Null Physics anyone?

[zosima]

QM and GR

>> ErkDemon

I thought essentially the same thing as Sol when reading your post, but I thought he was a little short in his post, so let me see if I can clarify. The "contradiction" between QM and GR is not testable because the conclusions from phenomena predicted would only come into conflict at energies far higher than it is in the capacity of humans to realize experimentally. So the problem is about as significant to scientists as how many angels can fit on the head of a pin or how dense a black hole is(in Witt's case).

In other words the contradiction that we might imagine is completely unscientific insofar as we are unable to test it. When we/if we are able to test it, the results themselves should make it possible to generate a theory.

Science is the domain of the testable.

>>on the google results from before...it seems the jref forum is back to #2, I had no idea google updated so frequently, perhaps my results from before were a fluke...I guess I should have taken a screenshot.

 

[sol invictus]

I didn't respond to these parts earlier.

Well, it does actually make some predictions that are qualitatively different to existing theory, and it does try to address the failure of Einstein's general theory to handle energy conservation in a universe that Hubble-shifts light.

Sorry, but you don't know what you're talking about. Energy is conserved in general relativity, both locally - conservation of the stress-energy tensor - and globally. You can see that by using any of several global definitions of energy, by the Wheeler-de Witt equation, or from the fact that energy is actually a kind of gauge charge in GR and as such is even "more" conserved than it is in any other theory.

But switching to an expanding model meant that energy conservation no longer obviously worked.

That's just false. If you want to argue about these things, I suggest you learn some physics first. Would you say energy isn't conserved because a charged particle flying in a circle (say it's tethered by a rope) gradually loses its kinetic energy?

As far as I can see, Witt's tried to fix this energy-conservation problem, in a constant-size universe that still shows Hubble-oid redshifts, by relating the energy lost through redshifting to the energy that appears in the microwave range, which would otherwise seem to be anomalous in his sort of steady-state model.

First of all, if he thought there was a problem it shows he doesn't understand even the basics of the theory he was trying to replace, which doesn't bode well. Second, what you said here is nonsense - we measure radiation in all frequencies, and we know that distant objects have the same spectra (more or less) as those nearby - they are just more redshifted. You can't just take that energy and put it into microwaves - we measure those too. The only explanation for redshift which does NOT violate conservation of energy is that the distant objects are simply moving away from us with a speed proportional to their distance - as in big bang cosmology.

By comparison, most of the GR guys not only don't seem to have a solution to offer ... they usually don't seem to acknowledge that this issue even requires a solution.

Gee, I wonder why? I guess they must all be idiots - that's the only explanation I can think of!

I do suspect that maybe he's slightly hyped parts of the book, but then again, there seem to be hordes of mainstream physics and math guys regularly committing worse offences to try to get publicity for their research, too. I mean, every fortnight New Scientist and the news agencies seem to be carrying some new claim about someone's research being about to discover “the key to the universe” or somesuch, and those are all mainstream guys, working on the inside.

Partly fair, although New Scientist is a rag that writes what it wants to, and it's not easy to stop it even if you wanted to.

 

[ben m]

Energy is conserved in general relativity, both locally - conservation of the stress-energy tensor - and globally. You can see that by using any of several global definitions of energy, by the Wheeler-de Witt equation, or from the fact that energy is actually a kind of gauge charge in GR and as such is even "more" conserved than it is in any other theory.

Erk, that may have gone over your head---a simpler way to think about it is that two masses, when close together, have a net negative gravitational potential energy compared to when they're far apart---that's the gravitational "potential well" that you descend into when you jump off a diving board. As the universe expands, all of these energies become less negative, and that's equal to the energy lost from the background collection of photons. The equality has to be rigged up in the Newtonian picture, but GR enforces it to be true all the time.

 

[ben m]

That being said however, and don't lose me here, we're all still scientists. Science demands skepticism. It demands it. Though the standard model is all of the things I've already said, it is NOT perfect. Quantum mechanics and general relativity are still at odds. How then can we truly and I mean TRULY refer to it as the be all and end all? How can we make statements that it is impossible to find a better theory? Just because we haven't found it yet? This is just an excuse.

Hi TSAcrey, welcome to the Forum.

I just want to comment on this point. Who, exactly, is said to "make statements that it is impossible to find a better theory"? Certainly not the theorists in my department, nor the experimentalists (like me) trying to break QM and SR and the Standard Model in any way we can think of, nor the funding agencies. Everyone wants to find a better theory---the only people saying otherwise are the crackpots. And, I think, what they're really saying is "Everyone is ignoring my theory, and since my theory is obviously right, the only reason for this must be that all new theories are ignored."

