• Questioning the Foundations Essay Contest (2012)

  • Inappropriate Application of Kepler’s Empirical Laws of Planetary Motion to Spiral Galaxies Created the Perceived Galaxy Rotation Problem – Thereby Establishing a Galactic Presence for the Elusive, I

I've reposted my response to Peter from his essay's blog below.

Peter,

We're now discussing my claim that the separation of lensing effects and x-ray emitting intracluster media falsifies your assertion that the effects attributed to dark matter can be attributed to plasmas. Please do Mario the favor of excluding remarks about him from this discussion, as he has made no such claims and in fact I've had no discussions with Mario about this claim of mine. He has nothing to do with this discussion - this is just between you and me.

Secondly, as I have provided several sources that conclude that the separation of lensing effects from x-ray emitting gases in high velocity galaxy collisions provides evidence for the existence of enormous masses of not just 'non-visible' matter but effectively non-interacting non-baryonic, weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). Please see Chandra posting. This is not just 'little old me' making this claim, it seems to be the consensus "mainstream" astrophysical community.

As I understand, 'undisturbed' galaxy cluster morphology can be generalized as tending towards a spherical distribution of mass centered around a common center of mass, generally coincident with the geometric center of the cluster. There the gaseous intracluster medium is densest and hottest, emitting high energy x-rays. There is also often an enormous galaxy located near the center of mass.

The consensus interpretation of collided galaxy clusters, as I understand, is that the disperse gasses comprised of baryonic particles physically interact upon collision, absorbing their momentum slowing their forward motion.

It is thought that the colliding clusters' sparse galaxies do not physically interact - their momentum allows each group of galaxies to continue their established relative motion until gravitation eventually slows their progress.

The gravitational lensing effects of collided galaxy clusters are typically coincident with the location of the two separated groups of galaxies. However, since the collective mass estimated for the galaxies is thought to be insufficient to produce the identified weak gravitational lensing effects, it is presumed that enormous amounts of dark matter coincident with the galaxies is contributing most of the mass necessary to produce the identified gravitational lensing effects.

It is crucial to understand that the inferred dark matter could only be coincident with the two groups of non-interacting galaxies if the dark matter was also non-interacting. The only interaction that could have occurred between the two groups of galaxies and any possible dark matter was gravitational.

The principal requirement for the inferred dark matter is that it could only have gravitationally interacted with any of the clusters' mass upon collision. As I understand, the p[articles of colliding plasma clouds would physically interact much like the hot gases in the intracluster medium - their forward progress could not have continued such that they would located coincidentally with the sparse, non-interacting galaxies.

If you can explain how ionized gas or plasma particles within the two colliding galaxy clusters could have avoided all physical interaction with other disperse particles, allowing their momentum to carry them along with the clusters' galaxies, I'd be very happy to try to understand.

Sincerely, Jim

Peter,

Yes - this is great news! I hope this or some similar model suppoting free access is adopted by all other fields of study.

Thanks, Jim

5 days later

Hi Jim, we met on the Sciam blog about two years ago and I see this is like me already your second participation with the FQXi contest. I read your essay with much attention and think that when you mention "I am just a "layman" it is not a bad proposition (from your point of view). Please as a layman listen attentively to proffessionals like Peter Jackson, besides that he is a professional that has a very open mind and a lot of intriguing new visions, all based on the facts that astronomy has put up untill today.

About dark matter which represents 95% of our visual universe (but is not visible) , I have no specific ideas only that the forces that are attributed to it are "emergent" from Total Simultaneity (TS).

If you are interested pls read/rate and/or comment "THE CONSCIOUSNESS CONNECTION", which is quite another approach of our "reality".

I look forward for your opinion.

Wilhelmus

    Hi Wilhelmus,

    Whether my status as a layperson in the field of physics is or isn't a bad "proposition" for me, I'm compelled to make that honest disclosure up front so that others might realize might level of expertise. As to my professional standing, I worked exceedingly hard for several decades as a highly accomplished information systems analyst. When I raise a very specific technical issue I expect a professional response, not a lecture on my demeanor. Thank you for your personal advice...

    I see you have no specific thoughts regarding my essay. Thanks for your comment.

    Jim

    After studying about 250 essays in this contest, I realize now, how can I assess the level of each submitted work. Accordingly, I rated some essays, including yours.

