Friday, September 02, 2011

Where did the Lithium go?

In the comment section of my blog Ulla gave an interesting link concerning Lithium problem to an article by Elisabetta Caffau et al titled "An extremely primitive halo star".

What has been found is a star which is extremely poor on metallic elements: ("metallic" refers to elements heavier than Li). The mystery is that not only elements heavier than Li but also Li itself, whose average abundance is believed to be determined by cosmological rather than stellar nucleosynthesis, is very scarcely present in these stars.

This finding can be coupled with too other observations about anomalies in Li abundance.

  1. The average abundance of Li in cosmos is lower than predicted by standard cosmology by a factor between 2 and 3. See this.
  2. Also Sun has too low Li abundance. See this.

I have proposed years ago (see this) that part of Li has transformed to dark matter (gained larger value of Planck constant) and therefore effectively disappeared. This process would have occurred both in interstellar medium and in stars so that all three Li problems would be solved at once.

One might even imaginge a process in which star gradually loses its heavier elements as they transform to dark matter and are "eaten" by a dark star formed at the same time in the vicinity. If this were the case, dark matter stars would tend to be near ordinary start with anomalously low abundance of Li and heavier elements.

Many question marks remain. What about the rate for the phase transition to dark matter? Also the nuclei lighter than Li should be able to transform to dark form. Why the cosmological abundances for them are however essentially those predicted by the standard model of primordial nucleosynthesis? Is the reason that Li their fusion to Li was much faster than transformation to dark matter during primordial nucleosynthesis whereas Li fused very slowly and had time to transform to dark Li?

Authors think that some process could have created very high temperature destroying the Li in this kind of stars: maybe dark matter annihilation might have caused this. This looks rather artificial to me and would not explain too low Li abundance for other stars and for interstellar medium.

Li problem would rather sharply distinguish between two very different views about dark matter: dark matter as some exotic elementary particles on one hand and dark matter as phases of ordinary matter implied by generalization of quantum theory on the other hand.

For background see the chapter Nuclear String Hypothesis of "p-Adic Length Scale Hypothesis and Dark Matter Hierarchy".

25 comments:

Leo Vuyk leovuyk@gmail.com said...

atti,

You wrote:
"....nicely abstracted by Sabine Hossenfelder from Verlinde's work. I have already described briefly my own interpretation inspired by zero energy ontology"

Can we find this description somewhere?

Ragards,

Leo Vuyk.

matpitka@luukku.com said...

Sabine's article is at http://arxiv.org/pdf/1003.1015 .

My own view is at http://tgd.wippiespace.com/public_html/articles/egtgd.pdf .

Ulla said...

These comments have gone messy. This should belong to previous post, and mine on the previous post here. Maybe y can fix it?

http://www.astronomy.com/en/News-Observing/News/2011/08/Hubble%20movies%20provide%20unprecedented%20view%20of%20supersonic%20jets%20from%20young%20stars.aspx

I have discussed with an astronomer, and this picture could have a chance. Supersonic speed favior DM? I make a post of it, with self-education :).

matpitka@luukku.com said...

Yes. They are messy because I replaced the posting with a wrong one in updating. It is too risky to try to move them from posting to another one.

Ulla said...

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/09/06/arxiv-find-new-sources-of-gravitational-waves-during-inflation/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CosmicVarianceBlog+%28Cosmic+Variance%29

New Sources of Gravitational Waves during Inflation

Leonardo Senatore, Eva Silverstein, Matias Zaldarriaga
detectable inflationary tensor modes can be generated by particle or string sources produced during inflation, consistently with the requirements for inflation and constraints from scalar fluctuations. We show via examples that this effect can dominate over the contribution from quantum fluctuations of the metric, occurring even when the inflationary potential energy is too low to produce a comparable signal. Thus a detection of tensor modes from inflation does not automatically constitute a determination of the inflationary Hubble scale.


http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7270 /full/nature08483.html
planet formation and Li

L. Edgar Otto said...

Ulla,

It is possible to do foundational physics that does not depend upon the cosmology at all but is intrinsic to matter etc...

The big bang and its ridiculous brother of the inflation models as the only cosmology is now very much considered old speculation.

The Hubble observation is not the cause of space expansion- we would know this better if we understood galaxy evolution better.

What makes us think we can understand gravity waves or even see them when we do not ultimately understand gravity? What makes us think there is a Hubble scale that is fixed to some idea of the microworld?

The PeSla

matpitka@luukku.com said...

I see cosmic expansion as a fact. In zero energy ontology the use of Lorentz invariant time (light-cone proper time) forces it even for empty space.

Inflationary cosmologies are to me one of those frozen fashions which should have one long time ago but managed to gain dominance in the idea market. Flat three space is however a fact and (quantum) criticality predicts it but saves from the strange features of inflation such as non-existing Higgs like fields. The additional bonus is cosmological evolution which is unique apart from single parameter. It is however impossible to get to the idea market since content matters as little as it does in the material market economy.

