Crackpot
joel sheinmel
Crackpots
How does one determine whether the entry they are reading in a physics
newsgroup is written by a crackpot? If a novel idea is being
introduced, we cannot evaluate it strictly based on our current
commitments, since it is these commitments that would be challenged by a
truly revolutionary idea.
I am of the opinion we have to revert to predictions. It seems fair to
label all new ideas as worthless, or scientifically meaningless, unless
the person proposing them offers a novel prediction that cannot be
explained by current theory. Yet to be fair to the would be
revolutionist, we need to state that current theory cannot incorporate
auxiliary hypothesis to save phenomena if the data of the novel
experiment does fit well within current theory. After all, it is always
possible fit data to a theory if we can adjust this theory in any manner
we wish post facto.
Even with a novel experiment it is doubtful many would be willing to
give up long standing traditions. They might agree beforehand to be
objective, but only on the basis they are convinced no experiment could
prove their views wrong. After the experiment they would quickly forget
any agreement not to use an ad hoc adjustment. Historically it has
always been that way, and we can expect it will be that way now. That
is why Max Planck said; "New theories do no triumph by convincing their
opponents. Rather, new theories triumph because their opponents
eventually die and a new generation grows up that are familiar with it."
I have proposed that electrons can travel at the speed of light in space
with mass values proportional to their kinetic energies. I can outline
an experiment that tests this unusual hypothesis in a manner that would
seem to leave little doubt. But today’s establishment is committed to a
model that would not allow for these results, and any experiment that
seemed to proof it would be ignored.
So how do we tell a crackpot? He is someone who doesn’t agree with us.
me...@cars3.uchicago.edu
In article <34A7F0...@mhv.net>, joel sheinmel <shei...@mhv.net> writes:
>
>Even with a novel experiment it is doubtful many would be willing to
>give up long standing traditions. They might agree beforehand to be
>objective, but only on the basis they are convinced no experiment could
>prove their views wrong. After the experiment they would quickly forget
>any agreement not to use an ad hoc adjustment. Historically it has
>always been that way, and we can expect it will be that way now.
Really? That's a Holywood view of science history.
... snip ...
>
>I have proposed that electrons can travel at the speed of light in space
>with mass values proportional to their kinetic energies.
Time of flight measurements with electrons are quite common. And,
especially, synchrotrons allow for a very precise measurement of
electron velocities. A would be science revolutionary would do well
to acquint himself with what's already known, and how it is known.
All past science revolutionaries did.
Mati Meron | "When you argue with a fool,
me...@cars.uchicago.edu | chances are he is doing just the same"
joel sheinmel
me...@cars3.uchicago.edu wrote:
>
> In article <34A7F0...@mhv.net>, joel sheinmel <shei...@mhv.net> writes:
> >
> >Even with a novel experiment it is doubtful many would be willing to
> >give up long standing traditions. They might agree beforehand to be
> >objective, but only on the basis they are convinced no experiment could
> >prove their views wrong. After the experiment they would quickly forget
> >any agreement not to use an ad hoc adjustment. Historically it has
> >always been that way, and we can expect it will be that way now.
>
> Really? That's a Holywood view of science history.
Its also how many historians and philsophers of science report it.
> >I have proposed that electrons can travel at the speed of light in space
> >with mass values proportional to their kinetic energies.
>
> Time of flight measurements with electrons are quite common. And,
> especially, synchrotrons allow for a very precise measurement of
> electron velocities. A would be science revolutionary would do well
> to acquint himself with what's already known, and how it is known.
> All past science revolutionaries did.
Years ago I checked out these time of flight experiments, since it was
obvious that they were in complete disagreement with my theory. It's an
interesting thing about these experiments, and I suggest you would learn
quite a bit if you looked at the actual data. It seems that in these
experiments the bulk of electrons arrive way to early to be explained by
current theory. These are excused in two ways. In the first way they
are ignored as experimental error. And in the second way there are
quantum mechanical statements of uncertainty in some of the energies
that account for early arrivals.
Early work in this area was done at Stanford with a low potential 3
meter electron gun. You might want to check the data.
Joel
me...@cars3.uchicago.edu
In article <34A870...@mhv.net>, joel sheinmel <shei...@mhv.net> writes:
>me...@cars3.uchicago.edu wrote:
>>
>> In article <34A7F0...@mhv.net>, joel sheinmel <shei...@mhv.net> writes:
>> >
>> >Even with a novel experiment it is doubtful many would be willing to
>> >give up long standing traditions. They might agree beforehand to be
>> >objective, but only on the basis they are convinced no experiment could
>> >prove their views wrong. After the experiment they would quickly forget
>> >any agreement not to use an ad hoc adjustment. Historically it has
>> >always been that way, and we can expect it will be that way now.
>>
>> Really? That's a Holywood view of science history.
>
>Its also how many historians and philsophers of science report it.
>
>> >I have proposed that electrons can travel at the speed of light in space
>> >with mass values proportional to their kinetic energies.
>>
>> Time of flight measurements with electrons are quite common. And,
>> especially, synchrotrons allow for a very precise measurement of
>> electron velocities. A would be science revolutionary would do well
>> to acquint himself with what's already known, and how it is known.
>> All past science revolutionaries did.
>
>Years ago I checked out these time of flight experiments, since it was
>obvious that they were in complete disagreement with my theory.
Shouldn't you rather say that your theory is in complete disagreement
with these experiments?-)
>It's an
>interesting thing about these experiments, and I suggest you would learn
>quite a bit if you looked at the actual data. It seems that in these
>experiments the bulk of electrons arrive way to early to be explained by
>current theory. These are excused in two ways. In the first way they
>are ignored as experimental error. And in the second way there are
>quantum mechanical statements of uncertainty in some of the energies
>that account for early arrivals.
>
"Excused"? You may not be aware of the fact but all experiments have
experimental uncertainties. And any complete experiment involves an
evaluation of said uncertainties. It is only when the deviations of
the data from theoretical predictions become significantly bigger than
those uncertainties that there is a reason to be suspicious.
>Early work in this area was done at Stanford with a low potential 3
>meter electron gun. You might want to check the data.
>
You may want to check more modern data. As well as synchrotron data.
jeff
joel sheinmel wrote:
>I have proposed that electrons can travel at the speed of light in space
>with mass values proportional to their kinetic energies. I can outline
>an experiment that tests this unusual hypothesis in a manner that would
>seem to leave little doubt.
Hi joel! it's me, jeff again. Just a(nother) quick note:
Unusual hypothesis don't chase people away, a lack of derived consequences
do. And not just the experimental kind. Re-analyzing some experiment
doesn't do it for me. Theory fecundity and integration with other theories
is of paramount importance. I'm not saying that you've not done this
someplace, but I know that my ears would perk up if you could derive the
spin-statistics theorem for electrons which travel at the speed of light
in a non-ad-hoc way. Stuff like that is what draws the crowds in. And
better yet, if you could exclude or include supersymmetric particles and
at the same time preserve microcausality, then I'll be all the more
interested. If you really want to knock 'em dead and make every physicist
take note, come up with a renormalized non-perturbative way to treat the
strong force. Perhaps give a quick numerical value of something that you
could beat the standard model to the experimental punch.
>But today’s establishment is committed to a
>model that would not allow for these results, and any experiment that
>seemed to proof it would be ignored.
Where would Einstein be if he thought like that? I think that this is
quite unfair to people who do physics, to whatever extent. For how many
years did people try to track down the "fifth force"? People take notice
of any well constructed and well analyzed experiment. And if you can find
some new effect that isn't predicted by today's models, then do it quick
and publish! Think: the "joel sheinmel effect."
I'm not being sarcastic, I'd really like to see these things done! Great
fame awaits!
-jeff
--
Door to door sales should have been made illegal, but wasn't.
Unsolicited mail should have been made illegal, but wasn't.
Telemarketing should have been made illegal, but wasn't.
We must make sure that unsolicited email is stopped, either
by making it illegal (unlikely) or by making those who do
wish they hadn't.
Bernard Leong
joel sheinmel wrote:
> Crackpots
A few good examples will be the Perez guy with his stupid Relative
Universe hypothesis (Pardon my blunt comments), Renshaw's RCM and Rbwinn's
equations.. What is common in their presentation : slip-shod analysis of the
subject itself, have no understanding of the formal theory itself, worse, no
proper logical, physical and mathematical arguments. The worst thing is when
someone points out their mistakes, they do not admit it and argue back with
the nitty gritty words of English. The crackpots are a bunch of people who
are basically bigots... That's all... A good class of crackpots are most
creationists.
> How does one determine whether the entry they are reading in a physics
> newsgroup is written by a crackpot?
I ask u this question : why did the scientists accept Einstein's special
relativity as the original paper is only based on simple algebra and
calculus? The point is on the physical ideas, the clarity of the idea and
the logical inferences made.
> So how do we tell a crackpot? He is someone who doesn’t agree with us.
If someone tells me that QM/QFT/SR/GR is wrong becoz of certain
assumptions are contradicted by authentic experimental data (meaning the
experiment is repeated many times), and the someone tells me that he came up
with a theory to overcome the intrinsic difficulties of the old theory and
make new predictions, I will accept it. But as far as I am concerned, those
who put up arguments against them, other than good scientists, are nothing
but a bunch of people who only know how to distort truths.
Hope that u will not end up like a crackpot. He is not someone who
doesn't agree with us, but he is someone who refuses to see the light of the
day by looking and understanding what the theory really is about and comes
up with some "smart-alec" idea with no physical and mathematical
grounds......
yours sincerely,
Bernard Leong
Btw : Where is that moron Harold Ellis Ensle? I am still waiting for him to
put up the paradox against SR... For him, I truly think that he is a
crackpot....
crs
Bernard Leong wrote:
>
> joel sheinmel wrote:
>
> > Crackpots
>
> A few good examples will be the Perez guy with his stupid Relative
> Universe hypothesis (Pardon my blunt comments), Renshaw's RCM and Rbwinn's
> equations.. What is common in their presentation : slip-shod analysis of the
> subject itself, have no understanding of the formal theory itself, worse, no
> proper logical, physical and mathematical arguments. The worst thing is when
> someone points out their mistakes, they do not admit it and argue back with
> the nitty gritty words of English. The crackpots are a bunch of people who
> are basically bigots... That's all... A good class of crackpots are most
> creationists.
[good stuff deleted]
What you are describing can be explained completely by the the theory of
grain boundries in the psycho-ceramic limit... :-)
Chuck Szmanda
chu...@ultranet.com
David Byrden
joel sheinmel <shei...@mhv.net> wrote in article
<34A7F0...@mhv.net>...
> How does one determine whether the entry they are reading in a physics
> newsgroup is written by a crackpot?
<snip>
> So how do we tell a crackpot? He is someone who doesn’t agree with us.
Actually, this is not true. We can tell
crackpots because they do not accept logical
reasoning or solid experimental evidence.
David
yvan pierre
In article <01bd16d0$54271ce0$98947dc2@goyra>, "David Byrden"
<Ne...@Byrden.com> wrote:
> Actually, this is not true. We can tell
>crackpots because they do not accept logical
>reasoning or solid experimental evidence.
>
>
> David
>
We should speak of "the best we can do" when we talk about logical reasoning
and solid experimental evidence.
Many people believe in superstitious stuff not because they are stupid or
mentally disabled but because they are (unconsciously) aware of the limits
of rationality. Indeed there is some "irrationality" (creativity of the
mathematician) in mathematical proofs. Exemple : if you put y=sint, then
you will see that...QED. the very idea of a substitution is just intuition.
"Exact science" is a very small island in a irrational and confusing world.
If science is producing all the modern technologies, let's hope that it will
produce also enough good sense to stop the destruction of the earth by
these technologies.
Yvan
Jim Carr
... followups trimmed, since specific theory idea at end of original
article has been snipped and is not discussed below ...
me...@cars3.uchicago.edu wrote:
}
} joel sheinmel <shei...@mhv.net> writes:
} >Even with a novel experiment it is doubtful many would be willing to
} >give up long standing traditions. They might agree beforehand to be
} >objective, but only on the basis they are convinced no experiment could
} >prove their views wrong. After the experiment they would quickly forget
} >any agreement not to use an ad hoc adjustment. Historically it has
} >always been that way, and we can expect it will be that way now.
}
} Really? That's a Holywood view of science history.
joel sheinmel <shei...@mhv.net> writes:
>
>Its also how many historians and philsophers of science report it.
It is not how they report it for every case. The resistance of
the field to a new idea varies widely, and may vary as much due
to recent history (a successful novel result in one field seems
to make others more willing to accept a new one in theirs) as to
the psychology of any particular subfield.
High Tc superconductivity is a perfect example of something that
was said to be impossible, but was accepted immediately, which
the acceptance of the quark hypothesis after the discovery of
charm and neutral currents was faster in some sub-populations
than in others.
--
James A. Carr <j...@scri.fsu.edu> | Commercial e-mail is _NOT_
http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac/ | desired to this or any address
Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst. | that resolves to my account
Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306 | for any reason at any time.
Owleye
In article <01bd16d0$54271ce0$98947dc2@goyra> David Byrden,
Ne...@Byrden.com writes:
>Subject: Re: Crackpot
>From: David Byrden, Ne...@Byrden.com
>Date: 1 Jan 1998 16:16:33 GMT
>>joel sheinmel <shei...@mhv.net> wrote in article
><34A7F0...@mhv.net>...
>
>
>> How does one determine whether the entry they are reading in a physics
>> newsgroup is written by a crackpot?
><snip>
>> So how do we tell a crackpot? He is someone who doesn’t agree with us.
>
>
>crackpots because they do not accept logical
>reasoning or solid experimental evidence.
>
>
> David
>
Owleye here...
I'll enter another possibility. A crackpot is one who claims to know the
truth and thereby is no longer in any need for either reassurance or
further searching. I could relax the reassurance part.
J-P
joel sheinmel wrote:
> So how do we tell a crackpot? He is someone who doesn’t agree with us.
Do a deja-vu search using keywords like "insane", "absolute velocity",
and "banana", and see if their name comes up. Other search words include
"Perez Franco", "Stein" and "nutter".
--
J-P
------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the President's e-mail address.
All correspondence: pres...@whitehouse.gov
We trust we can rely on your vote.
exe
> >> How does one determine whether the entry they are reading in a physics
> >> newsgroup is written by a crackpot?
> I'll enter another possibility. A crackpot is one who claims to know the
> truth and thereby is no longer in any need for either reassurance or
> further searching. I could relax the reassurance part.
I agree. The way that you can tell a crackpot is as follows:
1. They are 100% sure that they are right
2. They discount work previously published and confirmed by experiments
3. They provide no independent means of verification of what they propose
4. They demonstrate a lack of knowledge of the field
5. They think peer review is a means of crushing their new and unique ideas
6. They do not understand the difference between science and religion
Regards,
Daniel A. Morgan
Stephen Riley
In article <34B91968...@exesolutions.com>, exe
<e...@exesolutions.com> writes
capitalized words raises immediate potential.
--
Stephen Riley
Gabe Velez
exe wrote:
> I agree. The way that you can tell a crackpot is as follows:
>
> 1. They are 100% sure that they are right
Yup. I guess.
> 2. They discount work previously published and confirmed by
> experiments
Agreed. But I need a bit more proof.
> 3. They provide no independent means of verification of what they
> propose
Absolutely.
> 4. They demonstrate a lack of knowledge of the field
Without question.
> 5. They think peer review is a means of crushing their new and
unique ideasUh-huh.
> 6. They do not understand the difference between science and
> religion
But, what do you mean here?
A crackpot? Me? Maybe.
I am being fascetious, but I do agree with all of your own
statements, but I am sincere about the last question. No, I am not one
of those Christian (pseudo- or maybe not) scientists, but I do love
science and am religious and am curious to know what you mean. Many of
the interpretations of alot of religions or even the ones from the
"gurus" of such are now becoming a kind of science in that many of the
rituals followed may have scientific explanations as to the results.
For example, a Shaman's beating of the drum is usually about 4
hertz, or four beats per second. This tends to move the listeners brain
state into the theta, where hallucination takes place, meditation et al.
This was their purpose for thousands of years, and yet we now have the
technology and science to explain, kind of, how and why.
Just curious,
Thanks!
Gabe
exe
> > 6. They do not understand the difference between science and religion
>
> But, what do you mean here?
Sorry for the lack of clarity; I was trying to be brief. The premise of
religion is that things are accepted on faith or accepted as being logically
self-evident. For example, the human body is too complex to have come into
being through random actions. Or for example, how could wings have been the
result of evolution since you can't fly without wings and wings aren't good
for anything else.
