It seems rather unlikely that all of the supernovae systematic errors could combine and make it look like the Universe is accelerating and still agree, albeit roughly, with other lines of evidence that support the existence of dark energy.

Jerry said: "Observations that can't be modeled and demonstrated in the laboratory of local space are always problematic - the explanations are speculative." This is statement outright false, for example, CMB theory is based on our laboratory tested understanding of acoustic oscillations. Big Bang conditions can be simulated via particle accelerators. Supernovae are being modeled by computer simulations. Clearly, more work needs to be done in all of these areas, but it is a stretch to assume, as Jerry does, that the laws of physics (e.g. the bahavior of plasmas, emission/absorption spectra, and sound ways) are vastly different in each part of Universe so that we cannot conclude anything about the Universe's large scale properties.

Similar to the supernovae data, it seems equally unlikely that the CMB spectra follows a theoretical curve based on our knowledge of the physics of acoustic oscillations (which have been tested in laboratories on Earth despite what Jerry says) and yet is still a hopelessly contaminated mess. If the CMB is a hopelessly contaminated mess, as Jerry contends, the chances of the data points lining up as well as they do with the theoretical curve would be incredibly small; it would be much more likely for them to be situated in a pell-mell manner not following any curve. Thus, because Jerry is so convinced that he is right and mainstream cosmology is wrong (and he isn't even a cosmologist, and yes, that does matter due to the principle of specificity) he fails to see the uncomfortable sticky consequences of his own thinking, such as the ones mentioned above.

I'm going to examine Jerry's comment from the other direction, taking it at face value, and see where it gets us ...

Let's start with that staple of amateur astronomers, the [OIII] line. The square brackets are a convention, indicating a forbidden line. Modern theory on atomic transitions, based on quantum mechanics, is very comfortable with this line, despite the fact that this line has never been 'demonstrated' in an earthly lab! From the perspective of an extreme cosmological principle sceptic, it gets much worse; for example, what would such a person make of the Bahcall et al. use of astronomical [OIII] observations, in quasars no less, that "show that the ratio of transition probabilities corresponding to the λλ5007 and 4959 lines is 2.99+/-0.02, in good agreement with (but more accurate than) theoretical estimates"?

Then there's a minor inconvenience wrt stars: how many lab demonstrations of the properties of a gravitationally bound mixture of ~75% H, ~23% He, ~2% all other elements, of total mass ~2x10³⁰ kg can you point to Jerry?

And how about UHECRs (ultra-high energy cosmic rays)? In which earthly lab have particles with energies of ~10¹⁸ eV been produced?

In earlier posts we've discussed, albeit at no great depth, PSR 1913 + 16 and other binary pulsars - no binary pulsar demonstrations in any earthly labs.

And so on.

So, Jerry, maybe you'd be kind enough to tell us what the non-speculative limits of modern astronomy are?

As others in this thread have pointed out, if relativistic expansion parameters are wrong, the calculated attenuation factors used in every line of cosmic study are also wrong, and this is why dark energy is needed to explain every observation. These agreements with other lines of analyses adds credence to the hypothesis that there may be common systemic errors.

The problem here is that the acoustic oscillations observed in the CMB did not agree with laboratory predictions! They were two magnitudes smaller! Dark Energy and Dark Matter were added into the equations until the supernova data agreed with the ‘CMB’ peaks isolated. So 96% of the weight assigned in the equations cannot be modeled in the laboratory.

Two things:

1) Successful computer models [i]do not exist[i]. That is why inflation is used; Inflation has zero laboratory or particle physics heritage – no mathematical connections to the real world. Inflation is a massive layer of magic between the initial condition dynamics that have been carefully modeled using known physics, and the endless structure of the universe we observe.


2) I expect systems to behave exactly the same cosmically as they do locally. That is why I reject concepts that cannot be analytically derived, and look for flaws instead in the local physical models. This may not be the correct approach, but it beats the hell out of adding a new parameter every time our observations don’t agree with existing models.

