bulletproof alternate universe

All. Arkathon's stuff does not address CMB. His material is not something you could look for, and it apparently allows for the normal universe studied by science to exist for billions of years (with an apparent proviso that for reasons unknown and causes unexplained there might be something ill-defined which might have been different in some way or other which might make everything we know wrong and hey you can't prove me wrong so I'm batting 100 and making unassailable criticisms of conventional science.)Arkathon's spirit universe does not even attempt to be a model for empirical data. I'm explaining the empirical basis for conventional cosmology, which relates to the physical universe we see and touch. Deuterium is part of the physical universe. We know a lot about it, and we study it directly. It gets destroyed in the nuclear processes taking place in stars. It is unaffected by the chemical processes taking place on Earth. And it is formed if you have a very dense soup of free protons and neutrons. Free neutrons are unstable; they have a half life of about 15 minutes, from memory.There are no other processes which give a match for observed isotope distributions, other than the big bang. The Deuterium fairy, or a supernatural pop into existence of a universe complete with isotopes already in existence in observed distributions, is not a match, because it gives no basis at all for predicting anything about observation. Yes, I do know what I am talking about, and these posts are already explaining at considerable length, with plenty of references for those who want to explore further. Many folks have found them useful. There are some here who understand it even better than I do; I'm just the disturbed individual who can be bothered for some unfathomable reason explaining in these absurd threads. If you have a specific question, ask away. I'll answer if I can, or tell you if I can't. But I won't write a whole textbook. Vague questioners who demand an explanation of every jot and titel should go away, find a library, and read a book. I've also given a heap of references which people can use to explore further. The problem is with the term "something". The visible universe is not an identifiable thing; it is just the portion of things we are able to see. The phrase "speck" is misleading, because it fails to capture this distinction. Cosmology is tough to explain to a novice, and there are many terms used that are really misleading. Terms like "speck", and "explosion", and "primeval atom" are evocative... but wrong.The term "soup" is intended to convey the idea of dense mixture of materials. The identifiable things in the "quark-gluon soup" are just particles -- quarks, photons, gluons, and others even more exotic. No "universes". No "speck" that will become a universe. Just a very very hot and dense mix of elementary particles.That dense mix expanded and cooled over time. Right now the universe is filled with very cool microwave radiation. There are also occasional clumps of particles held together by gravity. We call those clumps "galaxies". This is true as far as we can see, with no indication or reason to think it gets substantially different as you move past the horizon of our visibility.Cheers -- Sylas

you are answered in full on
EvC Forum: bulletproof alternate universe
all your problems resolvedI did the work for you, no thanks required.enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

Perhaps you should take the time to read all the previous threads so you don't make the same mistakes as Arkathon or mistakes of assumption. The AC scenario does not rule out any arbitrary age. Expansion is not what inflation is about, and expansion is included in ekpyrosis -- read BB theory and Guth's inflation. Learn about what you are talking about. Correct, you cannot do that. I expect Hindus to take much comfort in ekpyrosis, especially the literalist fundamental Hindus that argue science is wrong because the universe is older than science says. Arkathons hope is that it explains christian creation, but it doesn't, nor does it make it harmonious with science as there are the problems of (1) the light from distant stars (that are further than 6200 lightyears away but are visible after only 6200 years oflight travel) and (2) the age of the earth (which can easily be determined to be older than 6200 years by a considerable margin -- one living tree is 4600 years old, others before it show an age of existence of the trees of 8,000 years and that is only the beginning -- see Age Dating Correlations thread for more.)Recapitulation of Problems with AC:

1. Age of universe not established by the concept
2. Light from distant stars must take longer than 6200 years to get here, not explained by any other mechanism, so AC age must be wrong
3. Age of the earth is easily determined to be greater than 6200 years, not explained by any other mechanism, so AC age must be wrong

Problem (1) remains for any age assumed, the same for any application.
Problem (2) resolved by Hindu Model
Problem (3) resolved by Hindu ModelEnjoy

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

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The problem is with the term "something". The visible universe is not an identifiable thing; it is just the portion of things we are able to see. The phrase "speck" is misleading, because it fails to capture this distinction. Cosmology is tough to explain to a novice, and there are many terms used that are really misleading. Terms like "speck", and "explosion", and "primeval atom" are evocative... but wrong.

