Your question wasn’t phrased in a way easily understandable so I wasn’t sure exactly what you try to ask and I did not know how to respond. But if you really wants me to say something. What I can tell you is I have studied the Big Bang Theory pretty well, and knows all the predictions it made, and measurements that it “confirms”. But it is still a wrong theory. The cosmology I am developing, is a more natural theory without the need to singularity, gives more precise predictions. And fits much better with observations. Let me stop here and do not discuss further since this is not my place. If you are interested look at my old posts:

http://quantoken.blogspot.com/

And here is a precise prediction of the neutron mass, precise to 9 decimal places, and completely within experimental error. No one else has predicted any particle mass so precisely:

http://quantoken.blogspot.com/2005/02/proton-and-neutron-mass-from-guitar.html

I have no idea what Quantoken knows or not. Besides, being an anonymous entity, we can say whatever we want of him or her, and it will still be true – as long as we can find a typing entity with those characteristics. Sorry Quantoken, but anonymity comes with a price tag too.

Cheers all,
T.

please go back to read what I wrote in the post, because in your comments above you give the impression to have equivocated them a bit.

In particular, your personal attack:

“As an experimentalist one ought to know that dimensionful quantities cannot be measured – except in relation to some dimensionful units. [...] So do you understand now why one thing is physics and the other thing is not?”

is unmotivated and a bit over the top. What can I say ?, thank you for the lesson. Now please tell me why a ten-dimensional world with branes, cosmic strings, and all the bells and whistles is physics to you, any more than some speculations about a possible variation of physical laws.

Oh, and I did not misquote the result. I said in 10^-7 units the limit is between -0.11 and +0.24, which is indeed a few parts in 10^-8. Quite a tight limit, as you say.

Cheers,
T.

All measurements are fundamentally dimensionless quantities. If you measure the mass of some object to be 2.5 kilograms, for example, it only means a dimensionless numerical ratio of 2.5 between the mass of your object, and the mass of that piece of standard kilogram alloy stored some where in Paris. I agree with you that it is meanless to discuss a varying C, because you need to fix C to be able to measure any speed.

Since alpha is related to electron charge, hbar and C, one of them has got to be rariable for alpha to be variable. My opinion is none of them is variable, and neither is alpha. I am fully aware of the Webb result when it first came out. There has been no independent confirmation, and the credibility of the result is being challenged. It is just one another piece of paper rushed out because the author was too eager to annoucne something that impresses his colleagues.

When measuring light from tens of billions of light years away, you are literally collecting just a handful of photons over many many many hours, it’s hard to say how reliable the data is, it is even harder to determine how big is the sigma. If the actual sigma is 10 times lareg than what you think it is, what you thought is 3 sigma is actually only 0.3 sigma. Of course, if one is eager to show 3 sigma, it isn;t hard at all to tweak a few things or ignore a few systematic errors to get a smaller sigma, like Eddington did.

They work in ‘units of 10^-7′ concerning variations, so the limits on alpha are actually extremely tight, at the few x 10^-8 level!

(Actually I think it is not good practice to miss out factors of 10^-7 in one’s equations, but that is what they choose to do, instead explaining it in the text…)

Why?

Well, for one thing there is significant astrophysical data, which were obtained specifically in order to test the constancy of alpha and instead point to a nonzero variation at more than 3 sigma significance. You ought at least to know about that. Work of Murphy, Webb, Flambaum and other authors, published in several journals.

But the main reason is because alpha is DIMENSIONLESS and therefore unambiguously measurable. No matter what type of ruler or clock or calorimeter you use, one ought to get always the same numerical value of alpha.

By contrast, ‘varying c’ is physically ill-defined because the numerical value of c depends on the way you choose your units. With SI units, you can’t measure any variation of c at all, because the meter and the second are linked to each other by … the speed of light in vacuo!

As an experimentalist one ought to know that dimensionful quantities cannot be measured – except in relation to some dimensionful units.

If someone wants to propose that ‘c is varying’, then they should say in what units it should be measured, and also which dimensionless quantities are varying. (For example

If dimensionless quantities are NOT varying, then you can always choose your units so that c = constant (or even c=1!) and ‘varying c’ has no physical content at all. Zero!

