Cosmology Questions to ACG Members

By Eric J. Lerner


  Just trying to look at the questionnaire from a purely descriptive standpoint I would say this paragraph characterizes the agreements:

  “Most of us agree that the universe is not expanding, has no age and never went through an epoch of high density and temperature—in other words, that the Big Bang never happened. Most of us also agree that the redshift relationship is produced by something that happen to the light as it travels—some tired light process-- and that the helium, deuterium and lithium observed in old stars was produced by thermonuclear reactions in stars and by cosmic rays. The  forces of gravity and electromagnetism, combined with thermonuclear reactions, have shaped the structures we see from stars to super-clusters. We don’t see the necessity for an epoch of matter-antimatter equality since the universe was never both hot and dense. Without expansion and the other hypotheses of LCDM there is no need for dark energy either.”

  I DO NOT want to create an Anti-Concordance Cosmology, so I want to emphasize that we don’t all agree on the above paragraph. But most of us seem to, and that is, in my view, a long way from everyone having their own personal model.
 
  It appears that we do have considerable disagreements on the origin of the CMB and the phenomena that LCDM labels dark matter as well as on the nature of quasars (if that last one is really needed for a coherent history of the cosmos.)

  This is my attempt at an objective take on the results of the questionnaire—just treating ourselves as the observed phenomena.


Questionnaire and answers by ACG members:

1) Did the universe go through an epoch of high density and temperature?
- Yes (ΛCDM)
- No (AT, LM, PB, EL, CF, AK, HC, BR, DR, RF, VV, YHS)
- No, except perhaps the local universe (OS)

2) Is the universe expanding?
- Yes (ΛCDM)
- Yes, the universe evolution is cyclic. The universe is expanding at this epoch (VV)
- No (LM, PB, EL, CF, AK, HC, BR, DR, OS, YHS)
- No, but bubbles within are expanding (AT, RF)
 
3) How old is the universe?
- 12.6 Gy to 13.8 Gy (ΛCDM)
- doesn't have an age (PB, EL, CF, AT, LM, BR, DR, RF, DS, VV)
- it doesn't have an age, only a temporal horizon at ~13Gy (HC)
- age uncertain for now, should be >> than estimated by ΛCDM (AK)
- local universe: 6 - 14 Gy; whole universe: no age, eternal, not-known eternal time (OS)

4) What process generated the helium, deuterium and lithium observed in the oldest stars?
- nucleosynthesis during hot and dense state (ΛCDM)
- evolution of the stars (OS)
- heavy elements recycled to H1 by SMBH (PB, OS)
- heavy elements recycled to H1 by quasars (BR, OS, VV)
- nucleosynthesis in stars and SN, cosmic rays (EL, CF, AK, LM, RF, OS, YHS)
- continuous nucleosynthesis from multibang explosions (AT, DR, OS)
- nucleosynthesis in plasma filaments, particular in Z-pinches (RF)
- overall abundances remain constant at all observable points in time due to nucleosynthesis and nucleoautolysis (HC, OS)

5) What process produced the energy content of the CMB?
- temperature 3000K of the universe (ΛCDM)
- blackbody radiation from ISM (PB, DR)
- undetermined, but not big bang related (RF)
- ambient electromagnetic radiation of the cosmos (BR, LM)
- large-scale local electromagnetic ambient radiation (DS, VV)
- thermonuclear reactions in stars in young dusty galaxies (EL)
- e/m background from all matter, close to local “vacuum temperature” (AK)
- all EM-waves that survived absorption, reemission and redshift to CMB (AT, HC)
- universe: many Big Bangs far away, there are so many of them eternally everywhere (OS)

6) What process thermalized and isotropized the CMB radiation? Where was the CMB produced?
- Thomson scattering; everywhere at decoupling z=1089 (ΛCDM)
- interstellar medium (HC)
- universe: in the Big Bangs (OS)
- everywhere, ongoing, source undetermined (RF)
- nearly thermodynamic equilibrium in IGM - gas (CF)
- equilibrium background, close to local “vacuum temperature”; local (AK)
- scattering in IGM by electrons in magnetic filaments and/or spinning dust (EL)
- scattering on uniform ISM, ongoing; locally produced inside our galaxy, ISM (PB, LM)
- Thomson scattering by electrons and solar wind particles inside earth's magnetosphere; local (DS)
- very long redshifts and inverse Compton scattering traffic jam at ~218GHz, ongoing; ISM and IGM (AT)
- ambient temperature produced by thermodynamic equilibrium of IGM and ISM non-luminous matter with the ambient electromagnetic radiation of the cosmos; ISM and IGM, ongoing (BR, DR, VV)

7) What process created the structures that we see from stars to largest scales?
- early quantum fluctuations (ΛCDM)
- gravity, electromagnetic forces, electric/magnetic forces, nucleosynthesis, ongoing (PB, EL, AK, HC, BR, LM, DR, RF, OS, VV)
- stars from local eddies in colder clouds; galaxies from eddies between two bubbles in expansion; bubbles from extreme black hole (quasar) implosion-explosions (AT, OS)

