[lbo-talk] For astro-geeks and sci-fi wingnuts

[Max B. Sawicky]

Speaking of which, on the strength of a thread
at the Crooked Timber blog, I started reading
a novel called "The Scar" by someone I'd not heard
of before, China Mieville.  He's a lefty Brit.
So far it's pretty good.  His other books
are Perdido Street Station, King Rat, and the
newest one, Iron Council.

Live long and prosper,
mbs

-----Original Message-----
From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
On Behalf Of Chuck Grimes
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2005 4:36 PM
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Subject: [lbo-talk] For astro-geeks and sci-fi wingnuts

For list astro-geeks and sci-fi nuts looking for famous and not so famous
extra stuff in the universe:

http://www.astro.umd.edu/~ssm/mond/flowchart.html

Check out the boxes several tiers down the tree of `new particle' on the
left under, `massless and stable but...' ... `kills dinosaurs', `cripples
dinosaurs', `scares dinosaurs a bit.' Also of interest are boxes labeled
`only found at Stanford' (People who went to Cal, like this sort of thing)

Evidently to dodge missing mass and redshift without resort to postulating
90% of stuff that can't be seen or measured in various canonical theories,
you can always alter fundamental constants like e. This is accomplished by
setting, ``variable charge wavelength changes.. proportional to the inverse
fourth power of the local-to-remote differential in unit electrical
charge...'' For variable charge fans see:

http://www.ebicom.net/~rsf1/missmass6.htm

The value goes up in regions of high matter density like the galactic disk,
spiral nebula, globular clusters and quasars. The value drops in `empty'
regions. 

The idea gets `suggestive' backing (anything is possible)  by recent
observations of quasars that spectulate that proton mass to electron mass
ratio was different in different evolutionary epochs (see
astro-ph/0210299):

http://arxiv.org/list/astro-ph/0210?200

In terms of geometrical analogies, a factor like variable e used to
construct a mass contour line gives a low flattened curve with spikes, like
mountains (regions of high density). This factor used in a 2-d perspective
projection along a line of sight, turns elongated ellipses into semi-normal
circles, i.e. tends to cancel the `perspective'
effect. (As if the 2-d perspective plane was curved upward near objects to
show more of their `top' view.)

Cosmological models depend on e because it appears in the calculations used
to get from the shift in hydrogen spectral lines to redshift-distance
relation (z). By allowing e to vary with mass density along the path from
source to receiver, the redshift becomes an artifact and measures the
density differential between us and remote objects.

Consequences. Abandons perfect cosmological principle, violates gauge
invariance (conservation laws), leaves CMB unexplained... Oh, nevermind. It
was fun.

For unrelated but fun java applet on field of moving charge:

http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~phys1/java/phys1/MovingCharge/MovingCharge.html

There are other inhomogeneous and anisotropic models that accomplish various
magical feats by altering fundamental constants. There is the variation of G
with time (currently used to `correct' BB model predictions with
observation), and the aging photon theory that ultimately dialates into CMB
(to get rid of expansion). I always liked the aging photon theory, but it's
very dated.

For some beautiful astronomy images and photosphop techniques to get
them:

http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/

CG

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