The Demise of ATM Discussions

[Gillianren]

I'll second that. I have a lot of skill as a musician, and it enabled me to have a fine 32-year career with one of the world's premier military bands. Nevertheless I never was anywhere close to being qualified to give a solo recital in Carnegie Hall. There probably are hundreds of French horn players in New York alone who are at least as good as I am, and mostly significantly better, and few of them make it to that stage as soloists. I would consider breakthrough work in physics, of the sort worthy of a Nobel laureate, as being roughly analogous to making it to that stage as a musician.

Actually, I've played on that stage. For the 100th anniversary of the Hall, they did a series of youth orchestra concerts--I don't know if they still do--and my community orchestra played. I was terrified. And I am assuredly not good enough for a solo recital, even if they ever had solo viola recitals. (I'm certainly not good enough on French horn, as I took one semester of it in high school from a teacher who didn't really know how to play it himself--followed up by a semester of bassoon, which he didn't know how to play at all!)

However, I seem to recall asking a direct question of Jerry that hasn't been answered yet.

[Nereid]

here's an example where mainstream has altered its theory due to untenable results.

see attached image/s of the cmb.

*************************************

in the bottom right section of the image appears 2 features which forced a re-evaluation of the meaning of the cmb data.

the bright area marked "axis of evil"...and the dark area marked "eridanus void".

the juxtaposition of 2 large areas of such massively divergent flux levels could not be explained by the previous assumption of an "unaltered" view of the cmb.

the cmb should look homogenous at large angles, there should be no large dark areas suggesting "large voids"...similarly, there should be no large areas that are over-bright...and appearing to be "cluster-like".

still, this is the answer that has been accepted by mainstream as to the reason why we see such divergences.

the bright spots are actually due to intervening galaxies/clusters residing between the cmb and us and (supposedly) amplifying the light of said cmb...and the dark areas are held to be voids or areas where there are few if any galaxies (and the cmb light is therefore minimally amplified).

**************************************

so our new understanding of what we are seeing when we look at the bright areas (ie: the bulk of the image) is now substantially different to what it used to be.

we are looking at clusters and superclusters of galaxies arranged into huge walls and mega structures, billions of light years long...and only in the dark areas (such as eridanus void) do we approach the ability to look at the transmission of the cmb unaffected.

What is the source of the attached images?

[Jerry]

Jerry. This is a direct question. Was the flow of blood through the human body once considered ATM?

If discussion of the matter would have been limited to thirty days, and then the thread closed, Blood flow would still be ATM.

[Gillianren]

If discussion of the matter would have been limited to thirty days, and then the thread closed, Blood flow would still be ATM.

Okay, number one, that's not actually an answer. I'll accept it as one, but it isn't.

Number two . . . William Harvey did the work. He didn't just expect people to overthrow thousands of years' worth of belief. He provided evidence. Further, he didn't expect time on a message board to change science. He didn't think that blathering on, and on, and on in one place was actually going to accomplish something. They didn't have peer review per se in the 17th Century, but he went through the closest process they had.

Number three, you're missing my point. Yeah. Discussion here is limited to 30 days, and thank Gods for that. However, science as a whole eventually accepted his ideas, and within his own lifetime. So much for "science never accepts new ideas." If it doesn't accept yours, the more likely options are that you haven't provided enough evidence, you haven't done enough work, or you're wrong.

[Neverfly]

Bear in mind to that we are not living in the ancient days.

Much of what was once unknown is no longer unknown. We have a clearer basis upon which to stand.
Claiming that such and such wasn't accepted a thousand years ago but was ultimately right means nothing by today's standards.

[Jerry]

I'll second that. I have a lot of skill as a musician, and it enabled me to have a fine 32-year career with one of the world's premier military bands. Nevertheless I never was anywhere close to being qualified to give a solo recital in Carnegie Hall. ... I would consider breakthrough work in physics, of the sort worthy of a Nobel laureate, as being roughly analogous to making it to that stage as a musician.

Cool. I found music too difficult, so I switched to physics and chemistry.

Breakthrough science is rare. All scientists dream of it; few get to bath in it. There was a fairly major (but largely unpublished) breakthrough in energetic chemistry when western scientist got their hands on what had been happening in the USSR. One of the direct results is much safer airbags.

Revolutionary changes are even more rare; but if you are looking for a comparison to musicianship, there really is none: Both Stravinski and Lennon were breakthrough musicians, but there is no 'more correct' musical score. Sometimes all that matters is that you can dance to it and it has a good beat.

