## Sunday, December 13, 2009

### A Paper Illustrating More of Crothers' Relativity Errors

Dr. Jason Sharples has published a paper in  'Progress in Physics', “Coordinate Transformations and Metric Extension: a Rebuttal to the Relativistic Claims of Stephen J. Crothers” which points out some of the many strange errors that Stephen J. Crothers makes in his somewhat bizarre interpretation of relativity.  I've written some on this topic already (See "Some Preliminary Comments on Crothers' Relativity Claims").

Dr. Sharples exposes Crothers' misstatements in a very pedagogical way, choosing simpler examples, such as 2-dimensional geometry, and applying Crothers' analysis methods.  This technique illustrates that Crothers' claims of 'fatal problems for general relativity' are actually problems in Mr. Crothers' interpretation of general relativity.

For example, Mr. Crothers' likes to claim that General Relativity has an internal contradiction because the metric radius in a Hilbert form of the Schwarzschild metric is not equal to the Gaussian curvature (Wikipedia: Gaussian Curvature) of the metric.  Dr. Sharples uses the simple example of a spherical line element in a Euclidean (flat) 3-dimensional space to illustrate that these quantities are not equal even in this simplified case and are not required to be equal.

From this introductory example, Sharples dives into Crothers' strange arguments about the Schwarzschild solution.

1) One of the more interesting revelations from Sharples' examination is that Crothers' 'solution' for a spherically-symmetric time-independent system in General Relativity is actually just the Schwarzschild metric, truncated to the region outside the event horizon.

2) Crothers presents the variable, $\alpha$ in his form of the equation, as an arbitrary free parameter.  Crothers never bothers to apply the physical constraint that the metric must generate motions consistent with the Newtonian gravitational solutions.  Once this constraint is applied, Sharples demonstrates that $\alpha = 2m$ = the Schwarzschild radius!

3) Item (2) becomes even more important when Sharples demonstrates that Crothers' solution is simply the traditional Schwarzschild solution mapped in a different coordinate system.  Crothers' infinity of solutions has no physical meaning, just as we can study the Earth in spherical, cylindrical, or cartesian coordinates (whichever is more convenient for the mathematics) with no change in the physical results.

I'd like to thank Dr. Sharples for his work on a very clear and understandable paper.  My own GR is a bit rusty and I would have had to spend some time reviewing relativity before I could have prepared a response to Crothers of this quality.  I am also very pleased that Dr. Sharples hit at the same fundamental areas where I suspected Crothers was off-base, using simpler real-world geometric cases to expose Crothers' misunderstandings as well as applying the real-world constraints in Crothers' Schwarzschild analysis.  They were all on my 'to do list' for a possible response.

Crothers' analysis is seriously flawed.  I wonder how Crothers would make his 'interpretation' of the spherically-symmetric solution consistent with the physics needed to make a reliable GPS receiver (see “Scott Rebuttal. I. GPS & Relativity”).

As an aside, I also find it interesting that Mr. Crothers has become aligned with the Electric Universe (EU) advocates.  Mr. Crothers' understanding of physics seems to rely on some rather bizarre interpretations of mathematics that keep it disconnected with real physical theories.  Yet comparison of mathematical models against observations and/or experiments is a key component of valid science.  If Crothers chooses to dismiss such validation, he is admitting that he is not doing science.

Meanwhile, the EU supporters distrust mathematical models, considering the level of excuses I receive when I've tried to find reproducible details on their Electric Sun models.  EU seems to rely on what could only be described as electrophilic pareidolia (Wikipedia: Pareidolia) in observations, assuming any filamentary glowing structure must be an electric arc.

Crothers is all mathematics with no experiment.
The Electric Universe is all experiment with no mathematics.
How these two ended up working together is a mystery in itself!

Mr. Crothers has apparently prepared a rebuttal to Sharples, but it was rejected (!!) by 'Progress in Physics' (Crothers is on the editorial board of this publication).  I suspect the rebuttal was longer than the new 8-page limit of PiPs new policy.  If Mr. Crothers has this response online, I'll be happy to post a LINK to it.

“Experiment without theory is tinkering.  Theory without experiment is numerology.“
Both are needed for a successful science.

#### 75 comments:

Anonymous said...

Crothers pals around with the EU crowd for much the same reason that the EU crowd are big fans of Arp et al.; namely, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

In this sense, the EU is a very broad church.

Nereid

Anonymous said...

