Talk:Gravastar/Archive 1

Plautus satire: gamma ray bursts are NOT the same as mere "high-energy gamma rays". The NASA article you link to does not support in any way what you wrote. It is misleading to link to external articles in this way. - What is a gamma ray burst? High-energy gamma rays? Yes. Take your red herring elsewhere, it stinks. - Plautus - That is not an adequate response. Please look up what gamma ray bursts are (for one thing, they are very distant). What you write has not "been shown", it's not legitimate to present your sole opinion as some kind of consensus. - You make the claim that all gamma ray bursts are very distant. Now if you don't mind you can qualify that (how far is very distant?) and then prove it. And while I'm at it, why did you revert the page while the discussion of the new content is going on? Why does everybody seem to do that?

By the way, this site, http://www.batse.com/oct13.html explains in simple terms that gamma ray bursts are high-energy bursts of gamma radiation: "Cosmic gamma-ray bursts have been called the greatest mystery of modern astronomy. They are powerful blasts of gamma- and X-radiation that come from all parts of the sky, but never from the same direction twice. Space satellites indicate that Earth is illuminated by 2 to 3 bursts every day."

It also says that gamma ray bursts are a mystery. Why didn't black hole hypotheses predict gamma bursts? Plasma theory does so, and based on experimental evidence, not abstract numerology. Plasmas are known to be copious emitters of all sorts of electromagnetic radiation. When you get done checking your facts I suppose you'll switch it back, but since you can't support your argument, I'm fixing the black hole entry now.

- The very website you quote, batse.com, shows:

"The results provide strong indications that these bursts originate from the remotest parts of the universe, at distances of billions of light years from Earth. These conclusions contradict theories that the bursts must somehow be associated within or just outside of our own Milky Way Galaxy."

http://www.batse.com/dec10.html

This has been known since 1997. - And the date of the document I cited is October 13, 1998. Are you familiar with the concept of supercession? What does the quote above say? Strong indications? Based on what?

- The very page you cite ( http://www.batse.com/oct13.html ) says, and I quote:

Now that we know where gamma-ray bursts come from -- very far away -- the next daunting task is to understand what causes them.

And "very far away", according to that same article, means 12 billion light years. - You really need to stop this quixotic windmill tilting here. I cited that as support for my claim that gamma ray bursts are high-energy gamma rays. The definition of gamma ray burst is arbitrary, but it is defined as a transient high-energy gamma radiation emission. You said they weren't, I proved you wrong. You are now taking that source and saying that since it claims quasars are far away, that they must be. Can you provide the evidence that suggests quasars are far away?

For your information, the claim that gamma ray bursts are far away is based on circular reasoning. They are assumed to be far away based on their assumed red shift, which is used to calculate distance, which confirms the observed red shift is caused by distance. If that doesn't make sense it's because it doesn't make sense. In other words, it's crap, not science. Halton Arp and others have shown that red shift is rarely (if ever) the reason for red shift (and that red shift in many cases is assumed based on previous assumptions about distance based on brightness). One logical fallacy after another, that's what is supporting your marginalized ideas. And when I say marginalized, I do not mean that your OPINION is a minority opinion, only that observable reality overrules it. - [[User:Plautus satire|Plautus] - Once again, you habitually link to external pages claiming that they support your modifications. When the page you yourself cited contradicts the modifications you made, you wave your hands and pretend it doesn't matter.  Your actions are simply intentionally misleading. - Yes, the page contradicts me, as do all of the baseless claims made about quasars. The one thing that I can honestly say I don't dispute on that document I cited is the definition of "gamma burst," which I already stated is arbitrary (but not meaningless). You even disagreed with "my source" and said that gamma ray bursts are not high-energy gamma rays, which clearly is wrong. So you disagree with what I agree with on that document and agree with what I disagree with. Simple contrarianism? Seems to be. - [[User:Plautus satire|Plautus]

-- This is incorrect. No one has ever measured a red shift of a gamma ray burster, and it's only within the last two years that we've even gotten a spectra. The belief that gamma ray bursters are distant is based on the fact that they are isotropic, which means that they are either very close (i.e. a few light years) or very far away (cosmological distances). If they were at an intermediate distance you'd see either some interaction with the galactic plane, and you don't. (i.e. if they were at Milky Way like distances, then a gamma ray burster at the far end of the galaxies would be blocked by all of the stuff that is in the way).

The reason people now think that they are at cosmological distances rather than close by (and this wasn't clear five years ago) is that people have detected gamma ray bursters coincident with observed supernova and galaxies (this only happened in the last year.)

Not sure what this has to do with quasars. The latest idea is that most GRB sources aren't as distant as quasars.

Actually, that cited page is quite outdated. The latest idea is that GRB sources are strongly beamed, and this vastly reduces the amount of energy that they produce.

--User:Roadrunner

- Gamma ray bursts produce immense quantities of high-energy gamma rays. However, not every high-energy gamma ray comes from a gamma ray burst. There are other plenty of other gamma-ray sources in the sky, many in our own galaxy. Saying that plasmas produce high-energy gamma rays is not the same as saying that plasmas are the source of gamma ray bursts.

Anyone can follow the links to the external pages you cite, read them for themselves, and see that the links you provide either say nothing to support your text modifications or outright contradict them. This is an extremely misleading practice of yours, and fundamentally dishonest, and completely self-defeating since it undermines your credibility.

