CATASTROPHE IN PHYSICS... REPENTANCE?

[Pentcho Valev]

http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/09/05/perimeter-institute-and-the-crisis-in-modern-physics/
Neil Turok: "It's the ultimate catastrophe: that theoretical physics has led to this crazy situation where the physicists are utterly confused and seem not to have any predictions at all."

http://blog.physicsworld.com/2015/06/22/why-converge/
"My view is that this has been a kind of catastrophe - we've lost our way," he [Neil Turok] says."

What are the causes of the catastrophe, Neil Turok? One is that physicists lie too much. For instance, Brian Cox flies towards the spotlight at 0.75c and informs the gullible audience that the light hits him in the face at c, not 1.75c. The gullible audience should also believe that this was a prediction of Maxwell's 19th century electromagnetic theory (in fact, Maxwell's 19th century theory predicted that the light would hit Brian Cox in the face at 1.75c, not c):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mpw68rvF4pc
Einstein's Relativity

The same lie taught by other Einsteinians (it often goes hand in hand with the lie that the Michelson-Morley experiment has confirmed Einstein's 1905 constant-speed-of-light postulate):

http://houseofanansi.com/products/the-universe-within
The Universe Within, Neil Turok: "In every argument, there are hidden assumptions. The more deeply they are buried, the longer it takes to reveal them. Newton had assumed that time is absolute: all observers could synchronize their clocks and, no matter how they moved around, their clocks would always agree. He had also assumed an absolute notion of space. Different observers might occupy different positions and move at different velocities, but they would always agree on the relative positions of objects and the distances between them. It took Einstein to realize that these two very reasonable assumptions - of absolute time and space - were actually incompatible with Maxwell's theory of light. The only way to ensure that everyone would agree on the speed of light was to have them each experience different versions of space and time."

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-mc2-Should-Care/dp/0306817586
Why Does E=mc2?: (And Why Should We Care?), Brian Cox, Jeff Forshaw, p. 91: "...Maxwell's brilliant synthesis of the experimental results of Faraday and others strongly suggested that the speed of light should be the same for all observers. This conclusion was supported by the experimental result of Michelson and Morley, and taken at face value by Einstein."

http://www.lecture-notes.co.uk/susskind/special-relativity/lecture-1/principles-of-special-relativity/
Leonard Susskind: "One of the predictions of Maxwell's equations is that the velocity of electromagnetic waves, or light, is always measured to have the same value, regardless of the frame in which it is measured. (...) So, in Galilean relativity, we have c'=c-v and the speed of light in the moving frame should be slower than in the stationary frame, directly contradicting Maxwell. Scientists before Einstein thought that Galilean relativity was correct and so supposed that there had to exist a special, universal frame (called the aether) in which Maxwell's equations would be correct. However, over time and many experiments (including Michelson-Morley) it was shown that the speed of light did not depend on the velocity of the observer measuring it, so that c'=c."

http://cfile205.uf.daum.net/attach/141EBD484EE5A30219CDD4
The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene, p. 19: "If she fires the laser toward you - and if you had the appropriate measuring equipment - you would find that the speed of approach of the photons in the beam is 670 million miles per hour. But what if you run away, as you did when faced with the prospect of playing catch with a hand grenade? What speed will you now measure for the approaching photons? To make things more compelling, imagine that you can hitch a ride on the starship Enterprise and zip away from your friend at, say, 100 million miles per hour. Following the reasoning based on the traditional Newtonian worldview, since you are now speeding away, you would expect to measure a slower speed for the oncoming photons. Specifically, you would expect to find them approaching you at (670 million miles per hour - 100 million miles per hour =) 570 million miles per hour. Mounting evidence from a variety of experiments dating back as far as the 1880s, as well as careful analysis and interpretation of Maxwell's electromagnetic theory of light, slowly convinced the scientific community that, in fact, this is not what you will see. Even though you are retreating, you will still measure the speed of the approaching photons as 670 million miles per hour, not a bit less. Although at first it sounds completely ridiculous, unlike what happens if one runs from an oncoming baseball, grenade, or avalanche, the speed of approaching photons is always 670 million miles per hour. The same is true if you run toward oncoming photons or chase after them - their speed of approach or recession is completely unchanged; they still appear to travel at 670 million miles per hour. Regardless of relative motion between the source of photons and the observer, the speed of light is always the same."

