In another thread we happened to fall upon the idea of writing down a list of "What I Believe".  I found it so fascinating that I decided to make it a forum topic of its own.  In this message I am listing what others have already posted in other threads so they won't have to repeat themselves.  Now it's your turn!  What do you believe?

Mike Petersen believes:

1. There was no bang.
2. Arp-Narlikar are probably very close to being correct.
3. Hoyle was also close.
4. There is only one Universe. There is nothing else.  So there can be no 'leaking' to our Universe from this 'otherverse'.
5. The "Pro's" on BAUT are not.  They're just like you and me, trying to make sense out of the Universe.  They just happen to be wrong.  :-)
6. It is disingenuous to argue a point based upon an unproveable assumption.  (DE = 'leaking gravity').  I suppose I am just as guilty of it, 'cause I can't prove my belief that there is only our one Universe and that there is nothing else.
7. The Universe is infinite in extent.  To me, that logically means that there is an infinite amount of energy within, so (philosophically) that means that it doesn't matter whether the Law of Conservation of Energy is correct or not.  If there is an infinite amount of energy, taking away some does not change the total (which is still infinite).  We know that "infinity minus infinity" still equals infinity.  (e.g. Subtract the infinity of odd numbers from the infinity of all ordinals, you are still left with an infinity of even numbers)
8. Redshift is not caused by an expanding Universe.  The Universe is not expanding.
9. There is no DM.
10. There is no DE.
11. I don't care what a photon experiences at signal velocity.
12. Singularities cannot exist.
13. Black holes are not holes, but rather "Zero mass hypersurfaces" from which "new" matter is generated.
14. The Universe has always been here, and always will be here.

Ritchie Annand believes:

1. I'm pretty sure there was no bang, certainly not within a 20 Gyr time frame
2. I think many of the Arp-style objections to current theory are correct
3. I'm pretty sure that Arp/Narlikar and Hoyle are off-base with VMT and QSSC, in part because they hardly exhaust possible explanations of a non-BB universe, but they are decent starting points against which to check things
4. I think current BB theory is of low predictive power
5. I think that we will continue to see oddities like shadow galaxies and dodecahedral universes postulated because of the current theory's low predictive power
6. I think current BB theory is extraordinarily over-hacked
7. I think current BB theory is extraordinarily unstable in its solutions
8. I think dark energy is one of the largest theory hacks of modern cosmology
9. I think dark matter is possible, but is also being used as an unproven hack to explain otherwise untenable things in current BB theory
10. I think that invoking other universes or dimensions is unnecessary until proven otherwise, and is too often used as a crutch when something does not add up
11. I think that cosmological redshift is most likely caused by a non-Doppler, non-expansion effect
12. I think that the universe is likely to be flat and thus infinite; universe curvature being measured as at most 1+10-20 with faster-than-light expansion in inflationary theory seems oddly desperate to avoid such a universe
13. I think that an infinite universe does not necessarily avoid the need for local finitudes
14. I think that there is still a possibility that a really, really old bang happened, or many/infinite little bangs, instead of a universe infinite in time and space, but it would still have to be amazingly old
15. I think that there is probably a law of conservation of some sort, but that there may be other players than matter and energy (e.g. the fabric of space) that partakes in the equation
16. I think that black holes, if indeed time comes to an observational standstill at the event horizon, can never complete forming
17. I think that the centers of galaxies will unlock a number of secrets
18. I think that more and better observation platforms and projects (like SDSS and GLAST) will continue to reveal surprises
19. I think that it will take cosmology a long, long time to forget its ego and converge on something closer to the real story

Skip Orr (turbo-1) believes:

1. I think that the vacuum is a transmissive medium through which EM waves propagate.
2. I think that "cosmological" redshift is the gradual loss of energy by EM waves to the vacuum.
3. I think that the CMB is the temperature of the vacuum, and it is more local than commonly thought.
4. I think that gravity is not a simple inverse-square relation, nor is it properly defined by the relativistic re-framing of that notion (GR).
5. I think that gravitational attraction is variable, based on the mass-density of the locale in which the massive bodies are embedded.
6. I think that the virtual particle-antiparticle pairs suffusing space form the fixed reference frame of Einstein's GR ether.
7. I think that the zero-point energy field of the vacuum can be polarized and densified by the presence of embedded matter.
8. I think that the neutral anti-hydrogen project at CERN will demonstrate a breaking of the equivalence principle by showing that the gravitational infall rate of antimatter is higher than that of matter, demonstrating the mechanism by which matter can polarize the quantum vacuum field.
9. I think that matter's gravitational attraction and inertial forces arise through matter's interaction with the vacuum in which it is embedded.
10. I think that GR will have to be completely overhauled or replaced before gravitation can be reconciled with quantum theory.
11. I think that the Universe is spatially and temporally infinite.
12. I think that GLAST will demonstrate that highly-energetic gamma rays arrive later than lower-energy gamma rays from the same burst, proving that EM interacts with the vacuum through which it propagates and that the interaction is frequency-dependent.
13. I think that the Webb space telescope will observe quasars redshifted considerably more than z~6.5 and that their spectra will continue to show super-solar metallicity, as the SDSS quasars do.

Well, it looks like I have to repeat myself... ;)

1. I believe that the universe has never been created
2. I believe that the universe will never be destroyed
3. I believe that the universe is infinitely large
4. I believe that the universe is flat, i.e. space is not curved in any way
5. I believe that the space is static (doesn't expand)
6. I believe that there are no parallel universes
7. I believe that there are three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension
8. I believe that there is no smallest possible non-zero length
9. I believe that our consciousness just by itself does not have an effect to reality
10. I believe that there is no dark energy
11. I believe that there is no dark matter
12. I believe that quarks can be broken to smaller pieces
13. I believe that energy is conserved but I also believe that the situation where it is not conserved is not impossible
14. I believe that redshift-distance relation exists
15. I believe that black holes are not infinitely dense
16. I believe there is a fundamental speed limit in the universe, whatever the cause
17. I believe that gravitational lensing happens
18. I believe that question of discordant redshifts does not call for new theories of the universe
19. I believe that all our theories about anything are more or less wrong
20. Therefore I also believe that Special Relativity is wrong (to answer the question of [the other] thread)

My beliefs of beliefs of others (A = agree, D = disagree, N = neutral, U = don't understand):

Mike's:

1 - A (= my 1), 2 - D, 3 - D, 4 - A (= my 6), 5 - D, 6 - D, 7 - A with belief but D a bit with explanation (= my 3), 8 - A (= my 5), 9 - A (= my 11), 10 - A (= my 10), 11 - N, 12 - A (~ my 15), 13 - D, 14 - A (= my 1 and 2).

Ritchie's:

1 - A (= my 1), 2 - D, 3 - A, 4 - A, 5 - A, 6 - A, 7 - U, 8 - D, 9 - A, 10 - A with 1st and N with 2nd, 11 - A (~ my 5), 12 - A with belief (= my 3 and 4) but D with explanation, 13 - U, 14 - A, 15 - A (~ my 13), 16 - A (~ my 15), 17 - A, 18 - A, 19 - D.

turbo-1's:

1 - N, 2 - N, 3 - N to 1st and A to 2nd, 4 - A, 5 - N, 6 - N, 7 - N, 8 - N, 9 - N, 10 - A, 11 - A (= my 1-3), 12 - N, 13 - A.

It seems that I have strongest diagreement with Mike's beliefs, and turbo-1 seems to have formed opinions on many matters I don't have an opinion. :)

Now I'm going to have to pepper you with questions about your disagreements :)

Ritchie said:

2. I think many of the Arp-style objections to current theory are correct

By this, I mean that their objections to Big Bang Theory, such as redshift measurements and associations of quasars, are correct. Their alternate explanations, I am much less sure about :)

Ritchie said:

7. I think current BB theory is extraordinarily unstable in its solutions

By this, I mean that it is very easy to get the BB equations to have universes collapse almost immediately or expand so incredibly fast that nothing has a chance to form - the values required are taken to be "amazingly precise" and are used as "evidence" of strong anthropic hypotheses

Ritchie said:

8. I think dark energy is one of the largest theory hacks of modern cosmology

By this, I mean that dark energy is just a term added to make equations balance, with nonsensical consequences - is there something that is so much more of a hack that dark energy is not even one of the largest? :)

Ritchie said:

12. I think that the universe is likely to be flat and thus infinite; universe curvature being measured as at most 1+10-20 with faster-than-light expansion in inflationary theory seems oddly desperate to avoid such a universe

By the explanation, I meant that inflationary theory needs curvature to be true - but that space had to expand faster than the speed of light enough to make the curvature look flat. Given that the estimate of flatness is, I believe, at most 10^-20 away from perfectly flat, that seems "reaching".

Ritchie said:

19. I think that it will take cosmology a long, long time to forget its ego and converge on something closer to the real story

You think it will take a short time? You optimist! :)

Alrighty, now for my own lists, using Ari's legend, plus my A/N which is "probably, but I'll still wait and see" :)

Mike's:
1 - A/N, 2 - N, 3 - N, 4 - A/N, 5 - A++, 6 - A, 7 - A with expansion, D otherwise, 8 - A, 9 - A/N, 10 - A, 11 - A/N, 12 - A/N, 13 - N, 14 - A/N

turbo-1's:
1 - N, 2 - A/N, 3 - A, 4 - N, 5 - N, 6 - N, 7 - N, 8 - N, 9 - N, 10 - A, 11 - A/N, 12 - N, 13 - A
(Of course, many of these are part of the same proposition :)

Ari's:
1 - A/N, 2 - A/N, 3 - A, 4 - A, 5 - A, 6 - A/N (at least, they should not be the default explanation :), 7 - A, 8 - U, 9 - A, 10 - A, 11 - N (depends what dark matter is taken to mean, though), 12 - N (Brian DuPraw had an interesting hypothesis in this regard, but he was too shy to post here :), 13 - A, 14 - A, 15 - A, 16 - A (though if Van Flandern somehow proves me wrong, so be it :), 17 - A, 18 - N, 19 - A/N, 20 - N

Ritchie said:

By this, I mean that their objections to Big Bang Theory, such as redshift measurements and associations of quasars, are correct.

Ok, but note my belief #18, which can also be said so that discordant redshift issues haven't really been objections to big bang theory. That is the disagreement I have with your belief; even if I think that many of DR-issues might be correct, I don't think they (necessarily) are objections to current theory.

Ritchie said:

By this, I mean that it is very easy to get the BB equations to have universes collapse almost immediately or expand so incredibly fast that nothing has a chance to form - the values required are taken to be "amazingly precise" and are used as "evidence" of strong anthropic hypotheses

In that case I have to update my take on this to N, I don't know enough about BB equations.

Ritchie said:

By this, I mean that dark energy is just a term added to make equations balance, with nonsensical consequences - is there something that is so much more of a hack that dark energy is not even one of the largest? :)

My disagreement is on "theoretical". I don't think the hack is theoretical because that part of theory was already in Einstein's equations as cosmological constant, and I don't think there's much new theoretical stuff relating to dark energy. I guess I would rather call it philosophical hack.

I thought about "largest" issue too, and there seems to be far larger (that of course depends how "large" is defined in this context ;) ) hacks than dark energy. Space expansion might be one, and the inflation also.

Ritchie said:

By the explanation, I meant that inflationary theory needs curvature to be true - but that space had to expand faster than the speed of light enough to make the curvature look flat. Given that the estimate of flatness is, I believe, at most 10-20 away from perfectly flat, that seems "reaching".

But I think that the inflationary theory doesn't need curvature. In the BB (+inflation) universe with flat geometry, universe is exactly flat, not curved.

Ritchie said:

You think it will take a short time?

