Orion, you just find cranks right and left, don't you. This person has a lot of things to say that are right, but then says the following nonsense:

This is wrong, Orion. There is no "absolute" frame, only relative frame. We measure a difference from a clock on Earth. That's a difference from a frame on Earth. NOT an absolute frame. Where does this idea that this proves an absolute frame come from? It proves nothing! In one experiment, your velocity vector is pointing in one direction and in the other it's pointing in the other. You have to add the velocity of the Earth because that's the velocity WITH RESPECT TO the reference frame on the ground. It is simple. There is no absolute frame required.

So you see, Orion, you've just shown that the sources you are using are unreliable. Don't be tempted by the dark side!

No regrets! [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Orion38 on 2003-03-03 14:39 ]</font>

Orion38: "The name of the game is the Dayton Miller's Ether-Drift Experiments."

Yes, Miller's experiments, which were carried out over a long time period and involved numerous measurements, have been shown to be unreliable--his measured "aether drift" was, as I recall, easily explained by uncorrected temperature variations in his experimental setup: "In 1925 Dayton Miller announced that he had detected a change in velocity of the speed of light and was even awarded prizes for the discovery, but a 1950's appraisal of his work indicated that the most likely origin of his erroneous results lay with diurnal and seasonal variations in the temperature of his equipment." And in point of fact, other experimenters surpassed Miller's best accuracy within a few years, and found no aether drift.

That hasn't stopped people from looking again, though. Aether-drift experiments have continued right up through the 1990s, all giving null results. Every time a technological advance or clever technique for making a new and more accurate aether-drift experiment becomes possible, someone tries it. That's good!

If the name of the game is Dayton Miller, then the final score is: Miller loses. His aether drift was not there, his results have been explained and the source of his error identified, and experiments have confirmed the no-aether-drift result to accuracies which far surpass Miller. Brillet and Hall' work limited any aether drift to less than three parts in 10¹⁵, for instance, and Hils and Hall's experiments limited any aether drift to less than one part in 2*10¹³.

Frankly, citing long-outdated and well-disproven experiments like Miller's hurts one's argument more than it helps it. The only people who are taken by such references are those who know very little about the history and context of aether-drift experiments. To paraphrase, "When I hear Dayton Miller cited, I release the safety catch on my crank-detector."

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: DStahl on 2003-02-21 23:59 ]</font>

Orion is correct. I was using sarcasm. That was motivated by a sense of ironic humor as I read through those posts rather than an intention of poking fun at any individual (not to mention by that time on that night my sarcasm control sensor had gone off line after 3 hours of grading exams). I apologize if anyone was offended.

I do not advocate ether, but if we could jump ahead 100 years we might find that people of that time will view dark matter and dark energy much the same way that we view ether today. Thus the irony. Since this will probably get some of you in a tither let me give a somewhat lengthy explanation.

First, there is no question that there is plausible evidence for the Big Bang and it is therefore a scientifically viable theory. But step back for a moment and take an outsiders look at the model as it stands today. Seventy-three % dark energy, twenty-three % dark matter and only 4% for the rest of “us”. I found some of the earlier comments on this thread ironic because of the tenuous nature of the dark matter/dark energy “evidence”. I’m not talking about it from a “This is so strange its hard to believe” point of view.

Consider dark matter. Strictly speaking, there is absolutely no evidence as to the nature of dark matter - except that if it exists it is non-baryonic and perhaps evidence as to what it cannot be. So take another step back and ask what was the evidence for dark matter in the first place. The answer is galaxy rotation curves and cluster peculiar motions. But the flat rotation curves of some (not all are in fact flat) spiral galaxies are NOT evidence for dark matter. Rather they are evidence for a non-Keplerian motion in the outer disk of a spiral galaxy. Dark matter is the INFERRED cause.

