Have you ever applied plastic tint to a window? You cut a piece slightly larger than the window, wet the window, and squeege the bubbles out, then cut the excess plastic from the edges. It works extremely well-as long as the surface you are applying the tint to is nearly flat. If you try to apply plastic tint to a round object, It will still flatten well in the center, but the rest will be a mess.

That is the way the current mainstream cosmology has been layed out, and it looks very good unless you try to chase the bubbles near the edges.

Mainstream cosmologists insist that they have the local terrain correct; meaning our current understanding of first principles is correct. It is not, and the only reason that the local terrain looks smooth is that they are not properly interpreting the local horizon.

Phoenix will be landing in May. The attitude will be steeper than expected, the parachutes will slow the descent through the upper atmosphere less than expected; the probe landing system will have to buffer more energy than expected, just like the Viking I and II landings. The Phoenix may land successfully, or not; but the Doppler and surface radar data will not be reconcilable with each other - just as they were not in the analysis of Huygens' landing on Titan.

These are the seams in the local fabric: The application of physics as it is known and studied on this planet are not correct. 'Gravitational waves' and weakly interactive dark matter do not exist; because the theories that drive these predictions don't even work well within our own solar system-let alone our own galaxy. This is the reason no one understands the surface of Titan or Enceladus, nor the black-and-white terrain of Iapetus. It is the reason comets are not dirty snowballs, and planetary orbits are relatively circular.

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jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

I fail to understand...

Modern Cosmology isn't like a sheet of window tinting, and the universe isn't like a window, the analogy is flawed.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't really see the connection between Jerry's post and what he quoted.

I don't see the connection either.

This appears to be yet another recycled version of this thread. What it's doing in OTB I have no idea. But Jerry should be given credit for his remarkable perseverance.

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Nor do I but how long before it gets the chop then?
Guesses anyone


Well let's see then how long it can stay in OTB before it gets kicked out, meets its demise so to speak

The OP could be about the standards required of ATM idealists while set high are naturally above the capacity of "any" ATM'er either due to the benchmarks that must be set, the endorsements an idea must receive, the ability to deliver an idea or it might be a thread where the question is asked does anyone care?

So long as it doesn't devolve into ATM, it won't see out post 30 in OTB.

Well that is my guess

(and that is from the one who shot the last attempt at a discussion in the foot)

I am taking bets on how long it will last, I say 12 hours.

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Sorry - this is supposed to be a discussion about ATM topics, not a discussion of an ATM topic, but I did get a little carried away.

I think everyone will concede our vision of the universe becomes distorted, whether we are looking at the micro or macro scale. My (ATM) argument is that this distortion occurs much closer to home than anyone seems to realize.

The greater point - that I lost track of, is that whenever one speculates beyond the known event horizon, the hypothesis should be considered ATM. Otherwise, only the most popular of unproven theories get any press time.

Which brings us back the the ATM thirty day turkey timer. Dark Matter has failed yet another test; a small bubble technique that should detect the weak interactions necessary for DM to form the 'tuffs and curls' it is hypothesized to exist in. In my opinion, this failure places weakly interactive dark matter in an ATM subclass: A theoretical prediction that has been tested and failed.

Gravitational waves pedictions arguably fall into the same category: In spite of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of man hours and gigaseconds of computer time, no one has been able to detect them locally. The theory that predicted these events is in jeopardy.

In neither case would anyone dream of limiting discussion to thirty days, and declaring the underlying theory off-limits to discussion. But like it or not, the theories are failing. If discussion of alternative concepts should be contained, where do we go from here?

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jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

Consdering that the ATM rules allow additional discussion upon the presentation of additional research, why is there a problem?

The 30 day rule was made to keep threads from going to hundreds of posts with no discussion. Something that several of your threads did. There are alot of seemingly unkillable nonsense threads that disappeared cause there was no advancment to the discussion.