Well, actually no, but I think that cosmology doesn't have an ego. :)

Ritchie said:

Ari's: ... 8 - U

It just means that universe is not made of discrete "blocks", and you can get things to be infinitely small in principle. Also, one implication here is that when an object moves, it does so smoothly, not by (very tiny) steps.

Ritchie said:

11 - N (depends what dark matter is taken to mean, though)

Well, yes, I certainly believe that there are lot of planets and other such ordinary "dark" matter out there.

Ritchie said:

12 - N (Brian DuPraw had an interesting hypothesis in this regard, but he was too shy to post here :)

That's a shame, I hope that Brian reconsiders it. There's no need to be shy among us. :)

Ritchie said:

16 - A (though if Van Flandern somehow proves me wrong, so be it :)

It definitely is not among my strongest beliefs, either.

Well, Ritchie, after seeing your opinions of the beliefs of others, I guess we can start calling you "Sir Agreesalot". :P

These Bolds are from Ari's list. Let's just start with some things we can agree on...;)

19. I believe that all our theories about anything are more or less wrong

I think/believe this is the most accurate statement so far!!! ...;)

4. I believe that the universe is flat, i.e. space is not curved in any way

I think/believe this is absolutely correct.

Einstein said that ponderable matter (Massive bodies) tell light how to curve, and that that curvature tells mass how to move.

The first part of that is correct...that is actually "Observed"....However, and it took me a long time to finally understand this, the second part is NOT correct.

Massive bodies DO curve light/photons, BUT those massive bodies are NOT curving 'space' or, more correctly 'space-time' (As Publius has enlightened us lately).

I have been saying on BAUT, for a very long time, that I think/believe that Non-baryonic dark matter IS the answer to the galaxy rotation curve 'problem', BUT.......that it is NOT the WIMPs/CDM, that mainstream just Totally "Made Up", that is the answer...

Why did they make up WIMPs?

When they modeled the "ONLY" non-baryonic DM that we know exists...Neutrinos...that did NOT fit the Big Bang paradigm/large/small scale structure, AND they were tOOOOOOOOO fast/hot, to be able to 'apply GR clotting/movement to'.

SO, when I saw a thread on "Frozen-In magnetic field lines" (I had never heard of those before...I thought they were always talking about the magnetic lines that go pole to pole in the earth and SUN, and the sun spot megnetic lines) it finally dawned on me....

See this post......aask questions....;)

So, If you agree that the universe has never been in danger of 'collapsing if on itself'...IE; was never smaller and smaller IE;  a cluster of galaxies 5 billion ly's away has always been that far, and a Void that far away, has always been that far away, THEN the fully developed elliptical galaxies that are say 10 billion ly's away, are 10 billion years old + however long it took them to evolve to elliptical galaxies....my guess ~20+ billion years. 20 + 10 = 30 billion years old minimum...;)

Then this should make sense, and extending Gravity to "Infinity" is just another example of mainstream not understanding "Infinites"

http://www.bautforum.com/1268951-post180.html

Ari said:

Ok, but note my belief #18, which can also be said so that discordant redshift issues haven't really been objections to big bang theory. That is the disagreement I have with your belief; even if I think that many of DR-issues might be correct, I don't think they (necessarily) are objections to current theory.

It is true that some kind of big bang theory could certainly absorb things like discordant redshifts. I do think, however, that it would interfere greatly with the lambda-CDM/concordance model, which I would call "current" Big Bang Theory. Discordant redshifts interfere with age assumptions, distances, the presumed "age of quasars" before the age of galaxies (because quasars routinely have high z), with presumptions of acceleration, etc.

Has anyone proposed a Big Bang Theory that includes discordant redshifts?

Ari said:

In that case I have to update my take on this to N, I don't know enough about BB equations.

Fair enough. Apart from Rees' "Just Six Numbers" and some discussions on fine-tuning and the anthropic principle, I had read a paper that had a section on how easily the universe could instantaneously collapse or expand so fast that no density of matter could ever form, but I will have to track it down again.

Ari said:

My disagreement is on "theoretical"...I guess I would rather call it philosophical hack.

