Glass Bead Games of the Week (4)
Robert L. Oldershaw
This week we have a very special treat: one of the most infantile
notions in all of modern theoretical physics - BOLTZMANN BRAINS!
Boltzmann brains are self-aware beings that are spontaneously
generated by random fluctuations in chaotic environments throughout
the universe. These beings are not the product of evolutionary
processes, like us, but rather spontaneously pop out of the chaos.
This is a bit like the Space Shuttle spontaneously and instantaneously
self-organizing out of a huge junk pile. See Wikipedia: "Boltzmann
Brain" if you cannot believe that such a stupid idea actually exists.
Do theoretical high-energy physicists and theoretical cosmologists
take "Boltzmann Brains" seriously? I regret to say that many do.
The prolific theorist Don N. Page graces us with "Possible Anthropic
Support for a Decaying Universe: A Cosmic Doomsday Argument".
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0907/0907.4153v1.pdf
Sounding like something as scientific as "the Rapture", this paper
argues that we are saved from being overrun by Boltzmann brains by
predicting a "cosmic doomsday" within 20 billion years.
Is this all some sort of inside joke and contest to see who can write
the most infantile New Age anti-science and get it published as
serious science? Is Don Page channeling the Boltzmann brains? What's
next - the virgin birth of the universe? Quarks as alien spaceships
guided by Boltzmann brains?
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Some notable also-rans out of 100s of such drivel that appear each
week on arxiv.org and in many physics journals.
(1) Also by Don N Page: "Do Our Observations Depend upon the Quantum
State of the Universe"
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0907/0907.4751v2.pdf
This has no real content. It is a "virtual paper". Completely
untestable.
(2) "Bose-Einstein Condensation of Dark Matter Axions"
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0901/0901.1106v3.pdf
Science fiction start to finish. Untestable!
(3) "Ectoplasm & Superspace Integration Measure for 2D Supergravity
with Four Spinorial Supercurrents"
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0907/0907.5264v1.pdf
Totally nuts! Totaly untestable.
(4) ""A no-ghost theorem for the bosonic Nappi-Witten string"
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0907/0907.5366v1.pdf
Definitely a UFO. No relation to the real world.
(5) "On Inflation in the Presence of a Gaugino Condensate"
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0907/0907.4630v1.pdf
WT%?????????????
(6) "Exact null tachyons from RG flows"
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0907/0907.4651v1.pdf
Pure science fiction. Unreal and untestable
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Do you worry that theoretical physics has crossed the line between
reasonable speculation grounded in empirical foundations and fatuous
New Age garabage that lacks empirical grounding and is totally
untestable in any definitive manner?
Robert L. Oldershaw
www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw