Long Term Collision Signals Old Universe

[mdkluge]

Wteven Sawyer wrote:

I'm not sure how much the model proposed by physicist D. Russell Humphreys, Ph.D. has been discussed here. Basicly, he believes that the Earth is young in agreement with Genesis, but the universe is old, in agreement with modern astronomical observation. Humphreys postulates that the universe and Earth emerged from a bound universe where our earth was near the center which created a "white hole" effect instead of a "black hole". Humphreys' model is consistent with Einstein's general relativity theory...

Nope. I do not know at what level to discuss this with you. Basically, though, in General Relativity dynamics depends upon the local geometry of space-time. If you have two space times (or two models of space-time) each containing a subregion having the same "metric" as a corresponding subregion of the other space-time (or model) then the two sub-regions evolve identically. That's just the way General Relativity works.

Humphreys embeds a region of space-time having the same geometry as that of standard big bang cosmology into a Euclidean space surrounding it. It follows that the dynamics of the inner region (in which we and all of the observed universe lie) would be the same as in standard big bang cosmology.

It is true that Humphreys SAYS that that different regions of the inner region have different dynamics from standard big bang cosmology, but his arguments are contrived and vexacious. Had he learned general principles of general relativity he would have learned that regions having the same metric evolve similarly. His model is more sophisticated than Setterfield's, and his mistakes are a bit more subtle, but Humphreys' model has not been taken seriously by any physicists. See the rebuttal of S. Conner and D. Page in CENTJ.

I do not favor Humphreys position over Setterfield's nor vice versa.

Nor have I a preference for drinking a solution of a salt of arsenic over a salt of lead or vece versa.

I do not see where they are mutually exclusive ideas.

Well they're not mutually exclusive in the sense thatone could without too much difficulty incorporate a time-varying speed of light into standard cosmology or Huympherys' model. However, in Humphreys' universe cosmic red shift really is caused by recession, while in Setterfield's universe there is no recession. Redshift is caused by certain quantized changes in fundamental parameters. So the two are reallty not compatible.

 

[Steven O. Sawyer]

Originally posted by M. D. Kluge:
Humphreys' model has not been taken seriously by any physicists. See the rebuttal of S. Conner and D. Page in CENTJ.

Samuel R. Conner and Don N. Page are both followers of Progressive Creationist Hugh Ross. Their original paper can be viewed here (technical):
http://www.trueorigin.org/rh_connpage1.pdf

However, Humprpheys and others have responded. Here is a short article that gives links to other papers as well as giving a short chonology of the argument ("can't tell the players without a program"):
http://www.icr.org/starlightandtime/starlightwars.html#f12

Humphreys reply to Conner and Page (technical):
http://www.icr.org/starlightandtime/pdf/rh_connpage2.pdf

Conner and Page's response to Humphrys along with Humphreys' second rebuttle is here (technical):
http://www.trueorigin.org/rh_connpage3.pdf

 

[mdkluge]

Thank you, Steven Sawyer, for the URLs. Although the articles are not new to me I did not know that they were online. One interesting feature is Humphreys' continuing and persistent misunderstanding of the notion of a center of the universe. Conner and Page correctly note that an infinite, uniform Newtonian universe is not stable against expansion or contraction. That is, if one started ont with a uniformly dense infinite Newtonian universe its density would not remain fixed with time, but rather its matter would uniformly contract under its gravitational interactions. Humphreys (following Newton, but not 20th-century physics) argues that such a universe could be static because the gravitational force on each particle of matter is balanced since it would be attracted equally in all directions.

But it is well known that that argument is flawed. The sum of the gravitational interactions for such a universe is not "absolutely convergent". That is, if you sum the absolute values of the gravitational forces without taking into account direction the sum diverges. As is well-known, this means mathematically that one must be very careful manipulating such a sum. If you consider a particle at x = 0, the total attractive gravitational force due to particles whose own x coordinate is greater than zero turns out to be infinite! Similarly the total force exerted by particles whose x < 0 is also infinite, but in the opposite direction. It is not correct to add those two offsetting infinities together to get zero.

Instead the correct procedure is to consider a large, but finite region of uniform mass distribution, calculate its motion, and then take the limit as its size approaches infinity. When one does so it becomes clear, as Conner and Page explain, that such a universe would tend to contract uniformly.

Ironically Humphreys quotes, but misunderstands, Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate, on this very point. Humphreys quotes Weinberg: "If matter were evenly dispersed through an infinite space, there would be no center to which it could fall." But Weinberg is not agreeing with Humphreys' claim that such a universe would be static. Rather, Weinberg, and every other physicist of the last century who has seriously considered the matter, means that there is no UNIQUE center towards which all matter would fall. Rather, such a universe would contract uniformly, its density uniformly increasing everywhere, so that any two pieces of matter would approach each other.

Weinberg's point is that ANY point of such a uniform Newtonian universe could be regarded as its center, and all other matter would seem to be falling into it. The Weinberg quote supports Conner and Page, but Humphreys doesn't even realize it.

The icing on the cake, though, is Humphreys' concluding remark that "If [someone] cannot acknowledge such obvious features of a simple Newtonian theory, how can we have confidence in [his] pronouncements about much more subtle relativistic theories?"

Exactly. If Humphreys doesn't understand the simple notion of absolute convergence, if he adds plus infinity and minus infinity and gets zero, and if he misunderstands Weinberg's simple quotation to be supporting him when in fact Weinberg's quotation is making the very opposite point about a simple Newtonian theory, then how can we take seriously D. Russell Humphreys' work on anything as subtle as relativistic cosmology?

Note: The one good thing one can say about Humphreys' argument is that it has a pedigree. Newton himself made the argument to support his notion that the universe is infinite. But it is uniformly agreed among physicists that Newton's argument was wrong here. Newton was a 17th/18th-cdntury mathematician. They often did ignore issues of convergence and divergence back then. But Humphreys is a physicist of the 20th/21st centuries. Every cosmologist has seen Newton's argument rebutted. There is no excuse for Humphreys' ignorance.

So why take Humphreys seriously?