Your comments on DM and gravity waves also show where alot of the ATM posters go wrong. You say that DM should be ATM cause it failed a test. What you have never been able to understand that what dark matter is is not understood well enough to be mainstream or not. If there was an experiment, and a null result was obtained, or a contradictory result was obtained, posting a link to the article is a perfectly acceptable re-opening of the discussion. You have never understood that "there is no such thing as dark matter" is a nonsensical phrase because 'dark matter' is the term used to describe the fact that we cannot see why large scale mass distributions that we can see dont obey newtonian mechanics. DM is not something you can put in a can. When we find whatever is causing the discrepancy between what we can see and what we think should happen, it will get a real name. All we really know about it is that it is really hard to see, and it should be exerting gravity.

The gravity wave problem you mention is another problem. The most recent detectors have only very recently gone into active service, and they are barely able to see down to the minimum intensities that GR allows. If they get a null result, that is not the last nail in the gravity wave coffin. It is a nail, just not the last one.

Lastly, you are right that the scientific community would never dream of putting a 30 day limit on a discussion. This isnt the scientific community. This is a privately run forum that uses volunteers to moderate. The 30 day rule was imposed to make it so that the moderators were able to keep up as much as to close down useless discussions. That is the difference, and a needed one to keep this forum the way it is.

I was speaking specifically of weakly interactive dark matter - WIMPS; the constraints virtually eliminate this candidate; just as warm dark matter and baryonic hot or cold matter have been systematically eliminated from the dark matter search.

That does not leave many dark matter options - almost exactly none; but something unexplicable is happening. Is alternative gravity on the front burner now or not? How does a theory move from mainstream to background status? Since WIMPS are unlikely to exist is talking about WIMPS an ATM theory now?

What about 'dirty iceballs'? Are they still a mainstream concept, or is it now more kosher to discuss 'icy dirtballs'.

These are the sematical difficulties encountered by canonical concepts, not scientific ones. An opinion.

If the only result of the thirty day turkey timer were the elimination of gas bag diatribes, that would have been useful, but it is not - rational alternative discussions have died out rather completely. An observation.

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jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

When God Himself turns up to explain to mainstream science that He did it differently, you can be quite sure their mathematics will prove Him wrong too.

God would be smart enough to show where the math was wrong in the first place. Which is something the ATM posters fail to understand.

Let’s not forget Pioneer Anomaly, which is happening fairly close inside our solar system, where both probes traveling at ‘escape’ velocity in opposite directions from the Sun are accelerating at a constant rate into the Sun, or slowing, so they are less distant from us than Newtonian gravity dynamics would predict. Then there are the Bouguer anomalies on Mars and Venus which show consistent irregularities in gravitational measurements for mounts and valleys. Then there were discussions such as mine, Hypothetical variable mass in hypo variable G?, which got good mileage back in the days when Bad Astronomy was an open forum for new ideas. Was it all ‘hot air’? Perhaps some seminal ideas are poorly formed, even amateurishly unprofessional, but ideas are ideas, when we are free to discuss them, so new things get examined we had not thought of before. What good is the process of exploration if the only allowed is mainstream re-confirmations of what had become the accepted norm, but prohibits real examination of new ideas? I think this is what Jerry’s complaint, per this thread and others, is really about. We are no longer encouraged to think ‘outside the box’ but are boxed in by both the 30 day rule (which I can live with), but more importantly by the almost immediate dismissal of any new idea that challenges accepted orthodoxy in cosmology, unlike in any time in science history except during the days of the Inquisition. That, alas, leads to any ATM idea’s demise even before it gets voiced, or examined, so it goes immediately into the cosmological ‘penalty box’. I don't find new ideas presented here with the same enthusiasm Bad enjoyed in the old days.

Why can’t we find any evidence of Dark Matter? What are doing wrong when our crafts land too hard on the outer planets, and too soft on the inner? Or when gravitational slingshots come in too high or too low, consistently in the same manner? Is our understanding of physics in the “local terrain” truly what applies to distant bodies? Is cosmic redshift really from an expanding universe, or is something else at hand? Why does MOND appear to work at galactic distances but not at planetary distances? These ideas were once discussed, sometimes ad nauseum, but they were turned over on the old ATM, sometimes with humorous results. Today they are subtly discouraged from further study or examination under the new rules. Is this a complaint BAUT cares about? I don’t know… they pay the bandwith bills… so it’s their call. I must admit I miss the old ‘wild west’ days of the old Bad Astronomy ATM forums. They really were fun! You could really sink your teeth in them!

