Why is there so much crackpot physics?

Farsight said:
There's physicists out there, respected physicists, who really do take time travel (in the time-machine sense) absolutely seriously, and who talk earnestly about the grandfather paradox. I hope we are now all agreed that they're talking through their hats and promoting crackpot physics.
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Again, you seem not to understand what science is all about. These scientists seriously investigate the physics that would be involved in time travel of different kinds by using the available science along with some speculation. You, on the other hand, offer text picked out of context, present arguments from authority, cannot follow the science, and deny that you speculate. You stick to dogmatic positions while these people offer argument. Their work is valuable because if we are to offer reasons why time travel is impossible, we need to provide reasons.

You avoid all serious questions because you will not or cannot reason. That behaviour is antithetical to the very basis of this forum.
No it isn't. My argument against time travel is that clocks clock up motion local to that clock within that clock, and you don't travel through a measure of motion. Not forward, and not backwards either. So the grandfather paradox is just specious irrelevant bunk.
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You are begging the question. If you could demonstrate how to do any physics with just movement, or even how to account for movement without time (since you are claiming that time derives from movement), then you would have the beginning of an argument. All you have so far is your dogma.
Farsight said:
Go look inside a clock. Time travel is the fantasy.
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Here you are clearly using the phrase "time travel" to mean the common use of time in physics. I would not call you a liar, so you are clearly confused about the content of your own mind.
No I'm not. If there was an absolute reference frame you'd be able to tell whether you were moving without looking outside your box. You can't. Note that the CMBR gives you the rest frame of the universe, and the universe is as absolute as it gets. But the CMBR rest frame isn't an absolute reference frame in the relativity sense of the phrase. See this webpage for a write-up. And stop being such a whining naysayer.
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Your insults aside, your words do you no help. You again contradict yourself: you claim both that there is and that there is not an absolute reference frame. But let's return to the foundation of your Twilight Zone and your fantasy box examples: you are claiming that it is possible for a physical system to be at absolute rest.
 
I must admit that I find the argument that the CMB provides us with a universal preferred frame of reference very compelling.
For some time now, I have been studying GR to get a better handle on why it is not possible for there to be a preferred frame of reference. A serious study of GR is not child's play, so I'm not there yet. Fortunately, we live in a wonderful age, where there is access to lectures, papers, forums, etc. for the mathematically literate.
I hope to have a good discussion about this again sometime -- but not now.
 
GR doesn't say that there cannot be a frame of reference that we pick out in some way and thus prefer. What it says is that the kinematics of the universe are not to be determined because there is some preferred frame of reference or system of coordinates. The dynamics of the universe are to be determined by the distribution of its contents regardless of the system of coordinates chosen. That there is a system of coordinates in which there is a nice distribution (on average) of the contents of the universe is a nice bonus.
 
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Farsight said:
Yes, there's one poised in mid-air, high up. It's not a perfect story, in that she's of course immune, and she can see and move things and people, and breathe air and drive her car etc.
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Uh, look at the time. I'm off to bed.
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Ofcourse there is also the twilightzone (?) episode where a person "falls in between moments" and sees how the next moment is being built by persons dressed in blue, what does that mean then?
 
tusenfem said:
Ofcourse there is also the twilightzone (?) episode where a person "falls in between moments" and sees how the next moment is being built by persons dressed in blue, what does that mean then?
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Smurfs are the architects of reality, exist outside of space time and have an inordinate amount of blue face paint ?
 
tusenfem said:
Ofcourse there is also the twilightzone (?) episode where a person "falls in between moments" and sees how the next moment is being built by persons dressed in blue, what does that mean then?
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Don’t forget The Outer Limits. That’s where crackpot physics thrives


http://www.hulu.com/watch/155110#i0,p44,d0


Exceeding all currently known speeds a test pilot and his wife are trapped in an instant of time, until they can (hopefully) catch up with themselves. You should (and do) see what happened to the last guy that didn’t.

Can we blame, at least in part, science fiction and fantasy stories for so much crackpot physics? Certainly more appealing and entertaining (as is the intent) than straight out science or physics and I’d much rather deal with the crackpots then give up or restrict the elements of a good sci-fi story.











We now return control of the thread to you, until maybe next week, at perhaps some time when the Control Voice will take you to... The Outer Limits.
 
I was just reviewing the thread, "Is light a particle or a wave? Explained here."
I believe that thread demonstrates that a major cause of crackpot physics is the jarringly counter intuitive aspects of modern physics. One can easily have sympathy and find the psychological need to create an alternative and simpler narrative quite understandable. A layman is faced with genuine confusion and understandable intellectual rebellion when considering some of the consequences of quantum physics. The wave/particle duality of photons, discussed in that thread is a great example.
Looking at the matter naively, wave particle duality sounds something like the three-in-one dogma of the holy trinity in christian theology. When one questions the trinity of Christianity, answers like the "mystery of god" is often heard (understood only by the ordained) -- which is not so different than the mystery of the real nature of matter and energy (understood only by the ordained -- physicists)
The difference is, of course, one mystery is confirmed by experiment and supported by the mathematical models of QM, while the other is merely fanciful.
The problem is that people like Jonesboy, the originator of that thread, is oblivious to experiment and mathematical models. Simply stated, it is likely he is not familiar with the mathematics involved and does not understand the nature of experimental physics. But his psychological need to deal with his world causes him to invent a mental picture and narrative that satisfies his needs. Unfortunately, he (and so many like him) go one step further and preach their non-scientific delusions to others, which results in these exasperating but admittedly entertaining threads.
 
