Your statements demonstrate that you are avoiding to actively try to understand the controversies. Thus, you are failing to learn how a Sagnac interferometer actually works and what actually measures, you are stating arguments that have nothing to do with the real issue [who EVER claimed that the Sagnac interferometer could measure linear motion with respect to the all-pervading aether? It contracts with linear motion with respect to aether, as everything else], stating demonstrably false reasons for "why Michelson and Morley" chose a different setup than Sagnac, accusing me with denying the QUANTITATIVE usefulness of the conceptually meaningless quantum theory when I clearly stated otherwise before, etc.
Regarding your exceedingly optimistic statements about the Standard Model, this seems to relate to what Nobel Laureate Robert Laughlin considers the worldwide "infection" by "quantum field theory idolatry". People interested in scientific progress need to watch this thought-provoking lecture:
As he argues, such an "infection" is the reason why people fail to see the forest for the trees. Laughlin remarkable statements are consistent with the conclusions of many analysts who have carefully studied all the multi-disciplinary aspects affecting particle physics research. For example, Alexander Unzicker, a committed physicist and academic whistleblower summarizes the disturbing situation as follows:
"The standard model is complicated beyond any credibility, it does not address a single fundamental problem of physics, it is a textbook example of a Kuhnian crisis, its experimental techniques make it increasingly more likely that researchers fool themselves, knowledge in the community mostly consists of parroting expert opinions, and the experiments are practically not repeatable and completely nontransparent. The standard model is bad science. Nobody has to be afraid of stating that."
Alexander Unzicker, "The Higgs Fake", How Particle Physicists Fooled the Nobel Committee, p.141.
What everyone needs to always remember is that an updated “Neo-Ptolemaic” geocentric system with sufficient amount and sufficiently complex epicycles could provide the same rigorous quantitative results for planetary positions that our currently accepted heliocentric system provides. So, if you are happy working with the epicycles of particle physics, please enjoy!
Anyway, time is precious and you have failed to provide any meaningful challenge to my previous statements, so I will kindly leave you with the last word so I can continue with more productive matters. It was fun anyway. =)
Re: "I'll give you that, I meant to say "inertial rotation". But it's just word play. My point still stands."
You may call it "absolute rotation" or "inertial rotation" — regardless of the arbitrary word of choice, the key point is that the speed of light in a sagnac interferometer is experimentally found to be constant ONLY with respect to "the fixed stars". In other words, a Sagnac interferometer detects rotation not with respect to a lab, not with respect to the Earth, nor to the sun, nor to the galaxy, nor with respect to any arbitrary frame of reference of choice but ONLY with respect to "the fixed stars", an experimentally-found preferred frame of reference that is identical to the one in which the original and not once falsified Theory of Relativity (i.e. The Lorentzian one) is based.
All this is explained in the paper that I pointed out to you, one that you apparently have not studied. Have you ever analyzed how a Sagnac Interferometer actually works? Let me help.
In 1951, P. A. M. Dirac wrote an article in the journal Nature titled "Is There an Aether?" in which he argued that we are “rather forced” to accept its existence. In 1953, Herbert Ives, the inventor of the television system that we all enjoy, explained the significance of the Sagnac Effect as follows:
"Further ground for rejecting the claim that Einstein's "view" renders the ether superfluous is furnished by the consideration that his scheme (even if it were valid) applies only to uniform rectilinear motion; rotational motion is excluded, yet optical signals are transmitted in such systems, and with results which point clearly and unequivocally to their transmission in an independent medium or coordinate system.
If light signals are sent out simultaneously in the "fore" and "aft" directions from a source moving in a circular path, and the two signals are brought back to the source by a series of reflections, they do not arrive simultaneously; the source has moved forward to meet one signal and has moved away from the other. This is the situation in the Michelson-Gale and Sagnac experiments, which yield positive first-order results exactly in conformity with the idea that the light signals travel in a fixed ether. The contractions of length and clock frequencies which account for null effects in uniform motion of translation, being of second order, do not materially alter the rotational effects. The optical phenomena in both uniformly and rotationally moving systems are completely explainable by a fixed ether and the Fitzgerald-Lorentz-Larmor contractions.
This survey of the background of the query "Is there an ether?" shows that the grounds for "abolishing" the ether were mistaken, and consequently Dirac's contribution would more properly have been entitled "Properties of the ether suggested by recent speculations."
Herbert Ives, "Genesis of the Query "Is there an Ether?", 1953.
Re: "You can easily derive it from the equations of SR, as summarized here [mathpages.com]. Also, you stated earlier that Lorenzian Relativity uses the exact same math as SR, so you're contradicting yourself here."
Please, I am not contradicting myself. That paper does not derive the experimentally-validated Sagnac formula using only the two postulates of SR. This shows again that you have not studied Marett's paper.
The original version of Relativity is based on the Lorentzian concepts of absolute time, a variable speed of light and an absolute frame of reference. From such concepts, the equations of Relativity that we continue to use today were derived. Afterwards, Einstein assumed instead his two postulates and derived the exact same equations, using different concepts to derive the exact same equations previously derived by Lorentz, Larmor, Poincaré, et. al.
However, such a mathematical equivalence is ONLY so for rectilinear uniform motion. For rotational motion like the one in the Sagnac Effect, there is a new equation that describes the phenomenon. Such
Re: "The rotation measured by the Sagnac Effect is an absolute rotation, that is, the platform's rotation with respect to an inertial reference frame."
An "absolute rotation" "with respect to an inertial reference frame" is an oxymoron (unless such frame of reference is an absolute one, which is surely not what you intended). Absolute is the conceptual opposite of relative, so it is contradictory to use absolute to mean relative. For all physicists, starting from Newton (and his water bucket) to pretty much all phycisists until the late 1910s, absolute motion (whether linear or circular) meant motion with respect to a preferred frame of reference, i.e. an absolute frame of reference, one that Newton called "absolute space" and Lorentz and most others from his time associated to the all-pervading aether. Such an absolute frame of reference can be associated to "the fixed stars" to an exceedingly good approximation. [Note: We need to do this because the nature of human measurement (which one should not conflate with the physical reality existing independently of our measurement) requires a frame of reference in order for the measurement to be carried out. All measurement is necessarily relative to an arbitrary standard, so "the fixed stars" seems to be the closest arbitrary standard that we may propose now as the preferred frame of reference, one validated by all optical experiments to date (as explained below)].
Re: "Being on the surface of the Earth, you are in an accelerating reference frame."
Of course. The point that you seem to be missing here is that, as shown by a sufficiently sensitive Sagnac interferometer, the only way that we can define an observer for which all circumstances the speed of light c is exactly constant in a circular path, is to place the observer stationary with respect to "the fixed stars". If the observer is associated to ANY OTHER frame of reference, the observer will be able to measure a speed different than c (with a sufficiently good experimental setup). This experimentally confirms that it is possible to detect — using a light-based experiment — a preferred frame of reference ("the fixed stars") relative to which the light-waves circular path is moving. The Sagnac interferometer thus experimentally falsifies the concept that "it is impossible to detect motion by measuring differences in the speed of light”. We can and do everyday using FOGs. All this has been covered several times in the literature, but I think that the clearest argumentation is found in this paper by physicist Doug Marett:
Re: "The effect can be perfectly explained with Special Relativity but not with Newtonian physics, and therefore is a nice demonstrator for the validity of the former."
The Sagnac Effect has NEVER been derived from the postulates of Special Relativity, which is exactly what is expected if one understands the experimental results summarized above.
Wikipedia incorrectly states that Laue derived the Sagnac Effect from the postulates of Special Relativity. In fact, Laue did a purely geometrical analysis which is identical to the one that is performed in an aether framework like Lorentz's one, as Laue states himself. The only difference is a tiny proposed time dilation due to the translating frame, which is so small and unmeasurable that it is always taken to be equal to one. So Laue's derivation contains no effective relativistic elements. It is in practice absolutely identical to the Galilean treatment, so it cannot be claimed in any way to follow from Special Relativity.
