The BICEP2 Project at the South Pole:

[lpetrich]

Cosmic inflation appears to solve several problems, lpetrich. But as you know singlularities are mentioned in the context of black holes and the Big Bang. Once you understand the "frozen star" black hole interpretation then flip it around, the flatness problem and the horizon problem go away.

Whatever the "frozen star" interpretation of black holes is supposed to be.

There is indeed an analogy between gravitational collapse and the Big Bang, but for gravitational collapse, the singularity is in the future, while in the Big Bang, the singularity is in the past. However, the mechanics are somewhat different. The Universe does not seem to have a surface, as a gravitationally-collapsing star does.

As to the flatness problem, let's see how the various constituents of the Universe behave. Let's consider their densities as functions of the Universe size parameter a.

Wavelength ~ a
Temperature ~ 1/a

I'll set c = 1 as is usual in the professional literature.
For an equation of state with (pressure) = w * (density),
(density) ~ a[sup]-3(1+w)[/sup]

Radiation (gas of particles moving at v = c): w = 1/3, (density) ~ a[sup]-4[/sup]
Dust (gas of particles moving at v = 0): w = 0, (density) ~ a[sup]-3[/sup]
Curvature: w = -1/3, (density) ~ a[sup]-2[/sup]
Cosmological constant: w = -1, (density) ~ constant

Let's see how the curvature behaves. I'll ignore dark energy and assume that the Universe is dust all the way back to the matter/radiation crossover at a ~ 1/3000 * present.

Present day:
Size factor = 1
Temperature = 3 K or 3*10[sup]-4[/sup] eV
Curvature/density = Less than few percent, but I'll use 1 for convenience, for matter/curvature crossover

Matter dominated; I'll ignore dark energy

Matter/radiation crossover
Size factor = 3*10[sup]-4[/sup]
Temperature = 10[sup]4[/sup] K or 1 eV
Curvature/density = 3*10[sup]-4[/sup]

Radiation dominated

Planck: quantum gravity
Temperature = 10[sup]19[/sup] GeV or 10[sup]28[/sup] eV
Size factor = 3*10[sup]-32[/sup]
Curvature/density = 3*10[sup]-60[/sup]

So one gets extreme fine tuning.

However, inflation solves that problem nicely, because curvature/density behaves as a[sup]-2[/sup] during it, instead of as a (dust) or a[sup]2[/sup] (radiation). It flattened out the Universe.

-

Now the horizon problem. For that, let us consider the light cone from a point.
Comoving coordinate x = integral dt/a
The event horizon is thus at x = (typical time)/a
The Hubble parameter H is essentially 1/(typical time)

Since time ~ 1/sqrt(G*density),
we get a ~ t[sup]2/(3(1+w))[/sup],
and x ~ t[sup](1+3w)/(3(1+w))[/sup]

Thus, x ~ t[sup]1/3[/sup] for dust and t[sup]1/2[/sup] for radiation. In both cases, the event horizon expands with time, thus producing the horizon problem.

But for inflation, x ~ 1/(H*a) where H is constant. Since a increases, x decreases, thus solving the horizon problem. In fact, a = a0*e[sup]H*t[/sup].

-

I hope that this math has not been too difficult to follow.

 

[lpetrich]

Then when you understand electromagnetism the relic problem goes away.

Farsight, I've seen your arguments against the existence of magnetic monopoles. They are essentially:

• They have not been observed.
• Maxwell's equations are revealed truth, and they contain no magnetic-monopole source terms.

 

[paddoboy]

Whatever the "frozen star" interpretation of black holes is supposed to be.

Farsight believes the Schwarzchild radius and GR predictions do not hold, rather the old Newtonian John Michel "Dark star" interpretation.
He also believes everything stops at the EH and nothing crosses it, and even claims to have a ToE. :shrug:

BTW, nice contributions to reality lpetrich...thanks.

 

[paddoboy]

Another interesting follow up.....


""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
http://phys.org/news/2014-06-higgs-boson-universe-collapse.html

(Phys.org) —British cosmologists are puzzled: they predict that the Universe should not have lasted for more than a second. This startling conclusion is the result of combining the latest observations of the sky with the recent discovery of the Higgs boson. Robert Hogan of King's College London (KCL) will present the new research on 24 June at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting in Portsmouth.
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Again to those interested one way or the other.
These are obviously still rather preliminary views.
Let's treat them as such.

 

[lpetrich]

Farsight believes the Schwarzchild radius and GR predictions do not hold, rather the old Newtonian John Michel "Dark star" interpretation.
He also believes everything stops at the EH and nothing crosses it, and even claims to have a ToE. :shrug:

This is what he seems to think is the only physical time for a black hole and what's inside it: the time measured by an observer who is stationary relative to the black hole. "Observer" here is anyone or anything that can make measurements.

