DO PHYSICISTS CARE?
Pentcho Valev
http://physics.about.com/b/2010/12/29/physicsreality.htm
"Does physics actually describe reality or is it just a useful way of
talking about how things happen? This question often comes up when I
speak about my recent book. People want to know if these curious
properties of the universe proposed by theoretical physics - whether
the experimentally-verified ones such as quarks and antimatter or the
speculative ones such as strings and wormholes - are physical objects
or just mathematical abstractions that happen to work out.
Unfortunately, the answer is unsatisfying to me as well as those who
ask the question: No one knows for sure. Or, to put it more precisely,
in many cases the physicists really don't care."
"Physicists don't care" is the key phrase. If they did, they would
have paid more attention to EINSTEIN'S 1954 CONFESSION suggesting that
Einstein's 1905 false constant-speed-of-light postulate has in fact
killed theoretical physics:
http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=317&Itemid=81&lecture_id=3576
John Stachel: "Einstein discussed the other side of the particle-field
dualism - get rid of fields and just have particles."
EINSTEIN'S 1954 CONFESSION: "I consider it entirely possible that
physics cannot be based upon the field concept, that is on continuous
structures. Then nothing will remain of my whole castle in the air,
including the theory of gravitation, but also nothing of the rest of
contemporary physics."
John Stachel's comment: "If I go down, everything goes down, ha ha,
hm, ha ha ha."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/genius/
A clue to EINSTEIN'S 1954 CONFESSION: "And then, in June, Einstein
completes special relativity, which adds a twist to the story:
Einstein's March paper treated light as particles, but special
relativity sees light as a continuous field of waves. Alice's Red
Queen can accept many impossible things before breakfast, but it takes
a supremely confident mind to do so. Einstein, age 26, sees light as
wave and particle, picking the attribute he needs to confront each
problem in turn. Now that's tough."
http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Its-Roots-Banesh-Hoffmann/dp/0486406768
"Relativity and Its Roots" By Banesh Hoffmann
A second clue to EINSTEIN'S 1954 CONFESSION: "Moreover, if light
consists of particles, as Einstein had suggested in his paper
submitted just thirteen weeks before this one, the second principle
seems absurd: A stone thrown from a speeding train can do far more
damage than one thrown from a train at rest; the speed of the particle
is not independent of the motion of the object emitting it. And if we
take light to consist of particles and assume that these particles
obey Newton's laws, they will conform to Newtonian relativity and thus
automatically account for the null result of the Michelson-Morley
experiment without recourse to contracting lengths, local time, or
Lorentz transformations. Yet, as we have seen, Einstein resisted the
temptation to account for the null result in terms of particles of
light and simple, familiar Newtonian ideas, and introduced as his
second postulate something that was more or less obvious when thought
of in terms of waves in an ether."
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0305/0305457v3.pdf
New varying speed of light theories
Joao Magueijo
A third clue to EINSTEIN'S 1954 CONFESSION: "In sharp contrast, the
constancy of the speed of light has remain sacred, and the term
"heresy" is occasionally used in relation to "varying speed of light
theories". The reason is clear: the constancy of c, unlike the
constancy of G or e, is the pillar of special relativity and thus of
modern physics. Varying c theories are expected to cause much more
structural damage to physics formalism than other varying constant
theories."
http://www.ekkehard-friebe.de/wallace.htm
The farce of physics
Bryan Wallace
A fourth clue to EINSTEIN'S 1954 CONFESSION: "Einstein's special
relativity theory with his second postulate that the speed of light in
space is constant is the linchpin that holds the whole range of modern
physics theories together. Shatter this postulate, and modern physics
becomes an elaborate farce! (...) The speed of light is c+v."
http://www.academie-sciences.fr/membres/in_memoriam/Einstein/Einstein_pdf/Einstein_eloge.pdf
A fifth clue to EINSTEIN'S 1954 CONFESSION (Louis de Broglie): "Tout
d'abord toute idée de "grain" se trouvait expulsée de la théorie de la
Lumière : celle-ci prenait la forme d'une "théorie du champ" où le
rayonnement était représenté par une répartition continue dans
l'espace de grandeurs évoluant continûment au cours du temps sans
qu'il fût possible de distinguer, dans les domaines spatiaux au sein
desquels évoluait le champ lumineux, de très petites régions
singulières où le champ serait très fortement concentré et qui
fournirait une image du type corpusculaire. Ce caractère à la fois
continu et ondulatoire de la lumière se trouvait prendre une forme
très précise dans la théorie de Maxwell où le champ lumineux venait se
confondre avec un certain type de champ électromagnétique."
Pentcho Valev
pva...@yahoo.com
Pentcho Valev
George Orwell: "In the end the Party would announce that two and two
made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that
they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their
position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the
very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their
philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was
terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise,
but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two
and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the
past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist
only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable what then?
(...) Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If
that is granted, all else follows."