Assuming that dark matter does exist, there are still numerous issues that must be addressed in forming galaxies with the aid of dark matter after the Big Bang. In fact some people advocate the warm dark matter models as an alternative to the cold dark matter. (eg. Sommer-Larsen recently proposed that warm dark matter might resolve the angular momentum and missing satellites problems that plague cold dark matter).

Turning to dark energy: Why do we need it? Well, because the microwave background is so smooth, we have the inflation hypothesis which ultimately requires that the universe be flat. Since visible matter does not sum up to a flat universe, dark matter was invoked in 80’s to make up the difference. But then it was demonstrated that the dark matter does not exist in the amounts needed to make the universe flat. So in the 90’s the cosmological constant became fashionable again. Now you have to be honest here – the cosmological constant is NOT a prediction of the Big Bang. It was on the backburner since Einstein dropped it. When dark matter failed the needs of the Big Bang, the cosmological constant was brought forward again.

There is evidence for dark energy in that it is now believed that expansion of the universe is accelerating – thanks to observations of Type Ia supernova at high z. But how much confidence must we place in that observational result? Rowan-Robinson (astro-ph/0201034) reanalyzed the high z supernova and concluded that the teams had underestimated extinction in the host galaxies. He also found that when you exclude the galaxies in the samples that had not been observed before maximum, the Mb-deltaM15 relation is weaker than stated.

There is evidence from low z supernova that the supernova distances must be taken with caution. The literature abounds with descriptions of “peculiar” type Ia supernova events. Then there is the case of NGC 2841. The Cepheid distance to the galaxy is 14 Mpc but the Type Ia supernova distance is ~23-24 Mpc. In terms of distance modulus this is a staggering difference of about 1 magnitude.

Finally, if you read the popular account of dark energy and quintessence given by Ostriker and Steinhardt in the recent Scientific American issue: “The once and future cosmos” you will see a multitude of if we assume this and possibly it could be that (supersymmetry, multiple dimensions, discussion of the fine tuning required by the cosmological constant …) statements all of which leave the impression that the reality of dark energy is not on the solid ground it seems to be on when it is pronounced that the universe is 73% dark energy and 23% dark matter with an age of 13.7 +/- 0.2 Gyrs, but rather its nature is still in the realm of scientific speculation (scientific added to stress that the work on the matter is being validly pursued).

So when I see a debate over old ether theories, I see the irony that dark matter and dark energy may be the “ether” of the future. If you take the approach that you are a juror and the Dark matter/Dark energy are the case being made by the prosecution, then you must admit that the criteria of beyond reasonable doubt has not yet been met. Alternatives to both are still possible. If the position is taken that these concepts cannot be disproven have we not left the realm of science and entered the realm of orthodoxy?




<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: dgruss23 on 2003-02-22 08:13 ]</font>

dgruss--

There is plenty of room for debate as to the absolute nature of dark matter and dark energy. I will comment on this later.

You may be right that in 100 years science will look back disapprovingly at dark matter and energy as we looked disapprovingly back at ether. I say, "Great!" Science should make progress forward. We are in the midst of a dark energy and dark matter debate and are trying to figure out the details. This is all very encouraging from the standpoint that there are unsolved problems in nature left for us to ponder. Otherwise how dull our existence would be!

Let's be clear... the difference between ether and dark matter/energy is that the former problem has been solved while the latter has not. We are spending a large portion of time trying to convince Orion that he's too accepting of quacks and cranks who advocate that "ether" still exists. We know that to be wrong and we have evidence. There is room for discussion about dark matter and dark energy, but for the most part it gets ignored by the anti-mainstream folks because these things are fairly model dependent... that is, the evidence that we're dealing with supports the Big Bang and standard hypotheses of science which "Against the Mainstreamers" don't buy.

Now, back to dark stuff...

You seem to think that the only observational evidence for Dark Matter is in rotational curves and velocity dispersions. Actually, now we have legion of other evidence as to the existence and nature of dark matter. First of all, cluster gas studies point to the existence of dark matter in the same amount as estimated by the rotational curves. This is an independent measurement that basically kicks MOND around. Futhermore, we have lensing studies which are even further removed. MOND cannot stand up against lensing that I can see. In any case, lensing and cluster gas temperatures give us more constraints on the nature of dark matter... and in the case of lensing, even gives us a decent mass-light correlation function.