Science on the other hand, takes the posture that everything must be
verified. And while much is hypothesized and not verified a scientific
theory must establish a means of verification even if it is only
hypothetical. For example, Einstein predicted that light passing near the
limb of the sun would be bent. This was verifyable. Einstein predicted time
dilation. This too can be verified or demonstrated to be correct or
incorrect. It is not, for example, possible to independently verify the
parentage of Jesus Christ, either in theory or in the laboratory; it must be
accepted as an article of faith.
Some people that post to this and other science newsgroups (I mention no
names as everyone knows who they are) expect their ideas to be accepted as
an article of faith. Being able to write a formula or fill a page with ASCII
characters does not a theory make.
Regards,
Daniel A. Morgan
The Walrus
exe wrote:
> Sorry for the lack of clarity; I was trying to be brief. The premise of
> religion is that things are accepted on faith or accepted as being logically
> self-evident.
Had to just fling my oar in here ... is that _all_ religion, or just
christianity?
Cheers,
d.
Gregory Loren Hansen
Darn! Over the summer I read a great article on crackpots, but I sent it
away to a friend and now I can't refer to it. It was in a course on the
occult in western civilization, a college correspondence course that I
picked up the materials for without registering.
I can't remember all, but some signs of crackpottiness are
1. Arguing by analogy. They say "X is like Y" and then implicitly make
the identiy "X = Y".
2. Ignoring evidence. They'll continue to argue a position even after
being proven wrong.
3. Anachronistic thinking. That is, dredging up old theories that have
been disproven long ago, like a lumeniferous aether.
4.
I can't think of a 4. But I mostly wanted to contribute arguing by
analogy and anachronistic thinking to the discussion.
--
"And don't skimp on the mayonnaise!"
mahipa...@orbital.fsd.com
In article <34BAFCCD...@exesolutions.com>,
e...@exesolutions.com wrote:
[...]
> Some people that post to this and other science newsgroups (I mention no
> names as everyone knows who they are) expect their ideas to be accepted as
> an article of faith. Being able to write a formula or fill a page with ASCII
> characters does not a theory make.
"Once and forever Crank" is a terrible burden to bear. Especially, if you
are not a Crank, Crackpot, Crazy, ..., Looney. Nonetheless, those who
earn themselves the label of "Crank" are undoubtedly at the mercy of
Readers who think only they themselves know better/best.
None of you self-appointed Crank-Chasers are fair. You are Judge, Jury,
and Executioner all bundled in a seemingly friendly package. Some of you
Crank-Chasers can't even begin to distinguish between a Crazy *PERSON*
and a Crazy *IDEA*. There is a lesson to be learned from distinguishing
between an individual's behaviour pattern versus an individual's affinity
to some farfetched idea. Besides, wasn't it Freeman Dyson who pointed out
that for any idea to succeed in Science it must at first seem *crazy
enough*? Oye.
Yes there are crazy people in Society. That doesn't imply that
individuals who use Usenet to work out their ideas are *crazy*. An open
communication is there to help weed out good and bad ideas, not to
outcast individuals who also happen to practice new&novel scientific
thinking.
The Crank-Labeling mentality is also dangerous because it has no escape
mechanism for those who are mislabeled "Crackpot" by Readers/Posters who
don't know what they're talking about. There exists no scientifically
objective criteria for determining the mental health of any individual
based upon his/her writing habits and or style. What I mean is, good
writers could easily *manipulate* their writings to convey either sanity
or insanity with equal conviction.
Ideas are not people.
Crank ideas don't originate solely from crank people.
Good ideas don't imply the orginators are sane.
To further make matters interesting and more complex, a really good
science idea may in fact originate from a mentally crazy individual. It
_may_ happen. Science and Scientists are not at liberty to dismiss an
idea simply because it originates from someone that's been labeled a
TroubleMaker==Crank. Scientists just don't have it that easy. As mature
individuals, scientists need to focus on the merits of the *idea*, not
the individual(s) personal mental attributes! Or institutional
affiliation. Or "phd" identifier in one's name-line.
The List and or Lists of Cranks currently in currculation are not
maintained by any peer-groups. It's just some individual who has no
intellectual depth to deal with ideas and hence resorts to defaming
*persons*. Certainly, Dr. John Baez's Crank Index (CI) guide encourages
others with far lesser minds to go out and list names of individuals they
think are cranks. While the intent of JB's CI is a guide to merely help
new Readers. List makers show their mental midgetry by not getting that
aspect of the utility of the CI.
Despite my personal dilemmas about Cranks, I find it rather bizarre that
in rare cases the IDEAS of "Cranks-on-Usenet" are attempting to be
plaigerized by reputable scientists. "Reputable" in the sense they never
post to Usenet, only read and steal from here. They'll rewrite an IDEA
they read from Usenet and submit to peer-reviewed scientific journals.
Are the Crank List Makers willing to do the follow-up work and identify
the ideas that migrate into professional peer reviewed journals via this
route? Or that's not in their dominion? How ironic that a Crank's Idea
would be trying to find print space in professional journals via the
route of Plaigerists?! Editors beware -- if you aren't already.
I would certainly HOPE that professional journal Editors would see the
irony in that sequence of events. Idea X originates on Usenet. X's
originator gets positive (and negative) feedback on X via Usenet. Also
and in the meantime, some third party label's the originator a Crank for
pushing his idea X. In the mean-meantime, some distant fourth party is
rewriting idea X and submitting to professional journals without ever
mentioning the original Originator of idea X! [YES ALL THIS IS
DOCUMENTED. Thanks to the marvels of Internet Technology. The only
question is how does one identify the isomorphism of idea X with the idea
of the alleged Plaigerists? Fortunately,
Math&Physics&Course-of-Real-Events provide a fine vehicle for
demonstrating the isomorphism.]
Bottomline: Yes their are Cranks and Fools. Just because person A labels
individual B a crank doesn't make it so.
Life is dangerous, post to Usenet at your own risk. Read at your own risk.
Remember, this Crank Identification Mentality is as flawed to effective
filtering of good ideas as is the notion that it takes a consensus to make
science work.
In Science, scientists spend a great deal of conscious effort trying to
convey the message that scientific ideas are independent of the personal
dispositions of the scientists discovering, inventing, or creating the
ideas. In sci.physics, there are many regular brilliant posters who
convey this message and make interacting in that group all the more
worthwhile. Any one want to List *them*?! [Hi Mati, Jim, Ed, Mahipal ---
er, that's me --, ...]
/\ "If the line between science fiction and
/ science fact doesn't drive you crazy,
/\ \ then you're just not tr(y)ing!"
\ /\/\ / \ \/ Mahipal "2 c me" Virdy
/ == \ / \/\/ The |meforce> Paradox
\/ http://www.geocities.com/Athens/3178/GateWay2DREAMScomeTrue.html
-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet
Ilja Schmelzer
glha...@copper.ucs.indiana.edu (Gregory Loren Hansen) writes:
> I can't remember all, but some signs of crackpottiness are
>
> 1. Arguing by analogy. They say "X is like Y" and then implicitly make
> the identiy "X = Y".
That's not crackpotism, but relativism: "X looks like Y for the observer -> X=Y".
> 3. Anachronistic thinking. That is, dredging up old theories that have
> been disproven long ago, like a lumeniferous aether.
The mainstream prefers relativity not because a lumeniferous aether
has been "disproven".
Ilja
--
I. Schmelzer, D-10178 Berlin, Keibelstr. 38, <schm...@wias-berlin.de>
http://www.cyberpass.net/~ilja
David Byrden
mahipa...@orbital.fsd.com wrote in article
<884715378....@dejanews.com>...
> Some of you Crank-Chasers can't
> even begin to distinguish between a Crazy *PERSON*
> and a Crazy *IDEA*.
<snip an inordinately long restament of the same idea>
Are you specifically claiming that one of
the "cranks" on here has a genuinely worthwhile idea,
and if so, which one?
David
Greg Shetler
mahipa...@orbital.fsd.com wrote:
[snip long diatribe re: science, new ideas, and cranks]
I think it is very important for you to re-examine your post, with this
one thought in mind:
Science is a method for determining accuracy of a model for a specific
observed behavior. Scientists are people who use the scientific method
to examine their models. Ideas that are inconsistent with observed fact
are immediately discarded by the scientific method as invalid. Ideas
that conflict with established models must make testable predictions
before they can be considered to be rival models. Without testable
predictions, a model cannot be subject to the scientific method, and are
therefore not "scientific ideas".
Somebody who comes up with a strange new idea for the way some part of
the universe works is a thinker. Regardless of what jargon they use to
express their idea, they are not a scientist unless they are using the
scientific method to examine their idea. The idea itself is not
scientific unless it promises testable behaviors, and survives the test
of experimentation. Technically, it is not "scientific" even then, as
the term applies to a methodology rather than to items tested under that
methodology.
So: of course the "Crank Hunters" aren't fair. Neither is life. The
concept of fairness is not a part of the universe that scientists seek
to model. So, if a new idea is obviously at odds with accepted,
supported theories that have withstood the test of experimentation, why
should scientists give it a 'fair hearing'? The onus is on the thinker
to provide a model that is testable, and that is not incompatible with
experimental data that is already available.
Greg
Greg Shetler
Ilja Schmelzer wrote:
> > 3. Anachronistic thinking. That is, dredging up old theories that
> have
> > been disproven long ago, like a lumeniferous aether.
>
> The mainstream prefers relativity not because a lumeniferous aether
> has been "disproven".
>
> Ilja
The mainstream prefers relativity because it works, and is supported by
experimental data. The mainstream has discounted lumeniferous aether
theories because their predictions contradicted experiment. There are
no lumeniferous aether theories that have survived experimentation, or
comparison to previous data.
Moreover, keep in mind that the two theories are not alternate, opposing
theories, as they pertain to separate phenomena only related through the
velocity of light. To pose them as opposing, alternate theories is
incorrect. The aether theories sought to explain the behavior of light
as a wave travelling in a media, while relativity seeks to explain the
apparent lack of an absolute reference frame for measuring the speed of
light.
Greg
Ilja Schmelzer
Greg Shetler <she...@rtis.ray.com> writes:
> > > 3. Anachronistic thinking. That is, dredging up old theories that
> > have
> > > been disproven long ago, like a lumeniferous aether.
> > The mainstream prefers relativity not because a lumeniferous aether
> > has been "disproven".
> experimental data. The mainstream has discounted lumeniferous aether
> theories because their predictions contradicted experiment. There are
> no lumeniferous aether theories that have survived experimentation, or
> comparison to previous data.
What about Lorentz ether theory?
> Moreover, keep in mind that the two theories are not alternate, opposing
> theories, as they pertain to separate phenomena only related through the
> velocity of light. To pose them as opposing, alternate theories is
> incorrect. The aether theories sought to explain the behavior of light
> as a wave travelling in a media, while relativity seeks to explain the
> apparent lack of an absolute reference frame for measuring the speed of
> light.
This suggests different explanatory power, but does not mean that
ether theory has been disproven.
Jim Meritt
In article <i3gd8hw...@fermi.wias-berlin.de>,
schm...@fermi.wias-berlin.de says...
>glha...@copper.ucs.indiana.edu (Gregory Loren Hansen) writes:
>> I can't remember all, but some signs of crackpottiness are
>> 1. Arguing by analogy. They say "X is like Y" and then implicitly make
>> the identiy "X = Y".
>That's not crackpotism, but relativism: "X looks like Y for the observer ->
X=Y".
What I'm seeing as not-uncommon is "both X and Y, X is beofre Y so X causes
Y". Assign your favorite X and Y (smoking/cancer, guns/crime,
birth/death,...)
--
James W. Meritt
The opinions expressed above are my own. The facts simply
are and belong to none.
Greg Shetler
Ilja Schmelzer wrote:
>
> What about Lorentz ether theory?
>
Here I have to beg ignorance born of neglect. I never pursued ether
theories when I found that they had such problems. I never verified for
myself that the problems existed. What is Lorentz ether theory, and how
does it survive the null result of the MMX?
[snip statement dissociating ether theories and SR]
> This suggests different explanatory power, but does not mean that
> ether theory has been disproven.
My statement carried nothing in to say that ether theory was disproven
by SR. My statement says that trying to say that posing them as
alternate opposing theories is incorrect, as they address different
behaviors.
Ether theory, IIRC, is disproven by experiment. SR theory is not.
Ergo, mainstream thought accepts SR, but does not accept the ether.
>
> Ilja
Greg
Paul Stowe
In <34BD2633...@rtis.ray.com> Greg Shetler <she...@rtis.ray.com>
writes:
>Ilja Schmelzer wrote:
>>
>> What about Lorentz ether theory?
>>
>
>Here I have to beg ignorance born of neglect. I never pursued ether
>theories when I found that they had such problems. I never verified
for myself that the problems existed. What is Lorentz ether theory,
>and how does it survive the null result of the MMX?
As I've said to Nathan Urban in the past, taking a stance from a
position of ignorance, is never a good idea.
The Lorentz ether theory is well described by Whitaker in Volume 1,
chapter "Theories of the Aether" of his book "A History of the Theories
of Aether and Electricity". I strongly recommend reading it,(it's a
good read but hard to come by).
>[snip statement dissociating ether theories and SR]
>
>> This suggests different explanatory power, but does not mean that
>> ether theory has been disproven.
>
>My statement carried nothing in to say that ether theory was disproven
>by SR. My statement says that trying to say that posing them as
>alternate opposing theories is incorrect, as they address different
>behaviors.
Now how & why is that? Since you admit no knowledge of modern variants
of aether theories, how can you make such a statement?
>Ether theory, IIRC, is disproven by experiment. SR theory is not.
>Ergo, mainstream thought accepts SR, but does not accept the ether.
Wrong again. If, and only if, one make certain assumptions, and we all
should know what happens when one ass/u/me(s).
>>
>> Ilja
>
>Greg
Paul Stowe
Robert Low
In article <884715378....@dejanews.com>,
<mahipa...@orbital.fsd.com> wrote:
>Despite my personal dilemmas about Cranks, I find it rather bizarre that
>in rare cases the IDEAS of "Cranks-on-Usenet" are attempting to be
>plaigerized by reputable scientists. "Reputable" in the sense they never
>post to Usenet, only read and steal from here. They'll rewrite an IDEA
>they read from Usenet and submit to peer-reviewed scientific journals.
Care to provide some evidence to substantiate that assertion?
Nathan Urban
> In article <884715378....@dejanews.com>,
> <mahipa...@orbital.fsd.com> wrote:
> >Despite my personal dilemmas about Cranks, I find it rather bizarre that
> >in rare cases the IDEAS of "Cranks-on-Usenet" are attempting to be
> >plaigerized by reputable scientists. "Reputable" in the sense they never
> >post to Usenet, only read and steal from here. They'll rewrite an IDEA
> >they read from Usenet and submit to peer-reviewed scientific journals.
> Care to provide some evidence to substantiate that assertion?
Why just the other day, I got my Plutonium Totality theory published in
the Physical Review...
Robert Low
Nathan Urban <nur...@vt.edu> wrote:
>In article <69kohh$3...@leofric.coventry.ac.uk>, mtx...@coventry.ac.uk (Robert Low) wrote:
>> >Despite my personal dilemmas about Cranks, I find it rather bizarre that
>> >in rare cases the IDEAS of "Cranks-on-Usenet" are attempting to be
>> >plaigerized by reputable scientists. "Reputable" in the sense they never
>
>
>Why just the other day, I got my Plutonium Totality theory published in
>the Physical Review...
I might have known it was you. Does this mean that I'll have to find
a different journal for my cosmic massometer paper?
--
Rob. http://www.mis.coventry.ac.uk/~mtx014/
mahipa...@orbital.fsd.com
In article <34BBDDF8...@rtis.ray.com>,
she...@rtis.ray.com wrote:
>
> mahipa...@orbital.fsd.com wrote:
> [snip long diatribe re: science, new ideas, and cranks]
Not a diatribe, but surely long. I wrote a true diatribe on this same
topic many many months ago.
> I think it is very important for you to re-examine your post, with this
> one thought in mind:
With pleasure. :-)
> Science is a method for determining accuracy of a model for a specific
> observed behavior. Scientists are people who use the scientific method
> to examine their models. Ideas that are inconsistent with observed fact
> are immediately discarded by the scientific method as invalid. Ideas
> that conflict with established models must make testable predictions
> before they can be considered to be rival models. Without testable
> predictions, a model cannot be subject to the scientific method, and are
> therefore not "scientific ideas".
Testable predictions are not compulsory. Also if by "immediately
discarded" you mean "it may take centuries sometimes", then we're seeing
eye-to-eye.
> Somebody who comes up with a strange new idea for the way some part of
> the universe works is a thinker. Regardless of what jargon they use to
> express their idea, they are not a scientist unless they are using the
> scientific method to examine their idea. The idea itself is not
> scientific unless it promises testable behaviors, and survives the test
> of experimentation. Technically, it is not "scientific" even then, as
> the term applies to a methodology rather than to items tested under that
> methodology.