The arguments here levelled against me are spurious. Here is my reply to Sharples:

www.sjcrothers.plasmaresources.com/REPLY.pdf

Sharples is mistaken at all turns.

Crothers, S.J.

Anonymous said...

Here is my paper on spherically symmetric metric manifolds in 3-space. Sharples, Bridgman and Nereid should study it carefully. I'd be most interested in where they can prove me wrong:

http://www.ptep-online.com/index_files/2007/PP-09-14.PDF

Crothers, S.J.

David Sadler said...

Why doesn't Jason Sharples debate Stephen Crothers on the Internet for the world to see? This is the age of the Internet. This is possible now. Allow the debate participants to use visuals and supporting documents. We live in an age of scientific bias and propaganda. Propagandized bias only works when there is no debate between the opposing points of view. This allows one view to dominate, not because of the strength of the idea but because of the exclusion of the opposing view. Let these men of ideas fight it out in a live Internet meeting so that free and open minds ready for the next paradigm shift can witness the exchange so that collectively we can move our understanding of reality forward.”

"Bias has to do with the elimination of points of view, not presenting a point of view."
-- Roger Ailes, the president of Fox News, in his 2003 interview with Broadcasting & Cable magazine regarding bias in the mainstream news media –

David Sadler
www.david-sadler.org

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

Mr. Sadler,

A 'debate' is what's taking place, via their publications, which is how professionals do it.

But if you mean a 'performance', with time limits, etc., like what the creationists enjoy, that does not work in science. Such forums favor the individual who can surprise their opponent with the most unexpected claim, regardless of its veracity.

Craig said...

The postscript of Jason Sharples' paper proves to me that Sharples hasn't fully comprehended Crothers' arguments.

In the postscript, he supposedly debunks Crothers' paper in the current issue of Progress in Physics by showing that the metric constructed there is just the Schwarzschild metric
written in terms of an ‘inverted’ radial coordinate.

But how does this debunk Crothers' arguments? All Sharples is doing is stating the obvious.

The truth is that it is impossible to debunk Crothers' arguments because his arguments are all based on Schwarzshild's original paper. In this paper, Schwarzschild derives a unique solution and in this solution there are no black holes.

David Sadler said...

Greetings, Mr. Bridgman,

Might I respectfully suggest that you are overlooking the fact that many status quo editors bias their readership by excluding and/or prejudicing views conflicting with the current ‘scientific’ dogmas. This prejudice parallels your use of terms loaded with negative connotations such as ‘creationists.’ Those advocating competing ideas are waved off using ad hominine attacks that are personal in nature – not scientific. Please show where Crothers is invoking any reference to creationism in his arguments.

To answer your question, I mean ‘debate’ not ‘performance.’ If there is a conflict between the way an observation or theoretical particular is currently explained and the way a new view interprets the observation or theoretical particular, then it is that discussion with evidence presented to support one view or falsify the opposing view that would be presented and debated by the presenters. The claims have already been made on paper. There is nothing unexpected about what might be said. It is the veracity of the competing arguments supported by evidence that is the whole point. It is the open equal playing field of the live debate that would eliminate the possibility of bias by exclusion or name calling.

Stephen Crothers has factual documented evidence to show that his views have been biased by exclusion and by ad hominine attack. Now it seems as though you might be defaming his work by calling it ‘creationism.’ How can professionals make informed comparative decisions if the only view presented is that of the status quo which history shows over and over again to be proven wrong once the dynamic between politics and technology changes?

Would you consider debating Stephen Crothers on the World Wide Web? I think that can be arranged. The debate agenda would be confined to a manageable logical unit of work comprised of specific areas of disagreement that would falsify one of the view points. These specific areas would be agreed to in advance by both participants. This would eliminate any surprises or unexpected claims.

Respectfully,

David Sadler
www.david-sadler.org

Anonymous said...

"Why doesn't Jason Sharples debate Stephen Crothers on the Internet for the world to see?"

I agree... Sharpe must atleast respond to the reply... I have seen nothing from Sharpe that clearly refutes Crothers' work.

Nereid's ad-hominem attachment of this issue to Arp is bizarre and irrelevant.

Bridgemans peppering of dismissals throughout the article is also bizarre and irrelevant to the material.

Please focus, and just address the science.

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

One thing I've never been clear about in Crothers efforts is are his gripes with the Hilbert version of the Schwarzschild solution or with General Relativity in general.

Crothers continues to complain about the using the Schwarzschild metric in the study of the motions of more than one object with the argument that the metric is designed with the assumption of a single mass only.

However, the only examples I know of this are where the test masses studied are *very* small compared to the mass generating the gravitational field (and the metric) so the object in motion has a negligible effect on the gravitational field. This type of calculation for things such as orbiting precision clocks, verified by individual experiments, is now done routinely, as implemented in the GPS system, and it works very well. I'm more inclined to believe those who have developed working experiments and technologies based on a theory over those who have not. If Mr. Crothers wishes to complain about the approximation (say for satellite motion in Earth orbit), he should compute the size of the error made by this 1-body assumption compared to the solution of including the mass of the satellite and demonstrate that it results in a *measurable* error. Otherwise he is just being pedantic.

In cases where the multiple bodies in the system are of comparable masses, Numerical Relativity must be used to solve the field equations for all the masses in the system in a self-consistent way.

One should note that a similar issue arises using Maxwell's equations in a multi-particle system and is handled in a similar fashion.

In regards to the Crothers alternative metric, the original Schwarzschild metric...

While the idea of crossing the event horizon of a Hilbert-version of the metric is a popular exercise in mathematics and science fiction, I know of no astrophysical applications where this possibility is considered. For all practical purposes, the region within the event horizon may be unreachable from the exterior, so many of Crothers complaints on this are probably irrelevant.

Since Crothers' metric has significant differences in the strong field limit, what kind of timing differences would we expect using his metric in the case of binary pulsars? See General Relativity Survives Gruelling Pulsar Test: Einstein At Least 99.95 Percent Right,
The Confrontation between General Relativity and Experiment, Confronting General Relativity to binary pulsars.

If he can demonstrate that the alternative metric gives results within measured error bars, then he might have something credible.

I have yet to see anything from Crothers' suggesting EXPERIMENTAL tests of his claimed metric. Without such validation against experiment or observation, a theory is indistinguishable from numerology. If one wishes to claim that my insistence that Mr. Crothers ideas be testable against experiment is 'irrelevant', then they are saying that Mr. Crothers theory has no relevance to how the universe operates and things we can measure - essentially saying Mr. Crothers is practicing an untestable pseudoscience.

The sad part is Mr. Crothers seems to have some actual talent in mathematics, but has a habit of treating every criticism of his work as a personal attack instead of learning and addressing the issues raised.

Anonymous said...

Mr Sadler,

Please understand - Mr Crothers doesn't even get to the science of GR. His mistakes are mathematical. Mathematics is not science. There is no debating mathematical proof.

Craig, with Crothers' supposed counter-examples to the KS extension he tries to show that there are metrics which satisfy all the requirements for a vacuum solution but which contradict the claims made of the Schwarz. metric by the "astrophysical scientists" (this is all on page 1!). What is easy to show is that Crothers' counter-example metrics are identically the Schwarz metric and so are entirely consistent with what the astrophysical scientists.

Nuff said.

J. Sharples

Anonymous said...

I just tried to read Crothers paper:
http://www.ptep-online.com/index_files/2007/PP-09-14.PDF

I got to paragraph one of section 2 where he says "Let E3 be Efcleetheen 3-space (he refuses to call it Euclidean as the rest of the world does!?) and let M3 be 3d metric manifold." So far so good. But then he says "Let there be a one-to-one correspondence between all points of E3 and M3." This is not possible (e.g. let M3 be the 3-sphere) and shows that Crothers doesn't even have a basic understanding of what a manifold is. If he can't get the basics right in the first section of his paper, why should I be bothered to read the rest?

Crothers is clearly a crank. Bridgeman and Sharples are correct.

Anonymous said...

It is certainly possible to have M3 and E3 in one-to-one correspondence. My paper on metric manifolds is correct. See also the references, particularly T. Levi-Civita. Also, there are no known soliutions to Eisntein's field equations for two or more masses and there is no existence theorem by which it can even be asserted that his field equations contain latent solutions for multiple masses. Numerical methods applied to an ill-posed problem are meaningless. Sharples and Bridgman are wrong.

