## Wednesday, December 15, 2010

### "Flatness"

The oddly named "flatness problem" doesn't indicate that the Universe is flat like the Earth (they are spherical) but refers to density. If the Universe were too dense, it would collapse under its own gravitation. Somehow it has a critical density $\Omega$ that allows it to expand asymptotically, slowing but never stopping or reversing its expansion. If this density varied even slightly, the imbalance would accumulate and make the Universe unstable. Old models do not solve this mystery.

A cosmology where GM = tc^3 is driven toward the stable density. The difference is made up by you and I, the matter we are made of. When the Universe is "underweight," quantum mechanics predicts that matter will appear via pair production. As we saw in the last post, the amount of this matter is the difference between $\rho$i and $\rho$f, or 4.507034%. This unique prediction is precisely confirmed by the Wilkinson Microwave Anistropy Probe.

In their paper on Time-Varying Speed of Light Albrecht and Maguiejo do not solve the flatness question, but suggest that a varying-c cosmology may someday answer it. Once this paper was published, Albrecht and Maguiejo discovered to their consternation that John Moffat had published a similar paper years earlier. They were all preceded by Thomson (Lord Kelvin) in 1874, so changing c is an old idea. Only in the 20th century, along with communism and fascism, did fixed c become dogma.

From their paper we can use Albrecht and Maguiejo's equation (10). Here R (not a) is scale and e is the deviation from critical density.

e = $\Omega$ - 1

edot = (1 + e)e(Rdot/R)(1 + 3w) + 2(cdot/c)e

Now we have w = 0,

From R=ct and GM=tc^3 we get:

(Rdot/R) = (2/3t) and (cdot/c) = (-1/3t)

edot = (1 + e)e(2/3t)(1 + 3w) + 2(-1/3t)e

edot = e^2 (2/3t)

Is it not reassuring that the other terms cancel? When t is low e is large and a large edot drives density toward a critical value. Today, when t is billions of years and e is very nearly zero, little mass is being created. Just as scale R began in a Bang and has been slowing since, the amount of mass creation has also been slowing and is now nearly zero.

Despite success, some people will act as if this isn't a Theory. It is painful to say that new ideas take time for others to figure out. Papers where c varies (including Albrecht and Maguiejo's) face great difficulties in publishing. Arthur Eddington joked in the 1920's that only 3 people understood Relativity, though he couldn't think of the third one! In the 21st century, we are on the way to solving "flatness" and other problems.

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#### 18 Comments:

Anonymous said...

So, how exactly does the universe spontaneously create matter via pair production? Even if this were true, how do you explain the fact that there does not appear to be equal amounts of matter and antimatter?

9:05 AM
James said...

Off topic, what do you do in the Naval Reserves? Looking at some old postings I've seen you in uniform.

1:08 PM
Kea said...

Oh, but there are equal amounts of matter and antimatter ... just not at our low energies or in the same places. The next lightest neutrino species has a threshold CMB temperature at redshift around 6.6.

3:12 PM
Anonymous said...

Oh, but there are equal amounts of matter and antimatter ... just not at our low energies or in the same places.

you can't justify that no observation has ever shown evidence of antimatter regions. if you have a theory that you want people to take seriously you cant state the implications as hard facts, if you do people can rebuke the implications and write the theory off as false. if you want people to take the idea of a variable speed of light seriously you need show the evidence for that theory alone and when you discuss the implications you need to talk about what the theory predicts or how modern theory's could get around this however this is not evidence of theory being correct.

4:27 PM
Kea said...

Yawn.

6:29 PM
L. Riofrio said...

For James: Flew in patrol aircraft. Painted some targets with radar. Nothing heroic.

LOL, Kea! Why can't anonymous get a Blogger account? Why must he sling his barbs nameless? Is he too uncool for Google? What is he hiding? Why should a woman give him the time of day?

6:58 AM
Anonymous said...

Dear Louise,

Why can't you answer simple questions regarding your claims, particularly those which are in direct conflict with current observations? What are you hiding?

PS The post by 'Anonymous' are not all by the same person.

8:11 AM
Kea said...

Dear cowardly anonymouses,

Since you are clearly incapable of clicking on the numerous links provided for you here and on other blogs, you must be new to the Blogosphere. In this new world, women actually (oh, gasp) expect to be treated with respect. Of course, they never are, but we expect it anyway! Technically criticism of well developed theories is most welcome ... but we don't actually get any of that. And as for whether or not the standard picture actually fits the data ... er, no. Did you not participate in Dark Matter Awareness Week. If you had, you would have learned that the universal Burkert profile for dark matter in galaxies fails to match the LCDM prediction. We have a longer list. It has been discussed before. On this blog, even.

9:33 AM
Anonymous said...