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The term "soup" is intended to convey the idea of dense mixture of materials. The identifiable things in the "quark-gluon soup" are just particles -- quarks, photons, gluons, and others even more exotic. No "universes". No "speck" that will become a universe. Just a very very hot and dense mix of elementary particles.

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...the size of, at one time of a speck,I believe you have agreed with. If something is so small you can hardly see it, how would it matter if it's soft, hard, hot, soupy, or whatever? To your theory, of course it is a sacred distinction. To the average observer of this tiny thing from which all matter in the universe will come, it would look, to the naked eye, much like a little speck. Nothing wrong with this. It is how big it is.(was)

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Right now the universe is filled with very cool microwave radiation. There are also occasional clumps of particles held together by gravity.

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Yes we can see where you're going with this, like a huge soup. I think that's where the similarity ends!

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His material is not something you could look for, and it apparently allows for the normal universe studied by science to exist for billions of years

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I believe that the whole idea here was a christian date of six thousand years.

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Light from distant stars must take longer than 6200 years to get here, not explained by any other mechanism, so AC age must be wrong

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When the seperation (process) occured, and we were left in this physical dimension, under God's control, the stars were already sending their light here. Created fairly recently in cosnological time, yet, now appearing far far away. So how long it takes to get there now does not affect the real age of orgin. The highway of light is then old, and the light we would see would be kind of delayed..thousands of years, rather than billions.
If I am missing something, what exactly is it about the light?

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...the size of, at one time of a speck,I believe you have agreed with. If something is so small you can hardly see it, how would it matter if it's soft, hard, hot, soupy, or whatever? To your theory, of course it is a sacred distinction.

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Thanks for the fill in attempt. When they erase me, you could always come back, and heavy them. They can't argue with the speck. They already said it could be any size. They seem to think it requires some great conceptualizing to see some microscopic theoretical difference, in the dumb little hot soupy all producing speck. Years of education down the toilet.