So do you understand now why one thing is physics and the other thing is not?

Give it up. The metallic hydrogen is too stretched an explanation for the radioactivity of Jupiter, no one can believe it. The Jupiter is known to EMIT heat and that heat must come from natural decay of radioactive heavy elements. Hydrogen does not decay.

Plus every one has directly or indirectly witnessed Shoemaker plunging into Jupiter. It happened. It was a fact. The rocks remain in Jupiter. During early evolutions of the solar system there must be much more rocks plunge into Jupiter and form the bulk of Jupiter mass. The same rocks that formed other planets. It’s a crackpot theory to believe that Jupiter is 100% gas just because we could not see the rocky core directly.

A widely accepted theory is that the inner core consist of higly compressed hydrogen. At very high pressures (some Gigapascals) hydrogen behaves pretty much like a metal, causing a magnetic field. Jupiter’s core seems to be bigger than previsouly thought, resulting the metallic hydrogen-core to be closer to the surface, producing a stronger magnetic field.

Cheers, Alex.

That is exactly the problem of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis

There is no need of primordial helium abundance to explain today’s helium.

So, the density of neutrons and protons could have been different than the standard big bang model predicts was the case at the time of nucleosynthesis, right?

So that maybe all dark matter *can* be baryonic and other more-exotic junk isn’t necessary???

I see you are quite interested in the matter. I am also, but I am afraid I cannot help you if you seek a confirmation of your non-mainstream ideas on nucleosynthesis, solar dynamics, or the like. I just am not the right person for that…

Cheers,
T.

“Helium was present after the big bang, but MOST of it now is due to Hydrogen fusion in the stellar cores.”

Excellent answer! I completely agree with the notion that MOST of the helium in the universe today is due to hydrogen fusion in stellar cores. This has got to be true because the so called first generation stars all blow up in supernovaes and that’s how they say heavy elements are generated (in supernovae explosions). Supernovae explosion happens when a considerable portion of the hydrogen fuel has been burned up into helium. I am happy that you agree with that.

That is exactly the problem of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. They ignored helium generation from stellar hydrogen fusion. They believe the currently observed Helium abundance, about 24%, all came from the primordial soup after the big bang, they have a data model that gives that 24% abundance, which meet the observed abundance. But that requires ignoring helium of fusion origin. That’s completely wrong.

My calculation shows that Helium generated from hydrogen fusion in stars alone, accounted for all known helium abundance in the universe, no more and no less. There is no need of primordial helium abundance to explain today’s helium.

Detailed calculation could not be discussed here. But here is the thumb of rule: Our sun burned about 8% hydrogen into helium since its birth 4.6 billion years ago. The sun’s age is about 1/PI of that of the universe. So for the whole universe, about PI*8% = 25% of hydrogen mass has been turned into helium. The calculation assumed the sun is an average star, which it is. Do your own exercise of calculation if you don’t agree with me.

Not only that. If you calculate the total luminent mass of the whole universe, most of it hydrogen to start with, which is about 5.4% of the total mass of the whole universe. You assume 25% of it converted into helium by hydrogen fusion. You calculate the total energy released. And that energy exactly accounted for the total energy of the 2.725K cosmic microwave background radiation. Not more and not less. Exactly equal. As a matter of fact, I used that assumption and arrived at the CMB temperature being 2.7243K, which exactly matches the experimental value.

Again you can disagree with me. But try to do your own calculation.

Helium was present after the big bang, but most of it now is due to Hydrogen fusion in the stellar cores.
We can “see” inside the sun by studying wave oscillations of its surface, much the same way as we understand the earth’s interior with seismic waves. And I am afraid a “solid” core makes utterly no sense in the sun, with the enormous pressures involved.

Cheers,
T.

http://www.uic.com.au/nip78.htm

http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com/

http://www.omatumr.com/

I must say I disagree with his explanation how the heat of the sun is generated. But I really can not dispute that the sun MUST have a solid core as the bulk of the mass if you consider the simple fact that heavy rocks must sink to the bottom.

