with words like doubt, dead, demise. I have many examples where this language is used between quasi-steady state cosmology camps and big bangers, and sometimes even, as above, where Hawking uses doubt, dead and demise with reference to the inflation theory, within the same camp. It is because of belief in the big bang that it hurts when someone says it’s dead. One should remain open to the possibility that the big bang is a monumental error.

 

But I am here to discuss physics, not new physics.

 

Tormod’s calculation about the age of the visible universe is mistaken. Permit me the pointing out of the fact that the observable universe is not 28 billion light years across. The furthest objects visible are at about redshift 0.7 corresponding to a distance (when absolute magnitudes and other factors, distance measuring techniques are taken into account) of less than 10 billion light years. Thus the calculation was 8 billion years over generous. He equated the visible universe with the age of the universe (as if it popped into existence one day). According to his logic we should not only see the galaxy formation era (the redshift desert), but we should see the first light emitted after t = 0, the ‘decoupling era’ where the universe becomes transparent as photons and baryons decouple, and the atoms from hydrogen to lithium are thought to have been formed (the chemical era and cooling sequence). What follows also from Tormod’s statement is this: It is a remarkable coincidence that the age of the universe corresponds with the distance to the horizon. Meaning, that if the universe was only 5 billion years old we would see 5 billion light years into the look-back time. Or if the universe were 30 billion years old, we would see objects 30 billion light years away.

 

I have news for all: the universe has no age (the objects inside it do). Spacetime is infinite is all directions, both towards minus infinity and in the direction of the arrow of time. There is no boundary, or singularity of spacetime anywhere in the universe. Do not buy, either, the spherical universe idea. It creates the distasteful paradox that spacetime coils around on itself, and so it is infinite like the surface of the earth. If that were the case, here is a thought experiment you can rate with 5 stars. Two astronauts leave earth traveling in opposites directions, at ultra-relativistic velocities (faster than the speed of light), so they’re going back in time to t = 0, to the big bang. What happens? I’ll save you the contorsionnismo estremo. They bang into each other: good day...

 

In our experimentum crucis, two observers set out in opposite directions. But that was for economic reasons only, we could have imagined ten, twenty or a thousand observers traveling in different directions away from Earth, in strait (geodesic) lines, the result will be the same. In fact, it doesn’t even make a difference from which galaxy or what moment in time the space travel began. The rational of such a doctrine sufficiently impeaches the sense upon which it is founded.

 

 

Tormod writes:

 

A) Why would discordant proportions of redshift kill the big bang theory?

Who said that inflation predicted a flat universe?

C) Who said that a non-flat universe could not expand?

D) Who said that the expansion of the universe cannot change?

 

Here is my response:

 

A) Discordant redshifts show that the universe is not expanding. Discordant redshifts confirm that a Doppler effect in non-operational, they indicate that galaxies do not lie at the distance that would be expected according to the Hubble law. The skeptics say that these are chance association and that the objects in question just look as if they were connected because they are in the same line of sight. This type of argument would have passed if few associations had been discovered, but the empirical evidence shows large quantities of associated aggregates. Halton Arp has calculated the probabilities of chance associations for every group of connected bodies. (see Arp below for reference).

 

:cup: Alan H. Guth (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Paul Steinhardt (Princeton University) the inventors of inflation predict a flat universe see The New Physics 1989 p. 48

 

C) No one said that. I wrote that if the cosmological constant is a fundamental constant of nature attached to a new law of physics, described by the Cold Creation theory, the universe cannot expand, space can’t expand. I have not yet written the value of lambda, and have not yet stated the law.

 

D) The standard model had never predicted a universe that accelerates as it expands. The search was on for the deceleration parameter. See Friedmann models. Recall that Einstein formally abandoned lambda in 1932 after having reviewed the theoretical work of Friedmann and the experimental discoveries of Hubble. This was when the idea of an initial explosion began raising its ugly head. It is a sweet paradox today that Einstein’s greatest blunder resurfaces, even with its new pretext.

 

Application of the scientific method to me means looking at the evidence, both observational and experimental, then coming up with solutions that do not require new physics (e.g., 21 dimensions, false vacua, etc. etc). To date, the big bang BB backs its claims with, Doppler redshift (but there is one other viable interpretation, and I have leaked that info above), the cosmic microwave background radiation (but all cosmological theories predict a blackbody residual thermal radiation. By the way BB cosmology originally predicted 20 K (Gamow I believe, that reference can be located easily). The theory should follow from the laws, not the inverse.

 

If everyone always agreed on things, life would not be as interesting, and neither would science forums. I feel that as a non-believer I can bring something essential to the discourse of cosmology, and nature in general; especially in a science forum, where new comers and physics students alike should be made aware that there are many hurdles before a definitive decision can be made as to the viability of the big bang model. Certainly we need a standard model against which observations can be tested. So far, in my opinion, the big bang along with inflation, new inflation, new new inflation, eternal inflation, chaotic inflation have failed. And therefore they are dead scientific theories.