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Perpetual Student said:
I was just reviewing the thread, "Is light a particle or a wave? Explained here."
I believe that thread demonstrates that a major cause of crackpot physics is the jarringly counter intuitive aspects of modern physics. One can easily have sympathy and find the psychological need to create an alternative and simpler narrative quite understandable.

...snip...

The problem is that people like Jonesboy, the originator of that thread, is oblivious to experiment and mathematical models. Simply stated, it is likely he is not familiar with the mathematics involved and does not understand the nature of experimental physics. But his psychological need to deal with his world causes him to invent a mental picture and narrative that satisfies his needs. Unfortunately, he (and so many like him) go one step further and preach their non-scientific delusions to others, which results in these exasperating but admittedly entertaining threads.
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I'm not sure we can or should diagnose other posters' psychological needs.

For example, I don't know how much of what Jonesboy says about himself is true. Some of what he says seems unlikely. I doubt, for example, whether Jonesboy was Wittgenstein.

Some crackpot physics is more Narcissus than science.
 
W.D.Clinger said:
I'm not sure we can or should diagnose other posters' psychological needs.

For example, I don't know how much of what Jonesboy says about himself is true. Some of what he says seems unlikely. I doubt, for example, whether Jonesboy was Wittgenstein.

Some crackpot physics is more Narcissus than science.
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You may be correct, but I do believe we all have a need to make our world comprehensible and that need is challenged by the appearance of dissonance in stuff like QM. So I think part of the explanation is that crackpots come up with explanations to ease their pain and go on from there.
 
I think you're being generous.

I don't think the non-intuitive nature of QM is dissolving his worldview ... I just think he's arrogant and pigheaded and smart enough to argue himself into anything ...

But you sound nice and you could be right and that's a good thing ... I'm just a grumpy old man!
 
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If I was playing one of those crackpot bingo cards ...

B -bizarrely worded thesis
I -indeterminable world view
N -no/little formal training in his 'field'
G -grand unifications
O -obscure physics journal

BINGO!
 
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I don't think Peter Lynds should be called a physicist, crackpot or otherwise. So what is he? A philosopher? Journalist? Science or physics writer? I'm not sure.
As a general guideline, I would not label as crackpot any speculative theory that does not violate established models or observations. In my view, it's good to speculate where current observations and models yield no information. When theories do contradict known physics and one maintains his/her opinions in spite of that contradiction, I call that crackpot.
I have not read his stuff so I really don't know enough about Lynds either way.
 
keyfeatures said:
Out of interest, would you say this guy is a crackpot physicist?
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Yeah, and a pretty bad case. The author clearly has heard a bunch of physics factoids---"time is uncertain in quantum mechanics", "everything is moving on a subatomic scales"---and he seems to think that's enough information to base his reasoning on.

How bad? Let me put it in context.

There are many "ex-physicist" crackpots---who know the tools of physics, and maybe have Ph.D.s, but who follow their tools into initially-understandable mistakes, but fall in love with the outcome of the mistake, and never look back (viz. Johan Prins, Anthony Peratt). There are many engineer-type crackpots---who know math, and know (or are eager to learn) physics, but when they try to combine them they make huge basic mistakes. (viz. Terence Witt, Ricardo Carezani.) And there are the mentally-ill and the mystically-inclined, who have daydreams or visions which they mistake for physics insights, then try to describe as "discoveries". (viz. Time Cube.)

Peter Lynds' writings are, excluding the mentally-imbalanced and/or woo, possibly the worst physics crackpottery I've every come across. Keyfeatures, if your own ideas look anything like this you should do some very very tough self-criticism and figure out why.
 
keyfeatures said:
I happen to like his ideas. Maybe this is because they echo some of my own physics crackpot thinking.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0612053v3.pdf
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When was that paper written? No date is included. The paper seems to be very outdated since he assumes a "big crunch" cosmology, which has been dismissed due to the discovery of cosmic acceleration and the various dark energy hypotheses.
Has he revised his ideas in any subsequent paper to accommodate these more recent discoveries?
 
ben m said:
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There are many "ex-physicist" crackpots---who know the tools of physics, and maybe have Ph.D.s, but who follow their tools into initially-understandable mistakes, but fall in love with the outcome of the mistake, and never look back (viz. Johan Prins, Anthony Peratt). There are many engineer-type crackpots---who know math, and know (or are eager to learn) physics, but when they try to combine them they make huge basic mistakes. (viz. Terence Witt, Ricardo Carezani.) And there are the mentally-ill and the mystically-inclined, who have daydreams or visions which they mistake for physics insights, then try to describe as "discoveries". (viz. Time Cube.)
...
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That should be on a "Know Your Crackpot" t-shirt!
 
Perpetual Student said:
When was that paper written? No date is included. The paper seems to be very outdated since he assumes a "big crunch" cosmology, which has been dismissed due to the discovery of cosmic acceleration and the various dark energy hypotheses.
Has he revised his ideas in any subsequent paper to accommodate these more recent discoveries?
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2007 I think.

MOre here on why cyclic theories may be compatible with dark energy and cosmic acceleration. http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/a_cyclic_universe/
 
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keyfeatures said:
2007 I think.

MOre here on why cyclic theories may be compatible with dark energy and cosmic acceleration. http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/a_cyclic_universe/
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I did not say that cyclic theories are incompatible with dark energy. However, big crunch models -- which Lynds does discuss -- are definitely contradicted by dark energy. Steinhardt's cyclic model does not involve big crunch concepts -- so, I really don't understand your response.
 
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