I’ll make a start on replying to this, I just starting reading it and I couldn't resist, most of the points are so wrong I dont know where to start;
Pages 1-3, much moaning, generizations, attempts to link plasma cosmology with creationism ploy, etc.
page 2
after finding a reference to the work by young-Earth creationist, Barry Setterfield, on his web site2. The reference was an attempt by Setterfield to deflect my criticisms that pulsar timing observations were evidence against his claims of a rapidly decaying speed of light3 by invoking a radically different model of pulsars proposed by Dr. Scott
I'm sure that Scott wants no connection of his work to creationists, and i'm sure that Scott does not believe in creationist Barry Setterfield's personal theories on light.
And its not just Mr Scott with this idea for pulsars, other astronomers are of this opinion aswell.
Radiation Properties of Pulsar Magnetospheres: Observation, Theory, and Experiment, in this paper Healy and Peratt too suggest a similar model, where the star is recieving energy in a solar circuit (Alfven, 1982), and the pulses are being generated by a periodic plasma discharge between the magnetosphere of the star, or between two bodies. Maybe if Bridgman was aware of this publication, published in a highly established astronomy journal, he would not be so quick to rubbish Scotts similar interpretation.
“Dr. Scott states that astronomers assume that the physical laws in the distant cosmos are different from those known on the Earth (page 7). Wrong. The default assumption is that the laws of are identical on the Earth and in distant space. This concept dates back to Galileo in 1592.”
If he fully understood what plasma cosmology is, or EU, he would understand that they do indeed hold the physical laws on Earth to a much higher regard. Lets take a look at the solutions offered so far for the acceleration of the solar wind. We’ve had over twenty completely different solutions proposed for that in the literature (
ref) utilizing such things as ‘Alfvenons’ ‘shock dissipation’ ‘pulsational waves’ ‘reconnection’ ‘field dissipation’ ‘shock waves’ ‘dipole fields’, various new particles, listing them all would be tedious, there are hundreds of different solutions. Seems that solar astronomy is in quite a muddle, hundreds of different models which seem to work, but no reason to choose one of them over the other. That’s why the simple acceleration from a global E-field seems such a sensible suggestion.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005psci.book.....A
This paperback is the second edition of the original textbook published in Aug 2004, with an addition of some 170 problems and solutions, written for graduate students, post-Docs and researchers. It provides a systematic introduction into all phenomena of the solar corona, including the Quiet Sun, flares, and CMEs, covering the latest results from Yohoh, SoHO, TRACE, and RHESSI. The contents are:
Introduction, Thermal Radiation, Hydrostatics, Hydrodynamics, Magnetic Fields, Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), MHD Oscillations, Propagating MHD Waves, Coronal Heating, Magnetic Reconnection, Particle Acceleration, Particle Kinematics, Hard X-rays, Gamma-Rays, Radio Emission, Flare Plasma Dynamics, Coronal Mass Ejections
Note that he does not mention once in this summary the electric currents on the sun that must maintain the magnetic fields. He didn’t even mention the current disruption model that has been proposed (originally by Alfven et al) for energetic solar events, and he certainly failed to mention that current disruption is a viable alternative to magnetic reconnection explanations. The Bu approach (magnetic reconnection) and the Ej approach (current disruption), although they both arise from the exact same conditions (at a neutral point), are different in the fact that magnetic reconnection does not encompass automatically all current-driven processes, because an electric current based on the Ampere’s law is associated with a non-zero curl B. Alfven was aware of the benfits of pursuing the electric current approach, as opposed to the magnetic reconnection approach, because currents create magnetic fields, not the other way around, so it makes sense to treat the current as the primary quantity. Thus his alternative electrical model of solar flares, utilizing the current disruption method; (
ref)
It is possible that the sun may be generating this E-field at its surface due to the interaction of its angular momentum with the surrounding conducting plasma (
ref), as well as any net charge it may contain. Thus the filamentary corona is the current that is being accelerated by this global field, just as Scott states in his book. But Bridgman seems to gloss over this potential solution to the long outstanding problem in solar physics, focussing on the minutia without addressing the main issue.
Astronomy has made no contributions to fundamental science
Scott claims that astronomy has made no contributions to fundamental science or is not really testable (pages 4, 5, 7, 9). Consider his statement on page 4:
“The answer is because there are no tangible, usable products from which we can judge the validity of theories emanating from sciences that deal with events that happened long, long ago and far, far away.”
Scott ignores many examples in the history of science [..]
Here he takes what was obviously a perfectly valid point that we can never know for sure about the validity of theories in space (as you can make no direct measurements of the objects in question) and then proceeds to list a series of things that we do now know for sure, and so are largely irrelevant to this point.
