Wallace Thornhill: The Long Path to Understanding Gravity | EU2015

[Slings and Arrows]

Has anyone watched this video from the Electric Universe conference held June 25, 2015?

After paying tribute to his hero, Immanuel Velikovsky, Wal Thornhill explains the mystery of gravity:

1. Gravity has two poles like a bar magnet.

2. Gravitationally induced atomic dipoles set up an internal gravitational field that is weakly repulsive.

3. All stars and planets in the universe repel each other with an inverse square law force.

4. Newton's attractive force has a limited sphere of influence.

5. This may explain many anomalies.

6. We are bounded to the Earth by the gravitational dipoles induced in us -- the effect is like that of a magnet on an un-magnetized steel ball.

7. We therefore assume that gravity is always attractive.

8. It is a mistake to assume that G, determined on Earth, is a universal constant.

9. The mass of a body varies with surface electric charge.

10. Gravity repels!​

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkWiBxWieQU

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

I'm having suspension of disbelief problems with step 1.

 

[BowlOfRed]

4. Newton's attractive force has a limited sphere of influence.

Darn. I wish we'd known that before launching all those space probes. It probably would have made it easier to keep them on target.

 

[Mader Levap]

1. Gravity has two poles like a bar magnet.

Taking aside small detail like "universe would look very, very differently", if that was fact, wouldn't it been common knowledge teached in schools for long time by now?

Darn. I wish we'd known that before launching all those space probes. It probably would have made it easier to keep them on target.

I think all points - alone or together - would make impossible to launch and use space probes built according to mainstream science.

 

[alexi_drago]

Taking aside small detail like "universe would look very, very differently", if that was fact, wouldn't it been common knowledge teached in schools for long time by now?


I think all points - alone or together - would make impossible to launch and use space probes built according to mainstream science.

But if we could reverse the polarity wouldn't that make launching and accelerating spacecraft much easier?

How would the sun deal with the planets spinning around it?

 

[Slings and Arrows]

Here is a typical response from the Electric Universe membership:

"This presentation on gravity is so bad as to be almost an embarrassment. I don't think it helps at all in getting EU ideas accepted, it's just material that critics can point at and label us all as crackpots."

For the first time, something we can all agree on.

 

[Crossbow]

Has anyone watched this video from the Electric Universe conference held June 25, 2015?

After paying tribute to his hero, Immanuel Velikovsky, Wal Thornhill explains the mystery of gravity:

1. Gravity has two poles like a bar magnet.

2. Gravitationally induced atomic dipoles set up an internal gravitational field that is weakly repulsive.

3. All stars and planets in the universe repel each other with an inverse square law force.

4. Newton's attractive force has a limited sphere of influence.

5. This may explain many anomalies.

6. We are bounded to the Earth by the gravitational dipoles induced in us -- the effect is like that of a magnet on an un-magnetized steel ball.

7. We therefore assume that gravity is always attractive.

8. It is a mistake to assume that G, determined on Earth, is a universal constant.

9. The mass of a body varies with surface electric charge.

10. Gravity repels!​

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkWiBxWieQU

I have never heard this stuff before or seen this video before.

I expect that the reason why I have not head of it is due to the fact that it is nothing but a bunch of really stupid crap.

 

[ben m]

I love this sort of gravity-is-just-atoms theory. For two reasons!

First, to my eternal embarrassment, when I was in high school I thought of this myself and felt like a genius. I think I put it in my college applications. "Hobbies: studying new theories of gravity". </shame> Thankfully I majored in not-being-a-moron.

Second, damn, it's sooooo easy to test experimentally. If gravitational attraction had *anything whatsoever* to do with atomic physics, even if you get lucky with most cancellations, it's obvious that the gravitational acceleration of (say) a hydrogen atom should be at least a little bit different than the gravitational acceleration of a deuterium atom or a lead atom or a neutron. In a theory like Thornhill's, or like teenage-me's, it'd be insane for "gravitationally induced atomic dipoles" to have precisely the same magnitude-per-unit-mass (or whatever) for systems with so many differences.

To compare the gravitational acceleration of two bodies is called a "weak equivalence principle" experiment. They're beautiful, simple, experiments, carrying out classical-mechanics-force-vector measurements, they've been done very precisely for over a hundred years, and theories like Thornhill's are extraordinarily thoroughly ruled out. (Not that that's ever stopped Thornhill.)