It has also been claimed that the Sagnac effect can be accounted for by assuming a constant light speed on the rotating disk and by factoring in the so-called "time dilation" of the rotating observer. This uses a backwards mathematical transformation from the stationary observer. This mathematical treatment, attributable to Langevin and repeated for example by E.
Anonynous Coward said: "That "time is absolute" is demonstrably false. And we can easily do experiments that show that time is not absolute. Take two of our most accurate clocks and sync them up. Move one of them to the top floor for a while. Then return it. They will no longer be in sync, with the difference exactly predicted by Einstein."
Well, the very real clock rate retardation effect that you are referring to was originally derived by Sir Joseph Larmor in 1897, full eight years before Einstein. Larmor wrote in 1897 that "... individual electrons describe corresponding parts of their orbits in times shorter for the [rest] system in the ratio (1 – v^2/c^2)^(1/2)". See:
Larmor, J. (1897). "A Dynamical Theory of the Electric and Luminiferous Medium. Part III. Relations with Material Media". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 190: 205.
Larmor derived such relationship by working under the qualitative interpretation that there is a preferred frame, i.e. an aether. In fact, the entire quantitative map underlying Relativity Theory was collectively developed by Woldemar Voigt, George Francis FitzGerald, Sir Joseph Larmor, Henri Poincaré, Olinto De Pretto, and — perhaps most importantly — the great Hendrik Antoon Lorentz. All these scientists derived their equations from the conceptual framework of a physically existent waving medium that provides a preferred frame. All this happened before Einstein had published his 1905 paper on Relativity.
As mentioned before, such a Lorentzian Relativity is based on a qualitative interpretation where the speed of light is variable, time is indeed absolute, and there is a preferred frame for light that is typically undetectable due to confounding properties of nature, such as the change in the rate of clocks with velocity and the contraction of matter with velocity. Every related experiment ever conducted confirms such a qualitative interpretation, which differs with the qualitative interpretation by 1905 Einstein where the speed of light is constant in all moving frames, the rate of time is variable, and the undetectable aether is irrelevant.
As an aside, please note that Einstein denied aether for only 11 years: between 1905 and 1916. He died in 1955. [See Ludwig Kostro's "Einstein and The Ether", in Toto.]
As I commented before, the quantitative maps of Einsteinian Relativity and Lorentzian Relativity are — in effect — quantitatively indistinguishable. Generally speaking, experiment cannot decide between the two. In other words, the quantitative maps (the equations) are identical, while the qualitative maps are totally different. This is thoroughly explained in the following paper by experimental physicist Doug Marett:
Anonymous coward said: "A more direct proof that time is not absolute is muons. Cosmic rays strike the upper atmosphere, creating muons. These are extremely short lived, and should decay long before they reach the surface, and yet we can detect them on the ground. The only explanation for this is that because of their speed, their time is slowed down relative to the observers. Unlike the clocks, there are no moving parts or things to stretch."
There is ample evidence that we do detect these things, whatever they are, on the ground. On the other hand, there is zero evidence that "there are no moving parts or things to stretch." That is your metaphysical assumptions about the nature of matter talking, not the actual evidence. In fact, the actual evidence shows that a muon — as everything at the sub-atomic scales — actually waves. Any waving material structure that we know of possesses deeper "moving parts" and "things to stretch".
Also, please note that the original derivation of this effect by Larmor in 1897 was based on moving electrons. Muons are conventionally understood as s
The overlooked history of the development of Lorentzian Relativity and the subsequent development of Einsteinian Relativity is indeed very interesting. I have the strong feeling that someday it will be taught in all universities, not just as a lesson about the history of science but primarily as a lesson about human nature.
Historian of science Herbert Dingle stated that although from 1904 until 1919 relativity theory was generally ascribed to Lorentz, "with the apparent success in 1919 of Einstein’s general theory, with its then quite new and terrifying mathematical machinery of tensor calculus, came the fatal climax. Almost overnight ‘the relativity theory of Lorentz’ became ‘Einstein’s special relativity theory’, and it was immediately hailed as such by the mathematical experts. The established physicists... gave up trying to understand the whole business, surrendered the use of their intelligence, and accepted passively whatever apparent absurdities the mathematicians put before them. They had the seeming excuse that the mathematical equations worked." [Dingle, Science at the Crossroads, p. 95.]
This historical turn of events could not happen without the "apparent success of the general theory", based on the famous 1919 eclipse expedition. Yet science historians John Earman and Clark Glymour have shown that the evidence presented was unquestionably inadequate. It was principally the triple-pronged public relations of the Astronomer Royal, the President of the Royal Society and Arthur Eddington that lent General Relativity its 1919 victory. See "Fabulous Science Fact and Fiction in the History of Scientific Discovery" by John Waller.
Anyway, please note that special relativity can indeed handle accelerating objects or accelerating frames of reference. This is explained in the following link at the website of John Baez (famous for being the author of the "crackpot index"):
In any case, on the relativistic notion that "it is impossible to detect motion by measuring differences in the speed of light", as tentatively concluded by the Michelson-Morley experiment, the Sagnac experiment shows that this can in fact be done. The Sagnac Effect demonstrates that depending on the placement of the observer, it is possible to see this variable speed of light and to confound apparent "time dilation".
We should always be extremely careful to distinguish between the quantitative vs. qualitative aspects of scientific theory. The former is constructed from abstract equations, the latter is constructed from abstract concepts. Both are maps (or aspects of a map) trying to describe the real territory, i.e. the universe.
You are right in that the quantitative aspect of Relativity has an enormous amount of experimental confirmation. What you seem to be missing is that such a mathematical framework was not originally developed by Einstein. This seems to explain why, when you get into the mathematics of Relativity, you have to study Lorentz Transformation Equations, the Lorentz Factor, Lorentz boosts, the Lorentz group, Lorentz Symmetry and Lorentz Invariance.
E. T. Whittaker, notable mathematician and science historian, wrote a classical textbook about the history of electricity and electromagnetism. If you check out the book, you will not find a chapter titled "The Relativity of Einstein", but you will find one titled "The Relativity Theory of Poincaré and Lorentz", in which Whittaker wrote:
"It is clear, from the history set forth in the present chapter, that the theory of relativity had its origin in the theory of aether and electrons. When relativity had become recognised as a doctrine covering the whole operation of physical nature, efforts were made to present it in a form free from any special association with electromagnetic theory, and deducible logically from a definite set of axioms". [A History of The Theories of Aether and Electricity, Vol 2, pages 42-43].
The original version of the quantitative map of Relativity — that we may call Lorentzian Relativity — is based on a qualitative interpretation where the speed of light is variable, time is absolute, and there is a preferred frame for light that is typically undetectable due to confounding properties of nature, such as the change in the rate of clocks with velocity and the contraction of matter with velocity. On the other hand, Einstein later found a way to obtain the exact same quantitative map through a completely different qualitative interpretation, i.e., the speed of light is constant in all moving frames, the rate of time is variable, and the undetectable aether is irrelevant. The new qualitative interpretation by Einstein was in line with the philosophy of instrumentalism, i.e. the philosophical belief that we should make no distinction between unobservable entities and non-existent ones, even if observations only make sense in terms of levels of physical reality that are not easily measurable, or beyond measurement.
Most importantly, people seem to be largely unaware that the quantitative maps of Einsteinian Relativity and Lorentzian Relativity are — in effect — quantitatively indistinguishable. Generally speaking, experiment cannot decide between the two. In other words, the quantitative maps (the equations) are identical, while the qualitative maps are totally different. This is thoroughly explained in the following paper by experimental physicist Doug Marett:
In other words, every experiment confirming Relativity is evidence confirming Lorenzian Aether-Based Relativity, which is the original Theory of Relativity. Considering that we generally cannot distinguish between the two "versions" of Relativity by quantitative measures, we should focus more than ever on carefully studying the qualitative differences between them, and making our choice wisely.