Yes, there is something wrong with this, actually.I sympathize; this is not easy stuff. But it will help if you try to co-operate a bit. I mean it when I say there is something wrong with speaking of a little speck. That notion does not correspond to what is actually proposed in modern cosmology.I will try, again, to explain the matter. Try to keep in mind; I am not trying to undermine your faith in God, or to say God is uninvolved in creation. I am purely and simply trying to help you understand the scientific model, now effectively universal amongst all cosmologists, of what the universe was like roughly 13.7 billion years ago.Even if you don't believe the universe is that old, if you are going to talk about the scientific models you disagree with, it would be wise to try and understand those models a bit better.What I have consistently pointed out as an error, right from the start, is to speak of the universe being a certain size at a certain time. Likewise, it is an error to speak of a particle, speck, primeval atom, or identifiable thing of any kind which was a certain size and then grew into the present universe.The plain fact is that we don't know the total size of the universe, either now or at any other time. The size of the universe is not established by big bang cosmology. In fact, we don't even know if the universe is finite, or infinite. And if it is infinite, then it has always been infinite, now and at any moment you pick in the past.Different individual scientists have different philosophical perspectives on this, but so far no way to test those ideas as science. There are many speculative cosmological models proposed which would answer this question, but we are unable to test any of them at present. One of the models mentioned in this forum in several contexts is the ekpyrosis theory. This is a really interesting idea; but it is not an alternative to the big bang. It is a new way for the bang to get started, and in such a way that there is no need for an inflationary epoch to explain the horizon problem, and no initial singularity. This is deep waters; but a starting point to even grasp the issues is to comprehend the basic underlying details of big bang expansion, which the ekpyrosis theory includes and endeavours to explain.So back to the big bang.When I say "soup", I am NOT saying that the "speck" was soupy. I am saying that there was no speck. As long as you keep thinking about "specks" there are still aspects of cosmological expansion as used in science that you have not yet understood.When I speak of "soup" I speak of a substance; not a thing. It makes no sense to ask how big "soup" is, or what is the size of "water". What we are saying is that at this early stage, the universe was not (as it is now) mostly empty space, with isolated clumps of matter. It was thick... very thick, and filled with a strange kind of soup.Imagine that everything you can see is filled with this soup. If you were to see it, you'd be in the soup yourself, there is no outside of the soup. The whole universe is filled with it. This would be difficult, because the soup is far more violent than the center of the Sun. Imagine the whole universe as far as the best of our telescopes could reach being all something like the center of our Sun, but far hotter and more dense and more violent. No edge. No boundaries. No specks.Got that in your mind's eye? You don't have to believe it; you may never believe it. That's up to you. I just want to help you get a slightly better understanding of what cosmologists believe, so exercise that imagination and give it a try. It is about to get worse. Now we add the expansion of space. To grasp this, think of a universe filled with bread dough; and the dough is rising. Again, there is no edge or boundary; everything is filled with dough. But it still rises... this is a bit like the expansion of space. As dough rises, it gets a bit less dense. If you take any little region inside the rising loaf, and watch it rise, the same amount of dough now fills a larger region.In the conditions of extreme density in the early universe, this expansion is rapid. (If we consider inflationary models, expansion is fantastically rapid; but we don't really need to worry about that at this stage.)If you have a little ray of light in this thick soup, it does not get far. For the first 300,000 years or so, the universe was too thick for light to pass through; it was opaque. But if light could move at the speed of light through the soup, distant regions would be carried by the expansion of space so fast that the light can't even catch up! This has nothing to do with travelling faster than light. Travel refers to movement through space, and the speed of light is a limit on travel through space. It is no limit at all on general expansion of space.A consequence of this expansion is that we can define within this thick soup a region, sufficiently large that light cannot ever get from one side to the other, because the expansion increases the required distances too rapidly for light to keep up. That region is not a speck. It is like a portion of a vast ocean that you are able to see from a ship. What you see is not a speck, and the boundary of your vision is not a real edge. The ocean carries on regardless far beyond what you can see.How large is this region? It depends on when you ask, because it depends on how fast the expansion is proceeding.Modern cosmology proposes that a small fraction of a second after the big bang, the size of this "horizon of visibility" was very small. This is not the size of any speck; it is simply an indication of how far away in the space are points that can see each other after 13.7 billion years.Since nothing travels faster than light, this means that everything we now see was once compressed within a small region of this small size... just like very thick dough before it has risen to become light and fluffy. But this small region would not look like a speck; because all you have is a universe of unknown size, filled with quark-gluon soup. Yes, but he tried to do that with incoherent and inconsistent gibberish; not with any material you could look for in empirical evidence. In fact, his first post in the thread includes phrases such as "it really is billions of our light years away" and "It leaves science pretty well intact!".Cheers -- Sylas (Edit replaced million with billion and fixed some spelling)[This message has been edited by Sylas, 04-01-2004]

Silas
You started your post by saying, "I sympathize". Please don't feel bad if I ask Eta, or a few of the others to verify what you said. If you are wrong, if you were writing from an insane asylum or something, and had access to the internet, that's ok. No problem. I'd give you "A" for effort. Anyone one out there want to spare this poor guy from some reply that may get a touch hard to take if it was just that he was speaking alone, and was far off what cosmology really says? I don't want to upset some poor feeble minded person if that's all it is. Soup, bread, and on and on. Please give this guy a break if he's really out to lunch, and let us know he does not speak for science.
OK, so, Silas, if you are serious, and someone stands up for you I'll try to give a reply. Thanks for the effort you put in these posts.

Sylas's explanations are consistent with the explanations of other cosmologists I've read, such as Hawking and Greene. As far as I know, what Sylas is telling you represents the consensus of modern cosmology.

He is using allegories. Nothing wrong with that, if you ensure that they help you visualize the model as good as possible.Preferably it would all be with math, but then you'd probably not understand any of it.

By responding to questions with irrelevant smart-aleck remarks rather than discussion or specification. See, for example, my attempts to get him to specify the amount of hydrogen that his "model" predicts should be in the universe (or at least get him to realize that not being able to predict the amount of hydrogen is a serious failing of his model) in messages 61, 63, 65, and 67, culminating in:

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That's a question for you to answer.