No. Laboratories do not have jars of Dark Matter and Dark Energy that they can pad acoustic signatures with in order to get the bounce they are looking for.

Look at the curve: 96% of the agreement is padding provided by three sets of parameters: Dark Energy, Dark Matter, and Inflation. Every ounce of agreement is slimed with a pound of intangible lard. Bad astronomy!

But you have taken your eye off-of-the-ball again. For four years I have been reasoning that there should be selection effects in our search for distant supernova: The most distant supernova found should be more representative of the brightest events that we observe in the local sample. For 15 years supernova research team have been arguing there are no net differences between local and distant supernova. Now they concede there are measurable differences, but they don’t agree upon what the new observational data means.

It will take years to sort this all out, but it shouldn’t take decades. Supernova research teams need to start focusing on the distant supernova events that look like type Ia, but appear as much as two magnitudes under-luminous, and have very short light curves. (Riess said they found at least one, but they did not do follow-up studies because the light curve evolved too quickly to be a time dilated supernova type Ia). I think they are out there – lots of them.

__________________
jwj

It's ok not to know.

???

As you explained, forbidden lines fit nicely into early quantum theory; (forbidden being rather poor nomenclature, since they only describe states that are too energetic to be found anywhere other than a highly radiative extremely thin medium environment).

In earlier posts we've discussed pulsar and other distances to the LMC. This is good science, too. Other astrophysicist are questioning the recent clumping of LMC distance estimates, and the streamlining in this data stream should be a cause of concern: There must not be a consensus-induced bandwagon effects: Too much confidence is being placed in prior assumptions.

I think everyone is puzzled by cosmic rays, because we can't figure out how they are produced, where they come from, or how they travel the cosmic distances they appear to travel. There are even more basic questions closer to home: How do clouds produce gamma rays? We should have answers by now.

Supernova 'type Ia' studies are a very good example of telescoping locally endurable spectroscopics and photometrics to an amazing astrophysical phenomena. Dark Energy is a very good example of what happens when you try to stuff supernova observations into a black box of preconceptions in which they do not fit, twisting the first spanner you can find.

Good science is skeptical science. Perhaps not as edgy as I am, but always dusting off the data and asking what is this new observational phenomenon really trying to tell us? Don't think for one second that cosmologist are not skinning this latest round of supernova papers to the bone: there is a lot of meat, and it does not taste like chicken.

__________________
jwj

It's ok not to know.

I'm really quite curious Jerry, how do you decide what's "always problematic", and "speculative"?

What, in the Jerry view, constitutes "modeled and demonstrated in the laboratory of local space"?

And on "twisting the first spanner you can find": are you saying that the two teams, a decade ago now, did not investigate any possible alternative explanations for their data, at all?

Those are expert opinions.

I have a background in chemical analytical method development. Also thermal chemistry, particle size analysis, spectrography, HPLC, GCMS, NMR, X-ray tomography, as well as ultrasonic, thermographic and other non-destructive methods development; automation of data analysis and automated data reliability assessment. So I have used many of the analytical tools available to astrophysicists. I know many limits imposed by the fickle physical house in which we live.

That said, you shouldn't give any more weight to expert opinions than I do

There is not an easy answer to this question, especially since I have recently come to doubt many experiments I would have considered concrete just a few years ago. For example, the GPS system has been lauded as proof of GR, because GR corrections are used in establishing GPS positions. What you do not hear, is that the original plan for determining absolute positions had to be restructured, and there were periodic effects noted during calibration that have no known physical explanation. Likewise, the Gravity B relativity probe has much greater error factors than expected. Five years ago, I would have written this off as bad engineering; now I think it is at least as likely that the science is wrong.

They investigated many possibilities. What is wrong is their joint conclusion that the only possible explanation is 'dark energy'. It is always possible they did not have enough evidence to fully characterize distant supernova. As we know now, more evidence is needed. It is also possible, and always will be, that one or more of the basic scientific facts they assumed are not facts at all.

__________________
jwj

It's ok not to know.