http://deenoverduniya.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/repentance.jpg

Pentcho Valev

[Pentcho Valev]

http://perimeterinstitute.ca/news/celebrating-sixth-class-perimeter-scholars-international
"Perimeter Director Neil Turok lauded the students for their ambition and dedication. "You've taken on probably the most difficult graduate program in physics worldwide," said Turok. "What we want PSI to be is a way for brilliant young people to get working on cutting-edge, interesting problems as quickly as possible. We are here to make breakthroughs, and the conditions could not be better. What we need most is originality and creativity, and that comes most of all from young people." Turok then introduced one of his own mentors, Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University, to deliver the keynote address. "There is no question in theoretical physics that is beyond your reach," Steinhardt told the students. "Follow your heart, not the crowd. When you choose something to work on, it has to be something you strongly believe in your heart to be important. I wish you good luck, future discoverers."

There is one discovery the future discoverers are forbidden to make, even if their hearts drive them in that direction. They will never inform the world that the speed of light (relative to the observer) does vary with the speed of the observer:

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/einsteinlight/jw/module3_weird_logic.htm
Joe Wolfe: "At this stage, many of my students say things like "The invariance of the speed of light among observers is impossible" or "I can't understand it". Well, it's not impossible. It's even more than possible, it is true. This is something that has been extensively measured, and many refinements to the Michelson and Morely experiment, and complementary experiments have confirmed this invariance to very great precision. As to understanding it, there isn't really much to understand. However surprising and weird it may be, it is the case. It's the law in our universe. The fact of the invariance of c doesn't take much understanding."

http://www.thegreatdebate.org.uk/VSLRevPrnt.html
"The speaker Joao Magueijo, is a Reader in Theoretical Physics at Imperial College, London and author of Faster Than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation. He opened by explaining how Einstein's theory of relativity is the foundation of every other theory in modern physics and that the assumption that the speed of light is constant is the foundation of that theory. Thus a constant speed of light is embedded in all of modern physics and to propose a varying speed of light (VSL) is worse than swearing! It is like proposing a language without vowels."

http://www.amazon.com/Faster-Than-Speed-Light-Speculation/dp/0738205257
Faster Than the Speed of Light, Joao Magueijo: "If there's one thing every schoolboy knows about Einstein and his theory of relativity, it is that the speed of light in vacuum is constant. No matter what the circumstances, light in vacuum travels at the same speed - a constant that physicists denote by the letter c: 300,000 km per second, or as Americans refer to it, 186,000 miles per second. The speed of light is the very keystone of physics, the seemingly sure foundation upon which every modern cosmological theory is built, the yardstick by which everything in the universe is measured. (...) The only aspect of the universe that didn't change was the speed of light. And ever since, the constancy of the speed of light has been woven into the very fabric of physics, into the way physics equations are written, even into the notation used. Nowadays, to "vary" the speed of light is not even a swear word: It is simply not present in the vocabulary of physics."

http://happynicetimepeople.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/einstein-speed-limit.jpg

Pentcho Valev

[Pentcho Valev]

After long wrestling with human rationality and his conscience, Einstein managed to convince the gullible world that the speed of light (relative to the observer) is independent of the speed of the observer:

http://www.aip.org/history/exhibits/einstein/essay-einstein-relativity.htm
John Stachel: "But here he ran into the most blatant-seeming contradiction, which I mentioned earlier when first discussing the two principles. As noted then, the Maxwell-Lorentz equations imply that there exists (at least) one inertial frame in which the speed of light is a constant regardless of the motion of the light source. Einstein's version of the relativity principle (minus the ether) requires that, if this is true for one inertial frame, it must be true for all inertial frames. But this seems to be nonsense. How can it happen that the speed of light relative to an observer cannot be increased or decreased if that observer moves towards or away from a light beam? Einstein states that he wrestled with this problem over a lengthy period of time, to the point of despair."

