Talk:Plasma cosmology - Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by HandThatFeeds (talk | contribs) at 13:10, 7 May 2023 (→"Electric Universe (physics)" redirects here: Closing year-old discussion to avoid further issues). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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"Electric Universe (physics)" redirects here

This section is over a year old, please don't re-open it. Also, avoid psychoanalysis of other editors, that's WP:NPA territory. — The Hand That Feeds You: 13:09, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

"Electric Universe (physics)" is a redirect to here.

If this is correct, then this article should include a "Template:Redirect" at the top and/or a bolded E.U. mention within the lede.

But if this redirect is incorrect, then attention of some sort is needed at that redirect itself so it doesn't point here. (That might be deleting the redirect (and perhaps salting it? although that may be extreme); it might be providing a stub EU article. But this parenthetical "what to do" is relatively secondary to the primary point "something needs doing".)

Could those who know about the topics (I know nothing at all about either) suggest which way to go?

Feline Hymnic (talk) 11:03, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Per policy, there really isn't a lot of choice involved. Either find sources that directly state how "Electric Universe' relates to 'Plasma cosmology', and include an explanation based on such content in the article, or delete the redirect. Unexplained 'redirects' that merely insinuate some sort of connection aren't remotely appropriate. AndyTheGrump (talk) 11:11, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. So you're suggesting RfD of the "EU (physics)" redirect? Fine with me. But I've never done one of those, and there seem to be several options (speedy; discussion; etc.). Could you, with your greater experience and understanding of the "per policy" issues, actively initiate the appropriate RfD mechanism? Thanks. Feline Hymnic (talk) 12:04, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Probably best to leave it for a few days, in case anyone can come up with a relevant source. AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:10, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Relevant? Sure, right from the horse's mouth: "The Electric Universe is a variant of Plasma Cosmology". But nothing on that page is even close to passing as a reliable source. Here's a single line from Forbes: "and so plasma cosmology — rebranded a few decades ago as the electric Universe..." Given how fringe all of this is, that should be sufficient to keep the redirect, no? - Parejkoj (talk) 19:35, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Well, if this target article, P.C., is fringe, shouldn't there be a {{Fringe theories|...}} template at the head of this article? Feline Hymnic (talk) 22:23, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

I completely agree that it should. - Parejkoj (talk) 01:34, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Hoo boy. This would take a while to dig up. The short version is that this started out as the "electric universe" concept but quickly got renamed to "plasma cosmology" when scientists rightly pointed out that the universe doesn't work the way its proponents claimed. I remember seeing some of its proponents fervently arguing for it way back in the early 00s... but that's not a reliable source. It might be difficult to actually track down an RS regarding the tie between the two. — The Hand That Feeds You: 19:05, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Here's my take. As I understand it, plasma cosmology is an attempt by some actual cosmologists and physicists to come up with a working alternative to standard cosmology that pays more attention to the tenets of plasma physics, in combination with gravitation, to model large scale structure, radiation background, galactic evolution, the light elements, and so on. It is certainly a minority area, by no means complete, it is even controversial, and so on; but the likes of Birkeland, Hannes Alfvén, Perratt, Halton Arp, Lerner, the Burbidges, and so on who contributed to its development are/were published working astronomers or scientists in their own right. Mavericks, maybe. In contrast, the "electric universe" folks as far as I can tell are Velikovsky fans who are trying to use some plasma cosmology ideas to make their other loony ideas sound more respectable. Their main channel seems to be their https://www.thunderbolts.info/ website, where they pedal books and flaky YouTube "documentaries" which are essentially retreads of Worlds in Collision and Chariots of the Gods. I think it's safe to say that while PC is an exploratory diversion in otherwise ordinary physics, with few proponents and plenty of critics, it nonetheless sticks to the usual methods of scientific enquiry; while EU is more like intelligent design or flat-earth theory, cherry picking some "sciencey" sounding things to prop up weird beliefs: that Venus popped out of Jupiter one day and went whizzing by the Earth, and the Egyptians all wrote about it, or something - I don't know, I didn't read it. Why would I? It's drivel. — Jon (talk) 01:54, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Once you have to resort to personal attacks, you lose all credibility to comment in the first place. It’s bullying, which in turn is a sign of insecurity and phobia, conscious or otherwise. Mcnaugha (talk) 09:31, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

That comment was left over a year ago. Please don't dredge up old issues. Also, your own psychoanalysis of the editor is a personal attack. Don't do that. — The Hand That Feeds You: 13:08, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Better delineate "plasma cosmology" and "Alfvén–Klein cosmology"

