The Ockhamized Universe --
The new explanation of the physical cosmos

David Noel
<davidn@aoi.com.au>
Ben Franklin Centre for Theoretical Research
PO Box 27, Subiaco, WA 6008, Australia.



The development of ideas
Ideas about the Universe have been expressed as long as there have been people about to express them. Early ideas from the Greeks, the Chinese, the Romans, and the Arabs have been developed, extended, and sometimes discarded with the growth of scientific knowledge.

Growth in our knowledge of the Universe has hugely increased since the development of the formal "Scientific Method" which began in Europe around the 1700s. The requirement for actual measurements and reproducibility of results was fundamental.

Other important facets have been the development of models and theories to represent particular aspects, often with underlying mathematical treatments. Competing models and theories have to vie with one another for acceptance, with new evidence always likely to shift the balance of acceptance from one to another. Applying logic to evidence can bring about big shifts.

In the real world, however, these shifts are often impeded or blocked by social factors. Researchers who have devoted their careers to investigations founded on a particular assumption will fight vigorously, sometimes frantically, to oppose claims that the assumption is false.

This is understandable. Clinging to the status quo may mean researchers keep their jobs, and sometimes their reputations. Stepping out of line may mean professional suicide for them.

As for the general public, they usually have no detailed knowledge of the matters discussed. They have to leave it to the "professionals" to fight it out.

The "Scientific Method" gave a tool for judging the "truth" or applicability of a theory or model, but no tool for overcoming the social factors of self-interest or apathy which can delay understanding and acceptance of ideas which go against the status quo. But there is such a tool which can be effective.

This tool, which was invented by a monk back in 1300s England, is called Ockham's Razor. It can cut through a competing maze of ideas. Basically, it says that if you have to make a choice between competing theories, you should always choose the simplest.

Let's look briefly at the man who devised Ockham's Razor.

William of Ockham's story
According to [1], "William of Ockham was not only influential in metaphysics, but also in all other major areas of medieval philosophy, like logic, physics or natural philosophy, theory of knowledge, ethics, and political philosophy, as well as in theology.


William of Ockham. From [1].


He died of plague during the black death epidemic in a convent in Munich either in 1347 or 1349 (the exact date is unknown). However, as the disease did not reach Munich until late 1348, the year of his death is more likely to have been 1349."

There is a fuller account of this fascinating intellectual figure in Wikipedia [2].

About the Ockhamized Universe
This site presents a set of questions which may be asked about the physical universe, each with two answers. The first answer, headed "Old View", represents the standard or conventional account, widely accepted by the Establishment, and hence the public.

The second answer, headed "New View", represents later work which is yet to reach general acceptance with the wider public, but which I believe gives a more logical and generally simpler view of the Universe. In these things, public acceptance may actually happen before acceptance by an older diehard section of the Establishment.

Some of these "Ockhamized" views may contain evidence and deductions which are new, but most will be re-formulations of older work, often stuff which has fallen from general oversight or consideration, even by the "experts".

While each of the questions can be considered individually, the whole of the "Ockhamized" views form a consistent and interrelated complex. In this article the questions are not dealt with in detail, instead links are given to specific web articles which explain the position with the minimum of jargon. Most of these articles are on the AOI site.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


Question Old View New View
101. How old is the Universe? About 13.7 billion years. Eternal, infinite in time.




Question Old View New View
102. How big is the Universe? It extends about 13.7 billion light-years from us. Infinitely large.




Question Old View New View
103. How did the Universe begin? It expanded out of nothing in the "Big Bang". The Universe is eternal and had no beginning.


It's not hard to show that the Old View is based on bad physics and bad logic. See, for example, The Placid Universe Model. Two gross defects of "Big Bang" are that it contravenes the Law of Mass/Energy Conservation (no other contraventions are currently known), and that it just does not correspond with observed packing of distant galaxies (in Hubble Deep-Field images, showing galaxies from over 10 billion years ago, their spacing is similar to that of current bodies).

In the present context, an important point is that the Ockhamized "new view" (that the Universe is infinite in space and time), is far simpler than the "old view" and still explains observed facts. It should therefore be adopted.

For more detail, see Refining the Zwicky Constant -- A new more soundly-based constant for inter-galactic distances, replacing the Hubble Constant. There it is shown that the "Big Bang Theory" is just one among a hundred or so local Creation Myths. With the Ockhamized view, there is no place for any creation myth, because there was no "creation".


Australian Dreamtime creation myth.