Something is wrong with our physical understanding of the universe. What we are looking at here, is more like a very complex puzzle, and like all puzzles, you start with borders, work on the lines and note discontinuties. The model of the universe has a lot of pieces that don't fit - but is it because of the level of complexity, or is some of the framework assembled wrong?

I spent an evening plowing through Hipparcos papers, and this is the kind of observations that perk my interest:

http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/astro-p.../0412093v2.pdf

The result obtained by Hipparcos for the Pleiades (van Leeuwen 1999) was a complete surprise, yielding a distance modulus of (m − M) = 5.37 ± 0.06 magnitude, to be compared to a modulus of 5.60 ± 0.04 from main sequence fitting (Pinsonneault et al. 1998). Taken at face value, the Hipparcos result means that stars in the Pleiades are about 0.23 magnitude fainter than otherwise similar stars of the solar neighborhood. This large discrepancy has forced a careful reexamination of the assumptions and input parameters of the stellar models, as well as a thorough study of the Hipparcos data itself and potential errors in it. The controversy has not been fully resolved in that builders of star models find that the changes in physics or input parameters needed to account for the Hipparcos distance are too radical to be reasonable while the Hipparcos team has resolutely defended the Hipparcos result...

Two years later, the ESA scientist who reduced the Hipparcos data acknowledged substantial errors, and published corrected tables of Hipparcos positions and distances.

Why such a stunning error? Why did it take eight years to fix it? The Hipparcos team had a great deal of confidence in their methodology - They used the tried-and-true 'great circle' as a reference, with multidimensional spline fits to patch together incontinuities. The method should have worked if all of the physical parameters used to define local space are correct. It is possible Hipparcos ran into the same kind of Doppler surges Anderson found, or the path through space varied, or some combination of both?

The new Hipparcos data relys upon what all science must do when the underlying physics are not understood or too complex: Principle components, a variation upon finite element code, and statistics. We can do better.

[madman]

Nereid

What is the source of the attached images?

originally the wmap site...but i have stretched the original (oval shaped) "mollweide"? projection horizontally at top and bottom to produce a psuedo "plate caree" projection.

in other words, the unavoidable distortions of projecting a spherical image onto a flat surface are now pushed to the top and bottom horizons of the image.

so when you look at the image it is now distortion free from the left to the right edges.

i have also converted it to grey scale, tonally adjusted it and then converted to red scale.

[Jerry]

Madman's features really are outstanding in the new WMAP image:

http://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/index.html

Is it just me, or is the 5 year map rather less homogenious than the 1 and 3 year abstractions?

[Nereid]

Madman's features really are outstanding in the new WMAP image:

http://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/index.html

Is it just me, or is the 5 year map rather less homogenious than the 1 and 3 year abstractions?

"homogenious"? Another Jerry test, to see if anyone is reading the posts?

And may one have the temerity to ask how you concluded, albeit somewhat tentatively, it's "rather less homogenious"?

Was it, perchance, by application of a standard statistical test?

[Nereid]

[snip]

Why such a stunning error? Why did it take eight years to fix it? The Hipparcos team had a great deal of confidence in their methodology - They used the tried-and-true 'great circle' as a reference, with multidimensional spline fits to patch together incontinuities. The method should have worked if all of the physical parameters used to define local space are correct. It is possible Hipparcos ran into the same kind of Doppler surges Anderson found, or the path through space varied, or some combination of both?

The new Hipparcos data relys upon what all science must do when the underlying physics are not understood or too complex: Principle components, a variation upon finite element code, and statistics. We can do better.

Ah the joys and delights that come from random surfing, without being required to show understanding!

If you'd like to ask these questions in the Q&A section, I'm sure you'll get thoughtful answers ... it's fascinating, how the two teams analysed the raw data independently, many years ago, and discovered some shortcomings; how they recognised the limitations of their analyses, and how more were subsequently discovered; how, much later, a complete, more comprehensive re-analysis become possible; ... and what that thorough re-analysis produced ...

But then the mystery - at least the possibility of a giant warp in "local space"* - would disappear, and we'd be left with boring old ordinary science, wouldn't we? Ah well, there are hundreds of other published papers to skim (and misunderstand) ...

* see how easy it is to grossly distort the original words? ("The method should have worked if all of the physical parameters used to define local space are correct. It is possible Hipparcos ran into the same kind of Doppler surges Anderson found, or the path through space varied, or some combination of both?")