In the era of Postscientism freedom is the freedom to say that an
arbitrarily long object CANNOT be trapped inside an arbitrarily short
container and that a bug CANNOT be both dead and alive. If that is
granted, all else follows:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/barn_pole.html
"These are the props. You own a barn, 40m long, with automatic doors
at either end, that can be opened and closed simultaneously by a
switch. You also have a pole, 80m long, which of course won't fit in
the barn. Now someone takes the pole and tries to run (at nearly the
speed of light) through the barn with the pole horizontal. Special
Relativity (SR) says that a moving object is contracted in the
direction of motion: this is called the Lorentz Contraction. So, if
the pole is set in motion lengthwise, then it will contract in the
reference frame of a stationary observer.....So, as the pole passes
through the barn, there is an instant when it is completely within the
barn. At that instant, you close both doors simultaneously, with your
switch. Of course, you open them again pretty quickly, but at least
momentarily you had the contracted pole shut up in your barn. The
runner emerges from the far door unscathed.....If the doors are kept
shut the rod will obviously smash into the barn door at one end. If
the door withstands this the leading end of the rod will come to rest
in the frame of reference of the stationary observer. There can be no
such thing as a rigid rod in relativity so the trailing end will not
stop immediately and the rod will be compressed beyond the amount it
was Lorentz contracted. If it does not explode under the strain and it
is sufficiently elastic it will come to rest and start to spring back
to its natural shape but since it is too big for the barn the other
end is now going to crash into the back door and the rod will be
trapped IN A COMPRESSED STATE inside the barn."
http://www.quebecscience.qc.ca/Revolutions
"Cependant, si une fusée de 100 m passait devant nous à une vitesse
proche de celle de la lumière, elle pourrait sembler ne mesurer que 50
m, ou même moins. Bien sûr, la question qui vient tout de suite à
l'esprit est: «Cette contraction n'est-elle qu'une illusion?» Il
semble tout à fait incroyable que le simple mouvement puisse comprimer
un objet aussi rigide qu'une fusée. Et pourtant, la contraction est
réelle... mais SANS COMPRESSION physique de l'objet! Ainsi, une fusée
de 100 m passant à toute vitesse dans un tunnel de 60 m pourrait être
entièrement contenue dans ce tunnel pendant une fraction de seconde,
durant laquelle il serait possible de fermer des portes aux deux
bouts! La fusée est donc réellement plus courte. Pourtant, il n'y a
PAS DE COMPRESSION matérielle ou physique de l'engin. Comment est-ce
possible?"
http://alcor.concordia.ca/~scol/seminars/conference/abstracts/Durand.html
"La contraction une longueur est un phénomène à la fois réel mais sans
déformation structurelle. C'est un phénomène réel (et non pas une
illusion) car, par exemple, une perche dont la longueur au repos est
plus grande que la longueur au repos d'une grange peut réellement être
contenue dans cette dernière si elle se déplace assez rapidement. Par
contre, il ne peut y avoir de contraction structurelle de la perche,
i.e de déformation matérielle de l'objet, car la contraction de sa
longueur aurait aussi lieu si c'était plutôt l'observateur qui se
mettait en mouvement sans changer l'état de mouvement de la perche.
Autrement dit, sans changer l'état de la perche, en se mettant soi-
même en mouvement, on change sa longueur: ce n'est donc clairement pas
une contraction matérielle (l'état de la perche est le même dans les
deux cas)."
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/Relativ/bugrivet.html
"The bug-rivet paradox is a variation on the twin paradox and is
similar to the pole-barn paradox.....The end of the rivet hits the
bottom of the hole before the head of the rivet hits the wall. So it
looks like the bug is squashed.....All this is nonsense from the bug's
point of view. The rivet head hits the wall when the rivet end is just
0.35 cm down in the hole! The rivet doesn't get close to the
bug....The paradox is not resolved."
Pentcho Valev
pva...@yahoo.com
Pentcho Valev
Stephen Hawking: "The explanation that is usually given as to why we
don't see broken cups gathering themselves together off the floor and
jumping back onto the table is that it is forbidden by the second law
of thermodynamics. This says that in any closed system disorder, or
entropy, always increases with time. (...) The increase of disorder or
entropy with time is one example of what is called an arrow of time,
something that distinguishes the past from the future, giving a
direction to time. (...) I shall discuss first the thermodynamic arrow
of time. The second law of thermodynamics results from the fact that
there are always many more disordered states than there are ordered
ones. For example, consider the pieces of a jigsaw in a box. There is
one, and only one, arrangement in which the pieces make a complete
picture. On the other hand, there are a very large number of
arrangements in which the pieces are disordered and don't make a
picture. Suppose a system starts out in one of the small number of
ordered states. As time goes by, the system will evolve according to
the laws of science and its state will change. At a later time, it is
more probable that the system will be in a disordered state than in an
ordered one because there are more disordered states. Thus disorder
will tend to increase with time if the system obeys an initial
condition of high order. Suppose the pieces of the jigsaw start off in
a box in the ordered arrangement in which they form a picture. If you
shake the box, the pieces will take up another arrangement. This will
probably be a disordered arrangement in which the pieces don't form a
proper picture, simply because there are so many more disordered
arrangements. Some groups of pieces may still form parts of the
picture, but the more you shake the box, the more likely it is that
these groups will get broken up and the pieces will be in a completely
jumbled state in which they don't form any sort of picture. So the
disorder of the pieces will probably increase with time if the pieces
obey the initial condition that they start off in a condition of high
order."
Classical science? Yet according to Jos Uffink, another mainstream
dignitary, what Hawking says is "actually a RED HERRING":
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000313/
Jos Uffink: "Snow stands up for the view that exact science is, in its
own right, an essential part of civilisation, and should not merely be
valued for its technological applications. Anyone who does not know
the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and is proud of it too, exposes
oneself as a Philistine. Snow's plea will strike a chord with every
physicist who has ever attended a birthday party. But his call for
cultural recognition creates obligations too. Before one can claim
that acquaintance with the Second Law is as indispensable to a
cultural education as Macbeth or Hamlet, it should obviously be clear
what this law states. This question is surprisingly difficult. The
Second Law made its appearance in physics around 1850, but a half
century later it was already surrounded by so much confusion that the
British Association for the Advancement of Science decided to appoint
a special committee with the task of providing clarity about the
meaning of this law. However, its final report (Bryan 1891) did not
settle the issue. Half a century later, the physicist/philosopher
Bridgman still complained that there are almost as many formulations
of the second law as there have been discussions of it (Bridgman 1941,
p. 116). And even today, the Second Law remains so obscure that it
continues to attract new efforts at clarification. A recent example is
the work of Lieb and Yngvason (1999)......The historian of science and
mathematician Truesdell made a detailed study of the historical
development of thermodynamics in the period 1822-1854. He
characterises the theory, even in its present state, as 'a dismal
swamp of obscurity' (1980, p. 6) and 'a prime example to show that
physicists are not exempt from the madness of crowds' (ibid. p.
8).......Clausius' verbal statement of the second law makes no
sense.... All that remains is a Mosaic prohibition ; a century of
philosophers and journalists have acclaimed this commandment ; a
century of mathematicians have shuddered and averted their eyes from
the unclean.....Seven times in the past thirty years have I tried to
follow the argument Clausius offers....and seven times has it blanked
and gravelled me.... I cannot explain what I cannot
understand.....This summary leads to the question whether it is
fruitful to see irreversibility or time-asymmetry as the essence of
the second law. Is it not more straightforward, in view of the
unargued statements of Kelvin, the bold claims of Clausius and the
strained attempts of Planck, to give up this idea? I believe that
Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa was right in her verdict that the discussion
about the arrow of time as expressed in the second law of the
thermodynamics is actually a RED HERRING."
Are physicists and philosophers, Hawking and Uffink included,
embarrassed by the glaring contradiction? They are not; they just
don't care. Some of them hold the two contradictory beliefs in one's
mind simultaneously and accept both of them:
http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com/1984-17.html#seventeen
George Orwell: "Doublethink means the power of holding two
contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both
of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories
must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with
reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself
that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it
would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to
be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and
hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since
the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while
retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To
tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any
fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary
again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed,
to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take
account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably
necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to
exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is
tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this
knowledge ; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead
of the truth. (...) It need hardly be said that the subtlest
practitioners of doublethink are those who invented doublethink and
know that it is a vast system of mental cheating. In our society,
those who have the best knowledge of what is happening are also those
who are furthest from seeing the world as it is. In general, the
greater the understanding, the greater the delusion ; the more
intelligent, the less sane."
Pentcho Valev
pva...@yahoo.com
Pentcho Valev
"With a shortage of more than 4000 physics teachers across England, we
are in the midst of nothing less than a national education crisis,
with no end in sight. (...) The situation has been getting worse for a
very long time."
http://archives.lesechos.fr/archives/2004/LesEchos/19077-80-ECH.htm
"Physicien au CEA, professeur et auteur, Etienne Klein s'inquiète des
relations de plus en plus conflictuelles entre la science et la
société. (...) « Je me demande si nous aurons encore des physiciens
dans trente ou quarante ans », remarque ce touche-à-tout aux multiples
centres d'intérêt : la constitution de la matière, le temps, les
relations entre science et philosophie. (...) Etienne Klein n'est pas
optimiste. Selon lui, il se pourrait bien que l'idée de progrès soit
tout bonnement « en train de mourir sous nos yeux »."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/ingdahl2.html
"But there has been a marked global decrease of students willing to
study physics, and funding has decreased accordingly. Not only that,
the best students are not heading for studies in physics, finding
other fields more appealing, and science teachers to schools are
getting scarcer in supply. In fact, warning voices are being heard
about the spread of a "scientific illiteracy" where many living in
technologically advanced societies lack the knowledge and the ability
for critical thinking in order to function in their daily
environment."
http://mneaquitaine.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/loccident-face-a-la-crise-des-vocations-scientifiques/
"L'Occident face à la crise des vocations scientifiques. Le mal
s'accroît, mais le diagnostic s'affine. Les pays développés, qui
souffrent, sans exception, d'une désaffection des jeunes pour les
filières scientifiques, pointent du doigt la façon dont les sciences
sont aujourd'hui enseignées. Trop de théorie, pas assez de pratique ;
des enseignements qui n'invitent pas au questionnement... (...) ...les
sciences physiques, grandes victimes de ce rejet collectif des jeunes
Européens, dégringolent (- 5,5 %)."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/nov/22/schools.g2
"But instead of celebrating, physicists are in mourning after a report
showed a dramatic decline in the number of pupils studying physics at
school. The number taking A-level physics has dropped by 38% over the
past 15 years, a catastrophic meltdown that is set to continue over
the next few years. The report warns that a shortage of physics
teachers and a lack of interest from pupils could mean the end of
physics in state schools. Thereafter, physics would be restricted to
only those students who could afford to go to posh schools. Britain
was the home of Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday and Paul Dirac, and
Brits made world-class contributions to understanding gravity, quantum
physics and electromagnetism - and yet the British physicist is now
facing extinction. But so what? Physicists are not as cuddly as
pandas, so who cares if we disappear?"
Do physicists care? Why is physics dying much faster than other
sciences? If physicists did care, they would find the answer here:
http://arc-tv.com/the-crisis-in-physics-and-its-cause/
"However, for the past century, theoretical physicists have been
sending a different message. They have rejected causality in favor of
chance, logic in favor of contradictions, and reality in favor of
fantasy. The science of physics is now riddled with claims that are as
absurd as those of any religious cult."
http://plus.maths.org/issue37/features/Einstein/index.html
John Barrow: "Einstein restored faith in the unintelligibility of
science."
ftp://ftp.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/pub/SISTA/markovsky/reports/06-46.pdf
"From the pedagogical point of view, thermodynamics is a disaster. As
the authors rightly state in the introduction, many aspects are
"riddled with inconsistencies". They quote V.I. Arnold, who concedes
that "every mathematician knows it is impossible to understand an
elementary course in thermodynamics". Nobody has eulogized this
confusion more colorfully than the late Clifford Truesdell. On page 6
of his book "The Tragicomical History of Thermodynamics" 1822-1854
(Springer Verlag, 1980), he calls thermodynamics "a dismal swamp of
obscurity". Elsewhere, in despair of trying to make sense of the
writings of some local heros as De Groot, Mazur, Casimir, and
Prigogine, Truesdell suspects that there is "something rotten in the
(thermodynamic) state of the Low Countries" (see page 134 of Rational
Thermodynamics, McGraw-Hill, 1969)."
http://www.ekkehard-friebe.de/wallace.htm
Bryan Wallace: "There is a popular argument that the world's oldest
profession is sexual prostitution. I think that it is far more likely
that the oldest profession is scientific prostitution, and that it is
still alive and well, and thriving in the 20th century. I suspect that
long before sex had any commercial value, the prehistoric shamans used
their primitive knowledge to acquire status, wealth, and political
power, in much the same way as the dominant scientific and religious
politicians of our time do. So in a sense, I tend to agree with
Weart's argument that the earliest scientists were the prehistoric
shamans, and the argument of Feyerabend that puts science on a par
with religion and prostitution. (...) I would agree with Popper's
argument that observations are theory-laden, and there is no way to
prove an argument beyond a reasonable shadow of a doubt, but at the
very least, the scientist should do more than pay lip service to the
scientific method. The true scientist must have faith and believe in
the scientific method of testing theories, and not in the theories
themselves. I agree with Seeds argument that "A pseudoscience is
something that pretends to be a science but does not obey the rules of
good conduct common to all sciences." Because many of the dominant
theories of our time do not follow the rules of science, they should
more properly be labeled pseudoscience. The people who tend to believe
more in theories than in the scientific method of testing theories,
and who ignore the evidence against the theories they believe in,
should be considered pseudoscientists and not true scientists. To the
extent that the professed beliefs are based on the desire for status,
wealth, or political reasons, these people are scientific
prostitutes."
Pentcho Valev
pva...@yahoo.com
Pentcho Valev
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/Douglas_Kutach/Phil1610.html
Brown University, Philosophy of Relativity Physics, Spring 2011
Douglas Kutach: "Another relativized concept is the concept of 'being
contained inside'. What it means for an object A to be contained
inside a container B is that all of A's parts have to be inside B at
the same time. Because 'at the same time' is at best conventional, in
some cases it turns out to be conventional whether A is inside B."
