Theoretical Physics Breakthrough or Hoax?

Brooklyn Bob writes "Ever get the feeling that some theoretical physics papers just don't make sense? According to this New York Times article, you may be right. Genius or gibberish? Who knows?" This belongs on your virtual refrigerator with nice big virtual magnet.

Comments

I suppose

[xtac]

slashdot can contribute to this as well?

That's enough

[EggplantMan]

I am tired of Slashdot's ceaseless battering of the physics community in the name of sensationalism. This is a blatant attempt to sully the good name of physics just because of the writer's inability to understand it.

Re:That's enough

[davids-world.com]

hahah. the physics people are the one's that don't understand - they obviously don't even understand each other anymore (except in their own sub-sub-subfield...)

Re:That's enough

[paploo]

I'll second that motion.

Physics papers aren't just published all willy nilly. They must be reviewed by other physicists. Also, most theorists don't work alone, but instead work in a group, so there are checks and balances going on there.

I do admit, however, that theoretical physics seems harder and harder to understand. Newton's laws are far more simple to do calculations with than Relativistic Dynamics. And Newtonian Gravity seems far more simple than General Relativity. And then you have Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Field Theory, and now String Theory (which is full of unsolvable differential equations).

However, just because the mathematics and principles involved are harder to understand, doesn't mean that they are hoaxes. Indeed, despite the computational and conceptual difficulties involved in General Relativity (to which I find the conceptual difficulties fairly easy to overcome, but to which the math to solve a problem seems to take forever), the theory works far better for extreme conditions than its predecessor.

Before I conclude, I would like to point out that there is a difference between computational difficulties and conceptual. Many modern theories take very difficult mathematics to solve even seemingly simple problems. However, to build a loose conceptual notion of of, say, General Relativity, is fairly easy, given some experience with problems. I usually find it a lot easier to understand the concepts of a newe theory, and then trust that the theorists are honestly doing the math in in effort to show that the theory pans out as compared to the real world.

I've babbled on long enough; it's just my two cents as a Physicist.

-Jeff

Re:That's enough

[kkenn]

Nonsense is impossible to understand by anyone.

Re:That's enough

[Subcarrier]

I am tired of Slashdot's ceaseless battering of the physics community in the name of sensationalism. This is a blatant attempt to sully the good name of physics just because of the writer's inability to understand it.

All professions have their quacks and con artists. Surely physics is no exception? To a layman one mad professor looks much like another.

Re:That's enough

[falzer]

I agree. Next you'll see the headline 'Science: Earth round?' along with the "it's funny" foot icon.

Re:That's enough

[3.2.3]

this is about a controversy -within- the physics community. since members of the physics community (sokal, as mentioned in the article) have taken upon themselves to sully other academic communities concerning determinism, it only makes sense they are held to the same yardstick they would hold others. for instance, ironically in light of the sokal hoax, quantum theory has been in revolt against determinism for most of a century, with significant criticisms against that trend from einstein at solvay in 1927 and 1930 and at princeton in 1935, from bell in 1965, from clauser in 1978, and from aspect in 1982. individuals among quantum theorists may have very definite opinions about the relevance of causality vs correlation. but as a community the only thing they appear to agree upon is that some among their number are speaking gibberish. just who among their number are speaking the gibberish depends on who among their number you talk to. some, like wheeler, will insist there is not even a controversy, and this is taken up as an orthodox academic position by many physicists.

i haven't noticed any "ceaseless battering of the physics community in the name of sensationalism" by slashdot. there is, however, a lot of disagreement among physicists as to who is making any sense, whatever the writer of the article understands.

Re:That's enough

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you totally. The math does become heinous after a certain point - partial differential equations, differential geometry, etc. I believe the reason that the classical laws are easier to work with is because they were determined (more or less) empirically. Part of the problem with extending physics theory has to do with being able to do experiments with new theory. In fact many phenomena in plain old G.R. require very precise calculations and measurements to confirm (ie mossbauer effect).

Re:That's enough

[Anonymous Coward]

did either of you even read the fucking article? it isn't slashdot editors or a nytimes reporter who finds physics "hard to understand" that thinks these guys were making it all up -- it's real physicists.

get off your high horse and try again, dork.

Re:That's enough

[paploo]

Nope. I was merely supporting the tangent topic which was presented before me, and then starting another tangent topic that was merely trying to be informative from a physicists point of view. It was all sort of tangent to the article at hand. :)

-Jeff

Re:That's enough

[Anonymous Coward]

What Sokal was trying to show was not just that Social Text would publish gibberish, but that the leading lights of the academic progressive movement were often writing gibberish themselves.

Of course, this was already obvious to anyone who cared.

This (embarrassing) incident is different from the Sokal affair, because the work of leading string theorists is read by other physicists, not all of whom are string theorists or even physicists, and they are able to understand and verify that it makes sense. It does not indicate that string theory is rotten at the core.

But of course it does indicate many problems with the way students are trained and qualified, the way articles are reviewed and published, etc.

Re:That's enough

[DinZy]

Sure many theories are computationally guelling. So what? If they actually predict something that is measureable then they are good and computers can be programmed to calculate their effects to arbitrary acurracy. Pre Big Bang theories are just pure speculation especially since there is no definative theory for engergies attainable in this universe. We can only measure in the TeV and these clowns are working on a theory to deal with >10^20 GeV energies. Come on! This is speculative mathematics not physics.

Re:That's enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! That's very extraordinary! A keyboard with *both* shift keys broken!

Re:That's enough

[kungfuBreaks]

Um...I don't know if you've read Sokal's book Fashionable Nonsense, but in it he makes painfully clear (as though it weren't clear enough already from the Social Text article) that his problem with postmodernism isn't 'non-determinism', or 'non-linearily', or anything of the sort. Rather, he points out that the works of many respected post-modernist 'intellectuals' (most of them French, coincidentally) are pure gibberish. These people brazenly use highly technical mathematical terminology without having the most rudimentary understanding of the underlying mathematical concepts. Moreover, the vast majority of their intended audience have no mathematical training whatsoever, and are thus unable to pick up on this. I do think that there are some similarities to the whole Sokal thing here though. Some physicists appear to be concerned that certain physical theories (e.g. string theory) have grown so obscure as to be unverifiable and hence unfalsifiable and nonsensical. Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with physics availing itself of sophisticated mathematical tools, so long as there's actually some, you know, physics going on the background.

Re:That's enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, but the caps lock key too. Even with both shift keys fubar'd, one could still use the caps lock to capitalize the characters.

Re:That's enough

[forgotmypassword]

Yup, we have a crank at my university.

He pushes his incorrect Gravity theory that inserts a gravitational potential term into the field equations.

Upon talking to him it becomes absolutely clear that he hasn't the slightest clue as to the fundamentals of Riemannian Geometry. I.E. he makes claims about the fallacy of GR that would prove Riemannian Geometry to be false as well. And we all know that you can prove physics to be wrong but math is axiomatic and perfect by design.

I don't take Gravity until next year and even I can tell that he is full of shit.

But he was once an experimentalist and now he has tenor. So what the hell can you do.

Re:That's enough

[martyn s]

Actually, parentheses and quotation marks both require the shift key. His post has both. I think he just has a philosophical objection to capital letters.

Re:That's enough

[Anonymous Coward]

But he was once an experimentalist and now he has tenor. So what the hell can you do.

Now he doesn't sing in the low range?
Can you get rid of him or does he have tenure?

Re:That's enough

[SEWilco]

"However, just because the mathematics and principles involved are harder to understand..."

Allow me to simplify it for you: 42

Re:That's enough

[henben]

this is about a controversy -within- the physics community. since members of the physics community (sokal, as mentioned in the article) have taken upon themselves to sully other academic communities concerning determinism,

The Sokal hoax was nothing to do with "determinism". It was aimed at the postmodern (ab)use of scientific terminology with no regard to meaning.

Sokal is a robust defender of the idea that the experimental method is a useful way to study reality, rather than one narrative amongst many which are equally valid. He is an "objectivist" rather than a "relativist". Determinism doesn't really come into it - I'm sure he is familiar with quantum theory.

Re:That's enough

[greenrd]

Upon talking to him it becomes absolutely clear that he hasn't the slightest clue as to the fundamentals of Riemannian Geometry. I.E. he makes claims about the fallacy of GR that would prove Riemannian Geometry to be false as well.

Perhaps you are right, I don't know the details. But have you considered the possibility that Riemannian Geometry just doesn't apply to the world as GR says it does? Axiomatic theories are perfect by design but that doesn't imply that they represent the physical world correctly.

Re:That's enough

[Anonymous Coward]

I was suspicious too, until I followed the link from the Wired article, where the "loyal opposition" to the sensationalist brothers claim an article in The Register as one of their primary defenses. Since "mainstream" theoretical physicists feel they cannot trust their own journals anymore, they turn to such a respectible and knowledgable publication for their support.

Re:That's enough

[forgotmypassword]

Some arguments he asserts amount to 1=2 (not modulo 1) therefore GR is wrong. But if in fact 1=2, then math would be wrong - and thus there would be no point in math or any mathematical science like physics.

He basically keeps bringing up how some old dead guy calculated the scalar curvature in two different corrdinate systems and got two different answers. However, the curvature only depends on your metric, and Riemannian Geometry doesn't care what coordinate system you use as long as it maps the manifold to and from Euclidean space in a smooth manner.

When I talk about math as axiomatic and perfect, I am not yet applying it to anything. It in itself is pure.

For those who still don't have registration...

[Anonymous Coward]

Partner Link Bypassing Registration

Re:For those who still don't have registration...

[The Original Yama]

You'll probably understand things a little better if you read this article first. It explains the supposed "hoax" that is referred to in the NYT story.

Re:For those who still don't have registration...

[Anonymous Coward]

What a cheap asshole. Jesus -- it's not like they want your firstborn or something. Abide by the terms if you want the service.

Deja vu all over again

[Istealmymusic]

This reminds me of a recent El Reg feature "This MS Antitrust story was created by a computer program". They noticed Google News was created by a computer program, and pondered the end result of the stories where also created from a non-human entity. The results are quite interesting, if I do say so myself; and the hoax scans as if it was legitimate. Its only a matter of time until more physics journals are conned into publishing computer-generated hoaxes, to save money from humans generating the hoaxes.

Re:Deja vu all over again

[bjtuna]

It doesn't sound like you read the article. Their papers weren't computer-generated, they were just nonsensical.

Physics is not for dumb people

[vivek7006]

Just because you dont understand something, does not mean that it is gibberish. Theoritical physics is not a soap-opera, which any Tom-Dick-harry can analyse.

Re:Physics is not for dumb people

[Kope]

True. However, there are some things that even a lay-person can understand.

For example, on "multiple universes."

Now, the work "Universe" means "everything that is."

Now, consider if multiple universe exist, then one of two things is possibly true about them.

1) they are measureable and studiable from our universe, and hence, are definitionally PART of our universe, and hence any talk of "multiple universes" is gibberish.

OR

2) They are not measurable and studiable from our universe, and hence, are definitionally NOT proper subject matter of physics but are properly subject matter of philosophy, and anything that is said about them isn't "science" in any meaningfull sense of that word.

But, crap like this isn't new. However, it does seem to be getting to the point where even respectable peer reviewed journals are having a harder and harder time finding people who will actually stand up and SAY something like that.

Re:Physics is not for dumb people

[kkenn]

No, but to people who do understand the field in which the Bogdanov brothers claim to be researching (I am a PhD student in string theory and include myself in this set), their paper is complete gibberish.

Their paper is full of unfounded assertions strung together, combined with definitions and other assertions that are patently false. The paper does not follow a logical chain of reasoning that allows the reader to repeat or verify their conclusions (which are also not clearly stated).

Furthermore, when confronted by other theoretical physicists (on the sci.physics.research Usenet group) with specific, detailed questions about their work, the authors have systematically refused to answer, or selectively answered with further vague or absurd statements. To me, this is the real clincher: they have completely failed to demonstrate a technical understanding of the field in which they claim to be working.

It is clear to everyone in the field that these papers are nonsense and should never have been published. The only actual supporters of the authors seem to be from non-scientists or physicists who are unqualified to judge the work itself.

Re:Physics is not for dumb people

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

Your definition of "universe" is probably faulty, or at least different from the one that these physicists are using.

Tim

Re:Physics is not for dumb people

[spectecjr]

Now, consider if multiple universe exist, then one of two things is possibly true about them.

1) they are measureable and studiable from our universe, and hence, are definitionally PART of our universe, and hence any talk of "multiple universes" is gibberish.

OR

2) They are not measurable and studiable from our universe, and hence, are definitionally NOT proper subject matter of physics but are properly subject matter of philosophy, and anything that is said about them isn't "science" in any meaningfull sense of that word.

But, crap like this isn't new. However, it does seem to be getting to the point where even respectable peer reviewed journals are having a harder and harder time finding people who will actually stand up and SAY something like that.

Presumably you feel the same way about the creation of advanced light waves, and would have felt the same way about anti-matter back when it was first hypothesized?

Multiple universes is one way of looking at it. It explains stuff. It lets you get reasonable answers out of the theory. It's just as likely as the other potential explanations of said theory.

(Personally, I don't believe in multiple universes; I do, however, believe in a mechanism where particles are able to move backwards or forwards through time simultaneously, taking slightly different paths each time, and then their effects are averaged out. I have a pretty good argument for it being the case too).

Simon

Re:Physics is not for dumb people

[Anonymous Coward]

I like this one better:

For example, on "sub-atomic structure."

Now, the work "atom" means "irreducible."

Now, consider if structures smaller than an atom exist, them on of two things is possibly true about them.

1) they are measureable and studiable, and hence, are definitionally PART of an atom, and hence any talk of "subatomics" is gibberish.

OR

2) They are not measurable and studiable, and hence, are definitionally NOT proper subject matter of physics but are properly subject matter of philosophy, and anything that is said about them isn't "science" in any meaningful sense of that word.

But, crap like this isn't new. However, it does seem to be getting to the point where even respectable peer reviewed journals are having a harder and harder time finding people who will actually stand up and SAY something like that.

On the other hand, perhaps definitions change over time with to fit in with accrued knowledge.

Re:Physics is not for dumb people

[manobes]

For a collection of stuff on this subject, search google groups on ``reverse sokal hoax''. Then read the (long) thread in sci.physics.research.

I'm not a string theorist so I can't be 100% sure, but this stuff sure sounds like nonsense. The part about the Foucault pendulum aligning with the initial singularity sounds really silly. To quote John Baez, a mathmatical physicist (see below for a link)

It [one of the papers in question] goes on to discuss the supposed connection between N = 2 supergravity, Donaldson theory, KMS states and the Foucault pendulum experiment, which he claims "cannot be explained satisfactorily in either classical or relativistic mechanics". If you know some physics you'll find this statement slightly odd.

As I said, I'm not a string theorist, so I don't know for sure, but some very sharp people seem to support the contention that this is nonsense. John Baez has compiled some of the relvent stuff on his webapge, here. Jacques Distler's blog also contains some good analysis.

Re:Physics is not for dumb people

[Nathanbp]

The multiple universe theory is a way to explain the seemingly random choice of different quantum events. The theory is that if A, B, and C might happen, then all 3 of them happen and the wave functions affected by this are seperated in a way that they cannot interact.
The term "multiple univereses" is really a misnomer, since it does not involve more than universe, just wavefunctions that cannot comunicate. This means that I see A, B, & C happen, but the me that can talk to you has to be the one that saw the same thing you did.
I hope this clear up multiple universe theory somewhat.
Disclamer: IANAQuantam Physicist

Re:Physics is not for dumb people

[Raffaello]

You miss the point entirely. The OP wasn't merely engaging in semantic games. The word "atom" does in fact mean "irreducible." However, no one in physics really thinks that atoms are irreducible. The term is simply a hold over from a time when theorists thought that atoms were the smallest unit of matter.

The term universe, however, does in fact mean, "all that is." Full stop. Period. If you hypothesized universe admits of anything outside of it, it is, in fact, not a universe, but part of a universe.

In other words, the term universe still means, "all that is." The word atom stopped meaning "irreducible" more than a century ago.

Those who subscribe to a theory of multiple universes believe that they are separate and distinct and cannot interact with each other (hence their designation as universes, not parts of a larger univers). But as these other universes can't interact with each other, they cannot interact with us. Thus, they cannot be experimented on, and their very existence must always remain a matter of pure conjecture.

What the OP was stating, and correctly in my opinion, is that science can say nothing about that which is not subject to experimental testing of any kind, much less verification. Multiple universes, though fascinating, must therefore remain in the domain of metaphysical speculation, not real science, because, by their very nature, they cannot ever be the subject of experimentaion. And, to the extent that they can be reached by physical experiment, they are not wholly separate, and hence, not universes, but parts of one, larger universe.

Re:Physics is not for dumb people

[RichardtheSmith]

> Now, the work "Universe" means "everything that is."

No, the word "cosmos" means "everything that is." That's why the
study of the nature of the universe is called "cosmology".

A more useful definition of "universe" is "the four-dimensional
space-time manifold within which everything observable to human beings
exists". It's possible that other universes exist but no evidence is
available for this, nor any theory or thought-experiment or anything
else that could pull this idea out of the realm of pure speculation,
and into the realm where any actual "science" can be done about it.

However IANAP and I'm sure others my have more useful definitions.

Re:Physics is not for dumb people

[aminorex]

> Now, the work [sic] "Universe" means "everything that is."

This is your mistake. Finish the sentence:

"The word 'Universe' means 'everything (i.e. all
particle pairs) that is (are) mutally accessible (i.e. occupy continuously deformable positions)
by travel through space-time (i.e. the Minkowski
manifold)'".

Now, it's not gibberish any more, is it?

Re:Physics is not for dumb people

[Anonymous Coward]

"Physics is not for dumb people".

Indeed not. But Slashdot sure is.

Re:Physics is not for dumb people

[DancingSword]

A more useful definition of "universe" is "the four-dimensional space-time manifold within which everything observable to human beings exists".

<sigh>

Try "the multi-dimensional ( including non-locality-or-Mind/Time/Space ) manifold within-which one reasonably consistent set of laws-of-physics resides", morelike.

If the Tibetan Buddhist maintain that there are 7 hidden dimensions ( can hold mind, cannot hold matter ), and the Toltecs independently discovered the same conclusion, and M-Theory came to approximately the same conclusion ( ~ at least 7, possibly more, hidden spacial dimensions ), then I'm betting that there actually are 7 or more hidden spacial dimensions.

Betting otherwise, after 3 absolutely-alien-to-each-other sciences perceived the same essence-structure, is, to me, prejudice only.

If Scientism holds that mind isn't in Universe ( and subject to laws-of-physics ) while maintaining that non-locality and entanglement are universal realities, that's hipocrisy ( so is "Scientism Knows that Knowing cannot exist: Therefore Scientism's Knowing is Right and all other Knowing is false, because Scientism is the only Authority" style reasoning ), and

Multiverse ( fer me ) means each Universe is its own 'bubble', no one of 'em making all/any other(s) non-exist, each 'bubble' having its own laws-of-physics.

My understanding is that there are 3 major dimensions, and numerous minor dimensions: Mind/Time/Space being the majors, Mind being broken down into 3 relatively-major and open subdimensions ( Toltec: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd attentions; Buddhist: gross-mind, subtle-mind, very-subtle-mind; Western: ego, deep-mind, soul ), Time maybe having one dimension, or maybe more, and Space having 3 relatively-major and open dimensions ( x/y/z ).

The near-symmetry between space and mind are so elegant: the Tibetan Buddhists and Toltecs hold that there are 7 hidden spacial dimensions, and the Tibetan Buddhists hold that there are 7 structures ( central-channel-wheels, or chakras ) of an autonomous-enough-to-realize mind. Interesting match with the 7 hidden spacial-dimensions that M-Theory apparently requires...

Why are there such symmetries?

The Magic Dismissal "Mere Coincidence" don't cut it for me, eh?

How about the Buddhist depiction of invariance ( 2000 or 2500 years before Einstein )?

If infinite-wisdom-mind is concentrating right there, and the observer is wisdom-nature contemplation, then the infinite-wisdom-mind one sees is red-shifted, being both orange-skinned and infinitely tranquil ( Manjushri ). If infinite-wisdom-mind is concentrating right there and the observer is ignorance-nature, then infinite-wisdom-mind one sees is blue-shifted, both blue-skinned and blazing violence and annihilation. Same infinite-wisdom-mind, different appearance, due to the mind of the observer, and the /red/-shift and /blue/-shift is right there in the t'anka paintings of 2?00 years ago.

So if Buddhism depicted our speed as invariant, between Mind and Time, and Einstein depicted it as invariant, between Time and Space, why is it assumed that only Time and Space can be actual and real?

Cripes, Ninja have seen mild versions of this same invariance, in their training, and I've seen the same strange apparent-difference-in-time-speed with a few ultra-total competitors...

Try this: ( and get the slashfuck spaces out from the URL, I can't get the system to allow the display of the link correctly )
http://www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/MartialArt sAndSuperpowers.html

Whatever: concertedly ignoring evidence because it doesn't amplify one's assumptions'-position/importance within a cultural prejudice strikes me as doltish, and If Universe includes mind ( that we discuss indicates it does, for all except behaviourists ), then Universe is elegant indeed, and solving-one's-way-out makes sense to me...

