MOND

The UNESCO palace, site of the "Invisible Universe" conference, is across from Ecole Militaire and within sight of the Eiffel Tower. Today there was time for a visit to the War Museum and Napoleon's tomb between talks. Last night I shared a table with Mordecai Milgrom and his wife. This afternoon Milgrom gave a 45-minute talk on MOND, modified Newtonian gravity.

While scientists since Fritz Zwicky and Vera Rubin have looked for "dark matter," Mordecai and colleagues have been developing MOND as an alternative for the last 25 years. Since DM has never been directly observed, the field is open to alternatives. He claims that MOND can match the predictions of DM. The theory is far from complete, Milgrom admits, but today he was able to present before an international audience.

Though they sound similiar, "dark matter" and "dark energy" would be quite different if they both existed. One would attract and the other repel. They possibly share the quality of being misnamed. DM could be made of Black Holes that have never been matter at all. DE can be explained by a changing speed of light. They are both inferences that have never been directly observed.

One of Mordecai's slides had an interesting equation:
a ~ cHo
This is remarkably similar to R = ct, suggesting that they are on to something. (Thanks to nige for pointing out the correct form, which he has pointed out before.) It is good that alternative ideas are being heard.

City of Light Pt. 2

Today at the Invisible Universe, saw talks by George Smoot, Adam Reiss, Ned Wright and others. We ended up having a French banquet at the Pavilion Dauphine. Study of "dark energy" now embraces a variety of ideas. Even Riess admits it might be something other than a cosmic constant. One of these days they may consider a changing speed of light...

City of Light

Am in Paris this week for the "Invisible Universe" international conference. Saturday saw Latin Quarter and Opera House. Today saw Louvre, a reception at the Paris Observatory, and an evening on the Eiffel Tower. Photos soon. In the City light is still slowing.

GM=tc^3 and the Paper Trail

In reponse to Carl and others, here is a partial list of papers on GM=tc^3. An early published paper came from a meeting near Tucson, Arizona March 2004. The paper sits on the shelf in a volume published by Astronomical Society of the Pacific:


Observing Dark Energy.

For a more reasonable price, the paper is sold by the British Library.

GM = tc^3 Space/Time Explanation of Supernova Data

Thanks to NASA and the "Beyond Einstein" program, a similar paper from May 2004 is available at the SLAC website.

GM = tc^3 Space/Time Explanation of Supernova Data

The data chart from this paper is courtesy of the Supernova Cosmology Project and some hand-drawn marks. Theory's prediction matches the "accelerating" data precisely, reason to take notice.

Report to International Astronomical Union at their 2005 meeting in Bali.

Space/Time as Possible Solution to Supernova and Other Problems

The previous papers were published before this little blog started. A longer, but not complete list is available at the Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data System, which is much more complete than other archives. Since Max Planck is no longer editor at Annalen der Physik, publishing papers requires quite a lot of patience!

Since this paper trail began, additional data has been found in the Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment and the "Faint Young Sun." It is impossible to prove experimentally that c is constant, because a more accurate experiment can always prove that foolish. Accumulating evidence supports a most surprising prediction, that the speed of light is slowing according to GM=tc^3.

Sidesaddle

On June 17, before the Augustine Commission, Shuttle Program Manager John Shannon described this "Sidemount" development of the Space Shuttle. This is very similiar to Shuttle-C, a cargo version of the Shuttle that was unfortunately never built. By removing the winged orbiter, Shuttle-C could bring twice as much payload to orbit. ISS could have been built with half as many launches and less risk to crews. When Norman Augustine was proposing a course for NASA 20 years ago, Shuttle-C was part of the plan.

The Sidemount booster uses components that are proven and human-rated, like the standard External Tank and 4-segment Solid Rocket Boosters. Because so much is common with Shuttle, this could be built for about 6.6 billion, far less than Ares I. The huge, expensive Ares V would not be needed. Instead of one big and one little rocket, a Moon mission would require 2 launches of one medium-sized booster. Orion would launch with an extra stage to boost the crew into lunar orbit, where it would rendezvous with the lander. Launch Complex 39 and much of the Shuttle workforce would be maintained.

There are some tradeoffs: The weight of the lander is reduced from 48 tons to 28 tons. The Apollo Lunar Module weighed 16 tons. There is a question whether the Space Shuttle Main Engines would be used, and whether those engines would be recovered after flight. Putting an escape tower alongside the External Tank could raise separation issues. At first glance, the Sidemount appears to offer many advantages over the current Constellation architecture. In a limited time of limited budgets, this proposal needs to be examined seriously.