Interestingly, you mention technologies as demonstrating the validity of Einsteinian Relativity. In fact, technologies provide perhaps the easiest way to distinguish between Einsteinian and Lorentzian Relativity. Everyday technology shows that there is indeed a preferred frame. We just need spin to observe it.
The text below the image explains quite clearly why the observed image is actually falsifying data. The link provided says:
"In 2002, two astronomers at La Palma took spectra of the galaxies and the connecting filament. They not only confirmed the discrepancy in redshifts of the galaxies but also discovered that the two quasar-like objects embedded in the filament (objects 2 and 3) have even greater discrepancies in redshift. If redshift indicated distance, the small objects would be 7 and 11 times farther away than NGC 7603. To dismiss this alignment as coincidence is to breathe sand."
Again, that's 7 and 11 *times* farther away according to Big Bang assumptions, but instead the image shows the four objects clearly interconnected.
Re: "For this to mean anything data from one of the survey instruments needs to be analyzed to see if overlaps like this happen more often than would be expected randomly (including lensing). Its not a difficult analysis, but someone has to take the time to do it. There is some data in public domain. An interested person an analyze and publish."
If you had read the paper provided above, the first paragraphs explains one of the many ways in which the analysis you are suggesting has actually been done already, obtaining results that falsify the Big Bang Theory:
"The first question that needs to be answered in a review of anomalous redshift data is, “What is the statistical significance of the samples being cited?” Put another way; are anomalous redshift associations not in fact just extremely rare events that can be written off to chance alignments and optical illusion? This was for decades the criticism levelled particularly at the observational work of Halton Arp, so I will let him answer it (from his paper with Chris Fulton, 2008): “Fulton & Arp have analyzed the positions, redshifts, and magnitudes of ~118,000 galaxies and ~25,000 quasars in the 2dF deep field. The examination of individual samples revealed concentrations of high z galaxies and quasars near galaxies. A natural extension of the analysis was to determine the average densities of objects over the survey area as a whole.”
Those are quite a few galaxies and quasars, I would say.
Now this is the really the last one from my side, good luck!
Physicist George Chapline has advanced the First Theorem of Science: “It is impossible to convince a person of any true thing that will cost him money.”
Nobel Prize winning physicist Robert Laughlin says that "We should probably rename it the First Theorem and drop the Science part." (Laughlin, 2005, p. 114)
The youtube video includes many references to original sources, documents that describe the many attacks from scientists to the mere idea of a rocket.
For example, the book Space Exploration by Ron Miller, says in page 21: "The idea that a rocket flew by pushing against the air behind it was a common one that many scientists of the era believed".
But I'll let you keep ignoring the tragic story of Goddard's ridicule, when pseudoscience was found to be science after all. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it".
I've finished with this postings, so I'll let you have the last word. Have a nice day!
As long as you continue to refuse to review the falsifying evidence, you will continue to think that cosmology is not in crisis.
"When Big Bang proponents make assertions such as “the evidence taken together hangs together beautifully,” they overlook observational facts that have been piling up for 25 years and that have now become overwhelming. Of course, if one ignores contradictory observations, one can claim to have an “elegant” or “robust” theory. But it isn’t science." -- Halton Arp
What you should do is to forget about theoretical claims, ask your self if the Big Bang is falsifiable, and if it is, then look at the raw data compiled in those four books. Check out for example the following link with just one example found in the books:
There you will see four objects, with four completely different redshifts, two of the four objects being quasars, physically associated through a plasma filament. That is impossible, according the Big Bang assumptions regarding redshift.
"It seems likely that redshift may not be due to an expanding Universe, and much of the speculations on the structure of the universe may require re-examination." - Edwin Hubble, PASP, 1947
"The evidence that many objects previously believed to be at great distances are actually much closer confronts us with the most drastic possible revision of current concepts." - Halton Arp.
The four books and related papers are chock full of similar raw evidence in which it is observationally found that the idea of redshift being an indicator of an "expanding Universe" (whatever you may want to physically interpret by that) has been falsified again and again and again.
Anyway, you seem to reject the possibility that the Big Bang Theory is observationally falsifiable. In such case, it is not a science. One way or the other, I finished with these postings. Enjoy!
The scientists who ridiculed Goddard and thought that rocketry was pseudoscience for full 24 years did know how to do the math very well. The historical mistake had nothing to do with learning how to do math.
By the way, I work in an electrical engineering laboratory and I apply mathematical physics everyday. Also, the weather forecast today for Siberia is -14 C. Both statements are equally relevant to the core of the controversy being discussed.
I'll let you have the last word, hopefully it will make you happy. Have a nice day! (Even if you are in frigid Siberia)
The deep question that you should be asking is the following: is the Big Bang Theory falsifiable?
If it is not, then it is not really science. If it is falsifiable, then the scientific method demands that scientists should be constantly looking for observational evidence that could invalidate it. This is not happening nowadays within academia. It did happened some decades ago, but when this world-renowned observational astronomer discovered the falsifying evidence, instead of being congratulated, he was basically sacked from the observatory (as explained in the video documentary previously mentioned).
If you had spend the time to actually look for such thing, then you may be surprised to find that the observational evidence falsifying the Big Bang creation story is very numerous. If you just want to focus on the controversy over redshift, then there are scores of papers related to it. This is just one for example:
If you really want to deeply understand why the Big Bang Theory has been observationally falsified, I recommend the following four books that you may use as a reference for all the papers that are cited within them.
In any case, the lesson of Halton Arp's story goes far beyond the data which observationally falsifies the Big Bang Theory (assuming that the theory really is falsifiable, something that doesn't seem to be the case). Arp's story is a very sad one and a lesson about everything that is wrong within academic science, and about what we need to radically change if we want to promote scientific progress and innovation.
For example, the discoveries of ubiquitous associations between high redshift objects and low redshift objects, all of which falsifies Big Bang Theory (because, if it is a scientific theory, it should be falsifiable, right?). If you only have a couple of hours to spend, you can start here:
For a more technical coverage of these discoveries, you should get Halton Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies and his three books on the subject.
And by the way, all the testable predictions confirmed by experiment associated to Relativity Theory come from its mathematical formalism, all of which was formulated by aetherists like Voigt, Larmor, De Pretto, Lorentz, Fitzgerald and Poincaré, all that happening before Einstein had written his first paper. From historian of science Whittaker's second volume on the History on the Theories of Aether and Electricity, from the chapter called "The Relativity Theory of Poincaré and Lorentz":
"It is clear, from the history set forth in the present chapter, that the theory of relativity had its origin in the theory of aether and electrons. When relativity had become recognised as a doctrine covering the whole operation of physical nature, efforts were made to present it in a form free from any special association with electro-magnetic theory, and deducible logically from a denite set of axioms of greater or less plausibility."
And by the way (bis), Frank Wilczek, a Nobel Prize winner for his contributions in Quantum Field Theory, has recently published a very recommendable book called: "The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces".
That's incorrect. Not just journalists but principally scientists considered rocketry to be pseudoscience, for full 24 years, and with tragic consequences. US scientists in particular considered the idea ridiculous. German scientists did not.
The important story of Goddard's mockery, including concrete examples of how scientists ridiculed the very real science of rocketry are covered here:
What you seem to be overlooking is that one paradigm predicted a filamentary universe (at least since the 1950s), while the other one didn't. Ubiquitous filamentation was not predicted at all by conventional astrophysics. And space age observations show that we do live in a filamentary universe.
Can gravity itself form ubiquitous filamentation? Well, if you add a sufficient quantity of carefully invented ad hocs, everything can be accounted for. Some unobserved dark matter exactly here, a little hypothetical dark energy exactly there, and everything is possible.
Or, instead of that, you just observe a novelty plasma globe and apply Occam's Razor.
You seem to be overlooking the fact that the space age has been one of an unending stream of "surprises", which is the actual misleading world that is typically reported by scientific journalists. But these "surprises" were not like when you find a strange-looking deep-sea species that you just add to the species catalog. No, what the historical record of this enormous quantity of surprises show is that these "surprises" were actually a theoretical failure to predict what was going to be discovered. The collective message of all these thousands of discoveries that were failed to predict is that we should be looking for a different viewpoint for the same data.
