Null Physics anyone?

[ben m]

Talk is cheap and accomplishments speak volumes.

If you think talk is cheap, then online message boards are clearly not the place for you. Anonymity is a system with both virtues and faults; in my opinion, its usual faults have not been on display in this thread. You are welcome to disagree, but the general attitude of "I don't converse with anyone until I have looked them in the eye" isn't going to be productive. You are also welcome to go start a thread on a non-anonymous message board somewhere.

You're reading a conversation about the ads, the web page, the excerpts. Witt himself participated in the conversation. Imagine that you just walked into a bar, and twenty people you've never met are sitting around with a copy of "Discover" and access to Witt's web page and to Physical Review Letters. They're talking about the ad. Some of them sound like they know what they're talking about, and are saying things you can confirm for yourself. Some of them are saying things you know to be incorrect. You're free to make your own judgments---so and so seems to have a point, so and so keeps refusing to cite sources, so and so is evading questions. I'm sure you make such judgements all the time, although perhaps not on life-or-death questions like "will I get into a plane with this person"---but this isn't one of those questions. You're also welcome to chime in---with criticism, counterarguments, requests for clarification, whatever.

But you're not free to smash a bottle on the bar and demand that the conversation conform to your standards.

As an amateur I can not understand your arguments.

Anyway. There's no substitute for actually knowing physics when it comes to amateur assessment of physics. If you're inclined to trust credentials, though, your task is easy: most credentialed physicists agree on the big stuff. Anyone saying that the following things are "wrong" is going to be in explicit disagreement (and know, and admit, that they're in disagreement) with the vast majority of Ph.Ds: quantum mechanics, special relativity, general relativity, the Big Bang, "standard model" particle physics, "standard model" lambda-CDM cosmology. If you're going to run on credentials alone, then you should be even quicker to dismiss Witt than we are, because he only has a BSEE, and the mainstream physics that Witt rails against obviously have lots of Ph.Ds. The "accomplishments" of mainstream physics should speak volumes, if that's the way you're judging.

So, you're going to have to clarify your goals a bit. You're looking for a credentialed Ph.D. physicist to tell you, on the record, whether a BSEE software CEO has solved all of physics or not. I think Witt himself can give you an honest answer to that: he'll probably say, "No, obviously no mainstream physicists have adopted my paradigm yet, that's why I haven't been able to publish a paper."

Of course, if you want to be an amateur physicist and still be open to the idea of finding theories in defiance of mainstream physicists ... well, then you're in the same bind as "amateur stock pickers" and "amateur art buyers" and "amateur currency traders". You'll be bombarded by 1000 mutually-contradictory theories, then try to pick the right one with fairly little information and analysis to guide you. Full-time professional brokers/buyers/traders will be bombarded by the same theories, but they've got a huge amount of experience with the analysis. Go ahead and make your picks, but your lack of information is going to make you prone to mistakes. You might get lucky, but you don't sound like the kind of person who wants to rely on luck.

 

[ben m]

double post

 

[skepticalone]

Wow. I feel like I'm in a high school pissing contest, yet no one has the balls to forward a single credential, even privately. Major lack of Cred.
And I thought the punk devs at MacRumours had issues.
I won't be back to bother you guys, you have bigger issues to deal with.
I'll be sure to pass the good word on Randi's site here in SoCal.

 

[Third Eye Open]

Wow. I feel like I'm in a high school pissing contest, yet no one has the balls to forward a single credential, even privately. Major lack of Cred.
And I thought the punk devs at MacRumours had issues.
I won't be back to bother you guys, you have bigger issues to deal with.
I'll be sure to pass the good word on Randi's site here in SoCal.

You're the only one doing any pissing so far. And who are you that anyone
should want to waste their time trying to convince you of their credentials?

As you said, you are already a skeptic, and would probably be skeptical of any credentials shown anyway.

 

[Paul]

Wow. I feel like I'm in a high school pissing contest, yet no one has the balls to forward a single credential, even privately.

Isn't it terrible when physicists won't play 'look at the size of my diploma' with a pilot.

I won't be back to bother you guys,

Bye

I'll be sure to pass the good word on Randi's site here in SoCal.

If you behave the same way as you did here, I'm sure they'll take it as a recommendation.