[Jerry]

Okay, number one, that's not actually an answer. I'll accept it as one, but it isn't.

Number two . . . William Harvey did the work. He didn't just expect people to overthrow thousands of years' worth of belief. He provided evidence. Further, he didn't expect time on a message board to change science. He didn't think that blathering on, and on, and on in one place was actually going to accomplish something. They didn't have peer review per se in the 17th Century, but he went through the closest process they had.

Number three, you're missing my point. Yeah. Discussion here is limited to 30 days, and thank Gods for that. However, science as a whole eventually accepted his ideas, and within his own lifetime. So much for "science never accepts new ideas." If it doesn't accept yours, the more likely options are that you haven't provided enough evidence, you haven't done enough work, or you're wrong.

All good points.

The best approach to solving a problem changes with time. William Harvey probably never looked anything up in Wikipedia or sold anything on Ebay.

About a year before Anderson published the gravitational assist anomally paper, I engaged in a series of Emails with one of his collaborators. Did this help persuade them to publish? Anderson pointed out he had access to unpublished data; he is also retired so he can question the mainstream all he wants - it might hurt his scientific credibility, but not his livelyhood. I don't have that luxury - in fact being labeled a radical has hurt my career.

I don't have the skills necessary to do the multivariant analysis of the Hipparcos data to test the hypothesis that the errors may have been the results of unexpected orbital paths divergence, or distortions in space: But someone who reads this may have that charter.

Newton was scoffed when he first introduced his laws - he didn't publish for what? Two decades, during which he worked out many of the details and gave us both the theory and the wonderful mathematical tools.

I don't have decades, and decades of time.

Do you?

[Nereid]

[snip]

I don't have the skills necessary to do the multivariant analysis of the Hipparcos data to test the hypothesis that the errors may have been the results of unexpected orbital paths divergence, or distortions in space: But someone who reads this may have that charter.

What about GRACE data? LAGEOS? lunar ranging data? (and so on).

Newton was scoffed when he first introduced his laws - he didn't publish for what? Two decades, during which he worked out many of the details and gave us both the theory and the wonderful mathematical tools.

I don't have decades, and decades of time.

Do you?

OK, so but for the decades, you and Newton are the same ... or did I misunderstand?

[Gillianren]

The best approach to solving a problem changes with time. William Harvey probably never looked anything up in Wikipedia or sold anything on Ebay.

Yes. But the best approach to getting people to accept your solution does not.

About a year before Anderson published the gravitational assist anomally paper, I engaged in a series of Emails with one of his collaborators. Did this help persuade them to publish? Anderson pointed out he had access to unpublished data; he is also retired so he can question the mainstream all he wants - it might hurt his scientific credibility, but not his livelyhood. I don't have that luxury - in fact being labeled a radical has hurt my career.

Yeah, that Nobel Prize would sure be a pain.

I don't have the skills necessary to do the multivariant analysis of the Hipparcos data to test the hypothesis that the errors may have been the results of unexpected orbital paths divergence, or distortions in space: But someone who reads this may have that charter.

Maybe. But if you don't have the skills necessary, what makes you think you're right about it?

Newton was scoffed when he first introduced his laws - he didn't publish for what? Two decades, during which he worked out many of the details and gave us both the theory and the wonderful mathematical tools.

That had nothing to do with scoffing; Newton was actually accepted pretty quickly upon publication. That had more to do with Newton's perfectionism and the fact that his primary interest was the alchemy, not the physics.

I will, however, grant you that Newton himself was a prime example of scientists hampering the research and publication of that with which they didn't agree. Ditto Lord Kelvin. I can, however, name you dozens of scientists who embraced the new with open arms. And if you're going to mention the persecution of Copernicus and Galileo, I will tell you that their persecution (expected persecution, in Copernicus's case; he actually did publish on his deathbed) was from the Church, and that other scientists largely accepted them unless their religious beliefs prevented them from doing so. Ditto Darwin.

I don't have decades, and decades of time.

Do you?

Depends on how you define "decades, [sic] and decades of time." Certainly if I live to the average lifespan for a woman in the United States, I've got about 35 years. I can't know that I'll live that long, though I do come from a long-lived family; not one of my grandparents died before their 80s. However, science is not particularly my field of interest. Currently, film is. Not creating, though I've done some of that in my day--studying. So I'm watching some 400 movies a year and reading just about everything my library system has on the subject. I'm putting myself through independent film school, is how I'm currently thinking about it. I'm not expecting other people to teach me about, say, The Conversation, the one I'm currently watching. I've read some about it, but in the end, the only way to know the film is to watch it. Similarly, the only way to know the science is to do it yourself.