Question Old View New View
104. What did Edwin Hubble discover about the spectra of distant galaxies? That their spectra were red-shifted more, the further away the galaxies were. That their spectra were red-shifted more, the further away the galaxies were.




Question Old View New View
105. What causes galactic red-shifts? The Doppler effect, due to galaxies moving away (expanding Universe). Zwicky Gravitational Drag acting on light.


The "Big Bang" idea has two main underlying ideas -- first, that the Universe is expanding, and second, that the CMBR (Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation) is due to relict radiation from the time the Big Bang began. For more detail on what's wrong with the first idea, see R.I.P. Expanding Universe (b. 1930, d. 2012): -- (The Big Bang never happened).

The concept that galactic red-shift is caused by the Doppler effect because of expansion is disproved by a feature of these red-shifts. If red-shifts were really due to a distant body moving away from us, then all parts of the distant body should show the same red-shift. In fact, the red-shift varies in different parts of the body's spectrum, and precisely as would be expected from Zwicky Gravitational Drag.



Question Old View New View
106. How were galaxies formed? From gravitational accumulation of interstellar matter. From gravitational accumulation of interstellar matter.




Question Old View New View
107. How were planets around stars formed? Stars accumulated "protoplanetary discs" around them which condensed into individual planets. Planets were formed by aggregation of planetesimals from galaxy-wide interstellar "Oort Soup".




Question Old View New View
108. In our Solar System, which came first, the Sun or the planets? The Sun. The Planets. The Sun was formed later by local aggregation of planets and planetesimals into a solar-mass body capable of ignition.


In respect of formation of stars, solar systems, and planets, The Old and New views differ fundamentally. The Old view is that stars form first, by accumulation of gas and dust, with the planets being matter 'left over' in the process -- matter between the stars being very sparse.

In the Ockhamized view, a galaxy starts off with a roughly uniform spread of matter in three dimensions, the "Oort Soup". Gravitational attraction causes this matter to aggregate into planetesimals, smaller bodies still distributed roughly uniformly throughout space.

In localized areas, some planetesimals accumulate into planet-sized bodies, and some of these aggregate into bodies of mass approaching that of the Sun. They are then massive enough for the nuclear-fusion process to occur ("ignition"), when they give out visible light.

In the Old view, most of the space between stars is largely empty. In the New view, a star is formed by accumulation of matter from a small local volume, a tiny part of the general interstellar "Oort Soup", most of which is left populated by planetesimals of below-solar masses.

To give an idea of the scale of the thing, our Solar System has a radius of up to 100 AU (where 1 AU or Astronomical Unit is the distance from the Earth to the Sun). The sphere of "local" space around the Sun (the "Oort Cloud"), taken to be a bit under half-way to the closest star, has a radius of 100,000 AU.

In effect, the Sun has cleared a volume of radius 100 AU around itself, to form the Solar System (itself, the planets, moons, asteroids, and short-period comets) from the planetesimals within this volume. The rest of the Oort Cloud is left with its original density of planetesimals.

As the Oort Cloud has a radius one-thousand times that of the Solar System, and so a billion times the volume, it could include matter approaching a billion times the mass of the Solar System.

There is more detail at The Cosmic Smog model for solar system formation, and the nature of 'Dark Matter'.

Question Old View New View
109. How old is our Solar System? About 4.7 billion years. About 4.7 billion years.


Question Old View New View
110. Why do the Planets orbit roughly in the same plane (the ecliptic)? Because they are originated from a protoplanetary disc. Because their original orbits have been normalized through the orbit-flattening force of the rotating Sun.



The planets in our solar system orbit roughly in the same plane. Moving out to the Kuiper Belt, orbits become more inclined, and by the time the Oort cloud is reached, orbits are random.


Note that even if the planets had originated from a protoplanetary disc, there is no special reason why this disc should been in the Sun's equatorial plane -- typically these factors start off randomly aligned. For example, the plane of our Solar System is inclined at over 60 degrees to the Galactic Plane.

Question Old View New View
111. Why do the Rings of Saturn orbit exactly in Saturn's equatorial plane? (no real answer). Because their orbits have been normalized through the orbit-flattening force of the rotating Saturn.




Question Old View New View
112. Why are older galaxies disc-shaped rather than spherical? (no answer). Because of the orbit-flattening force of their central rotating supermassive black hole.




Question Old View New View
113. What is the cause of the Late Heavy Bombardment occurrence? (no answer). This was the period when planetary and planetesimal orbits were being normalized towards the ecliptic, and so collisions became more likely.


