The Problems with Cosmology

Why the Universe does NOT add up!

In 2008, Lead re­search­er Al­ex­an­der Kash­lin­sky of NASA’s God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter in Green­belt, and his team, completed a study of three years of da­ta from a NASA sat­el­lite, the Wilkin­son Mi­cro­wave An­i­sot­ro­py Probe (WMAP) using the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect. They found evidence of a common motion of dis­tant clus­ters of ga­lax­ies of at least 600 km/s (2 million miles per hour) toward a 20-degree patch of sky between the constellations of Centaurus and Vela.

 

Kash­lin­sky and col­leagues sug­gest what­ev­er is pulling on the mys­te­ri­ously mov­ing gal­axy clus­ters might lay out­side the vis­i­ble uni­verse.  Telescopes cannot see events earlier than about 380,000 years after the Big Bang, when the the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) formed; this corresponds to a distance of about 46 billion (4.6×10¹⁰) light years. Since the matter causing the net motion in Kash­lin­sky’s proposal is outside this range, it would appear to be outside our visible universe.

Kash­lin­sky teamed up with oth­ers to iden­ti­fy some 700 clus­ters that could be used to de­tect the ef­fect. The as­tro­no­mers de­tected bulk clus­ter mo­tions of nearly two mil­lion miles per hour, to­ward a 20-degree patch of sky be­tween the con­stella­t­ions of Cen­tau­rus and Ve­la. Their mo­tion was found to be con­stant out to at least about one-tenth of the way to the edge of the vis­i­ble uni­verse.

 

Kash­lin­sky calls this col­lec­tive mo­tion a “dark flow,” in ana­logy with more fa­mil­iar cos­mo­lo­g­i­cal mys­ter­ies: dark en­er­gy and dark mat­ter. “The dis­tri­bu­tion of mat­ter in the ob­served uni­verse can­not ac­count for this mo­tion,” he said.

According to standard cosmological models, the motion of galaxy clusters with respect to the cosmic microwave background should be randomly distributed in all directions.  The find­ing con­tra­dicts con­ven­tion­al the­o­ries, which de­scribe such mo­tions as de­creas­ing at ev­er great­er dis­tances: large-scale mo­tions should show no par­tic­u­lar di­rec­tion rel­a­tive to the back­ground.  If the Big Bang theory is correct, then this should not happen so we must conclude that either (1) their measurements are wrong or (2) the big bang theory is wrong. Since they have measured no small movement (2 million MPH) by 700 galaxy clusters all moving in the same direction, it seems unlikely that their observations are wrong. So that leaves us to conclude perhaps the whole big bang theory is wrong.

 

In fact, there are numerous indicators that our present generally accepted theory of the universe is wrong and has been wrong all along.   Certainly our best minds are trying to make sense of the universe but when we can’t do so, we make up stuff to account for those aspects we cannot explain.

 

For instance, current theory suggests that the universe is between 13.5 and 14 billion years old.  This was developed from the Lambda-CDM Concordance model of the expansion evolution of the universe and is strongly supported by high-precision astronomical observations such as the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP).  However, Kash­lin­sky’s team calculates that the source of the dark flow appears to be at least 46.5 billion light years away.  That would make it three times older than the known universe!  Whatever it is would have to be more than 30 billion years older than the Big Bang event.

 

Or perhaps we got it all wrong.  Consider the evidence and the assumptions we have drawn from them.

 

The Big Bang is based on Big Guesses and Fudge Factors

ΛCDM or Lambda-CDM is an abbreviation for Lambda-Cold Dark Matter. It is frequently referred to as the concordance model of big bang cosmology, since it attempts to explain cosmic microwave background observations, as well as large scale structure observations and supernovae observations of the accelerating expansion of the universe. It is the simplest known model that is in general agreement with observed phenomena.

 

·         Λ (Lambda) stands for the cosmological constant which is a dark energy term that allows for the current accelerating expansion of the universe.  Currently, 0.74, implying 74% of the energy density of the present universe is in this form.  That is an amazing statement – that 74% of all the energy in the universe is accounted for by this dark energy concept.  This is a pure guess based on what has to be present to account for the expansion of the universe.  Since we have not discovered a single hard fact about dark energy - we don’t know what it is or what causes it or what form it takes – Lambda is a made up number that allows the math formulas to equal the observations in a crude manner.  We do not know if dark energy is a single force or the effects of multiple forces since we have no units of measure to quantify it.  It is suppose to be an expansion force that is countering the effects of gravity but it does not appear to be anti-gravity nor does it appear to be emanating from any one location or area of space.  We can observe the universe out to about 46 billion light years and yet we have not found a single observable evidence for dark energy other than its mathematical implications.

 

·         Dark matter is also a purely hypothetical factor that expresses the content of the universe that the model says must be present in order to account for why galaxies do not fly apart.   Studies show that there is not enough mass in most large galaxies to keep them together and to account for their rotational speeds, gravitational lensing and other large structure observations.  The amount of mass needed to account for the observations is not just a little bit off.  Back in 1933, Fritz Zwicky calculated that it would take 400 times more mass than is observed in galaxies and clusters to account for observed behavior.  This is not a small number.  Dark matter accounts for 22% of all of the matter in the universe.  Since Zwicky trusted his math and observations to be flawless, he concluded that there is, in fact, all the needed mass in each galaxy but we just can’t see it.  Thus was born the concept of dark matter.  Although we can see 2.71 x 10 ²³ miles into space, we have not yet observed a single piece of dark matter.  To account for this seemingly show-stopping fact, advocates say, “well, duh, it’s DARK matter”, you can’t SEE it!”.  However, it appears that it is not just dark but also completely transparent because areas of dense dark matter do not stop stars from being visible behind the dark matter.  So, 22% of all the mass in the universe cannot be seen, is, in fact, transparent, has never ever been observed, and does not appear to have had any direct interactions with any known mass other than the effects of gravity.

 

·         The remaining 4% of the universe consists of 3.6% intergalactic gas and just 0.4% makes up all of the matter (and energy) that makes up all the atoms (and photons) of all the visible planets and stars in the universe. 

 

ΛCDM is a model.   ΛCDM says nothing about the fundamental physical origin of dark matter, dark energy and the nearly scale-invariant spectrum of primordial curvature perturbations: in that sense, it is merely a useful parameterization of ignorance.

 

One last problem with modern cosmology.  There is a very poor agreement between quantum mechanics and cosmology.  On numerous levels and subjects, quantum mechanics does not scale up to account for cosmological observations and cosmology does not scale down to agree with quantum mechanics.  Sir Roger Penrose, perhaps one of the pre-eminent mathematicians in the world, has published numerous studies documenting the failure of our math to accurately reflect our observed universe and vice versa.  He can show hundreds of failures of math to account for observations while showing hundreds of observations that contradict the math we believe in.

 

The truth is that we have done the best we can but we should not fool ourselves that we have discovered the truth.  Much as we once believed in ether, astrology, a flat earth and the four humours – we must be willing to expand our thinking that notions like dark matter are ingenious and inventive explanations that account for observations but probably do not relate to factual and realistic natural phenomenon.

 

There is, however, a logical and quite simple explanation of all of the anomalies and observations that perplex cosmology today.  That simple explanation is described in the next report called “Future Cosmology”.

This entry was posted on 11 August 2011 at 21:39 and is filed under This Happened or Will !, Maybe True, This is Probably True !. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.