If you were to just suspend judgement and study the complexities of this profound controversy, then perhaps you would be surprised (pun intended) to find that the actual theoretical failures to predict the discoveries of the space age are pervasive and a constant, "surprises" that occur persistently in all sub-disciplines of astronomy and astrophysics, from planetary science (the latests "surprises" coming from the Juno mission), to cometary science, infrared astronomy, radio-astronomy, stellar astronomy, etc.
Of course, if you have only one paradigm and you are not going to consider an alternative one—the approach chosen by academic science—then you can always find ad hoc ways to try to account for observations. Dark matter, dark energy and inflation are just some examples of ad hoc measures incurred to patch what was failed to predict.
I've read absolutely all the comments for this post, and the initial poster seems to be in fact some of the very few persons being strictly rational here.
So, care to explain exactly in what ways he is not being a rational person, in your view?
Have you spotted any logical fallacies, for example? Or what exactly?
When your car's engine breaks down, you pull off to the side of the road and fix it. Why does the academic community assume that they can steer the machine to truth when the flows of scientific information are governed by "perverse incentives"?
I fail to see how my historical example of previously solved problems becoming unsolved again during a paradigm-shift is "complete bullshit".
Re: " you think you know something that no one else seems to have figured out"
The original ideas behind these controversies are certainly not mine. They originated with scientists like Hannes Alfvén, who used his Nobel Prize acceptance speech to tell the scientific community that they were misapplying his ideas to the astronomical scales, and if they continued to do so, a deep crisis in science would ensue. If you were to suspend judgement as a true skeptic and just spend the hard work of studying the controversy, it would be clear to you that Alfvén's worrying prediction was on target.
Re: "So when is the electrical universe gonna blow a hole in what we already understand? Where does it actually do a better job? Where are the mathematical models?"
If you had done the hard work of studying the diverse complexities underlying this foundational controversy—a time-consuming study that is apparent that neither you nor almost everyone else commenting here have done yet—then you would have answers to such questions. Much more importantly, you would be asking better questions.
Science should be about the culture of skepticism. This is the definition of 'skeptic' that I find most useful: "Skeptic - One who practices the method of suspended judgment, engages in rational and dispassionate reasoning as exemplified by the scientific method, shows willingness to consider alternative explanations without prejudice based on prior beliefs, and who seeks out evidence and carefully scrutinizes its validity." —Bernard Haisch, astrophysicist
The scientific habit of suspending judgement seems to be very very hard to most people, but it really isn't.
If you were to suspend judgement and study the ongoing controversies of science, then you would start acknowledging the dangers of specialization.
"People become engrossed in figuring out the next decimal place, and they lose sight of why they adopted the theory in the first place. They become too busy to revisit first assumptions. They take those assumptions for granted. The assumptions become unconscious and then they're surprised when reality throws data at them that isn't covered by the assumption."
"They have a certainty that comes from ignoring questions. They have the one true faith that comes from tunnel vision (specialization provides an extremely narrow field of view). This is a job description for technicians, but not for scientists."
"Science... is first of all about the questions. We need the answers in order to do things, but we need the questions more in order to do new things."
So far, such "right answer" seems to be the Standard Model, a theory which is typically regarded as “the pinnacle of science” or even “the theory of almost everything.” The Standard Model poses that the whole physical world is reduced to exactly 61 different kind of zero-sized point-particles, entities that somehow interact through four non-contact interactions, forces that are simultaneously also zero-sized point-particles. In addition, each of these 61 different kinds of extensionless entities may demonstrate the incomprehensible wave-particle paradox (as Feynman reminded us, "Nobody understands quantum mechanics"). All this activity happens, it is claimed, in 4D "curved" spacetime. In addition, absolutely all that was created from nothing sometime ago, starting from an "initial singularity" of "infinite density".
Just a quick reminder of the so-called right answer.
The point being made is that cosmology is in a deep crisis, and that neither the crisis nor the profound paradigm-shift that seems to be required to solve the crisis are discussed in physics departments. How would I know? Just paying attention to what academic whistleblowers have to say (see the list below).
An Open Letter to the Scientific Community Published in New Scientist, May 22, 2004 cosmologystatement.org
Website no longer works, but original page can be viewed here
"The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed -- inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples. Without them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory. In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, raise serious questions about the validity of the underlying theory.
But the big bang theory can't survive without these fudge factors. Without the hypothetical inflation field, the big bang does not predict the smooth, isotropic cosmic background radiation that is observed, because there would be no way for parts of the universe that are now more than a few degrees away in the sky to come to the same temperature and thus emit the same amount of microwave radiation.
Without some kind of dark matter, unlike any that we have observed on Earth despite 20 years of experiments, big-bang theory makes contradictory predictions for the density of matter in the universe. Inflation requires a density 20 times larger than that implied by big bang nucleosynthesis, the theory's explanation of the origin of the light elements. And without dark energy, the theory predicts that the universe is only about 8 billion years old, which is billions of years younger than the age of many stars in our galaxy.
What is more, the big bang theory can boast of no quantitative predictions that have subsequently been validated by observation. The successes claimed by the theory's supporters consist of its ability to retrospectively fit observations with a steadily increasing array of adjustable parameters, just as the old Earth-centered cosmology of Ptolemy needed layer upon layer of epicycles.
Yet the big bang is not the only framework available for understanding the history of the universe. Plasma cosmology and the steady-state model both hypothesize an evolving universe without beginning or end. These and other alternative approaches can also explain the basic phenomena of the cosmos, including the abundances of light elements, the generation of large-scale structure, the cosmic background radiation, and how the redshift of far-away galaxies increases with distance. They have even predicted new phenomena that were subsequently observed, something the big bang has failed to do.
Supporters of the big bang theory may retort that these theories do not explain every cosmological observation. But that is scarcely surprising, as their development has been severely hampered by a complete lack of funding. Indeed, such questions and alternatives cannot even now be freely discussed and examined. An open exchange of ideas is lacking in most mainstream conferences. Whereas Richard Feynman could say that 'science is the culture of doubt', in cosmology today doubt and dissent are not tolerated, and young scientists learn to remain silent if they have something negative to say about the standard big bang model. Those who doubt the big bang fear that saying so will cost them their funding.
Even observations are now interpreted through this biased filter, judged right or wrong depending on whether or not they support the big bang. So discordant data on red shifts, lithium and helium abundances, and galaxy distrib
What you are overlooking is that, in the midst of all such sea of crackpots saying untenable things, there are also the original thinkers that are not only pointing out real problems with accepted theory, but also providing the new ideas that we need to move forward.
Indeed, true wisdom is rare in critical websites, online forums, and comments. But this low signal-to-noise ratio is simply the nature of the challenge, much like mining for gold.
You are assuming that, just because the internet is inundated with untenable ideas, then absolutely all against-the-mainstream ideas must also be untenable. Such an assumption effectively cripples our possibilities for conceptual breakthroughs. This is why we must learn from history. Barry Marshall is a case in point. He would have continued to be a crackpot if he had not infected himself. He should not have needed to infect himself.
The Longitude Problem is also a very telling historical lesson. The ideas that we need can come from anywhere. See:
Slashdot Mirror
Dear Anonymous Coward,
Your statements demonstrate that you are avoiding to actively try to understand the controversies. Thus, you are failing to learn how a Sagnac interferometer actually works and what actually measures, you are stating arguments that have nothing to do with the real issue [who EVER claimed that the Sagnac interferometer could measure linear motion with respect to the all-pervading aether? It contracts with linear motion with respect to aether, as everything else], stating demonstrably false reasons for "why Michelson and Morley" chose a different setup than Sagnac, accusing me with denying the QUANTITATIVE usefulness of the conceptually meaningless quantum theory when I clearly stated otherwise before, etc.