(The Late Heavy Bombardment is thought to have occurred approximately 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago. During this interval, a disproportionately large number of asteroids apparently collided with the early terrestrial planets in the inner solar system, including Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. The LHB happened "late" in the Solar System's accretion period when the Earth and other rocky planets formed and accreted most of their mass).

There is more detail at The Cosmic Smog model for solar system formation, and the nature of 'Dark Matter'.



Question Old View New View
114. What is Dark Matter? A hypothetical substance, as yet undetected, invoked to explain apparent deviations from Newtonian gravity laws in the rotation of galactic clusters. Merely the large amount of Oort Soup matter in intergalactic space.


There is more detail at Refining the Zwicky Constant -- A new more soundly-based constant for inter-galactic distances, replacing the Hubble Constant.

Question Old View New View
115. What is the origin of CMBR? Supposedly it is radiation left over from the Big Bang. It is merely standard thermal emission from Oort Soup matter in intergalactic/interstellar space.


CMBR, Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, is the name for a type of short-wavelength radio emission detected from all over the celestial sphere. It has a wavelength of around 2 mm, and is associated with cold matter at about 2.7 K, that is 2.7 degrees above absolute zero. It is fairly uniform from any direction.

It was shown in The Placid Universe Model that this radiation could not have anything to do with a Big Bang event -- it supposedly originated from high-temperature matter (at several thousand degrees) with an original wavelength in the visible range. This was then said to be "stretched out to microwave wavelengths by expansion of the Universe".

The origin of CMBR was analyzed in The Oort Soup as the real origin of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, where it was identified as normal thermal radiation (sometimes called Black-Body radiation or Stefan-Boltzmann radiation) from Oort Soup material at a temperature of around 2.7 K. This is the same material as is identified here as Dark Matter.

All matter in the Universe continuously gives off electromagnetic radiation, the wavelength of which varies with the temperature of the particular matter. Matter at 3000 degrees Centigrade or thereabouts, such as the Sun's surface, radiates with visible light. The planets and asteroids are not hot enough to produce their own visible-spectrum radiation, but they do all give off (lower-energy) infrared radiation.

This simultaneous solving of the problems of the origin of CMBR and of the nature of Dark Matter is a vivid example of the power of Ockhamization. Elaborate and rather dubious theory is replaced by simple standard physics -- distant matter at 2.7 K must give CMBR-like radiation.

A huge body of data on CMBR has been built up over many years using specialist satellite detectors, but interpretation of this data has hitherto been stymied by its confusion with a Big Bang event. All this data can now be fruitfully re-interpreted.



Question Old View New View
116. What is a neutron star? A massive star which has lost its outer layers, leaving a core made up almost entirely of neutrons. A massive star which has lost its outer layers, leaving a core made up almost entirely of neutrons.




Question Old View New View
117. How were the neutrons in a neutron star formed? "Neutron stars are created when giant stars die in supernovas and their cores collapse, with the protons and electrons essentially melting into each other to form neutrons". When supernovas lose their outer layers, the pre-existing neutron core is left.


Neutrons are subatomic particles found in the nuclei of all normal atoms except hydrogen. Free neutrons, not bound in an atomic nucleus, decay in a few minutes into a proton and an electron, essentially a hydrogen atom.

The neutrons in a neutron star are hugely compacted relative to ordinary matter. If the Earth was made entirely of compacted neutrons, with the same amount of matter, it would be only about 300 metres in diameter.



Question Old View New View
118. When stars and planets are formed by aggregation of interstellar material, what is at their cores? (no answer). For bodies of the mass of Mars and above, including stars, their cores contain compacted neutrons.


More detail on this formation of compacted-neutron cores is at Inside The Earth -- The Heartfire Model. With increasing mass, gravitational pressures in an aggregating body also increase. When the mass of the body reaches that of Mars, the core is compressed, wholly or partly, into compacted neutrons.

Ockhamization simplifies understanding of the formation of stars, planets, and intermediate-sized bodies such as Brown Dwarfs. Their subsequent evolution depends almost entirely on their accumulated masses. Mars-Plus bodies have enough mass to contain compacted-neutron cores; stars have accumulated enough mass for hydrogen fusion to occur, so they shine by their own light.



Question Old View New View
119. How can larger bodies in the Oort Cloud be detected? Not detectable unless they move in towards the Kuiper Belt. From their CMBR-wavelength emissions.