Speaking of correlation functions, we can look at cosmological statistics to get at a decent model of the universe. To wit, if we look at clusters and galaxies and how they associate with each other and how bright they are, various cosmological parameters fall out of the mix. In particular, we find that the universe absolutely must contain a large component of nonbaryonic matter that had to freeze out of the cosmic mix early enough to allow structure formation. In effect, dark matter is something that is very hard to get rid of because evidence abounds from all scales and epochs. That they all point to this pivotal 23% number is amazing and should not be taken lightly. If "dark matter" isn't the solution to the problem, then there is definitely something that accounts for it all.

Dark Energy is a mystery beyond compare. We don't have decent models for it, but the cosmological models are so robust now that simply abandoning the idea cannot be done without offering an alternative. It's true that supernovae studies aren't complete now, but frankly, the systematic cannot be accounted for by an underestimation of extinction. The exact nature of the acceleration might be debated, but it's certain that the universe is not behaving as though it is matter dominated. The error bars are a good four sigma away from that. So, you may be upset that we have only model dependency (which is many, many observations) and supernovae studies as our background for the dark energy (actually, the early reionization gives us another interesting probe into dark energy too, but it hasn't been worked out to my satisfaction), but the phenomena is very real.

We still don't know what dark energy is, though.

Let's be clear as to how this is different from ether. Ether was a proposal that was made without observational evidence. Ether had to exist because light behaved as a wave and waves needed media to travel through. The false assumption was that waves needed media (we now know instead that waves are intimately related to particles). Could there be a false assumption in our studies of dark matter or dark energy? Possibly. But the difference remains that both dark matter and dark energy are observationally based theories that were not predicted by our "common sense" models. Ether was a "common sense" model that turned out to be wrong. Dark energy and matter are disturbing and horrific... John Bahcall called them offensive... to scientists, but the observations are too astounding to simply ignore.

JS,
1. the point where BB started is within the universe. u say, that nothing differs this point from any others.
yet we don't see the whole universe kuz of horizon. so perhaps that point is beneath the horizon with a special surrounding ??

2. BB xplosion would have created a spherical universe.
so why space-time is flat ??

You are AT the point where the Big Bang started. The whole universe at that time was concentrated in one point. Since then Spacetime has been growing, so now it looks a lot bigger than it did back then. However, if you rewound the clock, you would find that you wouldn't have to move one bit to find yourself at the "initial" point of the Big Bang.

"Flat" is a geometric term meaning, roughly, that if you draw a triangle the size of the universe the angles will add up to 180 degrees. In a "closed" universe the angles will add up to more than 180 degrees and in an open universe it will add up to less than 180 degrees. This "shape" of the universe has nothing to do with the fact that light has a finite speed in all directions which gives us the "spherical" universe model.

More about flat, open, and closed...

For a closed geometry in 4D, the 2D into 3D analogy is the surface of a sphere...

For an open one, the analogy is harder to picture as a hyperboloid... here's an Escher painting that does a good job...



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: JS Princeton on 2003-02-22 15:24 ]</font>

I APOLIGIZE FOR BEING SO LONG IN POSTING THIS FAR OUT OF SEQUENCE, BUT I SOMEHOW MISSED THIS THREAD AND HAVE BEEN AWAY FROM MY COMPUTER FOR AWHILE.

Mike Cyrek:

From my reading of JS Princeton's earlier posts, you seem to have had a problem with the meaning of the word, "Cosmogony", and have (to my knowledge) not yet looked it up. Therefore, to make your search easier, a definition of Cosmogony (from "The Facts on File Dictionary of Astronomy" by Valerie Illingsworth & John O. E. Clark, Fourth Edition) reads:

I hope this helps somewhat. This little dictionary is light and very easy to lift and juggle next to my keyboard, so I find it a dictionary of choice.

ljbrs [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_confused.gif[/img]

__________________
"There is in the universe neither center nor circumference." Giordano Bruno Born 1548. Torched 1600.

JS - thanks for your comments. I have a few additional thoughts/questions.