Regardless, without a rocky core to start, if it is just hydrogen gas, there is no way the hydrogen gas can condense into a star purely due to gravity. It wouldn’t work, the hydrogen gas will diffuse away. You must have a solid core to start with to trap the hydrogen.

Now, you may want to do a little bit calculation to see how big a solid core you must have to start with, for you to trap enough hydrogen to form a star the size of the sun. Especially start with an extremely dilute gas cloud in the galaxy.

It is not a weird thought, but conventional wisdom that heavy things sink to the bottom and light things float. It is hard to imagine that light hydrogen gas sink to the center and form the sun, and heavy rocks float out to form the planets. It just does not make sense.

True if you analyze the photons coming from the sun or any star, it’s 75% hydrogen and 25% helium (you said almost 100% hydrogen that’s incorrect). But fact is we can only see the surface of the sun, not below it.

Another evidence is they easily jump to conclusion is Jupiter. They see only hydrogen on the surface of Jupiter, and thus concluded Jupiter is mostly just hydrogen gas. But it’s odd why planets either further away like pluto, or further in, like mars, earth, are all solid rocks, why in between, hydrogen will condense and form a gaseous planet? Besides, there’s extreme radiation around Jupiter and extreme strong magnetic field. If it is mostly just hydrogen, where does the magnetic field and radiation come from? We know for a fact that Jupiter emits more heat than it absorb from the sun. The source of the heat has got to be either nuclear fusion or nuclear fission. Fusion is inpossible because Jupiter is not big enough or hot enough to allow fusion to occur. Then it must have a very big solid core containing lots of radioactive elements. The same rocks that firmed the earth and mars must form the bulk of the Jupiter mass, with hydrogen then trapped in due to the huge mass of Jupiter.

I am not trying to propose anything weird. I am trying to propose something that is reasonable, logical, and does not defy conventional wisdom. Unfortunatelly nowadays the weirdest ideas (like strong theory) are considered the standard text book of physics, and the most logical and reasonable ideas are considered crackpots.

Do you happen to know the Eddington Scandal?

I read some where that people concluded the uranium on earth has 7 different origins. I shall find my source and give you the link if I find them.

I find it hard to believe that while the fraction of U-235 is constant everywhere and only smaller in a few sites around Oklo, its origin is seven-fold.

As for the other numerology, it is a nice coincidence, but do you mean to speculate that intelligent life on earth is only possible when uranium isotope ratios and alpha are the same ? I find that quite hard to buy too.

Hydrogen is almost 100% of the universe. There is no wonder that it aggregates into stars. Instead, the fact that planetesimals form from heavy elements means there are complex phenomena in the early phases of formation of solar systems.

The sun being made of iron is instead a real howler. Helioseismology studies allow us to know extremely well the composition of the sun’s interior.

But at this point I think you are just putting together all the weirdest ideas to see if you win any support here. Sorry… I am in favor of bold ideas if there are things hard to explain by ordinary means, but I am an occamist by nature after all…

Cheers,
T.

Sorry I did not count it clearly. Reason 2,3,4 I listed are actually one reason, that is, we need to fix those few fundamental physics constant in order to obtain some basic unit with which we do meaningful measurements.

I don’t read into the Oklo “reactor” theory too much. There is some discrepancy in the proportion of U235/U238, but it could possible have much more natural explanation. I remember reading some where that some one concluded that the uranium on the earth at least came from 7 different sources at different times during the evolution of the solar system, instead of coming from the same primordial soup.

Do you know one interesting fact that if you consider the proportions of U238/U235/U234, the ratio of the abundance is extremely close to 1:alpha:alpha^2, with alpha being the fine structure constant. Another fact is the ratio of the CMB background temperature and the water boiling temperature, the ratio is also exactly alpha.

Talking about primordial soup that formed the solar system. Don’t you feel it is ODD that the lighter gas, like hydrogen, sink to the center and formed the sun, while heavier rocks get ejected to outer layer and form the solid planets? Doesn’t it make mroe sense that most of the rocks should sink to the center of the solar system, hence form the bulk mass of the sun? Some one is suggesting that the sun is mainly composed of iron instead of hydrogen. We only observe hydrogen because we can not see through to the center of the sun. What do you think?