Bodies of the size of a dwarf planet like Pluto can just about be detected at a distance of 30-60 AU away from the Sun, from their reflected light. But at much greater distances, say in the Oort Cloud at 10,000 AU, there is far too little reflected light to detect. Only when a body aggregates up to small-star size, when it shines by its own light, is it detectable in the visible spectrum.

However, planetary aggregates of Mars-Plus mass contain compacted neutrons at formation, and a tiny fraction of these decay each year, giving out energy. This decay is a main source of the heat coming up to the surface from within planets.

For the Earth, a body close to the Sun, this internal heat is small (about one five-thousandth) compared to sunlight received (see Temperatures of the Earth -- a Globe in Space). But moving out from the Sun, the planet Jupiter generates about as much heat internally as it receives from sunlight (Jupiter also has a much larger compacted-neutron core).

When it comes to distant larger (Mars-Plus) bodies in the Oort Cloud, these will generate internal heat. Their temperatures will be above those of adjacent smaller bodies, and so their thermal radiation will be shifted to shorter wavelengths. These bodies may therefore be detectable against the CMBR background.



Question Old View New View
120. What is a Black Hole? A region of space having a gravitational field so intense that no matter or radiation can escape. An enormously dense, massive rotating body which emits particles and energy along its axis.


As a theoretical definition, the Old view of what a black hole is may be technically correct. But in practice, what modern astronomers call Black Holes are rather different.

In particular, a "Supermassive Black Hole" exists at the centre of our galaxy, and similar things appear to be at the heart of most other galaxies. These objects have millions, sometimes billions, of times the mass of our Sun.


Axial outflow from a supermassive black hole.


These black-hole objects are many orders of magnitude denser than that in a neutron star. If our Earth was made up entirely of black-hole matter, with the same mass, it would be only about 3 centimetres across.

But a major feature of these supermassive black holes is that they emit enormous amounts of radiation and matter. These emissions are thrown out along their axes of rotation, in extremely narrow beams. How they appear to us on Earth depends on the orientation of the galaxy which contains them -- we cannot see the axial emissions from our own Galaxy's supermassive black hole, because the Solar System lies within the rotating disc.

We also cannot usually see the emissions from other galaxies directly, instead we see the effects of the emissions on the gases and other material they encounter. It appears that the emissions include very-high energy radiation in the gamma-ray and x-ray spectrum and beyond, and very-high energy electrons, protons, and alpha particles (helium nuclei).

In the case where we are viewing the jets of radiation from the supermassive black hole of a galaxy rotating in a plane perpendicular to our viewpoint, the galaxy can be classed as a "Blazar". We may see part of this radiation directly, rather than from its secondary effects. This sort of radiation is likely to be the source of much of the cosmic rays reaching the Earth.



Question Old View New View
121. Where do Cosmic Rays originate? Not known, but from outside the Solar System. From the supermassive black holes of galaxies rotating perpendicular to our viewpoint.


Cosmic rays have extremely high energies, orders of magnitude greater than anything else we are familiar with on Earth, such as the Large Hadron Collider used in particle experiments at CERN, Switzerland. A single cosmic-ray proton may have as much energy as a cricket ball travelling at 90 kilometres per hour -- fortunately most cosmic rays are scaled down in energy by the atmosphere before they hit Earth's surface.

Supermassive black-hole emissions come out in very narrow beams or jets, although they may be spread somewhat by interaction with gravitational and magnetic fields in their passage through space. The fact that they are concentrated in this way may lead to some misconceptions about the power of their sources.

Viewing a bright "star", astrophysicists may assume it is an ordinary star, radiating more or less equally in all directions. If the "star" is actually a Blazar or another sort of Quasar, the normal assumptions no longer apply. Light received at one end of a narrow beam would give a false idea of the power of the source if the source is assumed to be radiating in all directions.



Question Old View New View
122. Where in the Universe are heavy elements formed? (weak) In supernova explosions. Inside Mars-Plus planetary objects.


What are heavy elements? There are various answers to this question, but a common definition is that they are elements heavier than Iron in the Periodic Table.

The ordinary elements are numbered according to the number of protons they have in their nucleus -- hydrogen, the lightest element, has only 1 (atomic number=1), while Iron is number 26. The heaviest natural element found in nature is Uranium, No. 92, with 92 protons.

What's different about Iron, to make it the boundary between light and heavy elements? The nuclei of elements are held together by "Nuclear Binding Energies", which differ from one element to another. Iron has the highest nuclear binding energy, Uranium somewhat less, Hydrogen a lot less.