I have to admit - model dependency simply does not convince me. I'm one who wants to see the empirical evidence. This is my concern about dark energy. The supernova are the only tenuous empirical result supporting the existence of dark energy and I'm simply not convinced we can as of yet rely on the result. Look at figures 7 and 8 of Rowan-Robinson. He unquestionably demonstrates that a small false scatter is introduced into the Mb-delta m15 relation when supernova not observed before maximum are utilized. He points out that when you only use supernova observed before maximum the scatter is larger and the data are consistent with no MB-delta m15 relation. In fact, it might be asked what exactly the high z supernova teams are doing using the post maximum supernova in the first place?

If you combine that with the case of NGC 2841 and other cases of peculiar Type Ia supernova ... well, I'm just not ready to say that the empirical case for dark energy has been made.

The same can be said for dark matter in this sense ... I would argue (and please correct me if you have specific examples) that all the "evidence" for dark matter is model dependent in that traditionally Newtonian models are the context within which the evidence is interpreted. MOND ... I don't know what to think about that one. Conceptually, I find it intriguing, but NGC 2841 contradicts the model and Sanders (1996) stated it only takes one case to disprove the hypothesis.

The rotation curves and peculiar motions were the first evidence for dark matter. I am aware of the recent results with X-ray studies of cluster gas (for example) though admittedly less well versed in those lines of evidence. But again I look at the empirical results and what do we find:

Cold dark matter models face the angular momentum problem and the small satellites problem. The observed sizes of disks do not fit the models particularly well. The observed number of small satellites are in the same boat.

Then there is this one: Hipparcos data confirms that there is no appreciable dark matter in the disk (Creze et al 1998: A&A 329, 920; Holmberg&Flynn 2000: MNRAS 313, 209).

Quote:" We conclude that there is no compelling evidence for significant amounts of dark matter in the disc." Holmberg&Flynn

Quote: "The local dynamical density comes out as po=0.076+/- 0.015 solar masses per parsec-3 a value well below all previous determinations leaving no room for any disk shaped component of dark matter." Creze et al.

But in the March 2003 Scientific American we have this prelude to the explanation as to how neutralino's (which the author considers the most viable dark matter candidate)will be detected "Instead it (dark matter) continues to suffuse interstellar space like a gas. Our solar system is orbiting around the center of the galaxy at 220 kilometers per second, so we are pushing through this gas at quite a clip."

But the results cited above say we are not pushing through the dark matter because they indicate that it does not exist in the disk!

Perhaps you can understand my skepticism. If observations don't match theory, I'm looking at the theory as the source of the problem.

For me, the model dependency of the Big Bang is its greatest weakness (and to be fair its greatest strength if observational evidence eventually end up working out in its favor). Dark matter, Dark energy, inflation, are all concepts added to the model to keep it consistent with the observed nature of the microwave background.

Do you see the potential disaster here? The tight knitting of these add on hypotheses creates a very nice theoretical framework, but if the dark matter does not exist it collapses. If the supernova observations indicating acceleration are demonstrated to be invalid where does that leave the Big Bang? Most Big Bang theorists acknowledge that without inflation the microwave background cannot be explained (its smoothness).

To be completely frank, I do consider the Big Bang a scientifically viable exercise, but I think in the end it probably will not hold up. But I do have an open enough mind to discuss these issues from both inside the theory and outside the theory. I'm not interested in every alternative idea that comes along. Viable alternatives must be able to explain phenomenon that the Big Bang has difficulties with. Hence my interest in the dark matter/dark energy discussion -- it's an important test for any alternative to the Big Bang.

dgruss--- I wrote you an incredibly LONG reply, and as I hit send... well, you guessed it...