In reality the physics community is very aware of the QM/SR incompatibility, but we're also aware that QM and SR agree with experiments over this huge well-tested range. Mainstream theories try to keep the existing agreement intact, as the low-energy limit (or an "effective theory") of some better new theory.

 

[ben m]

If anyone involved in theoretical physics honestly believes that we aren't sorely in need of a new theory, I'd suggest that they consider giving up physics and getting a job in finance instead. A lot of the statistics are the same, and the money's better.

Who exactly are believes that we're not "in need of a new theory"? Nobody. Not the experimentalists (we're eagerly awaiting new theories to test), not the theorists (that's what they do all day).

Special relativity threw away aether theory, and QM threw away classical mechanics. Phlogiston theory was the most successful and most beautiful theory of chemistry that we'd ever had ... but this didn't stop it being wrong, and we dumped that too.

Sorry, that's quite wrong. Aether theory's real power was in using the transverse wave equations to describe light. You know what you find in the low-velocity limit of Special Relativity, i.e. Maxwell's Equations? The same transverse wave equations. SR includes all of aether theory's correct predictions; not only can SR reproduce any experiments Faraday or Huygens or Snell ever did, in the right limit it does so using the same math. The math, and the predictions, are different only for experiments inaccessible to the older experimenters. Quantum mechanics reduces exactly to classical mechanics in the large-quantum-number limit. Write down a quantum Hamiltonian for Newton's apple, and Schrodinger's Equation will tell you the apple's trajectory towards his head. Not just the same result, but the same math. Nothing was "thrown away"---just altered in ways that reproduced the old experimental results, while predicting new results in different limits.

I can't defend phlogiston, of course, which never really predicted anything to begin with ...

 

[tsacrey]

Yes, we do. We know that our universe is relativistic, and we know that quantum mechanics must incorporate uncertainty. Both of these have been proven not merely by extensive and detailed experimentation, but also because they are the only possible explanation for a vast range of phenomena. Given those two facts, there will never be the kind of intuitive simplicity that is possible for the motions of planets.

I think it is highly unlikely, if you mean that there will ever be a simple mechanistic explanation of quantum mechanics. In fact, given what we have observed already, I think it is impossible, due to uncertainty and relativity. On the other hand, theoretical physicists are exploring a mathematical theory called "string theory" that just might explain all of the twenty-four particles, and all of the quantum theories of the four forces, as the movements of a single, simple underlying entity. We would then be left with that entity, and the dimensionality of the universe, and nothing else. If this turns out to be true, it will be a simplification as great as the atomic hypothesis of Dalton. However, it will not supplant the standard model; it will merely explain it.

Ben, maybe I misinterpreted what was said here, and now reading it again, I think that perhaps I have (I was very tired and up late when I read it the first time!!)

The first bolded text above I think is more what I was thinking of, and not so much the second, and perhaps what was meant was that the match between the theory and the observation is soo great that it feels impossible to find a theory...anyway, with that I have to eat!

See ya later!

T

 

[ErkDemon]

Science is messy

I disagree with that completely. And yes, I know very well what I'm talking about.

Well, there's a convincing scientific argument!

Seriously, mate, everything in that paragraph should be sourcable. Tell me something specific that you disagree with and I'll see if I can dredge up a supporting quote or reference. At least give me some sort of evidence or argument to back up your position.

John Preskill 2004:

Hawking had precipitated a genuine crisis in fundamental physics, and it seemed that we would have to give up at least one of our cherished beliefs. Hawking's radical suggestion was that the foundations of quantum theory needed to be revised. "

On Hawking's volte-face:

This past year he has been thinking a lot about how his earlier conclusions about information loss might be evaded, and in his talk in Dublin last Wednesday he outlined a new argument supporting the conclusion that information loss does not occur after all. Unfortunately, I don’t understand this argument well enough to attempt to summarize it here. ...

====

Nonsense. Science just doesn't work that way. You don't throw old theories in the trash and start from scratch, ever.

You seem to be making quite a few unverifiable absolutist statements. That's usually a bad sign.
We certainly threw Phlogiston theory away, didn't we? At the time, it was the best theory of chemistry we'd ever had, by a long shot. But wrong. The weight change in reacting compounds wasn't due to the flow of energy after all, it was due to a previously-undiscovered element called oxygen. Beautiful theory, philosophically way ahead of its time ... but wrong. We kept some of its language and conventions, but the theory itself is long gone.