 

[Reality Check]

After paying tribute to his hero, Immanuel Velikovsky, Wal Thornhill explains the mystery of gravity:

1. Gravity has two poles like a bar magnet....​

That is certainly totally bad science from Wal Thornhill.
It starts with ignoring the existence of satellites that have passed though every bit of Earth's gravitational field without any sign of these imaginary two poles. Any satellite that passed over the repulsive pole would be shot into outer space!
From on the statements just get deluded.

 

[Reality Check]

I now see where this bit of woo from Wal Thornhill comes from - his blind hero worship of Immanuel Velikovsky leads Thornhill to accept without thought a paper from 1946 called Cosmos Without Gravitation.

First 10 minutes of Wal Thornhill ignorance, etc.

1. Treating electrons as point particles works to produce the best tested theory in physics - QED.
   Treating electrons as extended bodies violates physics - the surface has to be travelling many times faster than the speed of light to explain the magnetic moment.
2. Idiotic comment about renormalization.
3. The idiotic comment is applied to "theories about the Sun".
4. Richard Feynman's lecture Mathematics Is More Than Just A Language- It Is Language Plus Logic starts with the sentence "There is no model of the theory of gravitation today, other than the mathematical form." and goes on to explain why this is a good thing because explaining in words is hard.
   

   The burden of the lecture is just to emphasize the fact that it is impossible to explain honestly the beauties of the laws of nature in a way that people can feel, without their having some deep understanding of mathematics. I am sorry, but this seems to be the case.

5. Wal does not understand mathematics becomes no one can understand mathematics!
6. Delusion that classical physics is not as mathematically based as modern physics.
7. Delusion that modern physics is not as tested by observation and experiment as classical physics.
8. Ignorance: finding the Higgs is only one goal of the LHC.
9. Lie: The Higgs mechanism is a mechanism to give the rest masses of particles.
10. The idiocy of E=mc^2 explains mass. It still needs an explanation of where m comes from, i.e. the Higgs mechanism!
11. Ignorance: mass is not "measured by weight". Weight on the Moon is different from weight on Earth. He clearly has forgotten the difference between inertial mass and gravitaional mass.
12. Thinks that the electron is the only particle not made of quarks.
13. The delusion that because we cannot see quarks, e.g. have a teaspoon of quarks, then they do not exist.
14. Ignorance: quarks are not "confined within the nucleus", they are confined within hadrons.
15. Delusions This is science, not a trick!
    If you measure that hadrons are made of 3 sub-particles and that every attempt to spilt hadrons apart produces jets of hadrons rather than quarks then it is science to say that quarks exist and are confined to hadrons.
16. Lie: The LHC did confirm the Higgs boson concept.
17. Ignorance: The rubber sheet model does not produce gravity
    The rubber sheet model is a rubber sheet in a uniform gravitational field which produces a gravity well when a mass is placed on it.

 

[Slings and Arrows]

I now see where this bit of woo from Wal Thornhill comes from - his blind hero worship of Immanuel Velikovsky leads Thornhill to accept without thought a paper from 1946 called Cosmos Without Gravitation.

Oh, so that's where it originated. Thornhill's theory of gravitation is really just Velikovsky's cosmos without gravitation.

 

[fuelair]

Here is a typical response from the Electric Universe membership:

"This presentation on gravity is so bad as to be almost an embarrassment. I don't think it helps at all in getting EU ideas accepted, it's just material that critics can point at and label us all as crackpots."For the first time, something we can all agree on.

And is anything they say not crackpottish? I think not!!!!!

 

[Reality Check]

Oh, so that's where it originated. Thornhill's theory of gravitation is really just Velikovsky's cosmos without gravitation.

That origin includes the willful denial of more than 30 years of progress in science - when Thornhill first read that paper most if not all of the unknowns listed in it had been solved, e.g. the composition and formation of comet tails. Reading a textbook or two should have shown Thornhill how invalid that paper was for the 1970's.

 

[Darwin123]

Oh, so that's where it originated. Thornhill's theory of gravitation is really just Velikovsky's cosmos without gravitation.

Velikovsky’s Cosmos never had gravitation! Get with the program!

http://www.varchive.org/ce/cosmos.htm
COSMOS WITHOUT GRAVITATION
by IMMANUEL VELIKOVSKY
‘THE FUNDAMENTAL theory of this paper is: Gravitation is an electromagnetic phenomenon. There is no primary motion inherent in planets and satellites. Electric attraction, repulsion, and electromagnetic circumduction(1) govern their movements. The moon does not “fall,” attracted to the earth from an assumed inertial motion along a straight line, nor is the phenomenon of objects falling in the terrestrial atmosphere comparable with the “falling effect” in the movement of the moon, a conjecture which is the basic element of the Newtonian theory of gravitation.’