Compliments Get You Nowhere, But Keep Talking

From a student's short paper published in 2004, after some years' work. The hand-drawn line shows that either the universe is accelerating relative to light (violating the First Law of Thermodynamics) OR that light itself is slowing down. Prediction of GM=tc^3 precisely matches the "accelerating" curve. Despite this fit to data, scientists continue to peddle an accelerating universe with a repulsive "dark energy."

However, more and more people are seeing the light. This year the International Astronomical Union is devoting a 3-day symposium to the student's question:

Are the Fundamental Constants Varying With Space/Time?.

A recent commenter asked something so evocative that it should be printed here:

"So, you say that you can better 'conceptualise' this than all the thousands of physicists in the last about 90 years who have studied General Relativity, and better than the even more thousands of mathematicians who have studied Riemannian geometry for even more decades?"

This could be the week's biggest compliment, or a sympton of why new ideas meet such a high potential barrier. It is simliar to what our Czech friend wrote in his 2006 blog post.

"Start to advocate the nice Riofrio, a full-time researcher in cosmology who is suppressed by the sexist pigs in cosmology, despite having her "GM=tc^3" theory of the Cosmos that is far simpler, more important, and more testable than anything that Sean Carroll or any of his colleagues have ever invented during decades if not centuries of their fruitless and expensive efforts."

All one can reply is that discoveries like Relativity or Gravity are almost always made by lone researchers. A good idea takes almost no time to be processed by a single brain. However, a collaboration of 1000 physicists will take forever to accept a new idea. Some of those 1000 minds will not even read their group e-mails. A few of them will never, never accept the new idea. Somewhere along the way the originators of the idea will be told to shut up if they want to stay in physics. It should be axiomatic that a single determined mind is more capable than the group of 1000 minds.

History also shows that one determined mind will work 10, 20 years or however long it takes to solve a problem. No collaboration of 1000 minds could hold together that long, or agree on anything at the end. Epicycles, string theory, inflation and "dark energy" have all led to a divergence of ideas with no solution. Group minds are better for engineering projects like building spacecraft or bigger accelerators.

A student's education has uncovered great resistance to new ideas. It is a great surprise when a young mind solves a problem that has baffled many minds. Possibly for that reason, a "potential barrier" forms among all those jealous physicists. However, history has also shown that a single determined mind is more nimble than a group mind. Quantum mechanics shows that even high potential barriers can be tunnelled through.

Science in a Land of the Lost

A lighter note: In the hilarious new movie LAND OF THE LOST, Will Ferrell plays scientist Dr. Rick Marshall, whose theories of time are ignored by the mainstream. In a TODAY show interview his work is called nonsense by Matt Lauer. At the movie's end, when Lauer has been proven wrong, the TODAY host attacks Marshall with fists! Playing himself, Matt Lauer accurately portrays the mainstream media.

One reviewer, not a scientist but possibly one who has heard that GM=tc^3, noted an interesting angle:

"My guess is that this aspect of the film was not intended as direct satire but instead simply reflects something the filmmakers picked up in the contemporary zeitgeist. However, its presence in the central story of the film and the bookend scenes--which are in very important places in the film, the beginning and end--gives it great prominence and suggests that skepticism toward such claims of consensus has entered the culture as a real phenomenon.

"The claim of consensus and refusal to address scientific evidence, of course, is the direct opposite of the scientific method, which is based on continual attempts to disprove accepted theories and hypotheses. The scientific method treats all claims as hypotheses, not facts, and requires humility on the part of the scientist.

"TODAY, by contrast, on subjects as varied as earth's temperature record, the process(es) of species origination, and EVEN WHETHER THE SPEED OF LIGHT IS CONSTANT, many people knowingly misuse science for political purposes, arguing that "the science is settled" on a variety of issues when it most certainly is not. (People have done this throughout history, of course.)

The Word Gets Out

Democracy protesters gather in Naghshe Jahan Square, Esfehan, Iran. This photo arrived via Twitpic.

UPDATE: The next protest is on at 4 PM Tehran time. Spread the word!

We live in a world where information is at our fingertips, yet mainstream media tells us that Osama Bin Laden is alive and the Universe is dominated by "dark energy.". Forces of darkness try to control the media so that even intelligent people are kept in the dark. Despite the dictatorship's best efforts, word of the uprising is getting out via blogs and Twitter.