[nutant gene 71]

What about GRACE data? LAGEOS? lunar ranging data? (and so on).
OK, so but for the decades, you and Newton are the same ... or did I misunderstand?

Isaac Newton was ATM for two decades?!! How cool is that!

[Jerry]

But then the mystery - at least the possibility of a giant warp in "local space"* - would disappear, and we'd be left with boring old ordinary science, wouldn't we? Ah well, there are hundreds of other published papers to skim (and misunderstand) ...

* see how easy it is to grossly distort the original words? ("The method should have worked if all of the physical parameters used to define local space are correct. It is possible Hipparcos ran into the same kind of Doppler surges Anderson found, or the path through space varied, or some combination of both?")

Not a giant warp, a minor one, if you read the Anderson papers (on Pioneer, lunar ranging, and gravitational assist anomalies), you would know there are wider margins of error than the known systemics can account for. Three years ago, your peers were scoffing at these suggestions and using Hipparcos as the defining standard. (How could we possibly determine such astrometric limits...). I think you will find that even with the known errors in the Hipparcos measurements, the solar "warp" is more constrained by Hipparcos than Grace or LAGEOS. Also, the Cassini paper, which tightened constraints upon the WEP, was withdrawn without explanation.

I don't find very obvious discrepancy until you leave the Lunar-Earth environment. We need to perform fundamental tests the equivalance principles somewhere besides the Earth.

[Jerry]

Number three, you're missing my point. Yeah. Discussion here is limited to 30 days, and thank Gods for that. However, science as a whole eventually accepted his ideas, and within his own lifetime. So much for "science never accepts new ideas." If it doesn't accept yours, the more likely options are that you haven't provided enough evidence, you haven't done enough work, or you're wrong.

It is a good point, but I never said science does not accept new ideas - I pointed out progress in energetics as an example.

What I am saying is that astro-scientist have used unusual and unscientific reasoning to perpetuate bad scientific arguments; while at the same time expecting those with alternative solutions to find exact solutions, in Sagan's words: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. There is NO evidence of the imaginary 'tholins' on the surface of Titan, and Sagan's attempt to bale out Newton must be rejected as nullified.

Extraordinary evidence does exist that Newtonian physics do not correctly predict what we observe: Galactic rotations, cluster rotations, gravitational accelerations, even the calibration of the GPS system produced results that differ from Newton's predictions. It is impossible to resolve all of these oddball observations without changes that also predict higher percentages of heavy atoms in the outer solar systems, because that is what we are observing all of the time.

[Michael Noonan]

Okay, number one, that's not actually an answer. I'll accept it as one, but it isn't.

Number two . . . William Harvey did the work. He didn't just expect people to overthrow thousands of years' worth of belief. He provided evidence. Further, he didn't expect time on a message board to change science. He didn't think that blathering on, and on, and on in one place was actually going to accomplish something. They didn't have peer review per se in the 17th Century, but he went through the closest process they had.

Number three, you're missing my point. Yeah. Discussion here is limited to 30 days, and thank Gods for that. However, science as a whole eventually accepted his ideas, and within his own lifetime. So much for "science never accepts new ideas." If it doesn't accept yours, the more likely options are that you haven't provided enough evidence, you haven't done enough work, or you're wrong.

It is hard to be credited with a discovery if the work is destroyed or the establishment condones burning at the stake or you are from the wrong background. From Wikipedia the page on William Harvey.

Although Ibn al-Nafis and Michael Servetus had described pulmonary circulation before the time of Harvey, all but three copies of Servetus' manuscript Christianismi Restitutio were destroyed and as a result, the secrets of circulation were lost until Harvey rediscovered them nearly a century later.

Ibn al-Nafis was hundreds of years ahead of his time and accredited.

Ibn al-Nafis is most famous for being the first physician to describe the pulmonary circulation,[1] and the capillary[2] and coronary circulations,[3][4] which form the basis of the circulatory system, for which he is considered the father of circulatory physiology[5] and "the greatest physiologist of the Middle Ages."[6] He was also an early proponent of experimental medicine, postmortem autopsy, and human dissection,[7][8] first described the concept of metabolism,[9] and developed his own new Nafisian[10] systems of anatomy, physiology, psychology and pulsology to replace the Avicennian and Galenic doctrines, while discrediting many of their erroneous theories on the four humours, pulsation,[11] bones, muscles, intestines, sensory organs, bilious canals, esophagus, stomach, and the anatomy of almost every other part of the human body.[12] Ibn al-Nafis also drew diagrams to illustrate different body parts in his new physiological system.