I think this captures well why Science is as hard as it is.
> So: of course the "Crank Hunters" aren't fair. Neither is life. The
> concept of fairness is not a part of the universe that scientists seek
> to model. So, if a new idea is obviously at odds with accepted,
> supported theories that have withstood the test of experimentation, why
> should scientists give it a 'fair hearing'? The onus is on the thinker
> to provide a model that is testable, and that is not incompatible with
> experimental data that is already available.
>
> Greg
Even if life is unfair doesn't give anyone the right or liberty to
perpetuate the unfairness without limits. That life is unfair is not a
license to practice maligning people and their ideas *you (== some set of
people, even peers)* can't appreciate or comprehend or didn't concoct
yourself.
Wait a minute, only scientists can say "You don't understand!"? [Sarcasm]
Paul Draper
mahipa...@orbital.fsd.com wrote:
>
> Testable predictions are not compulsory. Also if by "immediately
> discarded" you mean "it may take centuries sometimes", then we're seeing
> eye-to-eye.
No, on this point I strongly disagree. Testable predictions are the ONLY
belwether that theories have for approval.
Paul Draper
Greg Shetler
Paul Stowe wrote:
>
> >Here I have to beg ignorance born of neglect. I never pursued ether
> >theories when I found that they had such problems. I never verified
> for myself that the problems existed. What is Lorentz ether theory,
> >and how does it survive the null result of the MMX?
>
> As I've said to Nathan Urban in the past, taking a stance from a
> position of ignorance, is never a good idea.
>
? I didn't take a stance. Ilja Schmelzer said that the reason the
mainstream had adopted SR over ether theory had nothing to do with its
being wrong. I pointed out that the mainstream had adopted SR because
it is borne out by experiment, and that ether was not adopted because it
was not borne out by experiment. I don't know the details of the ether
theory, but I was certainly educated on this. Where in there am I
taking a stance regarding the theory? I am making an assertion about
reasons that theories are adopted/rejected.
> The Lorentz ether theory is well described by Whitaker in Volume 1,
> chapter "Theories of the Aether" of his book "A History of the
> Theories
> of Aether and Electricity". I strongly recommend reading it,(it's a
> good read but hard to come by).
>
Thank you.
> >My statement carried nothing in to say that ether theory was
> disproven
> >by SR. My statement says that trying to say that posing them as
> >alternate opposing theories is incorrect, as they address different
> >behaviors.
>
> Now how & why is that? Since you admit no knowledge of modern
> variants
> of aether theories, how can you make such a statement?
Because I am aware that SR is a special case of GR, which posits that
physics works the same way in all intertial references frames, and that
space and time are related, and that mass can cause curvature in space
time. There is nothing in GR or SR that attempts to provide for a
mechanism for the propagation of light. Ether theories posit a medium
for the propagation of light, as I understand them. The two theories
may have some conflicts, but they are not alternate, opposing theories,
any more than Christianity and engineering are alternate, opposing
theories. They may conflict in some of the implications, but they are
not intrinsically opposed as they address different aspects of the way
the universe works.
>
> >Ether theory, IIRC, is disproven by experiment. SR theory is not.
> >Ergo, mainstream thought accepts SR, but does not accept the ether.
>
> Wrong again. If, and only if, one make certain assumptions, and we
> all
> should know what happens when one ass/u/me(s).
>
Again? Am I wrong again? Damn, I hate being wrong. Seems to happen so
much.
Assumptions are required in the application of *any* theory to
practice. We cannot control all variables, and those we *can* control
are not under perfect control. We always have to assume that the
variables we cannot control will not affect the experiment, and that the
variation in the controlled variables is small enough to produce
negligible effect. Moreover, we always assume that factors other than
those we know about and model with our theories do not affect the
outcome of our experiments.
Making assumptions has produced the steam engine, the automobile,
electronics, even the computers we are using to communicate with.
Pardon me for *assuming* that you understood that.
> >Greg
>
> Paul Stowe
Greg
BTW: I don't read alt.sci.new-theories, or sci.philosophy.meta. I am
responding to those newsgroups only because the post to which I'm
responding went there. If you want me to reply to a response to this
post from one of those, please e-mail. You can post my reply to those
newsgroups, if you like.
James C. Allison
Paul Stowe wrote:
> Shetler writes:
> >Ilja Schmelzer wrote:
> >> What about Lorentz ether theory?
> >theories when I found that they had such problems. I never verified
> for myself that the problems existed. What is Lorentz ether theory,
> >and how does it survive the null result of the MMX?
> As I've said to Nathan Urban in the past, taking a stance from a
> position of ignorance, is never a good idea.
> chapter "Theories of the Aether" of his book "A History of the Theories
> of Aether and Electricity". I strongly recommend reading it,(it's a
> good read but hard to come by).
> >> This suggests different explanatory power, but does not mean that
> >> ether theory has been disproven.
> >by SR. My statement says that trying to say that posing them as
> >alternate opposing theories is incorrect, as they address different
> >behaviors.
> Now how & why is that? Since you admit no knowledge of modern variants
> of aether theories, how can you make such a statement?
> >Ergo, mainstream thought accepts SR, but does not accept the ether.
> Wrong again. If, and only if, one make certain assumptions, and we all
> should know what happens when one ass/u/me(s).
> >Greg
> Paul Stowe
AllisonWonderland writes:
Just a few observations here.
First, your repartee' is wonderful. The civility of your agreement to
disagree is the classic example of how this kind of discussion should be
conducted. And I would like to commend you on that point.
Next, the MMX showed that there was no ether! But still the scientists
are trying to find the mechanism by which light is propagated. It isn't
that they don't accept the MMX results, it's more that they don't seem
to think that all that could have been done was done.
I have a Scientific American mag (somewhere) that details the most
recent version of the MMX, using lasers, evacuated container chambers,
elaborate anti-vibrational mechanisms, and egregiously long base legs,
and all this to see if there is:
1) an ether, and
2) if they can detect gravity waves. It seems to me that if the MMX were
so conclusive, that all this "nonsense'" would be foregoable. Still,
they are spending a lot of money doing this.
As to scientific methodology, what is today's scientific method, will be
tomorrow's smilable, headshaking examples of naivete, just as
yesterday's scientific methods are today's smilable, headshaking
examples of naivete. The only saving grace is the scientist's ability to
eloquently induce those who do the funding to give it just one more
shot, which might also be the most useless fault that science exhibits.
I say that because there is some amount of evidence that the funding of
redundant programs is a practice that is described by Robert S. DeRopp
in his book: "The Master Game" on page 16 as being: "mere jugglery, a
tiresome ringing of changes on a few basic themes by investigators who
are little more than technicians with higher degrees." DeRopp goes on to
say: "Science has become so complex, so vast and so expensive that more
or less routine enterprises are given preference. Anything truly
original tends to be excluded by that formidable array of committees
that stands between the scientist and the money he needs for research.
He must either tailor his research plans to fit the preconceived ideas
of the committee or find himself without funds. Moreover, in Science...
there is much insincerity and a frenzied quest for status that sparks
endless puerile arguments over priority of publication. Science is not
so much for knowledge as (it is) to bolster the scientist's ego."
Now Mr. DeRopp might just be giving us "sour grapes", but I can
personally see that science sometimes takes an almost religious
bumpersticker attitude. I here refer to one in particular that is quite
popular here, deep in the bible belt which says: "The Bible says it, I
believe it, End of conversation!"
Just replace the word "Bible" with Einstein, or Hawking, or whatever
appealed to authority one wants to choose and you have the attitude that
is shared by many of today's most eminent and illustrious scientific
thinkers and authorities. It seems that what they do to maintain control
is to build a bulwark around themselves and their ideas. When
challenged, they add another extension to that bulwark. This goes on and
on as challenges are mounted as time passes and eventually they have
built themselves a tower in which they are isolated high above the
roiling culture that exists out side.
The eventuality is that one day a "NEW" concept comes along and at that
time the tower is toppled and the scientist that have housed themselves
inside come crashing down to the smiles and headshaking and they come to
realize that they have now become examples of naivete. That is what is
called the changing of the Paradigm.
Anyway, I am enjoying your discussion. More!!!!
--
Hang in there!
Regards and sincere best wishes
AllisonWonderland
---
CHECK OUT THE WEBPAGE AT
http://www.livingston.net/allison/home.htm
Comments welcome.
Hermital
On Wed 1/14/98 14:55 -0600 Greg Shetler wrote:
> Ether theory, IIRC, is disproven by experiment. SR theory is not.
> Ergo, mainstream thought accepts SR, but does not accept the ether.
>
See URL http://magna.com.au/~prfbrown/aetherqr.htm
--
Spontaneous self-organization is to the life sciences
as perpetual motion machines are to physics.
- Alan Williams
Consciousness, Physics and the Holographic Paradigm:
(subtitle: BEYOND ZEN: The Footsteps of the Dragon)
http://www.livingston.net/hermital/intro.htm
Gregory Loren Hansen
In article <34BE48...@livingston.net>,
James C. Allison <all...@livingston.net> wrote:
>Next, the MMX showed that there was no ether! But still the scientists
>are trying to find the mechanism by which light is propagated. It isn't
>that they don't accept the MMX results, it's more that they don't seem
>to think that all that could have been done was done.
The MMX didn't, by itself, show there as no aether. I believe
measurements of stellar abberation and the drag in moving water showed
that if there was an aether, it is not dragged along with matter. The
null results of the MMX showed that if there is an aether, it *is* dragged
along with matter. The different experiments gave contradictory results.
And, of course, the reason the aether was postulated in the first place is
because no matter we know of, particularly not gasses like air, can carry
a light wave. For starters, light waves are transverse waves, and gasses
are not rigid.
Greg Shetler
I checked out the site Hermital posted. Quite a collection of articles
about alternative subjects. Some are written by reputable physicists
"debunking" myths and pseudo-science (e.g. Vic Stenger), and some are
straight out of left field (e.g. "gyrons" in ether fluid=matter).
Incidentally, none of the ether theories I saw there hold up to even
simple analysis.
mah...@gte.net
In article <01bd205e$b36383a0$c9867dc2@goyra>,
"David Byrden" <Ne...@Byrden.com> wrote:
>
> mahipa...@orbital.fsd.com wrote in article
> <884715378....@dejanews.com>...
>
> > even begin to distinguish between a Crazy *PERSON*
> > and a Crazy *IDEA*.
>
>
> Are you specifically claiming that one of
> the "cranks" on here has a genuinely worthwhile idea,
> and if so, which one?
>
> David
Which one? Good question. Maybe some professor is doing a secret
research on identifying how far a good|bad idea propagates via Usenet?
This professor's grant hasn't yet quite run out. He's not interested
in compromising his secrecy? It's a double blind scientific experiment
--- afterall.
First of all, I do not know of the "Cranks" that you might have in
mind as you refer to the (unidentified) set of them. I do agree there
are annoying posters as well as self-obsessed ones. Character flaws
imo. Personality disorders, etc.
Since you are partial towards terse posts, yes I do think the
possibiity exists that someone who has a worthwhile idea might be
mischaracterized as a Crank. It only takes a few name callers to start
the crank chasing bandwagon. I can already imagine a host of new
comers to usenet eager to show themselves off by identifying "cranks"
for the benefit of the readers at large. "Look Ma, I caught me a
really big fish!"
Which crank has a good idea? Good question. I leave it to your better
collective scientific judgement(s) to identify which "crank" has a
worthwhile idea. Scientists are not dismissed from pursuing the
origins and ramifications of professed ideas simply because they
originate from individuals whose names have been unfairly maligned.
Mind you, there are real cranks out there. There are. In the same
breath, there are honest scientists with interesting observations who
are erroneously labeled as "mentally ill"==''crank''.
/\ "If the line between science fiction and
/ science fact doesn't drive you crazy,
/\ \ then you're just not tr(y)ing!"
\ /\/\ / \ \/ Mahipal "2 c me" Virdy
/ == \ / \/\/ The |meforce> Paradox
\/ http://www.geocities.com/Athens/3178/GateWay2DREAMScomeTrue.html
[I just see that other's want a specific case of plaigerism too. Damn
scientists! They want all the facts and right away? What? They think
Internet technology exists or something? You are living in dreamland. :-)
.... I mean, don't you already know which crank ideas are worth the while?
Now I'm having fun and quite enjoying it.]
James C. Allison
Dear Alan,
> On Wed 1/14/98 14:55 -0600 Greg Shetler wrote:
> > Ether theory, IIRC, is disproven by experiment. SR theory is not.
> > Ergo, mainstream thought accepts SR, but does not accept the ether.
> See URL http://magna.com.au/~prfbrown/aetherqr.htm
Paul Stowe
Gr: Greg wrote:
PS: Paul Stowe wrote:
Gr: Here I have to beg ignorance born of neglect. I never pursued
ether theories when I found that they had such problems. I never
verified for myself that the problems existed. What is Lorentz ether
PS: As I've said to Nathan Urban in the past, taking a stance from a
position of ignorance, is never a good idea.
Gr: ? I didn't take a stance. Ilja Schmelzer said that the reason
the mainstream had adopted SR over ether theory had nothing to do with
its being wrong. I pointed out that the mainstream had adopted SR
because it is borne out by experiment, and that ether was not adopted
because it was not borne out by experiment. I don't know the details
of the ether theory, but I was certainly educated on this. Where in
there am I taking a stance regarding the theory? I am making an
assertion about reasons that theories are adopted/rejected.
Hmm, did I misunderstand the phrase in the first passage above?
PS: The Lorentz ether theory is well described by Whitaker in Volume
1, chapter "Theories of the Aether" of his book "A History of the
Theories of Aether and Electricity". I strongly recommend reading it,
(it's a good read but hard to come by).
Gr: Thank you.
You're welcome, but no thanks is needed, the complete subject of
physical "models" verses mathematical correlation's is sorely in need
of serious discussion.
Gr: My statement carried nothing in to say that ether theory was
disproven by SR. My statement says that trying to say that posing them
as alternate opposing theories is incorrect, as they address different
behaviors.
As is well known, SR is a special subset of GR and even Einstein fully
acknowledged that GR required the concept of a "medium" or continuum to
be valid. See his Leyden address (of May 5, 1920) at a meeting
honoring Lorentz & acknowledging his contributions to science. What is
less well known is that all Einstein said was the aether WAS not
directly required to understand the concept and mathematics of GR, NOT
that an aether was incompatible or is in anyway "disproven" by same.
PS: Now how & why is that? Since you admit no knowledge of modern
variants of aether theories, how can you make such a statement?
So, please enlighten us as to how SR disproves the aether concept.
Seriously, all SR does is restrict mathematically the available models
of any such medium to be Lorentz covariant. But this simply is not a
problem and Einstein knew this.
Gr: Because I am aware that SR is a special case of GR, which posits
that physics works the same way in all intertial references frames, and
that space and time are related, and that mass can cause curvature in
space-time. There is nothing in GR or SR that attempts to provide for
a mechanism for the propagation of light. Ether theories posit a
medium for the propagation of light, as I understand them. The two
theories may have some conflicts, but they are not alternate, opposing
theories, any more than Christianity and engineering are alternate,
opposing theories. They may conflict in some of the implications, but
they are not intrinsically opposed as they address different aspects of
the way the universe works.
Well I would disagree with with your choice of comparative topics but,
do agree that SR/GR and aether are totally compatible. In fact SR/GR
are hydro-dynamical models.
Gr: Ether theory, IIRC, is disproven by experiment. SR theory is not.
Ergo, mainstream thought accepts SR, but does not accept the ether.
Mainstream thought has demonstrated itself to be largely much to
conservative in it approach to the open issues in science.
PS: Wrong again. If, and only if, one make certain assumptions, and
we all should know what happens when one ass/u/me(s).
Gr: Again? Am I wrong again? Damn, I hate being wrong. Seems to
happen so much.
Well, if one is serious in pursuit of understanding, it is human nature
to "hate" to be wrong. This is at the very core of the problem of
openness when it comes to new or unusual ideas. Too freely accepting
same is considered undisciplined, but this stance often times hides the
fact that, if the proposed idea is even possibly correct, the one must
accept the possibility that some or all that one holds dear (as
understanding) could/would be wrong. No one even wants to consider
that they have invested much time and effort in an incorrect idea or
worse, been duped.
Gr: Assumptions are required in the application of *any* theory to
practice. We cannot control all variables, and those we *can* control
are not under perfect control. We always have to assume that the
variables we cannot control will not affect the experiment, ...
Correct, but many times it's the hidden or implicit assumptions (the
ones we don't consciously consider) that will often cause the most
problems.
GR. ...and that the variation in the controlled variables is small
enough to produce negligible effect. Moreover, we always assume that
factors other than those we know about and model with our theories do
not affect the outcome of our experiments.