 

Tormod wrote of the big bang expansion as many others do, “It has in no way been proven wrong.” I disagree. It has in no way been proven correct beyond a reasonable doubt. Proof is founded on more than just interpretations. So far that’s all there is for the cosmological redshift (interpreted as Doppler shifts), the CMB origin, and the abundance of the light elements. These observed phenomena carry with them each other viable explanations, and can be found in the pertinent literature: see references below, particularly Arp, Hoyle and Burbidge.

 

Cold Creation is a theory quite consciously turned away from the modernist stance, it is turned towards a contemporary science based on the observation of nature in the hope of developing a more accessible, popular kind of model that represents the true history of the universe.

 

The Cold Creation interpretation of lambda is not merely a contemporary conceptual phenomenon elevated to an idea, it is a more complete description of nature as first expressed by Einstein in connection with gravitational stability.

 

A thread will open soon called Cold Creation: the theory

In it, will be listed the entire foundation upon which the ultimate theory is based (you will not have to pay 37 Euros for it).

 

 

A.M. Coldcreation

 

 

References:

 

Arp, H. 1987, Redshifts and Controversies

 

Arp, H. 1998, Seeing Red, Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science

 

Burbidge, G., Hoyle, F. 1998, ApJ, 509 L1-L3

 

Caldwell, R.R, Steinhardt, P.J., 2000, Quintessence, feynman.princeton.edu/~steinh/ http://www.dartmouth.edu/artsci/physics/faculty/Caldwell.html

 

Eddington, A. 1921, Space Time and Gravitation

 

Eddington, A. 1936, Relativity Theory of Protons and Electrons

 

Eddington, A. 1958, The Expanding Universe

 

Eicher, D.J., Olson, S., Wiley, Jr. J.P., Graham, D. 1999, May, Astronomy

 

Einstein, A. 1916, 1961, Relativity, The Special and the General Theory

 

Einstein, A. 1954, 1982, Ideas and Opinions, Three Rivers Press, New York

 

Einstein, A., Infeld, L. 1938, 1961, The Evolution of Physics, The Growth of Ideas from Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta

 

Einstein, A., Adler, R., Bazin, M., Schiffer, M. 1965, Introduction to General Relativity 356-394

 

Ellis, G.F.R. 1975, Cosmology and Verifiability 245-263

 

Ellis, G.F.R. 1977, Is the Universe Expanding?, General Relativity and Gravitation, Vol. 9, No. 2 (1978), pp. 87-94

 

Ellis, R.S., 2004, Sky and Telescope – Hunting for the Very First Galaxies, http;//skyandtelescope.com

 

Ginzberg, V.L. 1975, Does Astronomy Need ‘New Physics’? Q. Jl R. Astr. Soc. (1975) 16, 265-281

 

Goldsmith, D. 2000, The Runaway Universe, The Race to Find the Future of the Cosmos

 

Goldhaber, G., Perlmutter, S. 1998, Physics Reports-Review Section Letters 307 (1-4): 325-331, Dec. 1998

 

Goldsmith, D. 2000, The Runaway Universe, The Race to Find the Future of the Cosmos

 

Guth, A., The New Physics 1989 p. 48

 

Hawking, S.W. 1988, A Brief History of Time, From the Big Bang to Black Holes

 

Hoyle, F. 1994, 1997, Home is Where the Wind Blows 399-423

 

Hoyle, F. 1955, Frontiers of Astronomy 280-313

 

Hubble, E. 1929, A Relation Between Distance and Radial Velocity Among Extra-Galactic Nebula, From Field, G.B., Arp, H., Bahcall, J.M. 1973, The Redshift Controversy 173

 

Hubble, E. 1936, The Realm of the Nebula 108-201

 

Krauss, L. 2000, Quintessence, The Mystery of Missing Mass in the Universe

 

Livio, M. 2000, The Accelerating Universe, Infinite Expansion, the Cosmological Constant, and the Beauty of the Cosmos

 

Mukohyama, S., Randall, L., 2003, published 2004, Dynamical Approach to the Cosmological Constant, Physical Review Letters, Volume 92, Nº 21 week ending 28 May 2004

 

Pais, A. 1982, ‘Subtle is the Lord…’ The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein

 

Prigogine, I., 1996, The End of Certainty, Time Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature

 

Reiss, A.G., Filippenko, A.V., et al, 1998, Astrological Journal, 116: 1009-1038, 1998 September "Observational Evidence from Supernova for an Accelerating Universe and Cosmological Constant."

 

Sandage, A.R. 1993, The Deep Universe, Saas-Fee Advanced Course 23, Lecture Notes 1993, Swiss Society for Astrophysics and Astronomy

 

Steinhardt, P.J., A Brief Introduction to the Ekpyrotic Universe, http://wwwphy.princeton.edu/~steinh/npr/

 

 

 

For your information: The ugly conundrum is best summarized in the language extracted from a passage of The Accelerating Universe by Mario Livio, written in a clean, forthright, propulsive style:

 