Regarding your exceedingly optimistic statements about the Standard Model, this seems to relate to what Nobel Laureate Robert Laughlin considers the worldwide "infection" by "quantum field theory idolatry". People interested in scientific progress need to watch this thought-provoking lecture:
https://youtu.be/yF869nAYlfQ?t...
As he argues, such an "infection" is the reason why people fail to see the forest for the trees. Laughlin remarkable statements are consistent with the conclusions of many analysts who have carefully studied all the multi-disciplinary aspects affecting particle physics research. For example, Alexander Unzicker, a committed physicist and academic whistleblower summarizes the disturbing situation as follows:
"The standard model is complicated beyond any credibility, it does not address a single fundamental problem of physics, it is a textbook example of a Kuhnian crisis, its experimental techniques make it increasingly more likely that researchers fool themselves, knowledge in the community mostly consists of parroting expert opinions, and the experiments are practically not repeatable and completely nontransparent. The standard model is bad science. Nobody has to be afraid of stating that."
Alexander Unzicker, "The Higgs Fake", How Particle Physicists Fooled the Nobel Committee, p.141.
What everyone needs to always remember is that an updated “Neo-Ptolemaic” geocentric system with sufficient amount and sufficiently complex epicycles could provide the same rigorous quantitative results for planetary positions that our currently accepted heliocentric system provides. So, if you are happy working with the epicycles of particle physics, please enjoy!
Anyway, time is precious and you have failed to provide any meaningful challenge to my previous statements, so I will kindly leave you with the last word so I can continue with more productive matters. It was fun anyway. =)
Cheers!
Juan
Dear Anonumous Coward,
Re: "I'll give you that, I meant to say "inertial rotation". But it's just word play. My point still stands."
You may call it "absolute rotation" or "inertial rotation" — regardless of the arbitrary word of choice, the key point is that the speed of light in a sagnac interferometer is experimentally found to be constant ONLY with respect to "the fixed stars". In other words, a Sagnac interferometer detects rotation not with respect to a lab, not with respect to the Earth, nor to the sun, nor to the galaxy, nor with respect to any arbitrary frame of reference of choice but ONLY with respect to "the fixed stars", an experimentally-found preferred frame of reference that is identical to the one in which the original and not once falsified Theory of Relativity (i.e. The Lorentzian one) is based.
All this is explained in the paper that I pointed out to you, one that you apparently have not studied. Have you ever analyzed how a Sagnac Interferometer actually works? Let me help.
In 1951, P. A. M. Dirac wrote an article in the journal Nature titled "Is There an Aether?" in which he argued that we are “rather forced” to accept its existence. In 1953, Herbert Ives, the inventor of the television system that we all enjoy, explained the significance of the Sagnac Effect as follows:
"Further ground for rejecting the claim that Einstein's "view" renders the ether superfluous is furnished by the consideration that his scheme (even if it were valid) applies only to uniform rectilinear motion; rotational motion is excluded, yet optical signals are transmitted in such systems, and with results which point clearly and unequivocally to their transmission in an independent medium or coordinate system.
If light signals are sent out simultaneously in the "fore" and "aft" directions from a source moving in a circular path, and the two signals are brought back to the source by a series of reflections, they do not arrive simultaneously; the source has moved forward to meet one signal and has moved away from the other. This is the situation in the Michelson-Gale and Sagnac experiments, which yield positive first-order results exactly in conformity with the idea that the light signals travel in a fixed ether. The contractions of length and clock frequencies which account for null effects in uniform motion of translation, being of second order, do not materially alter the rotational effects. The optical phenomena in both uniformly and rotationally moving systems are completely explainable by a fixed ether and the Fitzgerald-Lorentz-Larmor contractions.
This survey of the background of the query "Is there an ether?" shows that the grounds for "abolishing" the ether were mistaken, and consequently Dirac's contribution would more properly have been entitled "Properties of the ether suggested by recent speculations."
Herbert Ives, "Genesis of the Query "Is there an Ether?", 1953.
Re: "You can easily derive it from the equations of SR, as summarized here [mathpages.com]. Also, you stated earlier that Lorenzian Relativity uses the exact same math as SR, so you're contradicting yourself here."
Please, I am not contradicting myself. That paper does not derive the experimentally-validated Sagnac formula using only the two postulates of SR. This shows again that you have not studied Marett's paper.
The original version of Relativity is based on the Lorentzian concepts of absolute time, a variable speed of light and an absolute frame of reference. From such concepts, the equations of Relativity that we continue to use today were derived. Afterwards, Einstein assumed instead his two postulates and derived the exact same equations, using different concepts to derive the exact same equations previously derived by Lorentz, Larmor, Poincaré, et. al.
However, such a mathematical equivalence is ONLY so for rectilinear uniform motion. For rotational motion like the one in the Sagnac Effect, there is a new equation that describes the phenomenon. Such
Re: "The rotation measured by the Sagnac Effect is an absolute rotation, that is, the platform's rotation with respect to an inertial reference frame."
An "absolute rotation" "with respect to an inertial reference frame" is an oxymoron (unless such frame of reference is an absolute one, which is surely not what you intended). Absolute is the conceptual opposite of relative, so it is contradictory to use absolute to mean relative. For all physicists, starting from Newton (and his water bucket) to pretty much all phycisists until the late 1910s, absolute motion (whether linear or circular) meant motion with respect to a preferred frame of reference, i.e. an absolute frame of reference, one that Newton called "absolute space" and Lorentz and most others from his time associated to the all-pervading aether. Such an absolute frame of reference can be associated to "the fixed stars" to an exceedingly good approximation. [Note: We need to do this because the nature of human measurement (which one should not conflate with the physical reality existing independently of our measurement) requires a frame of reference in order for the measurement to be carried out. All measurement is necessarily relative to an arbitrary standard, so "the fixed stars" seems to be the closest arbitrary standard that we may propose now as the preferred frame of reference, one validated by all optical experiments to date (as explained below)].
Re: "Being on the surface of the Earth, you are in an accelerating reference frame."
Of course. The point that you seem to be missing here is that, as shown by a sufficiently sensitive Sagnac interferometer, the only way that we can define an observer for which all circumstances the speed of light c is exactly constant in a circular path, is to place the observer stationary with respect to "the fixed stars". If the observer is associated to ANY OTHER frame of reference, the observer will be able to measure a speed different than c (with a sufficiently good experimental setup). This experimentally confirms that it is possible to detect — using a light-based experiment — a preferred frame of reference ("the fixed stars") relative to which the light-waves circular path is moving. The Sagnac interferometer thus experimentally falsifies the concept that "it is impossible to detect motion by measuring differences in the speed of light”. We can and do everyday using FOGs. All this has been covered several times in the literature, but I think that the clearest argumentation is found in this paper by physicist Doug Marett:
http://www.conspiracyoflight.c...
Re: "The effect can be perfectly explained with Special Relativity but not with Newtonian physics, and therefore is a nice demonstrator for the validity of the former."
The Sagnac Effect has NEVER been derived from the postulates of Special Relativity, which is exactly what is expected if one understands the experimental results summarized above.
Wikipedia incorrectly states that Laue derived the Sagnac Effect from the postulates of Special Relativity. In fact, Laue did a purely geometrical analysis which is identical to the one that is performed in an aether framework like Lorentz's one, as Laue states himself. The only difference is a tiny proposed time dilation due to the translating frame, which is so small and unmeasurable that it is always taken to be equal to one. So Laue's derivation contains no effective relativistic elements. It is in practice absolutely identical to the Galilean treatment, so it cannot be claimed in any way to follow from Special Relativity.
It has also been claimed that the Sagnac effect can be accounted for by assuming a constant light speed on the rotating disk and by factoring in the so-called "time dilation" of the rotating observer. This uses a backwards mathematical transformation from the stationary observer. This mathematical treatment, attributable to Langevin and repeated for example by E.
Anonynous Coward said: "That "time is absolute" is demonstrably false. And we can easily do experiments that show that time is not absolute. Take two of our most accurate clocks and sync them up. Move one of them to the top floor for a while. Then return it. They will no longer be in sync, with the difference exactly predicted by Einstein."