So, name ALL the implicit assumptions and variables in the MMX.
Gr: Making assumptions has produced the steam engine, the automobile,
electronics, even the computers we are using to communicate with.
Pardon me for *assuming* that you understood that.
Nope, making well considered concepts and physical models and
mathematics describing observed properties of our environment gave us
those, assuming almost always bites us in the butt.
Greg
Paul Stowe
AW: writes:
AW: First, your repartee' is wonderful. The civility of your agreement
to disagree is the classic example of how this kind of discussion
should be conducted. And I would like to commend you on that point.
Thank you, this being the first real compliment in nearly four years.
I'm glad you found the discussion useful. There is, in general, no
decorum in the discussions on newgroups.
AW: Next, the MMX showed that there was no ether! But still the
scientists are trying to find the mechanism by which light is
propagated. It isn't that they don't accept the MMX results, it's more
that they don't seem to think that all that could have been done was
done.
No, the MMX failed to detect earth's motion through any such medium.
This is very different that saying it showed there was no aether.
<Snip >
AW: The eventuality is that one day a "NEW" concept comes along and at
Nathan Urban
In article <i3gvhvk...@fermi.wias-berlin.de>, Ilja Schmelzer <schm...@fermi.wias-berlin.de> wrote:
> No. Once we accept realism and causality, instead SR is disproven by
> experiment. (Of course, instead of relativity we can reject realism
> or causality, but I see no reason to sacrifice these simple and
> beautiful principles.)
I'll take SR and causality. I see no reason to sacrifice a simple and
beautiful principle like SR.
Ilja Schmelzer
Greg Shetler <she...@rtis.ray.com> writes:
> Because I am aware that SR is a special case of GR, which posits that
> physics works the same way in all intertial references frames, and that
> space and time are related, and that mass can cause curvature in space
> mechanism for the propagation of light. Ether theories posit a medium
> for the propagation of light, as I understand them. The two theories
> may have some conflicts, but they are not alternate, opposing theories,
> any more than Christianity and engineering are alternate, opposing
> theories. They may conflict in some of the implications, but they are
> not intrinsically opposed as they address different aspects of the way
> the universe works.
They are intrinsically in some conflict. Ether theory requires that
there are things in reality which are not Lorentz-invariant. These
things are hidden in Lorentz ether theory as well as in my
generalization to gravity.
After the violation of Bell's inequality we have a conflict between
EPR-realism, causality and relativity. To prefer here EPR-realism and
causality is de-facto the same as to prefer Lorentz ether theory.
Ilja Schmelzer
Greg Shetler <she...@rtis.ray.com> writes:
> Ilja Schmelzer wrote:
> > What about Lorentz ether theory?
> theories when I found that they had such problems. I never verified for
> does it survive the null result of the MMX?
It considers time dilation as a physical effect caused by interaction
with the ether. The experimental predictions are in the classical
domain the same as SR.
See my home page for a generalization to gravity, which makes de-facto
the same predictions as GR.
> Ether theory, IIRC, is disproven by experiment. SR theory is not.
No. Once we accept realism and causality, instead SR is disproven by
experiment. (Of course, instead of relativity we can reject realism
or causality, but I see no reason to sacrifice these simple and
beautiful principles.)
Ilja
Hermital
On Thu 1/15/98 15:49 -0600 Greg Shetler wrote:
>
> I checked out the site Hermital posted. Quite a collection of articles
> about alternative subjects. Some are written by reputable physicists
> "debunking" myths and pseudo-science (e.g. Vic Stenger), and some are
> straight out of left field (e.g. "gyrons" in ether fluid=matter).
>
> Incidentally, none of the ether theories I saw there hold up to even
> simple analysis.
>
The Time line on this message indicates that you posted it
3 hours and 3 minutes after I posted my response to your
previous article. The URL I provided yesterday was a quick
reference located in Mountain Man's Archive and, except for
articles 0 (zero),23, 30, 32 and 33, every article is linked to
the particular author's own web pages. In other words, the
Aether quick reference points directly to several gigabytes
of information.
Even if you saw my response and went to the referenced site
immediately, 3 hours gives you time to do little more than read
the titles of the articles contained in that archive, much less
read all of the abstracts and the articles themselves.
As for analyzing anything you may have read: You kid your
friends, Greg, and I'll kid mine, but you're not kidding me
with your disingenuous response on this subject.
/rant
For those who may be interested, the abstracts I mentioned
can be found at URL http://magna.com.au/~prfbrown/aether.html.
Links to the pertinent web pages are also provided there.
--
Contrary to popular belief, the business of America
is not business: The business of America is Freedom.
- Alan Williams
Consciousness, Physics and the Holographic Paradigm:
Hermital
On Fri 1/16/98 05:47 -0500 Nathan Urban wrote:
>
> In article <i3gvhvk...@fermi.wias-berlin.de>, Ilja Schmelzer <schm...@fermi.wias-berlin.de> wrote:
>
> > experiment. (Of course, instead of relativity we can reject realism
> > or causality, but I see no reason to sacrifice these simple and
> > beautiful principles.)
>
> beautiful principle like SR.
Please allow me to point out that SR is a theory
dealing with principles. SR is not itself a principle.
--
Spontaneous self-organization is to the life sciences
as perpetual motion machines are to physics.
- Alan Williams
Consciousness, Physics and the Holographic Paradigm:
Nathan Urban
> Please allow me to point out that SR is a theory
> dealing with principles. SR is not itself a principle.
"Lorentz invariance of physical law" could be regarded as a principle.
When applied to kinematics, that's just SR.
Robert Clark
Greg Shetler wrote:
>
> I checked out the site Hermital posted. Quite a collection of articles
> about alternative subjects. Some are written by reputable physicists
> "debunking" myths and pseudo-science (e.g. Vic Stenger), and some are
> straight out of left field (e.g. "gyrons" in ether fluid=matter).
>
> Incidentally, none of the ether theories I saw there hold up to even
> simple analysis.
>
> >
> > On Wed 1/14/98 14:55 -0600 Greg Shetler wrote:
> >
> > >
> >
I presume you include in this assessment the article by Einstein:
"Aether and the Theory of Relativity,"
http://magna.com.au/~prfbrown/aether_0.html.
Bob Clark
rich
In article <34BB37...@bigfoot.com> The Walrus <the_w...@bigfoot.com> writes:
>From: The Walrus <the_w...@bigfoot.com>
>Subject: Re: Crackpot
>Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 09:46:13 +0000
>exe wrote:
>> Sorry for the lack of clarity; I was trying to be brief. The premise of
>> religion is that things are accepted on faith or accepted as being logically
>> self-evident.
>Had to just fling my oar in here ... is that _all_ religion, or just
>christianity?
This statement actually applies to all religion, even Realistic Idealism. As
a matter of fact it applies to all humanity. No one knows EVERYTHING, and
everything accepted beyond our knowledge is accepted on FAITH (or as being
logically self evident.. the philosopher's way of expressing "faith"). The
scientist's way of expressing "faith" is to use the word..
rich
In article <69g11v$5r3$1...@jetsam.uits.indiana.edu> glha...@copper.ucs.indiana.edu (Gregory Loren Hansen) writes:
>From: glha...@copper.ucs.indiana.edu (Gregory Loren Hansen)
>Subject: Re: Crackpot
>Date: 13 Jan 1998 15:25:51 GMT
>I can't remember all, but some signs of crackpottiness are
>1. Arguing by analogy. They say "X is like Y" and then implicitly make
>the identiy "X = Y".
This is called "jumping to conclusions". Some refuters use it to muddy the
water or "change the subject".
>2. Ignoring evidence. They'll continue to argue a position even after
>being proven wrong.
"Don't confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up."
>3. Anachronistic thinking. That is, dredging up old theories that have
>been disproven long ago, like a lumeniferous aether.
Or one good turn deserves another... Or it's better to give than receive...
Or love your neighbor... Or love your God.
>4.
>I can't think of a 4. But I mostly wanted to contribute arguing by
>analogy and anachronistic thinking to the discussion.
That, in itself is similar to an unrecognizable futuristic thinking.
Alan Pendleton
Greg Shetler <she...@rtis.ray.com> wrote in article
<34BE3F5A...@rtis.ray.com>...
>Ilja Schmelzer said that the reason the
>mainstream had adopted SR over ether theory had nothing to do with its
>being wrong. I pointed out that the mainstream had adopted SR because
>it is borne out by experiment, and that ether was not adopted because it
>was not borne out by experiment.
This claim has been made 4 or 5 times just in today’s crop of downloads.
If I had a dollar for every time someone said that the existence of
aether has been disproven by experiment, I’d have enough to open up my
own physics lab. We would then be able to rerun those experiments which
came up with answers disagreeing with relativity, a non-null set BTW,
while varying various parameters of interest.
I especially like Esclangon, an experiment which could be repeated today
for under $1000. (Not enough, you say? OK, tack on $49000 for labor and
garage rent. That might be enough to interest a funding agency.)
>I don't know the details of the ether
>theory, but I was certainly educated on this.
Today’s physics teachers and textbook writers have a lot to answer for.
Every newly minted physics grad coming down the chute thinks that
relativity has been "proven" and the existence of aether has been
"disproven." Those few who know that the experiments by themselves
aren’t quite enough talk bravely about heuristics and postulates.
I’d like to recommend addition of a mandatory course to every physics
curriculum, one modeled after Harvard Business School’s case studies of
great business disasters. We might take a look at what errors of
reasoning led Mach and Ostwald to be certain that atoms did not exist.
We might take a look at what factors led Michelson to believe, in 1894,
that physics was almost complete, and to give a speech to that effect
only months before Becquerel discovered radioactivity. We might take a
look at how the authority of Newton (who himself was ambivalent on the
question) was invoked to attack Thomas Young’s new wave theory of light.
We might take a look at what led the QM theorists of the 30’s to believe
that they had "proven" that QM was "complete." Etc.
Ah, never mind. Each new generation thinks that it is the first not
comprised of fools.
Alan Pendleton
Esclangon reference can be found at
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2740/explist.html
Nonquixote
Ilja Schmelzer wrote:
> > Ether theory, IIRC, is disproven by experiment. SR theory is not.
>
> No. Once we accept realism and causality, instead SR is disproven by
> experiment.
What experiment/s? Just because SR is inconsistant with your assumptions about
realism and causality does not disprove it. Show me an actual EXPERIMENT that
gives results inconsistant with SR; that would disprove SR as a theory, being
incompatible with your beliefs does not.
Ilja Schmelzer
nur...@crib.bevc.blacksburg.va.us (Nathan Urban) writes:
> > No. Once we accept realism and causality, instead SR is disproven by
> > or causality, but I see no reason to sacrifice these simple and
> > beautiful principles.)
> I'll take SR and causality. I see no reason to sacrifice a simple and
> beautiful principle like SR.
Fine, your choice. I doubt that you will be able to develop quantum
gravity, but you can always hope for future ...
Be happy,
Ilja Schmelzer
Nonquixote <nonjo...@ntr.net> writes:
> > > Ether theory, IIRC, is disproven by experiment. SR theory is not.
> > experiment.
Aspect's and a lot of other in this direction.
> Just because SR is inconsistant with your assumptions about realism
> and causality does not disprove it. Show me an actual EXPERIMENT
> that gives results inconsistant with SR; that would disprove SR as a
> theory, being incompatible with your beliefs does not.
No. The relativity principle that "all laws of nature are
Lorentz-invariant" cannot be disproven without some independent
assumption about the laws of nature. Only if you accept causality as a
law of nature, an experimental result which shows that causality
cannot be made Lorentz-invariant falsifies relativity.
BTW, SR is falsified by any gravitational experiment, because for
gravity we need GR. GR is falsified by any quantum experiment, because
there is no theory of relativistic quantum gravity.
Hermital
On Mon 1/19/98 09:06 -0600 Greg Shetler wrote:
> 1) Your statement that I only had at most 3 hours operates on the
> (likely mistaken) assumption that you and I are in the same time zone.
> Where are you posting from?
>
You're kidding, right? Or is this another demonstration of your method
of analysis? 8^(
The *Date: Time Zone* line is contained in the header. Check it out.
mahipa...@orbital.fsd.com
In article <34BDDB...@startext.net>,
Paul, Paul, Paul... I was attempting being clever. :-) On par with
"Turning dinosaurs into music". Maybe? The dinosaurs in my tank
distinctively must've been Indian since more than 50% of the time the
music is in Hindi.
Regardless of what we personally feel about testable predictions,
sometimes experimentalists have had to wait hundreds of years to question
the validity of previously accepted paradigms. For example, the paradigm
shift from Newtonian gravity to Einstein's Spacetime geodesics took 230+
years to unfold.
Testable predictions are very important. I'll never say otherwise. Still,
sometimes scientists have to settle for conceptual breakthroughs (leads)
as a satisfying substitute in leiu of immediately available experimental
confirmations.
Of course, there are indeed dangers in going too deep into the Conceptual
Side of Science without having firm roots in experimental observations.
The truth is, experiments now-a-days are too expensive, too rare, even
too political, ..., and too difficult to be readily available in most
individual scientists' lifespans.
These are observations of mine, not a potential excuse to use anytime
someone annoyingly bickers "Where's the data??!!". You know, like your
children endlesly repeating "Are we there yet?" "Are we there yet?" ...
"Are we there yet?".
/\ "If the line between science fiction and
/ science fact doesn't drive you crazy,
/\ \ then you're just not tr(y)ing!"
\ /\/\ / \ \/ Mahipal "2 c me" Virdy
/ == \ / \/\/ The |meforce> Paradox
\/ http://www.geocities.com/Athens/3178/GateWay2DREAMScomeTrue.html
-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
Greg Shetler
> Nope, making well considered concepts and physical models and
> mathematics describing observed properties of our environment gave us
> those, assuming almost always bites us in the butt.
>
Here, I will agree with one thing: your assumption that I was arguing
with you regarding the ether theories is totally wrong. I have been
frustratedly trying to do only two things here:
1) point out that my beef with earlier posts was in their assumption
that SR and ether theories were mutually exclusive, and that they
inherently contradict each other. They don't, as far as I know. I *do*
know that SR makes some constraints on what the ether must be and how it
can behave. You keep making this point yourself, then banging on me as
though you think I disagree.
2) answer the question, posed by another poster: "if SR didn't disprove
ether theory, why is ether theory not accepted by the mainstream?" The
answer is that SR makes constraints on ether theories, and that those
ether theories that conform to SR and that make testable predictions
have failed to be supported by data. That doesn't mean all ether
theories are wrong, just that those developed to the point where they
can be tested have failed, and are thus not adopted.
I have not agreed to disagree, as stated in this newsgroup. I have not
disagreed with much of what you are posting. You are using my posts to
launch an argument tangential to the subject of my posts, and posing
them as arguments with what I have posted. I would appreciate it if you
paid attention to my posts, and discussed the subject matter contained
therein, if you respond to them.
Greg Shetler
hermital wrote:
>
> IMHO, you are mistaken, sir.
>
> The Time line on this message indicates that you posted it
> 3 hours and 3 minutes after I posted my response to your
> previous article. The URL I provided yesterday was a quick
> reference located in Mountain Man's Archive and, except for
> articles 0 (zero),23, 30, 32 and 33, every article is linked to
> the particular author's own web pages. In other words, the
> Aether quick reference points directly to several gigabytes
> of information.
>
> Even if you saw my response and went to the referenced site
> immediately, 3 hours gives you time to do little more than read
> the titles of the articles contained in that archive, much less
> read all of the abstracts and the articles themselves.
>
> As for analyzing anything you may have read: You kid your
> friends, Greg, and I'll kid mine, but you're not kidding me
> with your disingenuous response on this subject.
>
1) Your statement that I only had at most 3 hours operates on the
(likely mistaken) assumption that you and I are in the same time zone.
Where are you posting from?
2) It may take you more than 3 hours to read the titles of the articles
on the page. I can often consume a paperback novel in roughly the same
amount of time. Please don't base your judgment of other peoples'
reading speeds on your own, especially if you choose to castigate them
based on that judgment.
Greg
Greg Shetler
Alan Pendleton wrote:
>
> Greg Shetler <she...@rtis.ray.com> wrote in article
> <34BE3F5A...@rtis.ray.com>...
> >Ilja Schmelzer said that the reason the
> >mainstream had adopted SR over ether theory had nothing to do with its
> >being wrong. I pointed out that the mainstream had adopted SR because
> >it is borne out by experiment, and that ether was not adopted because it
> >was not borne out by experiment.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
You know, I really hate when people read part of one of my posts and
launch into detailed argument that they would know didn't apply if they
read the rest.