Why do I offer stuff that doesn't assume as Standard Prejudice does?
Because I feel that everyone's autonomy is worth something, and the sciences that discovered invariance between Mind and Time are sciences of Mind. If they work, get results, are effective, then why not honestly try 'em rather than just mechanistically not doing so for habit's sake? Is habit worth more than my or your meaning or understanding?

Re:Physics is not for dumb people

[SEWilco]

The word is not the thing.
He can call everything which exists around us a rose, but that does not make it a rose.

We know when someone is referring to "multiple universes" that they mean "more than one of the kind of thing which surrounds us". It doesn't mean that they are using a "everything that exists" meaning.

Now, let's move on to multiply infinity by 3...

Re:Physics is not for dumb people

[Mac Degger]

Actually, for people working in those (speculative) fields, the Universe is "all that is" and the universe (notice the lack of capitalisation) is that subset of the Unoverse where we currently reside. Another universe is the universe where the omega constant is different from the one in our universe.

Re:Physics is not for dumb people

[andybak]

"1) they are measureable and studiable from our universe, and hence, are definitionally PART of our universe, and hence any talk of "multiple universes" is gibberish." Agreed but everyone understands that what is meant by 'Universe' in the phrase "multiple universes" refers to our current understanding of the word 'univrese' and hence the phrase 'multiple universes' would amount to a redefinition of 'universe' in a narrower sense. You know what the phrase means in this context, hair-splitting aside. Although coinages such as 'multiverse' are awkward they get the concept across reasonably well. It is accurate to argue that 'Universe' should be defined in the widest sense possible and thus not be used in the narrow sense but people intuitively understand what is implied by such a redifinition. "2) They are not measurable and studiable from our universe, and hence, are definitionally NOT proper subject matter of physics but are properly subject matter of philosophy, and anything that is said about them isn't "science" in any meaningfull sense of that word." Agreed if there is absolutely no effect on the observable world then 'other universes' should be discarded as metaphysical baggage. However there is a lot of scope for other universes to have measurable consequences without them being directly 'observable' as such. Quarks aren't observable and yet they positing their existence makes our desription of certain observable phenomenon so much clearer they have to a strong claim to 'existence'. (this is simply an example so keep your particle physicists on the leash!)

Re:Physics is not for dumb people

[andybak]

I'll try that again with line breaks this time!

"1) they are measureable and studiable from our universe, and hence, are definitionally PART of our universe, and hence any talk of "multiple universes" is gibberish."

Agreed but everyone understands that what is meant by 'Universe' in the phrase "multiple universes" refers to our current understanding of the word 'universe' and hence the phrase 'multiple universes' would amount to a redefinition of 'universe' in a narrower sense.

You know what the phrase means in this context, hair-splitting aside. Although coinages such as 'multiverse' are awkward they get the concept across reasonably well.

Although accurate to argue that 'Universe' should be defined in the widest sense possible and thus not be used in this narrow sense but people intuitively understand what is implied by such a redifinition.

"2) They are not measurable and studiable from our universe, and hence, are definitionally NOT proper subject matter of physics but are properly subject matter of philosophy, and anything that is said about them isn't "science" in any meaningfull sense of that word."

Agreed if there is absolutely no effect on the observable world then 'other universes' should be discarded as metaphysical baggage.

However there is a lot of scope for other universes to have measurable consequences without them being directly 'observable' as such.

Quarks aren't observable and yet they positing their existence makes our desription of certain observable phenomenon so much clearer they have to a strong claim to 'existence'. (this is simply an example so keep your particle physicists on the leash!)

Re:Physics is not for dumb people

[shadowbearer]

No two witnesses ever see things the same way.

Re:Physics is not for dumb people

[Conare]

Anyone still confused? I was, so I went Here

Re:Physics is not for dumb people

[jaoswald]

Well, as for your particles moving backwards or forwards through time and "averaging out," there is a big difference between the particles "actually" moving, in the sense of having separate physical existence, and reaching a correct physical result by the mathematical operation.

Just to clarify, I believe in QED as much as the next physicist, but you have to keep in mind that Feynman's very compelling pictures are still just pictures. They show you how to find the path through the mathematical forest that was Schwinger.
Just because the average of foo and bar gives you baz, and is correct, doesn't mean that "foo" and "bar" exist, just that you can use them as tools to calculate "baz" reliably.

Theoretical != Actual

[philibob]

Theoretical physics is simply that. Always take these things with a grain of salt. Our scientific process is based on questioning assumptions and breaking the rules.

Re:Theoretical != Actual

[Anonymous Coward]

Should be:

Score 2: Obvious

But then again that depends whose company you're in. I guess insightful will do around here.

Re:Theoretical != Actual

[henben]

Theoretical physics is simply that. Always take these things with a grain of salt. Our scientific process is based on questioning assumptions and breaking the rules.

I can't believe this was modded "Insightful".

The issue at stake is not whether their theoretical conjecture is true - it's whether it makes sense, or is just a string of buzzwords that sounds semi-plausible.

It's the difference between a paper saying "let's suppose that the gravitational constant varies with time", and then rigorously working out the implications and figuring out how the hypothesis could be tested - and a paper saying "let's suppose that the Foucault constant is memetically deifictified" (ie nonsense). The second one "breaks the rules" but will never advance theoretical physics. That's very different from advancing a coherent theory that may turn out to be false.

Re:Theoretical != Actual

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it might be in the USA, but elsewhere, the scientific process is based on testing ideas against reality.

Huh?

[Zach978]

No "(free reg required blah blah blah blah)" ?

Sokal, Sch�n, Bogdanov

[davids-world.com]

It's always the physics guys... Remember the Sokal affair? Prof. Alan Sokal, Professor of Physics (NYU), published garbled crap on some weird post-modernist theory in the renowned journal Social Text. Title: "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" .

Then, Bell Lab's star physicist Hendrik Schön got caught after having published faulty data. That was fraud on purpose.

The whole thing sheds a bad, bad light on science. I wonder why I work so hard to get my PhD sooner or (most probably) later... I think I should switch to physics.

Re:Sokal, Sch�n, Bogdanov

[SteveAstro]

Sokal wrote a PARODY that was DESIGNED to take the piss. Its called HUMOUR.

Sokal was pointing out that it was possible to get any old crap accepted if the words were in the right order....

Steve

Re:Sokal, Sch�n, Bogdanov

[Flamerule]

It's always the physics guys...

I have 2 names for you: Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischman. Chemists from UofUtah. Alright, so maybe they were just negligent in not performing more tests -- it is kinda hard to match the kind of blatant bullshitting Schön was pulling.

Check out the Guardian's top 10 scientific blunders page. They've got psychologists, physicists, chemists... all working to pull down science's reputation.

Re:Sokal, Sch�n, Bogdanov

[Huge Pi Removal]

The way the Guardian described the Hubble mirror fiasco as a 'gross design flaw' was a little harsh.

As I understand it, the mirror was polished each night, then tested to see if it was the right shape yet. The testing apparatus included a series of lenses (or mirrors) held a fixed distance apart by rods. Turned out that one of those rods had the paint chipped off one end, which resulted in NASA thinking the mirror was perfect when it wasn't.

A blunder, yes, but not a design flaw as such.

Re:Sokal, Sch�n, Bogdanov

[Anonymous Coward]

As Frank Wilczek pointed out in the article, incomprehensible but allegedly deep works have been appearing in literature for years. The excellent example he cites is Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce. Several literary scholars have spent their entire careers analyzing that book, because no one really understands what (if anything) is meant by most of the text.

Re:Sokal, Sch�n, Bogdanov

[Anonymous Coward]

Methodology aside, get this part right: NASA didn't build the mirror, it was built under contract by Perkin Elmer Corp. They low-balled the contract and built the mirror, certified it, and NASA had not much choice other than to believe them.

Re:Sokal, Sch�n, Bogdanov

[global_diffusion]

Why do you put Sokal in the same group as Schon? Schon was hedging the data to get prestige and more funding (most likely). Sokal was criticizing the social sciences for their lack of rigor by submitting a parody --- which they published without any fact checking.

So let's get it straight: Schon is a talentless hack; Sokal is a dedicated scientist who wants to see more people acting and thinking rationally. If you don't believe me, check out his website. From personal experience I can tell you that Sokal is a good guy. It makes me sick to see people like you lashing out without even taking time to learn about what you're talking about (actually, people like you were the motivation for Sokal writing that piece.).

Re:Sokal, Sch�n, Bogdanov

[Shelled]

Sokal published intentionally grabled crap to expose the lack of post-modernist rigor. He knew it was incoherent, the publishers didn't and praised its 'logic'. Sokal is one of the good guys.

Re:Sokal, Sch�n, Bogdanov

[Huge Pi Removal]

I never said NASA did build it, just that they believed it was perfect when it wasn't. But thanks for clearing up any confusion.

Re:Sokal, Sch�n, Bogdanov

[davids-world.com]

Sorry that I didn't state that more clearly. I am well aware of Sokal writing the article on purpose. My point was not about the wrongdoings (or, in Sokal's case, right-doings) of single scientists, but about the embarassment physicists brought to a science. Whether it be Sokal, Schön or Bogdanov: they all showed great creativity in making things up.

ps: Sokal was completely right in doing that. Post-modernist theory with its 10-lines-per-sentence publications needed it.

Re:Sokal, Sch�n, Bogdanov

[jstott]

Sokal published intentionally grabled crap to expose the lack of post-modernist rigor. He knew it was incoherent, the publishers didn't and praised its 'logic'.

Also, I might add, in contrast to the Bogdanov's, Sokal owned up the the fakery right away and immediately published a second article (in a different journal) explaining why he did it and why his original article never should have been published in the first place.

Honesty matters. That's what makes Sokal one of the good guys.

-JS

Reminds me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of an Ars Technica article posted on the 26th of October, that you can still read here

Be Descriptive, Clear and Simple!

[jukal]

Sorry, but if that "scoop" section was supposed to make me understand what the story is about you failed. Especially in the case of these need registration stories (why do you still keep publishing tme) it might be a good idea to clearly tell WTF you want to say.

Re:Be Descriptive, Clear and Simple!

[garcia]

they obviously have a reason for doing it. It would be nice of them to PUBLICALLY explain it, but they obviously can't afford to, or have the desire to get the "partner" so they must continue using the standard link.

Not the best comparison, I guess.

[theRhinoceros]

His colleague Dr. Jackiw compared modern physics to modern art: "One person looks at a piece of art and says it is gibberish; another person looks and says it's wonderful."

Unfortunately, modern art isn't ultimately graded on if it's falsifiable or not, whereas physics is. Thus, the debate of good/bad art can rage forever without settlement, and that's fine; however, sooner or later, many scientific theories are demonstrated to be false (excepting those which aren't, of course. :-))

Re:Not the best comparison, I guess.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Thus, the debate of good/bad art can rage forever
> without settlement, and that's fine; however,
> sooner or later, many scientific theories are
> demonstrated to be false

You don't know nuclear physics then. There are several theories that, we won't be able to for hundreds if years, if we're lucky, and never, otherwise.

Things get murkier when we start dealing with cosmology.

When you're dealing with the physical states at be beginning of the universe (nuclear physics+cosmology) things get really out of whack. We don't know what 90% of the missing matter is out there, we've investigated only a small portion of the universe, we don't know if we know all the fundamental forces in the universe (so far, we've counted 4) and we only know how those forces work in relatively mild (comparing to the big bang) conditions, yet we have the audacity to believe that any theory about the start of the universe is more than speculation.

Estethics plays a bigger role in the acceptance of theory in some scientific areas, than you might otherwise believe.

Re:Not the best comparison, I guess.

[blonde rser]

I hope you aren't saying that being falsifiable is the same as being demonstrated to be false; because that isn't true. Falsifiable is a concept coined by Karl Popper and it doesn't mean that a statement is false. It means that a statement has to "expose itself to disproof." Only if a hypothesis or theory is falsifiable can it be considered truly scientific.

In other words when a knowledgeable reader sees a hypothesis or theory he must be able to envision evidence that would disprove said theory - otherwise the theory is not scientific. For example if my theory is "all foo's are bar" a knowledgeable reader can realized all she needs to find is a single foo that isn't bar. So that statement is falsifiable. But if my theory states "all people are controlled by little green men (LGMs) that live inside their heads and the LGMs disappear the moment they could be observed" then it is not falsifiable. No matter what evidence a reader envisions (ie. I cut open a head and find no LGM) I can always show that this evidence doesn't out right contradict my theory (ie Well the LGM disappeared moments before you cut open the head).

Maybe I'm being naive and everybody is already clear on what falsifiable actually means. It should be understood that falsifiable statements can be true. And non-falsifiable statements can be false.

Re:Not the best comparison, I guess.

[Otter]

Maybe I'm being naive and everybody is already clear on what falsifiable actually means. It should be understood that falsifiable statements can be true. And non-falsifiable statements can be false.

I doubt that everyone is clear on it, but it seemed obvious enough to me that the poster you're responding to does. He's saying that genuine research and scientific theory is falsifiable, as demonstrated by the fact that findings and theories are frequently shown to be false.

Physics is weird!

[Goalie_Ca]

Its weird and doesn't make sense because our tiny minds cannot comprehend nor visualize many things. Mathematically we can prove these concepts, however they may be hard to swallow. Do remember that mathematics has proved or hypothesized many things that we have later proven true.

Re:Physics is weird!

[Peyna]

Did you read the article? It clear that these guys have a shady past at best, previously guilty of plagiarism. Also, a few other noted scientists stated that these guys 'do not know how to do physics' based on their conversations with them. Most of physics does make sense because it is basic laws of motion and gravity. The stuff that is hard for most people to understand are things like quantum physics and theoretical physics.

Re:Physics is weird!

[Peyna]

Read further in the article and you'll see that they barely even got their doctorates. The one guy got the lowest passing grade, and the other failed.

Besides, the article focuses more on the integrity of articles printed in scientific journals, and how it is hard to figure out if something is worthwhile or if it is crap when they're so hard to understand.

Re:Physics is weird!

[anshil]

Well not to justify this guys, I do know far too less to take side on this case, but remember Einstein? He was often handled as outsider and stranger in his times. (not to say idiot, but in his school he was classified as "less gifted") Remember? He even got an F in physics. So much about our grade system at schools.

However his general relativity was a genius stroke, so mind boggling it was. (special relativity was due of the time, if it wouldn't have been him yet another scientist would proparly have discovered it some years later, but not so general relativity, we might not even have it today, without einstein).

Re:Physics is weird!

[Anonymous Coward]

'Barely even got their doctorates'. Getting a doctorate in Physics at all is a pretty major accomplishment (unless it's one of those mail-order deals). Amazing to me someone could go through all those hoops and still not know how to do physics.

Re:Physics is weird!

[Peyna]

From the article it sounds like they just got an A for effort because they did 10 years of work so they were just given the doctorate, but they didn't actually meet the requirements for it.

Re:Virtual?

[Anonymous Coward]

We all know that slashdot moderators are very small perl scripts.

Contemporary physics is just groping around

[myowntrueself]

for something new and interesting. But being frustrated at every turn.

Gone are the days when Newton could spout 'every action has an equal and opposite reaction' and have it universally accepted; it wasn't 'good science' then and it isn't now.

Modern science is far too logically demanding for that sort of pseudo-theory.

In fact, its approaching the point where modern science is about as encouraging of new ideas as modern (analytical) philosophy. Which is to say, not very.

('Every action has an equal and opposite reaction' is logically flawed as a scientific theory since it cannot be disproved. At best its an axiom, but it cannot be tested. Problems with universal quantifiers, I'm afraid; For every a there Exists b such that P(a,b). Disproving such an assertion is impossible).

Re:Contemporary physics is just groping around

[Anonymous Coward]

Perform any action that does not have an equal and opposite reaction. If you do, then you have disproved the proposition. Just because something cannot be fit into your particular notation does not mean it is invalid. Let go of the dogma and look at things in a different way once in a while.

Re:Contemporary physics is just groping around

[AJWM]

'Every action has an equal and opposite reaction' is logically flawed as a scientific theory since it cannot be disproved.

Um, no, you're confused. If the theory were false, then I could disprove it by performing an experiment where an action does not have an equal and opposite reaction. Thus, the theory is hypothetically falsifiable and therefore valid as a theory (it may be incorrect, but at least it is phrased as a valid theory).

If numerous experiments demonstrating action and reaction do not disprove it, then odds are that it is also correct.

But proof of correctness is never absolute (maybe we haven't found the circumstances under which it doesn't hold, yet), while proof of incorrectness is.

Re:Contemporary physics is just groping around

[Webere]

For every a there Exists b such that P(a,b). Disproving such an assertion is impossible

Easily Disproved Assertion: For every real number r there exists a real number x such that r*x = 1. (In other words, all real numbers have a multiplicative inverse.)

Disproof: Let r = 0.
0 * x = 0 for all real numbers x.
Therefore, the assertion is false.

That assertion fits the form you laid out, and yet is clearly disprovable.

Re:Contemporary physics is just groping around

[drudd]

You're completely wrong. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction is a perfectly valid scientific theory. How do you disprove it? Find an action which does not produce an equal and opposite reaction.

You're confusing the idea of testability with the ability to prove a theory correct. No scientific theory can be proven absolutely (i.e. how do we know that when we drop the apple THIS time it won't go up instead of down!), however a good scientific theory makes a prediction, and has a way of disproving it (in this case finding a counter-example).

Doug

Re:Contemporary physics is just groping around

[myowntrueself]

Nope;
for every action a,
there exists an reaction b,
such that b is equal and opposite to a.

Therefore to prove this false one would need to find a counterexample;
there exists an action a
such that for every reaction b
b is not an equal and opposite reaction to a

Which is an infinite task, since we are dealing with universal quantifiers.
The proof tree would never end hence the original sentence is not disprovable.

Or something like that, its been 6 years since I got my Honors in formal logic.

Re:Contemporary physics is just groping around

[myowntrueself]

"How do you disprove it? Find an action which does not produce an equal and opposite reaction."

Thats exactly my point; remember we are talking about physics not math.
To disprove a physical theory one must be able to find a counterexample.
But since we are dealing with universal quantifiers this is simply not possible.

Just like Freuds 'Every dream is a neurotic symptom'

Doubters should check some basic texts on the philosophy of science.

Re:Contemporary physics is just groping around

[aminorex]

Oh this is a lark indeed! (It's funny, laugh!)
The above is moderated as 5 - Informative as
I write, while in fact it contains a grotesque
fallacy which should be apparent to anyone with the
capacity to walk and chew gum:

"If the theory were false, then I could disprove it
by performing an experiment where an action does not..."

This is called begging the question. The poster
assumes that the claim (equal and opposite...)
is falsifiable, and concludes:

"Thus, the theory is hypothetically falsifiable".

Wow. it's no wonder we elect bald-faced liars
to lead us into wars of aggression.

Re:Contemporary physics is just groping around

[de Selby]

It's not much of an infinate task. There's an infinate that are "not an equal and opposite reaction to a" and only one that is.

The infinity of results all share the property that matters so, infinate or not, it's not an infinite task.

Or am I missing something?

Re:Contemporary physics is just groping around

[joto]

Are you so dense that you don't understand the difference between the possible existence of a counter-example, and the actual process of finding one? And yet you claim to have a honors degree in formal logic?

Let me state this in terms even you can understand. Let P be a statement in first order logic (it may involve free variables). Falsifiable(P) means the same as Satisfiable(not P). Now, assume P is Newtons third law. In other words, we want to show that not P is satisfiable. For this we have to imigine a universe in which there exist an action without an equal and opposite reaction. And as has been stated numerous times, that is not especially hard to imagine even under more formal systems...

Re:Contemporary physics is just groping around

[elfbabe]

I think this actually needs just a LITTLE rephrasing, as I think de Selby was saying. It's not that much, but in formal logic, any little difference can make the entire outcome off. (And I apologize for my formal logic being rusty as well...)

The law is not saying, or is not meant to say, that every action a has an infinite number of reactions b, of which at least one is equal and opposite to a. It's saying, rather, that every action a has one (1!) corresponding reaction b, which is equal and opposite to a.

So, to disprove this, you'd have to go and find the action a whose reaction b was NOT equal and opposite. (And it would involve very tiny things and be extremely confusing to students.) Yes, there are an infinite number of actions a that can be performed, but as there's only one b which corresponds to every a, it can still be shown that each a tested is either in agreement with or disagreement with the theory.

I'd write this out in formal-logicy style, but I unfortunately can't remember the correct way to say that there is only one b that goes with each a. Curse you, formal logic!

Re:Contemporary physics is just groping around

[myowntrueself]

suppose you are checking for counterexamples and you find an action with no equal & opposite reaction you can discern.

Thats just absence of evidence not evidence of absence.

So you have to look deeper for an equal & opposite reaction for this errant action.

When, exactly, do you stop looking? When you have checked every other action in the universe and determined that not one of them was an equal & opposite reaction to that action?

This is an impossible task, but its the only way, short of finding a mechanism to explain it, but then the 'every action has a blardy bla bla' becomes a data element in a theory, not a theory in its own right.

What I'm trying to get at, and this'll answer the other subthreads from this too, what I'm trying to get at is;

That modern science has lost its way when people who are trained scientists can't tell the difference between an axiom (something taken as a given) and a theorem (something which can be tested).

Take the example of the guy who came up with the 'water memory theory'. I don't have a handy URL, but this renowned scientist published a paper in Nature, to the effect that water somehow remembers things like antibodies; he said he took pure water, added antibodies, diluted it to the point where a sample of the water shouldn't give an antibody reaction, but it did, until exposed to oscilating magnetic fields at which point the diluted water no longer gave an antibody reaction but the real antibody carrying water did.

Ok that was long winded, but what happened? Nature retracted the papers (I believe?) and he got *two* ignobel prizes.

So far as I can tell Noone, not one person who dissed off his theory bothered testing it.

They *assumed* it was false and didnt bother trying to disprove it.

This is not science. Yet it was being done (is still being done) by people who call themselves scientists.

Roger Bacon would be turning in his grave;
in around 1200AD in universities in Europe, it was taught that diamonds dissolved in goats blood. Aristotle had taught this so it had to be true. Noone bothered trying to disprove it.

Roger Bacon singlehandedly invented scientific method by saving up his meager students income to buy a *very* small diamond, and a goat and performed the experiment.

The diamond didn't dissolve, Bacon was chastised, and scientific method was born.

Today we have the absurd situation I described before. Virtually the reverse.

Nuf said. Noones going to read this anyway.
But it was worth saying it cos its clearer in my head now.

Re:Contemporary physics is just groping around

[myowntrueself]

the thread is about physical science in which experiments must be performable.
Logics just a tool.
Study Goedel.

Re:Contemporary physics is just groping around

[myowntrueself]

suppose you are checking for counterexamples and you find an action with no equal & opposite reaction you can discern.

Thats just absence of evidence not evidence of absence.

So you have to look deeper for an equal & opposite reaction for this errant action.

When, exactly, do you stop looking? When you have checked every other action in the universe and determined that not one of them was an equal & opposite reaction to that action?

Re:Contemporary physics is just groping around

[AJWM]

Well, invert that.

Suppose you find an action with a very visible opposite reaction, but one that is far from equal -- i.e. of much greater magnitude.

Now of course, since this defies scientific observation up until this time, the onus is going to be on you to show that you didn't have some hidden extra action 'a' that accounts for the extra magnitude 'b'. That and to make sure your particular experiment can be replicated so others can satisfy themselves that there's no extra inputs.

Logically your case and this are equivalent: on the one hand you're asking to "prove the absence of an output", on the other you're asking to "prove the absence of an extra input".

But of course, you can't prove a negative.

In the case of an experiment demonstrating an action with no reaction, it isn't up to the experimenter to go to absurd lengths to prove it (but at least reasonable lengths). Rather the onus is on those wishing to maintain that "for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction" to duplicate the experiment and point out just where that reaction is happening; either that or restate the theory ("the reaction occurs as a burst of magic momentum particles which are almost impossible to detect but account for the missing momentum" -- substitute "neutrinos" for "magic momentum particles" and you've pretty much got an example from real physics).

Re:Contemporary physics is just groping around

[AJWM]

It's not begging the question, it's defining the term.

You seem to be confusing the difference between a theory being false (ie, incorrect) and falsifiable (ie, an experiment could be devised which, given a certain result, would show the theory to be incorrect). A theory can be either, both, or neither.

Falsifiable means that it is possible to prove it wrong (if it is wrong); that for a given test, there will be some result which, if it occurs, proves the hypothesis wrong. Sure, it's hard to imagine that happening in any test of action/reaction, simply because of the amount of collective experience we've had with it working. If the billiard balls don't ricochet the way we expect, we're inclined to suspect a problem with the balls or the table, not with Newton's Third Law.

But that's a psychological barrier to falsifiability, not a logical one.

Re:Contemporary physics is just groping around

[Mac Degger]

Yup! But I must disagree with the last part of your statement: if the theory is (mathematically or otherwise) provable, it ceases to be a theory and becomes a proof.
If that were not the case, you couldn't accept a proof of oncorrectness.

Re:Contemporary physics is just groping around

[joto]

the thread is about physical science in which experiments must be performable.

Yes, and there are hardly anything that's more testable in science than Newton's laws.

Logics just a tool.

Yet, you are the one who bring an argument that could be taken right out of Erasmus Montanus mouth to the table.

Study Goedel.

While surely a worthwile study, it also has little to do with the issue at hand, which is about the definition and interpretation of falsifiability. Despite your claims to the contrary, you seem to have a fundamental lack of understanding of even the most simple logical concepts.

Re:Contemporary physics is just groping around

[Lozzer]

If numerous experiments demonstrating action and reaction do not disprove it, then odds are that it is also correct.

Unfortunately that is just not true, if you compare the finite number of performed experiments against the infinite number of unperformed experiments you end up with the conclusion that your theory actually has zero change of being correct. So not only is proof of correctness not absolute, any kind of trend towards correctness can not be shown either.

Re:Contemporary physics is just groping around

[AJWM]

Well, unless the theory is entirely within the domain of mathematics, it isn't mathematically "provable" in some absolute sense because first you'd have to prove that the mathematics correlates with reality.

Good luck ;-)

More practically, though, we agree that certain theories and mathematics correlate with reality within certain bounds and domains. Euclidian geometry and Newtonian physics holds as a reasonable approximation of the macroscopic world we routinely experience, but both break down at the relativistic and quantum levels.

Things get interesting when we find a theory doesn't work in a domain that we previously thought it would. That's an area where our mathematical models don't correlate with reality.

Re:Contemporary physics is just groping around

[aminorex]

Umm... No.

Ummm... No.

"If the theory were false then I could disprove it"
asserts that the theory is falsifiable. The
conclusion derived is that the theory is falsifiable.
That's begging the question.

Coming back for more? That's begging a spanking.

Teach your grandmother to suck eggs. She might not
spank you so much.

Re:Contemporary physics is just groping around

[AJWM]

You're still confusing the terms.

Perhaps deliberately.

Have a nice day.

Re:Contemporary physics is just groping around

[aminorex]

Ummmmm.... No.

But this horse is as dead as the armadillo on a
Mack's grille, so why lead it to water?

Re:Contemporary physics is just groping around

[Mac Degger]

True...but the cool thing is when that happens, we just figure out what does correlate :) For relativistc speeds, Einstein provided the groundwork...and now the race is on to provide that for the quantum world (and much work has been done already). Next step will be to combine the two...and then what's left? We'll have described all of (easily observed) reality.

No doubt we'll find something else after that which doesn't fit (more dimensions, multiple universes, the place lost socks go to, whatever) but we'll create new models which approximate reality to a finer and finer degree, until finer approximation gives no real benefit and/or understanding (or until we need a model the size of the universe [scale 1:1] to understand the universe :) ).

Hey, at least it keeps us off the streets :)

I've often wondered...

[Anonymous Coward]

Going along the same vein with the quote about sufficiently advanced technologies being indistinguishable from magic, I have often wondered similar things.

If there was a physicst out there that was obviously intelligent, could he draft a theory that was so far beyond anyone elses comprehension to get seriously attacked, even if he knew it was BS.

For instance, Einstein's original theory of relativity. This wasn't a hoax, but it was wrong. It was, however, too complicated to be argued by the minds of the day. Einstein himself had to find the flaw and correct it.

Are there any physicsts that have garnered so much respect as to allow them to make an outlandish statement with obfuscated proof, and have it be taken as sound?

Re:I've often wondered...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

If there was a physicst out there that was obviously intelligent, could he draft a theory that was so far beyond anyone elses comprehension to get seriously attacked, even if he knew it was BS.

In my opinion, no. Even if some sort or cosmic irony dropped a physicist into our time, from 10,000 years in the future, said physicist wouldn't be capable of it.

For one, english as it is spoken today, even with the jargon of the phsyics community, would be inadequate to say anything truly mind-blowing. And if he adds in his own jargon from the year 12k, it would most likely dominate any message he would say. It would truly be gibberish to us, and it wouldn't exactly be unfair to call it nonsense.

Re:I've often wondered...

[Mac Degger]

No Einsteins theory was not wrong. It explained (demonstrably and provably [as it was when they tested it during an eclipse]) more and better (more detailed, more accurately) how the universe worked than previous theories. Thus it replaced newtonian physics...becasue it was more accurate and explained thing newtonian physics couldn't.

That things could be explained better, hell, everyone knows that. Every theory is expected to be replaced by a better one. But at the time it was the most complete and accurate model we had. So therefore that one gets used in place of others wich are less accurate and explain less.

And, btw, it wasn't Einstein who corrected his theory. It was Hubble who found evidence that an earlier version of Einstein's theory (the one which included the cosmological constant) was actually the one which explained the state of the universe more accurately.

Yep, sounds like gibberish...

[thasmudyan]

It was during the writing of the book, the brothers say, that they had a brainstorm for a theory of the so-called initial singularity, the infinitely dense, infinitely hot point into which all space and time were squeezed when the universe began, where normal physics breaks down.

IANP but the current universe clearly hasn't and infinite amount of energy nor matter, so why the hell should it have started as something infinitly dense and filled with infinite energy (heat). Is there even such a thing as infinite energy or matter? Can anyone enlighten me? And if the universe started out as a planck-small ball of energy how could it even have a temperature and a mass if particles did yet not exist???

Re:Yep, sounds like gibberish...

[Pius II.]

Well, take e.g. all the matter in the universe. Put it in a measurable space. -> finite density.
Make the space smaller. -> finite, but larger density.
As the space available goes to zero, the density would go against infinity.
However, when the space has shrunk to point size, there is no space anymore. So the density wouldn't be infinite, but (some matter/zero space) undefined. So that's my 0.02 .

not useless bashing

[Goldsmith]

For those of you trying to support the physics community here, note that this article is not just useless physics bashing. It is about a real problem in all scientific disciplines.

This article is not about criticism of the system, but rather specific criticism of specific people in the system. It is responsibility of the schools and journals, and especially thesis advisors to make sure people are doing adaquate work.

There was an excuse given by these guys' advisor in the article about these guys working for 10 years and they should get a degree for that, even if they didn't exactly display a command of the mathmatics behind their theory.

This is absolute bullshit!

I don't care how long or hard you are working on something. If you want a degree in theoretical physics, you'd damn well better be able to understand your own thesis. If you can't AT LEAST explain it to your advisor, there is no way I can see to give you a PhD.

Re:not useless bashing

[An Onerous Coward]

http://www.despair.com/demotivators/incompetence.h tml

Note: I am not an employee of Despair.com, just another suicidal customer.

Re:not useless bashing

[Anonymous Coward]

my thesis was total bullshit, and I didn't understand mosat of the bits that weren't (at least I assume that they weren't bullshit, since I only plagiarised the best).

As much as i like physics and math...

[packeteer]

Who says the universe works in numbers? Why do we think that we can bring everything down to math. Maybe it cant be done and we are not exactly wasting time but we wont ever find the end if we simply exploit math.

Re:As much as i like physics and math...

[Anonymous Coward]

Physics aren't supposed to tell you how the universe works, physics are a bunch of models one can use to predict (more or less accurately) how things will behave.

Re:As much as i like physics and math...

[RayBender]

Who says the universe works in numbers? Why do we think that we can bring everything down to math. Maybe it cant be done and we are not exactly wasting time but we wont ever find the end if we simply exploit math.

Because it has worked pretty well for us so far. Come up with something better and scientists will use it. In the mean time, why not continue along a line of progess that has a tremendous history of success?

Beatnik poetry

[Anonymous Coward]

"Then we suggest that the (pre-)spacetime is in thermodynamic equilibrium at the Planck-scale and is therefore subject to the KMS condition."

However, if their model is self consistent and is backed up by measurements of the universe, more power to them. The more models the better.

Re:Beatnik poetry

[kkenn]

Their "model" is not even stated, much less stated self-consistently :-)

Is it really surprising?

[Jon Erikson]

Scientists are people too... and like all men, they are not perfect beings by any stretch of the imagination. They seek after false goals, make mistakes in their logic, and get attached to ideas that they should now better about.

Unfortunately as the article says in the world of "cosmology" these scientists are unconstrained by the things that has made science such as useful part of our everyday lives... the need for experimental verification and some kind of connection with the real world. Instead, pesudo-scientists like these can come up with pie in the sky theories about bangs, splats, inflation or whatever the latest piece of mumbo-jumbo is. As long as they can justify their next grant check by pointing to their latest chin-stroking piece of nonsense, they just don't seem to care whether it actually contributes anything to science

The field of cosmology is a bust, and is never likely to produce anything other than windy speculation and an endless source of free taxpayers money to pay for ivory tower academics who could be doing something far more useful instead. The government needs to realise this, and stop wasting our money on something for which no explaination is needed - we already now how the Universe came to be!

There is no justification for this kind of science. Without an end goal in sight, this field of "science" is as empty of meaning as advertising.

Re:Is it really surprising?

[Anonymous Coward]

"We already now [sic] how the Universe came to be!"

Hmm. So God is posting on Slashdot now.

Re:Is it really surprising?

[Natalie's Hot Grits]

"The field of cosmology is a bust, and is never likely to produce anything..."

Such harsh comments coming from an IT Guru.

I guess your infinite experience in the cosmology field has brought you to this conclusion, or are you just too stupid to know any better?

Re:Is it really surprising?

[Dr. No]

Mr. Erikson couldn't be more wrong. Cosmology is swimming in experimental data right now, and there's orders-of-magnitude more on the horizon. In fact we have so much data it's a challenge to analyze it all in a computationally reasonable amount of time.

Not an hoax, a poorly worded paper

[descubes]

I've been following the original thread for a little while. The authors seem to have some trouble being precise enough, in particular when speaking English (not their native language.) Reports on their French works are better. But the reactions of some people are simply inexcusable.

The future of programming

Major Trauma ... a rant

[pjammer]

Physics:

As one who has suffered through our grueling-yet-vocationally-worthless Physics program I've concluded that Physics is God's way of telling us that there are things mortals just shouldn't know. When getting over 30% on midterms and finals earns an "A" in an upper-division class in E&M, you know something is wrong with the discipline - even the best students are doing worse than what would flunk you in any other class. The only good thing I learned from studying physics: now I know why the Space Shuttle blew up.

Think about it: NASA hired a bunch of scientists with seemingly impeccable academic qualifications - "straight-A" Physics students to work on specific portions of mechanics/safety evaluation. NASA authorities blindly trusted their options with the stupid confidence of those who do not realize physicists can earn their straight-As being WRONG 70 percent of the time. Only in baseball can a successful career be built on a comprable failure rate.

Major Trauma

Re:Major Trauma ... a rant

[Anonymous Coward]

The shuttle blew up because a bunch of management types decited against the engineering types on if to launch when it was cold.

Re:Major Trauma ... a rant

[kkenn]

Undergraduate physics education is the USA is a travesty; however fortunately this is not true in other countries. This is presumably why the vast majority of PhD students in physics in the USA are foreign students. This is especially true in theoretical physics: most american students just cannot compete with their foreign counterparts.

There _are_ universities with good undergraduate physics programs (and good students coming out of the bad universities), but they certainly seem to be in the minority.

Re:Major Trauma ... a rant

[spectecjr]

There _are_ universities with good undergraduate physics programs (and good students coming out of the bad universities), but they certainly seem to be in the minority. ... or at the very least, they seem to be in England ;-)

Simon

Re:Major Trauma ... a rant

[mozkill]

there is a reason why, in all schools across the country, that students in physics classes average nearly 30% on tests and quizes.

Its because, by making the curve that deep, its much easier for physics departmental heads to NOTICE a student who is conceptually able to rise far above the other students. A physics student with a high IQ can be very valuable to a schools physics program.

Re:Major Trauma ... a rant

[Butterwaffle Biff]

It's not necessarily a bad thing to have an exam that is so hard. There's nothing carved in stone saying that exams must be planned so that at least one student will correctly answer 90 percent of the questions.

I know some professors who like to put unanswered questions about their current research on exams; it's not meant to flunk the students, but to see how students go about answering the question. You don't have to be correct to show that you know how to organize your thoughts -- which is often the most valuable skill you will receive from an education, if you are lucky enough to get it at all.

Re:Major Trauma ... a rant

[Ryouko]

A mark 30% in a any of my final physics exam at my Uni (www.ukc.ac.uk) in the UK would fail you the module and hence the whole year (assuming you didn't do any coursework), and it's only half way up the UK league tables.

Gibberish is as Gibberish informs

[rufusdufus]

Just as it is with a post to slashdot, being right isnt enough. If a physics paper cannot be understood by physicists, and does not provide insight into anything meaningful or testable then the paper is rightly called gibberish.

Re:Gibberish is as Gibberish informs

[thasmudyan]

Absolutely correct. Besides, if someone has a weird theory and he really is right, then it should be possible to describe it to an educated reader so that he arrives at the same conclusion! Meaning, that if you're right you can always show (what happened to scientific proof, anyway?) it to another person and with more or less effort you should be able to explain your theory. Always. That is the foundation of modern science. Obviously some post-modern mathematicians and particle/quantum physicists have forgotten that and substituted theory with fantasy. While it is allright to make some unproven assumptions to base a certain scenario on, it is a wholly different matter to construct a whole theory that is almost COMPLETELY made up of assumptions and equations that make no sense and are not even explained. Why aren't reviewers getting this?

Reason why no attractive girls are in physics?

[Anonymous Coward]

These guys scared them away. Holy shit, I had to look at the picture twice to see if the picture had become corrupted; faces like these would scare small children.

Re:Virtual? BRILLIANT

[Anonymous Coward]

Spot-on goatse troll; had me tricked! you know sometimes when i'm especially randy I like to cover up the chap's twig and berries and think about having a go with that big gaping arsehole. crikey!

Hoax !

[The Ego]

Those 2 guys are well-known cranks. I can't believe they managed to make it into a "serious" newspaper.

They are "famous" in France as they presented some Sci-Fi TV show when I was growing-up. They have gone downhill from there :-(

The Conversion from Quack to Genius

[Alethes]

The scientists in any branch are always considered the ones that think too much about whichever field they specialize. Physicists think too much about physics, biologists think too much about biology, and computer scientists think too much about computers. As a matter of fact, Albert Einstein had several of the same suit just so he could devote the time thinking about he wanted to wear to something more useful -- like physics. I'm sure most of us have has professors that we considered at least a little eccentric. I had one astronomy prof that never washed in coffee cup in 20 years just to help his body build up his immune system -- the result of thinking on a level that most people don't.

If any one of us were to devote 99% of our time to any one dream, project, or theory like these scientists most of the things we would write on the subject would make little sense to those who didn't think about the subject as much as we did, and consequently, we would be ridiculed as quacks and our writings would be considered gibberish. That is, until our life's work turned into something applicable to the general public (possibly even outside out lifetime), at which point we would be considered geniuses.

Re:The Conversion from Quack to Genius

[thasmudyan]

Basically I think you are right, but this case is a bit different. It's not just about scientists being a bit strange and eccentric.

Science, in order to work, is like a network of theories and facts, "nodes" that depend on each other. Older, proven nodes provide the basis for new nodes, some of which are later validated (and provide the basis for nodes after them) and some are not (in which case they disappear from the network).

So let's call a new theory D, which rests on the theories A and B, maybe extending and proving theory C in the process. The thing is, that A => B => C => D all relate to each other in a meaningful way. They may all be theories but they are part of a relatively solid reference framework that allows for validation at different levels.

Now the problem, the infamous hoax theories: some theories don't stand on any framework at all. And they don't even bother to establish a new framework. They might start with a few equations (7=2 for example) and a few out-of-context references and they leave it there. Typically they don't offer any coherent explanation that even remotely shows how the author arrived at a certain conclusion.

The problem is that those theories are not only useless in our present time, they also hold a very small probability to make any sense in the future.

Re:The Conversion from Quack to Genius

[kkenn]

The other highly suspcious aspect of this whole affair is that the work was never published online prior to being submitted to a journal.

Some background for non-physicists: thesedays the primary venue for publishing new works is the arXiv. Several hundred papers per day are uploaded here in various categories, and it is the de facto standard library of modern research in physics.

After publishing your work on the arXiv, physicists around the work can and will read your paper and submit feedback. Typically, after publication on the arXiv you might submit your work to a paper-based journal, but this is only a secondary procedure, and the only real point is to give you bonus points for your resume.

Here is the main point:

No-one reads paper journals any more!

The fact that the Bogdanov papers were never uploaded to the arxiv meant that apart from the 2 referees (who basically seem to have abdicated responsibility), no-one had, or ever would have read their work!.

If the authors were serious researchers, they would have submitted their work to the arxiv so it could be read and critiqued by their peers.

Re:The Conversion from Quack to Genius

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, right.

Re:The Conversion from Quack to Genius

[kkenn]

I don't see your point.

Yes, physics people publish in journals (after first publishing the e-print on xxx.arxiv.org). Yes, physics people cite journal articles (together with the arxiv reference). And yes, non-physics people read journals (because they are 5-10 years behind the trend towards e-publishing). But physics people don't read articles in paper journals, instead they read the e-print version on xxx.arxiv.org.

As a theoretical physicist myself, I think I am speaking with some authority here :)

Re:The Conversion from Quack to Genius

[Hal-9001]

Some areas of physics are better represented on arXiv.org than others. My interest is in optics, and not many optics articles appear as preprints on arXiv, so I'm better off keeping current through the journals than through arXiv. Also, materials in journals have at least gone through some peer-review, which helps filter out noise.