Atoms lighter than Iron can, in theory, be fused together into heavier isotopes (varieties of elements), with the release of (nuclear binding) energy. This is what happens in a Hydrogen Bomb, where atoms of hydrogen (atomic number=1) are fused together into atoms of helium (atomic number=2).

On the other hand, atoms heavier than Iron have the potential to release some of their nuclear binding energy by fission -- their nucleus breaks apart to form lighter elements. Heavy elements such as Uranium are often "radioactive" -- their nuclei can fission spontaneously.

Radioactive elements can break down in a series of steps to form lighter and lighter elements, but their limit is Iron -- so Iron is at the boundary between where energy release through fusion (of lighter atoms) and energy release through fission (of heavier atoms) is possible.

There is a graph (Fig. ITE17) in Inside The Earth -- The Heartfire Model which gives a good visual representation of binding energies.

The vast amount of energy put out by the Sun comes from fusion, of hydrogen into helium and heavier elements, as happens in a Hydrogen Bomb. This fusion is the ultimate source of most of the energy we are familiar with in the Universe.

But where are atoms of heavy elements created in the Universe? The Sun's fusion process does create heavier elements, but these are necessarily no heavier than Iron, and are in practice much lighter. The Sun's spectrum does not reveal the presence of even Oxygen (atomic number=8), so Oxygen and other heavier elements are not made in the Sun, although they may be made in more massive stars.

On the other hand, when you come to look at the Earth, Oxygen is its most common element, said to make up 46% of its composition. Where did it come from? Old-View science has no credible answer to this puzzle, and even less to the source of really heavy elements like Uranium.

The Ockhamized-Universe answer to this question calls on the earlier proposition, that all Mars-Plus bodies may contain compacted-neutron cores.


Structure of the Earth with a Core containing compacted neutrons.


As an example, the image shows the suggested internal structure in the case of the Earth, from Inside The Earth -- The Heartfire Model. The same source, under the heading "What's dubious about the idea of supernovas making heavier elements?", shows why the concept of heavy elements being formed in supernovas is scarcely credible.

Instead, the source of heavy elements may be the boundary between the Mesolayer and the Core of Mars-Plus objects -- essentially larger planets and smaller protostars. Here a Core containing compacted neutrons is in contact with the Mesolayer, originally highly compressed gas (mostly hydrogen) and dust. "The Mesolayer of the Earth is a factory where heavier elements are made from hydrogen and neutrons".

It seems to me that this model, which says that nuclear fusion occurs under immense pressure in a confined site, is a better one than the Old-view assumption that high temperatures are needed.



Question Old View New View
123. What are the essential conditions for nuclear fusion? Matter at very high temperatures in a confined site. Matter at very high pressures in a confined site.


At the Mesolayer boundary, material is subjected to immense pressures over periods of millions of years, and may also be subject to a flux of neutrons from the Core. The temperature there is high, but not excessively so, maybe 3000 degrees C.

In conventional nuclear-fusion research, the approach has generally been to heat hydrogen up to very high temperatures in confined "magnetic bottles", with the use of ultra-high-powered lasers. To date, these decades-long trials have not been successful, never producing more energy than has been input. It may that a low-excitation approach, almost "cold fusion", could be successful using very high pressures.



Question Old View New View
124. What's the future of the Universe? Eventually everything will be converted everywhere to thin, low-grade heat, the "Heat Death of the Universe". The Universe will always remain much as now, long-distance stability emerging from shorter-distance changes.


The Old View of our long-term future was based on two main assertions, first that the Universe was expanding and so would thin out the matter it contained to extreme levels, and second that the main trend within it was for its matter (concentrated in stars) to be converted into radiated energy (with no significant conversion of energy into matter).

In The Placid Universe Model, and elsewhere on this site, evidence shows that both these assertions are unfounded. The Universe is not expanding. Energy is converted into matter in supermassive black holes, thus keeping the mass-energy balance of the Universe in check. "Speculation: Supermassive Black Holes or AGNs may be the mass/energy recycling factories of the Universe."



* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *




To make a comment on this article, please click HERE.




References and Links
1. The Black Death. https://wccshoeing.wordpress.com/2012/06/12/significant-people-killed-by-the-black-plague/
2. William of Ockham. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Ockham .



Go to the AOI Home Page

Draft version 1.0, 2015 Apr 1-15.
First version 1.1 on Web, 2015 Apr 16.