Pentcho Valev
believes that Einstein's 1905 constant-speed-of-light postulate is
true although its consequence, "The passage of time is an illusion",
is false:
http://www.humanamente.eu/PDF/Issue13_Paper_Norton.pdf
John Norton: "It is common to dismiss the passage of time as illusory
since its passage has not been captured within modern physical
theories. I argue that this is a mistake. Other than the awkward fact
that it does not appear in our physics, there is no indication that
the passage of time is an illusion. (...) The passage of time is a
real, objective fact that obtains in the world independently of us.
How, you may wonder, could we think anything else? One possibility is
that we might think that the passage of time is some sort of illusion,
an artifact of the peculiar way that our brains interact with the
world. Indeed that is just what you might think if you have spent a
lot of time reading modern physics. Following from the work of
Einstein, Minkowski and many more, physics has given a wonderfully
powerful conception of space and time. Relativity theory, in its most
perspicacious form, melds space and time together to form a four-
dimensional spacetime. The study of motion in space and all other
processes that unfold in them merely reduce to the study of an odd
sort of geometry that prevails in spacetime. In many ways, time turns
out to be just like space. In this spacetime geometry, there are
differences between space and time. But a difference that somehow
captures the passage of time is not to be found. There is no passage
of time."
Orwell would say that John Norton, in sincerely believing that
Einstein's 1905 constant-speed-of-light postulate is both false
(because the consequence is false) and true (because Divine Albert has
said it is true) exercises himself in doublethink:
Note that "the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion ;
the more intelligent, the less sane". So John Norton shows no signs of
internal conflict but that is not the case with less intelligent
Einsteinians:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/01/opinion/the-time-we-thought-we-knew.html
Brian Greene: "In the early part of the 20th century, however, Albert
Einstein saw through nature's Newtonian facade and revealed that the
passage of time depends on circumstance and environment. He showed
that the wristwatches worn by two individuals moving relative to one
another, or experiencing different gravitational fields, tick off time
at different rates. The passage of time, according to Einstein, is in
the eye of the beholder. (...) Rudolf Carnap, the philosopher,
recounts Einstein's telling him that ''the experience of the now means
something special for man, something essentially different from the
past and the future, but this important difference does not and cannot
occur within physics.'' And later, in a condolence letter to the widow
of Michele Besso, his longtime friend and fellow physicist, Einstein
wrote: ''In quitting this strange world he has once again preceded me
by just a little. That doesn't mean anything. For we convinced
physicists the distinction between past, present, and future is only
an illusion, however persistent.'' (...) Now, however, modern physics'
notion of time is clearly at odds with the one most of us have
internalized. Einstein greeted the failure of science to confirm the
familiar experience of time with ''painful but inevitable
resignation.'' The developments since his era have only widened the
disparity between common experience and scientific knowledge. Most
physicists cope with this disparity by compartmentalizing: there's
time as understood scientifically, and then there's time as
experienced intuitively. For decades, I've struggled to bring my
experience closer to my understanding. In my everyday routines, I
delight in what I know is the individual's power, however
imperceptible, to affect time's passage. In my mind's eye, I often
conjure a kaleidoscopic image of time in which, with every step, I
further fracture Newton's pristine and uniform conception. And in
moments of loss I've taken comfort from the knowledge that all events
exist eternally in the expanse of space and time, with the partition
into past, present and future being a useful but subjective
organization."
The more less intelligent Einsteinians exercise themselves in
doublethink, the deeper the mystery becomes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/opinion/16greene.html?src=twrhp
Brian Greene: "As remarkable as it is that even one of Einstein's
"bad" ideas has proven prophetic, many puzzles still surround the
cosmological constant: If there is a diffuse, invisible energy
permeating space, where did it come from? Is this dark energy (to use
modern parlance) a permanent fixture of space, or might its strength
change over time? Perhaps most perplexing of all is a question of
quantitative detail. The most refined attempts to calculate the amount
of dark energy suffusing space miss the measured value by a gargantuan
factor of 10123 (that is, a 1 followed by 123 zeroes) — the single
greatest mismatch between theory and observation in the history of
science. THESE are vital questions that rank among today's deepest
mysteries. But standing beside them is an unassailable conclusion, one
that's particularly unnerving. If the dark energy doesn't degrade over
time, then the accelerated expansion of space will continue unabated,
dragging away distant galaxies ever farther and ever faster. A hundred
billion years from now, any galaxy that's not resident in our
neighborhood will have been swept away by swelling space for so long
that it will be racing from us at faster than the speed of light.
(Although nothing can move through space faster than the speed of
light, there’s no limit on how fast space itself can expand.) Light
emitted by such galaxies will therefore fight a losing battle to
traverse the rapidly widening gulf that separates us. The light will
never reach Earth and so the galaxies will slip permanently beyond our
capacity to see, regardless of how powerful our telescopes may become.
Because of this, when future astronomers look to the sky, they will no
longer witness the past. The past will have drifted beyond the cliffs
of space. Observations will reveal nothing but an endless stretch of
inky black stillness."