Re:The Conversion from Quack to Genius

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically speaking, "Computer Scientists" do not study computers. Computer science is the study of algorithms, and is as happy outside a computer as inside. Computers are merely fortunate circumstances for testing algorithms.

Re:The Conversion from Quack to Genius

[jstott]

The other highly suspcious aspect of this whole affair is that the work was never published online prior to being submitted to a journal.

Some background for non-physicists: thesedays the primary venue for publishing new works is the arXiv [arxiv.org]. Several hundred papers per day are uploaded here in various categories, and it is the de facto standard library of modern research in physics.

This is only true for certain fields of physics. For the areas I've worked in, articles are either seldom (liquid crystal physics) or almost never (diffuse optical tomography) published online first. Quantum gravity, cosmology, and the like are the exception not the rule in their heavy use of the pre-print servers.

-JS

This is neither serious nor a hoax

[Anonymous Coward]

... but a major failure of the french university.

The Bogdanov brothers are self-proclaimed geniuses
with absolutely no scientific credibility, that got
their PhDs (in their 50s, after a career as
sci-fi TV host in the 70s) at the university of
Burgundy in France,

This story is a major reality check for the
french university and the scientific publishing
community in general.

You should check

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/bogdanov.html

for some serious comments on the affair.

Oops!

[AJWM]

This belongs on your virtual refrigerator with nice big virtual magnet.

Dang! That big virtual magnet just erased my virtual disk...

Re:Oops!

[Anonymous Coward]

More funny jokes like that one here

Idea:

[Dark Lord Seth]

Enforce the google parnet link on ALL nyt links posted in articles. Why? Because is so damned much easier. Reject stories without parnet nyt links, reduce the karma of the submitter, send cowboyneal over with a stick of butter and some mild narcotic, anything! The easy links are there people, use them when you submit something!

More info, less blather

[EnlightenmentFan]

This story has been percolating around since October 23 or so, when a physicist named John Baez posted to a discussion group his theory the Bogdonovs' stuff was so bad it must be a hoax.

It's not clear whether Baez meant this as a literal statement of his belief, or if he was looking for a newsworthy way to say the Bogdonovs' theories are crap.
Of course, if Baez had simply said the papers were crap, we would not be reading about it in the NYT, let alone Slashdot.

The Bogdonovs say their papers are not a hoax--they are simply very theoretical and "daring."

The New York Times article is a disjointed mishmash of quotes from good physicists who have been asked to assess the physics theories of two French TV stars with toilet-paper PhDs. There is no indication--none--that their work is a Sokal-like hoax.

If you care, you can read a clearer account of the incident in the November 5 online edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Re:More info, less blather

[Jeremy Erwin]

John Baez has a good link filled article on the subject. Interestingly, the editors of Classical and Quantum Gravity have distanced themselves from the Bogdanovs' article.

E-mail with more info on hoax

[ahaile]

The NYT article mentions "e-mails bouncing around the web." Here's one with a bit more info. I received it as below, so I don't know who the original sender was:

Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 22:56:42 -0400 (EDT)

Subject: Hoax: Alan Sokol phenomenon reversed

Sometime ago Alan Sokol et al wrote a completely meaningless article on quantum gravity which was accepted by a leading, refereed "deconstructionist journal". Physicists laughed because the hoax was at the deconstructionists' expense.

But now there is is an inverse Sokol hoax in which, apparently, two reporters interviewd a lot of string theorists, wrote meaningless but "right sounding" papers and even got a Ph.D. Details below. What is particularly sad is that a key paper appeared in CQG:

Class. Quantum Grav. 18 (7 November 2001) 4341-4372

Topological field theory of the initial singularity of spacetime*

Grichka Bogdanov and Igor Bogdanov
Mathematical Physics Laboratory, CNRS UPRES A 5029, Bourgogne
University,
France

The trouble is that the abstract seems indistinguishable from standard stringy papers. I understand that the CQG Editorial Board already discussed this hoax but found that the paper had been refereed by two reputable string theorists.

More details:
----
From Max Niedemayer to Ted Newman

# 1.
I always thought Sokal's hoax would also work in theoretical high energy physics. Now there is experimental proof.

Two brothers, Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff, journalists and science fiction writers, both in their late 40's, decided it is high time to earn a PhD, and that this should be just as easy in `stringy' high energy physics as it alledgedly is in sociology.

First they interviewed a number of prominent French string theorists in order to accquire the lingo, then (apparently without help from a trained physicist) spoofed two theses. To prepare the ground for their defense they spread rumors of them being geniuses and their theses being a milestone in theoretical physics. Although the official PhD awarding institution is only the (so far not too renowned) Universite de Bourgogne the members of the thesis committee certainly make up for it: R. Jackiw (MIT), J. Morava (John Hopkins), S. Majid (Cambridge), C. Kounnas (ENS), I. Antoniadis (CERN and Ecole Polytechnique), and others. For the actual defense they rented a hall in the prestigeous Ecole Polytechnique, arranged a big dinner with the president, invited the TV, ... and passed gloriously. The thesis can be found on the offical CNRS server (http://www.ccsd.cnrs.fr/). Already the abstract is a delightfully meaningless combination of buzzwords, that almost beats Sokal's, but which apparently has been taken seriously by the committee!

The bad side of the joke is, that it might hurt theoretical physics in general. The CNRS apparently even contemplates to split the present theoretical physics division into a pure mathematics and an experimental physics branch. Theoretical physics, being now more fiction than science, is meant to be entertained by professionals in that area. Hopefully the Bogdanoff ``singularity invariant'' for the ``topological expansion phase'' of the universe will provide a way out ...

I'll keep you informed. Best regards,

-- Max

2.
Dear Ted,
sure you can show the letter to others. Let me stress however (and maybe you should too) that this is not first hand information. A person who has first hand information is J. Magnen, from the Ecole Polytechnique. He works on constructive QFT and was not personally involved. The issue was apparently discussed in the French National Research Council, where Peter Forgacs is a member, and he is my source.

A small correction. In the last minute it seems the theses were not accepted at the Ecole Polytechnique, but only later by the University
of Bourgogne. The TV was also not permitted to the actual defense, but several people here saw reports on the Bogdanoff brothers decribing them as outstanding geniuses.

The theses and the committee members can be looked up on the web at http://www.ccsd.cnrs.fr/

All the best,

-- Max

----
HOAX THESIS:
Abstract in english:

We propose in this research a new solution regarding the existence and the content of the initial spacetime singularity. In the context of topological field theory we consider that the initial singularity of space-time corresponds to a zero size singular gravitational instanton characterized by a Riemannian metric configuration (++++) in dimension D = 4. Connected with some unexpected topological data corresponding to the zero scale of space-time, the initial singularity is thus not considered in terms of divergences of physical fields but can be resolved in the frame of topological field theory. We get this result from the physical observation that the pre-spacetime is in a thermal equilibrium at the Planck scale. Therefore it should be subject to the KMS condition. We consequently consider that this KMS state might correspond to a unification between "physical state" (Planck scale) and "topological state" (zero scale). Then it is suggested that the "zero scale singularity" can be understood in terms of topological invariants, in particular the first Donaldson invariant. Therefore, we here introduce a new topological index, connected with 0 scale, of the form Z = Tr (-1)s, which we call "singularity invariant". Interestingly, this invariant corresponds also to the invariant topological current yield by the hyperfinite II* von Neumann algebra describing the zero scale of space-time. In such a context we conjecture that the problem of inertial interaction might be explained in terms of topological amplitude connected with the singular zero size gravitational instanton corresponding to the initial singularity of spacetime.

Keywords : KMS State, topological field theory, singularity invariant, initial singularity, zero size instanton
PACS : 0420D, 04.65.+e,02.40.Xx, 04.60.-m, 5.45.-a

Keywords: Mots-cles : Etat KMS, theorie topologique des champs, invariant de singularite, singularite initiale, instanton gravitationnel singulier, amplitude topologique
PACS : 0420D, 04.65.+e, 02.40.Xx, 04.60.-m, 05.45.-a

Advisor: STERNHEIMER, DANIEL
Comments: President : Gabriel Simonoff (Prof.Emerite Univ.Bordeaux I) Premier rapporteur : Roman Jackiw (M.I.T.) Second rapporteur Jack Morava : (John Hopkins Univ.), Examinateur Hans Jauslin (Bourgogne Univ.), Co-directeur de these (pour la partie physique theorique), Jac Verbaarschot (Stony Brook Univ.) Le document de these est compose des textes suivants : 1. Le texte de presentation de la these (60 pages) 2. Les 4 tires a part des publications annexees (102
pages): - Topological Field Theory of the Initial Singularity of Spacetime, Class. and Quantum Gravity vol 18 no 21 (2001) - Spacetime
Metric and the KMS Condition at the
Planck Scale Annals of Physics, vol 295 no 2 (2002) - KMS State of the Spacetime at the Planck Scale, Ch. Jour. of Phys. vol 40, No2, (2002) -
Topological Origin of Inertia, Czech . Jour. of Phys. Vol. 51, No 11 (2001)

Subjects: Thesis: Physics: Theoretical Physics
ID code: tel-00001503
Deposited by: BOGDANOFF Igor on 24 July 2002 (01:49)

Re:E-mail with more info on hoax

[BoojiBoy0]

If you've been following this discussion on the moderated newsgroup sci.physics.research you'd know that the Bogdanoff's still claim that their papers are not hoaxes. Also many of the physicists there are giving them some benifit of doubt. As a physics grad student myself I'm often tempted to add a bit of fluff to impress my immediate reviewers but I would not go so far... All I can say is that if they are not hoaxes (it'll need alot more defence by the Bogdanoff's to prove so) then these guys will have falsely ruined careers.

Re:E-mail with more info on hoax

[jaoswald]

Well the question with "falsely ruined" is whether they should have had careers as physicists at all.

I'm not a string theorist by any stretch (I've gone to a number of colloquia, and always follow it to about the same slide 20% through every time, but never get any further in really understanding what these people actually do. I understand the kind of stuff that condensed matter theorists do: making expansions, various kinds of approximations, mixed in with quantum and statistical mechanics; and I know when they think they are finished. I guess one problem is I just don't understand topological deduction at all.)

Anyhow, the point made in the article is that not everyone making string theory arguments has as much of a grasp of the necessary mathematics as they should, and referees don't have the time to check all their work as rigorously as one might like. That means that sloppy, useless, impenetrable stuff can still get through the system.

My take as an outsider is that these people probably don't have any truly publishable ideas, just confusing ones. If their careers are "ruined" it's probably because their careers shouldn't have been leading anywhere. But hey, some days I still don't see a real reason that *competent* string theorists should be having careers either. What have they done for me lately? :-)

Better 'Scoop'...

[jaaron]

Agreed. The summary of this article does a horrible job of describing the story. For those who don't wish to read the whole article, here's an excerpt:


Consider Drs. Igor and Grichka Bogdanov, French mathematical physicists and twins, who have recently been burning up the physics world with a novel and highly speculative theory about what happened before the Big Bang. Scientists have been debating whether the Bogdanov brothers are really geniuses with a new view of the moment before the universe began or simply earnest scientists who are in over their heads and spouting nonsense.


That said, the article basically gives the history of these two french physicists and why their recent work is controversial. Apparently these two did research trying to describe the momement of (or before?) the Big Bang which really hard and there's quite a bit of arguement within the physics community that the ideas are simply nonsense. So this opens up more arguements about the general quality of current research, of papers being published, of PhD's being given, etc.

Personally, I think the article itself is more gibberish than the research. There's lot of quotes but not much explaination of what the actual problems are and why this is causing such a fuss. Conseqently the article is hard to follow and not well written.

Your answer

[WallsRSolid]

The current universe doesn't have an infinite amount of anything, but when you compress everything to a single point, you have what we call a "singularity". A finite quantity of energy in an infinitesimal volume is infinite density. Note that there is no mention of "infinite energy" or "infinite mass", which as we all know is the same thing anyway.

Temperature is difficult to define at a such a scale, but you better believe it was nice and toasty.

Also, the idea of a singularity did not come from our "Einstein brothers", but has been around since Hubble's time, I believe, when he discovered unambiguously that the universe was expanding more or less uniformly. Logical extrapolation backwards indicates that at one point, everything was on top of each other -- our singularity.

Now there's the idea of Inflation (well-accepted theory by Alan Guth, of MIT) to deal with, but that's a story for another post.

Hope that helps.

e+ ------> <------ e-
Fatal Attraction

Re:Your answer

[thasmudyan]

OK, bare with me, I'm really quite illiterate but I want to know more...

If you squeeze that stuff really tight, there is still no way it has infinite density, because no matter how small that room is it has still a size. Otherwise you could make a infinite mass object out of a single particle by squeezing it in the planck box, right? So unless the actual amount of matter in the universe becomes irrelevant once something is below Planck scale this can't be infinite density as we know it, right?

The other thing is: in order to even have mass and heat you would need particles. How can there be particles on such small a scale?

In order to have heat you need movement. How can you even have movement within the Planck scale? (Note that the article speaks indeed of an "infinitely hot point": heat)

What kind of "information" does a singularity contain? Doubtless (?) it still has to have a mass, but what else?

The other question is, if there was a "time" when the whole universe was compressed like that, this singularity should have been pretty stateless, right? How did it then get the impulse to expand to the shape we are seeing now?

Re:Your answer

[WallsRSolid]

So there is controversy with the concept of singularity exactly because of the quantization of spacetime. While you could have infinitesimal volume in classical space, in our modern understanding, you can't really talk about anything before around 10^-43 seconds, the Planck time. At this time, the universe was on the order of Planck length, which means that it's very hard to define any meaningful parameters. Probing back to these initial conditions is something that's being studied now. We're pretty sure about some stuff, and are just speculating about other stuff.

We don't actually need mass in this universe; photons have energy, but no mass. If all the anti-matter and matter had annihilated symmetrically, the universe would be filled with pure energy and no matter, but somewhere, symmetry was broken (which is yet another topic). My point is that you stop talking about mass or energy after a point, and talk about mass-energy or stress-energy. In general relativity, you learn that pretty much everything in the universe is determined by geometry, and this geometry is determined by the distribution of stress-energy, that is, the mass of particles, their associated energies, and the energy of fields such as electromagnetic and gravitational.

Re: Heat and information. As far as I know, there is no information in a singularity, including a characterization of heat. I've not studied any cosmology past what's fallen into the rest my physics curriculum and the stray popular-science book.

As to why the big bang took place, your guess is as good as mine. In exploring the why/how, we run into theories like the Infinite Universe theories (there are quite a few interesting variations) and more classical ideas such as Creationism. Science doesn't have an answer for that one yet, though I note that philosophy has proven that you can neither prove nor disprove the existence of the Christian God.

Ignoring that we don't know why/how the universe started, we do have lots of good, testable theories about how it subsequently evolved into its present state. Inflationary theory is a good place to start reading, as is the anisotropy of the cosmic microwave radiation. My research currently is on the early universe's phase transition between quark-gluon plasma and hadron gas. The superstructure and formation of galaxies is an active area right now with lots of excitement as things fall into place.

Re:Your answer

[thasmudyan]

OK, you have been very helpful, thank you very much! Just a few last questions...

What are the properties of a singularity, how can it be formed and what consequences would there be if one would exist right now?

Does it or does it not matter how much stuff there is in a singularity? (If it doesn't: doesn't that mean the universe is somewhat unstable if a singularity existed right now that can devour/expell mass like that?

If there is a Planck time after which you can really start saying something about the universe, does that also mean Planck time is the shortest possible unit of time for something to happen? Or is time more like, really without any "quantization"? (Well, apparently space isn't.)

OK, that's it, I promise... ;-)

Re:Your answer

[superyooser]

You sound like a highly educated gentleman, so I'd like to get your take here. Let me relate a conversation between Ravi Zacharias and some scientific scholars.

RZ: If the Big Bang were indeed where it all began, may I ask what preceded the Big Bang?
Sci: The universe was shrunk down to a singularity.
RZ: But isn't it correct that a singularity as defined by science is a point at which all the laws of physics break down?
Sci: That is correct.
RZ: Then, technically, your starting point is not scientific either.

[silent panic]

RZ: When a mechanistic view of the universe had held sway, didn't thinkers like David Hume chide philosophers for taking the principle of causality and applying it to a philosophical argument for the existence of God? Didn't he warn that causality could not be extrapolated from science to philosophy?
RZ: Now, when a quantum theory holds sway, randomness in the subatomic world is made a basis for randomness in life. Are you not making the very same extrapolation that you warned us against?

[awkward silence, self-deprecating smile]

Sci: We scientists do seem to retain selective sovereignty over what we allow to be transferred to philosophy and what we don't.

Ah, the dark truth is snookered into revealing itself. Science plays the charade of pursuing truth while spurning the open-mindedness that is necessary to find ultimate truth.

Again, in the words of Zacharias, "The person who demands a sign [from God, a miracle] and at the same time has already determined that anything that cannot be explained scientifically [naturalistically] is meaningless is not merely stacking the deck; he is losing at his own game." (words in brackets in this quote added by me)

Re:Your answer

[Anonymous Coward]

RZ: But isn't it correct that a singularity as defined by science is a point at which all the laws of physics break down? Sci: That is correct. RZ: Then, technically, your starting point is not scientific either.

Retarded BS. If the laws of physics, which are derived from the current state of this Universe, break down at some point how does this disprove the scientific method? It just proves the Universe was very different at some point in time. Totally non sequitur. This guy is an idiot.

Re:Your answer

[superyooser]

With all due respect, the non-sequitur is in your post, not mine. I never said anything about disproving the scientific method.

The point of my post is that the scientific method is not applicable to whatever happened before the Big Bang. To force science to answer questions about what happened between the "dormant" singularity and the Big Bang is to attribute causality to randomness, which encroaches on philosophical conjecture.

Re:Your answer

[Anonymous Coward]

hadron gas

he he, hardon gas.

Re:Your answer

[WallsRSolid]

Wonder if anyone is still reading this thread...

Anyhow, my only reply is that science doesn't presume to have any knowledge of what happens outside the universe as we know it. Before the Big Bang is generally considered off-limits. Science doesn't not necessarily preclude the existence of God.

What logic has proved is that God, in the Christian sense, can neither be proved nor disproved. Anyone who's taken a basic course in philosophy should know that. It was established a very long time ago that metaphysics is beyond the conditions for the possibility of knowing.

I would like to recall to your attention that it only counts as science if it matches the available data, verifications are repeatable, and it has some predictive value. Models such as the Big Bang count as good science because they explain so much of what we observe when we look through our telescopes. It explains why we have the chemical compositions we do. It's accounted for everything just fine, even before we thought to include those details in the model. It doesn't (yet) deign to give meaning to existence or to posit what existed before. If science ever ventured a suggestion as to what came before, there would have to be predictive value and a way of verifying the facts before anyone would take it seriously. If I claim the universe came from a bubble in a carbonated beverage, no one can present evidence to the contrary, but nor can I point to anything that lends me credence. Furthermore, I predict nothing. This is somewhat the same state as metaphysics; lots of claims are made that could work, but truly provide no reason to believe one way over the other than simple aesthetic value. Sometimes a belief just appeals to you. Read philosophy for more on that.

Re:Your answer

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know there was anti-causal randomness before the Big Bang? Are you psychic? Did God tell you?

Re:Your answer

[superyooser]

Go play your superstitious games elsewhere

I don't believe in evolution.

Religion has caused more misery and death in this world than any other force or disease

First off, religion is not a disease; you're comparing apples to oranges. As for comparing to another "force" (I assume you mean belief system), your comparison is untrue. Christians and Jews have most often been the ones persecuted, not the ones doing the persecution. More Christians were murdered in the 20th century (mostly at the hands of atheistic dictators) than in all previous time. Stalin killed 50 million innocent people. Hitler killed 11 million. Both were atheists.

In particular, Hitler was a champion of Darwinism, which provided him the moral impetus to denigrate Jews as a "disfavoured people." I might agree with you if we can consider Darwinism a religion.

I don't defend non-Christian religion anyway. As far as I'm concerned, their killings can be chalked up to the column that includes atheism. The two categories are not Religion and non-Religion; they are Christian and non-Christian.

Math was invented to explain the universe...

[Anonymous Coward]

... and, by definition, anything which explains the universe is math.

Re:Math was invented to explain the universe...

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't the halting problem disprove this assumption?

Re:That's enough .. Not!

[jdkane]

This is a blatant attempt to sully the good name of physics just because of the writer's inability to understand it.

The field of physics is obviously doing a good enough job of sullying itself. You see, despite whether or not the writer understands what's happening, the article talks about scientists and mathemeticians sullying physics:

Scientists have been debating whether the Bogdanov brothers are really geniuses with a new view of the moment before the universe began or simply earnest scientists who are in over their heads and spouting nonsense

Not to mention these quotes from people in and around the field:

1. "Dr. Roman W. Jackiw, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who read and approved Igor Bogdanov's Ph.D. thesis, said he found it speculative but "intriguing.""
2. "Dr. John Baez, a physicist and quantum gravity theorist at the University of California at Riverside, who has conducted a dialogue with the Bogdanov brothers on the Web site math.ucr.edu/home/baez/bogdanov, said, "One thing that seems pretty clear to me is that the Bogdanovs don't know how to do physics.""
3. "Dr. Peter Woit, a mathematician and physicist at Columbia University, said of the brothers' work, "Scientifically, it's clearly more or less complete nonsense, but these days that doesn't much distinguish it from a lot of the rest of the literature.""