Now, okay, it's unusual for a theory to be as successful as Phlogiston theory was, while being fundamentally wrong, and perhaps there's a limit to how wrong current theories can be, but there's definitely a margin of potential wrongness there, and the conflict between GR and QM is a dead giveaway: something has to be wrong with the current picture. Until we know what it is, we won't know for sure how much has to be changed.

Yes. Why? Because the old theories worked really really really well, but when you figured out how to test them extremely precisely, you discovered they weren't quite exactly right. So you replace them with a better theory, but one which includes the old theory as a limit.

Not always. Aether theory (as a broad subject) wasn't a superset of failed Newtonian emission theory, and special relativity wasn't a superset of aether theory. General relativity (if you squint really hard) might be classed as a special-case non-particulate aether model (Einstein 1920), but I doubt if you could find anyone who'd consider it to be a superset of previous aether models.
SR is a superset of a cut-down version of Newton's model, and GR1915 is designed to be a superset of SR ... but since SR and GR apply some quite different rules (GR associates energy with curvature, SR describes arbitrarily-great energy-concentrations in the absence of curvature), that's possibly not one of the most impressive aspects of current GR.

Now, okay, each theory's numerical predictions have tended to be an incremental improvement on those of the previous theory, in the areas that we considered to be most important when these transitions happened. But with hindsight, some of the other predictions that we weren't so interested in actually got worse. Ballistic emission theory was used to correctly predict the r=2M horizon surface way back in the C18th, along with gravitational light-bending, and gravitational shifts, but the aether theories that replaced it didn't tend to predict these things - this part of the subject actually regressed. Moving forwards to the C20th, general relativity predicts a zero temperature for gravitational horizons, but if we choose to believe the QM description, nasty old c1800 emission theory (with its positive horizon temperature and indirect radiation effects) arguably gives a better correspondence to QM in this regard than 1950's GR does. So although Einstein's general theory was an advance in most respects, in this respect it introduced a different step backwards.
Trans-horizon radiation wasn't on our list of important subjects when we drew up GR1915, partly because the theory was originally devised for a horizonless steady-state universe. If it had been designed around the idea of an expanding universe, the subject of leaky cosmological horizons should have come up, and we might have ended up with a different sort of theory. The nature of our current general theory was partly shaped by a series of historical accidents (regarding the timing of different discoveries), which influenced Einstein in the selection of a particular set of design criteria. If history had played out differently, we could have gotten a different theoretical wish-list, and a general theory that made a few different predictions to the current version.

So this idea that we always move forward, and we always incorporate all our previous work in the next model, and our current theories are all inevitably decided by the physical data really doesn't seem to correspond to historical reality. It's a nice story to tell schoolchildren, but out in the real world, humans are messy creatures and our science often develops messily, too. We've found that a certain amount of randomness in the system means that we get stuck less often.

It is totally impossible that general relativity and quantum mechanics are wrong.

No.
QM? I actually like QM, and would put good money on it never being overthrown (I was on the record as being against Hawking's pre-2004 position, when he wanted to alter it) ... but I wouldn't be crass enough to announce that it can never be wrong. I don't personally see how it could ever be wrong, but I'm not arrogant enough to proclaim that just because I can't imagine something, it can't be possible (I also prefer to put some distance between myself and the sorts of people who often make those sorts of statements).

GR? Now, GR is more problematic. If you go through the history and the psychology of the subject, and you look at a few of the "special" definitions invoked in the GR textbooks and open them up to be slightly more reasonable, you should see that there's a loophole that allows at least one other class of general theory of relativity to exist that isn't a simple superset of GR1915, and which makes different predictions about information flow across curvature horizons. Someone who's highly trained to expert level in GR1915 might not be able to see it, but if you go back to first principles and try to rebuild a general theory from scratch without making the usual historical assumptions, you should be able to see the second solution.

Now, I'm not claiming that the second model is right, or that there can't be other alternative models that I can't see (I don't see how, but ...) ... but it's there. You should be able to use existing textbook definitions to "prove" that that's impossible - I can, too. But the precise wording of some of those definitions sometimes seems to have been selected for no other reason than to produce a snug fit with the particular sort of general theory that Einstein came up with.