 

[crashman]

Teery Witt may be right about Neutrons (read below)

Discovery Changes Understanding of Neutrons

Since 1947, physicists have thought the neutron, an electrically neutral elementary particle and a primary component of an atom, actually carries a positive charge at its center and an offsetting negative charge at its outer edge.

But new research shows the setup is more complex.

The neutron has been found to have a negative charge both in its inner core and its outer edge, with a positive charge sandwiched in between to make the particle electrically neutral.

"Nobody realized this was the case," said Gerald A. Miller, a University of Washington physicist. "It is significant because it is a clear fact of nature that we didn't know before. Now we know it."

The discovery changes scientific understanding of how neutrons interact with negatively charged electrons and positively charged protons. Specifically, it has implications for understanding the strong force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature (the others are the weak force, electromagnetism and the weakest of all—gravity).

The strong force binds atomic nuclei together, which makes it possible for atoms, the building blocks of all matter, to assemble into molecules.

"We have to understand exactly how the strong force works, because it is the strongest force we know in the universe," Miller said.

The findings are based on data collected at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Va., the Bates Linear Accelerator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Mainz Microtron at Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany.

The three labs examine various aspects of the properties and behavior of subatomic particles, and Miller studied data they collected about neutrons. His analysis was published online Sept. 13 in Physical Review Letters. The work was funded in part by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Since the analysis is based on data gathered from direct observations, the picture could change even more as more data are collected, Miller said.

"A particle can be electrically neutral and still have properties related to charge. We've known for a long time that the neutron has those properties, but now we understand them more clearly," he said.

 

[ben m]

Discovery Changes Understanding of Neutrons

Since 1947, physicists have thought the neutron, an electrically neutral elementary particle and a primary component of an atom, actually carries a positive charge at its center and an offsetting negative charge at its outer edge.

But new research shows the setup is more complex.

Is that supposed to confirm Witt's model where the neutron is somehow a proton plus an electron? Sorry, Miller is a nuclear theorist---and his work is very deeply wedded to the quark model. Neutron models have always included a pion cloud, and all the new model (http://arxiv.org/abs/0802.2563) does is make the pion cloud a little larger than previously thought. Some of the experiments that go into the new fit are from inelastic probes, which are pretty explicit about measuring the quark charge distribution, which I don't think is what Witt had in mind.

And I seem to recall Witt explicitly telling us that he wasn't going to make any predictions for high-energy scattering experiments because the theory wasn't that advanced. Is he reversing himself on that? Strange.

 

[zosima]

Quote from his webpage

Here's a quote from a review that Witt recently added to his website:
"It makes 1000% more sense than anything I've ever been taught about these topics in the past..."
lol....
The review in general are hilarious and not one from a person with a doctorate in any marginally relevant field... but never fear, the guy who I quoted above apparently got a 3.5 GPA when he got his BS, in engineering....

 

[zosima]

Oh ya, in addition to adding that review, he has also updated his journal and added two faqs where he takes a few potshots at jref(not explicitly...but...).

The fact that he is irked enough to edit responses to jref into his website lends credence to the supposition that there have been a few sock puppets here.

Amongst other things he notes that his fantastically expensive add campaign has been getting him some sales...I really hope he's exaggerating there is enough ignorance in the world without this guy paying to increase it. When you really think about it this guy really is much more menacing than the run-of-the-mill crackpot that just has a cable modem and a prescription to thorazine.

 

[roSSman]

In his on-line "Author's Journal," Witt writes:

I'm not sure how to explain the explosive growth of this book

Hmmm.

Here's a guy who's unraveled the mysteries of the universe. He's has sufficient IQ for that. But after most deliberately and carefully orchestrating a multi-million dollar advertising campaign, directly targeted at book sales, he's mystified that some (evidently significant) quantity has sold.

I've heard that a genuis can be brilliant in one area, while dumb-ass stupid in another.

Can this be Witt?

Seriously, it's interesting that Witt cites the number of countries in which his book has (allegedly) sold, while denying us knowledge of any raw numbers. If sales were truly brisk, one has to believe, he'd be intent on citing the latter?

When I first looked at Witt's website a few months back, I don't think it yet contained the following:

Null Physics is derived from the concept that our entire universe is the internal structure of nothingness. In other words, physical reality is an intricate, four-dimensional geometric equation that adds to zero because it exists within zero. There is no beginning or end to our universe because there is no beginning or end to nothingness. Reality is composed of space and curvatures of space (energy), both of which are composed of geometric points, which are the physical representation of nothingness. In short, there is no difference between a universe whose sum is zero and a universe that exists as a formulation of zero.