Expectations: this is what matters also in idea market! Expectations is what all these idiotic hypes try to create and manage to do so. Expectations lead to funding and when you have received funding it is much more easier to get further funding. Inflation and superstrings are an excellent example of how this illusory progress can continue for decades.

Ulla said...

PeSla,

all but is intrinsic to matter etc...

exactly

what is matter?

L. Edgar Otto said...

Ulla,
I think I understand what you are trying to show me- well, OK you did not say what sort of meaning of mass you wanted. (Newton-like? Einstein-like?) I thought about this this morning but it is too long to post here.

Leo, this will be of some interest to you also, as per your comment with Rio Frio and your own theories.

I wrote nothing yesterday day so as Lubos says we need a new era of more theory! So I offer some speculations at the frontier for other than some busy work my thoughts did not make the concrete new today- at least I cannot know this consciously.

Matti,
that reply to me was a very timely and brilliant answer and is sad but true- I suspect our president will and congress will still only give lip service to science and anyone with a half working brain. This is unfortunate for the future and should not depend on funding. It not about science but just how much the arbitrary powers want to keep the people in the dark and ignorant to control them. But we would not know this unless we had some idea of a new and optimistic era where we are the innovators and the social reward for the sciences- in the name of our future children.

The PeSla

L. Edgar Otto said...

Well,

I made another post from the speculation 1 What is Matter called "massive binary numbers"

I did not include the idea of what is energy as such. But if we can represent the energy of the maximum diameter of the universe how can this be so for a flat universe? The again we know now that the plane makes the perfect lens! What sort of voodoo idea do we need to make this idea more acceptable?

Anyway, if you have time you might comment on this strange pattern of numbers especially since it does involve 89 as do the golden sequences.

The PeSla

Ulla said...

PeSla,
I dislike your way to post your comments only, on your blog.

And Matti has no time, how hard we ever wish he had. He is the Emperor. I know of nobody that work so hard.

http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=510

L. Edgar Otto said...

Ulla,

I desired that the readers if any would go to Matti's original postings- the point was not to read our commentary as much as the original contribution. I am not so sure we need to duplicate or mirror things that much.

Time is like solving problems as the entropy slows down- the more you solve the faster it goes and the closer you get to the answer.

I am not sure that link you threw at me again is technically cold fusion- and in any case if there are free electrons as the catalyst of these kinks in the field possibilities these involve geometry of structures such as the truncated octahedron.

I understand it will take a lot of work to catch up to me from where I was 20 years ago. But why will you not see the beauty in these ideas applying to carbon chemistry and the genetics?

It is not about dependence on the emotional aspect for the hard and raw objective science- there is no need to be in each others heads short of canine or love bonding or a role of healer. In my world I am described as an inoffensive centrist democracy in the nation state game, But I can see the empire in a grain of sand.

I will now post this for my own personal reference as my intention was not to promote the blog.

Must the mare maid find the love of another to gain her own soul?

The PeSla

Ulla said...

Well, the link is about Rossis work.

I don't say anything more about your style. I have said my opinion.

You see, Iam old and have not so much time, and there are lots of interesting things to study, among them TGD. Iam not good in math, I just want to understand the structures made, and that's why I look at your and Keas blogs.

The carbon is elementary for life. I have a friend that is expert on it. There will come time for it.

You see, I am a healer by profession, and you sent 'negative signals' a la TGD, so I answered, nothing more. You are maybe sensitive-receptive? This is a problem for me, yes, but I have no options. I must respond when there is time to respond.

Love is about superpositions and entanglement, free jail as Matti say, and we see ourself in the mirror of another, we need to see each other as we really are. In that way love expand us and we gain energy and information. Complexity as Santeri said. Love is an evolutionary force, so I guess the answer to your last question is - Yes.

L. Edgar Otto said...

Thanks Ulla,

Your friend dreamed of riding the light and so did Einstein as a young man.

Yeah, well all seemed to have passed go and not got 200$ in the universe's jail card. Good Matti metaphor that!

Anyway, this love entanglement idea is right on (but on what do we sit as we ride the light I do not know- nor if the old physics is strong enough to be real or more than energy as work as Lubos posted- (I think he reads us as I had talked about the soul- why would he post about the soul too?) he too knows it but a poetic term- yet can it replace love or God? (He was careful to say his thoughts on conservation applies to the Lie groups- I suppose he too wonders if some TOE like theory can be integrated as in Pitkanen's next post.)

Well, a little blurry eyed from mixing colors and twisting cubes in dim light I took a break and wrote a sort of poem by your inspiration - Riding the Light.

Just what is it we are sitting on if we are on that light? hmmmmm

Well, it is very hard with our language differences to really see the notions and the quality of comments negative or positive. As Kea once said we do not have time to learn a new language.

The PeSla

Ulla said...

Well, I think that if we should be able to ride the light, then we cannot be massive, and so we have to turn into a wave. Remember the Zeilinger group that found a big molecule as porphyrine could be a wave too. This means that at the ends of a wormhole are two waves? Or a virtual God-particle, maybe it is a wave too. I like the idea.