FWIW, there's a general principle that I find useful when judging the reliability of information: the Titanic Principle. If someone says that a thing is probably true, it probably is. If they insist that it absolutely, definitely, MUST be true, and that for it not to be true is just unthinkable ... then the thing is often wrong.
Horses that "can't lose" and plans that "can't fail" usually do.

They are simply inexact -

No, general relativity's qualitatively-new prediction about gravitational horizons was that they had a perfect zero temperature.

That's not just "inexact" ... it's precise, it's qualitatively different to the QM prediction, and (if we believe the QM version) it's qualitatively wrong.
Put another way, the margin of error in temperature, expressed as a proportion between the temperature that that GR predicts and what QM (and just about every other theory) predicts, is infinity.
If you don't accept a proportional error margin of "infinity percent" as representing a wrong result, then we have different concepts of what "wrong" means in the context of a theory's predictions.

... but at a level that's undetectable right now, and may well remain so for the forseeable future of the human race. While unifying QM with gravity is an extremely interesting topic intellectually, it's hardly a burning issue practically speaking.

Well, if physical effects that have never yet been measured, and might not ever be measured as naturally-occurring events in the forseeable future of the human race aren't interesting, then why the heck did we just spend all that public money building CERN LHC? We did it because we wanted to know what happens in extreme situations that we'd never normally get the chance to see in nature. We want the bigger picture. Research on quantum gravity tries to extract data for other extreme situations, using bright people who can think about this stuff and generate answers without having to spend a few billion of GDP on a dirty great chunk of hardware. I mean, for most people, whether the Higgs boson exists isn't exactly a burning practical issue either.

You can defend LHC by saying "Ah, but the unknown things that we may discover in these extreme realms may have unforseen benefits. They may suggest new achievable technologies that we can't yet imagine, and whose benefits we can't yet quantify." Well, the same goes for quantum gravity.

Sure, we can't visit a natural, solar-mass black hole and measure the Hawking radiation, but we can devise experiments to measure the analogous indirect-radiation effect through horizons in Bose-Einstein condensate, or in experiments in nonlinear optics, and there are a decent number of experimenters working on these things right now, as proper engineering.

And if you don't believe that the conflict between GR and QM has any current practical importance, consider this: If we hadn't done all that theoretical research on Hawking radiation and decided that this particular conflict between GR and QM has to be settled in favour of QM, then scientists would never have been allowed to build the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, would they? If we still thought that tiny black holes were immortal, and didn't just fizz themselves away in a burst of Hawking radiation, we'd have to send an international demolition team into Geneva to take that complex apart with explosives. Our willingness to create and operate LHC (without taking a shedload of tranquilisers) demonstrates that three-and-a-bit decades is long enough for us to do a 180-degree reversal over something that we were previously told was a piece of mathematically-proven physics that couldn't possibly be wrong.

Things change.

 

[sol invictus]

Well, there's a convincing scientific argument!

I really don't care whether I convince you. You've been quite civil, though, so I will try to be a little nicer.

At least give me some sort of evidence or argument to back up your position.

Hawking's recent proposed resolution of the paradox is wrong - he didn't properly understand the model he tried to use - but that model does points out why there is no paradox, and never was. I can give you references and tell you precisely how and why if you ask nicely, but I don't have either the time or the inclination to do so right now, and anyway it would be more appropriate in another thread.

To make a long story short, there is no conflict between Hawking's computation (the original one, not the more recent argument) and quantum mechanics, because the effects needed to resolve the "paradox" and restore unitarity are much, much too small to be visible at the level of approximation Hawking was working. He didn't realize that, and neither did anybody else until quite recently, but it has now been proven in a broad class of examples and all but proven in every other. So while there are still interesting questions to address, there is no longer a paradox.

You seem to be making quite a few unverifiable absolutist statements. That's usually a bad sign.

Usually, yes. But in this case it's because I know exactly what I'm talking about.

As for QM, it's by far the best-tested and most predictive theory in the history of science. I repeat - it is utterly impossible that it is flat-out wrong. At worst it will be replaced by something that modifies it in some very subtle way.

 

[ErkDemon]

The "contradiction" between QM and GR is not testable because the conclusions from phenomena predicted would only come into conflict at energies far higher than it is in the capacity of humans to realize experimentally. So the problem is about as significant to scientists as how many angels can fit on the head of a pin or how dense a black hole is(in Witt's case).