"Not borne out by experiment" < > "disproven by experiment"
The phrase means that certain predictions made by the theory were not
supported by experiment. This can mean that some of the assumptions
made in calculating predicted values of testable parameters might be
wrong, experimental error may be corrupting data, or the theory itself
may be wrong. It is for this reason that variations of the MMX continue
to be done today: to test a different set of predictions based on a
different set of assumptions, to further refine the experiment to reduce
experimental error, and to test variations of the fundamental theory.
Greg
Alan Pendleton
> > >Ilja Schmelzer said that the reason the
> > >mainstream had adopted SR over ether theory had nothing to do with its
> > >being wrong. I pointed out that the mainstream had adopted SR because
> > >it is borne out by experiment, and that ether was not adopted because
it
> > >was not borne out by experiment.
>
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> You know, I really hate when people read part of one of my posts and
> launch into detailed argument that they would know didn't apply if they
> read the rest.
>
> "Not borne out by experiment" < > "disproven by experiment"
>
> The phrase means that certain predictions made by the theory were not
> supported by experiment.
Frankly, I fail to see the difference. Lorentz aether theory (LET), which
was actually first enunciated by Poincare, makes the same predictions as
SR. There is no prediction of LET which is not borne out by experiment.
Some have claimed that this means that SR and LET are in fact the same
theory. But not so. SR is "brittle" in the sense that tiny deviations
falsify the theory (i.e. the principle of relativity will no longer hold),
while tiny deviations from LET can be accommodated. This, by some accounts,
is why Poincare liked his own theory and did not like Einstein's.
I did read your whole post. It appears to me that your later paragraphs
contradict what you said in the paragraph I responded to. The comments I
made apply to the subject in general. If you feel that they don't apply to
your position in particular, then I apologize.
Alan Pendleton
Paul Stowe
GS: Greg Shetler <she...@rtis.ray.com> writes:
PS: Paul Stowe <pst...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
PS: Nope, making well considered concepts and physical models and
mathematics describing observed properties of our environment gave us
those, assuming almost always bites us in the butt.
GS: Here, I will agree with one thing: your assumption that I was
arguing with you regarding the ether theories is totally wrong. I have
been frustratedly trying to do only two things here:
GS: 1) point out that my beef with earlier posts was in their
assumption that SR and ether theories were mutually exclusive, and that
they inherently contradict each other. They don't, as far as I know.
I *do* know that SR makes some constraints on what the ether must be
and how it can behave. You keep making this point yourself, then
banging on me as though you think I disagree.
Well, it was never my intent to "bang away" only to point out that, to
my knowledge, there has never been an experiment that "falsified" the
aether concept. This includes, Michelson-Morley, Trouton-Noble,
Fitzeau, Sagnac , Michelson-Gale, Thirring-Lense, and the Kennedy
variation of Michelson-Morley (unequal arm lengths). I only went by
what you wrote, and how I interpreted it. It has never been my intent
to belittle or denigrate, but to emphasize that many many times,
experiments have been misinterpreted because inherent assumptions were
not properly identified, such as the Michelson-Morley experiment.
My appologies if I misinterepted your comments.
GS: 2) answer the question, posed by another poster: "if SR didn't
disprove ether theory, why is ether theory not accepted by the
mainstream?" The answer is that SR makes constraints on ether
theories, and that those ether theories that conform to SR and that
make testable predictions have failed to be supported by data. ...
This I would like to investigate. Any experiment that a Lorentz
covariant form of aether such as LET failed would be most interesting.
Even the Kennedy experiment did not do this, contrary to popular
opinion.
GS: ... That doesn't mean all ether theories are wrong, just that those
developed to the point where they can be tested have failed, and are
thus not adopted.
GS: I have not agreed to disagree, as stated in this newsgroup. I
have not disagreed with much of what you are posting. You are using my
posts to launch an argument tangential to the subject of my posts, and
posing them as arguments with what I have posted. I would appreciate
it if you paid attention to my posts, and discussed the subject matter
contained therein, if you respond to them.
Again, not the intent. But this discussion seemed to focus on the
aether so it seemed appropriate to rename the thread. In fact, the
title almost guarantees that the thread will "die" since this is a
taboo subject in the mainstream arena.
Paul Stowe
Gerhart Hlawatsch
Greg Shetler wrote:
>
>snip
>
> Science is a method for determining accuracy of a model for a specific
> observed behavior. Scientists are people who use the scientific method
> to examine their models. Ideas that are inconsistent with observed fact
> are immediately discarded by the scientific method as invalid. Ideas
> that conflict with established models must make testable predictions
> before they can be considered to be rival models. Without testable
> predictions, a model cannot be subject to the scientific method, and are
> therefore not "scientific ideas".
> snip
I agree with you and congratulate you for the clarity and precision
of your comment.
Though, I'd like to add that scientific truth finding usually is often
not going the straight path as described by you. Many results stem from
experiments searching for different answers. I'd like to remind you
of the detection of the x-rays by K. Roentgen to state one of many
examples.
Therefore, accpting a certain degree of chaoticizm in the path of
scientific work should be valid, and may be a fruitful accessory
for scientific workers.
As this is an art, I will take my freedom
to reject crazy ideas by others. I think, it is not unfair to
concentrate on concepts that better fit my taste, as long as I
am residing in the meta layer of crazy thoughts. Others have
the same right. Complaining about ignorance - in addition - is
a poor-minded "sales strategy".
Gerhart
Greg Shetler
Paul Stowe wrote:
[snip discussion of interpretation of posts]
> Again, not the intent. But this discussion seemed to focus on the
> aether so it seemed appropriate to rename the thread. In fact, the
> title almost guarantees that the thread will "die" since this is a
> taboo subject in the mainstream arena.
>
> Paul Stowe
Thank you for your civility, Mr. Stowe. It is not often displayed on
newsgroups, which is unfortunate.
I, too, would like to see some of the data available on the experiments
done to date in order to investigate the existence of an ether according
to various theories.
I would also like to see some *real* ether theories, as well. By
*real*, I mean a mathematical model for the interaction of the ether and
matter and energy, as opposed to a collection of rambling postulates and
visualization schemes that produce no testable predictions.
Unfortunately, the web page that was posted to this newsgroup was nearly
useless in that regard.
Greg Shetler
Greg Shetler
Alan Pendleton wrote:
>
> Frankly, I fail to see the difference. Lorentz aether theory (LET), which
> was actually first enunciated by Poincare, makes the same predictions as
> SR. There is no prediction of LET which is not borne out by experiment.
>
Um, are you sure about this? I thought that LET postulates an ether
that is fixed in place, infinitely rigid, but compressible. That
implies that there is an Absolute Frame of reference at rest with
respect to the Ether. That Frame of reference should be determinable,
but so far we've seen no indication that such a frame exists. Right?
Can somebody correct this statement, if it's wrong?
> Alan Pendleton
r...@pantheon.global
Here's one: F(sub)Q=(qQ/r^3)[(V.r)v-(M/m)(v.r)V-(v.V)r]
Not mine. Is basis of unified field. Would appreciate comments.
Red
--
Pantheon Unarmed Militia
A valid and rational solution to our nations problems
To participate visit this site and reply to the e-mail link
http://members.tripod.com/~PantheonGlobal/
Hermital
On Tue 1/20/98 10:42 -0600 Greg Shetler wrote:
> I would also like to see some *real* ether theories, as well. By
> *real*, I mean a mathematical model for the interaction of the ether and
> matter and energy, as opposed to a collection of rambling postulates and
> visualization schemes that produce no testable predictions.
> Unfortunately, the web page that was posted to this newsgroup was nearly
> useless in that regard.
>
Try the links at at URL http://magna.com.au/~prfbrown/aether.html
Greg Shetler
r...@pantheon.global wrote:
>
>
> Here's one: F(sub)Q=(qQ/r^3)[(V.r)v-(M/m)(v.r)V-(v.V)r]
>
> Not mine. Is basis of unified field. Would appreciate comments.
>
This needs some additional info to be clear. I am assuming that you are
stating that the force between two charged objects of mass m and M, with
charge q and Q, separated by a distance r, and moving at velocities v
and V with respect to ether is F(sub)Q.
Questions:
1) in what reference frame is the velocity wrt to the ether zero?
2) (related to 1) how do you propose to measure the velocity wrt the
ether?
3) You *do* realize, that if the velocities wrt to the ether of these
two charged objects is zero, there is no force? This also implies that
if they are rest wrt each other, the force between them varies directly
with their velocity wrt to the ether. a) Is this how you propose to
measure the ether velocity? b) Why is there no apparent variation of
the Coulomb force based on time of day the measurement is taken? Is the
ether at rest wrt to the surface of the earth? If so, why does the
Coulomb force continue to be felt between charged objects at rest wrt
each other?
4) The equation appears to state that the force felt between two moving
electrons is significantly different from the force felt by a moving
electron and a moving proton (due to the mass terms being included).
Why is that?
Greg
Owleye
In article <884715378....@dejanews.com> ,
mahipa...@orbital.fsd.com writes:
> Ideas are not people.
> Crank ideas don't originate solely from crank people.
> Good ideas don't imply the orginators are sane.
Owleye here...
You may have a point here. Ouspensky comes to mind. There are three
hurdles to overcome. Idea, agreement, and acceptance. Agreement
requires patience, if not funds, while acceptance involves persuasion,
which involves politics, and so forth (a la Foucoult). Insofar as we
have ideas galore, (especially I see them on the Internet) discrimination
and censorship undoubtedly occur. But have you given an argument that it
should be otherwise? While Kuhn points out that mavericks are the source
of new ideas, the idea has to account for something that has otherwise
been overlooked and not accounted for properly in the accepted paradigm.
Further, the idea has to be so explosive as to cause chaos in the ranks
of current theoreticians.
r...@pantheon.global
Greg Shetler <she...@rtis.ray.com> wrote:
>r...@pantheon.global wrote:
>>
>>
>> Here's one: F(sub)Q=(qQ/r^3)[(V.r)v-(M/m)(v.r)V-(v.V)r]
>>
>> Not mine. Is basis of unified field. Would appreciate comments.
>>
>
>This needs some additional info to be clear. I am assuming that you are
>stating that the force between two charged objects of mass m and M, with
>charge q and Q, separated by a distance r, and moving at velocities v
>and V with respect to ether is F(sub)Q.
The absolute motion of the aether is not involved. The rest frame is lab
rest frame.
For gravity this formulae is derived: F=-(qQ/r^3)(v.V)r
Which indicates that it is the relative velocities of the charged
particles that developes gravity. These particles must be moving in
parallel.
>
>Questions:
>1) in what reference frame is the velocity wrt to the ether zero?
>2) (related to 1) how do you propose to measure the velocity wrt the
>ether?
>3) You *do* realize, that if the velocities wrt to the ether of these
>two charged objects is zero, there is no force?
This also implies that
>if they are rest wrt each other, the force between them varies directly
>with their velocity wrt to the ether. a) Is this how you propose to
>measure the ether velocity?
This is not mine. It disregards the absolute movement of aether, if there
is such a thing. This is the em component. There are also gravitons as
actors, not listed in the equation. But are activated by this em action.
b) Why is there no apparent variation of
>the Coulomb force based on time of day the measurement is taken? Is the
>ether at rest wrt to the surface of the earth? If so, why does the
>Coulomb force continue to be felt between charged objects at rest wrt
>each other?
>4) The equation appears to state that the force felt between two moving
>electrons is significantly different from the force felt by a moving
>electron and a moving proton (due to the mass terms being included).
>Why is that?
>
>Greg
It is a formulae from which all the other electrodynamic principles can
be derived.
Alan Pendleton
> Alan Pendleton wrote:
> > There is no prediction of LET which is not borne out by experiment.
>
> Um, are you sure about this? I thought that LET postulates an ether
> that is fixed in place, infinitely rigid, but compressible.
Compressible or incompressible? I forget.
> That
> implies that there is an Absolute Frame of reference at rest with
> respect to the Ether.
Yes.
> That Frame of reference should be determinable,
No. Poincare believed in the principle of relativity, and was the first to
give it its name. The absolute rest frame exists but, so it has been
thought, is not detectable due to the interaction of Lorentz contraction,
clock slowing and the effect formerly known as relativistic mass increase.
(What do they call it nowadays?)
> but so far we've seen no indication that such a frame exists.
[Cranky part begins here]
Well, I've been analyzing the Esclangon experiment of 1927, and it looks to
me like it detected the absolute rest frame. Details later.
[End cranky part]
> Right?
There are probably many views of what LET really is and says. My view is
that LET says that Maxwell's equations hold in the aether rest frame. Then
the debate, to the extent that there is a debate, is about what are the
implications that can be drawn from this starting point. Since SR says that
Maxwell's equations hold in every frame, including the frame which LET
claims as the aether rest frame, it stands to reason that the predictions
of both theories must be identical. (Assuming that LET and SR are each
internally consistent.)
Alan Pendleton
me...@cars3.uchicago.edu
In article <6a412e$f...@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net>, "Alan Pendleton" <alanpe...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>
>No. Poincare believed in the principle of relativity, and was the first to
>give it its name. The absolute rest frame exists but, so it has been
>thought, is not detectable due to the interaction of Lorentz contraction,
>clock slowing and the effect formerly known as relativistic mass increase.
>(What do they call it nowadays?)
>
exists but is not detectable and something that doesn't exist at all.
Mati Meron | "When you argue with a fool,
me...@cars.uchicago.edu | chances are he is doing just the same"
Paul Stowe
PS: Paul Stowe wrote:
GS: Greg Shether
[snip discussion of interpretation of posts]
PS: Again, not the intent. But this discussion seemed to focus on the
aether so it seemed appropriate to rename the thread. In fact, the
title almost guarantees that the thread will "die" since this is a
taboo subject in the mainstream arena.
GS: I, too, would like to see some of the data available on the
experiments done to date in order to investigate the existence of an
ether according to various theories.
GS: I would also like to see some *real* ether theories, as well. By
*real*, I mean a mathematical model for the interaction of the ether
and matter and energy, as opposed to a collection of rambling
postulates and visualization schemes that produce no testable
predictions. Unfortunately, the web page that was posted to this
newsgroup was nearly useless in that regard.
Yep, but it is interesting to note that I've posted both the background
discussion of a medium model and new empirical relationships that were
suggested from the model and have been resoundly ignored. Here are
some examples in the MKS system:
k = ue/2a
where k is Boltzmann's constant, u is permeability, e is elemental
charge, and a is alpha the fine structure constant. Yep, this single
equation could be a fluke but,
k = h/ec
where h is Planck's constant and c is light speed
Also a fluke? Now we'll note that these equations don't come out in
the standard units of Boltzmann's term, indeed we can't get rid of
Coulombs. That's where the model comes in, for the first time, to my
knowledge, this model resolves Coulombs by a simply definition of
charge, while showing it to be both fundamental AND necessary for any
compressible medium. Listen very carefully, charge is the measure of
divergence of the medium's momentum (p) property. i.e
e = Div p
and resolves the units to kg/sec.
So, if this definition is correct we get both of the above and the
charge to mass ratio defines a form of frequency in (nu) hertzs
(kg/sec/kg = 1/sec). So, given that:
E = h(nu) = 3kT and nu = e/m
For the electron when you solve for T you get 2.8 degrees K, just
another coincidence?
Now divergence is the measure of either, the inflow into a volume
element, or the out flow from a volume element. It would be exactly
zero if, and only if, the medium is absolutely incompressible. But
note that inflow is opposite to outflow and the divergence says both
are occurring! This means that any compressible medium must have a
fluctuating density/momentum at every point in it. Gee, sounds like
wave motion to me, and check it out, this is called self generated
white noise. The governing equation is an old friend, the linear
harmonic oscillator:
nu = 1/2pi Sqrt(K/m)
Where K is the spring constant and m is the mass in oscillation. Thus
m(nu) = 1/2pi Sqrt(Km) = kg/sec
so then we would expect that, if e is this, it should have the same
form, and indeed we get:
e = 1/2pi Sqrt(h[eps]c/1.73) Note 1.73 is actually Sqrt(3)
Where eps is permittivity.
Now this value is slightly higher than the published value (by .1005%).
But given this model will also give us the Newtonian force equation for
gravity, I think it certainly has merit.
Well, maybe this fulfills request for an aether model that has
mathematical correlations.
Paul Stowe
Alan Pendleton
In article <En4FE...@midway.uchicago.edu> Mati Meron wrote:
>[Alan Pendleton:]
>>No. Poincare believed in the principle of relativity, and was the first
to
>>give it its name. The absolute rest frame exists but, so it has been
>>thought, is not detectable due to the interaction of Lorentz contraction,
>>clock slowing and the effect formerly known as relativistic mass
increase.
>>(What do they call it nowadays?)
>
>There is absolutely no difference in physics between something that
>exists but is not detectable and something that doesn't exist at all.
What you say is true, given that you added the qualifier "in physics,"
meaning, presumably, physics of the modern sort. I’m happy to hear that
physicists have absolute opinions about metaphysics, even if they have
no such absolute opinions about physical phenomena.
