Why is there so much crackpot physics?

[lpetrich]

Not me. I propound the physics of Einstein and Minkowski and Maxwell.

That's what I mean by treating them as inspired prophets.

I must say that I like Gerard 't Hooft's phrase "celebrities in theoretical physics" (Gerard ’t Hooft, How to be a Bad Theoretical Physicist). He clearly does not view his colleagues as inspired prophets, not even the most eminent of them.

The crackpots say "ignore that sacred-text nonsense, listen to me instead".

I don't say that. I'm more "look at the theory apart from its inventors and not some isolated quotes that may or may not be related to it."

Then they propound the crackpot physics and pseudoscience such as the multiverse, the mathematical universe, the holographic universe, the evil-twin universe, the many-worlds universe that's forever splitting into two, and more.

What's supposed to be so silly about those hypotheses?

It isn't my photon model, ...

Farsight, your continual bleating about how "it's not my theory" is getting rather grating. It's almost like you are running away from the theories you advocate, or trying to evade criticism of them.

 

[RussDill]

Yours is the derail. It isn't my photon model, it's something Russ misunderstood.

I didn't misunderstand anything. I asked a question to gain understanding. You stated something about photons, I asked for clarification. You still haven't provided any clarification by the way. You mentioned that the front of the photon has a positive charge, and the rear has a negative charge. I asked if there is an anti-particle version of this, and if not, why is it positive in front and negative in rear.

This is a statement directly from you, not anywhere else "The front portion of a photon is a little like a partial positron, the back is a little like a partial electron."

 

[Farsight]

I did. It has no details about the method or medium used causing light go around in a loop.

But it does make it crystal clear that the speed of light varies in the room you're in. So I'm right, so I'm the expert, not the crackpot.

Why do you always deflect questions by citing links that do not provide answers.? Do you have any clue as to how the light goes in a loop?

I don't deflect questions. I answer them. And if it's information about laser gyros you're after, start with Wikipedia.

The point is that every observer in his own frame of reference will measure c. That is what is meant by the "constancy of c."

Only the speed of light at the ceiling is not the same as at the floor.

Sure I'll dismiss Richard J Cook, PhD physicist and professor of physics at the US Air Force Academy who has published a number of papers -- our of hand -- because you, Mr. John Duffield of Poole, who is not a physicist and cannot produce a single mathematical statement says so. Right!

Right.

Seriously, do you have a single substantive comment to make about Cook's paper. Have you read it?

No, and I'm not going to. Trust me, it's wrong.

Yes, we all know that light curves due to gravity. The point is that anyone measuring its velocity along any geodesic the light travels along will still get c.

And the reason for that is that the motion of light defines your second and your time. The speed of light isn't constant. That's just a tautology. It's like a rubber man with a rubber ruler. They both get stretched, and then the rubber man swears blind the length didn't change.

The mathematical ambiguities of the concept "frame of reference" in GR, discussed by Clinger above, require abstraction. One studies that abstraction to understand it. One does not beware of it.

You beware of it when it gets in the way of understanding something very simple: the speed if light varies the room you're in.

My pencil "falls down because ... the speed of light is not constant." Rubbish!

It isn't rubbish. Einstein said light curves because the speed of light varies with position. Not because spacetime is curved. It's the same for your pencil because of the wave nature of matter. I'm not lying to you about this. I have no reason to. I have my reputation to think of. Why don't you start a thread somewhere else to ask about this? Ask about Richard J Cook too.

GR is a mathematical formulation of the behavior of space, time, matter and energy in the universe. Understanding GR means understanding the mathematics. That is why I have spent the last several months studying differential geometry and tensor calculus. You, on the other hand, squander your time away looking at pictures, reading texts and imagining what it may all mean. I may never fully understand GR; however, you will never have anything but fantasies.

Resist the urge to cast aspersion when your conviction is challenged. I really am the expert around here when it comes to gravity and relativity.

 

[Farsight]

I didn't misunderstand anything. I asked a question to gain understanding. You stated something about photons, I asked for clarification. You still haven't provided any clarification by the way. You mentioned that the front of the photon has a positive charge, and the rear has a negative charge. I asked if there is an anti-particle version of this, and if not, why is it positive in front and negative in rear.

This is a statement directly from you, not anywhere else "The front portion of a photon is a little like a partial positron, the back is a little like a partial electron."