The aftermath:

http://www.edge.org/response-detail/23857
Steve Giddings: "What really keeps me awake at night (...) is that we face a crisis within the deepest foundations of physics. The only way out seems to involve profound revision of fundamental physical principles."

https://edge.org/response-detail/25477
What scientific idea is ready for retirement? Steve Giddings: "Spacetime. Physics has always been regarded as playing out on an underlying stage of space and time. Special relativity joined these into spacetime... (...) The apparent need to retire classical spacetime as a fundamental concept is profound..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U47kyV4TMnE
Nima Arkani-Hamed (06:11): "Almost all of us believe that space-time doesn't really exist, space-time is doomed and has to be replaced by some more primitive building blocks."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jun/10/time-reborn-farewell-reality-review
"And by making the clock's tick relative - what happens simultaneously for one observer might seem sequential to another - Einstein's theory of special relativity not only destroyed any notion of absolute time but made time equivalent to a dimension in space: the future is already out there waiting for us; we just can't see it until we get there. This view is a logical and metaphysical dead end, says Smolin."

http://www.amazon.com/Time-Reborn-Crisis-Physics-Universe/dp/0547511728
"Was Einstein wrong? At least in his understanding of time, Smolin argues, the great theorist of relativity was dead wrong. What is worse, by firmly enshrining his error in scientific orthodoxy, Einstein trapped his successors in insoluble dilemmas..."

http://www.amazon.com/Faster-Than-Speed-Light-Speculation/dp/0738205257
Joao Magueijo, Faster Than the Speed of Light, p. 250: "Lee [Smolin] and I discussed these paradoxes at great length for many months, starting in January 2001. We would meet in cafés in South Kensington or Holland Park to mull over the problem. THE ROOT OF ALL THE EVIL WAS CLEARLY SPECIAL RELATIVITY. All these paradoxes resulted from well known effects such as length contraction, time dilation, or E=mc^2, all basic predictions of special relativity. And all denied the possibility of establishing a well-defined border, common to all observers, capable of containing new quantum gravitational effects."

http://www.nature.com/news/scientific-method-defend-the-integrity-of-physics-1.16535
George Ellis and Joe Silk: "This year, debates in physics circles took a worrying turn. Faced with difficulties in applying fundamental theories to the observed Universe, some researchers called for a change in how theoretical physics is done. They began to argue - explicitly - that if a theory is sufficiently elegant and explanatory, it need not be tested experimentally, breaking with centuries of philosophical tradition of defining scientific knowledge as empirical."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/a-crisis-at-the-edge-of-physics.html
Adam Frank, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester, and Marcelo Gleiser, a professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College: "A Crisis at the Edge of Physics. Do physicists need empirical evidence to confirm their theories? You may think that the answer is an obvious yes, experimental confirmation being the very heart of science. But a growing controversy at the frontiers of physics and cosmology suggests that the situation is not so simple. (...) ...a mounting concern in fundamental physics: Today, our most ambitious science can seem at odds with the empirical methodology that has historically given the field its credibility."

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/what-happens-when-we-cant-test-scientific-theories
Frank Close, professor of physics at the University of Oxford: "In recent years, however, many physicists have developed theories of great mathematical elegance, but which are beyond the reach of empirical falsification, even in principle. The uncomfortable question that arises is whether they can still be regarded as science. Some scientists are proposing that the definition of what is "scientific" be loosened, while others fear that to do so could open the door for pseudo-scientists or charlatans to mislead the public and claim equal space for their views."