Here is the difference: Something that doesn’t exist can never under
any circumstances be detected. Something that exists but is not
detectable *today* might be detectable tomorrow with better technology
or (heh, heh) better analysis of experiments already done.
The villain Ernst Mach could have made the exact same argument against
the existence of atoms, and probably did, that you make today against
the existence of aether. We should have learned from his mistake; but
we did not.
I know that Poincare considered the possibility that the principle of
relativity was *rigorously* true. Whether he believed it was true, or
merely considered it a possibility, I don’t know. An interesting
historical question which perhaps one of our Poincare scholars could
answer.
If the PoR is rigorously true, then we will never be able to detect the
absolute rest frame. If the PoR is only approximately true, or if it is
false, then we will.
The odd thing is, that despite their apparent formal identity, LET can
survive the failure of the PoR, while SR cannot. As I’ve said many
times before, SR derives an exact formula for the velocity of light in
a moving medium and will not survive if that formula is experimentally
falsified by even the tiniest amount, because any tiny discrepancy
necessarily can be used to locate the preferred frame. In LET, if we
drop the PoR, we can allow experiment to tell us what the formula is.
My desire to let experiment tell us what’s true, rather than to pick
out postulates which tell the experiments what to do, marks me as a
pre-modern. Sorry about that.
More interesting still (given the subject of this thread) is the
question of whether the system <Maxwell’s equations + laws of optics +
PoR> is internally consistent. May the ghost of Herbert Dingle forgive
me for ever doubting him: I suspect it is not.
Alan Pendleton
me...@cars3.uchicago.edu
In article <6a6ik7$j...@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net>, "Alan Pendleton" <alanpe...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>In article <En4FE...@midway.uchicago.edu> Mati Meron wrote:
>>[Alan Pendleton:]
>>>No. Poincare believed in the principle of relativity, and was the first
>to
>>>give it its name. The absolute rest frame exists but, so it has been
>>>thought, is not detectable due to the interaction of Lorentz contraction,
>>>clock slowing and the effect formerly known as relativistic mass
>increase.
>>>(What do they call it nowadays?)
>>
>>There is absolutely no difference in physics between something that
>>exists but is not detectable and something that doesn't exist at all.
>
>What you say is true, given that you added the qualifier "in physics,"
>meaning, presumably, physics of the modern sort. I’m happy to hear that
>physicists have absolute opinions about metaphysics, even if they have
>no such absolute opinions about physical phenomena.
>
>Here is the difference: Something that doesn’t exist can never under
>any circumstances be detected. Something that exists but is not
>detectable *today* might be detectable tomorrow with better technology
>or (heh, heh) better analysis of experiments already done.
>
term "not detectable", not "cannot be detected today". I must
conclude that either the meaning of words you use isn't clear to you
or you just don't care what you say.
Todd Desiato
Paul Stowe <pst...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in article
<6a6aff$d...@dfw-ixnews6.ix.netcom.com>...
I would like to show that this is correct. First energy in Joules can be
expressed
E (joules) = Kg-m^2/s^2 = Co * Volts
In the model a fundamental unit of length is s = sqrt(h/e), so h/e has
units of
Volt-sec = m^2
so
Kg-Volt/sec = Co - Volts
and
Co = Kg/sec
As a check we see that Volts = Co/Farads, so
Joules/Co = Co/Fd = Kg/sec-Fd
so
Fd = Kg^2/Joule-sec^2 = Kg/m^2
which is indeed a way of expressing energy stored on a surface plate.
R...@pantheon.global
"Alan Pendleton" <alanpe...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>What you say is true, given that you added the qualifier "in physics,"
>meaning, presumably, physics of the modern sort. I’m happy to hear that
>physicists have absolute opinions about metaphysics, even if they have
>no such absolute opinions about physical phenomena.
>
>Here is the difference: Something that doesn’t exist can never under
>any circumstances be detected. Something that exists but is not
>detectable *today* might be detectable tomorrow with better technology
>or (heh, heh) better analysis of experiments already done.
>
>The villain Ernst Mach could have made the exact same argument against
>the existence of atoms, and probably did, that you make today against
>the existence of aether. We should have learned from his mistake; but
>we did not.
>
>I know that Poincare considered the possibility that the principle of
>relativity was *rigorously* true. Whether he believed it was true, or
>merely considered it a possibility, I don’t know. An interesting
>historical question which perhaps one of our Poincare scholars could
>answer.
>
>If the PoR is rigorously true, then we will never be able to detect the
>absolute rest frame. If the PoR is only approximately true, or if it is
>false, then we will.
Does time stop at the event horizon? If this were really true, or if it
even slowed down significantly, would this not make the apparent mass of
the singularity grow far faster than ingestion of matter would account
for? Would not a singularity be so massive at the event horizon that it
would be 'nailed' to absolute rest. That it would not be able to orbit
anything, or even to move. Because any thrust times no time is no
movement.
Can time appear to stop to us, looking at an object falling into the
gravity well, but still have, as a whole system, normal inertial
characteristics?
>
>Alan Pendleton
Greg Shetler
r...@pantheon.global wrote:
>
> It is a formulae from which all the other electrodynamic principles can
> be derived.
>
You state this with such assurance, after disclaiming that the formula
is not yours, and failing to answer my questions:
1) There are two velocities in the formula. If those are measured wrt
to the lab frame, as you claim, how can you get EM forces between
charged objects that are both at rest wrt to the lab frame?
2) How do you reconcile the formula with the fact that the EM force
between electrons is identical in magnitude to the EM force between an
electron and a proton, despite the M/m term in your formula?
And a new question: If the velocities are supposed to be taken wrt to
the lab frame, what will you see when two labs measure the same force -
one lab at rest wrt to the earth's surface, and one lab orbiting the
earth's surface. From your formula, they will see different forces
acting on the charged objects, even with very low relative velocities.
> Red
Greg
Greg Shetler
Paul Stowe wrote:
> Yep, but it is interesting to note that I've posted both the background
> discussion of a medium model and new empirical relationships that were
> suggested from the model and have been resoundly ignored. Here are
> some examples in the MKS system:
>
> k = ue/2a
[snip rest of post]
> Well, maybe this fulfills request for an aether model that has
> mathematical correlations.
>
> Paul Stowe
Almost, Paul, but not really. You are doing what I have sometimes
referred to as 'numerology'. You are playing games with ratios of
fundamental constants, but not really describing *why* you are playing
those games. You ask the question 'coincidence?' in the same fashion as
do sensational journalists looking for scandals.
A proper model will posit some structure, then derive equations from
that structure that cover known behaviors, then derive equations from
that structure that predict unknown, testable, behaviors. I don't see
equations of motion coming from your model, nor any other descriptive
equations. All I see is clever manipulation of numeric values, coupled
to in incorrect assumption that e=Div p, and that the existence of
divergence means both inflow and outflow at all points, and that such
paired inflow and outflow must mean harmonic motion.
Consider a pipe with fluid flowing through it. Any volume of the pipe
has both inflow and outflow. Therefore, Div p=0 (i.e. no source). The
same thing happens if that fluid is oscillating back and forth in the
pipe. Div p <>0 does *not* mean both inflow and outflow. It means
*only* one or the other.
Sorry. It's clever math games, but not a model for ether or anything
else.
Greg
R...@pantheon.global
Greg Shetler <she...@rtis.ray.com> wrote:
>r...@pantheon.global wrote:
>>
>> It is a formulae from which all the other electrodynamic principles can
>> be derived.
>>
>
>You state this with such assurance, after disclaiming that the formula
>is not yours, and failing to answer my questions:
If you want to take the time ask Dr Aspden at
http://www.energyscience.co.uk/
He has a ten step tutorial and this is taken from tutorial number 4.
I welcome your comments.
Red
>
>1) There are two velocities in the formula. If those are measured wrt
>to the lab frame, as you claim, how can you get EM forces between
>charged objects that are both at rest wrt to the lab frame?
>
>2) How do you reconcile the formula with the fact that the EM force
>between electrons is identical in magnitude to the EM force between an
>electron and a proton, despite the M/m term in your formula?
>
>And a new question: If the velocities are supposed to be taken wrt to
>the lab frame, what will you see when two labs measure the same force -
>one lab at rest wrt to the earth's surface, and one lab orbiting the
>earth's surface. From your formula, they will see different forces
>acting on the charged objects, even with very low relative velocities.
>
>
>Greg
Paul Stowe
GS: Greg Shetler writes:
PS: Paul Stowe wrote:
PS: Yep, but it is interesting to note that I've posted both the
background discussion of a medium model and new empirical relationships
that were suggested from the model and have been resoundly ignored.
Here are some examples in the MKS system:
k = ue/2a
[snip rest of post]
Well, maybe this fulfills request for an aether model that has
mathematical correlations.
GS: Almost, Paul, but not really. You are doing what I have sometimes
referred to as 'numerology'. ...
From Compton's Interactive Dictionary the definition of Numerology is:
"numerology (n m r al je, ny -) n. [[< L numerus , NUMBER + -LOGY]]
a system of occultism built around numbers, esp. those giving birth
dates, those which are the sum of the letters in one's name, etc.;
divination by numbers"
Which is what I too thought that this term meant too.
I take offense to this charge. I did not "play" with relationships to
establish them. I do have a physical model, which I found out after
developing, was congruent with Maxwell's model. There ARE NO
arbitrary scaling constants in the equations posted and these have
specific physical units will not match current theory without the key
definition provided. But given that definition match perfectly. So
this charge is patently unfounded! That I did not post the whole
definition of the theory was for brevity, and with the assumption
(there's that ass/u/me again) that it was clearly understood that we
were discussing a physical medium model (aether) and all that this
implied.
Such a physical medium on the macro level is encompassed by continuum
mechanics and the vector/tensor mathematics developed to describe same.
On the micro level we have Boltzmann's/Maxwell's kinetic theory and
the physical properties inherent therein, including fundamental
particles with momentum, energy, and velocity.
GS: ... You are playing games with ratios of fundamental constants,
but not really describing *why* you are playing those games. You ask
the question 'coincidence?' in the same fashion as do sensational
journalists looking for scandals.
Really, I suppose you've never heard of the thermal-electric effect.
You've demonstrated by your tact that you don't come to this discussion
with anything close to an open attitude. You haven't even come close
to the "right" questions, such as, "if this were right, what is the
units of temperature?" and "does these proposed units make any sense?".
For you see, any really new physical model IS suppose to lead to NEW
relationships, suggested by same. In this sense, if I'm "doing
numerology" I stand in good stead with the great physicist of the past.
GS: A proper model will posit some structure, then derive equations
from that structure that cover known behaviors, then derive equations
from that structure that predict unknown, testable, behaviors. I don't
see equations of motion coming from your model, nor any other
descriptive equations. All I see is clever manipulation of numeric
values, coupled to in incorrect assumption that e=Div p, and that the
existence of divergence means both inflow and outflow at all points,
and that such paired inflow and outflow must mean harmonic motion.
This is implicit, and again, I "assumed" that you understood that this
was the foundation.
GS: Consider a pipe with fluid flowing through it. Any volume of the
pipe has both inflow and outflow. Therefore, Div p=0 (i.e. no source).
You're dead wrong here and from the above description it is very clear
that you do not understand the very definition of Divergence.
Divergence is a SCALAR that defines the NET inflow (compression) or
outflow (rarefaction) of a differential volume element through the
surface of said volume (that is normal to said surface, at all points
over the volume). It can be zero IF, AND ONLY IF, the medium is
INCOMPRESSIBLE. This is very easy to see and understand, so think
about it carefully.
GS: The same thing happens if that fluid is oscillating back and forth
in the pipe. Div p <>0 does *not* mean both inflow and outflow. It
means *only* one or the other.
Also irrelevant to the definition of divergence. I do suggest you look
up the term "self generated noise" as applied to compressible mediums.
But you are correct, it can't be both at the same time. I've never
indicated it was.
GS: Sorry. It's clever math games, but not a model for ether or
anything else.
Wrong on all counts. When it becomes clear that a person has an
attitude this is clearly demonstrable to be unwilling or unable to look
at an issue without bias, it simply is not worth pursuing. Sometime,
someone will take the true scientific approach and say, "let's see
where this <add here any new concept> could lead" until it is clearly
in conflict with (falsified by) known physical processes, the
investigation and exploration is what its all about. When one take the
attitude, "I already know this" they simply stop having an open mind
and it is the death knoll to any learning process.
Good Day Sir,
Paul Stowe
Joe Kalash
> BTW, SR is falsified by any gravitational experiment, because for
> gravity we need GR. GR is falsified by any quantum experiment, because
> there is no theory of relativistic quantum gravity.
You know, the main reason I read this group is for the enjoyment I get
from reading the clueless who post here. They do nothing but amaze me.
This one is so jaw dropping, I just had to let everyone share it again.
--
Joe Kalash
StarNine Technologies, Inc.
kal...@starnine.com
R...@pantheon.global
Obviously the fella is right, though, because you did not refute his
argument, but attacked him. This is, of course, typical GS rating
debunking.<S>
Red
Alan Pendleton
>>>>not detectable ...
[Meron:]
>>>There is absolutely no difference in physics between something that
>>>exists but is not detectable and something that doesn't exist at all.
>
[my response snipped]
>
>The text above, both your statement and my response, clearly use the
>term "not detectable", not "cannot be detected today". I must
>conclude that either the meaning of words you use isn't clear to you
>or you just don't care what you say.
On the contrary. I care what I say. It is the defenders of relativity,
not necessarily you, who lack clarity on this matter. The phrase "not
detectable" is used to mean "not detectable under any circumstances,
imaginable or unimaginable" in the context of metaphysical statements
such as yours above, but imperceptibly shifts to "not detectable today"
when the discussion turns to the evidence for relativity and why it is a
better theory than LET.
I suppose it is time for me to lighten up. The majority of my recent
posts seem to have caused offense. Each of my attacks was meant to be
directed at the physics profession as a whole, not at individuals, even
when names were named. If I attack Mr. A for believing X, when 99% of
physicists believe X, that is meant to be a criticism not of Mr. A
personally, but of the 99%, who surely can find comfort in the strength
of their numbers. Of course, I now see, this has not been at all obvious
to the targets. My prose has become more strident, more harsh over the
months, without my being really aware of it, in my frustration at
finding the majority of you to be uninterested in the experimental
foundations of relativity, but still able write dozens of posts
explaining why the "twin paradox" is not a paradox (agree), why it is
not necessary to put a clock on the Mir (agree), why Sagnac is not a
problem for SR (agree), etc. and etc. and have enough time left over to
speculate vacuously on what might motivate crackpots.
My identification with the crackpot class has been a calculated risk.
The downside: (1) Most of you write off whatever I say as the raving of
a lunatic; Mr. Urban confirmed that for me just today. (2) I will never,
ever be offered a job in physics, for as long as SR is still breathing.
The upside: (1) Well, it’s been fun; I get to make outrageous statements
(all true, or so I thought at the time of writing) and have hundreds of
people read them. (2) It’s been educational, this exploration of the
soft underbelly of relativity theory. As Sherlock Holmes remarked in
another context, the dog didn’t bark: despite ample opportunity, none of
you have been able to show that there is no aether. I suspected you
couldn’t from the beginning; otherwise why is the argument not neatly
laid out in the textbooks? (3) I get stuff in the mail, unsolicited;
this is how I first heard of Esclangon. And, last but not least (4) I am
sure that there are lurkers out there: they are reading the papers that
I and others have mentioned; they are thinking about what those papers
might mean; and late at night, with the shades drawn, unwilling to take
you into their confidence, they are working out 21st century physics.
Since November I have harped on, every chance I got, a possible
experimentally observable difference between LET and SR. In all that
time only one person, from the vast pool of mainstreamers and dissidents
who play here, has indicated to me that he even understood what I was
talking about. That was by private email.
In the months since I first heard of it, I have mentioned numerous times
an experiment the results of which were published in 1927 [E. Esclangon,
C.R.A.S. 185, 1593 (1927)]. This experiment, if taken at face value,
falsifies special relativity. It could be repeated today for about
$1000. Only a few have shown any interest in this. Only one, to my
knowledge, had enough interest to read the paper before I put it up on
the web.
Everyone thinks, as far as I can see, that special relativity is a
package deal. Particle accelerators work. The GPS system works. Pulsars
blink at the predicted rate. Hundreds of experiments support SR. So what
if two or three don’t? We pile the papers on a balance scale. We look at
the dial. The hundred weigh more than the two or three. See? Nothing to
worry about.
You are a very smart guy, Mr. Meron. I agree with almost everything you
write. You know very well how science is done, and you also know how it
should be done. What about the two or three? Should someone look at
them, or not?