Hagelin also told of the same. Mass is not constant, just descreate?

The dreamer is a young man, very intelligent, certainly an Einstein-type too :)

Lubos can do whatever he wants. I tried to comment again, but he deletes my comments. I could be anon. but I don't want to.

http://esciencecommons.blogspot.com/2011/09/biochemical-cell-signals-quantified-for.html
dark hierarchial physics? Signaling is not enough, so it must be dark? This is what we call life?

This is very much off the topic again.

Li is really interesting. Bethe: http://prola.aps.org/pdf/PR/v55/i5/p434_1

L. Edgar Otto said...

Ulla,
I do not think we are that far off topic of what atoms are and why the ratios of them in the universe.

Now, in the words of the Novelist and Heraclitean philosopher, John Fowles:

"Of what do you drink, the water or the wave?"

I suppose if as Hawking says the universe has a wave function then in a sense it is also a particle we can touch. But I am not sure the math of all the complex numbers for time tells us much- and that these are the same way, wave-particle to describe the same thing- but matrices tend to narrow things down to the physical.

Such cosmic codes also relate to the gene codes in fluid ways we can see but not read- of course what the mind is is much more fluid I imagine. One might call this super-symmetry like thing dark, perhaps it is outside of quantum physics- but my periodic chart on the metals was rather explicit on the general geometry, finite that is of things.

Nice creative questions here Ulla. Illusions seem to interact with illusions in any case- and I ask you when we dream what sort of light is that if we look up at the sun- can we not ride that too?

None of the current theories can explain the source of the higher metals- nor recent ones that would claim live can be made from metal alone. The world is also plastic and ceramic.

The PeSla

Santeri Satama said...

Poetry of Light brings to mind this all-time classic:

Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? And what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

This poem has a special plase in what I'm currently reading, David Zindells Neverness-epic about Order of mystic mathematician pilots wandering through manifolds in their lightships made of dark diamond in search for meaning of All this, by solving theorems and especially the Continuum Hypothesis. :)

Ulla said...

Oh, no, this was a bit too much. Now I stop here :)

PeSla, I think y must go with the light to get the power, not against it. Against = dissipation, inertia, a charachter of matter, where light as we see it is born. Light is the inertia of time.

Lubos article was quite good, if we take away the religion stuff and soul stuff that he doesn't have any clue about. And long.

Santeri, can you find meaning by solving theorems, especially continuum? What about things outside our scope? Future is evolving?

Ulla said...

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/Chasing_the_light/

When Einstein abandoned an emission theory of light, he had also to abandon the hope that electrodynamics could be made to conform to the principle of relativity by the normal sorts of modifications to electrodynamic theory that occupied the theorists of the second half of the 19th century. Instead Einstein knew he must resort to extraordinary measures. He was willing to seek realization of his goal in a re-examination of our basic notions of space and time. Einstein concluded his report on his youthful thought experiment:

"One sees that in this paradox the germ of the special relativity theory is already contained. Today everyone knows, of course, that all attempts to clarify this paradox satisfactorily were condemned to failure as long as the axiom of the absolute character of time, or of simultaneity, was rooted unrecognized in the unconscious. To recognize clearly this axiom and its arbitrary character already implies the essentials of the solution of the problem."

Santeri Satama said...

"What one fool can understand, any fool can understand":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_electrodynamics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QED_%28book%29 (available from nearest library, also in Finnish. Feynnman is genious in popularizing.)

Ulla said...

The owner of this blog is away, so we can play here? Light and matter, thx.

Look, the kg is redefined using hbar?

http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/site/2011/SI.xhtml

While the kilogram is still defined as the mass of a Pt-Ir cylinder kept in a vault in at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures at Sèvres in France, serious plans now exist to redefine the kilogram by fixing the numerical value of the Planck constant h; and the ampere, kelvin and mole by fixed numerical values for e, k and NA. With the metre already being defined by the speed of light and the second by an atomic microwave transition, but likely soon to be redefined by an optical transition of much higher frequency, we shall have at last achieved this.

matpitka@luukku.com said...

Sorry for not responding. I spent a week in hospital and am returning to work.

Ulla said...

More Rossi. http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/09/upcoming-rossi-energy-catalyzer-tests.html

Ulla said...

http://nextbigfuture.com/search/label/rossi so many articles about Rossi.

Are you sick again? You are too sensitive?

Ulla said...

http://physicsforme.wordpress.com/2011/10/08/the-first-detection-of-abundant-carbon-in-the-early-universe/

It appeared that TN J0924-2201 had already experienced significant chemical evolution at z > 5. The detection of this emission line in this early galaxy confirmed their conjecture that an abundance of metals was already present in the ancient universe as far back as 12.5 billion years ago–at z > 5. The research opens the door for future investigations of the metallicity of galaxies in the early universe with redshift values of more than five.

Reference:
Kenta Matsuoka, Tohru Nagao, Roberto Maiolino, Alessandro Marconi, Yoshiaki Taniguchi, A&A, 532, L10, “Chemical properties in the most distant radio galaxy”