And I believe that Scott was referring to the many theories surrounding the Big Bang, that do claim to have a very definitive picture of what the universe was like billions of years previously.
page 4
Theory vs. Laboratory validation
Another mistake Scott makes is an almost dogmatic adherence to the notion that if it hasn't been demonstrated in the laboratory or tested in situ, then it can’t be real (page 9, 19). He ignores the fact that many things we know today, not just in astrophysics, were predicted theoretically, years,
On page nine from the electric sky, Scott outlines the empirical method. Observation, theory and experiment. This is no different explanation than any layman that has learnt the most basic physics course knows, it seems though that Bridgman takes issue with the empirical method for some reason. His examples are no better however, he uses the existence of the neutrino as evidence that you don’t always have to have observed something to know its there, but this is an erroneous position to take. Indeed, many people may have suspected that the neutrino existed before it was detected, but even the neutrino still needed that one piece of direct experimental evidence before it gained widespread acceptance in the scientific community. Since then neutrino’s have been used in all sorts of experiments and equipment, but they served no real purpose until they were discovered. The evidence for many of modern astrophysics abstractions is far more ambiguous than the evidence for the existence of the neutrino. As Scott rightfully said, to abandon the empirical method is to abandon science.
And many other scientists seem to agree, take Professor of Astrophysics at The University of Alabama, Richard Lieu;
http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.2462
Astronomy can never be a hard core physics discipline, because the Universe offers no control experiment, i.e. with no independent checks it is bound to be highly ambiguous and degenerate. Thus e.g. while superluminal motion can be explained by Special Relativity. data on the former can never on their own be used to establish the latter. This is why traditionally astrophysicists have been content with (and proud of) their ability to use known physical laws and processes established in the laboratory to explain celestial phenomena. Cosmology is not even astrophysics: all the principal assumptions in this field are unverified (or unverifiable) in the laboratory, and researchers are quite comfortable with inventing unknowns to explain the unknown. How then could, after fifty years of failed attempt in finding dark matter, the fields of dark matter {\it and now} dark energy have become such lofty priorities in astronomy funding, to the detriment of all other branches of astronomy? Given all of the above, I believe astronomy is no longer heading towards a healthy future, unless funding agencies re-think their master plans by backing away from such high a emphasis on groping in the dark.
The Importance of in situ Measurements
Related to the laboratory validation issue is Dr. Scott’s repeated statements that astrophysical claims can’t be tested since in situ measurements are not possible (pages 9, 19) and this means that all kinds of other claims should be admitted on equal footing.
Unfortunately that is a fact; you can not scale down gravity and test in laboratory conditions, it is too weak, and how gravity works is not fully known yet. Plasma’s have scale invariance over many orders of magnitude, and so in situ measurements really are possible. Like this recent simulation of a solar flare in a plasma, published in a well known plasma cosmology journal (
Laser Plasma Experiments to Simulate Coronal Mass Ejections - Plasma Science, IEEE Transactions on, 2007)
page 6
Trusting Mathematical Models
Dr. Scott complains about trusting mathematical models (page 25). Yet it is these mathematical models which provide numerical predictions for testing hypotheses. They not only provide insights for phenomena far away, but they enable us to ‘see’ things, such as atoms and subatomic particles, which are impossible to see.
Hilarious! He here completely ignores Scotts points on page 24-25 about what is acceptable to conclude from mathematics, dark energy and matter, quadratic curve fitting of data, and many of his other points, and instead jumps to the instantaneous conclusion that Scott is somehow trying to uproot the entire subject of mathematics!
What Scott was saying was in fact a very sensible point to make about applying un-needed physical process’s to abstract mathematical concepts. He notes that electrical engineers use singularities in their models all the time, the difference is that engineers realise that singularities are not physical things, they are useful mathematical points, nothing more. Whereas Astronomers prefer to give this mathematical object a plethora of strange physical attributes. As Scott says; “Actual quantities that exist in nature are quite distinct from the mathematical variables in the equations that attempt to model their behaviour.”
And the rest up to page nine is more of the writers personal opinion, a few Ad Hominems, more misrepresentations, and more misunderstandings.
I can see what the rest is going to be like now. The person who wrote this obviously started reading this book with a closed mind, in fact, he brought it specifically to debunk it as he thought that it was a creationist book, despite there not being one mention of creationism, religion, or anything like that at all in Scott’s book. What a twirp. And I suppose the irony of him accusing Scotts book of being creationist, whilst he staunchly defends the biggest creation event in history, the Big Bang, didn’t occur to him. Plasma cosmology does not need such a creation event, it works like most other areas of science, from empirical observation in the present, which works outwards and backwards. The Big Bang starts from mathematical formulae that start from the beginning of the universe, and try to predict the future. Few have turned out correct, and most are now just completely free variables, so no matter what is observed the theory will just be changed to account for the new values. I see most Big Bangers themselves as scientific creationists, instead of saying that the universe was created 10,000 years ago, they say a billion years ago, or 13 billion years ago; but no matter where you put the start time it never solves the creation problem. That’s why plasma cosmology is the less religious of the two cosmologies, no creation event is needed, and that is the simple reason why Bridgman’s entire premise is absurd.