As an afterthought, I think the faults in today's cosmology, everything from doubting Einstein to new gravity physics, are due to our overreliance on mathematical structure as first cause. In the old days of Planck and Farraday et al, the math resulted from experimental analysis, but it did not of necessity drive the theory. Today, it seems the math, especially General Relativity and Qauntum supersymmetry, drive the experiments. If we have the cart before the horse, we may be driving with rear view mirrors and missing much of the greater landscape that could potentially offer truly new ideas. Why aren't ideas such as R. Matsumoto's being developed further, rather than having them die on the vine? A whole new physics may be just around the corner, but our 'rear view' bias may have us miss it entirely. Well, it will happen, but perhaps not here.

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Yep. New ideas are always reflexively shot down by the othodoxy. Kinda like those crazies that came around a few years back and clamed that the expansion of the universe was accelerating. oh, wait......

You are completely wrong about the math behind the physics. Ever since Newton, the experiment drove the theory which was explained by the math. Plank is known for figuring out what math explained the theory, but the laser and the transistor were both discovered by noticing that the math meant certain things should be possible.

Even if we take you at face value, and the math should only explain experiment, then do it. Use the math to have your theory explain experiment. If you are correct, then your math should work, and your theory accepted, kinda like the crazies I mentioned at the start of my post. They came up with the most insane idea possible at the time, but they made their facts bulletproof and forced its acceptance. Most of the ATM ideas here have holes big enough to drive a mack truck through, but when we point them out, they dont get closed. This discussion should be a two way street, not dictates from on high. It should be: ATM proposed, hole found, hole fixed, hole found, hole fixed,....., hole found, hole fixed, no hole found, theory accepted. The 30 day rule was established cause virtually no threads got past the third step.

Lastly, the allegation that most 'mainstreamers' are simply attached to orthodoxy and resistant to change is really an ad-hom. Most of the physicists I know are more than willing to accept new ideas, just as long as they work. We are also more than willing to attack an idea just to see how well it is defended, simply because it has to have the holes plugged to make it work. I again refer to my opening statement: When the evidence for DE was first discovered, it was the most insane thing you could try to propose. They had to make their evidence bulletproof. When they did, DE when from ATM to mainstream, so the system does work.

At last a mathematically gifted friend. So if the universe works and the mathematics is wrong then why bother using it?

Yes I realise mathematics is a language (it has got a lot of letters in it) but it one of the most long winded and boring and hard to understand, non-descriptive and unhelpful languages for the non-elite.

I guess that is why there will be no new science generated outside the ranks of the scientific community, so I will just have to accept my ideas don't count because I am not from the approved master intellectual class. I should just accept that I am inferior because my enthusiasm developed later in life.

A measure of the usefulness of a thing is the ease of access to and service provided by the vendor. If my car needs fixing I have a range of people to go to who know how to listen and will work on the problem. From the practical point of saleability and usability, now that we are focusing on the mathematics ... as it should be, I think I have finally found my zero.

I am not mathmatically gifted. I am mathmatically trained. The difference it that while I have little natural talent for it, I realize that it is an essential tool for doing physics. Seeing that I was 29 years old when I did start learning the math, I have to say that your whine about not being in the master class is just that, a whine. My opinion of math is pretty much exactly identical to yours. I know it cause I need it, not cause I like it.

Math is the tool that allows you to do physics just like the socket wrenches, screwdrivers and other tools are needed to be a car mechanic.

To answer your question tho. 2+2=5: can you point out where the math is wrong? Basically, all of the leading edge of physics is approximations. To try to figure out almost any problem exactly would requre more computing power than exists on the planet. All of classical physics is the low velocity, many state averages of GR and QM. In many places you make assumptions to make the math simpler. Maybe you assume that the pressure gradient is small across the area looked at. Maybe you say that the magnetic field is changing slowly. There are many others.

One thing about physics today. Many of the new 'discoveries' are really only somone adding a small, approximated term back into a calculation to see what the effect is. Physicists are people, they can make mistakes. So, if god comes down and says we have it wrong, every physicist worth his diploma will immediately ask where the math is wrong.