It's hard to imagine a more nonsensical set of assertions. For expert or layman, the above should be sufficient to convince Witt's work has the same worth as the universe he describes. In short, its worth quotient is "an equation that adds to zero."

 

[ben m]

On indicator of how well his ad campaign works is ... this thread. According to the front page, it got over 28,000 views, making it the fourth most-viewed thread on the whole forum. I suspect that's a product of Witt and his amazing ad budget. (Thanks, Terry!)

That's kind of a nice statement about money and ideas on the Internet. $1M buys a lot of first glances at something dumb, but authentic good sense (even via simple media like geeks chatting on the message board of an educational nonprofit) can still find its way into the light. It doesn't always, but it can. We've made it just a little bit harder for bad ideas to masquerade as good.

 

[Hermine]

I've always believed that in the beginning there was "nothing", as even in "nothingness" there is balance and believe that the whole business of life is about balance, about finding the right balance.

I haven't read his book but on the site in Excerpts Chapter 15 he writes:

"The lumetic decay rate of any celestial object's prior luminous output will eventually balance its current luminous output."

Coming from a primal perspective (my plan P6) the more early pain and repression an individual holds, the less balanced (physically, mentally, socially etc) the individual is likely to be and energy is likely to come out in unhealthy ways. By the same token, the less early pain and repression in the system the more balanced the individual is likely to be and energy comes out in healthier ways.

This coming from a "one theory which explains everything" perspective.

 

[zosima]

I've always believed that in the beginning there was "nothing", as even in "nothingness" there is balance and believe that the whole business of life is about balance, about finding the right balance.

I haven't read his book but on the site in Excerpts Chapter 15 he writes:

"The lumetic decay rate of any celestial object's prior luminous output will eventually balance its current luminous output."

Coming from a primal perspective (my plan P6) the more early pain and repression an individual holds, the less balanced (physically, mentally, socially etc) the individual is likely to be and energy is likely to come out in unhealthy ways. By the same token, the less early pain and repression in the system the more balanced the individual is likely to be and energy comes out in healthier ways.

This coming from a "one theory which explains everything" perspective.

huh?

 

[Hermine]

Zosima - you heard me!

What is it that you don't understand?

That decay rate=early pain?

And to understand the concept of early repressed pain, you may like to check out and explore Dr Arthur Janov's Primal Centre website.

Good Luck

 

[zosima]

That decay rate=early pain?

Wha?
Why?
Uh?

 

[roSSman]

Perhaps I can help you, Zosima.

Hermine is probably a very nice person. However, based on his/her comments, it's evident he/she is not living in quite the same world as you and me.

I think everyone else on this thread just ignored Hermine, which was likely the best we could do.

No offense toward you is intended, Hermine. It's simply that the concepts you're embracing are of a type that likely everyone else here would refer to as "mysticism." This is not a bunch that has any interest in that, or even sympathy for it. There are indeed folks who like to combine talk about physics with mystical ideas, but you're in the wrong thread for that.

 

[zosima]

Perhaps I can help you, Zosima.

Hermine is probably a very nice person. However, based on his/her comments, it's evident he/she is not living in quite the same world as you and me.

I think everyone else on this thread just ignored Hermine, which was likely the best we could do.

No offense toward you is intended, Hermine. It's simply that the concepts you're embracing are of a type that likely everyone else here would refer to as "mysticism." This is not a bunch that has any interest in that, or even sympathy for it. There are indeed folks who like to combine talk about physics with mystical ideas, but you're in the wrong thread for that.

I guess I can stop banging my head against my keyboard,now My head was starting to hurt and my posts were coming out all gibberish.

 

[Anaxes]

Greetings from newbie. During the last two days, I followed this thread; it was exceedingly addictive. I followed 25-30% (I hope to get to really understand QED before I die). When I finally got caught up, it was at post 275--I was almost rolling on the floor. Got about 60% through a math major (nearly 40 years ago)--any suggestions for review and easy path into Feynmanland? Better path for me is cognitive psychology and epistemology--may try threading in that direction as time passes. Many thanks

 

[blobru]

A-way back on page 2, terrywitt responded to the standard criticism of tired light I'd posted; then ben_m debunked Witt's response:

... The next thing to account for is the loss of energy. Photons lose about half of their energy every ~10 billion years. This means that the universe’s entire legacy luminous output is halved every ~10 billion years. This is a prodigious energy loss. Where do you suppose it goes? Microwaves. Deep space photons, when exposed to the expansion of dv/dx, emit microwaves. Since the microwaves are emitted parallel to the photon’s trajectory, energy and momentum are conserved. ...