Sigh. See the picture of the light wave in the Wikipedia photon article. Start from the right and trace your finger along the red sinusoidal line. It goes up, then it goes down. The first half-wavelength is above the horizontal zero line. That's a positive "electric" field variation. The second half-wavelength is below the horizontal zero line. That's a negative "electric" field variation. So the first half-wavelength is a bit like a partial positron, and the second half-wavelength is a bit like a partial electron. But the photon does not consist of positive charge followed by negative charge. And there is no such thing as an anti-photon.

The reason why it starts with a positive field variation is because field is the derivative of potential, and the photon is a "pulse" of potential. Have a look at photon images and read http://arxiv.org/abs/0803.2596 . If you want to know any more ask me about it in the relativity+ thread.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

But it does make it crystal clear that the speed of light varies in the room you're in. So I'm right, so I'm the expert, not the crackpot.

If all you ever said was that the speed of light varies, then you would be fine. However, you don't even start there. You make a claim, without a single piece of evidence to support yourself, that there is no difference to the geometry of any part of space and that it is the speed of light alone that changes from position to position and that this change alone is responsible for all of the physical phenomena that we might want to attribute to the general theory of relativity.

In order to begin to support this claim, you would have to demonstrate in principle the effect that what is clearly your theory has on light and how changing light speed changes everything else we see. Then we could begin comparing this to observations.

In the general theory of relativity as Einstein wrote it, the change in the speed of light is a secondary effect that arises from the difference in the geometry of spacetime.

Farsight, you clearly know that there is no theory that claims to derive all the effects of general relativity from changing only the speed of light as you have admitted that there is no equation that Einstein wrote in general relativity where he uses the variable speed of light to derive some physical effect.

So you know that this is your theory, not Einstein's theory.

I don't deflect questions. I answer them.

While it is true that you sometimes answer questions (you did actually admit that Einstein doesn't use a variable speed of light in any equation of general relativity), you deflect any attempt to get you to compare your ideas to real evidence.

No, and I'm not going to. Trust me, it's wrong.

This is another example of your dogmatic insistence that you must be right that the variable speed of light must be fundamental even though you know that Einstein never once used the variable speed of light in his general relativistic calculations. That is a serious conceptual inconsistency.

And the reason for that is that the motion of light defines your second and your time. The speed of light isn't constant. That's just a tautology. It's like a rubber man with a rubber ruler. They both get stretched, and then the rubber man swears blind the length didn't change.

You often claim that you have a better way of doing physics with only motion, yet you have never revealed any way to work through a physics application with motion as your measurement standard.

You beware of it when it gets in the way of understanding something very simple: the speed if light varies the room you're in.

In standard physics as conceived with space and time as measurement standards, there is no way to discuss speed without some frame of reference. You claim that motion is a measurement standards, yet you refuse to either let us in on the secret or admit that there is no secret and your claim is false.

It isn't rubbish. Einstein said light curves because the speed of light varies with position. Not because spacetime is curved.

That is a paraphrase of your favourite quotation. You are introducing your bias into your understanding.

It's the same for your pencil because of the wave nature of matter.

If you want to claim this, then you have to be able to describe how a pencil falls using the changing speed of light. If you cannot do this to a detail that matches the observed rate of a falling pencil, then you have no evidence in physics for the claim.

I'm not lying to you about this. I have no reason to. I have my reputation to think of.

Sadly, your reputation is quite tarnished and this gives you a reason to lie in order to try to fool at least someone into believing that you have some sort of physics expertise that everyone else in the world lacks. It is clear, however, that you cannot do a physics problem, even in the areas you insult physicists about their performance.

Resist the urge to cast aspersion when your conviction is challenged. I really am the expert around here when it comes to gravity and relativity.

See, there is the motivation to lie again. If you are the expert, then show us how your claims match experiment and observation, the standard for evidence that you set in your comments.

 

[Farsight]

If all you ever said was that the speed of light varies, then you would be fine. However, you don't even start there. You make a claim, without a single piece of evidence to support yourself, that there is no difference to the geometry of any part of space and that it is the speed of light alone that changes from position to position and that this change alone is responsible for all of the physical phenomena that we might want to attribute to the general theory of relativity.

I didn't say "this change alone". But Einstein did say "light curves because the speed of light varies with position". And I have provided the supporting evidence, namely NIST optical clocks, the Shapiro delay, the GPS clock adjustment, and more. All one has to do is look inside a clock to see that there's no time flowing in there. When a clock goes slower it's because the regular cyclical motion inside it is going slower. And that's just as true for an optical clock as it is for a mechanical clock.

So again, I'm the expert, not the crackpot. And let's try to keep this thread on topic shall we? The subject is "Why is there so much crackpot physics?" And the answer is that a lot of people don't know much physics, and they lap up woo.

