Lubos Motl ET String Theorist at Harvard? :-) & Saving Einstein


Thanks Tony.:-) I need to think about it more as well. It's all in the details. It will take time. Curious Cahill gets a number close to the dipole anisotropy of the CM though not exactly the same and in a different direction and he is well aware of the latter. I think it is good that Cahill's papers are posted by the archiv since it is a serious paper even if it is wrong. It is wrong in an interesting way! It's a great project for a college course in relativity for example. Hans Bethe gave such a course to 6 of us back at Cornell in 1960. The 6 included Peter Goldreich who went on to become an important astronomy professor at Cal Tech. I include Hal Puthoff's PV papers in same category as Cahill's - wrong in an interesting way that should be studied and should be on the archive. Ibison's PV cosmology paper I think was not allowed and it was a good paper. The relativity principle is the corner stone of The Temple that Cahill, a wannabe Samson, is trying to pull down. :-)

re; your final remarks below: There are major attacks on M theory as what Feynman called "Cargo Cult Science" http://www.physics.brocku.ca/etc/cargo_cult_science.html by people like Shelly Glashow. http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/blog/
http://www.chowk.com/show_article.cgi?aid=00003573&channel=university%20ave&start=0&end=9&chapter=1&page=1
http://www.dailyfreepress.com/news/2005/01/25/Science/The-Thin.Line.Of.Theory-840583.shtml
The math is pretty to be sure. But physics is more than math - unless Max Tegmark is correct in his Super Platonism http://www.hep.upenn.edu/~max/multiverse1.html.

On Feb 2, 2005, at 3:42 AM, Tony Smith wrote:

Jack, now I see that you are correct that Cahill's paper at
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/physics/0501051 is flawed.

He analyzes the air Michelson-Morley experiments
with air refractive index n =/= 1
by considering that n is constant for the entire experiment
and that
"... The Fitzgerald-Lorentz contraction effect causes the arm ...
parallel to the absolute velocity to be physically contracted ..."
and that for all parts of the experiment
"... with n the refractive index of the gas present ...".

In short,
Cahill is using a constant air refractive index n =/= 1
while
ignoring the change in n due to the changed density of air
due to the "physical ... Fitzgerald-Lorentz ... contract[ion]"
of the system with respect to
the "arm ... parallel to the absolute velocity".

I am sorry that it took me so long to see that clear error,
and
I apologize for burdening you with my previous messages
about Cahill's paper.

It is interesting that arXiv allows him to post such a paper,
even to the physics archive,
while you and some others and I are blacklisted from doing so.

I do not advocate blacklisting Cahill, at least in part because
I did learn some things by studying his paper and seeing the
nature of a flaw in its analysis,
and because studying such flaws helps me keep my mind open
to new ways of thinking and to do a better job of distinguish
realistic thoughts from unrealistic thoughts.

I do think that it shows that the arXiv establishment may be
willing to allow flawed unconventional papers to be posted,
perhaps so that they can point to such papers as proving
that unconventional physics ideas are always wrong and
the conventional physics ideas are always correct,
but
the arXiv establishment remains so extremely fearful of unconventional
papers that may (at least in substantial part) be correct
that your Dark Energy ideas, Brian's cold fusion and consciousness ideas,
Carlos's Clifford algebra ideas, Paul's use of electromagnetism in
astrophysics/cosmology, my physics model, etc., must be banned
lest they lead to change in the world of physics,
which change could lead to the current set of "experts" being superseded
in jobs, grants, etc, by a new set of people.

Tony

PS - It will be hard for me to take advantage of Planck's thought
that new ideas may be accepted after the current set of "experts" die,
in part because
the conventional string theory community has done such an effective
job of indoctrinating so many young physicists, one example
being Lubos Motl.

Who in reality is a extra-terrestrial according to his own website! :-)

Lubos, assuming that only he has a sense of humor, wrote that he was only joking in


"Am I an ET alien?