1) I understood that some of the LHC guys had been saying that some of their experiments might create energy-densities large enough to produce micro-black holes.

2) If the scientists are theoretical physicists, logical breakdowns and discrepancies are very significant. They provide the clues that suggest how we may be able to construct the next generation of theory.

Science is the domain of the testable.

"Testability" includes the ability to be tested for logical consistency.

 

[ben m]

1) I understood that some of the LHC guys had been saying that some of their experiments might create energy-densities large enough to produce micro-black holes.

Micro-black-holes arise at LHC, not in the "known" version of GR (the one that is known to conflict with QM at the Planck scale) but only in new large-extra-dimensions models, which force the conflict to occur sooner. LHC cannot test the Planck scale incompatibility, which is the one everyone has been talking about.

 

[zosima]

domain of science

>>ErkDemon

I think there are people here who are better able to field your point on the LHC. So I'll leave a response to them, if they deem it necessary and if not, then conceded.

As to your point about logical consistency, I think that your point is generally valid, but...

1. Logical consistency is really a very tricky thing. In fact, it has been proven that even in relatively simple situations logical contradictions can be derived from the same basic premises. If you want a reference see Godel's Theorem.
So I think a 21st century standard of logic encourages us to be very skeptical.

2. The type of consistency you are talking about, however, goes well beyond logical consistency or even mathematical consistency, but is in fact physical consistency which deals with a lot of complications that make derivations of truths very subject to interpretation, as least in absence of hard evidence.

3. Humans in general are very fickle and fallible beings. What we think we know is often subject to revision upon presentation of evidence, which is why we don't have a single arbiter of science, but rather a community where discussion is had and consensus is arrived upon.

The basic point I'm trying to make here, which I think has come up earlier in this thread, is that it is not uncommon for someone to try to disprove scientific fact with a thought experiment, and generally I think we would call that philosophy not science and I think the contraction that is being discussed,specifically, is more in realm of speculation than fact. I wouldn't mean to imply that this line of inquiry is not academic or even incredibly important to the faculty of human reasoning in general, but until we have some evidence to work with there really isn't any *scientific* problem. Moreover I think it is both common and dangerous to take discussion and dispute within the scientific community as evidence of scientific fact, despite the fact that that is pretty much the bread and butter of scientific news reporting.

The bottom line:
I'll take two bits of observation over 100 bits of logical deduction any day of the year(especially leap years).

 

[skepticalone]

Wow. There are obviously some very bright individuals posting here.
I came to this site, like many before me, as a result of the ad in SciAm
Magazines. I was intrigued but immediatley skeptical.

IMHO I see an author who is easily known, with a simple google search,
being criticized by what seems, for the most part, a bunch of “real physicists”.
But, alas, they seemed hooded and concealed. Not unlike a terrorist.

It would help myself and the large new population of forum vistors to this site if the “experts” could please present their credentials so that the unwashed masses visiting this site could weigh the desenting opinions against those of the very well spoken author.
I sure can’t decide by trying to understand the spin of a quark. LOL

 

[Complexity]

skepticalone - I suspect that you either are this 'very well spoken author' or are acting on his behalf.

What a fraud.

Shame on you.

 

[ben m]

Wow. There are obviously some very bright individuals posting here.
I came to this site, like many before me, as a result of the ad in SciAm
Magazines. I was intrigued but immediatley skeptical.

IMHO I see an author who is easily known, with a simple google search,
being criticized by what seems, for the most part, a bunch of “real physicists”.
But, alas, they seemed hooded and concealed. Not unlike a terrorist.

It would help myself and the large new population of forum vistors to this site if the “experts” could please present their credentials so that the unwashed masses visiting this site could weigh the desenting opinions against those of the very well spoken author.
I sure can’t decide by trying to understand the spin of a quark. LOL

Hooded like a terrorist, eh? Classy.

I don't recall having made any arguments from authority. If I am right or wrong about, e.g., the existence of very sharp images of point sources at all wavelengths---an argument which IMO disproves Witt's redshift=decay=CMB hack---then I'm right or wrong whether or not I learned this argument from my "mainstream" education and practice. The argument should stand on its own.

Anyway. I would be happy to debate Mr. Witt in a non-anonymous forum, but that's a very different issue than the one of generally breaking by JREF-vs-real-world anonymity. Send me a PM if you have some evidence that Mr. Witt desires such a debate.

 

[Paul]

I was intrigued but immediatley skeptical.