Notice that those credentials don't appear to belong to journalists. Then who is defaming the field of physics? Maybe a physics professor, a physicist, and a mathematician! ;) Interesting.

The reporting does appear to make some physicists uncomfortable, and on slashdot it appears some are trying to push negative focus away from the physics community and onto the journalists -- a good scapegoat because of the "writer's inability to understand it" :-O
However this reaction is not surprising because any of us would do the same to protect our own field. Don't be surprised, but do see it for what it is.

Have a heart!

[Subcarrier]

There was an excuse given by these guys' advisor in the article about these guys working for 10 years and they should get a degree for that, even if they didn't exactly display a command of the mathmatics behind their theory.

This is absolute bullshit!

After 10 years of patiently explaining the basics over and over again the advisor was probably ready to get rid of these boneheads by whatever means necessary, even if it meant giving them degrees.

A typically Western dogmatic response.

[theonomist]

You, sir, disregard what the great social critic Alan Sokal described as "counter-hegemonic narratives emanating from dissident or marginalized communities." I couldn't have said it better myself.

...the authors have systematically refused to answer, or selectively answered with further vague or absurd statements.

Could it be that the authors are simply not interested in employing the hierarchical male-dominated "conflict" paradigm of scientific discourse, but insist rather on a more culturally inclusive paradigm of multiple and divergent truths, realities, modes of existence? Could it be that their truth simply differs from that of their critics, and cannot therefore be profitably discussed on sci.physics.research?

To suggest that Western male physics applies equally in the more authentic nations of the world is a self-evident absurdity. To suggest that it has any relevance to pre-spacetime thermodynamic equilibrium is a characteristically arrogant assumption of the hegemonic mind. Get real, folks!

The fundamental evaluative condition of any paper in the field of theoretical physics is not whether it satisfies some arbitrary, imposed standard of so-called "objective" so-called "truth", but rather whether it is true for the author. High-energy physics, by its very definition, is a purely personal and subjective undertaking. No physical law can possibly be applicable to all observers.

I find it rather pathetic and sad that referees of publications in the physical sciences so often insist on printing only those constructions of "truth" which agree with so-called "experimental evidence", as if such "evidence" (mere columns of numbers) were in some way relevant to the aspirations of marginalized peoples (e.g. the "three meters per second per second" dogma, which has been passed down unchanged, unquestioned, by generations of white male physicists -- don't you think the time has come to abandon that hoary old shibboleth and replace it with something of more vibrant cultural relevance to the developing world?).

Re:A typically Western dogmatic response.

[RayBender]

Hehe. Taking some inspiration from Sokal this morning, are we?

Re:A typically Western dogmatic response.

[Anonymous Coward]

This has got to be one of the wittiest and funniest comments I've ever seen posted on /. Bravo.

Re:A typically Western dogmatic response.

[tbradshaw]

Could it be that their truth simply differs from that of their critics[?]

No! To suggest that reality itself is subject to the perception for definition is to reject science itself.

Reality exists outside of the perception and understanding of man, and science is the gradual process of defining and understanding reality.

To assert that "[h]igh-energy physics, by its very definition, is purely personal and subjective" is completely absurd. And to further state that "[n]o physical law can possibly be applicable to all observers" is clearly the realm of metaphysical philosophy, and not the realm of science.

The scientific method is specifically designed to overcome the limitations of individual perceptive biases in order to discover those physical laws that do indeed apply to all things in all situations. If one were to conceed, as you suggest, that no physical law holds true for all observers, then all knowledge that mankind has accumulated would be rendered false by crude and childish statements.

In example, following your relativist logic, I could say something astranged like, "Gravity doesn't exist because when I was skydiving nothing appeared to be moving. Instead, Gravity is the force of air moving upwards to meet the sky when I'm no longer limited to terrestrial movement." Everyone and anyone can admit that this is not an accurate description or representation of reality, because while it may have seemed true based on my individual perception, it clearly doesn't hold true in all situations and for all people.

Humans have been using this method of determining reality since the discovery of communication. Science simply accelerates our ability to compare and contrast perceptions of individuals to find that subset of perceptions that accurately define reality.

Your suggestion that the reality of high energy physics doesn't exists because we have yet to determine the subset of perception to define that reality. This is the same as saying that organisms didn't have cells before the cellular dogma was discovered, or that magnatism didn't exist before someone discovered how to polarise something (or observe it's polarity). We don't yet know the exact reality of high energy physics, so there are no clear physical laws defined. That doesn't mean they don't exist.

This is the exact purpose of a scientific paper, to present the most accurate account of observation and perception to other skilled and willing individuals who will then retrace those steps to verify those observations and perceptions. The process of many individuals reproducing the conditions and observing the results is what allows reality to be defined.

You would like to say that it's arrogant to want to go through this process. That we shouldn't be "bent" on disproving these authors own perceptions and reality because that would somehow be pompous and ego centric. You even go further as to state that somehow perpetuating this vague undefinition rather than attempting to discover it's truth or untruth would somehow bet of some "more vibrant cultural relevance to the developing world".

To suggest that anything other than the truth and anything other than the most accurate understanding of reality would be superior is nothing less than a failure to the marvel of human acheivement.

If you want arrogance, I'll let you have it. A heartless metaphysical facade like this is nothing more than a proof of your own character. You are an intellectual degenerate. Trying to denouce science as some "hoary old shibboleth" and suggesting that relativism is "something of more vibrant cultural relevance to the developing world" is discusting.

Without a greater understanding of reality, there is no developing in the developing world. Crawl back into the socialist dogma you slithered out of.

Re:A typically Western dogmatic response.

[SEWilco]

It's good to hear from the school of politically correct physics. The globalization of Western physics must be stopped.

Re:A typically Western dogmatic response.

[Mac Degger]

Wow...and I nearly bit, too :) Good one!

WARNING DO NOT CLICk PARENT LINK!

[Anonymous Coward]

Its that page that probably plays "HEY EVERYBODY I'M LOOKING AT GAY PORNO". but my speakers are off. i'm not going there again to try

Physics isn't falsifiable either

[freejung]

Ah, but this is Karl Popper's model of scientific truth, which has been displaced in the philosophy of science by the works of Thomas Kuhn and subsequent refinements. The trouble with Popper's model is basically this:

Poppers model says theory plus experimental setup implies prediction. Therefore, if you can prove the prediction wrong, you have disproved or "falsified" the theory.

That sounds good, but he's left out a step. It's more like theory plus experimantal setup plus auxilliary assumptions implies prediction. Since you can never prove the auxilliary assumptions, you never know for sure if you have falsified the theory or the assumptions. Auxilliary assumptions are such things as assuming that there is not an invisible planet somewhere near Mercury, offsetting its orbit in exactly such a way as to mimic the effect of General Relativity. While this is not likely, you cannot absolutely prove that it is not the case, or that any one of a million other assumptions are not the case.

What this means is that you can never completely prove a theory either true or false, and you must fall back on essentially esthetic criteria in the selection of theories. Another way of putting this is that, for any phenomenon, there are an infinite number of possible theories that can adequately and accurately explain the phenomenon. The task of the scientist is then to choose those theories which are elegant, which work well for the context at hand, and which explain the broadest possible range of phenomena.

Keep in mind that the two great theories of modern physics, General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory, are mutually exclusive and have yet to be reconciled, yet both work amazingly well within their context. Which is "false"? Nobody knows. Sometimes it's hard to even define what false means (unless you're speaking in binary!)

If you add to this the complications posed by the theorems of Bell and Godel... well, you've basically got a mess, from the classical Popperian standpoint. Personally, I think it's cool.

"All proofs eventually lead to propositions which have no proof. We believe things because we want to believe them." -- Frank Herbert

the difference

[Anonymous Coward]

Theoretical physics is simply that. Always take these things with a grain of salt. Our scientific process is based on questioning assumptions and breaking the rules.

"Actual" physics is simply applied theoretical physics. Imagine that.

I've read this paper and it was clear enough to me

[PhysicsGenius]

Let me try to put it into terms the educated laymen of Slashdot might understand.

Take two hemispherical cylinders and fasten them together with a differential offset. Allow matter in a fluidic state to pass over the orifices thereby created. With a probability approaching Aleph Naught, some particles will necessarily be transmuted hyperspatially and re-emerge with reverse lepton numbers. When these shifted particles recombine on the other side, they will annihilite in a (small) burst of pure negative energy, cooling the atmosphere. Basically it's a cure for global warming.

Wishful thinking on the Pomo front

[EnlightenmentFan]

The folks stung by Sokal do have something to celebrate at last--maybe not one of their own being clever, but at least some scientists looking stupid also.

REGISTER already

[MacAndrew]

The NYT has the fairest registration deal I've ever seen, less intrusive than even Slashdot that nearly everyone here finds acceptable. I've never seen a spam from them, and I do subscribe to a daily news bulletin they provide. For a free service, I think it's fair to provide them the minimal amount of information reg. provides, information they need to justify the service internally and to advertisers -- and it's less trouble than bending over backwards to tunnel around it.

NYT has arguably the best free (for how much longer?) general news source online -- very frequent cited on /. -- and a show of support is something I'd encourage. We subscribe to the weekend editions despite online access; there's still something to be said for newsprint.

BTW, they do not track what you read; I looked into this, and was paranoid enough to send a specific inquiry. Besides, they don't really know who "you" are.

Re:REGISTER already

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of us access the internet on public computers. Some of us block any and all cookies (whether through paranoia or because we're required to). Some of us will undoubtedly have other good reasons I can't think of.

The forced registration from the NYT and far too many other sites is absolute bollocks. Even if you're willing to register, continuously needing to log in (or even worse, reregistering if once more you've forgotten yet another semi-strong password from your list of thousands) gets extremely annoying, extremely fast.
So please, karma whores and just plain friendly people alike, just continue posting these links so the multitudes like me can go and read the article directly - not even needing to bother with looking up the link in Google News.

Besides, if the NYT doesn't do anything wrong with your data, then it's beneficial to them if people who'd only be filling in junk data anyway don't register at all, isn't it? (Actually, it'd be even more beneficial if they would use the data for bad purposes, but whatever...) :)

Re:REGISTER already

[Anonymous Coward]

(I'm the one who actually posted the link, really)

I agree. I'm not a privacy nut (I have a slashdot account) and I had a New York Times account at one time...

But then my cookie got lost, and my password was unrecoverable (I never give good password hint things... damn me).

And so I started appreciating those who did the Google partner links, and I've posted a couple of my own. No real good reason, I suppose.

Re:REGISTER already

[MacAndrew]

:-) Been there...

It's just a quid pro quo thing. I don't think THEY care that much, but do believe it's fair they be able to judge how many distinct individuals visit the site, and how often, and perhaps from where, data that doubtlessly is shown to advertisers who want to know whether their ads are being seen. I figure this is the same kind of anonymous data they get when they sell newspapers.

Re:REGISTER already

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, YOU I don't think they want to register. Why would anyone?

Re:REGISTER already

[Anonymous Coward]

Washington Post is better. You don't have to input a name, income level, etc. It is just age, gender, and zip code. So with them, I actually don't mind telling the truth.

Re:REGISTER already

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes ... but it's the Washington Post. :)

Re:REGISTER already

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is it's annoying and damn near pointless! Especially if what you're saying about them _not_ using the data for anything is true.

Re:REGISTER already

[schmink182]

Even if you're willing to register, continuously needing to log in (or even worse, reregistering if once more you've forgotten yet another semi-strong password from your list of thousands) gets extremely annoying, extremely fast.

I signed up at least 6 months ago, and logged in right after. I have yet to be forced to log in a second time, besides obviously on other computers.

Re:REGISTER already

[theLOUDroom]

Yeah, whatever. I don't HAVE to register to read slashdot.
I registered with /. because I get messages when someone replies to my comments. The only way to do this is to have a user id.
There's no reason you make me register just to read a news story unless they're selling the information. Free depends on how you look at things. Marketing data is worth money, you must give it to them to read their stories, therefore they aren't exactly free.
I refuse to register with the NYT because I don't want to encourage what I consider annoying behavior. If I had to register with every site I look at, I would have to spend half my web browsing time registering for sites, many of which I would never visit again.
There are plenty of other places to get news that don't make you jump through silly hoops just to access a story. The BBC being the best example. They have a much better registration policy than the NYT, none. You only have to register with them if you're actually getting an individualized service, like email.
A news site can have adds without making me login. And how can you be sure they don't know who you are? I would bet they keep track of IPs. It's not an insurmountable tast to find out who has a given IP address. I'm not trying to be overly paranoid here. I'm just trying to be realistic about how much data they have about you.
Keeping track of registration info is a pain in the ass. Yeah, they can put it in a cookie, but I'm a college student. I don't use one computer. I'll stop by a computer lab around lunchtime, and I don't want to deal registering every time. I already have a crapload of passwords to remember for things that actually need them to function. I'm not about to start remebering logins for 50 different sites just becuase they all want my marketing data.
Hey, Google doesn't make me login to do a search. They seem to be doing just fine. And there's no way I would use Google is they did. Even if they tell me that they don't sell records of what I search for, it doesn't matter. Most privacy policies are total b.s. Often they have a clause which allows them to be changed at any time, sometimes without any notification. That's why I keep track of what info I acutally give out on the web. Then, I don't have to trust them. I know my info is safe because I never gave it to them in the first place. I know that I'm not going to get spam from them because I never gave them my email address.

Re:REGISTER already

[Mac Degger]

For one: NYTimes has to justify free online content. They do that by asking for information so they can track their demographic. That's it. If you consider it anoying, you're one of those people who consider everything on the net must be free. Well, wake up and smell the coffee: the world doesn't work like that. Just like you might find it anoying that you actually have to pay for certain software, that's no excuse to pirate it, or NYTimes content, for that matter.

As for the BBC: they have to do it free, as their publically funded with a mandate to provide free info over the net. The BBC is a quite different organisation than the NYTimes. Learn the difference.

As for passwords...what utter bollocks. Just use a generic password for non-critical sites...or do you rally think your registration to the NYTimes and Gamasutra and others would be critically ruinous to your life if ever cracked?

As for your last statement: never set up a fake email account for registration infor? If not, wtf are you doing here? Freeloader.

Re:REGISTER already

[henben]

As for the BBC: they have to do it free, as their publically funded with a mandate to provide free info over the net. The BBC is a quite different organisation than the NYTimes. Learn the difference.

While you're right about the BBC, you're ignoring the fact that the vast majority of newspapers (including all the UK broadsheets) provide their content online without registration. They seem to be able to cover the costs of publishing their material electronically.

Means of studying populations by random sampling have been well understood for decades - there's just no need to take registration info from every visitor.

Finally, nobody is "pirating" NYTimes content. The NYTimes themselves provide these reg-free "partner" links, without even bothering to implement 'referer' checks.

Re:REGISTER already

[MacAndrew]

More nitpicking:

Regardless of whether what the NYT requests is "necessary" it seems plain old politeness to provide it. They have bills to pay, and no one has to read their content. They ask for info, they offer something great in return, I say OK.

As for other newspapers being free, it's not really true if you confine yourself to the papers most worth reading -- papers which not coincidentally have the highest production costs, and which are most often cited. In the states, WSJ is paid-only (with some exceptions), NYT and LAT require reg., and WP for now is free. I'm pretty sure the Times in London requires subscription. All charge for content older than a week, but their bread-and-butter I'm pretty sure is the day-to-day paper, the rest is "yesterday's news," so as of now their online ops are experiments running at a loss. I'd like to see that experiment run as long as possible.

No, it's not pirating to use the referrer links -- which I bet won't be around much longer -- it's just a matter of politeness, an honor code. Taking the roundabout way for the sole purpose of avoiding reg is not in the spirit of things, even if you can do it. If anyone doesn't like the terms, I can sympathize, but also encourage them to read other papers.

I'm a longtime NYT fan and make these points not to browbeat anyone, but to raise the paper's point of view. NYT is an odd bird for having a fairly modest circulation but the most prominent national position. I think gov't-underwritten news such as the BBC are a good thing (they also do great work) but aside from NPR we don't really have that here, and what gov't funding NPR has is annually under attack anyway.

Of course no one is even reading this thread any more, given the /. 30-second attention span. :-) To the empty room -- any questions?

Re:REGISTER already

[Mac Degger]

Yes: how's it feel to be in the minority of honourable /.-ers? ;)

Re:REGISTER already

[MacAndrew]

Lonely. :)

Although you needn't throw insults. "Hono(u)rable"?!? You could ruin me around here.

Re:REGISTER already

[nukey56]

I have to say that this is totally wrong. Newspapers make more of their money off advertisements than subscriptions. In fact, market statistics show that published media can be given away to the correct demographic, and a profit can still be made.

I personally would rather have an opt-in registration, as would many other /.ers. Or a reg-bot for every news site, that'd be swell.

Re:REGISTER already

[henben]

As for other newspapers being free, it's not really true if you confine yourself to the papers most worth reading.... I'm pretty sure the Times in London requires subscription.

Really? They only need registration for special areas, like cricket coverage. I don't consider the Times worth reading, but the Guardian is, and is also free.

It's really against the nature of the web to put measures in place that prevent linking to information (as opposed to requiring reg for a subscription service). The existence of reg-free partner links basically acknowledge this. The NYTimes wants its content available on Google News, but at the same time, it tries to make most of its users play a silly marketing game.

Like I say, if the NYT wants accurate demographics, they should use sampling. If they want people to sign up for opt-in marketing mails, they should sell ads on a useful e-mail newsletter or something. The registration is annoying, and also likely to give them misleading information.

Re:REGISTER already

[MacAndrew]

I believe the NYT uses the demo info to change what banner ads and such the user sees, so it is individualized. Whatever is "against the nature of the Web," the alternative is content that must always be paid for and would really mess up the nice interlinked nature of the Web. At the least, we'll all be spending a lot of time summarizing what was said elsewhere, or violating copyright. I'm skeptical that the free reg. model will make it in the long term, anyway; hopefully we'll see something like an online public library at some point, but that's beyond the power of any one private organizaton, and will be a huge leap from the traditional brick limited-access libraries that don't threaten newspaper revenue.

NYT does offer a nice daily email with headlines, links, and, of course, a couple of text ads -- to registered folks. It is a pain to have to log in all the time, but that's a general problem with logins.

I have never never never in 6+ years received a spam from NYT. Nor have they leaked my address to others (I use a special email address for them alone, as I own a domain).

Re:REGISTER already

[jaoswald]

You're not clear about who is "totally wrong" in this discussion. Just to be clear, you ought to acknowledge that this is a point in favor of registering. Without registration, how can they provide anything to indicate to advertisers in a general audience newspaper that they are reaching people who at least purport to be part of a desirable demographic?

The NYT is giving away most of its coverage, which includes Pulitzer-prize-winning journalism day-in and day-out. They can afford to do this, if they are making money instead of losing it, by promising to advertisers that they are reaching a desirable demographic. They need registrations to do that, and I believe they are genuinely conscientious in their desire to not exploit the registrators.

Re:REGISTER already

[Anonymous Coward]

Freeloader?
Moron. Like you're paying them. Get a fucking clue.

Bogdanov hoax more damning than Sokal's

[ahaile]

With the Sokal hoax, many physics people jumped up and shouted that Sokal had "proven" that cultural studies was a "bogus" discipline. Now, with this hoax, the same people are backpedalling, saying that this time the issue is "complicated" and that "physics isn't for amateurs." If anything, this hoax seems more damning to me than Sokal.

Why? In his paper, Sokal didn't pretend to be a literature professor; he claimed at the start he was a physicist. The review board of Social Text weren't physicists and so they couldn't really evaluate the physics part of his paper. Instead, they trusted Sokal that he was following the usual academic honesty and integrity in his assertions. As it turned out, and as we all now know, he wasn't -- he was intentionally distorting his beliefs about physics in order to perpetrate a hoax. What Sokal did was a lot like a researcher falsifying data: review boards usually have no way of knowing whether a submitter has falsified data and so they have to rely on the person's academic integrity, just like the board of Social Text had no way of knowing whether Sokal was sincere in his representation of physics, so they had to trust him.

The Bogdanov brothers, however, published as physicists, about physics, and in journals reviewed by physicists. Not only that, but the people who reviewed them are now spouting inanities like "he worked for ten years, so he deserved a doctorate." (Um, no, he can work for 30 years, but if he doesn't understand the stuff, he doesn't get the doctorate.)

If Sokal had tried to write as a literature professor, I highly doubt his paper would have gotten through. I've read his paper, and quite frankly, it was *not* accepted for what it had to say about cultural studies. The knowledge the paper represents of cultural studies reads like an enthusiastic but over-bold sophomore who just took his/her first class in critical theory (disclosure: I teach critical theory to sophomores, and I've seen those papers ;)). The paper was published because an established physicist was making bold statements about the philosophical basis of his field. That's not news? Of course, as it turned out, that physicist was a snake in the grass.

Re:Bogdanov hoax more damning than Sokal's

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

"he worked for ten years, so he deserved a doctorate."

Don't make a judgement from such a comment. We don't know exactly how or why that was said but I don't know any physicist who would agree with it (I know quite a few physicists). Certainly you are wrong to generalize to "the people who reviewed them are now spouting inanities like..." from a single inane comment.

