ΛCDM Universe: “Fear of Physics” by Lawrence M. Krauss

“And why does the Higgs exist, if it does? Is there a more fundamental theory that explains its existence, along with that of electrons, quarks, photos,  and W and Z particles?”

In “Fear of Physics” by Lawrence M. Krauss

“Electricity and magnetism are the different ‘shadows’ of a single force, electromagnetism, as viewed from different vantage points, which depend upon your relative state of motion.”

In “Fear of Physics” by Lawrence M. Krauss

“We appear, with reasonably high precision, to live in a flat universe.” (*)

In “Fear of Physics” by Lawrence M. Krauss

NB: (*) This book was published in 2006. In 2019, my take on this is quite different. The statement that the Universe is 13.8 billion years old is a statement of universal simultaneity, either that or it is a meaningless statement. A universal simultaneity is a direct contradiction of Relativity Theory under which there can be no universal simultaneity! At root, the "expanding universe" model rests on two early 20th century assumptions that are almost certainly wrong. The first assumption, implicit in Friedmann's GR solutions to a universal metric (now commonly called the Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker metric) is that the cosmos constitutes a singular entity possessed of a universal frame - the metric. In itself this is contradictory of Relativity Theory which does not admit a universal frame. The second assumption is, of course, that the redshift-distance relationship discovered by Hubble is a consequence of a recessional velocity of some sort. That assumption reinforces and doubles-down on the cosmos as unitary entity assumption. The resulting ΛCDM model is the modern day equivalent of Ptolemaic cosmology. Despite the fact that it can be massaged to agree with actual observations (by the injudicious use of free parameters), the model bears no resemblance to the cosmos we actually observe. The big bang and inflation are an unobservable creation myth. Substantival space, time and/or spacetime are not empirically observable; they are relational concepts like temperature that have no physical correlate. There is no empirical evidence for the existence of dark matter or dark energy, that combined supposedly comprise 95% of the ΛCDM "universe". Modern cosmology is an empirically-baseless, unscientific mess. What is needed is not "new physics", just a new, realistic model of the cosmos we actually observe. Unfortunately, such a model is unlikely to spring forth anytime soon from the scientific academy. As long as the academic community remains mesmerized by the erroneous mathematicist’s belief, that mathematical models are more important than empirical evidence - most especially negative empirical evidence, the absurdities will continue to pile up - as unobservable, but oh-so exciting, "new physics". Modern cosmology is deeply embedded in a new dark age, where a sacrosanct model holds sway over the evidence of our lying eyes. It ain't pretty if you care about science. Don't forget particle physics and string theory. Future sociologists are going to have a field day with the degree to which theoretical physics has gone totally off into fantasyland. Curved spacetime and expanding space are a modeling of energy radiating out and mass coalescing in. The fact these two balance out is already fully accepted by the cosmology community "Omega=1." That this relationship is best described as a cosmic convection cycle is simply not considered. This problem doesn't occur occasionally, this is the operating paradigm in modern theoretical physics. It is the way science is now taught and conducted. Anyone who learned theoretical physics since the late 1970s - early 1980s is steeped in this approach; it is the watery realm in which they swim and it is invisible to most theoretical physicists. It is simply the way things are done.

The study, care, and feeding of preferred mathematical models has become the work of theoretical physicists. Physical reality itself is now studied as an adjunct, explored only in search of empirical verification for a particular model.

Better observational data will be needed to confirm or refute these models of so many unknowns. Older estimates will yield to newer, better estimates (and better methods of making those estimates). That said I have a few questions. To wit:

1) Can we be confident that the Hubble Flow is symmetric in all directions? Should we accept that Hø is a constant at all?

2) It seems that ΛCDM is a more rickety model than first thought?

If I am still alive 20 years from now, I won’t be surprised to know that these questions haven’t been answered yet...

"Faster Than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation" by João Magueijo

"Lee [Smolin] and I discussed these paradoxes at great length for many months, starting in January 2001. We would meet in cafés in South Kensington or Holland Park to mull over the problem. THE ROOT OF ALL THE EVIL WAS CLEARLY SPECIAL RELATIVITY. All these paradoxes resulted from well-known effects such as length contraction, time dilation, or E=mc², all basic predictions of special relativity. And all denied the possibility of establishing a well-defined border, common to all observers, capable of containing new quantum gravitational effects."

In “Faster Than the Speed of Light” (p. 250) by João Magueijo.