No ad-hom against the 'mainstream' scientific community implied. Rather, if there is a built-in bias towards a firming orthodox view of the universe, such as you described so well, then it warrants an awareness that what had become acceptable is what is acceptable by the community, and that alternate ideas are viewed with a 'built-in' suspicion. This is not a statement of condemnation but one of fact.

What you describe regarding DE has such a bias built-in of necessity, which is predicated on distant light redshift as a function of expansion of space, without which 'acceleration' becomes meaningless. But what if redshift is from another unknown cause? I know 'tired light' had been beaten to death, for example, but not so with potential 'gravitational' redshift, if such is a function of light coming out of a very deep well of high G gravity. This parallel hypothesis might be validated, but not under current assumptions about DE and space expansion. The BBT would likewise become jeapordized if an alternate reason was found for redshift, since rolling backwards the film on the universe does not necessitate a point of origin in time. (I personally always felt 13.7 billion years for a universe to form and produce all life as rediculously restrictive, but that's my personal bias, not scientific fact.) The reason I brought up Matsumoto is that perhaps it is time to go back into the lab and do some new studies, not predicated on the existing math, but from scratch. In the large Hydron Collider at CERN there is evidence of a self-forming 'micro black hole' when gold molecules are smashed together. New physics may be just around the corner. Will BAUT participate as 'guardians of the gate' or will they be the new 'openers' of new ideas? So... what if they're not great ideas? That's how ideas start out, as pretty dumb and sometimes lousy ideas, but then something happens from a vast interrelation, through discussion, of what appear as 'unremarkable' ideas... it's called Emergence. What's wrong with that, if a new emergent idea forms from unremarkable ideas, but in the end prove to be quite remarkable indeed?

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You assume there is 'a built-in bias towards a firming orthodox view of the universe.' You predicate your entire thinking upon it. Then you refuse to belive that it is not true. That is the insulting portion. You assume we are 'guardians of the gate' and are unwilling to challenge our own orthodoxy.

You are the one unwilling to challenge your own views. Instead of looking at my point about DE, you go off on an irrelevant tangent. My point is that even veiws that are completely contrary to the accepted view can be accepted. DE was, to put it bluntly, a completely insane idea considering the orthodxy of the time. What causes it is irrelevant to this discussion. The point is that this completely ATM idea was accepted because the evidence was too overwhelming to discard it.

As a matter of fact, looking at the history of QM, it is in fact quite possible that figuring out what DE is could show that there is a massive irreconcilable problem with the big bang theory, and force its discarding. The thing is, the theory that replaces BBT must be able to explain the universe better than BBT does. There are alot of different points that must be adressed for that to happen, from nucleosysnthesis, to CMB, to expansion. However, if it must be done, the BBT will be tossed.

Let me make my point very clear. The problem with ATM here is not the mainstreamers. Everyone here would be more than happy to have to adjust their knowledge to take into account new data. The problem is that most of the ATM posters dont have the ability to defend their ideas well enough to make it work, and most of them end up blaming their opponents 'closed minds' instead of their own inability.

If this were not true, there would be many more people around here who would be fighting the 30 day rule. Including me.

Quite wrong on this point. I am not only willing to challenge my own views but welcome it, as much as I am willing (and sometimes able) to study and understand mainstream cosmology, even the math. But you totally ignored the point I made about how DE is predicated upon an assumption, and blowing it off does not make it go away because it does not fit into your world view. I understand DE was an ‘insane’ idea when first presented, as BBT hypothesized by Fra. Lemaitre, and further observations cemented it into place, but my point was that this is ALL predicated on distant light redshift from ‘expansion’, and if that proves wrong, the whole structure of the hypothesis crashes. Therefore, that is the built-in bias at work here, and is not irrelevant at all. I guess the part about Emergence didn’t grab you? How do you think new ideas are formed, in a vacuum? Of course all the studies of astronomy and cosmology are valid, elegant and beautiful math included, for generating new ideas, including disproving old ideas. But without a certain freedom of attitude, meaning that we are not cowed into submission for our naivety in thinking we may actually have a new idea, has value. Whether or not BAUT wants to recognize that potential in new ideas is not my concern. But the complaint in the OP that this place is becoming more tame and less fun, if I may paraphrase Jerry’s, is a valid point, IMHO. Nothing personal, just an observation from one more ‘naïve’ contestant of ideas. ... And I'm still waiting on evidence in our "local terrain" of gravitational waves!