Michael Servetus from his page in Wiki.

Michael Servetus (also Miguel Servet or Miguel Serveto; 29 September 1511 – 27 October 1553) was a Spanish (Aragonese) theologian, physician, and humanist and the first European to describe the function of pulmonary circulation.

His interests included many sciences: astronomy and meteorology; geography, jurisprudence, study of the Bible, mathematics, anatomy, and medicine. He is renowned in the history of several of these fields, particularly medicine and theology.

This was the question.

Right. (Don't know about the China thing, either.) Now? Not so much.

How about (you don't have to answer this one, Jon; you're not any of the people I'm aiming at) the idea that blood flows through the human body? ATM at first or no?

(my bold)
I guess I was not one of the people you were aiming at either. Apparently an idea is only ATM when it becomes mainstream by the 'right' person.

As such I am not even ATM, nothing. Fair enough I can write in public and religious forums then.

[Nereid]

[snip]

Extraordinary evidence does exist that Newtonian physics do not correctly predict what we observe: [...] cluster rotations, [snip]

(my emphasis)

I am unfamiliar with such observations, let alone any "[e]xtraordinary evidence".

Could you please elaborate?

[Jerry]

That had nothing to do with scoffing; Newton was actually accepted pretty quickly upon publication. That had more to do with Newton's perfectionism and the fact that his primary interest was the alchemy, not the physics.

I will, however, grant you that Newton himself was a prime example of scientists hampering the research and publication of that with which they didn't agree. Ditto Lord Kelvin. I can, however, name you dozens of scientists who embraced the new with open arms. And if you're going to mention the persecution of Copernicus and Galileo, I will tell you that their persecution (expected persecution, in Copernicus's case; he actually did publish on his deathbed) was from the Church, and that other scientists largely accepted them unless their religious beliefs prevented them from doing so. Ditto Darwin.

Thanks - good insight.

Religions were able to persecute because they held the police power and the purse strings. Today the [science) purse is generally controlled by politicians who keep tabs on science, and the scientists they listen too. These are the gatekeepers for what new ideas are explored, and which suggested lines of research wither for lack of funding.

We will see more of the types of gravimetric research I am crying for in the future, because Anderson and others are finally getting the issues raised to a higher level of awareness.

... So I'm watching some 400 movies a year and reading just about everything my library system has on the subject. I'm putting myself through independent film school, is how I'm currently thinking about it. I'm not expecting other people to teach me about, say, The Conversation, the one I'm currently watching. I've read some about it, but in the end, the only way to know the film is to watch it. Similarly, the only way to know the science is to do it yourself.

With such an appetite, it sounds like you could/should teach.

If one is convinced there is much that is wrong with the current direction of cosmology, blazing one's own trail is an option. Neried has pointed out many times, that if the established ground rules are ignored; anything developed is likely to be weak in the knees and full of cracks...but then, that is what is wrong with cosmology today.

So it is a little like a sudoku puzzle you have 90% solved; but there is a mistake somewhere - it is almost impossible to back track; you have to scratch the puzzle off and start on a new one. What I want to know is, who decided static electricity is caused by rubbing electrons off of insulated surfaces?

[Jerry]

The properties of Titan's surface at the Huygens landing site from DISR observations

There is a lot of good material here, but also some passages that demonstrate my thesis for this thread: Mainstream standards are much lower for mainstream concepts than ATM concepts.

The good visual match with the ISS image and the dunes in the SAR image allow for accurate placement of the DISR mosaic. However, to match the orientation of the dunes in the ISS image with those in the DISR mosaic, the latter needs to be rotated 5 counterclockwise.

What is wrong with this picture? Matching possible dunes from the Huygens photo array with SAR images from Cassini? Dunes are dunes - they could be anywhere, and rotating the rest of the framing so that the dunes line up is like using manhole covers to determine where you are on long island.

Again, apply the Jerry test: If I said I can align sand dunes from different images, and use them to correlate surface features and thus prove aliens sculpted rocks about on Titan, wouldn't you find it laughable?