I'm going to try to reproduce it as well as I can, but I'm limited in time. So, I'm not going to do the point-by-point thing I did before... Instead I'm going to tell the story.

Skepticism about model-dependency is actually unwarranted in my opinion. This is because model dependency is based in observation. I'll demonstrate...

Here's the cosmic triangle:



As you can see, what we're looking at is not just a "model" and trying to fit our observations to the model, but we're looking at an INFINITE number of models and seeing where the universe tells us we should look for the answer. In effect, we take our obseravtions of the dynamical universe and fit them into a parameter space and see if we can get at an answer.

Right now, the three different tests of intersection come together at one area in the triangle (and the CMB swathe is actually much reduced by WMAP, and STILL goes through the same area).

What does this mean? It means that we have an OVER-DETERMINATION of the model. In other words, even if you didn't have supernovae, dark energy is still around... unless you can come up with a better way to explain the CMB, nucleosythesis of light elements, and the Hubble Flow that is consistent.

TO BE CONTINUED

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: JS Princeton on 2003-02-22 22:26 ]</font>

Supernovae --


You are right to be skeptical. I spent some time with Paul Steinhardt's cosmology class last semester and he also seems to indicate some skepticism. However, what we have to realize is that statistics are our friend.

An analogy can be made to the women at Harvard who first did spectral classifications of stars. They didn't get it perfectly right (thus we have the awkward alphabet soup sequence OBAFGKM), but they didn't have to. The statistics were such that the models fell out simply from looking at so many different objects. Supernovae surveys are the same thing. We have different "kinds" of Type 1A and they are close fitting in templates. We can do close, medium distance, and far away studies of these guys and we see that their classifications are basically consistent with the statistics we have. Do we want better stats? Of course! Stay tuned and see if SNAP flies.

Basically, H&H do present some problems of similar caliber to the problems with early spectral classifications of stars. We don't know what all the outliers are or how we should handle all these things. We don't know what causes them to have different luminosities. All we know is that they band together in different clumps and seem to be fairly robust against a lot of tinkering. If you put bizarre systematics in you can ruin everything, but that's just because we don't have a model. Right now, supernovae observations are completely empirical (and NOT model dependent at all). The reason there's a question why they work is because the theorists are scratching their heads. We don't know why there are all these classes, there just seems to be a lot of these classes. It's one of the more interesting problems in astrophysics today. I am somewhat confident, though, as the statistics get better that models will show up just as they did for stars for the women of Harvard. Of course, I can't see the future, but that's just my scientific optimism coming through.

As I said in my previous post, the Dark Energy has empirical evidence from CMB and from cluster parametrization as well. This shouldn't be hard to realize since the delicate dance that is our universe requires a certain amount of expansion and clumping to create structure and to STOP creating structure. Now that we're in an accelerating universe, we can say goodbye to creating more structure. This is why there is a decent relationship between lambda and the clusters whereas with the CMB the relationship is almost not there. Since the CMB is so early, lambda is a much smaller component and really doesn't have that much of an effect until you get to fairly large values when you end up screwing up recombination.

TO BE CONTINUED

DARK MATTER ---

Now, this guy's all observational. You mention rotation curves and velocity dispersions fine. You mention cluster gas (look into it, it's really good stuff). There are two more pieces of observational evidence, you epiricist you, that we should consider

1) structure... Again, back to the triangle. If we have structure, something needs to make it. That something has to be heavy, it has to be slow moving (so as to clump together under gravity) and it has to be accounted for in our model. What could it be? Well, it cannot be baryons because we know that baryon abundances are too low from nuclide abundances (specifically, deuterium). So that leaves us the CDM that is everybody's favorite. We know that the thing cannot be warm because then no structure. So we have this mystery "stuff" (should we call it stuff, even? After all, we've never discovered it) that allows you and me to be here by keeping galaxies together. Call it invisible hand of God, call it whatever you want! All we know is that it is something that has predictable character and shape...

which brings me to evidence number 2... lensing. This is beautiful because it doesn't rely on Newtonian gravity at all. It is strictly a GR-effect. Specifically, weak lensing studies should give us a pretty decent handle on the dark matter in the universe, but strong lensing has actually become statistically significant too. These are things that aren't model dependent at all because they are simply falling out of GR. What's great about lensing is not only do we get the masses of the lenses, we also get the profiles. This has given us a wealth of information to go back and look at simulations.