    Cood luck.

    Sergey Fedosin

      Sergey,

      Thanks for your notification, I guess. Not that it makes any real difference, since, unlike some others, I haven't been mass marketing my essay to the rest of the community, soliciting ratings (some even hinting at Quid pro quo). As a result I could see that mine would not be in the top 35 essays as rated by the community.

      However I should inform you that, with my background in information systems analysis, I find that my essay's position within the list ordered by community rating dropped precipitously following you rating notice. That indicates two conditions: my essay had not been rated by many members of the community and your rating was substantially lower than previous ratings.

      Again, all this rating stuff is meaningless since my essay would not have ever been one of the finalists (unless perhaps I had very successfully supported it with an intense marketing effort). However, more important to me than knowing you rated my essay would be to better understand why you might have given it a low rating, presuming that your rating was based on some specific evaluations of my essay. With no animosity, I would be very interested in understanding your assessment of my essay. Please do explain further!

      Sincerely, Jim

      • [deleted]

      • Post #40

      Dear Jim,

      I enjoyed with your interesting Essay, hence, I am going to give you an high score.

      Notice that, even admitting that Galaxy Rotation Problem could represent a fundamental falsification of Newton's law of universal gravitation (this is the issue on which you disagree in your Essay) there is a problem which is even greater. The existence of Dark Matter is admitted in order to justify Newtonian theory. But the most precise theory of gravitation that we have at the present time is general relativity rather than Newtonian theory! In the framework of general relativity the energy is coordinate dependent, hence we CANNOT speak of Dark Matter!!!

      You could be interested to another approach to solve the Dark Matter in this paper that I wrote with two colleagues: http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.0147

      Cheers,

      Ch.

        Dear Jim,

        Sorry if you thought that I was correcting you, I am not at all the one that is able for that.

        I reread yor essay and indeed it is indicating as I understood it now, the old ways of regarding the complex movement of galaxies. You mention that the Keplerian rotation curves cannot be applied on structures like galaxies, and I fully agree. There is indeed a vast distribution of massive objects and perhaps we should regard it as a fluid with all the mechanics and formula's that goes with fluid mechanics, this is just perhaps a wrong idea, but it can change the way of thinking about dark matter, as in your well written essay.

        Good luck in the contest.

        Wilhelmus

          Dear Chris,

          Thanks so much for reading my essay - and especially your kind remarks!

          I understand (in principle) that general relativity is fundamentally more accurate than classical physics and at least more correctly and more completely describes the physical effects of gravitation. However, I must take exception to the statement that "The existence of Dark Matter is admitted in order to justify Newtonian theory." IMO, a more correct statement would be that 'The existence of Dark Matter is admitted in order to justify the misapplication of overly-simplistic methods of approximation based on pre-Newtonian physics.'

          Reading your paper, "High-energy scalarons in R^2 gravity as a model for Dark Matter in galaxies" (which I found very interesting, to the extent that I could comprehend), I think I should explain that, in my view, the fundamental issue with galaxy gravitational evaluations is not (when correctly applied) Newtonian physics, it is the expedient misapplication of even simpler methods of approximation by astronomers and others. There are several references to research in my 'Supplemental Info." and "Cited Works" sections (the latter correcting one erroneous URL) that more correctly represent galactic mass configurations using Newtonian dynamics and gravitation to successfully represent observed galaxy rotation. There is also a reference using general relativity - Fred Cooperstock also takes the view that the failing is inherent in Newtonian physics.

          In my information systems analyst view, the application overly-simplistic methods of gravitational approximation to more complex structures introduces scale variant errors in the estimation of both non-luminous masses and the effects of gravitational interactions among discrete objects within very large composite structures. As I think is inherent in gravitational evaluation methods prescribed in general relativity, galactic disks are self-gravitating aggregations of massive objects, avoiding at least the errant evaluation of gravitational effects.

          I have a lot of thoughts regarding gravitational lensing effects attributed to dark matter, especially through the compound lens that must be presented by galaxies within galaxy clusters. While certainly a 'localized' large scale structure such as a galaxy cluster must produce a collective curvature of spacetime, each relatively compact galaxy must also produce a more intensive, if more localized, curvature of spacetime. I suspect that generalizing the magnitude of lensing effects produced to consider only the overall structure in order to facilitate evaluation may introduce large scale errors into the results. I think (not comprehending math) I may have detected some perhaps over-generalizations in your equations - is that possible?