The relativity of time is a cornerstone of relativity. That's why Max Planck called it "relative theory" and Alfred Bucherer "relativity theory". However, Newtonian mechanics is also a sort of relativity theory, though with time always the same.

Consider observing gravitational collapse of a star to a black hole. From the outside, the star slows down as it approaches the event horizon and its light gets very redshifted. One never observes the star reaching the event horizon, only getting closer and closer and closer, and also more and more and more redshifted. But if one was in the star, one would observe it collapsing past the event horizon in a finite time, and one would not even notice anything special when that happens. One would also observe collapse from there to the singularity in a finite time.

BTW, nice contributions to reality lpetrich...thanks.

Nice to be appreciated.

 

[Farsight]

Whatever the "frozen star" interpretation of black holes is supposed to be.

You know what it is. Kevin Brown refers to it in the formation and growth of black holes.

Farsight, I've seen your arguments against the existence of magnetic monopoles. They are essentially:

• They have not been observed.
• Maxwell's equations are revealed truth, and they contain no magnetic-monopole source terms.

No they aren't. In a nutshell what I've said is that the electron has an electromagnetic field, not an electric field. So "electric" charge is a misnomer. So "magnetic" charge is misguided.

 

[paddoboy]

You know what it is. Kevin Brown refers to it in the formation and growth of black holes.

Kevin discusses the "frozen star" interpretation, that's all. And it certainly is obvious that he prefers the GR version.

 

[lpetrich]

(The "frozen star" interpretation of black holes...)

You know what it is. Kevin Brown refers to it in the formation and growth of black holes.

Farsight, I get the impression that you deny the relativity of time, that you maintain that there is one universal time that every observer experiences. That is not the case, as several experiments have shown.

No they aren't. In a nutshell what I've said is that the electron has an electromagnetic field, not an electric field. So "electric" charge is a misnomer. So "magnetic" charge is misguided.

That's a dumb argument against magnetic monopoles. The electric and magnetic fields are parts of the electromagnetic field, just like the electric field's x1 component, x2 component, and x3 component are all parts of the electric field. It also does not demonstrate that magnetic-monopole source terms are impossible.

Let's now get into the relativity of time. That is why relativity is called that instead of Einsteinian mechanics. Both Newtonian mechanics and special relativity feature symmetries of space-time. Yes, space-time and not space-motion. Here they are:

Continuous ones:
Translations: x1 -> x1 + a1, x2 -> x2 + a2, x3 -> x3 + a3, t -> t + at
Rotations: x1 -> x1*cos(a) - x2*sin(a), x2 -> x1*sin(a) + x2*cos(a), x3 -> x3, t -> t, and analogously for other rotation axes
Boosts:
Newton: Galilean boosts:
x1 -> x1 - v*t, x2 -> x2, x3 -> x3, t -> t
Einstein: Lorentz boosts:
x1 -> γ*(x1 - v*t), x2 -> x2, x3 -> x3, t -> γ*(t - v*x1/c^2) and likewise for other directions
γ = 1/sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2)

Setting v = c*tanh(u), where u is the "rapidity", the Lorentz boosts become
x1 -> x1*cosh(u) - c*t*sinh(u), x2 -> x2, x3 -> x3, t -> t*cosh(u) - x1/c*sinh(u) and likewise for other directions
Notice the similarity to rotations.

Discrete ones:
Reflection in space
Reflection in time
Reflection in both

Needless to say, one can easily make combinations of them.

The symmetries form groups, and they have an elaborate hierarchy of subgroups.

 

[Farsight]

Farsight, I get the impression that you deny the relativity of time, that you maintain that there is one universal time that every observer experiences. That is not the case, as several experiments have shown...

Not me. I don't know where you got that idea from. I'm forever pointing to experimental evidence and describe myself as a "relativist". I've never said anything against boosts or the "rotation" between space and time.

Kevin discusses the "frozen star" interpretation, that's all. And it certainly is obvious that he prefers the GR version.

They're both the GR version.

Are we on the wrong thread here guys? This is the BICEP2 thread about inflation.

 

[dumbest man on earth]

Are we on the wrong thread here guys? This is the BICEP2 thread about inflation.