...but it's the General Theory of Relativity, not the General Philosophy of Relativity ;)

I'll agree that inflation does really take the cake when it comes to hacks, though :)

Ari said:

But I think that the inflationary theory doesn't need curvature. In the BB (+inflation) universe with flat geometry, universe is exactly flat, not curved.

That's incorrect. The whole point to inflation is to have the finite amount of spacetime and energy contact each other to erase any general differences, and then inflation expands space an amazing amount.

Take a look at a quote from NASA's "What is the Inflation Theory?":

NASA said:

The Flatness Problem:
Imagine living on the surface of a soccer ball (a 2-dimensional world). It might be obvious to you that this surface was curved and that you were living in a closed universe. However, if that ball expanded to the size of the Earth, it would appear flat to you, even though it is still a sphere on larger scales. Now imagine increasing the size of that ball to astronomical scales. To you, it would appear to be flat as far as you could see, even though it might have been very curved to start with. Inflation stretches any initial curvature of the 3-dimensional universe to near flatness. (emphasis mine)

Ari said:

Well, actually no, but I think that cosmology doesn't have an ego. :)

If cosmology were a person, I would say that it does ;)

Ari said:

It just means that universe is not made of discrete "blocks", and you can get things to be infinitely small in principle. Also, one implication here is that when an object moves, it does so smoothly, not by (very tiny) steps.

Alright then, I understand. Yes, I would have to be neutral on that. At the very least, I cannot discount things like Penrose's spin networks, which have a minimum area of ~10^-66 cm².

Ari said:

That's a shame, I hope that Brian reconsiders it. There's no need to be shy among us. :)

I hope so, too. He had quite a tidy way to determine what particles would form given a certain amount of energy. I wrote about it here, and there's a link on there to a Wayback Machine archive of his pages.

Ari said:

Well, Ritchie, after seeing your opinions of the beliefs of others, I guess we can start calling you "Sir Agreesalot". :P

Well, I've just seen a lot of proposals over the years by scientists and amateurs, and of the ones that sound remotely reasonable, so many of them are so different from one another. Is there an aether, a vaccuum polarization, a spin network, a cavalcade of strings, a plethora of probability waves, or a multiverse? Good question!

I think I'm going to be most impressed with the next theory that manages to successfully predict something new instead of just changing to accommodate it :)

Ritchie said:

It is true that some kind of big bang theory could certainly absorb things like discordant redshifts. I do think, however, that it would interfere greatly with the lambda-CDM/concordance model, which I would call "current" Big Bang Theory. Discordant redshifts interfere with age assumptions, distances, the presumed "age of quasars" before the age of galaxies (because quasars routinely have high z), with presumptions of acceleration, etc.

It depends on which aspects of discordant redshift question you consider to be true. For example, if it would be just quasars having discordant redshifts, then the distance scale wouldn't be affected that much.

Ritchie said:

Has anyone proposed a Big Bang Theory that includes discordant redshifts?

Yes, Bell.

Ritchie said:

...but it's the General Theory of Relativity, not the General Philosophy of Relativity ;)

Well, yes, but if the concept already was in the theory, it wasn't a theoretical hack. A specific (if we are allowed to stretch the meaning of that word a little... :) ) meaning was assigned to that theoretical concept, so I think the hack part is philosophical because it is the explanation that got added, not a part of the theory.

Ritchie said:

That's incorrect. The whole point to inflation is to have the finite amount of spacetime and energy contact each other to erase any general differences, and then inflation expands space an amazing amount.

Now that I looked at it some more, it might be that I indeed have been wrong about that. It seems that inflationary universe is not exactly flat, and also not infinitely large. By the way, here's quite good resource on current version of inflation theory (Andrei Linde's home page).

Ritchie said:

If cosmology were a person, I would say that it does ;)

But only in the sense that everyone has some kind of ego. I don't think it's the ego of cosmologists that is slowing the progress. That would imply that they are being dishonest about it, which I don't think they are. I think they just believe they are on the right track, so they also think they are making good progress.