In Iran bands of thugs, some imported from abroad, have beaten people senseless and ramsacked college campuses. This was written by "Kaveh" from Tabriz:

Don't Accept This Coup

Ahmadinejad has taken revenge on the students of Iran during these violent days. The regime's aim is to damage universities, since they are the first base of change, movement and protest.

I live in the dorms at Tehran University. I was asleep when Basij militiamen entered my room early Monday morning, demolished everything and started beating us. A man with a long beard broke my notebook and said: "It is destroyed, this book that you were using against Islam and Ahmadinejad."

They beat students more when they saw posters of Mousavi in their rooms. And they carried big knives and guns.

They also attacked the women's dormitory next door. The Supreme Leader calls us rioters, but I want to ask him: How can sleeping women in their beds be rioters? Is this the Islamic justice he believes in?

President Obama's speech was good; he says that he will support us. He also said that nations must decide the fate of their countries by themselves. I agree with him, but now we don't have any power to change the situation, so we need help and attention.

We ask the president not to accept this coup d'etat.

LRO/LCROSS Liftoff

Thursday 3:00 PM at the Lunar and Planetary Institute was a lecture by Walter Kiefer on the Aristarchus region of the Moon. The Moon contains many "pyroclastic deposits," similiar to lava fields on our Big Island. Aristarchus is the largest pyroclastic deposit on the Moon, composed of many layers of solidified lava. Digging in these layers could give us a history of solar and supernova events. With abundant resources for fuel and oxygen, Aristarchus is a prime choice for future human landings.

After the lecture, televisions at LPI were tuned to NASA TV for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter LRO/LCROSS launch. After a slight delay for weather, the Atlas rocket lifted off at 4:12 PM Houston time. This mission is a needed precursor to those future human landings. Everyone at LPI in Houston has great hope that scientists will again walk on the Moon.

Warm Wet Mars and the Speed of Light

Solar luminosity vs. solar system age. L/Lo is luminosity as a fraction of present value. Lower line is standard solar model. Upper line indicates luminosity when c change is a factor. If speed of light c is precisely related to Universe age t by GM = tc^3, luminosity remains within a comfortable range for life to evolve.

From a University of Colorado at Boulder press release. Using the HIRISE experiment onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, scientists have found definitive evidence of shorelines on ancient Mars. The features are signs of an ancient lake about 3.4 billions years old. This adds to meteorite evidence that early Mars was warm enought for liquid water and life.

According to standard models, several billion years ago the Sun shone with only 75% of its present luminosity. Earth and Mars would have been frozen solid. This "faint young Sun" is a hypothesis that is not supported by experement. A mountain of evidence from Earth and Mars shows that both planets were warm when the model says they were frozen.

Fortunately, the Sun turns fuel to energy according to E=mc^2. If the speed of light changed according to GM=tc^3, solar luminosity would remain within a comfortable range. If c had not changed in the amounts predicted, life would not have evolved on Earth.

The evidence is mounting! Soon there will be still more evidence from the Moon, an anomaly like that of Mercury's orbit. While scientists continue to peddle "dark energy," this growing mass of data is largely overlooked.

Defiance

A defiant Persian woman waving the green flag standing up to the security forces this weekend. Supposedly the women have shown bravery in situations where men ran. Despite violent crackdowns and killings, the protests continues. The world has been watching with great interest and sympathy. Shortly this blog will link to more pictures and video.

According to the BBC, 1-2 million people marched in Tehran Monday.

Also from the weekend, CNN reports that students are pleading for the US not to accept this illegitimate government. Where is the US leadership? Why does the President of the US not strongly condemn the regime?

UPDATE: At his moment, there are reports of the Iranian Army moving into Tehran! The people still have strength in numbers--if the crowds stay strong, even an Army will have difficulty crushing them. A few IED's planted at strategic locations would help too. Where is the American President?

Lunar Surface Rendezvous

Another peek into the hatch of the Orion mockup. In a Lunar Surface Rendezvous, Orion would land on the Moon, where it would be refuelled for the return trip by a second, unmanned lander.

John Kennedy challenged America to put a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth. When the first Moon missions were planned, engineers faced a dilemma. No chemical rocket could land crew on the Moon and return them in one launch. Von Braun's first plan called for two launches and an Earth orbit rendezvous. One vehicle would provide fuel for the other to reach the Moon. Rebel engineers proposed a riskier Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR). Thanks to those determined engineers the US reached the Moon in the 1960's.

