Why is there so much crackpot physics?

[DeiRenDopa]

Watch my lips: the Earth goes round the Sun. That isn't blathering, that's what happens. All GR says is that you're free to use a geocentric coordinate system. That doesn't mean the Sun goes round the Earth. Just as when you're on a roundabout it doesn't mean the universe is revolving around you. Because I'm on a roundabout too, and it can't be revolving around the both of us, now can it?

Yeah yeah. You are ignorant of scripture, and consequently not in a position to have any opinion on the preachings of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. I bought the T-shirt.

No they aren't. Time and distance are both defined using the motion of light, and mass ratios are dimensionless just like harmonics. Are you ever going to stop and think about this? Will you even look at the the watt balance section of the wikipedia kilogram article? Did you spot the bit that says "The Planck constant defines the kilogram in terms of the second and the meter. By fixing the Planck constant, the definition of the kilogram would depend only on the definitions of the second and the meter"? And how do you define the second and the metre? Using the motion of light. But sigh, this is hopeless. If I can't get you to understand the mass of a body is a measure of its energy-content, no way am I going to get you to understand this.

I haven't embarrassed myself. You have. You think the Sun goes round the Earth. And that The Sky is Falling In. And if anybody challenges what you think via a reasoned counterargument backed by evidence and explanation and Einstein, you don't respond in kind, you just dismiss it as irrelevant cherry-picking nonsense, because it doesn't square with what you think you know. You just won't listen, you offer no counter argument, no counter evidence, and no counter nothing. Why is there so much crackpot physics? Because of suckers like you.

(bold added)

Here's the thing, Farsight: I am unaware of anyone, any JREF member, who has posted in response to what you have written here, who has said, in effect, "You know what Farsight, you're right! Golly gosh, how could I have been so ignorant all this time?!?"

As far as I know, no one has ever said anything like that (but please, if you have evidence to the contrary, I'd love to be shown to be wrong).

And why is that? Why is it that you have (it would seem) failed, so ... spectacularly at communicating what you have said (repeatedly) is really quite simple? In a way that at least one other JREF member has been able to understand?

What is it? Is it the way you are communicating? Is it the lack of any meaningful reference to the mathematical heart of the general theory of relativity? Is it, perhaps, the in-your-face approach you take? Or perhaps the non-answers you give when asked simple, honest questions (about the content of what you write)?

Whatever the reason, don't you think - given the apparent complete and total failure to communicate - that you should modify your message?

Try this: You said "Watch my lips: the Earth goes round the Sun. That isn't blathering, that's what happens."

OK, I watched your lips, and I have a simple, honest question: what leads you to the conclusion that the Earth goes round the Sun?

 

[Kwalish Kid]

Yes there is. The "experts" are feeding you drivel like the sky's falling in and the universe revolves around the Earth, and you're lapping it up. So much so that when I offer Einstein's relativity instead, you dismiss it as cherry-picking crackpot physics. You have a mysterious psychological drive to cling to woo. And I have a not-so-mysterious psychological drive to teach you to be skeptical about it. If don't do this, you are doomed to be a Perpetual Student forever, like some kid who never graduated from high school.

Given the myriad mathematical mistakes that you have made on Einstein's work without gravity, how do you know that you have Einstein correct on gravity? You don't seem able to compare what the experts write with what Einstein wrote.

Honestly, have you spoken to a psychologist about this? If you have read other parts of this forum, you must have been exposed to the accounts of people who have irrational beliefs.

 

[Perpetual Student]

Watch my lips: the Earth goes round the Sun. That isn't blathering, that's what happens. All GR says is that you're free to use a geocentric coordinate system. That doesn't mean the Sun goes round the Earth. Just as when you're on a roundabout it doesn't mean the universe is revolving around you. Because I'm on a roundabout too, and it can't be revolving around the both of us, now can it?

There is no doubt that having the earth revolving around the sun provides a simpler and more intuitive picture. I find it disturbing that GR does not confirm that preference and so I continue to study GR in the hope I can resolve this for myself. Arrogantly proclaiming that your intuition trumps the understanding of thousands of physicists throughout the world may satisfy your naive approach to physics, but not mine. I have had a number of discussions about this aspect of GR over the last four years. If you had something at the level of genuine physics to offer I would pay attention. But you provide nothing but empty assertions.