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=7266
Peter Woit: "I don't think though that this will have any effect on multiverse mania and its use as an excuse for the failure of string theory unification. It seems to me that we're now ten years down the road from the point when discussion revolved around actual models and people thought maybe they could calculate something. As far as this stuff goes, we're now not only at John Horgan's "End of Science", but gone past it already and deep into something different."

http://www.worddocx.com/Apparel/1231/8955.html
Mike Alder: "This, essentially, is the Smolin position. He gives details and examples of the death of Physics, although he, being American, is optimistic that it can be reversed. I am not."

http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/09/05/perimeter-institute-and-the-crisis-in-modern-physics/
Neil Turok: "It's the ultimate catastrophe: that theoretical physics has led to this crazy situation where the physicists are utterly confused and seem not to have any predictions at all." x

http://archipope.over-blog.com/article-12278372.html
"Nous nous trouvons dans une période de mutation extrêmement profonde. Nous sommes en effet à la fin de la science telle que l'Occident l'a connue », tel est constat actuel que dresse Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond, physicien théoricien, épistémologue et directeur des collections scientifiques des Editions du Seuil."

Pentcho Valev

[Pentcho Valev]

http://blog.physicsworld.com/2015/06/25/agreeing-to-disagree-at-the-next-convergence-conference/
"Agreeing to disagree at the next Convergence conference. I have just returned from the Perimeter Institute (PI) in Waterloo, Canada where I enjoyed a fantastic few days immersed in discussions involving some of the sharpest minds in physics. The great and good were at the PI for the first Convergence conference and from what I have heard, the participants are calling it a great success. But could it be even better next time? At the panel discussion that closed the conference on Wednesday, several people suggested that "challenge" should be the theme of the next meeting. In particular, the structure of the meeting should facilitate questioning the views of individual researchers as well as more general critiques of accepted wisdom..."

But at this Convergence conference accepted wisdom was OK? No catastrophe? No revolution is needed? Oh là là oh là là:

http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/09/05/perimeter-institute-and-the-crisis-in-modern-physics/
Neil Turok: "It's the ultimate catastrophe: that theoretical physics has led to this crazy situation where the physicists are utterly confused and seem not to have any predictions at all." l

http://blog.physicsworld.com/2015/06/22/why-converge/
"My view is that this has been a kind of catastrophe - we've lost our way," he [Neil Turok] says." x

http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/blog/convergence/beyond-success-simplicity
"These are amazing times for physics... Many of us believe physics is poised for a new revolution." With those words Perimeter Institute Director Neil Turok officially opened the first Convergence conference."

Pentcho Valev

[Pentcho Valev]

String theory is to blame (Divine Albert's Divine Theory is perfect):

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22730283.900-physicists-launch-fight-to-make-data-more-important-than-theory.html
"IT WAS, in many ways, a declaration of war. A group of physicists has launched a rearguard action to restore experimental data to what they see as its rightful place, back on their subject's throne. Last week, the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada, hosted its inaugural Convergence conference at the same time as Strings 2015, the world's largest string theory conference, was taking place in Bangalore, India. The timing wasn't entirely accidental, says Perimeter director Neil Turok. Although string theory attempts to describe the universe in one theoretical framework, it makes no attempt to explain experimental results, he says. "We've been given these incredible clues from nature and we're failing to make sense of them," he told New Scientist. "In fact, we're doing the opposite: theory is becoming ever more complex and contrived. We throw in more fields, more dimensions, more symmetry - we're throwing the kitchen sink at the problem and yet failing to explain the most basic facts." (...) "We're at this wonderful stage: we've seen the Higgs boson, we've seen the whole universe, our reach is further than ever before... and we're fundamentally confused. What I think we need now are very simple, radical ideas that will point towards new approaches to the big problems."

Pentcho Valev