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I, for one, wasn't aware that "this place" intended to be (less) tame and (more) fun; whence comes the thought that it so intends (or should so intend)?

Ah, well, I was paraphrasing Jerry's title: "The Demise of ATM Discussions"

Perhaps this is only an opinion of one, but that's how I understood Jerry's OP.

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Let me make my point very clear. There is no problem with the ATM rules here and that is coming from a dedicated ATMer. The problem with ATM threads would be solved if all the people who complain about the rules, or about the quality of ideas, or shift blame would ask just one pertinent question on each new ATM thread. That would quickly weed out the ATMer who won't or can't defend their premise.

And then there are MY ATM threads, . Since my ideas are not easily falsified the questions have to be about whether the ideas are reasonable and responsible as opposed to wild speculation akin to "angry green Meanies scattering a trail of multi-verses as they wind their way through the void".

Seriously, ATM would be a much more efficient vehicle for weeding out thoughtful ideas from those filled with misconceptions and poor logic if those who come to ATM would participate more in the various threads.

nutant gene reads me better than I read myself

The success of Dark Energy has nothing to do with a successful mathematical solution: It is a painful herd-following of the assumptions made by a small cadre of supernova researchers who were at a loss to explain why their curves were bending in the wrong direction.

It is also a blind acceptance of oddball data reduction practices used by supernova researchers, such as the normalization of data about a midpoint that is anchored only on one end.

Many other reasonable conclusion can be drawn from our supernova observations which are more mathematically robust:

Why didn't Goldhaber, Nugent and Perlmutter find ANY evidence of Malmquist bias in supernova distributions? We know they vary in magnitude. We know we should selectivily find brighter events in the more distant past; and yet the data reduction techniques used to create Dark Energy ignore the statistical quirkyness of the conclusion.

This is where the exclusion of non-mainstream opinions creates arid science: One pat answer, posed by the same researchers who created the paradox in the first place.

The cometary 'dirty iceball' is another indice of how sterile astro-theory has become. Comets were thought to be primal matter that lurked in the solar fringe, until a gravitational fling sent them sunward. But when we looked at them close, and we have examined several now, they have clays and other components fenced into the inner solar system by solar theory. The theory has been shown to be false in at least one aspect: Why is there so little controversy? How many other ways might solar theory be failing? Is Iapetus a dirty snowball, or a snowy dirtball of a moon? Why isn't there more discussion - and what in the hell is going on at Enceladus? Wouldn't it be fun to run with a bunch of ideas and see what pans out?

If you would have told me in the salad days of Sagan cosmology, that by 2008 there would be no direct evidence of Dark Matter, No Evidence of Gravity waves, No first generation stars, No compositional directive for 'tholins', dirty comets and an ammonia-free Titan, I would have bet my Atari Space Invaders game you were inhaling glue.

Sorry, but the predictions are not panning out. Jumping on one new bandwagon doesn't make the music sound any better: Dark Energy is just one more missing Flugglehorn.

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jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

Wouldn't that imply that as you move further away from the Earth, the depth of galactic gravitational wells increases? It seems difficult to reconcile this position with the cosmological principle.

If there is a new idea that could explain cosmological redshifts, then there is no reason why it could not be introduced into ATM. If it is a rehash of an old idea that has been "done to death" then it probably doesn't need revisiting, unless there is new evidence, or a better thought out theory.

Ten or fifteen years ago, was dark energy "mainstream" cosmology?

Which is what this thread is supposedly all about.

Jerry, unless I am missing something, you started this thread to say that the 30 day rule only assists mainstreamers in defending their orthodoxy. That it stifles out alternate views.

I pointed out that within recent history, a very very ATM view became very very mainstream.

Then you and nutant gene 71 started discussing the problems with dark energy.

That is seemingly not the point of this thread. The point is to discuss how the 30 day rule has stifled ATM discussion and contributed to othodoxy.

So, since this is ATM, I will ask a simple question.