Any particular reason? Or do you just think we’re going to believe you because you claim to be sceptical?

IMHO I see an author who is easily known, with a simple google search, being criticized by what seems, for the most part, a bunch of “real physicists”.

Really? My simple Google search turned up this thread at the top of the list, followed by Witt’s site and lot’s of Witt’s self-publicity interspersed with the odd forum thread. Amusingly, even the knuckle-dragging scum over on the stormfront forums think you’re he’s wrong.

But, alas, they seemed hooded and concealed.

Then how do you know they are real physicists?

Or are you saying that those criticising Witt appear to be qualified to do so, but you don't like it, and if they told you where they went to school it would somehow make a difference to the validity of their criticism?

Not unlike a terrorist.

I can see where a person who is particularly hard of understanding might be confused.

if the “experts” could please present their credentials

Oh, apparently you are that easily impressed.

very well spoken author.

Obviously, if he is well spoken he must be right; I'm sure none of us can think of anyone who is well spoken or able to deliver, say, a stirring speech in support of their views, who is anything other than wholly correct in all their opinions.*




*not without Godwining ourselves anyway

 

[Third Eye Open]

....
But, alas, they seemed hooded and concealed. Not unlike a terrorist.

3 weeks later, terrywitt returns with a new strategy!

ROFLMAO!!!!!

 

[thubbathubba]

It would help myself and the large new population of forum vistors to this site if the “experts” could please present their credentials so that the unwashed masses visiting this site could weigh the desenting opinions against those of the very well spoken author.

As one of the "unwashed" who has been reading this forum for months (and occassionally exposing my ignorance for the sake of getting some discussion flowing), I must say that none of arguments I have read has suffered from lack of credentialling.

Should one of these knowledgeable participants happen to be a lowly patent clerk in a poorly lit office somewhere, I would be no less impressed with their careful deconstruction of every crackpot assertion made so far.

 

[TriangleMan]

This month Witt has a two-page ad in Discover promoting his book! Serious money on this ad campaign, geez.

Witt, science is not a popularity contest. Your theories are not proven true by argumentum-via-colour-addius. If your theories have merit you should be able to address the weaknesses pointed out in pages 1 to 3 of this thread.

 

[skepticalone]

Wow, time to pass out the aluminum hats. Not only am I not the author, I came to this forum because I was sceptical after seeing his ad.
As an amateur I can not understand your arguments, so, not unlike a juror, I must make my judgement on credentials and cross examination.
Now after the "conspiracy" reactions I have less faith.
I am a check pilot (instructor) who specializes in technically advanced aircraft (TAAs) in SoCal. I have never met the author, or heard of him until the ad. Wake up and smell the coffee.
Any one has any doubts? IM me and when I get back from work I will forward my credentials.
I have a limited physics background and need advice.
If a pilot comes to me and says, "I am a 10,000 hour pilot and am typed in a CE500", I say "Ggreat, let me see your pilot cert, and logbboks".
Talk is cheap and accomplishments speak volumes.
I will not give credence to hidden commentators or conspiracy theorists..









..

 

[Paul]

Wow, time to pass out the aluminum hats.

OK, here you go -

Not only am I not the author, I came to this forum because I was sceptical after seeing his ad.

Then you shouldn’t have come across as an arrogant, sarcastic, qualification obsessed ass.

As an amateur I can not understand your arguments, so, not unlike a juror, I must make my judgement on credentials and cross examination.

If you don’t understand the science, cross examination will be of no use, and the existence of credentials is no guarantee of ability in another field (see Behe, Chopra, Laurence Gardner or Rupert Sheldrake)

I am a check pilot (instructor) who specializes in technically advanced aircraft (TAAs) in SoCal. I have never met the author, or heard of him until the ad.

Ok, so you don’t know Witt, do you actually have anything substantive to say?

Wake up and smell the coffee.

Sorry, I don’t speak idiomatic platitude.

I have a limited physics background and need advice.

Try asking polite questions.

If a pilot comes to me and says, "I am a 10,000 hour pilot and am typed in a CE500", I say "Ggreat, let me see your pilot cert, and logbboks".

However, if a pilot said “I flew a Citation Mustang 1,500nm at 44,000ft.”, and I pointed out he was wrong, and why, would you believe him because he is a pilot?

Talk is cheap and accomplishments speak volumes.

List Witt’s accomplishments in null physics.

I will not give credence to hidden commentators or conspiracy theorists..

I think you might be needing that tin foil hat.