The destruction of human rationality caused by Einsteiniana is now
irreversible; accordingly the Cult "is no longer getting the kind of
support it needs" (small consolation):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b558kjihQQg&feature=PlayList&p=27DFC0155A909EEF
Silly Walks Applicant: "Well sir, I have a silly walk and I'd like to
obtain a Government grant to help me develop it....I think that with
Government backing I could make it very silly." Silly Walks Director:
"Mr Pudey, the very real problem is one of money. I'm afraid that the
Ministry of Silly Walks is no longer getting the kind of support it
needs. You see there's Defence, Social Security, Health, Housing,
Education, Silly Walks ... they're all supposed to get the same. But
last year, the Government spent less on the Ministry of Silly Walks
than it did on National Defence! Now we get 348,000,000 a year, which
is supposed to be spent on all our available products."
http://www.physorg.com/news179508040.html
"More than a dozen ground-based Dark Energy projects are proposed or
under way, and at least four space-based missions, each of the order
of a billion dollars, are at the design concept stage."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3322462/Did-Einstein-get-all-his-sums-right.html
"Did Einstein get all his sums right?.....Last week, an American probe
began an 18-month mission to put Einstein's prediction to the test, 90
years after he unveiled his ideas in Berlin. Gravity Probe B was
blasted into space from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on
a Boeing Delta 2 rocket and will orbit the Earth for more than a year.
The $700 million joint mission between Nasa and Stanford University,
conceived in 1958, uses four of the most perfect spheres ever created
inside the world's largest Thermos flask to detect minute distortions
in the fabric of the universe.....Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer
Royal, said: "The project's a technical triumph, and a triumph of the
persistence and lobbying power of Stanford University. But its
gestation has been grotesquely prolonged, and the cost overruns have
been equally gross. I recall hearing a talk about the project from
Francis Everitt (principal investigator) when I was still a student
and it was already well advanced. "Back in the 1960s the evidence for
Einstein's theory was meagre just two tests, with 10 per cent
precision. But relativity is now confirmed by several tests, with
precision of one part in 10,000. It's still, in principle, good to
have new and different tests. But the level of confidence in
Einstein's theory is now so high that an announcement of the expected
result will 'fork no lightening'. "Moreover, if there's an unexpected
result, I suspect most people will suspect an error in this very
challenging experiment rather than immediately abandon Einstein:
There's now so much evidence corroborating Einstein, that a high
burden of proof is required before he'll be usurped by any rival
theory. "So the most exciting if un-alluring outcome of Gravity Probe
B would be a request by Stanford University for another huge sum of
money to repeat it."
Pentcho Valev
pva...@yahoo.com
Pentcho Valev
"…I have no doubt that there will arise a new generation who will look
with a wonder and amazement, deeper than now accompany Einstein, at
our galaxy of thinkers, men of science, popular critics, authoritative
professors, and witty dramatists, who have been satisfied to waive
their common sense in view of Einstein's absurdities. Then to these
will succeed another generation, whose interest will be that of a
detached and half-amused contemplation; and in the limbo of forgotten
philosophies they may search for the cenotaph of Relativity."
Arthur Lynch, The Case Against Einstein, Dodd, Mead & Co., New York,
1933.
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/hutchison/080616
"Like bronze idols that are hollow inside, Einstein built a cluster of
"Potemkin villages," which are false fronts with nothing behind them.
Grigori Potemkin (17391791) was a general-field marshal, Russian
statesman, and favorite of Empress Catherine the Great. He is alleged
to have built facades of non-existent villages along desolate
stretches of the Dnieper River to impress Catherine as she sailed to
the Crimea in 1787. Actors posing as happy peasants stood in front of
these pretty stage sets and waved to the pleased Empress."
http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/rose_sci_2/physics_ideology_2.html
Ideology of/in Contemporary Physics
Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond
"In this way, major advances in modern physics, especially in
relativity and quantum mechanics, have paradoxically fed an intensely
irrational current. (...) Modern physics appears as a collection of
mathematical formulae, whose only justification is that 'they work'.
Moreover, the 'examples' used to 'concretise' the knowledge are often
totally unreal, and actually have the effect of making it even more
abstract. Such is the case when the explanation of special relativity
is based on the consideration of the entirely fictitious spatial and
temporal behaviour of clocks and trains (today sometimes one speaks of
rockets . . . it sounds better . . . but it is as stupid!). (...) This
crisis is particularly obvious in the field of physics. (...) Average
scientists do not even control the meaning of their own work. Very
often, they are obscure labourers in theoretical computation or
experimentation; they only have a very narrow perspective of the
global process to which their work is related. Confined to a limited
subject, in a specialised field, their competence is extremely
restricted. It is only necessary to listen to the complaints of the
previous generations' scientists on the disappearance of 'general
culture' in science. In fact, the case of physics is eloquent on the
subject. One can say that, until the beginning of this century, the
knowledge of an average physicist had progressed in a cumulative way,
including progressively the whole of previous discovery. The training
of physicists demanded an almost universal knowledge in the various
spheres of physics. The arrival of 'modern' physics has brought about
not only the parcelling of fields of knowledge, but also the
abandonment of whole areas. I have already said that important
sections of nineteenthcentury physics are today excluded from the
scientific knowledge of many physicists. Therefore the fields of
competence are not only getting narrower, but some of them are
practically vanishing altogether. If physicists no longer know about
physics, a fortiori they know nothing about science! The idea of a
'scientific culture', of a 'scientific method', of a 'scientific
spirit', which were common to all scientists and used to give them a
large capacity for the rational understanding of all reality, have
turned into huge practical jokes. True, some scientists have access to
a global vision of their field or even of the social organisation of
science and social ties, but that tends to depend solely on the
position of power they occupy. The others, massively, are dispossessed
of all mastery over their activity. They have no control, no
understanding of its direction."