First some qualifiers:
I am not asking if DE is correct or incorrect.
I am not asking what problems there are with DE theory
I am not asking for problems with any cosmology
I would prefer a one word answer

Note: this is predicated on my assumptions about this thread. If I am wrong about what this thread is about, an explanation of what this thread is for is an acceptable answer.

So here is my question:

Was dark energy against the mainstream when it was first presented?

I will expect a prompt answer. I would prefer a short answer also

It appears Dark Energy was first postulated in 1970, but was coined as a term in 1998 by Michael Turner. Here's what Wiki says about it: If space 'expansion' is due to Dark Energy, then everything appears to fit, except for that niggling data where researchers are "at a loss to explain why their curves were bending in the wrong direction. It is also a blind acceptance of oddball data reduction practices used by supernova researchers, such as the normalization of data about a midpoint that is anchored only on one end," per Jerry. If redshift is from non-expansion space but gravitational line of sight gravity well, then the further you look back the more light will redshift, I would think. The problem with the gravity well idea is that at Newton's universal constant G there is not enough dust and gas mass out there in intergalactic space to account for redshift Z, so a new understanding of intergalactic gravity would be needed. At this time we have no evidence, other than MOND, Brans-Dickie, hydrogen gas combusting into stars (not enough gravity for that to happen), perhaps Pioneer Anomaly, or very tall gas atmospheres of outer solar system Gas Giants (and moons like Titan), or flat rotation curves, et al, so we have no theory in place to account for evidence of G not being universal. So that's where we're at, and Dark Matter and Dark Energy fill in the blanks.

Back in the salad days of Sagan cosmology those were not as much an issue, but now we may be on a cusp of new discovery, which would happen if Newton's G were empirically found different from what we measure on Earth; but that is not acceptable at present. So for now, as Jerry stated earlier, we are stretching into place a flat piece of "local terrain" observations onto a curved space and squeezing out those niggling bubbles that keep showing up in data, where the fit isn't exact. But we can stretch that only so far before something must break. What ATM offers, if intelligently presented (and there are a lot of intelligent people here), is to show where the stretch is too much, and perhaps a new idea is called for to explain how our "local terrain" in cosmology may not work in an 'isotropic and homogenous' universe as we had thought. But until it is truly broken, nobody around in mainstream will find reason to fix it. It could be a research funding problem? But as Fortis says "unless there is new evidence, or a better thought out theory", we need better and new evidence, and not just anecdotal evidence but real evidence away from "local terrain" knowns.

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Not to nitpick korjik, but the first mention of DE was in yours here above.

The quick answer to your question is "no" in 1970, but "yes" in 1998.

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I know I mentioned it first. I mentioned it because it is the best example of how there isnt a kneejerk defence of orthodoxy. That it isnt this kneejerk defence of orthodoxy at work in ATM.

Which shows my point. Make your data work and you will be accepted.

The answer is never that simple.

There are mainstream concepts that are jealously guarded: The Big Bang and the three pillars that support it: Metallicity evolution, expansion and the CMB. When the size of the universe became too great; a auxillary hypothesis, inflation, was added to the equation. Inflation required a reverbation signal in the the CMB; but in the Boomerang and WMAP measurements, the signature was much too small. Dark Energy was proposed as an auxillary hypothesis to an auxillary hypothesis. So was it a mainstream concept? It was a patch on a sinking raft, because without dark energy; the Big Bang was losing air and flying around backwards. Supernova researchers found more attenuation than they expected and there you have it: A bandwagon to reel-in the BB.

There has been no careful or critical examination of the assumptions made by supernova researchers as you imply: The explanation seemed to fit into the existing puzzle; so every other possible reason that supernova magnitudes are queer becomes an ATM issue. If you think about it dark matter is a very big patch: it is like floating all the pieces of a puzzle that do not fit on water and calling them islands. I guess since 70% of the earth is covered with water, 70% Dark Energy is a reasonable number, too.

So once again, observational evidence exists that comets are not the dirty snowballs they were predicted to be. Is the dirty snowball concept mainstream today, or ATM? Where do we discuss alternative hypothesis that attempt to explain why comets are made out of clay? How long should a discussion of alternative theories of comets last, and which theory should be allowed to be discussed on a mainstream discussion board?

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jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?