Velikovsky was a ‘world class’ moron. Not just one of your ‘provincial neighborhood’ morons.


Velikovsky gave 50 reasons for not believing in gravitational interactions. However, he still fell short of evidence.

 

[Slings and Arrows]

Not ONCE have I seen these detractors, nor any mainstream physicist, nor anyone else, attempt with any coherence, to explain the cause of the force of gravity. Yet the moment someone outside the fold even displays that he MAY be on the right track, or that he is even trying to work it out, they jump up and down to 'prove' him wrong, with nothing right to show for themselves, often totally misunderstanding the basic facets of the argument. Wal's writings on this speak for themselves. He has had his initial ideas published in a journal. I don't know of anyone else who has even had a go at explaining what the CAUSE of the gravitational force is. It just magically is.

Tell the trolls to go research Wal's work themselves. He's working on his hypothesis still. It's not complete, nor does anyone pretend it is. Unlike flash-in-the-pan trolling, such work takes many years to bring into shape. Let one of them even have a crack at it before they shake their fingers of doom at others.

This constant nitpicking is just like Nereid used to undertake. Keep the opponents running around in circular arguments with nothing substantial to offer themselves. Ask these people what THEY think the cause of gravity could be. Make sure they show their math...

http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=15913&start=90#p107986

Dave Smith is the Managing Editor of the Thunderblogs, administrator of the Thunderbolts Forum and provides technical assistance for the Thunderbolts websites. He is also an Honorary Fellow of the Telesio-Galilei Academy of Science.

 

[Reality Check]

Obviously a kneejerk reaction from a stance of ignorance about basic physics from Dave Smith

• Ignorantly thinks that Wal Thornhill's ideas are about a cause of gravity.
• Denies centuries of trying to work out what gravity is with enormous success.
• The bad scholarship of not citing those "initial ideas published in a journal".
• Imaginary writings (plural) on the subject.
  If Dave Smith means blog entries then there is the problem that Thornhill's blog is full of delusions, e.g. that the Grand Canyon was crated by electrical discharges.
  For a real laugh about Thornhill's ignorance read Electric Gravity in an Electric Universe (2008).

 

[Slings and Arrows]

For a real laugh about Thornhill's ignorance read Electric Gravity in an Electric Universe (2008).

Oh no, another aether based theory. It's part and parcel of being an authentic crank -- you gotta have an aether theory:

Others and I have argued that a plenum of neutrinos forms the aether. Based upon nuclear experiments, I have also proposed that neutrinos are the most collapsed, lowest energy state of matter. In other words they exhibit vanishingly small mass. However, being normal matter composed of subtrons, they are capable of forming electric dipoles. In an oscillating electromagnetic field a neutrino must rotate through 360˚ per cycle. That would link the speed of light in a vacuum to the moment of inertia of a neutrino. Having some mass, neutrinos must be ‘dragged along’ by gravitating bodies. They form a kind of extended ‘atmosphere’ which will bend light. It has nothing to do with a metaphysical ‘warping of space'.

 

[tusenfem]

Someone asking there why gravity is "magic" when electrostatic attaction/repulsion is not.
That is the same thing I am always wondering about, why is gravity "not understood" whereas to charges acting forces on each other is "understood".

 

[ferd burfle]

For a real laugh about Thornhill's ignorance read Electric Gravity in an Electric Universe (2008).
[/LIST]

"variable inertia"??? Oh my. Why is it that every rant from a crank starts by saying the mainstream knows nothing about a given subject? I suppose the obvious reason is so they can fill the purpoted gap.

I find the ideas of cranks pretty tedious in general since there's little or no chance their ideas will change or evolve. Of more interest to me is the psychology behind the crankiness; crankology if you will. I wonder of Thornhill (and others who derive an income from their crankiness) how much, if any, he believes of what he says. /OT

 

[thedopefishlives]

Someone asking there why gravity is "magic" when electrostatic attaction/repulsion is not.
That is the same thing I am always wondering about, why is gravity "not understood" whereas to charges acting forces on each other is "understood".

Presumably because gravity requires energies on a scale we can't even begin to reproduce, as opposed to, say, electromagnetism, which is observable at far lower energy regimes.