Text modifications that 1) say "it has been shown", "it is now known", "it is proven" 2) contradict widely accepted consensus views in a field 3) are not supported by any external links, or are even contradicted by external links that you provide... will not survive on Wikipedia. One person cannot impose their own unique idiosyncratic crank opinion.  The text modification does not survive.

- I put Mazur and Mazolli's proposal in context. Until very recently, people were theorizing all sorts of bizarre things for gamma ray bursters. It's easy to propose bizarre things if you have no data.

There are no hits for gravistar in ADS, and the only thing close is Mazur and Mazolli's original conference paper. What I think happened was that Mazur and Mazolli were thinking out loud. The Los Alamos press office put out a press release. It got posted on slashdot, and the thing got more press than it probably warranted.

Roadrunner 04:31, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC) - Roadrunner, I don't know where you get this crap. You claim that "No one has ever measured a red shift of a gamma ray burster, and it's only within the last two years that we've even gotten a spectra.". This claim is roundly dismissed by a document published by NASA ("Last Revised: 24 November 1999"):


 * "Gamma-ray bursts were discovered in the late 1960s, but only recently have most astronomers agreed that a large fraction of the bursts originate in the very distant, early Universe. The bursts fade quickly at gamma-ray energies and are hard to pinpoint, making it difficult to observe a burst's optical afterglow and determine a distance, or redshift.


 * Redshift is a common measurement of astronomical distances. The more distant an object is from Earth, the faster it is receding due to the expansion of the Universe, and the greater its light is stretched or redshifted. This is similar to the way a siren on an ambulance appears to drop in pitch as the ambulance speeds away. Objects at high redshifts serve as probes to the early Universe, for their light has taken billions of years to reach Earth.


 * Yet of the thousands of gamma-ray bursts detected, fewer than ten have had an afterglow or host galaxy whose redshift could be determined with optical telescopes. This new finding by Goddard scientists has the potential of gauging the distances of many bursts from gamma-ray data alone."

I hope you can now admit that you were making claims from a standpoint of weakness, that is to say ignorance. Now you have been educated, you have no excuse.

As if that is not bad enough, though, you further go on to state: "The belief that gamma ray bursters are distant is based on the fact that they are isotropic, which means that they are either very close (i.e. a few light years) or very far away (cosmological distances)."

In the first place, isotropic in this case means omnidirectional as opposed to beamed. To give an example with which I suspect you're strongly familiar, imagine playing Diablo. The "nova" spells and effects are isotropic, the "jet" spells and effects are beamed. How it follows that "being isotropic" implies either vast or very short distances is beyond me. Perhaps you are skipping the assumption that since they are very redshifted they must be far away, and being so far away they must be very bright if they're isotropic. Incidentally, an article published by NASA ("March 26, 1999") makes mention of the mounting evidence that gamma ray bursts follow the same laws of physics that all high-energy electromagnetic radiation does, which implies that they are more than likely a beamed energy sources. High-energy electromagnetic radiation passing through plasma is known to self-organize into filamentary structures, not to mention the known propensity for plasmas to self-organize into powerful jets of radiation and particles.

Roadrunner, I'm going to make a simple suggestion to you. Instead of arguing from a point of weakness, that is to say ignorance, perhaps you should educate yourself on subjects before you try to comment on them intelligently. I may add more to this later after I've finished a private conversation. Ta for now. - Plautus

- When he says they're isotropic, he means that they're isotropically distributed across the sky. Not that the energy radiated from one of them is radiated isotropically -- it may be beamed in a non-isotropic way.

The fact that they're evenly distributed across the sky is what suggests they're either very local or very distant.


 * Once again two unqualified statements. ALL celestial objects are "very distant". The suggestion that gamma ray bursts all must be EXTREMELY very distant or must all be at nearly the same distance because their distribution is isotropic is absurd to say the least. And for another thing, the large-scale structure of the universe as a whole has a cellular structure (once again, as PREdicted by plasma physicists), not a homogenous, isotropic structure. Regular distribution does not imply isotropism. If isotropic distribution implies anything here, it implies that gamma ray bursts are ubiquitous in the universe, not strangely only present in the "early" universe or the "distant" universe. Perhaps in a geocentric big bang model of the universe it would imply that the farther away an object is, the older it is, and thus the brighter, more redshifted, etcetera, it is. However, in twenty-first century cosmology there is no place for this kind of intuitive leapfrogging over logic and observable evidence. Plautus satire 16:39, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I've read the quote from the nasa article, and it doesn't appear to say that they're using redshift to determine the distance of Gamma ray bursters, but that they are unable to. It also seems to me that there isn't an argument anymore, but both sides just bashing one another. What exactly is the discussion about? ! Obviously Plautus is in support of plasma theories over black hole ones. There's nothing wrong with that. But the way that everyone goes about these arguments concerning them (I also reference talk:black hole), is an indicator of... hostility. Can't we make our points without having a negative tone to our text? It makes it harder for people to get the point when they're too busy trying to sort through all of the negativity (this doesn't seem to be a side-specific thing). Debate all we want, but don't throw around insults. Pointing out lack of credibility can be much nicer, I believe. But then again, my opinion may be completely out there.