http://arc-tv.com/the-crisis-in-physics-and-its-cause/
"However, for the past century, theoretical physicists have been
sending a different message. They have rejected causality in favor of
chance, logic in favor of contradictions, and reality in favor of
fantasy. The science of physics is now riddled with claims that are as
absurd as those of any religious cult."
http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2010/11/17/opinion/doc4ce35a105941b635950366.txt
"Mead's book on "Quantum Foundations of Electromagnetism" forecasts
that we will look back on the last 70 years as a kind of Dark Age for
physics. Certainly there has been little significant progress and
major institutions like the American Physical Society have become so
ossified that anyone questioning their dogma is simply told "this is
the consensus view so you must be wrong." No effort is made to provide
a scientific response showing an actual reason why. This is evident in
global warming climate disruption as well as particle physics."
http://io9.com/5607692/are-physicists-just-making-up-dark-energy
Dave Goldberg, Associate Professor of Physics at Drexel University:
"The idea of dark energy is so ridiculous that almost every question
is based on trying to make it go away. And believe me, I share your
concerns. I don't want to believe in dark energy, but I have no
choice. (...) Basically, if you want to get rid of dark energy, you
have to get rid of relativity."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/science/26essay.html
"The worrying continued. Lawrence Krauss, a cosmologist from Arizona
State, said that most theories were wrong. "We get the notions they
are right because we keep talking about them," he said. Not only are
most theories wrong, he said, but most data are also wrong..."
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/87150187.html
"Dark Energy: The Biggest Mystery in the Universe (...) "We have a
complete inventory of the universe," Sean Carroll, a California
Institute of Technology cosmologist, has said, "and it makes no
sense."
http://school.maths.uwa.edu.au/~mike/Trouble.doc
Mike Alder: "It is easy to see the consequences of the takeover by the
bureaucrats. Bureaucrats favour uniformity, it simplifies their lives.
They want rules to follow. They prefer the dead to the living. They
have taken over religions, the universities and now they are taking
over Science. And they are killing it in the process. The forms and
rituals remain, but the spirit is dead. The cold frozen corpse is so
much more appealing to the bureaucratic mind-set than the living
spirit of the quest for insight. Bureaucracies put a premium on the
old being in charge, which puts a stop to innovation. Something
perhaps will remain, but it will no longer attract the best minds.
This, essentially, is the Smolin position. He gives details and
examples of the death of Physics, although he, being American, is
optimistic that it can be reversed. I am not."
Do physicists care? Does anybody care?
Pentcho Valev
pva...@yahoo.com
GSS
...
> http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/rose_sci_2/physics_ideology_2....
> http://arc-tv.com/the-crisis-in-physics-and-its-cause/
> "However, for the past century, theoretical physicists have been
> sending a different message. They have rejected causality in favor of
> chance, logic in favor of contradictions, and reality in favor of
> fantasy. The science of physics is now riddled with claims that are as
> absurd as those of any religious cult."
>
Yes.
> http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2010/11/17/opinion/doc4ce35a105941...
> "Mead's book on "Quantum Foundations of Electromagnetism" forecasts
> that we will look back on the last 70 years as a kind of Dark Age for
> physics. Certainly there has been little significant progress and
> major institutions like the American Physical Society have become so
> ossified that anyone questioning their dogma is simply told "this is
> the consensus view so you must be wrong." No effort is made to provide
> a scientific response showing an actual reason why. This is evident in
> global warming climate disruption as well as particle physics."
>
I agree.
> http://io9.com/5607692/are-physicists-just-making-up-dark-energy
> Dave Goldberg, Associate Professor of Physics at Drexel University:
> "The idea of dark energy is so ridiculous that almost every question
> is based on trying to make it go away. And believe me, I share your
> concerns. I don't want to believe in dark energy, but I have no
> choice. (...) Basically, if you want to get rid of dark energy, you
> have to get rid of relativity."
>
Yes.
...
> http://school.maths.uwa.edu.au/~mike/Trouble.doc
> Mike Alder: "It is easy to see the consequences of the takeover by the
> bureaucrats. Bureaucrats favour uniformity, it simplifies their lives.
