Month: April 2015

Did Darwin steal his theory of Evolution?

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After his trip around the world on The Beagle, Darwin waited 23 years to present his theory of Evolution.  The myth is that he sat on the theory out of fear of repercussions. However, when Charles Darwin published On the Origen of Species in 1859 evolutionary theories had been around for a long time.  There were at least a dozen evolutionary theories, including one by Erasmus Darwin, Charles’ grandfather, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century that were openly debated among scientists.

Alfred Russel Wallace 1862 - Project Gutenberg eText 15997
Alfred Russel Wallace 1862

It wasn’t until Alfred Russell Wallace, a naturalist and admirer, sent Darwin his observations and theory of Evolution while still away on a voyage to the Malay Archipelago and Borneo, that Darwin’s theory was (hurriedly?) presented, acknowledging Wallace as co-discoverer, and published, establishing primacy over Wallace.  Was Wallace the true originator of a theory that Darwin had overlooked in his own observations?  Did Wallace provide the link that brought all his speculations together?  Darwin’s claims were backed by his friends Charles Lyle and Joseph Hooker, so we may never know the truth.  It is sure that the scientific reputation of Wallace declined, while Darwin’s grew.  It is interesting to note that Wallace later rejected the theory as lacking both mechanism and sufficient evidence.

Is Cosmology Science?

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Cosmologists tell the following story: 

When the universe began, it all fit into a very tiny volume that then violently “exploded” and began to expand, ultimately creating all of the energy, matter, space and time.  Immediately after the Big Bang when there was only very hot energy, there was an Inflationary Period caused by to a false vacuum with repulsive gravity that expanded faster than the speed of light, but then inflation ended.  After that the universe continued to expand until it cooled enough for subatomic particles to condense out of energy.  Both matter and antimatter particles were created, so that most of the particles annihilated each other leaving only a small amount of leftover matter.  When the universe expanded and cooled further, subatomic particles were formed into the lightest atoms, mostly hydrogen and helium with a tiny amount of lithium.

Only when atoms of Hydrogen dominated the universe did the universe become transparent to radiation, e.g. light, X-Rays.  The very uniform Cosmic Microwave Background radiation is the cooled, redshifted remnant of the light from the Surface of Last Scattering, just before the universe became transparent to energy.  When objects such as stars were formed that could produce ions, the neutral universe became a reionized plasma[1].  Much later, as bodies moved farther apart, expansion began to accelerate due to Dark Energy, which is a repulsive force, counteracting Gravity.

Ordinary matter and energy make up less than 10% of the universe.  Dark Energy and Dark Matter, neither of which has been directly detected yet, make up the other 90-plus percent.  Dark Matter, which interacts only through gravity, is responsible for     1.) the formation of large scale structures, 2.) galaxy rotation rates that do not decrease with distance from the center and 3.) “closing” the universe to a finite size rather than an “open” universe that is infinite.

But is it science? What is the evidence for this scenario and are there other possible explanations that have been ignored?

Evidence for the Big Bang, Expanding Universe, Inflation, Acceleration, Dark Energy and Dark Matter: 

  • Solutions to Einstein’s general relativity field equations by Georges Lemaitre and Alexander Friedman in the 1920s that predicted expansion (or contraction) of the universe.  Alternative Possibility: There are many possible solutions to Einstein’s field equations, so choosing this one only fits a preconceived or preferred idea. It was seemingly confirmed by the redshift data. See below. The field equations are mere mathematical models of mathematically possible universes. Einstein’s own calculations included a Cosmological Constant that resulted in a static, non-expanding, universe, which did not fit with the desired progressive picture of others. At one point he supposedly renounced the Cosmological Constant when he told George Gamow that the “…the introduction of the cosmological term was the biggest blunder of his life,” although some others who knew him contended that, if true, it must have been a joke. Note that this so-called Einstein quote was only related by Gamow in 1970, not directly by Einstein who died in 1955. Long after rejecting Einstein’s Cosmological Constant, cosmologists have included a new Cosmological Constant, attributed to Dark Energy, to explain an apparent acceleration of expansion.

 

  • Redshift of light increases with distance indicating, by the Doppler Effect, that objects are receding and space between is expanding.  Alternative Possibility: Redshift could be due to other factors than the Doppler Effect. Longer wavelength(redshifted) light has lower energy so redshift could be from loss of power rather than from being stretched by receding sources. We know that light is affected by gravity and other fields and forces. We also know that farther is older, so forces acting on light have been acting longer the farther the object is from us, causing ever increasing redshift with distance. Fritz Zwicky proposed that gravitational forces sap energy from light as it passes.  His detractors called it “Tired Light” and wrongly attributed it to collisions in the Compton Effect, which Zwicky expressly excluded as causing too much scattering. See Hubble post.