8) What process generates the redshifts of galaxies?
- space expansion (ΛCDM, VV)
- 4D universe (OS)
- some type of tired light (EL, CF, LM, DR, DS, YHS)
- small positive curvature of universe removes energy from photons in transit (HC)
- relativistic gravitational effect and absorption effect on spherical wavefronts of light (BR)
- photons are a kind of slightly dissipative solitons (details), cannot be nondissipative particles in any case (AK)
- orbiting matter (stars, dust...) for the proper redshift; bubble expansion for all galaxies; for far away light: crossing many expanding bubbles (AT, PB)
- a repulsive force between electrically neutral matter that is part of an electrically neutral Maxwell force that is needed to explain inertia and the speed of light limit of neutral objects (RF)

9) What process produced more observed matter than antimatter?
- CP violation, a small asymmetry in quark/anti-quark decay rates (ΛCDM)
- maybe a futile question (OS)
- the universe was not created, there is no need to have an equal amount (LM, PB, HC, BR, DR)
- asymmetric baryogenesis for unknown process in prequark "black" energy (AT)
- it is possible that the correction of ΛCDM will imply a correction of standard model (CF)
- particle creation process automatically, dynamically, gives rise to only one kind of matter (AK, RF)
- separation of matter and antimatter by magnetic/gravitational processes at very large scales (EL)
 
10) Are quasars at the distance indicated by their redshift?
- Yes (ΛCDM, VV)
- some of them might be other BBs (OS)
- No, closer than estimated by ΛCDM (LM, BR, DR, RF, DS, PB, OS)
- No, farther than estimated by ΛCDM (AT, OS)
- At least a significant fraction of them (YHS)
- Yes, but their luminosity gets diminished by hyperspherical lensing (HC)

11) What process produces quasars?
- active galaxies powered by billion-solar-mass black holes (ΛCDM, CF, AT, HC, OS)
- undetermined (RF)
- Arp's theory - baby galaxies spit out by SMBH (DR)
- plasmoids contained by magnetic fields, gravity involved as well (EL, OS)
- active galaxies with not completely certain details of power source (AK, OS)
- very big explosion of black holes and galaxies, where everything starts again (OS)
- active galaxies seen through hydrogen clouds, spectra dipole-redshifted by hydrogen (LM, OS)
- quasars are nascent galaxies gestated by full scale active galaxies; the observed outcome of a gravitational collapse arrested before event horizon-singularity formation (BR, PB, OS)

12) What process causes very distant objects (e.g. SN Type 1a) to appear unusually faint?
- acceleration of expansion of universe (ΛCDM)
- undetermined (RF)
- absorption of light by intergalactic medium (VV)
- linear relation of y with distance + photon-loss (YHS)
- intensity/redshift/absorption scaling relationships (OS)
- hyperspherical lensing within a non-expanding universe (HC, OS)
- linear relation of z with distance, non-expanding universe (EL, OS)
- they are so far, and some of them are baby galaxies from the bangs (OS)
- this is not a model-independent observation; misinterpreted redshift measurements (LM, AT, DR, DS, PB, OS)

13) What causes the gravity identified as dark matter?
- weakly interacting particles, non-baryonic matter (ΛCDM, OS)
- magnetic fields (EL, OS)
- needs a better theory (VV)
- General Relativity fails (DS)
- fully ionized ordinary matter (YHS)
- positive spacetime curvature of universe adds to rotation velocity (HC)
- misinterpreted redshift measurements, condensed matter (e.g. rocks) (LM, PB, DR, OS)
- lousy analytics, cannot expect a Keplerian decline in the rotation curves of galaxies (BR, AT, LM, PB, OS)
- lousy analytics, cannot treat galaxies as gravitational point sources in galactic clusters (BR, AT, OS)
- not gravity or matter, but unreduced chaotic motion and interaction processes neglected in usual description (AK)
- needs a better theory; different forces, not matter, more electromagnetic forces, unknown forces, we can postulate forces as well as matter (OS)
- a Lorentz force between electrically neutral matter that is part of an electrically neutral Maxwell force that is needed to explain inertia and the speed of light limit of neutral objects (RF)

14) What is the energy identified as dark energy?
- cosmological constant (ΛCDM, OS)
- General Relativity fails (DS)
- misinterpreted redshift measurements (LM, BR, AT, PB, AK, DR, OS, YHS)
- not an energy at all, hyperspherical lensing within a non-expanding universe (HC)
- misinterpreted measurement, absorption of light by intergalactic medium does not need dark energy (VV)
- needs a better theory; different forces, not matter, more electromagnetic forces, unknown forces, we can postulate forces as well as matter (OS)
- a repulsive force between electrically neutral matter that is part of an electrically neutral Maxwell force that is needed to explain inertia and the speed of light limit of neutral objects (RF)



Updated 2020-4-10

© 2020 Eric J. Lerner