Jerry said: “It is also possible, and always will be, that one or more of the basic scientific facts they assumed are not facts at all.” This statement resembles the trite phrases lacking in freshness or effectiveness because of constant use or excessive repetition such as, “Well, gee, anything is possible. We don’t really know anything for sure.” Jerry’s statement resembles the dime a dozen statements one hears coming from certain other groups who don’t like certain other mainstream scientific conclusions e.g. fossil fuel lobby vs. climate change. In fact, it sounds like it came straight from off a memo written by a fossil fuel lobbyist playing up uncertainty about climate change. If you don’t like the conclusion, play up the uncertainty. Act like there is objectivity and truth when it suits your interests, but when it doesn’t act like everything is up for grabs. Maybe, Jerry, you should stop criticizing astrophysicists and become a lobbyist for ExxonMobil, as you clearly have all of the skills relevant to the job.

Jerry also said: “I know many limits imposed by the fickle physical house in which we live.” So, on the one hand he knows that there are physical limits imposed by nature. On the other hand, he is saying that the basic scientific facts maybe not be facts at all. These limits are the most basic scientific facts—they are the limits imposed by {laws of} nature. It is just not logical to “know” that there are limits by saying “I know the limits imposed by nature” and then turn around and say that it possible that there are really no limits at all. Forget bad astronomy for a minute! How about bad logic?

Wouldn’t it be nice if nature was as bendable as Jerry is suggesting here with this trite comment? As a chemist and someone involved in rocket propulsion, I am sure Jerry would agree that it would be nice if the established science and basic scientific facts were not facts at all—that is, one day, for example, we could wake up and be able to induce objects to travel faster than light and walk through walls. Or, wouldn't it be nice if we could wake up and synthesize or discover a high energy density material that is thermodynamically stable enough to replace the dwindling fossil supply and thus stave off the impending breakdown of modern industrial civilization. Similarly, in Jerry’s “there are no established facts Universe” maybe instead of using the same basic chemical rockets physics package we been using for decades we could actually travel faster than light and explore the distant Universe up close—negating the need for fancy telescopes altogether. For instance, if the facts are so bendable maybe could skip Cepheids by traveling faster than light and measure the distance to the magellenic cloud by traveling there, right? Maybe pigs could fly…maybe the earth is not round, maybe…maybe…there are no facts, right, Jerry?

It is a well known well-documented phenomenon that people whose careers are stagnant resent it when other people’s careers move forward fruitfully. Perhaps Jerry’s resentment and lack of faith in the astrophysics community is related to the fact that cosmologists seem to be making great strides in helping us understand the distant Universe whilst Jerry, with all of his uppity pretense, cannot even manage to apply the same level of vitriolic criticism to his own field (ATK propulsion) which has not really made signigificant progress since dawn of the space age. We are still, despite Jerry’s “there are no established facts Universe model”, using the same chemical rocket technology to explore space that we were using forty years ago. Forget supernovae and cosmology for a minute, where is all of the self-criticism and creative speculative doubt wrt to your own field Jerry? If all of modern physics is up for grabs (a position which fits conveniently, ableit in an ad hoc manner, with Jerry’s view that cosmology, which is based on modern physics, is so-flawed) why is your field, propulsion, moving forward (no pun intended) at a snails pace? Why is your field not moving forward significantly? Certainly NASA’s space exploration budget is much greater than the puny amount given to space science, let alone astrophysics! Does not change begin at home?

This is a bait-and-switch argument that has nothing to do with the fundamentals of physics. ExxonMobil is more than smart enough not to challenge basic physics. They want profits, not ridicule. They don't challenge fundamentals, they challenge the fuzzy gray statistical and probability layers, and the do so in a manner that gives the drivers of oversized, over-powered pickups a smug satisfaction they are doing no wrong fuming down the road at 11mpg.

Focus on the science.

Everytime a new crop of supernova is analysed, the methodology is changed. every time an event occurs near the local sample that would broaden the recognized magnetude of type Ia's, another 'peculiar type' is indentified and supernovae theory goes on as usual.