Which is where you turn to next. Surprisingly. Why does the lack of a model distress you? Aren't you the fan of EMPIRICAL evidence? Well, the MODELS don't exactly work right now, but that's to be expected. We have problems with cusps and such for CDM models that we have right now, but remember, we have no idea what this stuff IS. As we get a better handle on it, expect improvements.

As to the satellite studies, one thing you failed to mention is that we only have two data points (Milky Way and Andromeda) for this. Dwarf galaxies just are hard to find, even when they're in our neighborhood. It's still a problem, but we're not sure at all whether it's an observational problem or whether it's a model problem. It's probably a combination of both. After all, we don't know if we're an outlier, and we certainly don't know what Dark Matter is. It could be tunneling in from brane-dimension 90210 for all we know and completely solve the mystery of cusps and satellites.

The last thing you mention is the Dark Matter in the disk problem. Actually, Dark Matter in the disk was something of a nebulous result in any case. We're not sure whether we have a good handle on all the dust and ISM material in order to decide whether we see Dark Matter there or not. The Disk, however, is a small part of the halo, and as it also appears to be the part of the halo that has all the baryons and stuff we CAN see, you should expect there to be some controversy in measurements of stuff we CAN'T see. After all, the stuff has proven stubbornly elusive thus far. There are even models out there that posit an "exclusion" principle between the baryonic matter and the dark matter. Who knows what's right? Time will tell as stastistics and observations get better because it was ultimately OBSERVATIONS that gave us dark matter.

That's right, dark matter is an observational phenomenon. It's something that is causing gravity and we don't know why. This is perhaps what got MOND peeps all excited (though they continue to be plagued with problems with lensing and other issues). So, you see, being critical of models means you should be MORE supportive of dark matter, not less so.

TO BE CONTINUED.

Okay, now that I've resigned myself to just answering everything, I guess I'll quote you...

But, as you can see, it's really true that the THEORY doesn't match the observations because we are looking into the frontier. There are a whole slew of theories waiting to be explored, and that's what's exciting about science. Learn a little bit of theory (which requires a ridiculous amount of math) and come up with your own. Lots of people are doing it as we speak.

The cool thing about theories is that you can eliminate them. For example, certain inflation theories posit the existence of magnetic monopoles. We rule those out. For now... until we discover that the dark matter is made up of magnetic monopoles that are excluded from interacting with the baryons ( [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] see I just made up a theory!)

What you need to realize is that there isn't just "ONE" possibility, but literally an INFINITE number. More than likely what will come out of all this is something truly strange and bizarre, but that's why we struggle ahead. We USE the observations and push forward.

TO be blunt, the problem is not with the big bang... the problem is with the particulars. We haven't worked out the particulars.

But, I don't understand. The Big Bang is a model that's based on observation. To say otherwise is behaving like an ostrich with its head in the sand.

No, no, no... they're all observationally driven concepts. You've got it all backwards. We have dark matter because we OBSERVE its effects. Same for dark energy. And inflation.