Farsight, the following link was Posted in Post # 104 : http://phys.org/news/2014-06-higgs-boson-universe-collapse.html

The following is the "abstract" of the Physical Review Letter 112, 201801 – Published 20 May 2014 "Electroweak Vacuum Stability in Light of BICEP2", by Malcolm Fairbairn and Robert Hogan - referenced in that Link :

We consider the effect of a period of inflation with a high energy density upon the stability of the Higgs potential in the early Universe. The recent measurement of a large tensor-to-scalar ratio, rT∼0.16, by the BICEP2 experiment possibly implies that the energy density during inflation was very high, comparable with the GUT scale. Given that the standard model Higgs potential is known to develop an instability at Λ∼10 10  GeV this means that the resulting large quantum fluctuations of the Higgs field could destabilize
the vacuum during inflation, even if the Higgs field starts at zero expectation value. We estimate the probability of such a catastrophic destabilization given such an inflationary scenario, and calculate that for a Higgs boson mass of m h=125.5  GeV that the top mass must be less than m t∼172  GeV. We present two possible cures: a direct coupling between the Higgs field and the inflaton and a nonzero temperature from dissipation during inflation.

The ^^above quoted^^ "abstract", as well as the Full Document, can be read at this at this Link : http://arxiv.org/pdf/1403.6786v3.pdf

Farsight, if you have not already read it, I thought you might be interested in it.

My own objective observation, after a several full readings of the Physical Review Letter, is that the Letter should probably not be marginalized or maligned in any way by being "treat(ed) as obviously still rather preliminary".

Farsight, it is a "good read" and probably deserves inclusion in any serious discussion of the findings of BICEP2 in regards to inflation.

 

[lpetrich]

The instability of the vacuum at high energies? That's a known issue for the Standard Model in the absence of SUSY or similar intermediate-scale physics.

Inflation itself does require new physics. The inflaton (no second i), as it is sometimes called, is unlikely to be the Standard-Model Higgs particle.

 

[paddoboy]

They're both the GR version.

Are we on the wrong thread here guys? This is the BICEP2 thread about inflation.

Except one dates back to around 1783 with a paper by John Michell and which he called "Dark "Stars"
The other around 1916.

The BICEP2 findings are possibly tainted, and further investigations and peer review, including redoing the experiment will confirm positively one way or the other.
Either way, it does not invalidate the cosmic Inflation scenario, and its many benefits to the BB.

 

[Farsight]

dmoe: thanks. I'll take a look.

Except one dates back to around 1783 with a paper by John Michell and which he called "Dark "Stars"
The other around 1916.

Go and read Kevin Brown's article, particularly this bit:

Incidentally, I should probably qualify my dismissal of the "frozen star" interpretation, because there's a sense in which it's valid, or at least defensible. Remember that historically the two most common conceptual models for general relativity have been the "geometric interpretation" (as originally conceived by Einstein) and the "field interpretation" (patterned after the quantum field theories of the other fundamental interactions).

Also note that Kevin Brown previously referred to Wheeler and Weinberg rather than Einstein and field theories.

The BICEP2 findings are possibly tainted, and further investigations and peer review, including redoing the experiment will confirm positively one way or the other. Either way, it does not invalidate the cosmic Inflation scenario, and its many benefits to the BB.

Read the Nature article. Nothing can invalidate the cosmic inflation scenario.

 

[paddoboy]

Go and read Kevin Brown's article, particularly this bit:

As far as I know, the Dark Star concept is the same as your Frozen star concept, and is actually a Newtonian mechanics proposition. :shrug:

Read the Nature article. Nothing can invalidate the cosmic inflation scenario.

Thanks for that.
Although Paul Steinhardt is a reputable figure, his opinion re Inflation is not shared by all.
I found the following at.........
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https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/cosmic-inflation-has-its-flaws-so-do-its-critics

an extract:

So perhaps a sort of cyclic universe scenario will someday explain the universe better than inflation does. But in the meantime, dismissing inflation as an unmitigated disaster reflects more philosophical prejudice than physical judgment.

Steinhardt’s lament that inflation fails to make “falsifiable” predictions rests on a philosophical view that not all scientists share. Must a scientific theory make falsifiable predictions, or can it simply provide an explanation that relates observations to the operation of underlying physical principles? It’s a nuanced distinction, but the “falsifiable prediction” philosophy of what counts as science isn’t quite the same as the “explaining the observations” approach, and many scientists prefer the latter. It remains to be seen which of those philosophies proves must fruitful in making progress on cosmological problems.

A related philosophical issue is the implicit dislike of anthropic explanations among many expressing anti-inflation sentiment. It’s a philosophical prejudice, widely shared by many scientists, that anthropic reasoning — appealing to the existence of life — has no business being part of a scientific explanation. But historically, similar reasoning has been used, appropriately, to answer questions that had been misposed when assuming that life’s existence was irrelevant to the answer. (Why is the planet we live on so comfy, for instance? No theory predicts that planets must have temperatures in this range. It just turns out that there are a bunch of planets, and people live on one that happens to occupy the comfort zone.)

An important known unknown is whether the universe is analogous to the Earth in this respect. Maybe the conditions in our universe allow life not because some deep theory predicts these conditions precisely, but because there’s a whole bunch of universes and we live in one with the properties that allow us to exist. If that’s the case, then inflation does explain why the universe we live in is the way it is, even if it does not predict the properties uniquely.