Well, the very real clock rate retardation effect that you are referring to was originally derived by Sir Joseph Larmor in 1897, full eight years before Einstein. Larmor wrote in 1897 that "... individual electrons describe corresponding parts of their orbits in times shorter for the [rest] system in the ratio (1 – v^2/c^2)^(1/2)". See:
Larmor, J. (1897). "A Dynamical Theory of the Electric and Luminiferous Medium. Part III. Relations with Material Media". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 190: 205.
Larmor derived such relationship by working under the qualitative interpretation that there is a preferred frame, i.e. an aether. In fact, the entire quantitative map underlying Relativity Theory was collectively developed by Woldemar Voigt, George Francis FitzGerald, Sir Joseph Larmor, Henri Poincaré, Olinto De Pretto, and — perhaps most importantly — the great Hendrik Antoon Lorentz. All these scientists derived their equations from the conceptual framework of a physically existent waving medium that provides a preferred frame. All this happened before Einstein had published his 1905 paper on Relativity.
As mentioned before, such a Lorentzian Relativity is based on a qualitative interpretation where the speed of light is variable, time is indeed absolute, and there is a preferred frame for light that is typically undetectable due to confounding properties of nature, such as the change in the rate of clocks with velocity and the contraction of matter with velocity. Every related experiment ever conducted confirms such a qualitative interpretation, which differs with the qualitative interpretation by 1905 Einstein where the speed of light is constant in all moving frames, the rate of time is variable, and the undetectable aether is irrelevant.
As an aside, please note that Einstein denied aether for only 11 years: between 1905 and 1916. He died in 1955. [See Ludwig Kostro's "Einstein and The Ether", in Toto.]
As I commented before, the quantitative maps of Einsteinian Relativity and Lorentzian Relativity are — in effect — quantitatively indistinguishable. Generally speaking, experiment cannot decide between the two. In other words, the quantitative maps (the equations) are identical, while the qualitative maps are totally different. This is thoroughly explained in the following paper by experimental physicist Doug Marett:
http://www.conspiracyoflight.c...
Anonymous coward said: "A more direct proof that time is not absolute is muons. Cosmic rays strike the upper atmosphere, creating muons. These are extremely short lived, and should decay long before they reach the surface, and yet we can detect them on the ground. The only explanation for this is that because of their speed, their time is slowed down relative to the observers. Unlike the clocks, there are no moving parts or things to stretch."
There is ample evidence that we do detect these things, whatever they are, on the ground. On the other hand, there is zero evidence that "there are no moving parts or things to stretch." That is your metaphysical assumptions about the nature of matter talking, not the actual evidence. In fact, the actual evidence shows that a muon — as everything at the sub-atomic scales — actually waves. Any waving material structure that we know of possesses deeper "moving parts" and "things to stretch".
Also, please note that the original derivation of this effect by Larmor in 1897 was based on moving electrons. Muons are conventionally understood as s
Dear Zorpheus,
The overlooked history of the development of Lorentzian Relativity and the subsequent development of Einsteinian Relativity is indeed very interesting. I have the strong feeling that someday it will be taught in all universities, not just as a lesson about the history of science but primarily as a lesson about human nature.
Historian of science Herbert Dingle stated that although from 1904 until 1919 relativity theory was generally ascribed to Lorentz, "with the apparent success in 1919 of Einstein’s general theory, with its then quite new and terrifying mathematical machinery of tensor calculus, came the fatal climax. Almost overnight ‘the relativity theory of Lorentz’ became ‘Einstein’s special relativity theory’, and it was immediately hailed as such by the mathematical experts. The established physicists ... gave up trying to understand the whole business, surrendered the use of their intelligence, and accepted passively whatever apparent absurdities the mathematicians put before them. They had the seeming excuse that the mathematical equations worked." [Dingle, Science at the Crossroads, p. 95.]
This historical turn of events could not happen without the "apparent success of the general theory", based on the famous 1919 eclipse expedition. Yet science historians John Earman and Clark Glymour have shown that the evidence presented was unquestionably inadequate. It was principally the triple-pronged public relations of the Astronomer Royal, the President of the Royal Society and Arthur Eddington that lent General Relativity its 1919 victory. See "Fabulous Science Fact and Fiction in the History of Scientific Discovery" by John Waller.
Anyway, please note that special relativity can indeed handle accelerating objects or accelerating frames of reference. This is explained in the following link at the website of John Baez (famous for being the author of the "crackpot index"):
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/...
In any case, on the relativistic notion that "it is impossible to detect motion by measuring differences in the speed of light", as tentatively concluded by the Michelson-Morley experiment, the Sagnac experiment shows that this can in fact be done. The Sagnac Effect demonstrates that depending on the placement of the observer, it is possible to see this variable speed of light and to confound apparent "time dilation".
Best regards,
Juan
Dear Meglon,
We should always be extremely careful to distinguish between the quantitative vs. qualitative aspects of scientific theory. The former is constructed from abstract equations, the latter is constructed from abstract concepts. Both are maps (or aspects of a map) trying to describe the real territory, i.e. the universe.
You are right in that the quantitative aspect of Relativity has an enormous amount of experimental confirmation. What you seem to be missing is that such a mathematical framework was not originally developed by Einstein. This seems to explain why, when you get into the mathematics of Relativity, you have to study Lorentz Transformation Equations, the Lorentz Factor, Lorentz boosts, the Lorentz group, Lorentz Symmetry and Lorentz Invariance.
E. T. Whittaker, notable mathematician and science historian, wrote a classical textbook about the history of electricity and electromagnetism. If you check out the book, you will not find a chapter titled "The Relativity of Einstein", but you will find one titled "The Relativity Theory of Poincaré and Lorentz", in which Whittaker wrote:
"It is clear, from the history set forth in the present chapter, that the theory of relativity had its origin in the theory of aether and electrons. When relativity had become recognised as a doctrine covering the whole operation of physical nature, efforts were made to present it in a form free from any special association with electromagnetic theory, and deducible logically from a definite set of axioms". [A History of The Theories of Aether and Electricity, Vol 2, pages 42-43].
The original version of the quantitative map of Relativity — that we may call Lorentzian Relativity — is based on a qualitative interpretation where the speed of light is variable, time is absolute, and there is a preferred frame for light that is typically undetectable due to confounding properties of nature, such as the change in the rate of clocks with velocity and the contraction of matter with velocity. On the other hand, Einstein later found a way to obtain the exact same quantitative map through a completely different qualitative interpretation, i.e., the speed of light is constant in all moving frames, the rate of time is variable, and the undetectable aether is irrelevant. The new qualitative interpretation by Einstein was in line with the philosophy of instrumentalism, i.e. the philosophical belief that we should make no distinction between unobservable entities and non-existent ones, even if observations only make sense in terms of levels of physical reality that are not easily measurable, or beyond measurement.
Most importantly, people seem to be largely unaware that the quantitative maps of Einsteinian Relativity and Lorentzian Relativity are — in effect — quantitatively indistinguishable. Generally speaking, experiment cannot decide between the two. In other words, the quantitative maps (the equations) are identical, while the qualitative maps are totally different. This is thoroughly explained in the following paper by experimental physicist Doug Marett:
http://www.conspiracyoflight.c...
(See also the references included in the paper).
In other words, every experiment confirming Relativity is evidence confirming Lorenzian Aether-Based Relativity, which is the original Theory of Relativity. Considering that we generally cannot distinguish between the two "versions" of Relativity by quantitative measures, we should focus more than ever on carefully studying the qualitative differences between them, and making our choice wisely.
Interestingly, you mention technologies as demonstrating the validity of Einsteinian Relativity. In fact, technologies provide perhaps the easiest way to distinguish between Einsteinian and Lorentzian Relativity. Everyday technology shows that there is indeed a preferred frame. We just need spin to observe it.