It seems to me that the article does not clearly describe the relationship between "plasma cosmology" and "Alfven-Klein cosmology". It introduces AKC in the AKC section without stating any relation to PC, then discusses Alfven's and Peratt's "plasma universe" in the "PC and the study of galaxies" section as another distinct model (but I don't see the difference between Alfven's and Peratt's models and AKC). At a cursory literature search, I can't find any sources describing any PC models other than AKC. So wouldn't it make more sense for the article to be titled "Alfven-Klein cosmology"? Or alternatively, there should be a note in the lede to the effect of "the most common plasma cosmology model is the Alfvén–Klein cosmology, as described by Hannes Alfvén and Oscar Klein. The term 'plasma cosmology' often refers specifically to Alfvén–Klein cosmology." Either way, I think the AKC section should be renamed "History", since all three sections seem to specifically talk about AKC. –Justin Kunimune (talk) 23:06, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Plasma cosmology was developed in Sweden by Hannes Alfven and his group. It included much more than is talked about in the article, as it was about all plasmas in astrophysics. This is what Alfven was getting at with his 'triple jump', that plasma in the laboratory behaves the same as plasma in magnetospheres, and indeed as interstellar and intergalactic plasmas. As an example, the current astrophysics of the solar wind and the Northern Lights is 100% plasma cosmology; in the 1970s the Scandinavian theory completely overthrew the old UK/American standard theory which had rejected the idea of the solar wind, see Birkeland current. Plasma cosmology at all scales was supported by Scandinavian scientists like Alfven, Birkeland and Klein. Obviously, due to Alfven's foundational work on plasmas, the work for which he was awarded the Nobel prize, any mainstream work today on any space plasma is based on his work and is essentially continuing plasma cosmology, so work on the solar atmosphere is 100% plasma cosmology.
Later, the American Anthony Peratt worked with Alfven on developing plasma cosmology theories about galaxy evolution. Plasma cosmology became problematic because historically its theories about galaxies provided an explanation for the observed Galaxy rotation curves, and thus an alternative to the idea of dark matter.
Historically plasma cosmology was a steady state theory, as the Steady-state model of Fred Hoyle and his group (note the interesting comment in the lede to the Steady-state model article that it "enjoyed some minority support" - in fact until the CMBR was discovered it was 50/50! The plasma scientist Eric Lerner wrote the book "The Big Bang Never Happened", and he still supports the steady state theory. Personally I don't, but I recognize there are a lot of problems with the current big bang model - why did inflation happen? More difficult: why did it stop? And the size of the largest structures in the universe seem to be too big. Anyway, food for thought. Aarghdvaark (talk) 11:27, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

If "plasma cosmology" does refer to all plasmas in astrophysics, then the page needs to be rewritten to reflect that, but is the term really used that way? The sources I've found seem to only talk about "plasma cosmology" with respect to large structure formation. Also, I feel like the solar atmosphere doesn't generally count as cosmology; it's certainly plasma physics and astrophysics, but "cosmology" usually only refers to studies of very large-scale things.

More pragmatically, if "plasma cosmology" does encompass all space plasmas, I don't see how this page's scope differs from Astrophysical plasma. This is why I think it would be best to rename this article. Since it currently almost exclusively talks about Alfven-Klein cosmology, we can just rename it to that, and maybe add a "see also" link to Astrophysical plasma. Justin Kunimune (talk) 17:00, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

If you wan to rewrite this page to just focus on the Alfven-Klein cosmology as an item of historical interest, that would probably be a good refocusing. The problem is that there are very few reliable sources that discuss it. Go back through the archives (archive 11 has a *lot* of discussion from 2012 that's still relevant) to see how this has gone in the past; Aarghdvaark tries to make it sound like it's become mainstream, practicing astronomers say "nobody cares about Plasma Cosmology", someone notes that Plasma Cosmology and Electric Universe are difficult to disentangle in the handful of sources we do have, and all of the actually relevant references just get older and older since nobody's doing research on Plasma Cosmology, because it's an abandoned dead-end. The article really could use a gutting and re-write to remove all the WP:OR that tries to claim that every mention of magnetic fields or plasmas in the astronomy literature implies that Plasma Cosmology is now mainstream.

(UPDATE): having just gone through the article, I think it's in a better state than I feared: now that I've reverted Aarghdvaark's attempts at mainstream-izing it, I think it does a decent job of putting Alfven and Perrat's views in a proper historical context. - Parejkoj (talk) 19:07, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

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