 

[RussDill]

Sigh. See the picture of the light wave in the Wikipedia photon article. Start from the right and trace your finger along the red sinusoidal line. It goes up, then it goes down. The first half-wavelength is above the horizontal zero line. That's a positive "electric" field variation. The second half-wavelength is below the horizontal zero line. That's a negative "electric" field variation. So the first half-wavelength is a bit like a partial positron, and the second half-wavelength is a bit like a partial electron. But the photon does not consist of positive charge followed by negative charge. And there is no such thing as an anti-photon.

The reason why it starts with a positive field variation is because field is the derivative of potential, and the photon is a "pulse" of potential. Have a look at photon images and read http://arxiv.org/abs/0803.2596 . If you want to know any more ask me about it in the relativity+ thread.

You've linked me to an unpublished paper and told me to go find the evidence myself. Wonderful. And you still haven't explained why it starts with a "positive field variation", you've only pushed the ball down the field a bit by stating that its a derivative of some other quantity. Can you explain then why this other quantity starts with a positive derivative? If you applied angular acceleration to a electron to emit a photon, and then angular acceleration to a positron to emit a photon, wouldn't all the EM quantities in the equation be reversed?

(Also, I'd like to point out that your characterization of a photon has many flaws and does not line up with physics in any way. You might get a slightly better idea if you look at a diagram of a wave-packet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_packet), but still, your very literal interpretation causes issues. I'd like to stay on the tangent of why the front of a photon would be attributed to being positron like though)

 

[thedopefishlives]

(Also, I'd like to point out that your characterization of a photon has many flaws and does not line up with physics in any way. You might get a slightly better idea if you look at a diagram of a wave-packet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_packet), but still, your very literal interpretation causes issues. I'd like to stay on the tangent of why the front of a photon would be attributed to being positron like though)

It's the same argument he used to claim that all light waves have the same amplitude. Because random drawings on Wikipedia are apparently an authoritative source for how the world works.

 

[Farsight]

You've linked me to an unpublished paper and told me to go find the evidence myself. Wonderful.

I explained it, I referred to a paper, and told you to look at some photon pictures. So you'd see pictures like this one where the photon is shown as something a little like a lemon. That's the typical shape of the "wavepacket". The arXiv paper says it isn't actually a series of little waves, it's a pulse.

And you still haven't explained why it starts with a "positive field variation", you've only pushed the ball down the field a bit by stating that its a derivative of some other quantity. Can you explain then why this other quantity starts with a positive derivative?

At the deepest fundamental level it's because energy E=hf is positive, and energy is related to spatial pressure. You can see a hint of this in the stress-energy-momentum tensor, note the energy-pressure diagonal, and remember that the dimensionality of energy can be expressed as pressure x volume. See Wikipedia for a bit about derivatives: "the curl operator on one side of these equations results in first-order spacial derivatives of the wave solution, while the time-derivative on the other side of the equations, which gives the other field, is first order in time, resulting in the same phase shift for both fields" I can probably best explain this with an analogy. Imagine you're in a canoe on a flat calm ocean. Then you see a wave coming at you. This wave has no trough. As the wave nears your canoe tilts upwards. The rate of tilt is the "magnetic" field variation. The angle of tilt is the "electric" field variation. At the top of the wave your canoe is flat, then it tilts the other way. Do your own research on electromagnetic geometry. Have a read of The Role of the Potentials in Electromagnetism and see the last page where Percy Hammonds talks about curvature.

If you applied angular acceleration to a electron to emit a photon, and then angular acceleration to a positron to emit a photon, wouldn't all the EM quantities in the equation be reversed?

No. See Dirac's belt on mathspages: "In this sense a Mobius strip is reminiscent of spin-1/2 particles in quantum mechanics, since such particles must be rotated through two complete rotations in order to be restored to their original state." Now go and make two Moebius strips with different chiralities. The positron has the opposite chirality to the electron, check it out, but both are comprised of positive energy. Despite what Dirac first thought, there are no negative energy particles.

(Also, I'd like to point out that your characterization of a photon has many flaws and does not line up with physics in any way. You might get a slightly better idea if you look at a diagram of a wave-packet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_packet)

That's why I was telling you to look at photon images. Read the paper at http://arxiv.org/abs/0803.2596: "The single photon must not necessarily be a wave train containing intrinsic oscillations, but it is rather a single pulse and it may be viewed as such one." The "shape" of the photon is lemon-like, like you draw an outline around their figure2 wavepacket.