The latest Cassini Titan pass (41?) in February revisited the Huygens site at for higher resolution SAR; and I'll bet you a bottle of the best Australian Merlot, that the correlations found in earlier passes melt away at higher resolution. (I am on record for saying all of the Huygens images were taken at MUCH lower elevations than the ESA has published, therefore there can be no correlations between SAR and Huygens images.

Also in this paper:

Furthermore, parts of the MRI and the HRI images were overexposed due to reected light of the Surface Science Lamp (SSL), and the HRI and, to a lesser extent, the MRI were out-of-focus due to the close proximity (about 45 cm) of the surface.

Ok - that's good to see in print.

The original intent was to cover the full range of azimuths, but this was not achieved due to the failure of the Sun Sensor.

In section 5.1 we will demonstrate that the darkness of the river beds can completely be explained by topographic shading, without the need for dark deposits.

So, no dark 'tholins' in the lowlands...oh, wait:

In Fig. 10 we make a rough estimate of the shape of the land spectrum by
multiplying the ratios with the reflectance reconstructed for the lake bed by
Schroder & Keller (this issue). It is tempting to interpret this reddening in
terms of tholins with the implication that they are more abundant on the land.

Why is this a temptation? Tholins are black, or in weak concentrations, yellow, where does the red come from? Continuing...

Different types of tholins have been synthesized in the laboratory. The black tholins of Bernard et al. (2006) are red over the whole DISR wavelength range, whereas the reflectance spectrum of their yellow tholins feature an absorption line at 1.5 cm. The presence of both types of tholin cannot explain the jump in reflectance at 1.59 cm. Perhaps it is associated with water ice abundance or grain size, as the strongest water absorption line in the DISR range is the 1.5 cm line. Then water ice would be more abundant (or exposed) in the lake bed area, or it would be in the form of coarser grains (more about this below).However, Fig. 10 shows that the jump at 1.59 cm in the land spectrum completely erases the shallow absorption line that we find in the lake bed spectrum; it still features a blue near-IR slope, but it is not clear whether there is room for a water absorption line at all (though admittedly, we have only reliable information within the methane windows). The brightest terrain in the land area seems not to expose water ice as suggested by Tomasko et al. (2005).

Since Tomasko is one of the authors, this is a remarkably candid admission. As long as they limit the possible constituents to water and organics, Titans surface will remain a mystery to mainstream scientists.

Finally, rememeber the holler'n science between Doug and I, over whether Huygens was swaying or rotating bassakwards just before landing?

The azimuth angle of each spectrum was calculated from the probe attitude reconstruction by Karkoschka et al. (2007), and we assumed zero tip and tilt. Note that the latter may lead to inaccuracies in the positioning of the footprints; the relative orientation of the spectra within a map is reliable due to the rapid acquisition of spectra, but we cannot account for a possible swinging motion of the probe.

I can, but only if the landing occurred almost two hours sooner than expected: That is the only time that the accelerometers accumulated data consistent with a swinging moment.

[Gillianren]

Thanks - good insight.

Religions were able to persecute because they held the police power and the purse strings. Today the [science) purse is generally controlled by politicians who keep tabs on science, and the scientists they listen too. These are the gatekeepers for what new ideas are explored, and which suggested lines of research wither for lack of funding.

Yeah, but the government can't burn you at the stake for your ideas. Further, there are non-governmental sources of funding.

With such an appetite, it sounds like you could/should teach.

I don't know enough yet.

If one is convinced there is much that is wrong with the current direction of cosmology, blazing one's own trail is an option. Neried has pointed out many times, that if the established ground rules are ignored; anything developed is likely to be weak in the knees and full of cracks...but then, that is what is wrong with cosmology today.

Um . . . if you don't have the skills to do the work yourself, how do you know? That was the whole point of my little film analogy. No matter what I've read about The Conversation, or Broken Blossoms, or whatever, without seeing the movie for myself, I still don't really know it.

So it is a little like a sudoku puzzle you have 90% solved; but there is a mistake somewhere - it is almost impossible to back track; you have to scratch the puzzle off and start on a new one. What I want to know is, who decided static electricity is caused by rubbing electrons off of insulated surfaces?

I'm pretty sure that's a bad definition of what causes static electricity. Further, I do sudoku puzzles all the time, and I have since before they became popular, and I've always found it easier to work out where I made the mistake than to start over, because where I made the mistake is usually in the last two or three steps. But either way, science isn't sudoku; throwing out things that work is bad science. Refining them is good science.