But this is not science as usual. The most distant supernova we observe do not provide us with the necessary analytical details for realistic comparison with local events. Rewriting the analytical method every time you workup a new set of data would not be an acceptable practice in any other field. You can shoot the messenger all you want, the message is becoming clear: Supernovae are not the tamed-animal astrophysicists hoped they would be; they very more in size, structure, and magnitude than all the wishful thinking this subjective world can muster.

__________________
jwj

It's ok not to know.

Hmm, let's see now ... the relevant physics here (high-z supernovae, dark energy, etc) is the physics of the detectors, spectroscopy, General Relativity, and the astrophysics of supernovae. From the astronomy side, there's a good deal of statistics, selection effects, and stuff to do with galaxies (the environments in which the supernovae occur).

By the Jerry criterion ("expert opinions"), together with the Jerry CV, we should ignore everything that Jerry writes on this topic, because he is clearly not an expert.

Alternatively, per the Jerry criterion, the only people who can, or should, decide what's "always problematic", and "speculative" are those who have no expertise in the physics of the detectors, spectroscopy, General Relativity, the astrophysics of supernovae, statistics (as used in astronomy), and stuff to do with galaxies.

I'm hoping you can clarify Jerry, because if my understanding of your criterion is even half-way correct, you have just declared that science cannot be done by scientists.
(my bold)

Unless I mis-read what you wrote, you did not answer the question at all!

Which means we need to go one step further back, to seriously examine the foundations of the Jerry assault on modern astronomy.

If, in the Jerry view of astronomy as a science, stuff needs to be "modeled and demonstrated in the laboratory of local space" before it can be considered science, and if there are no objective criteria for determining what modeling and demonstrating get the (Jerry) gold star of (sound science) approval, haven't you just declared that astronomy cannot be a science?

Or, perhaps you have declared that there is but one authority on modeling and demonstrating ("in the laboratory of local space"), whose subjective determinations are the sole source of scientific validity (for astronomy) ... and his name is Jerry?
(my bold)

They did? Or is this yet another case of Jerry wildly exaggerating, mis-remembering/mis-stating, or possibly coming close to trolling*?

Would you care to give references to the two distant supernovae teams' first 'dark energy' papers, together with sufficiently long quotes from those two papers, to support your assertion?

*IIRC, a certain BAUT member once all but accused a leading astronomer of deliberately destroying data - reference available upon request.

That's a scary thought.

Scientists who bath in a topic are sometimes in the worst position to evaluate the data in-hand. Consider:

Two scientists are evaluating flash thermographic images of a composite airplane wing. One scientist has knowledge of the ultrasonic, X-ray, visual inspections and tap-test data for the structure and knows they all appear normal. The other scientist only knows the result of the thermographic measurements. The ‘all knowing’ scientist concludes that the thermography is consistent with the rest of the data. Meanwhile, the scientist who knows only the thermographic results concludes they could not sample deep enough, could not penetrate deeply enough into the structure to determine anything.

The project engineer may assume this means that the thermography would have detected a flaw, when it would not have, giving the engineer more confidence in a product he than he should have. In this case, each evaluation is subjective, and knowledge of one result must not influence the interpretation of any other. For similar reasons, it is dangerous to conclude CMB information should increase our confidence in the current interpretation of supernova events, and visa versa.
I didn’t. Situations occur when there are parameters that cannot be independently controlled: One has to make an assumption about the value of one, or the ratio of the two in order to proceed. Assumptions are speculations.

‘Problematic’ situations occur when no one set of assumptions satisfies all of the constraints. Supernova lightcurves are an excellent example: Using the ‘stretch factor’, Goldhaber demonstrated that there is no evidence of selection or evolution effects observed in the sample as a whole. However, our experience with observationa data that extend deep into space and time is that our observations are always hindered by selection effects. The absense of evidence of selection effects in the supernova interpretations is problematic, indicating that one or more of the assumptions necessary to derive the interpretive data are wrong.