The present Constellation plan uses both Earth Orbit Rendezvous and Lunar Orbit Rendezvous. Each crewed mission to the Moon will require launching both Ares I and the big Ares V. As we saw this weekend with STS-127, many things can delay a rocket launch. If either Ares I or Ares V fails to make the rendezvous, a very expensive mission could be scrubbed.

Former NASA engineer Dan Adamo has come up with an alternate plan, a Lunar Surface Rendezvous. In this scenario two Ares V vehicles would separately launch to the Moon, one bringing crew and the other fuel. The key to the plan is a refuelling at the landing site. Hitting the same landing site on the Moon is fairly easy--40 years ago Apollo 12 landed within feet of Surveyor. According to Dan, this plan offers many advantages for reliability and crew safety.

Friday in Johnson Space Center Building 16 Dan had a chance to present his plan to interested NASA personnel. The NASA engineers know their jobs and asked very detailed questions. Dan has also tried to contact the Augustine Commission. In this critical year 2009, multiple plans for reaching the Moon will be considered. Let us hope that minority ideas get their chance.

Kaguya Into the Moon

Wednesday June 10 Japan's Kaguya probe crashed into the Moon. Many telescopes were focused on this event. This 1:15 video shows the view as Kaguya descended within 15 km of the surface. This is similiar to the view astronauts would have before landing.

Orion

Orion mockup in Johnson Space Center Bldg 9

The Orion spacecraft is key to travel beyond low Earth orbit. Modelled after Max Faget's design for Apollo, it will travel much farther than Shuttle or SpaceX's Dragon. Even competing architectures like DIRECT are based on this design. As demonstrated 40 years ago, it is a great shape for the Moon and beyond.

Friday at JSC was a briefing on the current status of Orion with managers Mark Geyer and Larry Price. They showed some never-before-seen videos of engine firings and Launch Abort System tests. Overall they were upbeat about the program. They feel the Orion portion of Constellation is on track for a March 2015 human flight.

Every program like this has bumps. This week a report claimed that Air Force experts doubt the LAS' ability to carry the crew away from an exploding booster. Concerns like this need to be addressed. A greater challenge lies in the Ares I booster. Though the means to carry it is subject to change, Max Faget's reentry shape still survives.

Next Big Future hosts the new Carnival of Space!

GM = tc^3 Outlives GM

Since last year, someone in Houston has become known for owning an electric vehicle.

Monday morning June 1 General Motors filed for bankruptcy. Given their history of building wasteful SUV's it is hard to feel sorry. The Chrysler Corporation will shortly follow into Chapter 11. These corporations may stagger on like zombies, sustained by government takeovers. Subsidies cannot possibly work, for if these companies were good investments then real investors would buy them. No amount of taxpayer dollars will make people want to buy cars. Ford Motor Company, which has so far resisted government control, may be the only surviving major US auto manufacturer.

There is a precedent in commercial aviation. As late as the 1970’s the US had a “Big 3” making jet airliners: Boeing, Lockheed and McDonnell-Douglas. After the expensive L-1011, Lockheed stopped making commercial jets. McDonnell-Douglas, which was already product of a merger with the Douglas Aircraft Company, combined with Boeing in the 1990’s. Jet manufacturing moved overseas with the rise of Airbus and smaller competitors Bombardier and Embraer. With the success of the 787, Boeing is today the sole US commercial jet builder.

With the end of the Cold War, the US aerospace industry consolidated. Grumman Iron Works built the Lunar Module and Naval aircraft like the F-14 and A-6. It merged with Northrop, maker of the B-2 bomber, to become Northrop-Grumman. Lockheed merged with Martin Aircraft to become Lockheed-Martin. This consolidation took place without any government subsidy. Quite the opposite, it occurred in response to the government downsizing defence dollars.

Proponents of "dark energy" seem to dominate, but once Houston was dominated by an energy corporation called Enron. At its height Enron employed 22,000 people, far more than the physicists who peddle “dark energy.” Enron’s profits appeared to accelerate like the universe, but those profits were sustained by fraud. Like the best liars, Enron employees believed that their frauds were the truth. They willfully ignored evidence that Enron was a house of cards ready to fall. The difference between Enron and “dark energy” is that Enron actually owned some energy.