Re:Bogdanov hoax more damning than Sokal's

[Hal-9001]

I believe that the fact that the scientific community catches its own frauds like cold fusion, or the Schon controversy at Bell Labs mentioned a couple of times on Slashdot within the past few months, or this controversy, reaffirms the validity of the scientific method. If they aren't familiar with a particular subject, scientists seek the opinion of someone who is familiar with the subject and use that person's judgement to determine whether or not the results or theories in question are valid. Contrast this to critical theory, which did not seek a physicist's opinion of Sokal's article and had to have Sokal to tell them the article was nonsense.

Re:Bogdanov hoax more damning than Sokal's

[Lulu of the Lotus-Ea]

ahaile has already pointed largely the same point, but it is worth reiterating. Back when Sokal published his paper, the whole right-wing "Cultural Literacy" schtick was a current "debate." For the most part, the "debate" consisted of a bunch of right-wingers like E.D.Hirsch and the truly deplorable William Bennet bemoaning the teaching of non-white authors in college and/or teachers who are leftists (they never admitted that's quite what they are about, but it is).

Sokal is not nearly such a bad guy as those right-wingers. He's actually a decent liberal, but one raised in a particular scientistic, positivist intellectual tradition. Alan Sokal is a physicist, after all (although that is not sufficient, many in the occupation understand humanities better). But caught in that anti-Postmodernism ferver of the early 1990s, Sokal decided to make fun of the journal _Social Text_ (and the general field, by implication)

_Social Text_ is not really the most prestigious journal in that general area, but it's not bad. It is refereed, but that doesn't mean as much in any journal as what outside people tend to think. You don't have to be RIGHT, or even original, to right for "good" academic journals... just write well enough, and pick a topic the editor are interested in. For a lot of them, you also have to wait years for publication to roll around... they are behind schedule by huge amounts.

But even for what moderation means at _Social Text_, Sokal did not go through it. He knew some editors, and approached them saying "I'm a well known physicist, and I'd like you to fast track something I want to write." The _Social Text_ editors liked the idea of reaching out to that other academic community, so they agreed. But the refereeing in this case consisted of making sure the sentences were grammatical, the words spelled right, and the subject matter generally what Sokal had suggested informally. The same paper WOULD NOT have been published if submitted for blind review.

So the hoax basically amounts to this: people tend to grant some leeway to their friends. True enough, but hardly an indictment of cultural studies, the humanities, postmodernism, multiculturalism, or whatever it is that is supposed to have been shown to be foolish.

Re:Bogdanov hoax more damning than Sokal's

[greenrd]

The same paper WOULD NOT have been published if submitted for blind review.

Although the paper was rather crammed full of blatant examples of falsehoods, nonsense and incoherent statements, Sokal's whole point is that similar papers would, and indeed have been. His paper was a parody of the abuse of science and mathematics in "postmodernism" etc., and it reflected the false or nonsensical ideas of other papers and books that have been published and treated in all seriousness, without much criticism from within their respective fields. For a small smattering of examples you can check out Sokal and Bricmont's book, Intellectual Impostures.

True enough, but hardly an indictment of cultural studies, the humanities, postmodernism, multiculturalism, or whatever it is that is supposed to have been shown to be foolish.

What Sokal tried to show was foolish was the abuse of scientific-sounding words to promulgate unscientific nonsense. Other commentators have tried to draw too broad a conclusion from this, but really what Sokal was doing was quite narrow and modest.

Sokal's irony

[g4dget]

Since this discussion goes back to Sokal's hoax, I recommend looking at Sokal's own work. His own papers are largely about obscure properties of lattice models in statistical mechanics. For much of this kind of work, it is far from clear whether it is relevant to any real physical system, or whether some of the assumptions under which they are proven are even mathematically meaningful or consistent. In mathematics, if you start with inconsistent assumptions, you can prove anything. Sokal's own field would have been another good target for a physics hoax, although string theory clearly beats lattice methods to the punch.

Re:Sokal's irony

[Conare]

Maybe it is not so much ironic as causitive:
Maybe the obscure nature of his work led him to the conclusion that he could be writing just about anything and no one would notice because they don't really understand it. Sort of like sheep reading Nietsche. So he decided to see if it was true. It even sounds like a bar conversation. Sokal: "Look at this reviewer comment! he doesn't understand anything. Why I bet I could write that lattices are more stable when roses are growing on them and they wouldn't bat an eye."
Sokal's drinking buddy: "Aw come on, they're not that bad."
Sokal: Hmmm...

no statements are falsifiable

[freejung]

For example if my theory is "all foo's are bar" a knowledgeable reader can realized all she needs to find is a single foo that isn't bar.

The problem with this is that you then have to prove that the foo is not bar. Popper's theory was proposed in the first place to answer objections by Hume and others that you can never really prove that a statement is true by empirical evidence, because you may always find some case later in which the statement is false. So by this reasoning, you can't ever prove that fo is not bar, because you might somehow later find a case in which the fo is bar.

Let's face it, you can't really prove anything absolutely. There will always be a certain amount of uncertainty about things. Deal with it.

Re:no statements are falsifiable

[de Selby]

... you can never really prove that a statement is true by empirical evidence, because you may always find some case later in which the statement is false.So by this reasoning, you can't ever prove that fo is not bar, because you might somehow later find a case in which the fo is bar. ..."so by this reasoning"? That reasoning doesn't apply. That's the whole point!

If you say all sheep are white, and you find a white one, nothing has been proven. Admitted.

If you say all sheep are white, and you find a black one, you have proven the statement wrong.

How can any new evidence alter that falsifacation? Did you observe the sheep wrong, so it's really not black?

Re:no statements are falsifiable

[myowntrueself]

I would doubt very much that any sheep could be black. Light would just have to fall into it.

They are most probably dark brown.

The previous posters comment though and your reaction proves my point about the sad state of science; its never about proving something absolutely true or false or whatever; its about finding theories that *hold*

Math is the domain of absolute truths, not physical sciences.

We come up with a theory then try to disprove it.
So long as we are unsuccessful the theory is said to hold and we utilise it to devise new theories and experiments.
If and when the theory no longer holds it is discarded for a new one; one which does hold.

Re:no statements are falsifiable

[de Selby]

Consider me converted.

Re:no statements are falsifiable

[freejung]

the sad state of science

It's only sad if you are attached to old, mechanistic, deterministic paradigms. You could instead rejoice in the glorious dawn of a new paradigm, one which deals with experience rather than with absolutes.

Re:no statements are falsifiable

[myowntrueself]

hmmmm my perspective on this is that its not so much the paradigms as the integrity of thought.

As I see it modern science is losing its integrity as a discipline of discovery and becoming more religion-like.

Its almost as if science were regressing back to the days when certain views were the orthodoxy and to challenge them inevitably results in scorn regardless of experimental results.

The problem lies, in part (I believe) in the shakey scientific training today (my reference to Newton & axioms vs theories) and in part in the way that science is funded, encouraging scientists to make pretenses in order to get funding.

Perhaps science was better off when it was being performed by self-funded aristocrats! ;)

Uh, no.

[Grendel Drago]

I really hope you're trying to take a page from Sokal here.

To humor you: the "for every reaction b" clause implies that there are an infinite number of reactions. However, unlike the original statement "for every action a", this refers to a specific instance---every reaction to a particular action---rather than the entire space of possible samples.

For example, I make the assertion that "all priests have a blue corpse in their backyard". Using your logic, you can't disprove that, because you can't examine every possible corpse in a given priest's backyard for blueness.

--grendel drago.

Re:Uh, no.

[Some Dumbass...]

For example, I make the assertion that "all priests have a blue corpse in their backyard". Using your logic, you can't disprove that, because you can't examine every possible corpse in a given priest's backyard for blueness.

Not quite.

What he's saying is that any given instance of "priest" implies "no corpse in backyard" (or in your version, "does have corpse in backyard"), just like every instance of "action" implies "equal and opposite reaction". The only way to truly prove the priest/corpse thing is to check all priests' backyards for blue corpses, not to check all blue corpses. When you find a priest's backyard which doesn't meet the criteria, then you've disproved the theory. This would take a long time. Checking all actions for equal and opposite reactions is impossible.

Of course, science isn't about proving random logical combinations of conditions. Science not only says "all actions have equal and opposite reactions", but explains _why_. That's the real difference between science and logic.

Beeing french...

[pruneau]

What I just remember of the Boganoff brother is that they were hosting one of the first Sci-fi shows on the french TV (around 1979). Pretty advanced for the time, let's admit it.
They also wrote "la mémoire double", which is one of the first book exploiting the virtual reality theme I ever read.
I did no knew they were physicist up today...

proof of incorrectness is not absolute

[freejung]

Proof of incorrectness is not absolute. The problem is that in any experimental setup, you have to make all kinds of assumptions and models and approximations which can never be proven. These are called auxilliary assumptions. If the experiment doesn't turn out the way theory predicts, you never know if you've disproved the theory or the assumptions.

Re:proof of incorrectness is not absolute

[AJWM]

True enough, but it does narrow the domain of things to test. If the assumptions have proved themselves in other experiments, it's a good bet the problem is with the theory. Conversely, coming up with a different method for testing either the theory or the assumptions could show where the problem is.

Either way you learn something about how things really work.

Theoretical physics isn't physics its math

[thogard]

Theoretical physics theorys are the current alchemy or like the early "real science" theorys of the orbits of the planets. In both of thouse cases, some of the smartest humans alive at the time felt they were going down the right path. In once case Keppler came up with something simple and wiped out a huge mess of compex things (that fit the math) and most of the early dye industry was based on alchemy and some of the early compaines basing their dye science on alchemey are still the largest chemical supply compaines. Many of modern chemstry terms still come from that "science".

Modern gravity research shows the current stuff is wrong. This is why gravity probe B is going to be launched but its set up to do some very specific expierments and doesn't do a few key ones. Answer why the GPS sats are slowing down and why voyager is slowing down and why pendulums swing funny during an eclipse and theres a Nobel prize waiting for you.

Richard Feynman said that physics is simple and if its not, the theory headed in the wrong direction.

Bunch of links on this topic

[pyat]

This was on http://www.incunabula.org/blog a while back

Links of interest are:
usenet post, along with abstracts from the theses:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?R35126F52
Also here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/27894.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/27963.html
Very detailed info here and in linked pages:
http://cass.eahosting.com/cass/bogdanov2.htm
And here:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/bogdanov.html

In particular the link
http://cass.eahosting.com/cass/bogdanov2.htm
is invaluable as it has an email dialogue with the brothers about their
research, and is a work in progress

you can read about sokal here:
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/no retta.h tml

Bogdanov hoax more damning than Sokal's? Right...

[EnlightenmentFan]

You teach critical theory and your analysis is "Bogdanov hoax more damning than Sokal's"?

First of all, the Bogdanov hoax is not a hoax. It's a goof, a public display of carelessness, by a bunch of physicists who now look very silly.

But let's test your theory--the experiment is in progress. The Sokal hoax trashed the entire Pomo field of cultural studies, cut the number and quality of grad students in half, reduced grant allocations, and so on, and so on.... Let's watch and see if the same thing now happens to physics, shall we?

Hehe...

[RyanFenton]

Does that make this a quantum quantum theory? The theory itself is inside a black box (of both existence before big bang singularity, and of the undecipherable explanation of it's creators), and is both simultaniously correct and incorrect at the same time. Sure, we could call it mal-defined or unprovable in this state, but that wouldn't be any fun. :^)

Ryan Fenton

Anyone got a mirror of the aticle? / Scientia 2.0

[gacp]

Anyone got a mirror of the text of the aticle? So I can read it?

That means I have not read the article. Still, I know something from personal experience: an awful lot of science is suspect, at least in biology. It's just that the traditional scientific model of doing research (closed, journal-based, elitist, without true peer review, heavily censored, &c.) is no longer viable, and it almost makes fraud, poor research, and lightweights inescapable. I'm afraid science-as-we-know-it has survived it usefulness, and has become the worst hindrance to real Scientia. This version of `science' is just another Micro$oft: kills innovation, bludgeons competing theories, cheats, steals, avoids addressing real questions (you kill your career that way!). And it will only get worse.

I believe we should all go for Science version 2.0---I myself already have. Sorry, version 2.0 breaks compatibility with version 1.0.

Anyone for version 2.0?

It's the same in Star Trek...

[jorlando]

When Geordi, Data and Wesley start talking about how to solve problems people say they talk gibberish, like a mechanics trying to deceipt a customer... it's only high physics that we don't understand today, but in the future will make sense, so they can save the Enterprise again!

I know that because I read (in The Sun, I think) that the Star Trek episodes come from the future in capsule times to Gene Roddenberry (he is a refugee from future). In fact, Star Trek is a soap opera from the future. Gene's relatives send the episodes to him so he doesn't feel so far away from home...

That's enough, if I talk more Ashtar Sheran will send that Xemnu boy to get me... and I have to make a call to these Bogdanov brothers, I have some theories that I wish to share with them.

For those about to rock. Thanks!

[Anonymous Coward]

I love you man!

Before Physics

[3seas]

Before the beginning, there was less than nothing, not even existance existed for there to be anything to exist in. And it was that way for an eternity of eternities of even beyond eternities.

But then something happened smaller than you can know, even smaller than that.

The void became aware of itself and at that very same moment, the void split into the potential for all things. Existance and the observation, awareness of the potential. The essence of physics and nature. Existance and what can be done within it, experienced.

Suddenly existance was, and so was consciousness, the split of less than nothing.

What to do next? Survive! It's certainly better than less than nothing. It is More!

That ment expanding, creating stuff in existance.....it started out very very slow, taking almost an eternity to make the first interaction happen, time was a very difficult thing to create, but in time the momentem would built up to increase the creation of what all is existing in existance. Of course this too goes on for what seems to be now at least a measureable eternity.

Eventually, the odds of cycling thru all possibilities on what existed in existance a spark of life would be found, and the awareness became aware of another perspective, one within existance. A very small and limited awareness that was, at that moment, understood to be a way to forever increase the experience ability of what all exist in existance... to forever increase the rate and complexity of creation and experience.

And forever beyond eternity the expansion happens, and at all moments, the all of existance, what is in it and it's awareness, is fully aware of itself. Realizing there is nothing at all, not even existance, outside of itself. So to survive, to exist, it forever expands and has been doing this for a long long time.

etc.....

But what of us, mankind? What's our part?

Well besides the obvious being that we are like sensors, cameras, recorders, communication senders, witnesses of the experience of what existance presents us, we are also intended to assist in the expansion of existance and what exist in it.

A matter of survival, you understand. However, we were not given a full set of the perceptions of all things, for we are within what exist in existance, and therefore inherently limited in our perception. But being given the ability to create, we are given the ability to overcome these limitations. And we are not alone, far from it.

To follow the rest, requires a break, a look back at our history, mans history, our evolution, our creation, and realize how far we have come, while projecting where we will go in our future based upon the path of our past.

At some point in the future, maybe not so distant, we will come to understand physics and nature so well that we can travel to the edge of existance or go out into our back yard and cause a big bang to happen out of nothing more than less than nothing. Perhaps take a gravity unit aand collaspe it in a non-balanced manner and ccause a boom before you know it, causing the all of existance to expand.

Now lets say we don't do it in our back yard, that we have the knowledge to do it on the borders of existance...boom...we create a new and unique galaxy or galaxies. And we know that it will prove fruitful, that some place in all of it we will be able to help iniate the evolution of life again. And we know that just as our history has shown us, we can help that life become conscious so to also contribute to the expansion of existance and what exist in it.

When is existance big enough? The answer is not what you might think. For that's not the real question to explain the expanding result. For the answer is, expansion is the indicator of growth, life, assurance of continuation. As soon as expansion stops or reverses, you get the indication of stagnation, enthropy, shrinkage, death. It's not a matter of what is, but a matter of which direction you are going.

There was a time in mans evolution, not unlike the evolution of other life forms thru out existance, that man was without abstract thoughts, like a bird that somehow knows to fly south for the winter yet can travel back to where they were born in the spring. Or a crab that knows to go to higher ground when a serious storm is approaching.... When Man was without guilt, for he had not the ability to know the abstraction of man made guilt.

Man was even able to create societies without the need for abstract thought. No guilt, no crime, just existing like a herd of sheep, aware of the harshness of life and the value of sticking together in a heard.

But as the size of the societies man created, grew, so did the complexity of functioning productively in society. Society began to break down, for what amounts to the benefits of society, better protection against the harshness of the wild resulted in increased population. And that increase in population cause an increase in complexity beyond the non-abstract communication or languages that were able to evolve without, or prior to, the invention of higher level abstractions.

One example of this breakdown has been told in the story of the tower of babel. The building of a tower to reach heaven, for all the benefits and values of working together lead them to believe, finally salvation. But it was not yet to be, for seasons we could not see at the time. This event is said to be what resulted in the different cultures and peoples of this world. Or perhaps this sort of event happened in different ways thru different cultures and places at different times, perhaps more than once thruout the world before it finally reached stability of difference.

The splitting and dividing resulting from the permature effort to reach the whole. As it was in the beginning before the beginning. Expansion providing the endless quest for the answer. It's the question that drives us..... what is the whole. And the only way to get there, is to continuing expanding the awareness, the consciousness and it's ability to comprehend the whole. And when you finally get there, you'll know, it's all about survival. The need to expand as an indicator, knowing. For to know and be content, do nothing, is to revert to less than nothing where what all there is, is obviously nothing to be aware of.

There was a time when we did not know guilt, but sociey caused us a need to invent higher level abstraction in order to survive and manage greaters levels of society, and greater benefits of. Certainly the invention was well intended, but as many well intending things become, abuseable, abstraction at such higher levels also leads to the discovery of deception.

Certainly before this, a man knew he existed "I am" as his heart raced and he ran as fast as he could to get away from the hungry tiger. But he did not murder his brother or take his own life, rather only hunted and ate what they killed or found growing in the land and sea.

But we were intended to evolve beyond such limitations and as such, knowing the creatures we were intended to be, those who planted our seeds of life ...creating us, knew what to expect of our evolution. Just as we will know what to expect of the evolution of any life we create within a galaxy we create, Even today we are playing around with creating new and unique life, life beyond the natural creation process. Life created thru the communication of higher level abstractions. Inventions that such abstractions have allowed us to understand, create, and communicate greater awareness of reality and power over it. Even here we are able to alter our own life form, improve upon it, even give ourselves, the future of mankind, better and new perception abilities. Who knows, perhaps one day soon, we that are alive will naturally "see" energy we today are not so aware of. Or have the sences to apply mental telapathy in an every day use manner, as our language today is so very limited and time consuming to use.

But one step at a time. And again as our population grows and our technology re-enables the combining of our languages that once separated us....... well...... the question will be.... Why are we fighting? And we will realize what has already begun being realized, that it is the intentional wrongful manipulaion of abstractions that are the source of the problems. And that such deceptions are being done by a very small minority who had found it was easier to take unearned value from others for themselves rather than to help produce it and share it, all thru deceptions applied.

Outside looking in, it is understood that this deception phase of mans evolution was not only expected to happen but will reach it's ultimate limitation. And that the only way to continue the expansion of existance and what exist in it is to overcome the problem of deception, to become master over the beast of deception and it's bottomless endless pit of possible deceptions .666.... (2/3rds) what is, mixed with .333... (1/3) of what is not (what is distortion of what is), or maybe I have that backassward. Never the less, yes, that does only amount to .999.... (repeating decimal). carried all the way out in split infinity....... What is it that makes the smaller than small, and smaller than that, difference? What it is that drives survival? That allows us to know the whole when it is otherwise impossible to see, due our inherent subjectiveness within existance? Love!

Will we again become ignorant of guilt, deception, revert to a lower level of communication and live in far more limited ways NO! We have tried that already! And we know that it only would mean we'd just have to go thru it all again. And to really do it, It'd also mean that we would have make serious reduction in population either from a huge man made disaster, serious nuclear (sp?) war.... or something we'd consider natural and beyond our ability to control, like an asteroid. To reduce the go forth and multiply force of population and the complexity and problems population forces us to solve, like higher level abstraction creation.

Next step, move beyond deception.... and if we don't....

From the outside looking in, which would take longer to recover from? And if you were a farmer with such a problem with your crop, that you could either let it follow a natural course of self distruction or your own control over it's distruction that you'd then likely have greater control over it's recovery...replanting .....etc.?

If you can never know the whole, due to inherent subjectivity of being within existance, how can you be without error?

Be a generator of that smallest of difference, what is smaller than even that.

2/3 what is + 1/3 of what can be and a touch of love = expansion. It is the equasion that converts .999... into 1.0... the knowing of the whole without seeing it.

Nobody can tell you what it is. You have to see it for yourself, the deceptions, the doubts. But love....that is somehing you know. You just know. There is no decpetions, not doubts, just the certainty of knowing.

We will go beyond the limitations of the use of deceptions. Or we will be distroyed to make room for another crop.

The signs say it's time......

What's interesting, is what it means to become aware of the deceptions, so that deceptions can be seen for what they are and then deflated in vlaue to the nothingness they are. To see the code of the matrix and defeat the wrongful taking of unearned value, to defeat deception.

To know thyself.

Re:Before Physics

[frank249]

Everyone knows that in the beginning there was nothing. Then God said 'Let there be light'. There was still nothing, but now you could see it.