There was no “cause and effect axiom” in 1905. The two axioms from which Einstein deduced special relativity were the principle of relativity and the constancy of the speed of light. The falsehood of the second axiom killed physics, as suggested in the above quotation. Uhm…Come again?

This reminds me of the sad fact that the proponents of the hidden variable idea despite their failure managed to win popularizations claiming that all the problems of their project are actually some "weirdness" of the quantum theory. Tale about ridiculousness of the quantum theory sells better it seems. Sells so good that even if you don't support the hidden variables it's possible to present a trivial work as some novel fundamental research of cosmic importance by the following recipe. You add enough clichés into introduction of your paper, invent loud names for mundane stuff, and claim that it's relevant for some problematic topic without experimental data like quantum gravity. I'm sorry but you can't derive axioms within theory itself because they are, well, axioms. You can't reformulate your theory or call some objects with different names so that equivalent set of axioms becomes more fundamental or more "justified".

And they say quantum theory is an "ad-hoc patchwork, lacking any obvious physical interpretation or justification"? Seriously? You know, that's exactly the "criticism" used by all those anti-Einstein unrecognized geniuses like Magueijo. They use it for the special relativity they seem not to have any problems with. They use it because they failed to understand it, hearsay seems strange and they want to stop at the preceding level.

One of my favorite interpretations of QM is relational quantum mechanics, which also tries to use only a few axioms and information ideas to deduce QM. (Check it out on wikipedia or the arxiv (Rovelli 1996).) RQM posits that observation is interaction, which creates correlation between the observed and the observer -- yielding some relational notion of a state vector -- and that such an interaction/observation is also in principle given by an interaction Hamiltonian which another system (another observer) might be able to write down. In RQM, instead of trying to rationalize a classical universe with quantum mechanics (by supposing such a thing as wavefunction collapse), we have to give up our notions of the classical universe and suppose it's all interconnected in a quantum way. Great theories (like relativity) trade our "intuitive" or "classical" understanding of the universe for some beautiful (simple yet powerful) axioms. i hope to see space-time emerging along with QM from some concise set of principles, principles like those behind relativity and RQM, which leave us feeling quite wonderfully adrift in this strange universe. Interesting how we may have to give up "time" (causality) to do it :).

I am limited by my own sense of knowledge. Hence, I keep reading, looking, and am forced to keep thinking. I am the dash runner, and am always seeing myself from that sense of gravity I was born with. That keeps me grounded, yet I keep moving. My intention is to keep searching for knowledge. Where that came from is a fact that I picked up on when I became conscious. The thoughts in all of our brains are the universe(s) that surround us, and will be the decaying plasma we will leave behind. While I'm in this conscious state, I feast on. It's a strange custom and habit to carry around an equal sign that I removed and place it at my will and pleasure for selfish satisfaction, or to help where I can. I didn't damage or hurt anything because that equal sign is always where it was. That's not spooky at all when you think about it.

As Josh Billings quipped over a century ago: “The trouble with people is not that they don’t know but that they know so much that ain’t so.”

"Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity as Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi" by Howard Gardner

Kuhn's book did indeed create its own paradigm shift. But curiously, Kuhn never seemed to realise that those who change paradigms are nearly always a completely different kind of scientist than those who extend existing ones. The paradigm breakers are those few who "can't be told anything", who automatically question everything, and who tend to either make a huge breakthrough or (more usually) to pass on without a ripple. They are the few who blew their stacks over the APS slogan "Science is Curiosity Satisfied" when it was accepted by a large majority of APS members - non-paradigm-breakers all.

When it comes to things like the Periodic Table, it's worth recalling that scientists clung on to Ptolemy's ideas for well over a thousand years. The paradigm shift initiated by the Copernican revolution didn't render obsolete the data built up over the previous millennia (indeed, it was used to support Copernicus's ideas), it just set it in a new light. Given the fact that scientists always change their minds, the same could happen here; the facts will remain the same, but they will be put in a new light. If the past is anything to go by, there is a very high probability this will happen. The Periodic Table is now understood in a vastly different way to Mendeleev, who invented it; Quantum Mechanics saw to that. Mendeleev knew nothing of electrons and protons, etc. [You can find the details in Eric Scerri's book on The Periodic Table.]

And, of course, Relativity Theory has meant that Geocentric models of the solar system are now no less scientific than Heliocentric models are -- the Equivalence Principle lies behind this shift (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-iframes/ and http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2005/10/03/does-the-earth-move-around-the-sun/)

It's not a terribly sucessful take on the subject, but nevertheless read H.E.Gardner's "Creating Minds" to get a sense of those who kick science into progress.