It's the same argument he used to claim that all light waves have the same amplitude. Because random drawings on Wikipedia are apparently an authoritative source for how the world works.

Not so. The quantum nature of light relates to the h in E=hf, and h is action. The dimensionality of action has the dimensionality of momentum x distance. It's the same distance for all photons, regardless of wavelength. Those common-amplitude pictures are a pretty good depiction actually. Think of a guitar string. Regardless of where you put the fingers of your left hand on the frets to change the wavelength, the amplitude of your pluck stays the same. Do you know what's crackpot? The idea that the quantum nature of light means it's made up of billiard-ball particles. It isn't.

 

[ben m]

Sigh. See the picture of the light wave in the Wikipedia photon article. Start from the right and trace your finger along the red sinusoidal line. It goes up, then it goes down. The first half-wavelength is above the horizontal zero line. That's a positive "electric" field variation. The second half-wavelength is below the horizontal zero line. That's a negative "electric" field variation. So the first half-wavelength is a bit like a partial positron, and the second half-wavelength is a bit like a partial electron. But the photon does not consist of positive charge followed by negative charge. And there is no such thing as an anti-photon.

Wow.

First, Farsight, the electric field is a vector. It doesn't have a "positive" or "negative" except with respect to (arbitrarily chosen) axes. The sketch you're linking to does NOT show "positive" and "negative" electric field variation, it shows (for some z-axis chosen arbitrarily by the cartoonist) "electric field pointing along the +z axis" followed by "electric field pointing along the -z axis". The axis choice is 100% arbitrary and no physics goes into the choice.

Second, there is no association whatsoever between "electric field pointing along the +z axis" and "partial positron". There is no association between "electric field pointing along the -z axis" and "partial electron". A positron produces field vectors pointing in all directions in Cartesian coordinates. An electron produces field vectors pointing in all directions in Cartesian coordinates. There is no sense whatsoever in which a photon's fields are "a bit like" the fields of electrons or positrons.

The reason why it starts with a positive field variation is because field is the derivative of potential, and the photon is a "pulse" of potential.

The reason it starts with a +z field is that the cartoonist chose to draw a +z component at the left edge of the plot. There is no physics there whatsoever. You can draw an electromagnetic wave cartoon "starting" with peak, zero-crossing, trough, or anything in between. This cartoonist made a "start with increasing-from-zero" choice and you mistook it for a truth about photons. Seriously, Farsight, how wrong is this? I'll tell you how wrong it is: I had to read your post a couple of times to convince myself you'd made the mistake you did; on first reading I said "this mistake seems too elementary even for Farsight". But no, you'd just outdone yourself. Again.

 

[Farsight]

Wow....on first reading I said "this mistake seems too elementary even for Farsight". But no, you'd just outdone yourself. Again.

I haven't made a mistake. The various depictions of electromagnetic waves aren't something I've invented. I didn't invent the terms positive charge and negative charge.

All: do excuse ben m, his physics knowledge is poor, especially when it comes to electromagnetism. And he seems to suffering from some kind of professional jealousy. He often tries to assert I've made some error when I've done no such thing.

 

[edd]

Ben m seems to me to make strong and correct arguments. You're quite wrong Farsight, and mis- or over-interpreting diagrams.

 

[ben m]

I haven't made a mistake. The various depictions of electromagnetic waves aren't something I've invented. I didn't invent the terms positive charge and negative charge.

You didn't invent the term "positive charge", but you invented the notion of associating it with "cartoon E vector in the +z direction."

And: even your argument-by-image-search illustrates my point, not yours. For me this search returns examples of all of the following (taking the left edge of the plot to be x=0), and "up" to be +z)

E = (+zhat)*sin(x)
E = (-zhat)*sin(x)
E = (-zhat)*cos(x)
E= (-zhat)*cos(x)
E = (+yhat)*sin(x)
E = (-yhat)*sin(x)

I don't happen to see a "yhat*cos(x)" example of either sign but I'm not going to scroll down to look.

Seriously, Farsight, you think that there's a truth about photons which cartoonists know about, and correctly embed in their photon cartoons, but which you can't find in any textbook or in Maxwell's Equations? Tell me, where do you think the cartoonists learned this "fact" about electromagnetism? Surely they learned it somewhere so as to be able to put it in their cartoons your way, uh, sometimes.

All: do excuse ben m, his physics knowledge is poor, especially when it comes to electromagnetism. And he seems to suffering from some kind of professional jealousy. He often tries to assert I've made some error when I've done no such thing.