Perhaps the easies
Re: "I don't see the falsifying data"
The text below the image explains quite clearly why the observed image is actually falsifying data. The link provided says:
"In 2002, two astronomers at La Palma took spectra of the galaxies and the connecting filament. They not only confirmed the discrepancy in redshifts of the galaxies but also discovered that the two quasar-like objects embedded in the filament (objects 2 and 3) have even greater discrepancies in redshift. If redshift indicated distance, the small objects would be 7 and 11 times farther away than NGC 7603. To dismiss this alignment as coincidence is to breathe sand."
Again, that's 7 and 11 *times* farther away according to Big Bang assumptions, but instead the image shows the four objects clearly interconnected.
Re: "For this to mean anything data from one of the survey instruments needs to be analyzed to see if overlaps like this happen more often than would be expected randomly (including lensing). Its not a difficult analysis, but someone has to take the time to do it. There is some data in public domain. An interested person an analyze and publish."
If you had read the paper provided above, the first paragraphs explains one of the many ways in which the analysis you are suggesting has actually been done already, obtaining results that falsify the Big Bang Theory:
"The first question that needs to be answered in a review of anomalous redshift data is, “What is the statistical significance of the samples being cited?” Put another way; are anomalous redshift associations not in fact just extremely rare events that can be written off to chance alignments and optical illusion? This was for decades the criticism levelled particularly at the observational work of Halton Arp, so I will let him answer it (from his paper with Chris Fulton, 2008):
“Fulton & Arp have analyzed the positions, redshifts, and magnitudes of ~118,000 galaxies and ~25,000 quasars in the 2dF deep field. The examination of individual samples revealed concentrations of high z galaxies and quasars near galaxies. A natural extension of the analysis was to determine the average densities of objects over the survey area as a whole.”
Those are quite a few galaxies and quasars, I would say.
Now this is the really the last one from my side, good luck!
Physicist George Chapline has advanced the First Theorem of Science: “It is impossible to convince a person of any true thing that will cost him money.”
Nobel Prize winning physicist Robert Laughlin says that "We should probably rename it the First Theorem and drop the Science part." (Laughlin, 2005, p. 114)
This quote related to an astronomy textbook from the 1930s summarizes the situation pretty well:
https://youtu.be/rwDnOLg0Nss?t...
Over and out! =)
The youtube video includes many references to original sources, documents that describe the many attacks from scientists to the mere idea of a rocket.
For example, the book Space Exploration by Ron Miller, says in page 21: "The idea that a rocket flew by pushing against the air behind it was a common one that many scientists of the era believed".
But I'll let you keep ignoring the tragic story of Goddard's ridicule, when pseudoscience was found to be science after all. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it".
I've finished with this postings, so I'll let you have the last word. Have a nice day!
As long as you continue to refuse to review the falsifying evidence, you will continue to think that cosmology is not in crisis.
"When Big Bang proponents make assertions such as “the evidence taken together hangs together beautifully,” they overlook observational facts that have been piling up for 25 years and that have now become overwhelming. Of course, if one ignores contradictory observations, one can claim to have an “elegant” or “robust” theory. But it isn’t science." -- Halton Arp
What you should do is to forget about theoretical claims, ask your self if the Big Bang is falsifiable, and if it is, then look at the raw data compiled in those four books. Check out for example the following link with just one example found in the books:
https://www.thunderbolts.info/...
There you will see four objects, with four completely different redshifts, two of the four objects being quasars, physically associated through a plasma filament. That is impossible, according the Big Bang assumptions regarding redshift.
"It seems likely that redshift may not be due to an expanding Universe, and much of the speculations on the structure of the universe may require re-examination." - Edwin Hubble, PASP, 1947
"The evidence that many objects previously believed to be at great distances are actually much closer confronts us with the most drastic possible revision of current concepts." - Halton Arp.
The four books and related papers are chock full of similar raw evidence in which it is observationally found that the idea of redshift being an indicator of an "expanding Universe" (whatever you may want to physically interpret by that) has been falsified again and again and again.
Anyway, you seem to reject the possibility that the Big Bang Theory is observationally falsifiable. In such case, it is not a science. One way or the other, I finished with these postings. Enjoy!
The scientists who ridiculed Goddard and thought that rocketry was pseudoscience for full 24 years did know how to do the math very well. The historical mistake had nothing to do with learning how to do math.
By the way, I work in an electrical engineering laboratory and I apply mathematical physics everyday. Also, the weather forecast today for Siberia is -14 C. Both statements are equally relevant to the core of the controversy being discussed.
I'll let you have the last word, hopefully it will make you happy. Have a nice day! (Even if you are in frigid Siberia)
The deep question that you should be asking is the following: is the Big Bang Theory falsifiable?
If it is not, then it is not really science. If it is falsifiable, then the scientific method demands that scientists should be constantly looking for observational evidence that could invalidate it. This is not happening nowadays within academia. It did happened some decades ago, but when this world-renowned observational astronomer discovered the falsifying evidence, instead of being congratulated, he was basically sacked from the observatory (as explained in the video documentary previously mentioned).
If you had spend the time to actually look for such thing, then you may be surprised to find that the observational evidence falsifying the Big Bang creation story is very numerous. If you just want to focus on the controversy over redshift, then there are scores of papers related to it. This is just one for example:
https://www.academia.edu/81152...
If you really want to deeply understand why the Big Bang Theory has been observationally falsified, I recommend the following four books that you may use as a reference for all the papers that are cited within them.
https://www.amazon.com/Quasars...
https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-...
https://www.amazon.com/Catalog...
https://www.amazon.com/Galileo...
In any case, the lesson of Halton Arp's story goes far beyond the data which observationally falsifies the Big Bang Theory (assuming that the theory really is falsifiable, something that doesn't seem to be the case). Arp's story is a very sad one and a lesson about everything that is wrong within academic science, and about what we need to radically change if we want to promote scientific progress and innovation.
Re: "Which discoveries are you thinking of?"
For example, the discoveries of ubiquitous associations between high redshift objects and low redshift objects, all of which falsifies Big Bang Theory (because, if it is a scientific theory, it should be falsifiable, right?). If you only have a couple of hours to spend, you can start here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
For a more technical coverage of these discoveries, you should get Halton Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies and his three books on the subject.
And by the way, all the testable predictions confirmed by experiment associated to Relativity Theory come from its mathematical formalism, all of which was formulated by aetherists like Voigt, Larmor, De Pretto, Lorentz, Fitzgerald and Poincaré, all that happening before Einstein had written his first paper. From historian of science Whittaker's second volume on the History on the Theories of Aether and Electricity, from the chapter called "The Relativity Theory of Poincaré and Lorentz":
"It is clear, from the history set forth in the present chapter, that the theory of relativity had its origin in the theory of aether and electrons. When relativity had become recognised as a doctrine covering the whole operation of physical nature, efforts were made to present it in a form free from any special association with electro-magnetic theory, and deducible logically from a denite set of axioms of greater or less plausibility."
And by the way (bis), Frank Wilczek, a Nobel Prize winner for his contributions in Quantum Field Theory, has recently published a very recommendable book called: "The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces".
That's incorrect. Not just journalists but principally scientists considered rocketry to be pseudoscience, for full 24 years, and with tragic consequences. US scientists in particular considered the idea ridiculous. German scientists did not.
The important story of Goddard's mockery, including concrete examples of how scientists ridiculed the very real science of rocketry are covered here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
What you seem to be overlooking is that one paradigm predicted a filamentary universe (at least since the 1950s), while the other one didn't. Ubiquitous filamentation was not predicted at all by conventional astrophysics. And space age observations show that we do live in a filamentary universe.
Can gravity itself form ubiquitous filamentation? Well, if you add a sufficient quantity of carefully invented ad hocs, everything can be accounted for. Some unobserved dark matter exactly here, a little hypothetical dark energy exactly there, and everything is possible.
Or, instead of that, you just observe a novelty plasma globe and apply Occam's Razor.