LET was originally derived, by Poincare, by postulating the principle of
relativity. Once derived, it can stand on its own without the PoR. It
should be considered a viable theory, separate from SR, as yet
uncontradicted by experiment.
Alan Pendleton
Jim Hunter
Bernard Leong wrote:
>
> After some thought, I have finally come up with a scientific theory of
> crackpots. I welcome all crackpots, philosophers or real scientists to
> debunk me on my "crackpot" theory.
>
[snip]
> 2) Crackpot 2 = The Relative Universe Hypothesis
>
> CI = 200 * 100 * S
>
> This crackpot theory has higher points than the first one. First of all, the
> originator of this theory uses obscure terms to illustrate his theory. The
> reason why it is labelled as a crackpot theory : it does not agree with
> experiment, and it predicts no new results, worse no mathematical arguments.
> It seems to me that it is more like a philosophy argument. I dun kniow
> whether philosophers have an alternative index for labelling crackpots or
> maybe they might accept it as a formal theory.
These type of theories aren't theories of anything. If you can
get these people to translate their pseudo-science into plain english,
you'll end up with "theories" of what the color blue looks like, and
"theories" of what words sound like. These are concepts for which no
theory should be required for the normal person. But some people
require theories of thinking before they'll assume it logically
justifiable to execute a thought.
ale2
In article <kalash-2301...@boris.starnine.com>
kal...@starnine.com (Joe Kalash) writes:
>
> > BTW, SR is falsified by any gravitational experiment, because for
> > gravity we need GR. GR is falsified by any quantum experiment, because
> > there is no theory of relativistic quantum gravity.
>
> You know, the main reason I read this group is for the enjoyment I get
> from reading the clueless who post here. They do nothing but amaze me.
> This one is so jaw dropping, I just had to let everyone share it again.
The person in question is not so clueless. He knows that SR only
applies when there is no mass-energy around, and second knows that
there is no quantum theory of gravitation.
You could have found a better example of cluelessness.
Ross Tessien
In article <6aavvk$p...@sjx-ixn8.ix.netcom.com>, pst...@ix.netcom.co
says...
>
>GS: Greg Shetler writes:
>PS: Paul Stowe wrote:
>
>GS: A proper model will posit some structure, then derive equations
>from that structure that cover known behaviors, then derive equations
>from that structure that predict unknown, testable, behaviors. I don't
>see equations of motion coming from your model, nor any other
>descriptive equations. All I see is clever manipulation of numeric
>values, coupled to in incorrect assumption that e=Div p, and that the
>existence of divergence means both inflow and outflow at all points,
>and that such paired inflow and outflow must mean harmonic motion.
>
>This is implicit, and again, I "assumed" that you understood that this
>was the foundation.
>
>GS: Consider a pipe with fluid flowing through it. Any volume of the
>pipe has both inflow and outflow. Therefore, Div p=0 (i.e. no source).
>
>You're dead wrong here and from the above description it is very clear
>that you do not understand the very definition of Divergence.
>Divergence is a SCALAR that defines the NET inflow (compression) or
>outflow (rarefaction) of a differential volume element through the
>surface of said volume (that is normal to said surface, at all points
>over the volume). It can be zero IF, AND ONLY IF, the medium is
>INCOMPRESSIBLE. This is very easy to see and understand, so think
>about it carefully.
I will give you both a few of the many observable consequences I have
found that must exist if what we think of as matter is instead, solitonic
waveforms in aether. And, I show you the things we have in fact observed
in our universe, which match what you expect from this model. Finally, I
show you that in each place what I expect occurs, physicists using the
particle model are confused, and a mystery exists and has persisted for a
long time. I say, the particle model where it is believed that mass is
equivalent to energy is incorrect, and for as long as that notion is
included in physical models, they will fail to anticipate the actual
observed behavior of stars. I don't have time to list the 30 some odd
examples I have now accumulated, but below are a few of them.
Regarding PS' last statement, Paul, couldn't you have a differential
volume in the aether where the aether is co-moving, and thus there is over
some small time interval, no divergence across the boundary of the
differential element? ie, if you have a spherical resonance, a soliton
structure, at the center of convergence there is some tiny spherical
differential volume, say, at the Planck scale at about E-35 meters in
diameter. Thus, if that soliton is resonant, then aether converges into
and out of, the volume cyclicly.
But, that means that there is some time when the momentum is reversing,
and so for some tiny dt --> 0 , there is no fluid flow across the boundary
as the fluid flow transitions from convergent to divergent flow.
Now, as for predictions as requested above, treat sub atomic matter as
solitonic obeying the KdV equations and using a spherically resonant
solitonic wave form to represent Leptons, ie electron muon tauon.
then, use 9 muon resonances coupled in a donut shaped torus, similar to
the diagram on the blackboard with Penrose in front in his book with
Hawking, "The Nature of Space and Time". Three muon's in three groups
where each group of 3 is a "quark".
Now, when you fuse nucleons and lose mass in the particle model, you have
to be emitting the aether in the solitonic model. Thus, there is a
divergence of the aether directed out of the sun. ie, in a solitonic
model, mass is not *equivalent* to energy, rather energy is aether in
motion and mass is a measure of how much aether is associated with a given
motion. But, what we think of as empty space is also an ocean of massive
aether into which fusion reactions dump their mass emissions. This leads
to observable consequences.
If this is so, then it should be observable in stellar phenomena because
such a divergence will induce a spacetime distortion, equal to the
gravitational compression. In other words, if this were so, then the mass
of the sun would have to be **2** solar masses, as the KE of the particles
aka solitons provides buoyancy, AND the flow of aether out of the sun
would also provide an equal buoyancy.
Thus, we should anticipate gravitational wave like phenomena to manifest
if there is any change in the luminosity of a star. We should expect that
anomalous phenomena manifest the instant the star ignites. We should
expect that the flow of aether out of the star leads to an anomalous
acceleration as the aether exits the solar interior and we have an aether
pressure drop as the aether exits what is essentially a fluidized bed of
particles, thus that pressure drop and aether acceleration should induce
an *****inertial***** acceleration of the matter involved.
We see, jets shooting out of new born stars along the axis of rotation
(the path of least resistance to aether flow), waves called slow or silent
earthquakes on earth, the solar corona is a thousand times hotter than the
photosphere beneath it despite a better view factor to distant cold space,
a heat sink. We see that O and H ions in the corona have been heated to
the same **velocity dispersion** which is just an accidental quirk if you
use magnetic fields to accelerate the ions (1:16 and 1:8 vs 1:1 charge to
mass ratios for the O and H ions respectively). Thus, if both ions have
the same velocity dispersions, they are NOT in thermal equilibrium and so
why did they get those same velocity dispersions from the heating
mechanism, is it an accident or is it an inertial acceleration mechanism?
If you study resonances, then it becomes clear that two oscillators can
become coupled. The sun is known to have all sorts of acoustic waves
inside, but it is not supposed that these motions of matter betray the
flow dynamics of the aether headed out of the sun. Some of those acoustic
motions just happen to be a harmonic of the earths rotational period. So
the question then arises, "could the earth's rotational period be coupled
to the solar acoustics due to the sun emitting waves of aether, which
would be interpreted by today's physicists as gravitational waves?
The earths orbit is elliptical, so we can make a prediction. As the earth
is moving from winter solstice toward summer solstice, the earth moves
further away from the sun, so the incident waves should be Doppler shifted
to the red. And from summer to winter, the opposite with a blue shifting
of the waves coupled to the earths orbital period.
So, we should see the earth's rotation slow in spring and speed up in the
fall, a tiny bit.
Well, we do. (it is attributed to leaves growing and falling to the
ground in the Northern hemisphere).
Next, if we consider a node on the surface of the earth, such that the
earth is being gently compressed and released by the incident aether waves
in lock step with the suns emissions, we can now combine the above notion
with the inclination of the earth, and predict the line along which the
earths crust should be weakened.
When you combine the tilt of the earth, with the precession of the earths
libration relative to the sun's wave phase angle, you find that the
precession of an acoustic node goes from south east up toward north west
and then back again as you move around the earths elliptical orbit.
When we look at the weaknesses of the earth's plates, we find that the
major plates and volcanic regions are indeed along lines from the south
east to the north west, ie, consider the line of the west coast of the
America's to see what the angle of the plate lines is like.
If you consider that fusion requires a divergence of aether, and that
spacetime is distorted along the line of the divergence, then you will
learn all sorts of places where you should expect our current theories to
cause us to expect one thing, while this aether theory tells you nature
should do another.
You can apply this to new born stars, T-tauri, and you will expect a flow
of aether along the line of least resistance, the axis. So you expect
jets to blast out. Go see, they are there, and physicists don't know why.
if you think a bit further, you will realize that the entire star should
then fluidize the volume, and you expect the whole surface to break up and
start boiling like a pot of water with steam coming out in a rolling boil.
And when you look, you find flare stars, and all manner of solar surface
phenomena like CME's flares etc.
You will expect that an increase in fluidization will begin near the poles
and work down to the equator, and you can read about the solar butterfly
pattern of sun spots.
If the reactivity goes up or down in the sun, you will expect the flow
rate of aether to go up or down too. And so you will expect the density
of "empty space" between the particles of the sun to increase and
decrease, and thus the density of the particles themselves to decrease and
increase respectively. Now you can go read the SOI information where the
sun's density changes over the solar activity cycle, despite it taking
170,000 years for thermal energy to reach the surface via Compton
scattering.
The evidence is all over the place. QM and GR have incorrectly
interpreted the equation, E = mc^2. Mass is aether, energy is aether in
motion, and energy, momentum, and mass must all be conserved, and empty
space is massive.
Go see the dark matter problem in galactic dynamics where 90 percent of
the mass of the universe is missing. It isn't missing at all, it is empty
space, or aether, or the stuff of spacetime foam, or the stuff of quantum
vacuum fluctuations, a rose by any other name............
Later, Ross Tessien
ale2
In article <34C8DBBE...@rtis.ray.com>
Greg Shetler <she...@rtis.ray.com> writes:
> Paul Stowe wrote:
> > Yep, but it is interesting to note that I've posted both the background
> > discussion of a medium model and new empirical relationships that were
> > suggested from the model and have been resoundly ignored. Here are
> > some examples in the MKS system:
> >
> > k = ue/2a
>
> [snip rest of post]
Won't the value of k change if one changes ones temperature scale, if
so the right hand side of the equation is independent of such changes.
ale2
Bernard Leong
After some thought, I have finally come up with a scientific theory of
crackpots. I welcome all crackpots, philosophers or real scientists to
debunk me on my "crackpot" theory.
I call my theory "Crackpot Theory" :
Postulate 1 : All Crackpots work in an absolute frame of reference.
Let us define a quantity called Crackpot index, CI, where
CI = Crackpot theory * Propagation of Crackpot theory * Stupidity
The CI is a relative measure of crackpot, despite from the first postulate,
they all work in the absolute frame of reference. Btw, the absolute frame of
reference, in pure common sense, means to debunk science. There are a few
things about CI, that one, the stupidity quantity is a constant, and the
crackpot theory and propagation variables that would change. The minimum
value for crackpots is 1. For non crackpots, the index will be in the
negative scale. Experimentally, it is proven from a few examples and they are
samples taken from sci.physics.relativity here :
1) Crackpot 1 = Crackpot Theory : Distance Contraction is not true
CI = 100 * 50 * S
The crackpot theory cost 100 points, which is based on the fact that this
crackpot always tell people that distance contraction is not true. He is
given only 50 points for propagtion becoz he does not change his stand only
in the newsgroup. If he like crackpot no. 2, he will gain more points.... As
defined in the quantity of S is constant, I denote it as S.
2) Crackpot 2 = The Relative Universe Hypothesis
CI = 200 * 100 * S
This crackpot theory has higher points than the first one. First of all, the
originator of this theory uses obscure terms to illustrate his theory. The
reason why it is labelled as a crackpot theory : it does not agree with
experiment, and it predicts no new results, worse no mathematical arguments.
It seems to me that it is more like a philosophy argument. I dun kniow
whether philosophers have an alternative index for labelling crackpots or
maybe they might accept it as a formal theory.
Based on this two experimental facts, I conclude that my first postulate is
correct....
Postulate 2 : They will never accept the truth.
Theorem 2 : From this postulate, since they do not accept the truth, they
distort it.
Comments : U ask them to do a derivation or produce a mathematical result,
they will hide away like cowards. This is experimentally shown in the Sagnac
Effect thread, especially by a few crackpots like H***** and A**** B****,
OB****..... The first two examples clearly proved this theorem true, hence
the postulate is correct as well.
Theorem 3 : Their motivation for debunking science in the search of truth is
never their motivation.
This theorem explains itself.... If u want me to elaborate, I will clearly
explain....
Postulate 3 : They based their truth on the so-called common sense.
The last postulate is a bit speculative. They say that because common sense
does not allow it. So, experiments that seem to indicate the scientific
theory is correct, they will declare it wrong or from theorem 2, they will
distort their version of truth.
I am still trying to perfect my theory, since I dun have a homepage to
propagate my ideas, pls follow up here....
Disclaimer :
1)The theory may not be correct, and it is subject to experimental evidence.
As far as experimental observations indicates, it seems true ...
2)The theories and names mentioned are merely labels for people who are doing
these things. Since they are always accusing the scientists for name-calling,
hence I shall use variables like crackpot 1 : the distance contraction
disprover or crackpot 2 : Relative Universe Hypothesis......
me...@cars3.uchicago.edu
In article <6adv8p$o...@bgtnsc03.worldnet.att.net>, "Alan Pendleton" <alanpe...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>In article <En68H...@midway.uchicago.edu> Mati Meron wrote:
>[Alan Pendleton:]
>>>>>... The absolute rest frame exists but, so it has been thought, is
>>>>>not detectable ...
>
>[Meron:]
>>>>There is absolutely no difference in physics between something that
>>>>exists but is not detectable and something that doesn't exist at all.
>>
>[my response snipped]
>>
>>The text above, both your statement and my response, clearly use the
>>term "not detectable", not "cannot be detected today". I must
>>conclude that either the meaning of words you use isn't clear to you
>>or you just don't care what you say.
>
>On the contrary. I care what I say. It is the defenders of relativity,
>not necessarily you, who lack clarity on this matter.
Spare me the "defenders of relativity" stuff. Relativity is not a
religion or political credo which need "defenders". It is a well
established physical theory which works amazingly well. In many of
the situations in which we apply it the results differ from those of
classical physics by many orders of magnitude. And, guess which way
the experimental evidence points? The phrase "defenders of" comes
from a standard propaganda manual and, same as the manual, belongs in
a trash bin, not in a discussion of physics.
>The phrase "not
>detectable" is used to mean "not detectable under any circumstances,
>imaginable or unimaginable" in the context of metaphysical statements
>such as yours above,
Well, that's the way I use it and ...
>but imperceptibly shifts to "not detectable today"
>when the discussion turns to the evidence for relativity and why it is a
>better theory than LET.
When you'll notice that I switched the meaning, let me know. I tend
to clearly distinguish between "not detectable" and "not detectable
today".
>My prose has become more strident, more harsh over the
>months, without my being really aware of it, in my frustration at
>finding the majority of you to be uninterested in the experimental
>foundations of relativity,
We'll tend to become more harsh when arguing with fools. That's why
we've to remind ourself all the time that they may be doing the same.
No offense intended, believe me, I'm reminding this to myself daily,
that's the purpose of my sig.
As for what you call "the experimental foundations of relativity", we
aren't returning daily to the foundations nor are they much relevant
anymore. Every new application, every measurement yielding results
conforming to relativity is a part of an ever expanding foundation.
>(2) I will never,
>ever be offered a job in physics, for as long as SR is still breathing.
>
For the type of jobs that are offered in physics nowadays, nobody asks
you whether you believe in relativity, only how good you're with a
wrench and can you work nightshifts:-)
... snip ...
>
>Everyone thinks, as far as I can see, that special relativity is a
>package deal. Particle accelerators work. The GPS system works. Pulsars
>blink at the predicted rate. Hundreds of experiments support SR. So what
>if two or three don’t? We pile the papers on a balance scale. We look at
>the dial. The hundred weigh more than the two or three. See? Nothing to
>worry about.
Well, Newtonian mechanics worked very well for 200 years till,
eventually, we got to realms where the discrepancies became obvious.
Nothing is a done and finished deal in physics and even if it is
nobody can prove it. But before we start tearing down working
theories there is need for some evidence that there is a problem. And
it should also point to the nature of the problem.
>
>You are a very smart guy, Mr. Meron. I agree with almost everything you
>write. You know very well how science is done, and you also know how it
>should be done. What about the two or three? Should someone look at
>them, or not?
If and when there are such two or three, rest assured that there are
enough tenure hungry young physicist to pounce on them.