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Well, why would the spiritual universe have physical gas? Would the angels toot?

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How much is it you think we need?

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"The amount that we observe. "

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Well with the bulletproof model, you got it! Everything in the physical universe still exists, as is, for now!

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IMHO it's pretty obvious that he's not discussing or actually thinking about the points, he's just making childish jokes. I have something against your mis-statement of Sylas's posts. Try re-reading them. Exactly the opposite. Please try reading for comprehension. It is "bad" from a scientific viewpoint because it is unsound from a scientific viewpoint. Anything that science can study has a measurable effect on our universe.Repeating the part that you snipped and did not respond to:If you wish us to evaluate Arkathon's ideas as science, please supply a list of predictions about things we can measure today that will give one result if Arkathon's ideas are true and will give another result if Arkathon's ideas are false. He's refused to give even one item, and I think that his ideas are formulated so nobody can come up with such an item. Prove me wrong?

Excellent idea, but you can go much further. If all of this is new to you, then you can't even be sure that others here are not all in the same asylum as myself. Anything written in an on-line discussion forum like this is necessarily written comparatively quickly and without any review process. It should never be your final guide. You should check not only with a few other people on-line; you should also try reading a few books on the subject; and you should not feel obliged to do all that overnight.Books come in a great range of levels; and some popular books will repeat some of the common errors. But there are also a number of excellent books by prominent scientists who take time from their research to be involved also in the important task of making science accessible to the rest of us. Check out the background of the authors as far as you can (not always easy). Look for books which are actually by people who are cited in other books as leading researchers in their own right. Hawking, Guth, Linde, Weinberg (now dated), Davies, etc. John Gribbin is, I think, a good guide at a comparatively accessible level, and Gribbin also has a deeper understanding that helps anticipate and avoid common misunderstandings by a reader. I'll bet Eta would have some better suggestions for writers as well.On-line sources are easy to obtain, but harder to check for quality control. They can be at too technical a level for the regular readers, or else they can be nonsense from people who don't really know what they are talking about. To get at the models used in conventional science, focus on web sites at major universities and well known research organizations; but use this as a supplement to reading.You'll find that the terms I use; such as "soup" and "rising bread" and "horizons" are very common analogies of things from normal experience which are used to help explain this material. I've deliberately avoided the "balloon" analogy, which is very common but often causes more confusion because of subtleties with higher dimensions that are hard to grasp at first.You can use Google just to see who else uses these analogies. For example, search for "rising bread" and "relativity" together, or "rising dough" with "big bang", or other such combinations.Try a google for "quark-gluon soup" and just see how many hits you get. This search will turn up some fascinating research being conducted at major accelerators like CERN; and the research will invariably indicate that this is a state of matter which existed early in the universe. At such early stages there is a heap of room for a lot of new information and discovery to refine our models; so the CERN research is pretty exciting stuff.I'm not an expert in this; just a well read amateur. The analogies I use just are ones which I have taken from others who are experts.The ultimate description of the model is its mathematical representation; not the analogies we use to try and describe it. My maths is good, but not expert; in particular I struggle with general relativity, and really need a good textbook beside me. But I think I know the underlying models in sufficient detail to make a rough evaluation of different analogies, to identify places where they work and where they fall down.I don't require a reply to anything, though of course you are welcome as you wish. I recommend you focus on checking my sanity thoroughly.If any of this has been of use or interest, or even if not, then you are most welcome.Cheers -- Sylas[This message has been edited by Sylas, 04-01-2004]

No, it's not the suggestion, it's the fact; Arkathon admitted that the thread scenario allows for any age of the Universe, young or old, and the only reason that he has for picking 6,000 years is Biblical ... and the Bible is supposedly not part of the thread scenario. So again his "model" has no measurable impact on the Universe. In message 110 he wrote:

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If it doesn't rule out other dates then it does not allow whatever date you want, as in the final analysis all ages are included,

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Not within reason. But with the beginning being around 6200 years ago, I guess you can rule out then the older dates. OK I may have what you mean this time. "if exactly the same explanation can be used for any other age" So in other words, why not 62 million years. OK that is because there is good indications of the creation age, that would go with the spirit world involved. For example, a Spirit claiming to be the creator gave us the precise dates. So, what evidence would we have to come up with another date?