You seem to be overlooking the fact that the space age has been one of an unending stream of "surprises", which is the actual misleading world that is typically reported by scientific journalists. But these "surprises" were not like when you find a strange-looking deep-sea species that you just add to the species catalog. No, what the historical record of this enormous quantity of surprises show is that these "surprises" were actually a theoretical failure to predict what was going to be discovered. The collective message of all these thousands of discoveries that were failed to predict is that we should be looking for a different viewpoint for the same data.
If you were to just suspend judgement and study the complexities of this profound controversy, then perhaps you would be surprised (pun intended) to find that the actual theoretical failures to predict the discoveries of the space age are pervasive and a constant, "surprises" that occur persistently in all sub-disciplines of astronomy and astrophysics, from planetary science (the latests "surprises" coming from the Juno mission), to cometary science, infrared astronomy, radio-astronomy, stellar astronomy, etc.
Of course, if you have only one paradigm and you are not going to consider an alternative one—the approach chosen by academic science—then you can always find ad hoc ways to try to account for observations. Dark matter, dark energy and inflation are just some examples of ad hoc measures incurred to patch what was failed to predict.
I've read absolutely all the comments for this post, and the initial poster seems to be in fact some of the very few persons being strictly rational here.
So, care to explain exactly in what ways he is not being a rational person, in your view?
Have you spotted any logical fallacies, for example? Or what exactly?
Yeah, no need to ever study ongoing controversies of science. Everything is "fine", like here:
https://www.theverge.com/2016/...
Actually, a survey of 270 academics reveals that the information engine at the heart of science is broken, see:
https://plus.google.com/+Chris...
When your car's engine breaks down, you pull off to the side of the road and fix it. Why does the academic community assume that they can steer the machine to truth when the flows of scientific information are governed by "perverse incentives"?
A better example of the denial to act like a scientific skeptic by suspending the rush to judgement can hardly be imagined. Thank you.
I fail to see how my historical example of previously solved problems becoming unsolved again during a paradigm-shift is "complete bullshit".
Re: " you think you know something that no one else seems to have figured out"
The original ideas behind these controversies are certainly not mine. They originated with scientists like Hannes Alfvén, who used his Nobel Prize acceptance speech to tell the scientific community that they were misapplying his ideas to the astronomical scales, and if they continued to do so, a deep crisis in science would ensue. If you were to suspend judgement as a true skeptic and just spend the hard work of studying the controversy, it would be clear to you that Alfvén's worrying prediction was on target.
Re: "So when is the electrical universe gonna blow a hole in what we already understand? Where does it actually do a better job? Where are the mathematical models?"
If you had done the hard work of studying the diverse complexities underlying this foundational controversy—a time-consuming study that is apparent that neither you nor almost everyone else commenting here have done yet—then you would have answers to such questions. Much more importantly, you would be asking better questions.
Science should be about the culture of skepticism. This is the definition of 'skeptic' that I find most useful: "Skeptic - One who practices the method of suspended judgment, engages in rational and dispassionate reasoning as exemplified by the scientific method, shows willingness to consider alternative explanations without prejudice based on prior beliefs, and who seeks out evidence and carefully scrutinizes its validity." —Bernard Haisch, astrophysicist
The scientific habit of suspending judgement seems to be very very hard to most people, but it really isn't.
If you were to suspend judgement and study the ongoing controversies of science, then you would start acknowledging the dangers of specialization.
See: https://plus.google.com/+Chris...
"People become engrossed in figuring out the next decimal place, and they lose sight of why they adopted the theory in the first place. They become too busy to revisit first assumptions. They take those assumptions for granted. The assumptions become unconscious and then they're surprised when reality throws data at them that isn't covered by the assumption."
"They have a certainty that comes from ignoring questions. They have the one true faith that comes from tunnel vision (specialization provides an extremely narrow field of view). This is a job description for technicians, but not for scientists."
"Science ... is first of all about the questions. We need the answers in order to do things, but we need the questions more in order to do new things."
So far, such "right answer" seems to be the Standard Model, a theory which is typically regarded as “the pinnacle of science” or even “the theory of almost everything.” The Standard Model poses that the whole physical world is reduced to exactly 61 different kind of zero-sized point-particles, entities that somehow interact through four non-contact interactions, forces that are simultaneously also zero-sized point-particles. In addition, each of these 61 different kinds of extensionless entities may demonstrate the incomprehensible wave-particle paradox (as Feynman reminded us, "Nobody understands quantum mechanics"). All this activity happens, it is claimed, in 4D "curved" spacetime. In addition, absolutely all that was created from nothing sometime ago, starting from an "initial singularity" of "infinite density".
Just a quick reminder of the so-called right answer.
The point being made is that cosmology is in a deep crisis, and that neither the crisis nor the profound paradigm-shift that seems to be required to solve the crisis are discussed in physics departments. How would I know? Just paying attention to what academic whistleblowers have to say (see the list below).
An Open Letter to the Scientific Community
Published in New Scientist, May 22, 2004
cosmologystatement.org
Website no longer works, but original page can be viewed here
https://web.archive.org/web/20...
"The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed -- inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples. Without them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory. In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, raise serious questions about the validity of the underlying theory.
But the big bang theory can't survive without these fudge factors. Without the hypothetical inflation field, the big bang does not predict the smooth, isotropic cosmic background radiation that is observed, because there would be no way for parts of the universe that are now more than a few degrees away in the sky to come to the same temperature and thus emit the same amount of microwave radiation.
Without some kind of dark matter, unlike any that we have observed on Earth despite 20 years of experiments, big-bang theory makes contradictory predictions for the density of matter in the universe. Inflation requires a density 20 times larger than that implied by big bang nucleosynthesis, the theory's explanation of the origin of the light elements. And without dark energy, the theory predicts that the universe is only about 8 billion years old, which is billions of years younger than the age of many stars in our galaxy.
What is more, the big bang theory can boast of no quantitative predictions that have subsequently been validated by observation. The successes claimed by the theory's supporters consist of its ability to retrospectively fit observations with a steadily increasing array of adjustable parameters, just as the old Earth-centered cosmology of Ptolemy needed layer upon layer of epicycles.
Yet the big bang is not the only framework available for understanding the history of the universe. Plasma cosmology and the steady-state model both hypothesize an evolving universe without beginning or end. These and other alternative approaches can also explain the basic phenomena of the cosmos, including the abundances of light elements, the generation of large-scale structure, the cosmic background radiation, and how the redshift of far-away galaxies increases with distance. They have even predicted new phenomena that were subsequently observed, something the big bang has failed to do.
Supporters of the big bang theory may retort that these theories do not explain every cosmological observation. But that is scarcely surprising, as their development has been severely hampered by a complete lack of funding. Indeed, such questions and alternatives cannot even now be freely discussed and examined. An open exchange of ideas is lacking in most mainstream conferences. Whereas Richard Feynman could say that 'science is the culture of doubt', in cosmology today doubt and dissent are not tolerated, and young scientists learn to remain silent if they have something negative to say about the standard big bang model. Those who doubt the big bang fear that saying so will cost them their funding.
Even observations are now interpreted through this biased filter, judged right or wrong depending on whether or not they support the big bang. So discordant data on red shifts, lithium and helium abundances, and galaxy distrib
What you are overlooking is that, in the midst of all such sea of crackpots saying untenable things, there are also the original thinkers that are not only pointing out real problems with accepted theory, but also providing the new ideas that we need to move forward.
Indeed, true wisdom is rare in critical websites, online forums, and comments. But this low signal-to-noise ratio is simply the nature of the challenge, much like mining for gold.
You are assuming that, just because the internet is inundated with untenable ideas, then absolutely all against-the-mainstream ideas must also be untenable. Such an assumption effectively cripples our possibilities for conceptual breakthroughs. This is why we must learn from history. Barry Marshall is a case in point. He would have continued to be a crackpot if he had not infected himself. He should not have needed to infect himself.
The Longitude Problem is also a very telling historical lesson. The ideas that we need can come from anywhere. See:
https://plus.google.com/+Chris...