 

  • Cosmic Background Radiation interpreted as extremely redshifted light from Surface of Last Scattering.  Alternative Possibility: The Cosmic Background Radiation (CMB) may just be the residual temperature of the universe from stars within it. It may even be a local feature of our galaxy. The 2.7K temperature of the CMB was accurately predicted by scientists as residual temperature from starlight long before it was discovered. Although CMB is the strongest, other wavelengths are also present in the cosmic background. See list and relative power of each wavelength region below. (figure from Wikimedia, public domain by user: pkisscs)  Ref: “History of the 2.7 K Temperature Prior to Penzias and Wilson” A. K. T. Assis, Instituto de Física “Gleb Wataghin” Universidade Estadual deCampinas 13083-970 Campinas, São Paulo, Brasil M. C. D. Neves Departamento de Física Universidade Estadual de Maringá 87020-900 Maringá, PR, Brazil

Extragalactic-background-power-density

CGB = Cosmic Gamma Ray Background

CXB = Cosmic X-Ray Background

CUVOB = Cosmic UV-Visible Background

CIB = Cosmic Infrared Background

CMB = Cosmic Microwave Background

CRB = Cosmic Radio Wave Background

 

  • Large scale uniformity of the universe as evidence of early inflation.  Alternative Possibility: This is a red herring. The CMB is not that uniform, nearby galaxies are excluded and the visible universe may be a tiny part of an infinite universe that is not expanding, so no need to explain the supposed uniformity.

 

  • Mismatch of type 1A Supernovae standard candle redshift, interpreted as an acceleration of expansion and as evidence of Dark Energy, a repulsive force.  Alternative Possibility: This is a no-brainer. No real intergalactic distances have ever been measured.  They are calculated using a series of standard candles, so they may not be the actual distances and error likely increases with distance.  The standard candle mismatch does not necessarily mean there is a change in speed, only that there are forces we don’t understand that may affect standard candles or redshift.

 

  • Dark Matter, which has never been detected, is proposed on the basis that, by the Big Bang timeline, (13.7 billion years) there has not been time enough to form the large structures composed of galaxies without some unseen influence drawing galaxies together.  Galaxy rotation is still a mystery but if a Dark Matter halo is causing it, there must be an extraordinary balance in each galaxy to account for observations.  Unlike the solar system, where outer planets move slower than inner planets according to standard gravitational calculations, galactic outer bodies appear to revolve in near unison with the inner bodies.  Dark matter is proposed to account for this unsolved mystery.  Alternative Possibilities: If the universe is not expanding and is both infinite and very, very old, large scale structures are not a problem. Galaxy rotation, while still a mystery, may have more to do with the galactic plasma magnetic fields than gravity alone.  Work is needed in this area but is not funded by leading cosmologists who prefer to believe in magic foo-foo dust.  It turns out that the universe is nearly flat, not severely curved and finite as first proposed.  There is no need to “close” the universe if it is not expanding.

“Mathematicians deal with possible worlds, with an infinite number of logically consistent systems.  Observers explore the one particular world we inhabit.  Between the two stands the theorist.  He studies possible worlds but only those which are compatible with the information furnished by the observers.  In other words, theory attempts to segregate the minimum number of possible worlds which must include the actual world we inhabit. Then the observer, with new factual information, attempts to reduce the list still further.  And so it goes, observation and theory advancing together toward a common goal of science, knowledge of the structure and behavior of the physical universe.”

                 —Edwin Hubble, “The Problem of the Expanding Universe,” 1942

Unfortunately, this is not what we see in cosmology, which has become mired in dogma and has not allowed further progress that does not fit with their nested set of assumptions.  Redshift interpreted as recessional speed and a preferred mathematical model that predicted expansion are the basis of modern cosmology. Other views or data are not considered, funded or published. Conclusion:  Cosmology as we know it is not science.  It is a religiously held philosophy that supports the progressive anti-god agenda.

“I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos.  There has to be some organizing principle.  God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing.”

                                                                    —Alan Sandage, Cosmologist

“However, the most unhealthy aspect of cosmology is its unspoken parallel with religion. Both deal with big but probably unanswerable questions. The rapt audience, the media exposure, the big book-sale, tempt priests and rogues, as well as the gullible, like no other subject in science.”

 —Michael Disney, “The Case Against Cosmology” Published in General Relativity and Gravtitation, Vol. 32, Issue 6, p. 1125, 2000

 

 

Did Hubble discover the Big Bang?