Alan Pendleton
me...@cars3.uchicago.edu wrote in article <EnBDn...@midway.uchicago.edu>...
> For the type of jobs that are offered in physics nowadays, nobody asks
> you whether you believe in relativity, only how good you're with a
> wrench and can you work nightshifts:-)
One of the reasons I'm not too worried about spouting heresy.
> >You are a very smart guy, Mr. Meron. I agree with almost everything you
> >write. You know very well how science is done, and you also know how it
> >should be done. What about the two or three? Should someone look at
> >them, or not?
>
> If and when there are such two or three, rest assured that there are
> enough tenure hungry young physicist to pounce on them.
First they have to hear of the two or three. That is my role in this great
journey.
Alan Pendleton
Paul Stowe
Not the temperature scale (a.k.a Kelvin verses Celsius), no, but system
of units (Rankine verses Kelvin), yes. Thermodynamic evaluations are
based on the absolute temperature scales, (K)elvin in MKS, and
(R)ankine in English engineering system which are integrated into these
systems by their definitions. For example k is defined with units of
J/K and while we can easily convert this to erg/K we can't change K
because it is arbitrarly defined based on the Celsius scale of 100
units between the freezing and boiling point of water.
But, it may be possible to gain a deeper understanding of this
arbitrary definition of temperature if my derived property is correct.
In which case we find that the Kelvin, or temperature, is a measure of
the "impact" exerted by the particle which has units of kg-m/sec^3.
This makes perfect sense in terms of its common usage.
Paul Stowe
Ilja Schmelzer
me...@cars3.uchicago.edu writes:
> The fact that we've no quantum theory of gravitation means that either
> QM, GR or both are incomplete. But it has nothing to do with GR being
> falsified when you deal with QM or wise versa.
That means, classical GR is false in the quantum domain, as well as
Minkowski-QFT is false in the domain of gravity.
> Same as the fact that
> Maxwell's equations don't explain the existance of life doesn't mean
> that any time life is observed Maxwell's equations are falsified.
Not the same. The predictions of Maxwell's equations are valid in
living bodies too.
> Theory is falsified when you've results contradicting its predictions,
> not when you've results in an area where it has no predictions.
That's a different name for the same fact.
> As for SR, it is well understood that it is a limit, strictly valid
> only for flat space-time. So, again it is not falsified by gravity.
As for flat Earth theory, it is well understood that it is a limit,
valid only for a small area. So, again, it is not falsified by
spherical Earth theory.
Ilja
--
I. Schmelzer, D-10178 Berlin, Keibelstr. 38, <schm...@wias-berlin.de>
http://www.cyberpass.net/~ilja
Greg Shetler
Ilja Schmelzer wrote:
> > Theory is falsified when you've results contradicting its predictions,
> > not when you've results in an area where it has no predictions.
>
> That's a different name for the same fact.
>
Please.
Newtonian mechanics does not cover molecular interactions. But
chemistry does not invalidate classical physics.
The phrases "predictions contradicting fact" and "results in an area not
covered by prediction" are not equivalent.
Results of experiments regarding which soda the people at a mall prefer
cannot be used to validate/invalidate a theory regarding the migration
of waterfowl.
Get real.
Greg
me...@cars3.uchicago.edu
In article <i3g90s2...@fermi.wias-berlin.de>, Ilja Schmelzer <schm...@fermi.wias-berlin.de> writes:
>me...@cars3.uchicago.edu writes:
>> The fact that we've no quantum theory of gravitation means that either
>> QM, GR or both are incomplete. But it has nothing to do with GR being
>> falsified when you deal with QM or wise versa.
>
>That means, classical GR is false in the quantum domain, as well as
>Minkowski-QFT is false in the domain of gravity.
>
domain. You've theories which are valid within a limited realm. Out
of this real they don't apply. Not the same thing as false.
>> Same as the fact that
>> Maxwell's equations don't explain the existance of life doesn't mean
>> that any time life is observed Maxwell's equations are falsified.
>
>Not the same. The predictions of Maxwell's equations are valid in
>living bodies too.
>
I'll repeat, slowly. "Maxwell's equations don't explain the existance
of life." There is a difference between this and "valid in living
bodies".
>> Theory is falsified when you've results contradicting its predictions,
>> not when you've results in an area where it has no predictions.
>
>That's a different name for the same fact.
>
Most certainly not.
>> As for SR, it is well understood that it is a limit, strictly valid
>> only for flat space-time. So, again it is not falsified by gravity.
>
>As for flat Earth theory, it is well understood that it is a limit,
>valid only for a small area. So, again, it is not falsified by
>spherical Earth theory.
>
By its definition the flat Earth theory is valid for the Earth, not
just a small area. As such, it is falsified.
Paul Stowe
GS: Greg Shetler writes:
PS: Paul Stowe wrote:
RT: Ross Tessien
>>GS: A proper model will posit some structure, then derive equations
from that structure that cover known behaviors, then derive equations
from that structure that predict unknown, testable, behaviors. I don't
see equations of motion coming from your model, nor any other
descriptive equations. All I see is clever manipulation of numeric
values, coupled to in incorrect assumption that e=Div p, and that the
existence of divergence means both inflow and outflow at all points,
and that such paired inflow and outflow must mean harmonic motion.
>PS: This is implicit, and again, I "assumed" that you understood that
this was the foundation.
>>GS: Consider a pipe with fluid flowing through it. Any volume of
the pipe has both inflow and outflow. Therefore, Div p=0 (i.e. no
source).
>PS: You're dead wrong here and from the above description it is very
clear that you do not understand the very definition of Divergence.
Divergence is a SCALAR that defines the NET inflow (compression) or
outflow (rarefaction) of a differential volume element through the
surface of said volume (that is normal to said surface, at all points
over the volume). It can be zero IF, AND ONLY IF, the medium is
INCOMPRESSIBLE. This is very easy to see and understand, so think
about it carefully.
RT: I will give you both a few of the many observable consequences I
have found that must exist if what we think of as matter is instead,
solitonic waveforms in aether. And, I show you the things we have in
fact observed in our universe, which match what you expect from this
model. Finally, I show you that in each place what I expect occurs,
physicists using the particle model are confused, and a mystery exists
and has persisted for a long time. I say, the particle model where it
is believed that mass is equivalent to energy is incorrect, and for as
long as that notion is included in physical models, they will fail to
anticipate the actual observed behavior of stars. I don't have time to
list the 30 some odd examples I have now accumulated, but below are a
few of them.
RT: Regarding PS' last statement, Paul, couldn't you have a
differential volume in the aether where the aether is co-moving, and
thus there is over some small time interval, no divergence across the
boundary of the differential element? ie, if you have a spherical
resonance, a soliton structure, at the center of convergence there is
some tiny spherical differential volume, say, at the Planck scale at
about E-35 meters in diameter. Thus, if that soliton is resonant, then
aether converges into and out of, the volume cyclically.
Hi Ross,
At any scale below that of the particulate granularity (defined when
Knudsen number [Kn] > 1) the application of macroscopic properties
(field) such as divergence, grad, curl, etc. simply are no longer
valid. This is what stymied Mie when he worked on the field properties
of charge and found that there must be points in the field where such
properties vanish. As we have discussed before, I don't currently
ascribe any significance to Planck's length, time, or mass, but yes,
fluctuations which are cyclic will have instances where there is no
inflow/outflow from the point. But at scales when Green/Gauss theorems
hold, and the medium can be treated as a continuos "field", Divergence
has a very specific meaning and can only be zero when the property
under evaluation is truly constant.
RT: But, that means that there is some time when the momentum is
reversing, and so for some tiny dt --> 0 , there is no fluid flow
across the boundary as the fluid flow transitions from convergent to
divergent flow.
Yes, but this has no affect on the "defined" divergence value, which
only tell us the scalar magnitude of the variations (+ & -).
RT: Now, as for predictions as requested above, treat sub atomic
matter as solitonic obeying the KdV equations and using a spherically
resonant solitonic wave form to represent Leptons, ie electron muon
tauon.
RT: then, use 9 muon resonances coupled in a donut shaped torus,
similar to the diagram on the blackboard with Penrose in front in his
book with Hawking, "The Nature of Space and Time". Three muon's in
three groups where each group of 3 is a "quark".
Penrose's Twistor, donut shaped torus, ring vortices, back to Kelvin's
/ Maxwell's / Helmhotz's (Circa. 1865) atomic vortex hypothesis again &
again & again... Well jeez, I'm not surprised.
Paul Stowe
Etherman
me...@cars3.uchicago.edu wrote in article
<EnBDn...@midway.uchicago.edu>...
> If and when there are such two or three, rest assured that there are
> enough tenure hungry young physicist to pounce on them.
Then why have none of them pounced on the Marinov results or the
Silvertooth results (both detected absolute motion)? Or the Grenau
results (which indicate the failure of the Lorentz force law)? Or the
recent measurements of cosmological anisotropy of the propagation
of light? These are all potential paradigm busters, but await independent
replication/analysis.
--
Etherman
The Internet's sole purpose is to get porn and
bomb making plans into the hands of children.
Ilja Schmelzer
me...@cars3.uchicago.edu writes:
> >That means, classical GR is false in the quantum domain, as well as
> >Minkowski-QFT is false in the domain of gravity.
> No more so than real number arithmetics is false in the complex
> domain.
Truth and falsity in math is a completely different domain.
> You've theories which are valid within a limited realm. Out
> of this real they don't apply. Not the same thing as false.
I see no substantial difference. You can apply the theory in one
domain and get correct results, but if you try to apply it in another
domain and get wrong results. In any case, you have only an
approximation with limited accuracy.
> >> The fact that we've no quantum theory of gravitation means that either
> >> QM, GR or both are incomplete. But it has nothing to do with GR being
> >> falsified when you deal with QM or wise versa.
> >> Same as the fact that
> >> Maxwell's equations don't explain the existance of life doesn't mean
> >> that any time life is observed Maxwell's equations are falsified.
> >Not the same. The predictions of Maxwell's equations are valid in
> >living bodies too.
> I'll repeat, slowly. "Maxwell's equations don't explain the existance
> of life." There is a difference between this and "valid in living
> bodies".
And I repeat slowly: Your analogy fails. According to our theory of
life, that Maxwell's equations are valid in living bodies too. But
according to our ideas about QG, the classical Einstein equations are
invalid for quantum gravity effects.
> >> Theory is falsified when you've results contradicting its predictions,
> >> not when you've results in an area where it has no predictions.
> >That's a different name for the same fact.
> Most certainly not.
For a theory which is self-consistent and not obviously false where is
always a "domain" where the predictions are in agreement with
experiment (per definition - it contains at least the domain of
"obvious").
> >> As for SR, it is well understood that it is a limit, strictly valid
> >> only for flat space-time. So, again it is not falsified by gravity.
> >As for flat Earth theory, it is well understood that it is a limit,
> >valid only for a small area. So, again, it is not falsified by
> >spherical Earth theory.
> By its definition the flat Earth theory is valid for the Earth, not
> just a small area. As such, it is falsified.
By its definition (by Einstein, see Einstein's position about quantum
theory) GR is valid in the whole universe. As such, it is falsified.
Ilja Schmelzer
Greg Shetler <she...@rtis.ray.com> writes:
> > > Theory is falsified when you've results contradicting its predictions,
> > > not when you've results in an area where it has no predictions.
> > That's a different name for the same fact.
> covered by prediction" are not equivalent.
Ok, accepted.
But the discussion was about another question - SR as falsified by GR,
GR as falsified by the existence of quantum effects. These are
general theories. You cannot say that SR does not make predictions in
the domain of gravity, SR makes claims about all laws of nature, like
"all laws of nature are Lorentz-invariant", and it makes false
predictions for gravity.
The Einstein equations do not make much predictions about matter, they
describe only the relation between gravity and the energy-momentum
tensor of matter. A lot of different classical matter theories can be
combined with these equations. That GR does not predict them does not
falsify GR. But the energy-momentum tensor should be a c-field, not a
quantum field. A quantum energy-momentum tensor falsifies the
classical Einstein equations.
The "truth content" of GR is very high, and to name a theory "false"
simply describes a fact, is not pejorative. BTW, I think that in this
sense my own ether theory is false too.
me...@cars3.uchicago.edu
In article <i3glnw0...@fermi.wias-berlin.de>, Ilja Schmelzer <schm...@fermi.wias-berlin.de> writes:
>me...@cars3.uchicago.edu writes:
>> >That means, classical GR is false in the quantum domain, as well as
>> >Minkowski-QFT is false in the domain of gravity.
>> No more so than real number arithmetics is false in the complex
>> domain.
>
>Truth and falsity in math is a completely different domain.
>
>> You've theories which are valid within a limited realm. Out
>> of this real they don't apply. Not the same thing as false.
>
>I see no substantial difference. You can apply the theory in one
>domain and get correct results, but if you try to apply it in another
>domain and get wrong results. In any case, you have only an
>approximation with limited accuracy.
Which is certainly a problem for somebody who thinks that every theory
must be a theory of everything. But it ain't necesserily so. And
yes, there is a substantial difference between "false" and "doesn't
apply".
>> I'll repeat, slowly. "Maxwell's equations don't explain the existance
>> of life." There is a difference between this and "valid in living
>> bodies".
>
>And I repeat slowly: Your analogy fails. According to our theory of
>life, that Maxwell's equations are valid in living bodies too.
You really don't see the difference between
"Maxwell's equations don't explain the existance of life."
and
"Maxwell's equations are valid (or invalid) in living bodies"
Well, I can't make it plainer than this.
>
>> >> Theory is falsified when you've results contradicting its predictions,
>> >> not when you've results in an area where it has no predictions.
>> >That's a different name for the same fact.
>> Most certainly not.
>
>For a theory which is self-consistent and not obviously false where is
>always a "domain" where the predictions are in agreement with
>experiment (per definition - it contains at least the domain of
>"obvious").
Sure. So?
>> By its definition the flat Earth theory is valid for the Earth, not
>> just a small area. As such, it is falsified.
>
>By its definition (by Einstein, see Einstein's position about quantum
>theory) GR is valid in the whole universe. As such, it is falsified.
>
Why? Where has it been falsified? Show me an experimental result
which contradicts a GR prediction.
me...@cars3.uchicago.edu
In article <i3gk9bk...@fermi.wias-berlin.de>, Ilja Schmelzer <schm...@fermi.wias-berlin.de> writes:
>Greg Shetler <she...@rtis.ray.com> writes:
>> > > Theory is falsified when you've results contradicting its predictions,
>> > > not when you've results in an area where it has no predictions.
>> > That's a different name for the same fact.
>> covered by prediction" are not equivalent.
>
>Ok, accepted.
>
>But the discussion was about another question - SR as falsified by GR,
>GR as falsified by the existence of quantum effects. These are
>general theories. You cannot say that SR does not make predictions in
>the domain of gravity, SR makes claims about all laws of nature, like
>"all laws of nature are Lorentz-invariant", and it makes false
>predictions for gravity.
It would, if the claim would've been that it is universally valid.
But that's not the claim. From the time relativity has been completed
(well, more or less completed) it was known, obvious and clearly
stated that SR is just an assymptotic limit of GR. It is a matter of
"truth in advertising". If I sell you a stereo and claim that it also
works as a can opener, this claim is falsified the moment you try to
use it for such purpose. If I made no claims about its utility as a
can opener, there is nothing to falsify. You may say "what's the
difference, in both cases it doesn't open cans so the end result is
the same". True, but the premise isn't the same.
>
>The Einstein equations do not make much predictions about matter, they
>describe only the relation between gravity and the energy-momentum
>tensor of matter. A lot of different classical matter theories can be
>combined with these equations. That GR does not predict them does not
>falsify GR. But the energy-momentum tensor should be a c-field, not a
>quantum field. A quantum energy-momentum tensor falsifies the
>classical Einstein equations.
What do you mane "should be". If and when a theory is falsified, it
is by experimental results, not by speculations of theorists. The
fact that two diffeerent theoretical derivations yield different
results says that one of them is wrong, but it doesn't say which.
>
>The "truth content" of GR is very high, and to name a theory "false"
>simply describes a fact, is not pejorative. BTW, I think that in this
>sense my own ether theory is false too.
>
OK, I'll wear my "pedant's hat" for a moment, now. IMO, the whole
teminology of "false", "falsify" etc. is used wrongly here, and not
just here. Probably Popper's fault (I'm not kidding).
The concepts of "true" and "false" are clear cut, binary concepts
which apply to statements which have clear cut, binary truth value.
Not to theories. Theory is rarely if ever falsified. What can be
falsified is a statement like "theory X is universally valid". It may
indeed appear as a pedantic distinction but it is important.When a
theory which was considered universally valid is found not to be so,
it is its universal validity that's falsified, not the theory itself.
The theory doesn't become automatically false, more often than not it
simply becomes a special case of a more general theory.