Yeah yeah. You are ignorant of scripture, and consequently not in a position to have any opinion on the preachings of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. I bought the T-shirt.

I can't improve on Giordano's above comment.

No they aren't. Time and distance are both defined using the motion of light, and mass ratios are dimensionless just like harmonics. Are you ever going to stop and think about this? Will you even look at the the watt balance section of the wikipedia kilogram article? Did you spot the bit that says "The Planck constant defines the kilogram in terms of the second and the meter. By fixing the Planck constant, the definition of the kilogram would depend only on the definitions of the second and the meter"? And how do you define the second and the metre? Using the motion of light. But sigh, this is hopeless. If I can't get you to understand the mass of a body is a measure of its energy-content, no way am I going to get you to understand this.

As you point out, "Since 1967, the second has been defined to be the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom..."
That standard is used because it is reproducible, not because there is anything fundamental about 9,192,631,770. What is the speed of light if we used 7,000,000,000 periods of the radiation of cesium? The origins of the second are astronomical, for example: the fraction 1/31,556,925.9747 of the tropical year for 1900 January 0 at 12 hours ephemeris time. The second is an arbitrary unit of time. Think man!

I haven't embarrassed myself. You have. You think the Sun goes round the Earth. And that The Sky is Falling In. And if anybody challenges what you think via a reasoned counterargument backed by evidence and explanation and Einstein, you don't respond in kind, you just dismiss it as irrelevant cherry-picking nonsense, because it doesn't square with what you think you know. You just won't listen, you offer no counter argument, no counter evidence, and no counter nothing. Why is there so much crackpot physics? Because of suckers like you.

Rubbish!

 

[ben m]

Watch my lips: the Earth goes round the Sun. That isn't blathering, that's what happens. All GR says is that you're free to use a geocentric coordinate system. That doesn't mean the Sun goes round the Earth. Just as when you're on a roundabout it doesn't mean the universe is revolving around you. Because I'm on a roundabout too, and it can't be revolving around the both of us, now can it?

We had a whole thread about this, in which people who know GR discussed the merits of various viewpoints, including a viewpoint resembling yours, in an intelligent and polite discussion that involved none of your overbearing browbeating.

To recap that discussion, you're being sloppily intuitive about what you mean by "around". The Sun, the Earth, and you have coordinate labels in some system. The intuitive description of "X goes around Y", translated into physics, can only mean that X has a coordinate label that increase continuously, in the manner of an angle. In this sense: consider the labeling convention in which the Earth "goes around" the Sun. This is, objectively speaking, the simplest such convention, and the only one in which, asymptotically far from the Solar System, the laws of coordinate-motion are themselves coordinate-dependent. So there is a reason to "prefer" this coordinate convention. However, given that space is curved near the planets, the laws of coordinate-motion are always coordinate-dependent, so you'd better get used to it. The coordinate system in which "the Sun goes around the Earth" is, objectively, no weirder and no less symmetric than the systems in which "free-falling objects move towards the ground" or "the Space Shuttle catches up to ISS because its orbit is lower". (Try to explain *that* to an ISS astronaut who wants to say that his capsule's internal, free-falling, rectilinear coordinate system is the "real" one.)

More generally, your attitude is typical of people who know less about GR and coordinates than they think they do. Many people seem to arrive at this attitude with a mental picture of a "real" snapshot of the solar system---a photo whose coordinates are what they are---and imagine that GR just gives you different ways of drawing gridlines on this snapshot. "well, sure, those gridlines are valid things to draw, but erase them and you can see the real photo"; this seems to be the attitude. Sure, that's close enough to the truth if you're drawing cover art for a Star Trek DVD box, but it's missing the actual meaning of coordinate-system-freedom by a mile and a half.

 

[Perpetual Student]

We had a whole thread about this, in which people who know GR discussed the merits of various viewpoints, including a viewpoint resembling yours, in an intelligent and polite discussion that involved none of your overbearing browbeating.

