Well, Thanatos is partially correct. I understand neither plasma cosmology nor it's more accepted alternatives to be considered a voice of authority but rest assured that I do endeavour to understand as far as I am able. Inevitably, given that my interpretations of the 'truth' is always based on imperfect knowledge of an incomplete set of facts, I may well post comments that the senior members will quickly see are flawed.

I trust they will set me straight on such matters, rather than simply tell me there is something I do not understand. I am already well aware that there is still much I am ignorant about.

'Demonstrate their relative ignorance by exposing flaws in their arguments, don't say 'Puh! This chap does not possess a PhD so everything he says is bunk!' (such statements conveniently ignore the amount of 'truths' held by scientists of great repute, later proven to be wrong. See: The Sun is made of iron).

You've lost me here - can you clarify please?'

Sure.

It seems to me that when a person seeks to debunk the opposing theories held by another person who is deemed 'not suitably qualified', the implication is that the opinion of a person who IS suitably qualified can be trusted. But if we look at examples from the past, we find situations where the most respected scientists in the relevant fields held fast to truths that are now known to be rubbish. The 'iron sun' refers to the old story of Cynthia Payne who dared to suggest the sun was 90% hydrogen at a time when the community agreed it was 66% iron. Payne's view was clearly fringe at the time and roundly dismisssed, but has since become the accepted fact for the astrophysics community.

It should be pointed out, in all fairness, that Payne's theory was eventually accepted thanks to the immense amount of quantitive analysis that she and independent teams brought to bare on the 'hydrogen' theory. I do not believe Wal Thornhill (for example) has ever provided anything close to such a compelling set of data with which to back up his hypothesis.

'If it can be convincingly demonstrated that the approach, methods, and techniques of a proponent of an ATM idea are seriously flawed, with respect to generally accepted principles of the modern sciences of astrophysics, cosmology, and space science, yet the proponent refuses to even acknowledge such flaws, then isn't it reasonable to summarise that proponent's approach as pseudoscience?'

Good point.

'11,008 abstracts, from the Astronomy part of ADS (Astrophysics Data System, "a NASA-funded project which maintains three bibliographic databases containing more than 5.0 million records: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Physics, and ArXiv e-prints"), published between 1990 and 2005 on MHD (the plasma theory for which Alfvén was (largely) awarded his Nobel Prize in 1970).

If plasma theory were neglected or (worse) ignored by mainstream astronomers, who wrote those >11k papers?'

Nice This is unarguable proof that there is no such conspiracy of silence. I stand corrected.

'BTW why would it have to be ALL of cosmology that refocuses its attention? I am pretty sure that while we were searching for the planet Vulcan (required to explain why Mercury's orbit deviated from the path predicted by the highly succesful Newtonian laws of gravity) the entire establishment was NOT refocused on writing a new law of gravity.

It was one bloke in a Swiss patent office, wasn't it?

I don't understand what you're trying to say here - can you clarify please?

Any plasma cosmologist is free to develop the theory of plasma cosmology in any way she sees fit.'

This was simply written to point out that the previous poster ('Couger') was perhaps being a bit 'overkill' by claiming I advocate 'effort to refocus all of cosmology to one man's particular bias'. Of course, the main focus of attention should be centred on the community that provide the requisite work needed to really establish a scientific theory and it is extremely difficult to prove that the PC/EU community have been doing this in any real sense. Having said that, though, I reserve the right to at least glance in that direction every now and then just in case the next Einstein has risen in the EU community.