GM = tc^3 has many advantages over GM survivability. GM = tc^3 has no overhead, no legacy costs, no benefits promised to workers, no union pay scales. GM = tc^3 needs no expensive “dark energy” probes, for the evidence already exists. Several lines of data say that light has been slowing according to GM = tc^3 for billions of years. If true, GM = tc^3 will last far longer than any human corporation. Who wants a ride?

From Street Performer to Space

The STS-125 crew is back in town! Today this writer ended up in the JSC cafeteria line right in front of spacewalker Michael Good. Just as we reached the front of the queue the cashier ran out of pennies and he patiently waited. All one could say to the Good man was, “Welcome back!”

While Kea is in Canada, perhaps she will run into Guy Laliberte. Rumour has it that Laliberte will be the next paid spaceflight participant, going up with TMA-16 in October. He left home at age 18 to hitch across Europe, performing on street corners as a stiltwalker and fire-eater. Laliberte enjoyed street performing and considered it a perfect art form. His skills led him to found the world-famous Cirque de Soleil. Today the street performer has a billion dollars in his cup.

Laliberte’s road to Space has been seeded by risk. The life of a street performer can be a rough one. The pay is unsteady and often low. We can be harassed, robbed, attacked and even arrested. In 1984 the troupe landed a contract to perform for Quebec’s 375th anniversary. Guy recalls, “We had every problem starting a big top could have. The tent fell down on the first day. We had problems getting people into shows. It was only with the courage and arrogance of youth that we survived.”

In 1987 Laliberte bet everything to perform at the Los Angeles Art Festival opening. “If we failed,” he recalls, “there was no cash for gas to come home.” The LA appearance was a success, leading to contracts and financial success. Tonight Cirque de Soleil has 6 shows running simultaneously in Las Vegas. In addition to his circus activities, Laliberte in 2007 placed 4th in the Las Vegas World Poker Tour.

Some people complain that NASA has become risk-averse, but Guy LaLiberte is no stranger to risk. His shows have entertained huge crowds and given him the wherewithal to follow his dreams. To explore the Universe, we must take risks. Guy Laliberte’s bravery and circus skills would be a welcome addition to Space.

Another Voice

Nige reminds us of the work by Richard Lieu at Univeristy of Alabama. Lieu has been another voice crying out in the wilderness, pointing out inconsistencies in mainstream science. He helped organise "Outstanding Questions for the Standard Cosmological Model," a conference (funded by the NSF) in London which this writer was unfortunately late for. Nige agrees on many things, including the sad incompetence of the local government.

Lieu's 2007 paper was entitled LCDM cosmology: how much suppression of credible evidence, and does the model really lead its competitors, using all evidence? His conclusions:

"Cosmologists should not pretend to be mainstream physicists, because there is only one irreproducible Universe and control experiments are impossible. The claim to overwhelming evidence in support of dark energy and dark matter is an act of exaggeration which involves heavy selection of evidence and an inconsiderate attitude towards alternative models with fewer (or no) dark components. When all evidence are taken into account, it is by no means clear that LCDM wins by such leaps and bounds.

"Thus I do not see the wisdom of funding agencies in planning such ambitious and expensive programs to perform dark energy research, to the detriment of other fields of astronomy, as though cosmology has now become a branch of physics, which it will never be. These programs all have the common starting point that dark energy is really out there - no question about it. I hope the present article demonstrated the contrary."

Lieu measures the hodgepodge "LCDM" comsology with some alternatives you might not have heard about--from T. Shanks (2007), Subir Sarkar and Alain Blanchard (2003). These little-known cosmologies use the Einstein-de Sitter model where Omega = 1, and match just as many observations. Their main failing is not matching supernova data, for which the "standard model" adds the fudge factor of "dark energy."

Mainstream science and press promotes a hodgepodge model Through papers and conferences, word is getting out that there is Trouble with Physics. Alternative models explain as many observations as the mainstream, except for supernovae. All these models need is a changing speed of light.

UPDATE: As this is published, we have word that Home Secretary "Jackboot Jacqui" Smith is finally stepping down. Was it the Orweellian monitoring of cel phone calls and internet traffic? The ID scheme that would cost each citizen 60 pounds on top of the billions for implementing it? Charging a second home to the taxpayer while living with her sister? Making her husband a paid assistant? Said husband watching dirty movies at home alone and charging the taxpayer? Her giving him a 400 dollar iPhone and charging that too? She will shortly stand for re-election in her home district, though she is not popular enough to get elected dog-catcher. This relates to science in that dictatorship allows mediocrity to reach the top.