Hey thanks for your reply. I have to admit, it was pretty much what I feared I would encounter on this forum: Requests for information that requires a greater understanding of this particular field of science than I possess.

So I am afraid I won't be able to answer all of your questions, and those I do will probably not be answered satisfactorily.

"But it is actually their oponents who believe certain observations reveal 'black holes' and it is they who come up with theories concerning a universe with 5 large dimensions of space contorted into a certain geometry (which does not look like our universe at all) in order to 'fix' the GR/QM violation problem".

'I have no idea what you are talking about here - could you clarify please?'

Well, as I understand it, any scenario in which information falls into a black hole never to be seen again is prohibited by quantum physics, but any scenario where information escapes from a black hole requires a violation of relativity.

The idea I referred to is the work of a physicist named Juan Maldacena. It is similar to the holographic universe theories posited by the likes of Susskind and Gerard 't Hooft. Malcadena's proposal is that a black hole (and everything else) has an alter ego existing on the boundary of the universe. Black hole evaporation corresponds to quantum particles interacting on this boundary. No information loss can occurr in a swarm of ordinary particles, and so there can be no information loss in a black hole.

'Specifically, which of the many different (kinds of) observations that point to 'black holes' as the best explanation do you feel are too weak to support the conclusion ("here be black holes")?'

Many? That is news to me. I was aware only of the outpourings of xrays from the centre of active galaxies (aka plasma focus) and stars orbiting seemingly empty patches of space (sometimes so close to the imagined black hole that they aught to have been pulled in). Perhaps you could explain what other supporting evidence there is?


'Perhaps the most serious criticism of 'plasma cosmology' is just what you have (apparently) lightly passed over here - the ability of any such 'cosmology' to match the relevant good observational results ... quantitatively.

Since you seem to have made this a claim, under the ATM rules, I am going to ask you, specifically and explicitly, to provide support for this claim'.

Here you highlight my main concern with the validity of EU (which is even more 'fringe' than PC, I understand). If I read an essay concerning some new discovery made by inflationary cosmology that is written in a language the layperson can understand, I can (should I wish) very quickly track down more technical papers that give the quantitive data required to really establish the worthiness of said discovery. But just try locating the hard data that backs up the claims made at Thunderbolts et al!

So I will play fair and suggest you all dismiss this claim as unsubstantiated. But, the thing is, every OTHER failed theory comes with an explanation as to WHY it failed which is a bit more detailed than 'not substantiated enough'. And, let's face it: Every theory was 'not substantiated enough' at some point in its life! I would be much happier with an explanation that details the catastrophic error of PC which shows it to be as much in error as geocentrism, the steady state theory, etc etc.

'So this really is more about the 'air-time' PC gets, not about how well it can account for the relevant astronomical observations!'

But why IS this hypothesis (I guess we cannot call it a theory if your 'lack of quantitive data' argument is correct) something that must NOT be mentioned even when it would seem that an article has touched upon a subject that is directly relevant. I admit I may have comitted a Thunderbolt's-style pattern-recognition trick, but surely it is not TOO silly to suppose there just might be a connection between 'plasma filaments across...vast tracts of space' and the transformation of energetic, high temperature material into current-carrying bundles that is characteristic of plasma at any scale?

'And if you would like to present a 'plasma cosmology' account (quantitative, of course) of any one of the following, then other BAUT members may judge for themselves just how well this idea actually fits the solid observational data:

* Olbers' paradox
* large-scale structure of the universe
* abundance of light nuclides (1H, 2H, 3He, 4He, ...)
* the CMB - near-perfect BB spectrum, dipole (including magnitude), angular power spectrum, polarisation, ...'

Can I PERSONALLY solve all these puzzles in accordance with plasma cosmology? No I cannot. But then, if you were to ask me to sit down and PERSONALLY arrive at a theory that provides a quantum physical description of gravity I could not do that, either. Of course, my PERSONAL lack of ability may not necessarily indicate that no such solutions exist.