[korjik]

So it is a little like a sudoku puzzle you have 90% solved; but there is a mistake somewhere - it is almost impossible to back track; you have to scratch the puzzle off and start on a new one. What I want to know is, who decided static electricity is caused by rubbing electrons off of insulated surfaces?

Snipped by me

The proper definition of static electricity is any case where the change in charge with respect to time is small compared to the other timescales involved.

When you have two objects rub against one another, certain pairs cause a charge buildup on the two surfaces. If the two objects do not conduct current, then it can be found that the charge distributions are approximately equal and opposite in magnitude and correspond to the areas that were in contact. Conductors rapidly conduct (duh) the charge around their surfaces to minimize the energy in the electric field, but careful readings would still show an equal and opposite charge to the other rubbed object.

this was all shown quite a long time ago.

When people finally figured out how chemicals and elements were arranged, It was rapidly figured out that to first order, the negative charge had to be electrons, and that the electrons had to be rubbed off. If it were the only other possible way, the ions moving, then the structure of the two objects shoud rapidly change, and it should take alot more mechanical energy to charge, since you would have to pull molecules out of a lattice.

The actual mechanics of two objects rubbing is far more complex, but it still boils down to most of the charging from rubbing being electrons pulled off of one object by an object with more affinity for electrons.

[Jerry]

The actual mechanics of two objects rubbing is far more complex, but it still boils down to most of the charging from rubbing being electrons pulled off of one object by an object with more affinity for electrons.

Aye, and that's the rub - you can generate static charges in two identical substrates - for example, rubbing two toy balloons together - my daughter taught me that one, to at first my disbelief. Why does one piece of rubber have more or less affinity than an identical mate?

This is what I mean about backing all of the pieces out, reexamining them and seeing if the theory really holds water.

Originally Posted by Jerry
[snip]

Extraordinary evidence does exist that Newtonian physics do not correctly predict what we observe: [...] cluster rotations, [snip]

(my emphasis)

I am unfamiliar with such observations, let alone any "[e]xtraordinary evidence".

As you know, there is compelling evidence galaxies and clusters of galaxies do not rotate according to Newtonian laws, and whether you call the variance 'dark matter' or 'weird gravity' is really just a matter of sematics, especially since known types of matter have been eliminated from the equation. How could you ever determine the Newtonian mass/force relationship of 'dark matter' if it does not interact with normal matter in any measurable way other than gravimetrically? (How much volume does a one gram equivalent of dark matter fill?)

Um . . . if you don't have the skills to do the work yourself, how do you know?

I said I could not reduce the Hipparcos data in a reasonable time, I don't think one person could do it in a lifetime. Stuff this complex takes a task force; building potential models and crunching gigaflops of data-many dependent variables.

I once worked on a project to reduce and evaluate data on a similar scale - computer tomographic images of very large objects - thousands of manhours. (I only did the fine tuning on the neuro-networks - that took more than a year.)

[Gillianren]

I said I could not reduce the Hipparcos data in a reasonable time, I don't think one person could do it in a lifetime. Stuff this complex takes a task force; building potential models and crunching gigaflops of data-many dependent variables.

I once worked on a project to reduce and evaluate data on a similar scale - computer tomographic images of very large objects - thousands of manhours. (I only did the fine tuning on the neuro-networks - that took more than a year.)

Okay, but you still don't have the information, no matter why you don't. How do you know it'd go your way?

[Nereid]

[snip]

[snip]

Extraordinary evidence does exist that Newtonian physics do not correctly predict what we observe: [...] cluster rotations, [snip]

(my emphasis)

I am unfamiliar with such observations, let alone any "[e]xtraordinary evidence".

As you know, there is compelling evidence galaxies and clusters of galaxies do not rotate according to Newtonian laws, and whether you call the variance 'dark matter' or 'weird gravity' is really just a matter of sematics, especially since known types of matter have been eliminated from the equation. How could you ever determine the Newtonian mass/force relationship of 'dark matter' if it does not interact with normal matter in any measurable way other than gravimetrically? (How much volume does a one gram equivalent of dark matter fill?)

[snip]

(I have restored the original citation, or Jerry's post).

Actually, I'd rather prefer that you did not assume what I do, and don't know, if it's OK with you Jerry.

In this case, I do not know of any evidence concerning the rotation of clusters of galaxies, of the kind that suggests "clusters of galaxies do not rotate according to Newtonian laws" (emphasis added) ... hence my initial question.

Would you please provide clarification of this (apparent) ATM assertion, and some references to papers which present observational results that support this assertion?