The most ridiculous item of the day

Today I've received several e-mails from Doc Savage and from Jack Sarfatti. They have figured out that I am an extraterrestrial alien. Their evidence is composed of many pieces:
• Doc Savage claims that he has already met me, and he has a video of our encounter:
• http://stardrive.org/cartoon/coffee.html
• Also, Doc Savage has found my web page that proves that I am an ET alien:
• http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~motl/
• Moreover, Jack Sarfatti proves his point by another claim that I am a "sex-shifting alien"

http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~motl/ .

"I hope that you are not distracted by the animated picture of myself. All of us had to prepare special masks to look just as the people living on the Earth. So whenever you meet me at the Department of Physics and Astronomy in New Jersey or at NASA or our spaceship, you will see a person looking precisely as the terresterial human beings. My mask is able to change its gender so I can look both as a girl and as a boy. You can see my mask here
http://www.kolej.mff.cuni.cz/~lmotm275/morf/lhm.gif "

"• Doc Savage has another piece of evidence, namely my agreement with Cumrun Vafa that the question "Should string theory be studied at all?" is not the right question for the year 2005.

A copy of these mails has arrived to the mailboxes of many other people with similar beliefs as Doc Savage and Jack Sarfatti, for example Carlos Castro, Brian Josephson, the Nobel prize winner, and others.

Well, I am sure that they won't believe me anyway. But let me try to say that I am not an ET alien. The Rutgers alien web page has been created as a joke 7 years ago. Well, it's true that since 1998, I've received about 100 e-mails from the people who really believed that I was an extraterrestrial alien and they were extremely grateful that they found my web page (although most of them have already met ET's before). It makes my point harder to prove, but I am really not an ET alien! ;-) The last animation is called "morphing", and I have nothing to do with the shockwave animation.

Thanks for your understanding. :-)"

http://motls.blogspot.com/

For the record, I can't speak for Doc Savage of course, all of my references to Lubos' own writings claiming he was an ET had SMILEY's :-) and was also done in jest exactly like his. There goes that double standard again. Hey what shockwave animation is that? As they say, if you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen. :-)

Perhaps the conventional string theory community has learned
from such groups as the Jesuits that if they get to indoctrinate
people during their initial learning process then the doctrine
will in most cases be believed for all the life of the indoctrinee.

Unfortunately,
the level of maturity and objectivity of the people of the
physics/astronomy establishment is indicated by the following quote
from a 2 February 2005 review in The New York Times by William Grimes
of Simon Singh's new book, "Big Bang":
"... When Martin Ryle, a British radio astronomer,
was presented with a photograph disproving his theory
that celestial radio waves emanated from stars, not galaxies,
he threw himself face down on a couch,
in full view of his colleagues at a conference,
and burst into tears.
Then he got up, dusted himself off and began plotting revenge. ...".

On Jan 31, 2005, at 3:18 PM, Gary S Bekkum / SSR wrote:

FYI

The Speed of Light and the Einstein Legacy: 1905-2005

http://www.arxiv.org/abs/physics/0501051

Authors: Reginald T Cahill (Flinders University)
Comments: 22 pages, 10 figures. better graphics
Subj-class: General Physics

That the speed of light is always c=300,000km/s relative to any
observer in nonaccelerating motion is one of the foundational concepts
of physics. Experimentally this was supposed to have been first
revealed by the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment, and was made one of
Einstein's key postulates of Special Relativity in 1905.

However in 2002 the actual 1887 fringe shift data was analysed for
the first time with a theory for the Michelson interferometer that
used both the Fitzgerald-Lorentz contraction effect, as well as the
effect of the air in the interferometer on the speed of light.

That analysis showed that the data gave an absolute motion speed in
excess of 300km/s.

So far six other experiments have been shown to give the same result.

This implies that the foundations of physics require significant
revision. As well data shows that both Newtonian gravity and General
Relativity are also seriously flawed, and a new theory of gravity is
shown to explain various so-called gravitational `anomalies',
including the `dark matter' effect. Most importantly absolute motion
is now understood to be the cause of the various relativistic effects,
in accord with the earlier proposal by Lorentz.

--
Gary S Bekkum

Starstream Research
PO Box 1144
Maple Grove, MN 55311