Speculative solutions involve making an assumption or serious of assumptions about one or more parameters in order to evaluate the data set. Dark Energy is a speculative solution to a problematic situation: The magnitude of supernova in the past are not consistent with the redshifted distance estimates. Since the ‘proof’ of the redshift/distance relationship is derived from studies that rely upon accurate assessments of the magnitude of supernova, the situation is cyclic as well as problematic.
Newton first asserted the principle that we must assume cosmic behavior is akin to what we observe locally in order to call our theories scientific. It was an important distinction in Newton's time, because it was widely accepted that the rules were different in the heavens than they are on the earth. It is speculative, and in my opinion non-scientific, to propose dark stuff governs the ebb and flow of materials in space when we have no local equivalent. When you can show me the spectral lines of this dark stuff, even if we can’t achieve the same spectral lines on earth, this would be reasonable evidence something physical is out there even, if we do not completely understand it. There are too many assumptions necessary to conclude dark energy is real.

Jerry is making ATM predictions that are different from everyone else, including Newton. They are speculative, but less problematic than the current situation regarding supernova. In fact [the jerry predictions] are derived directly from speculative solutions to the problematic situation regarding supernova/dark stuff that I outlined above. Most important, they are testable – they have to be to be scientific.

The real answer might be worm holes, but without any evidence of such, we have to take our apples as they fall
The assertion that they reached the same conclusion? Perlmutter discussed this on a NOVA program. I did not mean to imply that they collaborated or conspired (even though they coauthored a paper in the same year). What I am trying to emphasize is that their prior training and expertise led them both to conclude there must be a dark energy component rather than suspecting that there may be a common systemic error in their treatment of the data. Redundancy does not equate with reliability if redundant solutions contain the same root errors.

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/p.../9805201v1.pdf (Riess paper)

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/p.../9812133v1.pdf (Perlmutter Paper)


See also
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/p.../9804065v1.pdf (Riess, Perlmutter & others)
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/p.../9812473v1.pdf (Great SN1a bulletin board)
Notice the very high noise levels in the bulletin board presentation of the high redshift supernova 1997ap spectrometric data – much too high to ascertain whether or not this event was peculiar in spectral detail.

Today we know there is more variability in the lightcurves of type ‘Ia’ supernova than Riess or Perlmutter thought was possible in 1998. Their concurrent speculations need to be revisited in the light of this new data.

__________________
jwj

It's ok not to know.

Jerry, here is what you wrote, just a few days ago (the emphasis is in the original; I have changed italics to bold):Jerry, here is how you re-stated my question (excerpt, my bold):Jerry, I think you have stated, elsewhere, that you are fluent in English, so I doubt that the difference between your initial and second sets of words is due to a poor command of English.

Jerry, just a few posts ago you used the phrase "bait-and-switch". It seems to me that your two posts, which I have quoted above, are as clear cut a case as you could ask for of exactly this tactic.

Jerry, just on the parts of the two papers you have quoted alone, it is obvious that neither Riess et al. nor Perlmutter et al "conclu[ded] that the only possible explanation is 'dark energy'" (my bold; Jerry italics).

Jerry, if your summary of these two key papers is so grossly inaccurate, may readers reasonably conclude that the rest of your posts likely contain similarly gross inaccuracies?

Jerry, how do you reconcile such grossly inaccurate summaries with your assertions of being a scientist (or using a science-based approach)?

(I shall comment on the rest of your post later)

Section 5 of that paper is entitled "Discussion", and has eight sub-sections. Immediately before the first such are the words "How reliable is this conclusion [Omega_lambda to be inconsistent with zero at the [x] confidence level]? Although the statistical inference is strong, here we explore systematic uncertainties in our results with special attention to those that can lead to overestimates of the SNe Ia distances."

Here is a selection of the final paragraphs/sentences of these eight sub-sections:Riess et al. seem to have stated, with considerable clarity, that there are many possible systematic effects, and that while the 'dark energy' conclusion certainly seems robust, it is not, pace Jerry, the only possible explanation.