Slashdot trolls, read this

[Ryan Amos]

Heh, I equate these guys as being the trolls of the physics world. Some are better than others, as witnessed on slashdot here. These guys just happen to be very good trolls.

Heck, they even have the same goals. Slashdot trolls aim to show how the mod system sucks, these guys are trying to show how worthless the peer review system is. Ultimately, however, they'll probably be given just as much credit as trolls, i.e. none at all. It's just because they've found a new medium to troll in that they're getting this much attention.

Re:Slashdot trolls, read this

[nathanh]

Slashdot trolls aim to show how the mod system sucks, ...

Oh? Is that what the slashdot trolls are doing? Trying to use "civil disobedience" to demonstate what they perceive as inequity by the moderators?

So that's why they still think goatsecx is funny. And why there's still a stupid race for First Post. And why they think it's hilarious to write "you're a mother fucking cocknobber wankfuck" as Anonymous Coward. And why they'll insult somebody until the person is obviously offended, and then say "I WAS JUST JOKING AND YOU'RE STUPID AND SLASHDOT SUCKS". You think this is all some kind of peaceful protest?

No. I disagree with you. These people aren't trying to change the moderation system. They're just losers. They're no better than the vandals who spraypaint obscenities on church walls or break the windows at primary schools. Fuck them all.

Re:Slashdot trolls, read this

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Everyone has their own style and goals.
Crapflooding prooves moderation dosnt work. Ever since the two post limit for bad karma, people that used to crapflood at -1 now posts anonymously (at scoore:0).
What happened? Now reading at 0 is impossible, and thus its hard to get a point across unless you're logged in. Therefore crapflodding has ruined anoniminity on slashdot thanks to the uneffective moderation system.

A lot of first posts arnt so much done by trolls as they are by the 'HI MOM!' sign guys at a football game or wrestling match. They just want to be seen.

As for more traditional forms of trolling, Thats usually its own game, and only loosely related to disprooving the moderation systems effectivness.
I could explain further, but I've already said far more than anyones interested in. Go ahead and mod me down and have a nice day.

Re:Slashdot trolls, read this

[nathanh]

Great. It's the cat-burglar trying to argue that he's better than the common thieves and muggers. You think it's a game? I think it's pure vandalism. I want to use Slashdot to read articles and comments. You want to ruin that for me.

But you've managed to justify to yourself that it's just a game. Why should you care if you ruin a resource for everybody else, so long as you have fun while you do it. Inconsiderate little shithead.

Re:Slashdot trolls, read this

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off you donkey-raping shit-eater. I'M NOT JOKING!

Re:Slashdot trolls, read this

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off you donkey-raping shit-eater. I'M NOT JOKING!

What's the matter, loser? Dose of reality too much for you?

Re:Slashdot trolls, read this

[handsomepete]

Browse at +3 and shut the hell up. That's the advantage of the wonderous moderation system. It doesn't make sense to bitch about something that can be so easily remedied. I browse at -1 and find nothing to be ruined anyways, so maybe I just don't get it.

And for the record, irc.goatse.cx troll has written some really interesting stuff on here - don't assume that because his/her name contains the word 'troll' that he/she was talking about him/herself.

"Cat-burglar better than the common thieves and muggers"... geez. Get a grip, man.

Re:Slashdot trolls, read this

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Funny, You dont seem to realise that the best trolls are the ones that start huge debates. I'm not ruining anyones experience, I'm giving many a topic of discussion.
The difference between -1 Troll and +1 Insightful is in who moderates it.
Personally the only time I've ever posted something with no value whatsoever was as a reply to another troll's journal entry.
Examples of good trolling that provides plenty of great content:

Purposely giving misleading info -- this causes atleast 10 people to reply with informative posts, probably more info than the article had.

Posting far-left or far-right wing posts in an attempt to get a reply from the opposite group -- this is the basis of all the great arguments on slashdot, most of which are filled with information or ideas, and are generaly interesting.

Re:Slashdot trolls, read this

[greenrd]

Therefore crapflodding has ruined anoniminity on slashdot thanks to the uneffective moderation system.

How about a bit of personal responsibility, fucktard. It's the wankers who crapflood who have ruined anonymity on Slashdot, if anyone.

Re:Slashdot trolls, read this

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Not at all, I personally know a few people that were fine posting at -1, until slashdot took that away from them.

If they can post at -1 then everyone else can read at 0 (relativly) safely, But because of the 2 post a day limit they are forced to post anonymously, thus killing the signal to noise ratio at 0.

Re:Slashdot trolls, read this

[nathanh]

And the thief robbing a bank means the police can investigate an exciting crime instead of writing traffic tickets, makes for interesting news in the local newspapers, invigorates the local economy, and inspires improvements to security all around. In fact, the thief should be congratulated rather than arrested and sentenced!

This philosophy might work in science-fiction books but your name isn't the Stainless Steel Rat.

Re:Slashdot trolls, read this

[nathanh]

Hey look, it's another inconsiderate little shithead.

"Browse at +3", my arse. The fact that you think that's a solution at all shows how fucking stupid you are.

Re:Slashdot trolls, read this

[handsomepete]

And you clearly are very considerate in keeping the noise down by using your +1 bonus on this thread. *sigh*

How is browsing at +3 not a solution? What do you see at that level that ruins your browsing experience? Or even at +2? Honestly curious - I want my fucking stupidity remedied.

Re:Slashdot trolls, read this

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

But what am I stealing? Bandwidth/cpu of slashdot? doubt it. Time of the readers? No ones complained yet.
I'm not stealing anything, unless you use some twisted RIAA-esque definition of the word stealing.
Theres a huge difference between a bank loosing a few thousand and me posting a little misinformation on Xvid.

Re:Slashdot trolls, read this

[jaoswald]

Reading at +3 doesn't work because the moderators are either as stupid as the average Slashdot reader, or are too busy to pay attention to what they are moderating.

What gets modded up to +3 usually consists of the following:

1) cleverly concealed falsehoods designed to appear insightful to typical Slashdot readers.
2) carelessly presented "fact-filled" posts that usually have gross errors, but appeared early in the discussion, so they were the most informative posts at the time.
3) yet another recycling of a somewhat appealing idea that was off-topic the last time, and is off-topic yet again.
4) Harmless, uninformative, but politically tasty diatribes of various kinds. Similar to the annoying one-liners attached to the articles by the editors. Even if they have a grain of truth, they are invariably presented with smarmy, smug, overweening typically-geek confidence.
5) In general, whatever else got modded up.

Genuinely informative, insightful, and interesting posts are lucky to get one positive mod point. Much more commonly, something that deserves at most one positive mod point, and likely deserves a "-1 completly misguided," will instead get a pile-on that would send it to +10 if there weren't a +5 limit.

Re:Slashdot trolls, read this

[handsomepete]

"Genuinely informative, insightful, and interesting posts are lucky to get one positive mod point. Much more commonly, something that deserves at most one positive mod point, and likely deserves a "-1 completly misguided," will instead get a pile-on that would send it to +10 if there weren't a +5 limit."

Ok, look - I'm really not trying to troll or be super argumentative about this, but if posts that you would consider to be good are lucky to get one mod point and every shmuck that does get modded up is uninteresting, a troll, or saying the same old thing, why do you bother coming here? What's the point? Obviously you're a part of a very small minority (not saying that that's a bad thing). Is it really worth it to stick around for the gems? Or is it for the same reason I still watch The Simpsons - it's crappy now, but I don't know what else to watch that half hour every week.

I read Slashdot to be entertained and if there's one thing that it is, it's entertaining. I've never expected real serious insightful conversation, but maybe I showed up to the party too late (I started reading and posting anonymously about 1.5 years ago). If you honestly consider the average Slashdot reader to be stupid (and boy, I'd hate to hear what you think of the non-geek/technical/scientific folk in the world, although I agree about the 'typical geek confidence - yeesh), then what keeps you coming back?

I...

[Anonymous Coward]

...submitted this story a week ago, before the NYT reported it. My write-up had better links too. WAAAAAA! *cry cry* Oh well, no scoop for you, biznitches.

The Confusion of All Science

[gelfling]

Why not. If economics can become math (A Beautiful Mind) and psychology can become economics (See this year's Nobel in Economics - it's basically graduate level experimental psychology applied to group economic behavior) then why can't physics become science fiction.

Robots!!

[httpamphibio.us]

anyone else think those guys pictured in the article look sorta like robots?

N-Rays

[marksilverman]

Reminds me of the classic French physics fiasco with N-Rays. Can anyone think of others?

Sorry to single out the French, but I suspect they have a knack for this kind of thing!

This is being interpreted weirdly

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Someone wrote a bullshit paper. Editors at some journals were asleep. These editors need to be hauled over hot coals. The journals will lose some respect. But the whole problem was detected by physicists who are perfectly competent to judge what is and isn't bullshit in the field of physics. There's nothing bigger going on. There's no sign of any kind of crisis going on. People just put whatever spin they want on what is really fairly straightforward.

Re:I've read this paper and it was clear enough to

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir are the biggest ass I've ever had the misfortune to come across. Here's hoping that your troll license gets revoked soon.

Yeah! Who needs Math?

[Mmmrky]

I agree. Where has math gotten us? Clearly we know nothing about the world we live in. We are completely ignorant to the forces around us and yet we destroy forest after forest producing thick tomes to celebrate our theories on things that we have no clue about. Waste of time if you ask me.

I think we should eschew math entirely and try to come to a deeper understanding of the universe at an emotional level. Science could be easily reduced to sitting in a circle expressing how we feel about issues. "The ball keeps falling? That makes me sad!"

Relax, it was a joke...

[Anonymous Coward]

...really...

Re:Relax, it was a joke...

[tbradshaw]

On my campus, I get hit with crap like this every day from people that are not joking.

It felt good to vent.

fredkin & wolfram suggest the same

[FreeUser]

Wolfram, in A New Kind of Science, suggests exactly that ... that calculus has gotten us this far but may not get us much further, that many of the problems and discouragements in modern physics stems from the fact that the universe doesn't operate according to calculus, that calculus merely describes some aspects of it and there are other aspects, perhaps even those most fundamental aspects, of the universe that are simply inimical to calculus as a tool to accurately describe them.

Of course, he extends Fredkin's notion of using cellular automata rules (and variations on cellular automata) as a different tool with which aspects of the universe not amenable to calculus could be more accurately described, modelled, and predicted.

Since math is a human invention, it would not be terribly surprising to discover the natural world not necessarilly conducive to a complete and full description using only that tool, but somehow, if we ever do hack through to whatever lies beneath, we'll find even a combination of Newton's calculus, Fredkin's cellular automata, and who knows what other analytical tools we come up with, when taken together, will probably still be inadequate to describe and unify the whole thing.

Which of course is why so many people cop out with the whole God mythos ... because figuring out the universe and how it works is hard, and humans seem to always crave easy answers.

Physics

[Baudrillard]

As a scientist, reading this article in the New York Times is rather troubling. The "text" produced by the science is an incredibly accurate rendition of the truth of the universe we live in. As further experiments and exploration continues, our understanding becomes ever richer and more detailed. This is the basis for a fascinating intellectual persuit. But also, the understanding produced by the social enterprise of science, as influenced by experiments, has led directly to important technological advances that shape our society. Ignore the arcane musings of physicists as you will, but it is difficult to ignore their impact! Finally, the philosopher Jean Baudrillard has written extensively about the fact that humans communicate through symbols and images that are essentially simulacra removed from objective truth. This leaves in his words, the "desert of the real". As far as I am concerned, say what you will about other academic subjects, but you can consider science to be an oasis, firmly rooted in the desert of the real. You post-modernist punks can take that to the bank! :-)

My hero!

[Anonymous Coward]

You are so smart. Your lengthy and devastating refutation of the sillyhead communist postmodernist fag makes me all wet. Could you please follow up by posting a similarly detailed refutation of the current headlines from that hideous piece of ivory tower socialism called The Onion?

Even weirder than most people think

[freejung]

our tiny minds cannot comprehend nor visualize many things

Indeed, it has even been seriously proposed that the wave function itself exists all around us, but it is merely the limitation of our minds which prevents us from seeing all possible universes. And that's only the beginning.

As for mathimatical proofs, consider Godel's thm, which states that it is impossible to have a complete consistant binary logic system (this is proved, of course, using binary logic!). Try to visualize that! No way.

These guys in particular may be babbling unscientific nonsense, but this doesn't change the fact that theoretical physics is getting weirder and weirder all the time, and much serious science is far more far out than this.

Your theory is crazy. On that we are all agreed. The question is, is it crazy enough to be true? -- Neils Bohr

Close Enough.

[Grendel Drago]

We're sort of saying the same things. I'll let it rest at that.

Science does not explain "why" everything happens. We know, for instance, that matter has a property called "mass", and everything with "mass" has a force called "gravity" acting on it, but we don't really know how it works. Some laws are empirical, meaning that they describe the world, and are correct in that way... but they don't come with an explanation.

--grendel drago

Article for the lazy.

[jacobcaz]

French Physicists' Cosmic Theory Creates a Big Bang of Its Own

By DENNIS OVERBYE

Everyone who ever wondered whether physicists were just making it all up when they talked about extra dimensions, dark matter and even multiple universes might take comfort in hearing that scientists themselves don't always seem to know.

Consider Drs. Igor and Grichka Bogdanov, French mathematical physicists and twins, who have recently been burning up the physics world with a novel and highly speculative theory about what happened before the Big Bang. Scientists have been debating whether the Bogdanov brothers are really geniuses with a new view of the moment before the universe began or simply earnest scientists who are in over their heads and spouting nonsense.

The uproar began late last month when rumors, denied by the brothers, began ricocheting around the Internet that they had constructed an elaborate hoax à la that of Dr. Alan Sokal, the New York University physicist who published a nonsense article about quantum gravity in the cultural journal Social Text in 1994. The story was that the pair, who are 53 and better known as the writers and producers of a popular television show in the 1970's and 80's in which they appeared as what might be called science clowns, had posed as string theorists to obtain fraudulent doctorates.

Until then, few physicists had noticed the brothers' theses or their journal articles, which purport to exploit something called the Kubo-Schwinger-Martin condition. It implies a mathematical connection between infinite temperature and imaginary time (don't ask) to probe the state of the universe at its very beginning. Suddenly physicists were trying to figure out what sentences like this meant, if anything: "Then we suggest that the (pre-)spacetime is in thermodynamic equilibrium at the Planck-scale and is therefore subject to the KMS condition."

Dr. Roman W. Jackiw, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who read and approved Igor Bogdanov's Ph.D. thesis, said he found it speculative but "intriguing."

But Dr. John Baez, a physicist and quantum gravity theorist at the University of California at Riverside, who has conducted a dialogue with the Bogdanov brothers on the Web site math.ucr.edu/home/baez/bogdanov, said, "One thing that seems pretty clear to me is that the Bogdanovs don't know how to do physics."

Dr. Peter Woit, a mathematician and physicist at Columbia University, said of the brothers' work, "Scientifically, it's clearly more or less complete nonsense, but these days that doesn't much distinguish it from a lot of the rest of the literature."

Indeed, the problem of distinguishing sense from nonsense goes beyond the Bogdanovs, say some physicists, who worry that far too much junk goes past the referees who vet articles for the scientific journals and the examiners who approve Ph.D's.

"The bigger issue is about scientific integrity, and how theoretical physics gets judged," said Dr. Frank Wilczek, another M.I.T. physicist and editor of Annals of Physics, where one of the Bogdanov papers appeared. "Do people really have a mastery of the field as a whole?"

How the Bogdanovs came to this pass is perhaps a cautionary tale about the way physics is done today. Born in 1949 in a castle in Gascogne, they described themselves as descendants of Russian and Austrian nobility. After studying applied mathematics at the Institute of Political Science and the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, the brothers carved out careers for themselves as writers and producers of their science television show, "Temps X" ("Time X").

A particularly murky episode in their careers began in 1991, when they published "God and Science," a book based on conversations with the French philosopher Dr. Jean Guitton. The book was a best seller in France, but the authors were sued for plagiarism by Dr. Trinh Xuan Thuan, an astronomer at the University of Virginia, who claimed they had copied passages from his 1988 book, "The Secret Melody, and Man Created the Universe." The brothers countersued, arguing that Dr. Thuan had borrowed from their earlier writings and Dr. Guitton's.

The case was eventually settled out of court in 1995, according to a settlement document provided by the brothers, with both sides renouncing any damages and paying their own court costs. Dr. Thuan, whose book is being reissued in the United States this winter, failed to respond to requests for an interview.

It was during the writing of the book, the brothers say, that they had a brainstorm for a theory of the so-called initial singularity, the infinitely dense, infinitely hot point into which all space and time were squeezed when the universe began, where normal physics breaks down. They returned to college to pursue Ph.D.'s, something they say they had always intended to do, but had been delayed by the unexpected success of their television show.

After two years at the University of Bordeaux, they moved to the University of Bourgogne and apprenticed themselves to Dr. Moshe Flato, founder of the journal Letters in Mathematical Physics and a prominent theorist known for his unconventional ways. When Dr. Flato died in 1998, a longtime associate, Dr. Daniel Sternheimer, a mathematician at C.N.R.S., the French center for scientific research, took over as the twins' adviser.

For the most part, however, the brothers were left to work on their own without much supervision, "pursuing ideas that are quite a bit out of the mainstream," said Dr. Jacobus Verbaarschot, a physicist now at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and one of the examiners for Grichka Bogdanov's doctoral thesis in 1999.

Dr. Sternheimer described the twins as stubborn "wunderkids" with very high I.Q.'s, who have a hard time understanding that they are not "the Einstein brothers" and prone to shooting themselves in the foot with vague statements and an "impressionistic" style. He called teaching them "like teaching My Fair Lady to speak with an Oxford accent."

Certainly they did not come off as the Einstein brothers in their dissertations. In June 1999, Grichka was granted a Ph.D. in mathematics by the École Polytechnique in Paris but with an "honorable," the lowest passing grade.

Igor, however, failed. The examining committee agreed that he could try again if he had three papers published in peer-reviewed journals, a common litmus test of legitimacy, Dr. Jackiw said.

"One has to have trust in the community," he explained. Igor's thesis had many things Dr. Jackiw didn't understand, but he found it intriguing. "All these were ideas that could possibly make sense," he said. "It showed some originality and some familiarity with the jargon. That's all I ask."

Igor got his degree in theoretical physics from the University of Bourgogne in July, also with the lowest possible grade, one that is seldom given, Dr. Sternheimer said.

"These guys worked for 10 years without pay," he said. "They have the right to have their work recognized with a diploma, which is nothing much these days."

The brothers have since returned to television, producing two-minute spots for a French series called "Rayons-X" ("X-Rays"). That would have been the end of it, except for the hoax rumors.

Dr. Sternheimer called the dispute "a storm in a teacup."

"They don't deserve so much interest, they don't deserve so much hatred," he said.

The aftermath has been bruising for both the Bogdanovs and for physics. Dr. Arkadiusz Jadczyk, a Polish theoretical physicist who has been conducting a dialogue with the brothers and other physicists on his Web site, cassiopaea.org/cass/bog-sternheimer .htm, said it was now his "working hypothesis" that the Bogdanovs had done something interesting.

But the editors of Classical and Quantum Gravity repudiated their publication of a Bogdanov paper, saying it "does not meet the standards expected of articles in this journal," although they declined to retract it, inviting readers to send comments to the journal instead.

Dr. Wilczek stressed that the publication of a paper by the Bogdanovs in Annals of Physics had occurred before his tenure and that he had been raising standards. Describing it as a deeply theoretical work, he said that while it was "not a stellar addition to the physics literature," it was not at first glance clearly nonsensical.

"It's a difficult subject," he said. "The paper has a lot of the right buzz words. Referees rely on the good will of the authors." The paper is essentially impossible to read, like "Finnegans Wake," he added.

His colleague Dr. Jackiw compared modern physics to modern art: "One person looks at a piece of art and says it is gibberish; another person looks and says it's wonderful."

When physics talks about the universe before the Big Bang, it is completely speculative, he said, adding, "I would be very careful before calling something nonsense, especially if I didn't understand it."

Physicists were no more unanimous on the greater lesson of the whole affair. "This says something profound about what happens to theoretical physics in the absence of the discipline of experiment," Dr. Wilczek said.

Dr. Baez and others have suggested that the system administering the brothers' degrees and publishing their papers was lax. "I do think that the examiners, referees and editors do have something to answer for in this case," said Dr. Lee Smolin, a theoretical physicist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, in Waterloo, Ontario, citing what he said were obvious errors in the referees' reports for the brothers' papers.

But others, especially in France, disagree. "What they did or what they have written seems to show that they are not better (but not worse) than several theoretical physicists friends of ours who often use some mathematical terminology that they do not master well enough," said Dr. Robert Coquereaux, director of research at C.N.R.S., in a statement posted on Dr. Jackiw's Web site.

But Dr. David Gross, director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, Calif., took issue with this view. "It is easy to judge, even from the abstract alone, that these papers are nutty," he said, noting that the physics community had ignored them until the hoax brouhaha.

Dr. Coquereaux and others said that the "publish or perish" ethos of academic research in the United States had contributed to the spread of unintelligible papers.

"There is a tradition of formally obscure but extremely serious and competent theoretical work in Europe," said Dr. Carlo Rovelli, a theoretical physicist and gravitational theorist at the University of Marseille and the University of Pittsburgh. But there was a tradition of letting every wild idea go in the United States, he added. He described the brothers' papers as "really empty."