          I've had some very long and tedious discussions with Peter Jackson attempting to explain that the Bullet Cluster's separation of gas and non-interacting masses does falsify his assertion that ionized gasses produce the effects attributed to dark matter. While I agree with him that non-detectable gasses represent an under-appreciated quantity at all scales, the decelerated gasses comprising intracluster media apparently cannot produce galaxy cluster lensing effects.

          I think it's much more telling that dark matter is almost always coincidentally located with galaxies. Perhaps, in a literary sense, it is dark matter that cannot exist without galaxies! I think the method often used to estimate 'ordinary' galaxy mass based on luminosity is a perfect fit for main sequence stars, whose mass directly produces luminosity. However, applying that method to galaxies generally ignores a significant independently contributing factor of non-numinous (and often luminosity obscuring disperse) masses. As I understand, it's generally resulted in spiral galaxies often requiring large amount of compensatory dark matter - they also contain relatively large volumes of dust and gas. This, in conjunction with simplified methods of approximating gravitation relying too much on a compound object's center of mass and not considering the effects of so many discretely interacting objects, often produces underestimated masses for large scale composite masses.

          To conclude all of this, I think that if the original requirement truly establishing the existence of dark matter in galaxies was a product of improper analysis, as I think I've established, and galactic rotation can be explained in the context of existing physics, then it should follow that galactic dark matter does not exist, at least in significant amounts. While I agree that this does not preclude its existence throughout the rest of the universe, I think that cosmologists rely entirely on galactic dark matter estimates for their presumptive universal proportion of dark matter to 'ordinary' matter. To that extent, if there's no requirement for galactic dark matter it should follow that there's no justification for cosmological dark matter, no matter how expedient it might be for cosmological analyses. At least that's the way this information systems analyst sees it...

          Thanks again, Jim

          Dear Wilhelmus,

          Sorry if I was testy - I'm easily exhausted these days.

          Thanks very much for reading my essay - I think you've understood it well.

          Your idea that large scale compound masses behave as fluids seems to me to have merit, although I can't follow the math of general relativity or fluid dynamics. I think there are strong similarities. Certainly compound objects comprised of billions of loosely bound interacting discrete objects of mass must in at least some ways behave as particles in a fluid! Their individual masses and bindings are more variable than water molecules', though. It seems things are always more complex than we'd like!

          Best wishes, Jim

          • [deleted]

          • Post #45

          Dear Jim,

          Thanks for your kind clarifications on your ideas on the the misapplication of overly-simplistic methods of approximation based on pre-Newtonian physics. I well know Fred Cooperstock, he is a great scientist who sometimes disagrees with various extremisms of orthodox science.

          I propose you a challenge. You should try to find the CORRECT methods of approximation based on Newtonian physics in order to see if that they could carefully, i.e from a rigorous mathematical treatment, explain the motion of the stars in a galaxy.

          Cheers,

          Ch.

          Dear Chris,

          Firstly, did I not adequately demonstrate that galactic dark matter was inferred by the simple misapplied specification that objects in spiral galaxies should rotate in compliance with Kepler's third law of planetary motion? That erroneous conclusion was not based on any analysis employing Newtonian dynamics or gravitation.

          I'm neither a physicist nor mathematician, so obviously your challenge would not be attainable for me personally. I'm certainly not aware of any method to precisely describe the motions of individual stars within the disks of spiral galaxies.

          However, there are several researchers who (as I understand) correctly describe the rotational characteristics of spiral galaxies using only classical dynamics and gravitation (specifically Feng & Gallo below). From my "Works Cited" (without links):

          James Q. Feng and C. F. Gallo. "Modeling the Newtonian dynamics for rotation curve analysis of thin-disk galaxies." Res. Astron. Astrophys. 11 (December 2011): 1429. doi:10.1088/1674-4527/11/12/005. arXiv:1104.3236v4.

          Joanna Jalocha et al. "Is dark matter present in NGC4736? An iterative spectral method for finding mass distribution in spiral galaxies." Astrophysical Journal 679 (May 20 2008): 373-378. doi:10.1086/533511. arXiv:astro-ph/0611113v3.