Oh, and by "sematics" do you mean semantics?

[Jerry]

(I have restored the original citation, or Jerry's post).

Actually, I'd rather prefer that you did not assume what I do, and don't know, if it's OK with you Jerry.

In this case, I do not know of any evidence concerning the rotation of clusters of galaxies, of the kind that suggests "clusters of galaxies do not rotate according to Newtonian laws" (emphasis added) ... hence my initial question.

Would you please provide clarification of this (apparent) ATM assertion, and some references to papers which present observational results that support this assertion?...

ATM? Depends upon who is using the cluster and how they interpret the data:

Hubble sees dark matter ring in a galaxy cluster
http://www.physorg.com/news113031879.html

Time to overhaul Newton's theory of gravitation? Galaxy cluster models cast doubt on dark matter

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM5SHV681F_index_0.html

Stacy McGaugh's Mond pages:
http://www.astro.umd.edu/~ssm/mond/

[matt.o]

Nereid, there have been studies done searching for cluster rotation, most recently this one. The results are tentative, though they find evidence for 12 clusters which are rotating (and don't exhibit substructure). I think other methods have detected bulk motions in the intra cluster medium, not sure if it was net rotation.

I think both you and I know Jerry meant to refer to the dispersion of peculiar velocities of cluster galaxies (which is different from cluster rotation, Jerry).

[korjik]

Aye, and that's the rub - you can generate static charges in two identical substrates - for example, rubbing two toy balloons together - my daughter taught me that one, to at first my disbelief. Why does one piece of rubber have more or less affinity than an identical mate?

This is what I mean about backing all of the pieces out, reexamining them and seeing if the theory really holds water.

then do so. Just saying that your daughter showed you two balloons that could charge off of one another dosent mean that all of electrostatics must be thrown out. It means that there is something there that you dont know. You seem to think that once you have a single peice of anomalous data, the entire previous theory must be rejected, even if you cannot explain what is causing the anomaly.

As you know, there is compelling evidence galaxies and clusters of galaxies do not rotate according to Newtonian laws, and whether you call the variance 'dark matter' or 'weird gravity' is really just a matter of sematics, especially since known types of matter have been eliminated from the equation. How could you ever determine the Newtonian mass/force relationship of 'dark matter' if it does not interact with normal matter in any measurable way other than gravimetrically? (How much volume does a one gram equivalent of dark matter fill?)

How do you know that what we can see is all that there is to see? We dont know why galaxy scale objects seemingly are non-newtonian, but we do know that it does fit on most scales we can test. Until we can get enough data to disprove some theories, or confirm others, we just dont know.

How much volume does one gram of DM fill? A rough calc would be (mass galaxy-mass baryonic)/Volume galaxy= density DM

The estimate I did a couple years ago was about 10^-20 kg/m^3

I said I could not reduce the Hipparcos data in a reasonable time, I don't think one person could do it in a lifetime. Stuff this complex takes a task force; building potential models and crunching gigaflops of data-many dependent variables.

I once worked on a project to reduce and evaluate data on a similar scale - computer tomographic images of very large objects - thousands of manhours. (I only did the fine tuning on the neuro-networks - that took more than a year.)

Why? If you have a model of what happens, you should be able to figure how it would affect Hipparcos and see if your model causes better fits. That looks more like a grad student with supercomputer time than a huge collaboration.

[dgruss23]

Oh, and by "sematics" do you mean semantics?

Either he means semantics - which fits in the context of the sentence - and it was a simple typographical error - or he's invented a new word not found in the dictionary. I'll go with the typographical eror interpretation.

[Nereid]

Either he means semantics - which fits in the context of the sentence - and it was a simple typographical error - or he's invented a new word not found in the dictionary. I'll go with the typographical eror interpretation.

I think you're right.

However, it was used in a post that showed - to me anyway - that Jerry intended to mean something very different than "clusters of galaxies do not rotate according to Newtonian laws", despite being asked about it previously.

Further, Jerry is on record* as saying that he (deliberately?) sometimes writes clangers (my term), for the (sole?) purpose of testing whether (certain?) BAUT members are actually reading his posts.

So, who knows (other than Jerry)? Was this simply a typo? Or one of those deliberate tests he referred to elsewhere? Or something else (the initial salvo in a new ATM idea, yet another hijack of an ATM thread, perhaps)?

And how - other than by getting a direct Jerry response - could anyone tell?

* reference available upon request