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The Redshift Trap

Shortly after stars were first seen in galaxies, confirming that they are outside our galaxy, Edwin Hubble and others in 1929 discovered that the redshift of light from nearby galaxies was proportional to the distance as calculated from apparent brightness of Cepheid variable stars within the galaxies[1].  This is called Hubble’s Law and the proportionality constant is the Hubble Constant.  Because a redshift had been noted earlier in stars within our galaxy and had been attributed to movement of the source stars away from us, it was natural to assume, based on Hubble’s observations, that redshift of nearby galaxies was also caused by movement away from us.

This phenomenon is known as the Doppler Effect and is attributed to the fact that each wave of light is emitted just a little farther away as the source recedes, thus “stretching” the light to longer (redder) wavelengths.  Since farther is redder, farther must be faster by the Doppler Effect.

Since galaxies are light years distant we are seeing them as they appeared in the past.  Were the stars in the past moving faster than those in more recent times?  At first it appeared to be so.  Was the effect caused by the universe slowing down with time?  If the expansion is slowing down, could it eventually stop and then start to contract?  Instead, almost from the beginning, due to preconceived mathematically based theories postulating a beginning from a much smaller size, the redshift was seen as an expansion of the universe, not as contracting or slowing.  But what could explain the acceleration into the past?

After Einstein had defined space as being space-time, astronomers started to think of empty space as a thing the way the preceding generation talked about space filling aether.  Some theoretical astronomers, i.e. cosmologists, decided that the space between galaxies was expanding making more distant objects only appear to be moving faster.  (Like raisins on rising bread, all are moving at the same rate, but the expanding spaces between add up so that farther appears to be faster.) They never offered to explain the expansion of space; they just assumed it as a given.

After redshifts were found that indicated speeds near the speed of light, Hubble doubted that recessional speed was responsible for the redshift of galaxies.  In later years, he speculated about the intergalactic medium interacting with the light by gravitation or magnetism, etc. rather than expansion, as the cause of the redshift.  He is credited with discovering the expanding universe and thus the Big Bang, but after his earlier work, he spent the rest of his life working to refute it[2].

“[If the redshifts are a Doppler shift] … the observations as they stand lead to the anomaly of a closed universe, curiously small and dense, and, it may be added, suspiciously young. On the other hand, if redshifts are not Doppler effects, these anomalies disappear and the region observed appears as a small,homogeneous, but insignificant portion of a universe extended indefinitely both in space and time”

                             — E. Hubble, Roy. Astron. Soc. M. N., 17, 506, 1937

Link:  Hubble and red shift by Vincent Sauvé

[1] “A Relationship Between Distance and Radial Velocity Among Extra-Galactic Nebulae,” Edwin Hubble, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Vol. 15, 168, 1929.

[2] “The Problem of the Expanding Universe,” Edwin Hubble, American Scientist, Vol. 30, April 1942, No. 2

Darwin’s Problem with Ants

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Darwin’s Claims

Worker ants of various castes and two large queens
Leaf Cutter Ants – Worker ants of various castes and two large queens

Darwin thought cells were simple bags of gel.  He knew nothing of DNA or any other cellular structures.  He believed that inheritance was through “Gemmules” that each cell shed and that traveled to the gametes (sperm and egg).  Since each cell “voted” it was called pangenesis. He believed that the life experiences of the parents were passed on to their offspring in this way. He believed evolutionary incremental changes occurred by passing these life experiences on to subsequent generations.

Darwin’s Dilemma

Colony insects were a problem for Darwin.  If life experiences were passed on, how does a queen ant, who has never experienced foraging for food, pass on the behavior of the worker ants who hunt for food and bring it back to the colony?

His theory of evolution taught that use and disuse along with adaptation to environmental changes experienced by parents were passed on and were responsible for the changes seen between species by gradual changes over time, coupled with natural selection aka survival of the fittest.  How is this any different from J-B Lamarck’s theory of acquired characteristics, which was discredited as having no foundation?  Did acceptance for Darwin’s theory and not Lamarck’s have more to do with politics and marketing than science?

Modern Evolutionary Biologists’ Dilemma

Obviously, modern evolutionary biologists found pangenesis and inheritance of acquired traits embarrassing, so, in the early 20th century they changed the theory to include genetics with an emphasis on natural selection and called it Neo-Darwinism or the Modern Synthesis. Later, they included DNA.  Although Darwin is still revered as if he had everything right, this form of Evolutionary theory is grossly different from the original Darwinian theory except for the assumption of natural selection and unlimited gradual changes producing new species over time.