To recap that discussion, you're being sloppily intuitive about what you mean by "around". The Sun, the Earth, and you have coordinate labels in some system. The intuitive description of "X goes around Y", translated into physics, can only mean that X has a coordinate label that increase continuously, in the manner of an angle. In this sense: consider the labeling convention in which the Earth "goes around" the Sun. This is, objectively speaking, the simplest such convention, and the only one in which, asymptotically far from the Solar System, the laws of coordinate-motion are themselves coordinate-dependent. So there is a reason to "prefer" this coordinate convention. However, given that space is curved near the planets, the laws of coordinate-motion are always coordinate-dependent, so you'd better get used to it. The coordinate system in which "the Sun goes around the Earth" is, objectively, no weirder and no less symmetric than the systems in which "free-falling objects move towards the ground" or "the Space Shuttle catches up to ISS because its orbit is lower". (Try to explain *that* to an ISS astronaut who wants to say that his capsule's internal, free-falling, rectilinear coordinate system is the "real" one.)

More generally, your attitude is typical of people who know less about GR and coordinates than they think they do. Many people seem to arrive at this attitude with a mental picture of a "real" snapshot of the solar system---a photo whose coordinates are what they are---and imagine that GR just gives you different ways of drawing gridlines on this snapshot. "well, sure, those gridlines are valid things to draw, but erase them and you can see the real photo"; this seems to be the attitude. Sure, that's close enough to the truth if you're drawing cover art for a Star Trek DVD box, but it's missing the actual meaning of coordinate-system-freedom by a mile and a half.

I think it's easy enough to grasp the equivalence of coordinate systems treating them geometrically. It's when all the necessary forces are introduced that the physics seems to prefer a heliocentric approach. But that's for another thread and time... My understanding of GR is very much a work in progress but I do believe I'm getting there.

 

[ben m]

No they aren't. Time and distance are both defined using the motion of light

They're defined, to start with, using arbitrary human choices---the 18th century decision that a "meter" is yea big and the medieval decision that a "second" is about yea long in human terms. Those are honest to goodness arbitrary definitions. Starting with those definitions, the speed of light turns out to be 3x10^8 French-distance-unit per medieval-time-unit. Alternatively, the French-unit turns out to be 3x10^-9 light-medieval-units. Or, the medeival-time-unit turns out to be the time it takes light to travel 3x10^8 French-distance-units.

After you pick an arbitrary time, you can define distance using light.

After you pick an arbitrary distance unit, you can define time using light.

You can't do both.

"The Planck constant defines the kilogram in terms of the second and the meter. By fixing the Planck constant, the definition of the kilogram would depend only on the definitions of the second and the meter"?

"Fixing the Planck constant" is the same thing as "picking the number 299000000, calling it the speed of light, then letting that define the meter"

This is what physicists have been doing for a century, Farsight. "Natural units", an arbitrary human choice to say G=c=h=1, are the most common such choice, and they result in new distance-unit/time-unit/mass-unit. Another arbitrary choice, to say c=hbar=1, results in different new units.

Once again, you're pointing at Freshman-level physics knowledge you don't understand, hinting that no one but you knows it (!), further hinting that it contradicts the other Freshman-level physics you don't understand.

If I can't get you to understand the mass of a body is a measure of its energy-content, no way am I going to get you to understand this.

Everybody understands that the mass of a body is a measure of its energy content. Including Peter Higgs. Including Einstein. You are making inferences far beyond "mass is a form of energy", you're doing so using your error-ridden scholastic technique, and you're getting these inferences wrong. I agree with E^2 = p^2 c^2 + m^2 c^4, and I disagree with your interpretation of it.

 

[Perpetual Student]

...
After you pick an arbitrary distance unit, you can define time using light.

You can't do both.



"Fixing the Planck constant" is the same thing as "picking the number 299000000, calling it the speed of light, then letting that define the meter"

This is what physicists have been doing for a century, Farsight. "Natural units", an arbitrary human choice to say G=c=h=1, are the most common such choice, and they result in new distance-unit/time-unit/mass-unit. Another arbitrary choice, to say c=hbar=1, results in different new units.

Once again, you're pointing at Freshman-level physics knowledge you don't understand, hinting that no one but you knows it (!), further hinting that it contradicts the other Freshman-level physics you don't understand. ...