I look forward to all of the posters who are about to tell me how wrong I am. Don't hold back, I have a whole box of tissues.

 

[ctamblyn]

Wow.

Looks like you called it correctly!

 

[Farsight]

Ben m seems to me to make strong and correct arguments. You're quite wrong Farsight, and mis- or over-interpreting diagrams.

LOL, he's made no argument at all. There's various internet sites where people refer to the positive and negative field variation. Here's one picked at random. It says this: "The magnetic field around a photon fluctuates from its maximum-positive to its maximum-negative strength as the photon travels..."

You didn't invent the term "positive charge", but you invented the notion of associating it with "cartoon E vector in the +z direction."

No I didn't. See above.

And: even your argument-by-image-search illustrates my point, not yours.

No it doesn't. Your point merely demonstrates your poor physics knowledge.

Seriously, Farsight, you think that there's a truth about photons which cartoonists know about, and correctly embed in their photon cartoons, but which you can't find in any textbook or in Maxwell's Equations? Tell me, where do you think the cartoonists learned this "fact" about electromagnetism? Surely they learned it somewhere so as to be able to put it in their cartoons your way, uh, sometimes.

A photon really is a field variation. And people really do talk about positive and negative field variations. Here, have a read of this pdf: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~djmorin/waves/electromagnetic.pdf. And I quote: "The incident, reflected, and transmitted waves are shown in Fig.29 (the vertical displacement in the figure is meaningless). We have arbitrarily defined all three electric fields to be positive if they point upward on the page. A negative value of Ei, Er, or Et simply means that the vector points downward".

Really ben, you really ought to bone up on this stuff before you try to criticise me. It would save you embarrassing yourself.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

I didn't say "this change alone". But Einstein did say "light curves because the speed of light varies with position". And I have provided the supporting evidence, namely NIST optical clocks, the Shapiro delay, the GPS clock adjustment, and more.

That would be a lie: Einstein did not, as you know, use a variable speed of light in his theory and the common interpretation of the two phenomena you describe are that they are canonical examples of spacetime changes predicted by Einstein.

Unless you can produce a theory where there is a change in light speed that can then result in any physical event, you are simply lying to claim the successes of general relativity as your own.

All one has to do is look inside a clock to see that there's no time flowing in there. When a clock goes slower it's because the regular cyclical motion inside it is going slower. And that's just as true for an optical clock as it is for a mechanical clock.

Again, you make many claims about being able to produce a time-free physics. Until you do this, you seem to be offering us nothing but dogma free of evidence.

So again, I'm the expert, not the crackpot.

No, you failed to produce evidence as you defined evidence. SInce we are using your definition, it seems clear that you are lying about your behaviour in this and other threads. And that is germaine to the subject matter of this topic.

 

[ctamblyn]

(deleted - wrong thread)

 

[ben m]

We have arbitrarily defined all three electric fields to be positive if they point upward on the page. A negative value of Ei, Er, or Et simply means that the vector points downward".[/I]

(my bold)

Yes, that's precisely what I said. The notation "positive" or "negative", with regards to an electric (or magnetic) field, are statements about the sign of the field component along arbitrarily defined axes. That's why they have to explain it.

Seriously: you claim that the "front" of a photon (!) is "positive" and the back is "negative". Suppose that Andrew Worsley is next to you, looking at the same photon, but he's standing on his head. The direction that you thought was "up", he thinks is "down". Why doesn't he say that the front is negative and the back is positive?

Now ask the same question about an electron or a positron. If you're looking at an electron, does your upside-down friend Mr. Worsley think it's a positron? (Hint: the answer, in rot13, is "bs pbhefr abg")

 

[Perpetual Student]

I haven't made a mistake. The various depictions of electromagnetic waves aren't something I've invented. I didn't invent the terms positive charge and negative charge.

All: do excuse ben m, his physics knowledge is poor, especially when it comes to electromagnetism. And he seems to suffering from some kind of professional jealousy. He often tries to assert I've made some error when I've done no such thing.

Come off it, Mr. Duffield! Ben m embarrassed you by exposing your childish cartoon understanding of an electromagnetic wave -- and you are well aware of it -- all the bluster in the world will not mask that!

 

[Perpetual Student]

Farsight

Originally Posted by Perpetual Student
Seriously, do you have a single substantive comment to make about Cook's paper. Have you read it?

No, and I'm not going to. Trust me, it's wrong.

Frankly. I believe that you are incapable of reading and understanding that paper, simply because the mathematics and concepts of GR are beyond your abilities. All the bluster you can muster will not hide that fact.