The Bogdanovs said they were still hopeful that their ideas would be recognized and useful in physics. As they said in an e-mail message: "Nonsense in the morning may make sense in the evening or the following day."

weird dilemmas involving sheep

[freejung]

It's not so much a matter of new evidence as of the assumptions you are making before the experiment. For instance, in this case, you are assuming that the sheep has not been painted black, that it's not standing in a region of intense shadow, etc.

Of course you have chosen an example case which is fairly clear-cut. You can probably get away with saying that there is a very high probablity that the statement is false. My point is that you can never know with absolute certainty. This is the objection commonly held, in philosophy of science, to obsolete Popper's theories in favor of those of Kuhn and his followers, who coined the word "paradigm" and elaborated the idea of a "paradigm shift" to describe the real process of theory selection in science.

Incomplete Formalism

[Mark Garrett]

(Unless you're making a really obscure joke about how inexact the phrase "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction" is...)

for every action a,
there exists an reaction b,
such that b is equal and opposite to a.

You're not actually formulating one of Newton's laws, you're just saying that an equal and opposite reaction exists... not making the implication that the reaction that will be observed will be the equal and opposite one.

What would work:
Let X,Y be actions.
For all X, there exists a (unique) Y such that X is equal and opposite to Y and that X occuring implies that Y will also occur.

I'm going to ignore the "unique existential quantifier" on Y (leave it as an existential) since the only thing it says is that "only one equal and opposite reaction exists".

To negate my proposition (sans uniqueness), we have (using parentheses for grouping):
There exists a X such that for all Y, ((X is not equal and opposite to Y) or ((X occurs) and (Y does not occur))).

So, all you have to do is find one instance where X occurs and Y (the equal and opposite) does not occur, and you're done. You can also find an instance where a reaction occurs, but it is not equal and opposite.

Okay, if you really want the uniqueness:
There exists a X such that for all Y, ((X is not equal and opposite to Y) or ((X occurs) and (Y does not occur))) or (there exists a Z such that (Z is equal and opposite to X) and (Z is not equal to Y))

So therefore, if you can find two reactions that are equal and opposite, but aren't the same, you've also found a counterexample... I'm not counting on that being very useful.

--
Apologies for any errors... I'm easily distracted by shiny objects.

Re:Incomplete Formalism

[myowntrueself]

Yeah sorry typical internet sloppyness.

I dunno exactly how the posting system works here but I have given this as an answer to a few others now that its clearer in my head, so if you don't mind I'll just paste it.

(BTW the initial point was more that this is an example of something that many people, including many scientists, *assume* is a theory, but its actually an axiom).

Suppose you are checking for counterexamples and you find an action with no equal & opposite reaction (that you can discern).

Thats just absence of evidence not evidence of absence.

So you have to look deeper for an equal & opposite reaction for this apparently errant action.

When, exactly, do you stop looking? When you have checked every other action in the universe and determined that not one of them was an equal & opposite reaction to that action (the one you were looking at in the first place)?

This is an impossible task, but its the only way, short of finding a mechanism to explain the reason for the axiom, but then the 'every action has a blardy bla bla' becomes a data element in a theory, not a theory in its own right.

Re:Incomplete Formalism

[Mark Garrett]

"Yeah sorry typical internet sloppyness."

Sloppiness on the internet? On Slashdot? Surely you're kidding me! Heh.

I think we probably agree on the central point... but in the details...

"Suppose you are checking for counterexamples and you find an action with no equal & opposite reaction (that you can discern)."

If it happens once, you can probably dismiss it as experimental error. If it happens regularly given the same conditions, then the 'theory' in question is in trouble.

For instance, Newtonian mechanics mostly accounts for chunks of matter either running into each other or being in an acceleration field (e.g. gravity). If you have no equal and opposite reaction in the application of a force (you can find no matter that ran into what you're observing and other things indicate the absence of a field), then your theory is not predicting the outcome properly. Then people will laugh at your theory and generally feel better about themselves. Your theory will still be a theory, but it will have about as much acceptance as classical aether theory does today.

"Thats just absence of evidence not evidence of absence.

So you have to look deeper for an equal & opposite reaction for this apparently errant action.

When, exactly, do you stop looking? When you have checked every other action in the universe and determined that not one of them was an equal & opposite reaction to that action (the one you were looking at in the first place)?"

It's completely arbitrary, the matter of when you stop looking. All you're trying to do is convince yourself and others of the validity of your observation.

A theory is simply a relation amongst physical phenomena which is observed with enough regularity to put disbelief on any claims of observations that run contrary to it. Eventually, if we can't find any conditions where the theory fails we just call it a law.

In other words:
Hypothesis = proposed physical axiom or consequence thereof
Theory = Hypothesis + agreement in observation
Law = Theory + more agreement in observation until everyone gets tired and calls it a day.

There isn't (or shouldn't) be any claim that we can create a formal proof of any physical 'law'. Such things are the realm of mathematics only. This is simply because we live by whatever axioms of physical law exist, not with them.

If that's your point, we certainly agree.

"This is an impossible task, but its the only way, short of finding a mechanism to explain the reason for the axiom, but then the 'every action has a blardy bla bla' becomes a data element in a theory, not a theory in its own right."

And, of course, you can't explain the reasoning for an axiom. They just are. That's what an axiom is. (At least in a mathematical sense, which is hopefully what you'd encounter in physics.) Going by the things that you said previous to this, I'm thinking that we disagree slightly on the definitions of axiom and theory.

--

Re:Incomplete Formalism

[myowntrueself]

I think we are broadly in agreement,
but I'd just like to point out something in the nature of the 'when do you stop looking' problem;

This is essentially a decision problem, right?

How do you use an algorithm -- a method -- to decide to stop descending an infinite branch of a proof?

This has always, and will always be, a problem in formal logic.

In computation theory its an even more 'real' problem leading to eg the halting problem among others.

In scientific method, its an even more real problem because it impacts on our ability to be purely rational about solving scientific problems or disproving theories.

What it means is, in the context of our discussion so far, that at some stage one must use ones feelings to determine when one stops bothering to look for an equal and opposite reaction and to declare that this particular action is a counterexample and that the laws of physics must be revised.

Different people have different feelings on these matters, different thresholds and this gets some people into hot water. :)

This is related/connected with Goedels incompleteness theorem.

(Personally, and I know this is sticking my neck out, but I believe that reality is complete and inconsistent).

is it an African or a European sheep?

[freejung]

Allow me to elaborate on this for a moment, I've always been very interested in this subject.

If you say all sheep are white, and you find a black one, you have proven the statement wrong.

This sounds pretty straightforward. But now, in order to falsify your theory (all sheep are white) with certainty, you must prove absolutely the statement, "this sheep is black." This is fraught with difficulties (beginning with the exact definition of "sheep" and "black" and spreading out from there), and in fact turns out to be impossible to do with total rigor.

This is a very subtle issue, though, and for a long time people thought that Popper had it right. Then, of course, they falsified his theory ;-). When Kuhn first came on the scene, he received a lot of objections along the lines of your comment, and was accused of undermining the basis of science and turning it into a mere popularity contest. The problem is, no matter how clearly you think you've falsified a theory, the proponents of that theory can always come up with some kind of wild assumption or argument to save their theory. The trick is, at some point these assumptions get unwieldy, cumbersome, ugly, and awkward (e.g. the increasing number of circular orbits needed to save the old Ptolemaic theory of the solar system from the attack being made on it by Copernicus and co...), and eventually you just have to say, "well, yeah, it could be like that, technically, but it's just silly!"

This means that in the end you have to make an essentially esthetic judgement about the elegance and simplicity of the theory. This judgment is informed by reasonable criteria but is not made on the basis of strict logic.

I think this is cool, myself, it makes science a form of art.

Re:is it an African or a European sheep?

[Mac Degger]

"it makes science a form of art"

You haven't really understood it, then. For example, in the case of the sheep, all you need is a spectronometer.

As for cumbersome theories, there's a dictum which states that the simpler theorie (which explains more) always 'wins' from a more cumbersome theory which explains the same. And a cumbersome theory which explains more about the way things work 'wins' from a simpler theory which explains less. Not science as art, because science is objective, never subjective.

Re:is it an African or a European sheep?

[fferreres]

all you need is a spectronometer

You'd need to prove the spectometer is all that is needed to prove your sheep is black. As I have read the post you replied to, he really is not trying to make an argument or convince you, he's just explaining things cannot be proved right, just as Hume and other claimed.

Re:is it an African or a European sheep?

[freejung]

You haven't really understood it, then.

You'd like to think that, wouldn't you!

Re:is it an African or a European sheep?

[freejung]

OOPS, submitted by accident. Let me try this again.

You haven't really understood it, then.

You'd like to think that, wouldn't you?

Actually, I've understood it all too well.

My collegue here has already pointed out the problem with the spectrometer. But there's another problem with your statement too. There can be no absolute objective criteria for which theories are more cumbersome and which explain more. To determine this, you must make a subjective judgement call.

Furthermore, objectivity as an epistemological stance breaks down. The reason for this is that objectivity assumes that the observer is separate from the system being observed, which is clearly not the case. In fact, recent evidence suggests that the system being observed may not even exist as such until it is observed. Thus the observer is inextricably entangled with the system, and can never be truely objective. In the end, all you can really say is, "this sheep sure looks black to me."

This also brings up another interesting point. Binary logic only works on models. In the real world, sheep are not black or white, they are varying shades of gray. Who is to say where to draw the line? Where this question gets even more interesting is when you apply it to people. What color are you? I bet you define yourself as either black or white, but in fact most of your skin is probably some shade of brownish pink. The terms "black" and "white", as applied to people, are social constructs rather than statements of physical fact.

The solution to all of this is to use fuzzy logic! Then statements are not regarded as true or false, but are rather assigned a real number between 0 and 1. This gets around the difficulty very nicely, and allows you to state very precisely and mathimatically that this sheep is probably black and that therefore the statement "all sheep are white" is probably false.

Re:is it an African or a European sheep?

[Mac Degger]

But here's the rub: using a spectrometer does give you objectivity and fuzzy logic!

The frequency lines it shows are the same every time they're displayed. The only problem is defining a colour...but you do that the way these things go: if the mayority say that that colour is black...then screw the people who say it's white, it's black! And from that day forth, that combination of lines in the spectrum will be known as black. It's repeatable and objectively defineable.

Sure, this kind of thing doesn't work for everything; but the thing about hard science is that much more often than not, one can use machine detected (and thus objective and defineable) output. And this works even when something is put in terms of fuzzy logic; if a certain outcome is 0.7, if it doesn't change it will be 0.7 when you let your machine observe it again. Surrounding culture might have a different name for 0.7 by then, but it's 0.7 nonetheless.

As I said, this aproach can't be used for all cases. Beauty is always subjective, as it can't be measured (somewould like to differ, but here the litmus test is that when re-measuring, the outcome is different because the criteria have changed). But in science, there is most always some objective datum which can be verified.

Re:is it an African or a European sheep?

[jaoswald]

To be more complete, however, an overelaborated theory usually is superseded by another theory that is aesthetically superior, and can be scientifically fruitful, even if the initial evidence is somewhat lacking.

Rarely does a overelaborated theory get discarded without some other theory to take its place. That's how this process can keep moving in a direction that seems to be forward.

It's also important to emphasize that theories get overelaborated because of experimental measurements that meet relatively high standards of technical excellence. Ptolemy had to have cycles to *accurately* account for observed planetary motion. That's an important thing missing from the parallel phenomenon in art. Planetary motion wasn't *settled* until impressive observations were made by Brahe and others, for Kepler to use. (Copernicus is an interesting case: the circular orbits are less accurate than Ptolemaic systems. That one could favor a less-accurate theory is the human part, but the less-accurate theory had to be made more accurate to finally win, because people didn't disbelieve their hard data. If it were truly art alone, people never would have progressed to Kepler's laws.)

not saying the same things

[freejung]

Actually you're not saying the same things. Look, to use your example:

Suppose you think you've found a priest who does not have a blue corpse in his back yard, thus falsifying the theory that all priests have a blue corpse in their back yard. But the reason the proof tree is infinite is that you now have to prove with absolute certainty that there is not a blue corpse in this priest's back yard. How do you know? Maybe you just haven't looked hard enough. So then you must go through everything in the priest's back yard and prove that it is not a blue corpse, and then you must prove somehow that you have exiamined every object in the priest's back yard. It goes on and on, and you can never prove it with total certainty.

My Biggest Problem with There Registration

[hswerdfe]

OK This is My Problem with New-York-Times Registration.

When you login you are presented with 3 fields.
[login name]
[pass word]
[remember my login on this computer]

my entire objection to NY-Times is that the third field IS_selected_by_DEFAULT.

It should be deselected by default, this goes for all similar dialog boxes, like the ones that say

Do you want to do something.?
[Yes]
[No]
["don't ask me this again"]

the last field should always be unselected by default.

Its really annoying to have to make that one extra click ever frig-in time I want to log in.
So I have to make 2 times as many clicks as I should have to.
Where as if it was the other way the people who want auto login would only have to make one Total extra click, not one per login.

Any way thats my rant and I am sticking to it!

Re:I've read this paper and it was clear enough to

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow. And throw in something metaphasic.

Foucault Pendulum + Topology, a point of suspicion

[wilgamesh]

I bet most nonphysics /. readers will find the original Bogdanov papers quite difficult to read, and perhaps the theses even more so since they are in French. But I can show here some very simple things that will make nonphysics reader very suspicious about the Bogdanov twin's work.

As some /. readers have pointed out already, John Baez, the UCI physics prof, criticizes a very specific passage from one thesis, involving the Foucault pendulum part. You don't have to read everything, just see that Bogdanov mentions the pendulum and topology in one breath! here I quote from Baez's webpage:

"It goes on to discuss the supposed connection between N = 2 supergravity, Donaldson theory, KMS states and the Foucault pendulum experiment, which he claims "cannot be explained satisfactorily in either classical or relativistic mechanics". If you know some physics you'll find this statement slightly odd.

After several pages he concludes: We draw from the above that whatever the orientation, the plane of oscillation of Foucault's pendulum is necessarily aligned with the initial singularity marking the origin of physical space S3, that of Euclidean space E4 (described by the family of instantons Ibeta of whatever radius beta), and, finally, that of Lorentzian space-time M4.

Zounds! He took that pendulum and rode it right off into hyperspace..."

And this Foucault pendulum quote you can obtain directly from one Bogdanov thesis.

The Foucault pendulum bit is on page 49/162 of the thesis, in French. It's easy to read and probably will parse in babelfish.

So what's the big hoopla about Foucault's pendulum and the supergravity stuff? Well, Foucault's pendulum, contrary to the Bogdanov thesis that it's not understood in classical mechanics, is really well understood, at least the regular ole' Foucault pendulum. It's basically a free-swinging pendulum, that over time, rotates its plane of swinging because of the Coriolis force. You can check it out in any decent undergrad mechanics text, such as my dusty copy of Marion/Thornton classical dynamics, page 399, where the solution is quietly sitting. Or you can read this little web tidbit.

That a PHD physics candidate would be trying to tell us there is some connection between the very earthly, understood Foucault pendulum, and the big bang (initial singularity) really stretches the imagination! But again, this just makes one suspicious, and doesn't prove anything.

stupid nyt account

[Anonymous Coward]

login: sdot12345
passwd: 12345

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

[L. J. Beauregard]

Dude, lighten up. Didn't you notice the name Alan Sokal in that pile of "postmodern" rubbish?

To be expected

[Compuser]

Science "community" is getting larger, hence
fraud is getting out of hand. I am a physics
grad student and between this, the Schon saga
and the Ninov debacle, this has been a bad year
for physics. But I wager it will only get worse
because physics is growing. My fear is that
beyond a certain size, we will not be able to
maintain knowledge in a coherent state between
all practitioners.

Quantum

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Quantum physics, there is a small but finite possibilit of this story being true :)

Interesting quote.

[mshiltonj]

One of the earliest models of the universe was erected by Ptolemy.

It worked fairly well, except for the fact that it assumed that our planet was the center of the universe and that everything rotated around the Earth. As astronomy got more sophisticated, we had to invent ever more elaborate mathematical models to make Ptolemy's picture of reality work. The astral cycles of heavenly movement became cycles within cycles within cycles. Until finally Copernicus suggested we imagine the Sun was the center of the system. The way we conceived the workings of the universe literally shifted and it was simple again both in perception and in mathematics.

The present moment in physics has the whiff of Ptolemaic epicycles about it. Perhaps the universe is actually incredibly complex and incomprehensible. Or, just maybe, it is our models that have become complex and incomprehensible. Perhaps new theories will yield ways of seeing things that are not as simple minded as the clockwork universe of the 19th century or as illusive as the unimaginable world of the 20th century. In our new understanding of the relationships of the very large to the very small, we may literally revisualize the universe around us.

Rethinking Everything. The above quote is on page 4.

arkadiusz jadczyk questions bogdanovs

[ironhide]

Read a more thorough account of the matter here:

http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/bogdanov1.htm

Re:That's enough .. Not!

[DNS-and-BIND]

It's well-known that journalists prefer bad news whenever possible.

fuck off, troll

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck off, troll

What if?

[Anonymous Coward]

What if our known universe is nothing but a portion of The Universe? Then, Big Bang may have been nothing more than a supernova on an unusually large scale.

How does one tell the difference from sitting inside an exploding supernova and an expanding universe?

I have yet to hear a good answer to that.

Fair enough -- but mind your spelling, please.

[Anonymous Coward]

Spelling is no more "subjective" than physics is. Jesus, dude, there's just no 'c' in "disgusting", even if you haven't been marginalized by the hegemonists.

IMHO it's also unfair to call the guy a socialist: Socialism is one of the stupidest religions on record, granted, but "postmodernism" is pure nihilism, which is considerably worse. Most "postmodernists" may be socialists, but not all socialists are willing to sink quite so low as to become "postmodernists". Let's be fair to the ones that ain't.

Re:Virtual?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is the script:
if ( $comment =~ /M\$/ ) { $insightful++ }
elsif ( length $comment > 500 ) { $intersting++ }
elsif ( $comment =~ /goatse/ or $comment =~ /first post/ ) { $troll-- }
elsif ( $comment =~ /beowulf/ or $comment =~ /are belong to us/ or $comment =~ /Profit!!!/) { $offtopic-- }
elsif ( $comment =~ /a href=/ ) { $informative++ }

Re:I've read this paper and it was clear enough to

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Sir/Madam,

Please try to be more subtle. If You are moderated down to often and have 0 (or, God forbid, even -1) start score of every new post, no one will take You seriously. What You should do is to post enough high-scored posts to have 2 points of every new post (which shouldn't be hard for You) and then start to post very subtle posts, like some of Your older ones, which I read like theonion.com for the first time. I wish You good luck, as You are in my opinion definitely the best here. Remember, You are my only hope.

Sincirely,
One of Your fans.

Not profitable

[MacAndrew]

The problem, among other, is that top-tier papers are expensive to produce. These folks have their own staff around the country and abroad, have specialists in many fields, the most sought-after columnists, etc. etc. I notice immediately in other papers that I'm mostly reading AP and Reuters, and they do a good job but don't break as much news.

Even if they make a larger fraction of their money off ads, most won't be profitable without subscriptions as well. And, of course, NYT isn't even asking for subscriptions, yet.

The paper NYT is quite expensive to subscribe to. The WP, which is local to me, just raised its newsstand price from 25 to 35 cents, a big jump %-wise that suggests they really do need that money (why endanger circulation?).

Most on point, NYT Digital has been losing money and laying off as they decide their next move in a declining advertising market. I've read similar stories elsewhere. The future is bleak -- look what happened to banner advertising

All the demographic info does is allow anonymous targeted marketing, which advertisers will pay more. So by signing up you indirectly increase their revenue.

Yeah, there are better ways to handle the log-ins, but I have the feeling the next step will be worse -- more intrusive ads or, most likely, paid-only access. I value being able to compare what different news sources are saying, but would hate to have to pay for each and every one.

Genius Steals, Talent Borrows

[boy_afraid]

Don't you know that genius steals, and talent borrows?

Useful Science

[earlydaysofsin]

Some statements while fulfilling Popper's criteria for being scientific, never-the-less are not USEFUL scientific statements. For instance "There is always at least one lemming in the centre of the sun at all times". This is falisfiable as all we must do is find one instance of the sun lemmingless. The problem is, it is VIRTUALLY impossible to check this condition ... of course today's virtually impossible becomes tomorrows plausible, becomes next year's old hat. This of course is applicable do a great number of scientific statements and it is certainly valid to query the worth of a scientific statement that may not ACTUALLY be falsifiable for the rest of human existence.

Error: Conceptua Theoretical != Actual

[Anonymous Coward]

Theoretical may be identical to actual.

Observations are "facts". Theories explain facts. A theory that does not hold for all observations is proven false, but a theory cannot be proven true. That does not mean that some theories are not true. One cannot divine anything about the "actualness" of an idea due to the idea being labeled a "theory".

Re:I've read this paper and it was clear enough to

[cmdr_beeftaco]

Mod the parent up. This man or woman has summed the feelings of the entire /. community. Physic Genius' post are some the best reading on /. His grammer is flawless. His spelling first-rate. His wit unmatched.