Dear Kea,

I do not believe that asking valid questions regarding the claims made by Ms. Riofrio constitutes disrespect. On the contrary, it is the expectation of every scientist to answer questions regarding his/her assertions.

To be honest, you and Ms. Riofrio do nothing but dance around valid questions. The whole anonymous issue is just a straw-man as is your insinuation that asking critical questions of Ms. Riofrio is somehow sexist.

As for your statement concerning 'dark matter week', what does this have to do with the relative abundance of matter and antimatter? It is still a fact that the normal baryonic matter in the universe is almost completely composed on matter and not antimatter. This has nothing to do with dark matter.

Your behavior is a striking example of why you are considered to be crackpots.

10:07 AM
Kea said...

What does this have to do with the relative abundance of matter and antimatter?

Excellent question. Your thinking betrays your prejudice towards a fixed objective classical universe, rather than an observer dependent cosmology for which we as observers happen to be made of ordinary matter. Now the annihilation of neutrinos and antineutrinos with the mirror matter sector suggests a very tight correlation between dark matter and antimatter.

A tight correlation between ordinary matter and dark matter is already observed, as you would know if you followed the observations. Your main concern may be the baryon/photon ratio, but Graham Dungworth and I have discussed (online, yawn) how this figure can be attributed to new neutrino physics. The abovementioned redshift of z=6.6 says a great deal about antimatter. It says that an earlier cosmic epoch (from our standpoint) is best viewed as an antimatter epoch. This was my point above. Since the cosmology is totally new, you should be more careful not to jump to conclusions based on standard thinking.

You may consider us crackpots. Others would disagree.

10:30 AM
L. Riofrio said...

This pot does experiments for NASA with returned Apollo lunar samples, 200 grams of which are worth more than an F/A-18.

12:53 PM
James said...

L,

Thanks for answering, I'm a former NFO--now research professor in sultry Mississippi--so I know what you did, and good for you!

3:28 PM
Anonymous said...

Kea: Yawn. What a bunch of crap.

Louise: I hope you apply better scientific reasoning to your current job than you do at physics. I think it's clear why you don't have a job doing physics. Your ideas are, quite frankly, contrived.

5:01 PM
Kea said...

Hmm, yet another criticism totally devoid of any technical content. You could be more original.

6:27 PM
Kea said...

Ah, Graham D has decided to join the conversation, referring in my favourite manner to Anonymous's cosmology as a rotting corpse.

7:14 PM
L. Riofrio said...

Kea knows that from long experience that pesty anonymous questions are just a pretext for the negativity that lies in hearts.

Thanks, NFO James. You did something to be very proud of and are not ashamed to say who you are. Just doing the obstacle course at Pensacola is an achievement. Then there is the Mile Swim in flightsuit, the Helo Dunker...

5:41 AM
nige said...

Ummm, "flatness" is supposedly evidence for inflation. Rapid early expansion flattens out the universe by spreading out matter, which reduces curvature. However, it's an ad hoc piece of evidence for inflation. One problem with "flatness" (which implies a scale distance expansion rate in proportion to t^{2/3} if lambda is zero or close to zero) is that it's defined by the standard Friedmann equation cosmological models, which is just a solution to classical general relativity (which doesn't contain the kind of quantum gravity dynamics needed such as a mechanism for the observed value of the epicycle lambda). Yes, general relativity is a physically self-consistent description of accelerations in terms of what causes accelerations (stress-energy tensor), but that doesn't imply it's validity to cosmology. E.g., one might expect quantum gravity to predict a mechanism for cosmological acceleration (possibly lambda is like retrograde motion in the earth-centred-universe model, which idiots explain away or cover-up by adding an ad hoc epicycle to the model, but which actually leads to a completely new theory like elliptical orbits in a solar system), that has an equivalent effect to cosmological acceleration, such as Louise's idea. Cosmological acceleration may be indicative of a failure in the cosmological application of the framework of general relativity with all of its implicit assumptions (implicit assumptions about unchanging parameters like c, for instance, but there are other problems as well).

7:55 AM
Dave said...

I think there is a teeny tiny problem with your equation. It predicts that the density of the universe is exactly double the critical density, which would cause the universe to implode instantly.
The volume of a sphere is V=4pi/3 r^3. r=ct=c/H is the radius of the observable universe,where H is the Hubble parameter, since the Hubble parameter is the inverse of the age of the universe. Reorganizing GM=tc^3, we get
GM=tc^3=(ct)^3/t^2=r^3/t^2. Dividing both sides by 4pi/3 r^3, we get GM/V=3/(4pi*t^2). Rearranging, we get M/V=(3H^2)/(4piG)=2 times the critical density, since the critical density is (3H^2)/(8piG). So,the density M/V is exactly double the critical density. I think this is a big problem for your cosmology, because it grossly disagrees with observation.

2:08 PM

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