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Of course, the question he asks at the end indicates a severe ignorance of cosmology.I know it can be difficult to pick up in the middle of a long thread like this, but please read the thread and make an attempt to understand what's gone before.

Exactly! Arkathon started with the un-refutable (to him) assumption that the Univers is 6,000 years old, and attempted to produce a scenario in which that would be true. He didn't consider the observed evidence, he didn't consider the interrelationships of the many components of the Universe, he didn't consider anything much; any scenario that produces an answer he likes is good enough for him.The joke is that the scenario doesn't even produce the answer he likes; his scenario is (as he has admitted) compatible with any age of the Universe!Of course, starting with an assumption he wasn't willing to discard made his efforts unscientific immediately. Cue the rant about conventional scientists never questioning their assumptions ... even though fame. fortune, and prizes are showered on scientists who successfully question assumptions.

It is sad when a person does not even understand their own vision.Before separation speed of light was instantaneous (you're vision)
Therefore the light the stars were already sending was already at destination.When separation (process now not instant moment as it was originally) occurs as each section is ripped spiritual from physical universe the light now travels at speed (c), wherever it was dropped. (New undefined) process takes at most 2 days for your (weaker than the Hindu Model) Christian version (stars on 4th day rested on 7th, job done -- do we now get to the "a day is as a thousand years" bit huh do we huh?), except that you claim all was made before the "process" started ... was the "process" on the 7th day? Is that when it happened?Whichever you use, it was still but a moment in cosmic time, and the sky still goes dark: using the (larger) two day period, the light is spread out to (2 days/13.7 billion years = 4e-11% = 4/100000000000%) to fill the void from here to furthest there, so dim and spread out it is not possible to see with the unaided eye.Conversely, let's assume that this dim drawn out shadow of light is what we actually see instead of the full glory of light that was and will be again when the universes are reunited, ... or light reaches us traveling at (c) from wherever the star is. This means that stars that cross the "threshold" (of the age of the universe as distance) will suddenly be full brightness and shine like beacons in the wilderness. Unfortunately this is not the case, Alpha Centauri (remember Alpha Centauri, the third brightest star, actually a triple star system and 4.3 light-years away?) should be such a beacon, but while (a) it is bright, it is not the brightest (and there are three of them), and (most certainly) certainly (b) it is not 40,000,000,000,000 times as bright as the more distant stars for that would make it brighter than the sun. Note that Alpha Centauri is a sun type star with the same spectrum distribution as the sun and many other similarities, similarities that also match known stars that are over the threshold distance with no drop-off in light intensity beyond that expected from distance alone (no "process" involved).So, either the universe goes dark or we are blinded by the light of nearer stars ... or the AC is invalid. Epicycles anyone?Hindu model much superior, no "process" needed ... must be correct version. The Holy Trinity (sound familiar?) -- Brahma, Vishnu and Siva -- will be pleased.Don't think I didn't notice that you made no refutation for the Hindu Model, glad we are agreed that it is superior. Notice that between the two there are testable differences in what they predict:

1. age of the universe
   • "AC" predicts age of 6200 years
   • "HM" predicts 100 billion year old universe
   • Observation: minimum age of the universe is 13.7 billion years, contradicts "AC" and allows "HM"
2. light behavior
   • "AC" predicts light from 6200 ly away or less will be full bright, anything further extremely dim to the point of being unvisible
   • "HM" predicts light fully visible from depths of the universe
   • Observation: light fully visible from the depths of the universe, contradicts "AC" and confirms "HM"
3. age of the earth
   • "AC" predicts age of 6200 years
   • "HM" predicts much greater age, the earth being a cyclic event in a 100 billion year old universe
   • Observation: age of the earth is 4.55 billion years, contradicts "AC" and confirms "HM"

You probably recognize these three ...Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}