non-fractal re: Whither Goest CMB Isotropy?

Phillip Helbig wrote:
Knecht <rloldershaw@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

The basic issue is whether the observable
universe is homogeneous (appears isotropic) or
whether the observable universe shows evidence
for discrete fractal organization from the
smallest to the largest observable scales.

I haven't yet read the paper (though I know and/or
have met some of the authors), but my guess is
that they don't mention "discrete fractal
organization". You make it sound like a
dichotomy: EITHER it's homogeneous OR there is
"discrete fractal organization".

There seems to be an issue ongoing for some number
of years here of a theory fuzzy in all its
details for which _every_ anomalous observation by
astronomers is seized upon as additional evidence
for that theory, without any attempt to integrate
it in any coherent way into that theory.

I'm fairly sure that's not a paradigm used by
successful scientists.

People might consider them had the discrete
fractal paradigm made some quantitative
predictions which could in principle be falsified.

Well, "discrete fractal organization" makes one
immediate prediction which is easily falsified.

"Fractal" means what it says, and if the universe
were "fractal", that would be observable at local
scales, and indeed down to atomic scales and below.

No such local observations exist, therefore
"fractal" is not an appropriate description of the
universe.

Pretending that "fractal" has some other meaning
than the one it has in mathematics doesn't seem
likely to lead anywhere useful.

We already know at what scales "discrete" would have
to hold, and that is at anything above the Planck
length.

Terminology that matches what the observations do
seem to support already exists and is in use, as
e.g. "anisotropic". There is not any obvious reason
to try to convey this direct observable and those
like it into some magical and unspecified realm
outside of math, physics, and astronomy.

xanthian.
.

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