“What exasperates the situation is the fact that…the most natural value theoretically expected for the contribution of the vacuum energy to omega is about 10123, while the measured value appears to be 0.6 to 0.7. Thus apparently by some mysterious process, the contribution of the virtual particles of the vacuum has been striped from its most natural value to 123 decimal places, leaving only the 124th place intact…thereby violating a basic requirement for beauty…in principle, the situation could be much worse than we think. Within the errors that are still possible in the values of the different contributions to omega, it could be that those contributions add up (God forbid!) to an omega (total) of 0.9 or 1.1, rather than 1.0. If this were the case, then even the most basic prediction of inflation in its simplest form would be jeopardized. I will ignore here such horrifying possibilities, simply hoping that nature has some mercy on us in our attempts to understand it…It is therefore not impossible that the prejudices against a dominant contribution by the cosmological constant merely reflects our present ignorance concerning where the ultimate theory is going to lead us…What does it all mean? Is it possible that we have come all this way, where in every step along the path our belief in the beauty of the universe has only been strengthened, to see it all collapse at the very end?” (Livio 2000, p. 192, 194, 195, see the full reference above)

 

In a standard expanding universe, every newly created cubic centimeter of space emerges with an equal quantity of energy. On the other hand, a universe dominated by some mysterious form of energy (whether it be quintessence or L) has the capability of continually producing new energy from literally nothing (Goldsmith 2000). Each new cubic centimeter emerges with more energy than preceding. Donald Goldsmith, in his ouvrage The Runaway Universe, shows symptoms of the same sanguinity held in the prose of Livio and Krauss.

 

“Only when we have satisfied ourselves that a nonzero cosmological constant offers by far the most coherent way to interpret the observational facts should we embrace the concept of the runaway universe. Even then, we must remain aware that new data and new interpretations may soon appear, causing us once again to question the framework within which we conceive the cosmos.” (Goldsmith, 2000, p. 5-6)

 

After a hawkish explanation of how a universe with a cosmological constant gives birth to “new space” (and new energy) from “literally nothing,” Goldsmith adds, without reinventing the wheelchair himself:

 

“It seems clear from his later discussions, however, that for several years Einstein believed in a nonzero cosmological constant, a hitherto-unknown aspect of space with the near-magical property of hiding energy, capable of explaining why the universe is neither expanding nor contracting. How utterly wrong he was, and yet how right—in a way—he nevertheless proved to be!” (p. 12)

 

 

From Cold Creation

[Little Bang]

Question coldc, do virtual particles appear every where in the universe and if so do they also appear inside the earth or even my body?

[Tormod]

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=0009F0CA-C523-1213-852383414B7F0147&pageNumber=5&catID=2

 

The whole article is pretty interesting, but this page applies specifically to the topic of the size of the observable universe. They claim about 46 billion light years, I have heard in the 30's as well.

 

The article also addressed the topic of galaxies receeding faster then the speed of light (although they are not moving faster then the speed of light, of course). That expains the redshift in the CMB.

 

Ah yes, I forgot to incorporate the expansion of the universe into the expansion of the observable universe. My bad.

[Tormod]

I realize that the majority of physicists believe in some form of big bang origin. I do not.

...

So far, in my opinion, the big bang along with inflation, new inflation, new new inflation, eternal inflation, chaotic inflation have failed. And therefore they are dead scientific theories.

 

So they are dead because you disagree with them, and because scientists are discussing alternatives. That is slightly different that saying the theory has been dead since 1997, coldc. A theory that is being discussed cannot be dead. This may be retorics from you but I think we should look beyond mere semantics. The hot big bang theory is not dead because of the observation of accelerated expansion.

 

For the record: You are of course free to write that a theory is dead. I went a bit far in saying that it does not belong in a science forum.

 

Tormod wrote of the big bang expansion as many others do, “It has in no way been proven wrong.” I disagree. It has in no way been proven correct beyond a reasonable doubt. Proof is founded on more than just interpretations.

 

I did not write that it is correct. I also did not write that it is the only theory. I do however maintain that to date it is the mainstream theory that best describes what we observe.

 

It may be 100% wrong and I would be very happy to see the day when someone can prove that. Don't get me wrong: I welcome new ideas. What I don't like is to see people play martyr for their own views. There is no need imply that I meant this or that in order to make your own point.

 

My estimate of the size of the observable universe was admittedly wrong. That's what I get from posting late at night - sorry about providing false information. My apologies. From bumab's link it is however apparent that the size of the observable universe is much *larger* than what I suggested, not smaller as you suggest. Maybe you can elaborate on that.

 

I appreciate your long list of books (I have read about 1/3 of that list) but I would like to recommend two very good books in addition to your books.

 

The first is John Barrow, The Constants of Nature: From Alpha to Omega, 2002. Jonathan Cape, London and 2003 Pantheon NY. This book addresses the constants and discusses the changes in expansion as discovered by Paul Davies et al (including J. Barrow).

 

The other is Fred Adams and Greg Laughlin, "The Five Ages of the Universe: Inside the Physics of Eternity". 2000, Free Press. It is a marvellous and understandable book about where the universe came from and where it is heading. It is not a tour guide, but a book about various theories.

[Little Bang]

Tormod, maybe you could give me an answer?

[Tormod]

Tormod, maybe you could give me an answer?

 

Sorry, to what?

[Little Bang]

Reply # 46, do virtual particles appear every where in the universe and if so do they also appear inside the earth or even my body?