          Of course, they reference prior works. Then there's also Fred Cooperstock's most recent analysis using general relativity:

          J. D. Carrick and F. I. Cooperstock. "General relativistic dynamics applied to the rotation curves of galaxies." (2010). arXiv:1101.3224v1.

          Another report you might find interesting does not directly address galactic rotation but rather the orbits of halo objects and their implications for dark matter halos:

          Lukasz Bratek et al. "Keplerian Ensemble Approximation. The issue of motions of Galactic halo compact objects." (2011). arXiv:1108.1629v2.

          It its somewhat related to another recent work:

          M. S. Pawlowski , J. Pflamm-Altenburg, P. Kroupa. "The VPOS: a vast polar structure of satellite galaxies, globular clusters and streams around the Milky Way." Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 423 2 (June 2012): 1109-1126. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2012.20937.x, arXiv:1204.5176v1.

          I really can't fully evaluate the physics or mathematics involved - perhaps you'll find some shortcoming. Please do let me know if you find any issues - I have been in contact with all of the authors and can try to mediate a resolution if necessary.

          Sincerely, Jim

          Dear Jim,

          I do not understand fluid mechanics, as said I am just a retired architect, the only thing I thought of when reading your essay was when I stirred the milk in a cup of coffee, you also see these galaxy forms, maybe this approach is a different one, just trating a whole galaxy as a fluid. You have more insight as I have so perhaps think about it.

          thanks for being on good terms again.

          Wilhelmus

          If you do not understand why your rating dropped down. As I found ratings in the contest are calculated in the next way. Suppose your rating is [math]R_1 [/math] and [math]N_1 [/math] was the quantity of people which gave you ratings. Then you have [math]S_1=R_1 N_1 [/math] of points. After it anyone give you [math]dS [/math] of points so you have [math]S_2=S_1+ dS [/math] of points and [math]N_2=N_1+1 [/math] is the common quantity of the people which gave you ratings. At the same time you will have [math]S_2=R_2 N_2 [/math] of points. From here, if you want to be R2 > R1 there must be: [math]S_2/ N_2>S_1/ N_1 [/math] or [math] (S_1+ dS) / (N_1+1) >S_1/ N_1 [/math] or [math] dS >S_1/ N_1 =R_1[/math] In other words if you want to increase rating of anyone you must give him more points [math]dS [/math] then the participant`s rating [math]R_1 [/math] was at the moment you rated him. From here it is seen that in the contest are special rules for ratings. And from here there are misunderstanding of some participants what is happened with their ratings. Moreover since community ratings are hided some participants do not sure how increase ratings of others and gives them maximum 10 points. But in the case the scale from 1 to 10 of points do not work, and some essays are overestimated and some essays are drop down. In my opinion it is a bad problem with this Contest rating process. I hope the FQXI community will change the rating process.

          Sergey Fedosin

            Sergey,

            I do have an aversion to equations, especially since retiring. If I understand, though, if a new rating is is made for an essay that is slightly lower than the existing average rating for that essay, the new average rating will be reduced. Is that correct?

            There may be another consideration in the ranking of essays by rating: if an essay's rating was tied or very close to many other essays, even a slight reduction in rating could significantly reduce an essay's position withing the rating ordered list. In that case a single rating (even one that is not so 'bad') could produce a large drop in the essay rankings.

            Thanks very much for explaining. Once I began watching the rankings I noticed in particular that my essay repeatedly jumped up & down between ~50 & 100 in very dramatic swings. It's now settled down to something >100. Well, I never hoped to be a finalist anyway and don't have any professional aspirations.

            Sergey, I sincerely apologize if I (and others) unfairly accused you of making excessively low ratings. Please consider that your 'rating announcement' postings called people's attention to whatever change was produced. At any rate, I'll now consider that you must have given me a fair and deserved rating.

            Sorry again, Jim

            Dear James,

            I tried rate your essay repeatedly but it is impossible. So I see that in this Contest I was tricked by the Contest system of rating. Firstly I did not know that ratings averaged in this Contest. Instead of it I supposed that ratings are summed. In the second why it is impossible to change rating at the page of anyone if my opinion changed? It is a pity but FQXi up to now do not answer my questions in 3 letters to them.