How is this not obvious to even the most casual reader?

 

[a_unique_person]

How about real scientists who don't accept global warming?

 

[Sideroxylon]

How about real scientists who don't accept global warming?

They need to get back to doing geology and leave climate science to the experts.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

How about real scientists who don't accept global warming?

I'm not aware of any connection between that and crackpot physics.

Some of the AGW-denying blogs may incorporate crackpot physics into their denials, but those blogs aren't written by real scientists. The relatively small number of real scientists who still don't accept global warming may have good reasons (which wouldn't be crackpot physics) or poor reasons, but it looks to me as though the poor reasons are more likely to be mistakes and misunderstandings than crackpot science of any sort. If you know of real scientists who don't accept global warming because they accept or advocate crackpot physics, then I hope you'll discuss them in this thread.

 

[tsig]

Watch my lips: the Earth goes round the Sun. That isn't blathering, that's what happens. All GR says is that you're free to use a geocentric coordinate system. That doesn't mean the Sun goes round the Earth. Just as when you're on a roundabout it doesn't mean the universe is revolving around you. Because I'm on a roundabout too, and it can't be revolving around the both of us, now can it?

Yeah yeah. You are ignorant of scripture, and consequently not in a position to have any opinion on the preachings of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. I bought the T-shirt. No they aren't. Time and distance are both defined using the motion of light, and mass ratios are dimensionless just like harmonics. Are you ever going to stop and think about this? Will you even look at the the watt balance section of the wikipedia kilogram article? Did you spot the bit that says "The Planck constant defines the kilogram in terms of the second and the meter. By fixing the Planck constant, the definition of the kilogram would depend only on the definitions of the second and the meter"? And how do you define the second and the metre? Using the motion of light. But sigh, this is hopeless. If I can't get you to understand the mass of a body is a measure of its energy-content, no way am I going to get you to understand this.

I haven't embarrassed myself. You have. You think the Sun goes round the Earth. And that The Sky is Falling In. And if anybody challenges what you think via a reasoned counterargument backed by evidence and explanation and Einstein, you don't respond in kind, you just dismiss it as irrelevant cherry-picking nonsense, because it doesn't square with what you think you know. You just won't listen, you offer no counter argument, no counter evidence, and no counter nothing. Why is there so much crackpot physics? Because of suckers like you.

Equating science to scripture says a lot about why you are wrong.

Equating yourself to Einstein is even more wrong.

 

[The Norseman]

I am well and truly puzzled at some people's insistence on the New Mathematics of "physics = Einstein" as if one man is the end-all, be-all of physics.

Einstein was a dude who got some things right and who also got some things wrong. He built upon others' work just as his work is in turn built upon. He came up with some ideas that turned out to be true. No need to elevate him to godlike status or repeat everything that the man ever did or said with mind-numbing adulation.

 

[sol invictus]

I am well and truly puzzled at some people's insistence on the New Mathematics of "physics = Einstein" as if one man is the end-all, be-all of physics.

Einstein was a dude who got some things right and who also got some things wrong. He built upon others' work just as his work is in turn built upon. He came up with some ideas that turned out to be true. No need to elevate him to godlike status or repeat everything that the man ever did or said with mind-numbing adulation.

It's particularly bizarre in Farsight's case, because what he claims Einstein meant bears very little relation to what Einstein actually thought (or said, for that matter). Part of the reason is that if you can't follow Einstein's math, you can't understand what he did - because all of what he did was based on mathematics.

 

[catsmate]

Farsight clearly thinks a large proportion of his claims are exactly what Einstein thought.

Wooster behaviour so classic it's on the Crackpot Index.

I understand this stuff really well.

No. You have demonstrated time and again you have very little understanding of physics or mathematics.

Yeah yeah, dismiss Einstein.

What have your ramblings got to do with Einstein? And I take it from your answer you dismiss the work done in physics since Einstein?

I just gave one. And I explained why the maths applies. Sorry about the typos. All you ever do is snipe.

Nope. If by "snipe" you mean "point out the nonsense you post" then yes I do.

It's particularly bizarre in Farsight's case, because what he claims Einstein meant bears very little relation to what Einstein actually thought (or said, for that matter). Part of the reason is that if you can't follow Einstein's math, you can't understand what he did - because all of what he did was based on mathematics.

Again, classic wooster behaviour. Worth 30 points

 

[Farsight]

I just need to point out that if you were ignorant of scripture, you would certainly not be in a position to offer any opinion about scripture, and you would be at a major disadvantage in offering an opinion on the preachings of the Holy Roman Church as they applied to scripture. If I never read (or even looked at) a book, could I form a legitimate opinion about it?

When people are preaching nonsense at you that doesn't stand up to logical analysis and has no evidential support, you don't need to be an expert in scripture to call ********.

Not understanding quantum field theory DOES prevent you from having a legitimate opinion about quantum field theory and about any theory in physics that is based on quantum field theory.

********. I understand quite enough physics to give a legitimate opinon on those aspects of QFT that could be improved. But not that I haven't been particularly critical of QFT. I don't go round saying QFT is all wrong.

Edited by LashL: 

Edited to properly mask profanity. Please see Rule 10 re: the auto-censor.

 

[Farsight]

...Whatever the reason, don't you think - given the apparent complete and total failure to communicate - that you should modify your message?

What are you on about? This is no complete and total failure to communicate. We've been having some nice physics conversations.

...Try this: You said "Watch my lips: the Earth goes round the Sun. That isn't blathering, that's what happens." OK, I watched your lips, and I have a simple, honest question: what leads you to the conclusion that the Earth goes round the Sun?

Observation. Go and read up on the Copernican Revolution. It only took a hundred years.

 

[edd]

When people are preaching nonsense at you that doesn't stand up to logical analysis and has no evidential support, you don't need to be an expert in scripture to call ********.

I might agree with this in principle but I don't think it applies in this case. There's not much 'preaching of nonsense' going on from your opponents.

 

[Farsight]

Given the myriad mathematical mistakes that you have made on Einstein's work without gravity, how do you know that you have Einstein correct on gravity? You don't seem able to compare what the experts write with what Einstein wrote.

Get real. I haven't made myriad mathematical mistakes. And I'm the guy who puts up what Einstein wrote and points out how different it is to what the experts write. Here's one example: post 607 on the Higgs thread.

Honestly, have you spoken to a psychologist about this?

LOL. Honestly, I don't need to.

If you have read other parts of this forum, you must have been exposed to the accounts of people who have irrational beliefs.

I've had a great deal of exposure to that. I've had long "conversations" with Young-Earth Creationists and Muslim Fundamentalists, and others. And as you are to them, so am I to you.

 

[Giordano]

When people are preaching nonsense at you that doesn't stand up to logical analysis and has no evidential support, you don't need to be an expert in scripture to call ********.

********. I understand quite enough physics to give a legitimate opinon on those aspects of QFT that could be improved. But not that I haven't been particularly critical of QFT. I don't go round saying QFT is all wrong.

Edited by LashL: 

Edited to properly mask profanity. Please see Rule 10 re: the auto-censor.

The whole point is that you DO NOT understand enough physics to give a legitimate opinion, even though you believe you do.Liisten to what the others here are trying to teach you! Think about the saying, "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." It explains why your partial and distorted knowledge of physics leads you to dismiss widely accepted concepts held by the top experts in the world.

 

[Giordano]

Observation. Go and read up on the Copernican Revolution. It only took a hundred years.

I think you are working yourself up into a tizzy because you are imagining that people are telling you the earth holds still and the sun rotates around it.

Let me try an explanation as to the sun around the earth problem. Neither actually rotates around the other, but around their common center of mass. If both were the same mass, the common center of mass would be mid way between them. Given the much larger mass of the sun, the common center of mass I believe is within the sun itself, but displaced from the actual center of the sun. So when people are telling you that it is equally legitimate to view the sun as rotating around the earth as visa versa, they are not envisioning the earth staying "still" and the sun whipping around it. Nor, when someone says the earth rotates around the sun are they saying the sun holds still and the earth whips around it. They are both saying that the sun and earth rotate around this common center of mass, and that you can view it from either end of this pivot. Further, neither view is more correct than the other.

Okay?