Ritchie said:

At the very least, I cannot discount things like Penrose's spin networks, which have a minimum area of ~10-66 cm2.

That's exactly a kind of thing I'm protesting against with that belief of mine. Of course I can't discount it either, but I believe it's not correct. I make a distinction between discounting and not believing. I try not to rely on my beliefs, so I can believe that something is not correct without actually discounting it.

Ritchie said:

He had quite a tidy way to determine what particles would form given a certain amount of energy. I wrote about it here,

That's an interesting idea. I think we talked about something like that in the past, perhaps even in this forum.

I'll reply to other things later, but that's an interesting paper by Bell, there. The preprint, anyhow:

Bell said:

Those who believe in the standard, or cosmological redshift, model may not realize that the DIR universe is in many ways quite similar. Since the intrinsic redshifts have been found to be superimposed on top of the Hubble flow (Bell and Comeau 2003c), there appears to be no need to abandon the Big Bang in this model.

I haven't read much of Bell's stuff. I remember DIR in passing before; I'll have to read up on it again :)

I believe that the universe is one crazy place.

Azelx7 said:

I believe that the universe is one crazy place.

Do you subscribe to Douglas Adams' take on the understandability of the universe? :)

I believe the universe is software; data and data streams and we're looking at it from the inside. What's the purpose? Who designed it? Haven't got a clue. What the heck are we doing here? No idea.
Quantum weirdness is probably some kind of shortcut to optimize processing speed.
Solid objects are cohesive data sets, i.e. a coffee cup is a collection of data expressing the idea of a coffee cup. We can reach out and feel it because that's how the program works; one set of data interacting with another and our brain tells us what to feel and what to see.
Weird, crazy, maybe not terribly helpful, but not out of the question.

Hi Ed, and welcome to the forum (sorry for being so late in this)! :)

In your viewpoint, I guess a photon would just be a number, i.e. a piece of data. In standard view a photon would be a piece of energy which could be thought of as piece of data as well, so I think from our perspective there might not be anything different with your idea and standard view. Hmm... I don't think your idea is testable, or is there anything we could see here "inside" that would prove it or differentiate it from the standard view?

The only practical application or test that comes to mind is that looking at the same information and data we have now, but adopting the premise that everything is an expression of code, using the same operating system, finding similarities or patterns across seemingly unrelated fields or systems might offer some new insights into the operating system itself.

I know in the standard view, that's what physics is supposed to be doing, but I think the focus could be far to narrow for this particular scenario. If you've got your eye on a couple of pixels, you can't see the whole picture.

I suppose it's not that far off from string theory, except that the "programmer" is writing (or wrote) with vibrating strings instead of "0"'s and "1"'s. The manner in which the strings come together dictates what they represent or how they're "displayed". A combination of two, three or just a few strings might be imperceptable, but still could have an effect on a larger bundle that interacts with it. It could be a self-perpetuating program, or maybe we're providing cheap entertainment.

I don't know. I've been programming for a long, long time, and the universe does not feel like it has the same sort of characteristics. There doesn't really seem to be a tick (all important to drive operations; analogous to the Ghz rating on a computer chip) or a state. Even some of the things which seem to be pretty binary, like spin or atomic orbitals, seem to derive their discrete values from squares of non-discrete matrices, some of them infinite!

(You'll have to excuse my enthusiasm - I've been reading a matrix-based quantum mechanics info and it dawned on me in the oscillator chapter that they were showing a basis for why atomic orbitals are discrete even though the position and momentum themselves would not be)

It does seem like there ought to be something "underlying it all" that makes all the 'real' data points for all of the statistical reality we see, but with non-locality in the mix, it doesn't seem like an underlying reality would be very computery, either. Like chemistry, I expect a lot of the rules that we see are emergent behaviour from components instead of something particularly directed.

That's just my take on it, though :)

Ritchie, I'm with you on the non-directed bit, but if you think about an underlying, probably very simple few lines of code governing how data streams interact, share, store and display information, then turn the data streams loose and sit back and watch.....