Let’s get back on topic! Degrees, qualifications, psychology, whatever, is all off topic. The focus here is the tired light model.
RAZD has, as requested, expanded on his comments. Thanks! I will reflect on them in return.
One thing to appreciate is that the galaxy is way bigger than the solar system, by a something like eight orders of magnitude or so. And as far as background radiation is concerned, even the galaxy is still a localized environment. Worrying about a few electrons in the solar system is probably irrelevant, as are distributions in electrons altered by Earth's magnetic field. I do not see that Ashmore's notion of a redshift in thin plasma would be appreciably impacted by the solar system environment.
If Ashmore’s model was correct, however, I do think we should see some detectable effect due to variations in ionized gas in the galaxy. One difficulty with detecting this can be seen in your WMAP picture. The CMB signal in the plane of the galaxy is already highly distorted from other microwave sources and has to be removed before the background is perceived. I think this would make it hard to detect any additional CMB distortion in the galactic plane. Also, it is hard to get cosmological redshifts in this plane for comparison, because there is so much obscuring dust.
On the other hand, there certainly are variations in the IG medium outside the galaxy. For example, the Lyman-alpha forest is a pattern of hydrogen absorption lines seen in the light from distant galaxies. It forms a forest, because neutral hydrogen absorbs light at a characteristic frequency, and as the frequency of light from a galaxy is redshifted in the long journey through space (by whatever mechanism) a slightly different band is absorbed out of the spectrum at each new concentration of neutral hydrogen. These patterns are used to map distributions of neutral hydrogen in the IG medium.
This is not directly relevant to Ashmore's effect, since he invokes interactions with free electrons, which requires a highly ionized gas; not neutral hydrogen; and indeed most of the IG medium is ionized. But the question is whether this ionized gas is homogenous, or whether it is has localized concentrations like the neutral hydrogen. Indications are that there are localized concentrations, and so you are right that we should observe variations in the CMB radiation.
Amusingly, Ashmore himself was explicit about this early in the thread. He explains varying estimates of H
0 as being due to varying amounts of plasma in the inhomogenous medium. As you note, this should indeed be reflected as strong non-uniformities in the background; which are not observed. Another strike out for Ashmore.
RAZD concludes...
RAZD writes:
The biggest problem I can see with his model for this is that it has to happen continuously through space, and that once generated, the CMB
ASH is equally subject to redshift as all other photons, thus the band of CMB
ASH frequencies should be spread out and wider than the predicted (and validated) frequency spread of the actual CMB.
The CMB has quite spread out as it is; in fact it is a blackbody spectrum. Ashmore does not even bother to derive a spectrum; only a peak frequency. As it turns out, however, and has been noted already in the thread, his model would not give a blackbody spectrum, and so cannot explain the CMB.
There are two kinds of errors to be found in Ashmore’s model. On the one hand, it is riddled with trivial errors in basic physics theory. On the other hand, we can try to ignore those problems, imagine that an effect occurs as Ashmore describes, and look for testable implications. This is what you are doing.
You are right; Ashmore gives no consideration to interactions of CMB photons with the IG medium. If he did apply his redshift model to the CMB it would be a violation of the law of thermodynamics. The energy of ionized electrons in the IG medium is greater than the energy of CMB radiation, so actually the CMB photons are cooler than the plasma and should get blueshifted.
And in fact, this is valid physics. It is called the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect, and it is observable.
Like Ashmore’s model; this effect arises from photon electron interactions. Some important differences between Ashmore’s model and real photon electron interactions are as follows:
- The photons are scattered (change direction). Ashmore uses a physically invalid comparison of the plasma with a rigid crystal lattice like glass in order to avoid dealing with scattering, which is absurd. Any particle interaction that alters energy (redshift) must also alter momentum, and momentum is a vector, with direction. Glass transmits in straight lines without scatter because there is no redshift in transmitted light. The lack of scatter in high redshift light is proof that the redshift cannot be from particle interactions in the IG medium.
- The CMB photons are blueshifted by electron interactions, not redshifted. This is because the electrons have a higher energy than background photons, and so the photons generally pick up a boost in energy in these interactions. Ashmore neglects this aspect because he uses an assumption of stationary electrons: which is invalid in the IG plasma. Of course, visible light is much more energetic than microwave background, but it is still comparable with the energy of free electrons in the IG medium, and Ashmore’s failure to consider this is another fundamental error in his basic physics.
- Ashmore models electrons using formulae for photoabsorption of neutral hydrogen. Really; I’m not kidding. I have given the relevant extract from Ashmore’s paper in Message 146; and you can look up his reference 18 on-line at X-Ray Interactions With Matter. Contrast Ashmore’s paper and mechanism with his reference. He’s using the cross section that applies for photoabsorption with neutral hydrogen. Ashmore uses a formula for a mean free path of a photon as ( neσ )-1 where ne is an electron density and σ is a collision cross section. The correct cross section to use for photons and free electrons is the Thomson cross section of 6.65*10-25 cm2. Ashmore uses a frequency dependent cross section based on photoabsorption of neutral hydrogen which is 2reλf2, but with f2 set to one. For visible light with a wavelength of about 5 * 10-5 cm, this gives a cross section of 2.8*10-17, which is nearly seven orders of magnitude too large.
Finally, on looking at all this in a bit more detail I note that Ashmore’s model is a violation of thermodynamics anyway. He has hot plasma radiating a blackbody radiation with a frigid temperature of 2.7K.
Cheers -- Sylas
This message has been edited by Sylas, 03-21-2005 03:53 AM
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