... Aha, the decay photons are collinear with the source photons? That means that the microwave "decay" photons must point back to their sources. In other words, you're not predicting a microwave background, you're predicting that all high-redshift objects are microwave point sources. This is experimentally not true. You're predicting that higher-redshift sources should *always* have higher microwave-to-primary-light ratios. This is also experimentally not true. ...

So with higher redshifts we simply don't find the extra microwaves Witt's theory for photon decay requires.

The problem for Witt is those darned collinear microwaves from the photon's decay pointing back to the red-shifted object.

I notice there's now a "reply" from Witt that tries to fudge the collinear microwave gap (from his website's faq):

If photons lose energy in intergalactic redshift, where does this energy go?

Since the universe is not expanding, the energy lost by photons through intergalactic redshift has to go somewhere. The universe's primary luminosity is the optical band (UV-red), and when these photons are redshifted they release microwaves directly into the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Although these microwaves are initially colinear with their source photons (in order to conserve energy and momentum) they are quickly (by astronomical standards, at least) scattered by the next link in what is referred to in Our Undiscovered Universe as the cosmic fusion cycle. The CMB's power spectrum is consistent with this scattering mechanism, but there is far more direct evidence of this process, and it is presented in detail in Part IV of Our Undiscovered Universe. [added bolding]

What is the CMB "scattering mechanism"? Could it erase the photon-decay microwaves? Witt says the scattering is quick, but only by astronomical standards. So shouldn't we still observe unscattered microwaves pointing back to the red-shift source (assuming a microwave’s frequency is dependent on how ‘decayed’ the emitting photon is, shouldn't red-shift objects still have a sort of microwave signature: the farther away the source, the more red-shift, the more photon decay, the longer the microwavelength...)?

Etc. Likely a lot of other problems with it that are over my head. Interesting to see this indirect response to those earlier posts in Witt's faq; thought I'd pass it along.

 

[zosima]

What is the CMB "scattering mechanism"? Could it erase the photon-decay microwaves? Witt says the scattering is quick, but only by astronomical standards. So shouldn't we still observe unscattered microwaves pointing back to the red-shift source (assuming a microwave’s frequency is dependent on how ‘decayed’ the emitting photon is, shouldn't red-shift objects still have a sort of microwave signature: the farther away the source, the more red-shift, the more photon decay, the longer the microwavelength...)?

Etc. Likely a lot of other problems with it that are over my head. Interesting to see this indirect response to those earlier posts in Witt's faq; thought I'd pass it along.

Ya, Witt is saying "Buy my book and I'll show you how my improbable theory magically explains this evidence." Who knows what its mechanism is? He claims something about the "Cosmic Fusion Cycle" explaining CMB. This is just obfuscation. Why wouldn't he explain this in his FAQ too? If he wants to get the word out on his theory he doesn't do himself any favors by keeping his "magical mechanism" secret. So the fact that he chooses not to share it indicates either he's a snake-oil salesman, trying to profit off his silly ideas, or that not even he is confident that his "magical mechanism" will stand up to scrutiny.

The bottom line is that the COBE results are some of the strongest results in the history of science. COBE matches almost perfectly the prediction of a single event blackbody emission, emitted evenly from everywhere. The evidence matches both the predicted power spectrum and the predicted directional anisotropy.

If CMB were emitted from the light of stars, which in turn are in varying directions and at varying distances, then the CMB spectrum would, at best, match a many event blackbody emission and would show anisotropy that is consistent with the direction of cosmic radiation sources.

Your point about red-shift is great too. Does light red-shift and lumetic decay? Why doesn't the CMB lumetic decay? How can we even separate this hypothetical decay mechanism from the well measured and well understood doppler shift mechanism? Why do we need both?

There are just too many questions, too many inconsistencies, just too much duct tape holding Witt's theory together. It isn't worth anyone's time or the purportedly expensive paper upon which it is printed. On the other hand, if Witt is willing to donate a lot of his cash to a university so that they can do real research, then I think they are smart to repay him with a pittance in legitimacy.