It may look overly convenient and sly on the outside, but believe me these are pushed and pushed and pushed in everyway we can think of. That's the beauty of cosmology right now, the pushing and pushing has come up with, frankly, a universe that NO ONE in their right mind would have ever dreamed of. Now, is that a weakness? Maybe, but then again, no one in their right mind dreamed that the Earth went around the Sun. No one in their right mind dreamed that some of those fuzzy patches on the sky that had absorption lines in their spectra were whole other GALAXIES. No one ever believed that we could split the atom. Science is sometimes about pushing over your tried and true beliefs. It is my opinion that that's basically what keeps most of the Big Bang deniers from accepting the Big Bang, they don't care about the evidence, which is observational, rather they are afraid to challenge their own deepseated beliefs. Well, that's why they say people end up dying so the new theory can make way. (RIP Sir Fred [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_frown.gif[/img] )

When you criticize the "theory" of the Big Bang, it's all well and good because it's not the concrete observations that you are criticizing, but rather the IDEA. We exchange currency of ideas freely and so that doesn't mean much subtantively. To be skeptical about the Big Bang is convenenient because you don't have to address the myriad of observational evidences that point you toward it. Rather you simply say, "it must not be true" and try to poke holes or look for excuses around it. The same thing goes for creationists in evolution.

Therein lies the difference between the innovator and the dinosaur in my mind. The dinosaur says, "I believe in THIS and that's how it must be... now I will go and show why all of these other people are wrong." The innovator steps forward with an open minds and says, Sherlock Holmes-like, "when I eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth." Bang! Kepler's Laws! Bang! Evolution! Bang! Big Bang!

These, to me, are sort of "la de da" statements. It's kind of like saying, "If the sun is proved to go round the Earth, then where is heliocentricity?" Well, in the toilet, I suppose... but that's not how you do science, man! There is SOMETHING causing the Dark Matter phenomenon, there is EVIDENCE right now for Dark Energy, there is EVIDENCE for inflation. Now, if somebody comes forward and shows that supernovae are not behaving in the way we think they are, then we may have to move to another space on the cosmic triangle. Nothing is really in stone, at this point. We could have all sort of weirdness going on we never imagined. Sure, no inflation seems to screw up the CMB, but WE SEE THE CMB. It's there. It's not going away. You've GOT to be able to explain it. Now, if I tell you that I have a set of dynamical models of the universe and that something near a dozen different ways at determining the various particulars of which one in that set is the correct one agree, you're going to tell me that's a house of cards? That we're in danger of collapse? Well, if that's the case, then bring on the counter observation. Don't be shy, man! Do it. Be the Vera Rubin!

I have NO DOUBT that we will end up with a strange universe. But I would be quite surprised if we ended up with a univerese that wasn't expanding (which is really all the Big Bang is saying). The particulars are still fudgeable. WMAP makes it harder to dance around, but we're by no means done and finished with our endeavor in explaining and understanding the universe.

MORE IMPORTANTLY, vialbe alternatives must explain the phenomenon that the Big Bang deals with well.

Agreed. That's because the Big Bang explains these the best we've got. Find me another theory that has a parameter space like the one above that gives you agreement and we might talk. Remember, you've got Hubble's observation to contend with too. Oh yeah, and nuclearsynthesis. And structure. And lensing. And Sunyaev-Zeldovich. And time-scales of globular clusters....

well, I could go on, but I won't. You've hopefully heard it all before...

JS – thanks again. Sorry to hear you lost your first draft. That is a pain to be sure. In terms of your views on the philosophy and approach of science I think we are in agreement. There are a few points I would probably make in response to your comments, but I’ll leave it to this one response for now. I really do not have time to ping-pong back and forth long responses every day. (If the responses could be written as quick as a ping pong ball flies we might be on to something!!)

It’s a good thing I’m not shy. I already have one paper under review at a journal. Three more will be written soon. You should understand that the analysis is conducted using methods and data already established in the literature and the discrepant results support a theory already present in the literature. I’m not even ready to say that the results could not be interpreted within the context of the Big Bang … I will leave that to the theorists to decide. What I can say is that there are some smaller results within the context of the main results that simply cannot be ignored and do change the way that at least one thing must be done. I’ve also identified (empirical result) a whole new phenomenon regarding galaxy rotation and it will weigh in on the dark matter issue. You know publication takes time – a few months for review then a delay until publication. I’ve been through it before, but with these latest results I’m simply not saying any more at this time.