            Sergey Fedosin

            Dear James,

            Just now I sent a letter to mail@fqxi.org :

            Please remove all the ratings which I made in the FQXi Contest ! Firstly I did not know that ratings averaged in this Contest. Instead of it I supposed that ratings are summed. So all ratings which I gave to participants of the Contest are wrong. In the second why it is impossible to change rating at the page of anyone if my opinion changed?

            James, may you do the same and ask FQXi about it?

            Sergey Fedosin

              Dear Sergey,

              I suspect there's not much that FQXi could do to change things in this contest, unless they could possibly identify your ratings and retract them. Again, watching the rankings, I suspect there are others who did not really understand the effect their ratings would have. I'll see what I can suggest to the administrator. I imagine they (I think it's more like 'he') are quite busy at this time - perhaps they'll respond soon. Thanks very much for you efforts in this regard!

              Sincerely, Jim

              Dear James,

              Thanks for the interesting essay, and in particular for pointing out the simple but important point that Kepler's laws are totally inadequate for describing the gravitational dynamics of a system with significant extended mass distribution. I suppose an extreme example could be found at a much smaller scale by simply considering a gas giant... it would be ridiculous to expect the outer layers to move in a Keplerian fashion with respect to the center.

              Coming from the math side, I am presently trying to make up my mind what to think about the "dark matter" hypothesis, so any well-reasoned essay of this sort is valuable to me. Personally, I suspect that the scientific community still has an imperfect appreciation for scale dependence in nature... for instance, I think that dark energy is probably something "different" than gravity. I think there are at least "five different scales," but that's a long story... I discuss that in section 3 of my essay here if you're interested, but most of the essay is not about dark matter.

              Have you read the submissions by Theo Nieuwenhuizen and Mario de Souza? They give totally different takes on the same subject. These two, together with yours, give me a reasonably diverse perspective as a starting point, I hope.

              By the way, I noted the discussion above about ratings. I think that there is a lot of bad behavior going on in this regard. I just rated your essay, having just now read it... I rated it honestly, on the basis of what I learned from reading it. It would be unethical for me to tell you what the rating was, but your essay moved up 34 places as a result. The fact that a single honest rating would make such a difference at this stage in the contest tells me that many people are rating others low just to gain an advantage. Anyway, it would be better if we could ignore the "ratings game" entirely, but I have made up my mind to give an honest rating to every essay I have time to read... otherwise the contest is dominated by those who down-rate others out of self interest.

              I enjoyed your perspective! Take care,

              Ben Dribus

                Dear Ben,

                Thanks very much for reading my essay - I'm very glad you enjoyed it appreciated it. I really enjoyed your remarks and insights.

                I have read both Theo Nieuwenhuizen's & Mario de Souza's essays and have had some interesting discussions with Mario. Frankly, offhand & forget what Theo's was about - I lost track of it when he didn't respond to some comment I made. Maybe I'll go back to it. I find Mario's galaxy evolution model very interesting, as long as his conception of lateral outflows is valid (I think it is). BTW, if you didn't notice there are some modeling references in my "Supplemental Info." & "Works Cited" sections that use classical dynamics and gravitation to more properly represent the mass distribution of spiral galaxies and describe their observed rotational characteristics. Unfortunately the dynamic link in the "Supp..." section is wrong for probably the best reference:

                James Q. Feng and C. F. Gallo. "Modeling the Newtonian dynamics for rotation curve analysis of thin-disk galaxies." Res. Astron. Astrophys. 11 (December 2011): 1429. doi:10.1088/1674-4527/11/12/005. arXiv:1104.3236v4.

                I think some teacher(s) around 1960 ruined me for math - my grandson and two granddaughters love it! I may not be able to follow you essay very well, but I'll give it a shot tonight.

                I now think (most of)) the ratings issues are mostly unfortunate misunderstandings perhaps mostly by those whose first language is not English. I also thing the rating scale of 1-10 (averaged, I think) produces a lot of ties, meaning that (especially for essays with few ratings like mine) small changes produce big swings in their position within the ranking ordered list.

                I do have some more thoughts about my essay and some of the topics you mentioned - I'll try to bore you with them a little later.

                Thanks very much for your interesting discussion!

                Jim