Re:Evidence that the key assumption made in discovery of dar...
by tsimionescu on Thursday January 09, 2020 @02:47AM
(#21999280)
The problem I have with assuming plasma is pervasive in the void of space is that, unlike the hypothesised dark matter, plasma should be hot and visible. As I understand it, there is mainstream acceptance that there is a possibility that some regions of space, such as the galactic center, could contain plasma (though the preferred explanation is that they contain matter pulled apart by a supermassive black hole), and some other regions such as nebulae do contain plasma, but the picture I linked earlier doesn't show any kind of hot visible substance that could refract light to produce that lensing effect.
If gravity affected the atomic clock frequency, we would need to understand how. Either way, we know from observations of the speed of light being constant in any reference frame that time dilation must exist when moving at high speeds. GR incorporates acceleration and gravity here.
Note that rejecting GR doesn't get rid of space-time (perhaps at best, it gets rid of curved space-time). We know from very good observations that the speed of light is a physical constant, so at least special relativity must be true (or we need some other theory to explain this physical phenomenon).
However, if we got rid of GR we would also need a new explanation for a very old problem: why is an object's inertial mass (the amount that it opposes motion) equal to its gravitational mass (the amount that it is attracted by the earth through Newton's formula)? GR has a beautiful unification of these two masses, making acceleration equivalent to gravity (which also happens to match how we feel, by the way).
Now, if I understand correctly, Plasma Cosmology does not discount GR, but simply proposes that plasma physics is more important in some galactic structures, especially the large-scale structure of the universe. There seem to be some technical limitations (related to implications for the state of the early universe vs observed current state), but perhaps they are resolvable.
Electric Universe starts from there essentially and seems to go much farther, getting rid of gravity and GR (and Special Relativity?) and hits all of the issues I mentioned above.
If gravity affected the atomic clock frequency, we would need to understand how. Either way, we know from observations of the speed of light being constant in any reference frame that time dilation must exist when moving at high speeds. GR incorporates acceleration and gravity here.
Note that rejecting GR doesn't get rid of space-time (perhaps at best, it gets rid of curved space-time). We know from very good observations that the speed of light is a physical constant, so at least special relativity must be true (or we need some other theory to explain this physical phenomenon).
However, if we got rid of GR we would also need a new explanation for a very old problem: why is an object's inertial mass (the amount that it opposes motion) equal to its gravitational mass (the amount that it is attracted by the earth through Newton's formula)? GR has a beautiful unification of these two masses, making acceleration equivalent to gravity (which also happens to match how we feel, by the way).
Now, if I understand correctly, Plasma Cosmology does not discount GR, but simply proposes that plasma physics is more important in some galactic structures, especially the large-scale structure of the universe. There seem to be some technical limitations (related to implications for the state of the early universe vs observed current state), but perhaps they are resolvable.
Electric Universe starts from there essentially and seems to go much farther, getting rid of gravity and GR (and Special Relativity?) and hits all of the issues I mentioned above.