> They want rules to follow. They prefer the dead to the living. They
> have taken over religions, the universities and now they are taking
> over Science. And they are killing it in the process. The forms and
> rituals remain, but the spirit is dead. The cold frozen corpse is so
> much more appealing to the bureaucratic mind-set than the living
> spirit of the quest for insight. Bureaucracies put a premium on the
> old being in charge, which puts a stop to innovation. Something
> perhaps will remain, but it will no longer attract the best minds.
> This, essentially, is the Smolin position. He gives details and
> examples of the death of Physics, although he, being American, is
> optimistic that it can be reversed. I am not."
>
> Do physicists care? Does anybody care?
>
Yes, I care.
http://book.fundamentalphysics.info/
http://physicsessays.org/resource/1/phesem/v23/i3/p442_s1?isAuthorized=no
http://physicsessays.org/resource/1/phesem/v24/i1/p85_s1?isAuthorized=no
GSS
> Pentcho Valev
> pva...@yahoo.com
Pentcho Valev
"A particular worry highlighted is the finding that in 2009, 17 per
cent of upper secondary institutions in England, 13 per cent in Wales
and 43 per cent in Northern Ireland did not enter a single candidate
for A-level physics. The report also points to the potential for "STEM
deserts" in higher education, which it says already exist in the
physical sciences. "Indeed, an A-Level student who lives in Norwich
and wants to study physics at university will have to travel to London
to do so, or a similar distance," it notes."
Do physicists care? Does anybody care? The new hymn of physics:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIYfoeBOhTU
Where once was light
Now darkness falls
Where once was love
Love is no more
.................................
These tears you cry
Have come too late
Take back the lies
The hurt, the blame
And you will weep
When you face the end alone
You are lost
You can never go home
You are lost
You can never go home.
Old hymns:
http://www.haverford.edu/physics/songs/divine.htm
No-one's as dee-vine as Albert Einstein
Not Maxwell, Curie, or Bohr!
He explained the photo-electric effect,
And launched quantum physics with his intellect!
His fame went glo-bell, he won the Nobel --
He should have been given four!
No-one's as dee-vine as Albert Einstein,
Professor with brains galore!
No-one could outshine Professor Einstein --
Egad, could that guy derive!
He gave us special relativity,
That's always made him a hero to me!
Brownian motion, my true devotion,
He mastered back in aught-five!
No-one's as dee-vine as Albert Einstein,
Professor in overdrive!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PkLLXhONvQ
We all believe in relativity, relativity, relativity.
Yes we all believe in relativity, 8.033, relativity.
Einstein's postulates imply
That planes are shorter when they fly.
Their clocks are slowed by time dilation
And look warped from aberration.
We all believe in relativity, relativity, relativity.
Yes we all believe in relativity, 8.033, relativity.
Pentcho Valev
pva...@yahoo.com
Pentcho Valev
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-grandfather-paradox.html
"Among the many intriguing concepts in Einstein’s relativity theories
is the idea of closed timelike curves (CTCs), which are paths in
spacetime that return to their starting points. As such, CTCs offer
the possibility of traveling back in time. But, as many science
fiction films have addressed, time travel is full of potential
paradoxes. Perhaps the most notable of these is the grandfather
paradox, in which a time traveler goes back in time and kills her
grandfather, preventing her own birth. In a new study, a team of
researchers has proposed a new theory of CTCs that can resolve the
grandfather paradox, and they also perform an experiment showing how
such a scheme works. The researchers, led by Seth Lloyd from MIT,
along with scientists from the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa,
Italy; the University of Pavia in Pavia, Italy; the Tokyo Institute of
Technology; and the University of Toronto, have published their study
in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters. The concepts in the
study are similar to an earlier study by some of the same authors that
was posted at arXiv.org last year. "Einstein's theory of general
relativity supports closed timelike curves," Lloyd told PhysOrg.com.
"For decades researchers have argued over how to treat such objects
quantum mechanically. We believe that our theory is the correct theory
of such objects. Moreover, our theory shows how time travel might be
accomplished even in the absence of general relativistic closed
timelike curves."
Obviously "with Government backing" Einsteinians can make physics
infinitely silly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b558kjihQQg&feature=PlayList&p=27DFC0155A909EEF
Silly Walks Applicant: "Well sir, I have a silly walk and I'd like to
obtain a Government grant to help me develop it....I think that with
Government backing I could make it very silly." Silly Walks Director:
"Mr Pudey, the very real problem is one of money. I'm afraid that the
Ministry of Silly Walks is no longer getting the kind of support it
needs. You see there's Defence, Social Security, Health, Housing,
Education, Silly Walks ... they're all supposed to get the same. But
last year, the Government spent less on the Ministry of Silly Walks
than it did on National Defence! Now we get 348,000,000 a year, which
is supposed to be spent on all our available products."
Do physicists care? Does anybody care?
Pentcho Valev
pva...@yahoo.com