Still, these questions are open. What’s the best philosophy, what’s the best picture of the cosmos, what is the relationship of life to reality? Can’t say for sure. So it’s OK to question the conventional cosmological wisdom. But it might be worth remembering that a simple universe does not necessarily call for a simple explanation, or a philosophically pleasing explanation — it calls for a correct explanation.
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In the mean time, Inflation stands as the best explanation we have that explains the horizon problem, Isotropy and homegenity.
To dismiss it out of hand, as you appear to do, is not very scientific like...considering also that Paul Steinhardt was once a supporter and advocate of Inflation.

 

[paddoboy]

And it seems we also have different models of "Inflation"to contend with.....
see
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
http://cds.cern.ch/record/326204/files/9705048.pdf

extract:
There now exist perfectly valid inflation models
which predict a significantly open Universe


Verdict:
In summary, we believe that as a model of initial conditions, inflation is a very adaptable theory,
but there remain several ways in which it might be ruled out. It remains to be seen whether any
of these tests become decisive. But as a model of structure formation, inflation lives much more
dangerously. Future observations offer the prospect of a critical test. Whether inflation created the
large-scale structure of the Universe is at present not proven, but will eventually be decided, one
way or the other, beyond all reasonable doubt.
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Which supports my final point in the previous post.

 

[dumbest man on earth]

To all who may be interested :

Stanford University made a video of Assistant Professor Chao-Lin Kuo surprising Professor Andrei Linde.
It was included in : "New evidence from space supports Stanford physicist's theory of how universe began", posted in the Stanford Report, March 17, 2014 : http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/march/physics-cosmic-inflation-031714.html

It is also viewable(in higher quality) at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlfIVEy_YOA

Is the video an example of Stanford University's own, "Peer Review in Action"?

 

[paddoboy]

Is the video an example of Stanford University's own, "Peer Review in Action"?

Of its own and by itself, certainly not...In conjunction with what has happened in mainstream cosmology since, in conjunction with the abating of the initial excitement, and in conjunction with the possible anomaly, of course it is an example of the scientific method and peer review in action, and that's the exact reason why the experimental data is being re-examined and will be re-conducted.
Points to take in hand... The BICEP2 results after review, one way or the other, does not invalidate the need for Inflation [or better] to explain the problems as previously presented.
Scientists are human...they are disposed to get excited and maybe jump the gun sometimes, like we all do, you, me and them. But mainstream science on the whole and peer review, has shown that more examination, and/or rerun of the experiment is needed.
And of course it in no way invalidates the still most likely proposal of the origin of the Universe, again as explained and detailed in the BB.

 

[Trippy]

And it seems we also have different models of "Inflation"to contend with.....

Quite, and this is part of what we were discussing in another thread.

 

[Trippy]

To all who may be interested :

Stanford University made a video of Assistant Professor Chao-Lin Kuo surprising Professor Andrei Linde.
It was included in : "New evidence from space supports Stanford physicist's theory of how universe began", posted in the Stanford Report, March 17, 2014 : http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/march/physics-cosmic-inflation-031714.html

It is also viewable(in higher quality) at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlfIVEy_YOA

Is the video an example of Stanford University's own, "Peer Review in Action"?

:roll:

Has the Cosmology Standard Model Become a Rube Goldberg Device?

 

[paddoboy]

:roll:

Has the Cosmology Standard Model Become a Rube Goldberg Device?

Nice article.....
A couple of extracts?

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
This week at the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting in the UK, physicists are challenging the evidence for the recent BICEP2 results regarding the inflation period of the Universe, announced just 90 days ago. New research is laying doubt upon the inclusion of inflation theory in the Standard Cosmological Model for understanding the forces of nature, the nature of elementary particles and the present state of the known Universe.

Dr. Brian Green, a researcher in the field of Super String Theory and M-Theory and others such as Dr. Stephen Hawking, are quick to state that the Standard Model is an intermediary step towards a Grand Unified Theory of everything, the Universe. The contortion of the Standard Model, into a sort of Rube Goldberg device can be explained by the undaunting accumulation of more acute and diverse observations at cosmic and quantum scales.
"


Today, observations from BICEP2, NASA and ESA great space observatories, sensitive instruments buried miles underground and carefully contrived quantum experiments in laboratories are making the Standard Model more stressed in explaining everything, the same model so well supported by the Higg’s Boson discovery just two years ago. Cosmologists concede that we may never have a complete, proven theory of everything, one that is elegant; however, the challenges upon the Standard Model and inflation will surely embolden younger theorists to double the efforts in other theoretical work.

Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/112822...-become-a-rube-goldberg-device/#ixzz35ngTiYOp

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