Sharples has clearly not understood my KS counter-examples paper, as revelaed by his conclusion. The counter examples invalidate the so-called KS "extension". Moreover, the motivation to the KS "extension" implies a non-static solution to a static problem. Furthermore, the mathematics surrounding Hilbert's corruption of Schwarzschild's solution is quite trivial, and not even necessary to invalidate the black hole fantasy. According to Einstein and his followers his Principle of Equivalence and his Special Relativity must manifest in sufficiently small regions of his gravitational field, and these regions can be located anywhere in his gravitational field. Both the Principle of Equivalence and Special Relativity are defined in terms of the a priori presence of multiple arbitrarily large finite masses and photons. Therefore, neither the Principle of Equivalence nor Special Relativity can manifest in a spacetime that by construction contains no matter. But Ric = 0, according to Einstein and his followers, is a spacetime that by construction contains no matter. The upshot of this is that Einstein's field equations violate the usual conservation of energy and so are in conflict with experiment. Einstein's invention of his pseudo-tensor, in order to avoid this catastrophe, is invalid because his pseudo-tensor implies the existence of a linear invariant that is composed solely of the components of the metric tensor and their first derivatives. But the pure mathematicians G. Ricci-Curbastro and T. Levi-Civita proved in 1900 that such invariants do not exist. Therefore, by reduction ad absurdum, Einstein's pseudo-tensor is a meaningless concoction of mathematical symbols and everything relying upon it just nonsense, like Einstein gravitational waves. The search for such waves is destined to detect none. None have been detected - as expected.

Sharples claims that I don't even get to GR theory. That is also false. Here is an example:

www.sjcrothers.plasmaresources.com/BB.pdf

Crothers, S. J.

Anonymous said...

Stephen,

If it is possible to have M3 and E3 in one-to-one correspondence, as you claim, then please provide us with such a mapping. In fact I'll make it even less onerous - simply provide us with a one-to-one mapping between the 1D circle and 1D Euclidean space.

Please try and stick to the point in your reply - the question I ask has nothing to do with GR, or KS extensions, or multibody problems, etc, etc, etc.

J. Sharples.

Anonymous said...

Jason Sharples,

The mapping you request is developed in the paper based upon the hypothesis of a one-to-one correspondence between E3 and M3, and associated rigid rotations in one corresponding to rigid motions in the other so that geodesics are mapped into geodesics. I suggest that you study my whole paper instead of the opening few lines in isolation before you jump to conclusions. The metric so deduced provides the mapping you request. I also note that you have ignored my reference to the detailed study by Tullio Levi-Civita who developed the relations following the suggestion first made by Palatini. T. Levi-Civita was an inventor of the tensor calculus on manifolds and a most able geometer.

Furthermore I note that you have chosen to ignore my theoretical arguments of which you falsely accused me of not addressing. You also ignore the fact that Einstein's field equations violate the usual conservation of energy and that his attempt to escape this catastrophe by means of his pseudo tensor is spurious since it is a meaningless concoction of mathematical symbols as detailed in my papers. I again refer you to my paper:

www.sjcrothers.plasmaresources.com/BB.pdf

which renders all this trivial mathematical hoopla of no consequence.

Perhaps you can provide a proof that E3 and M3 cannot be hypothesized to be in one-to-one correspondence and relevant deductions obtained from that initial specified condition. One can suppose E3 and M3 in one-to-one correspondence to address the nature of 3-dimensional metric manifolds, as demonstrated by Levi-Civita himself. His relevant book is easily obtained, as I have done. It is worthy of careful study, as I have also done. Clearly you have failed to do so, as your remarks clearly betray.

General Relativity's violation of the usual conservation of energy with its consequent conflict with experiment renders the theory false. That takes with it all the black hole and big bang nonsense without any need of the trivial mathematics of black hole and big bang theory.

Like it or not, physics has moved on from the usual GR dogma. Such as you cannot save it from the dustbin of scientific history, where it rightly belongs, by pithy scribbling of equations and theoretically ill-posed problems.

S. J. Crothers

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

Crothers: there are no known soliutions to Eisntein's field equations for two or more masses and there is no existence theorem by which it can even be asserted that his field equations contain latent solutions for multiple masses. Numerical methods applied to an ill-posed problem are meaningless. Sharples and Bridgman are wrong.

Mr. Crothers, the simple fact is that your so-called 'ill-posed' problems generate agreement with experiment and observations. Electromagnetism has similar issues with self-energy, etc. Many others have demonstrated that GR works, including the GPS. Since you have demonstrated/documented no such accomplishments, I have more reason to believe them than you. Evasion of experimental agreement makes your claims more akin to numerology than science.

Since this is my blog and not your forum, your next comment here better include a demonstration (preferably a link) of the experimental implications of your claims, including why it works so well in precision timing applications, or I will reject it.

Anonymous said...

Not surprisingly Crothers could not stick to the point as requested... alas.

In fact the closest he got to the point was in saying "The mapping you request is developed in the paper based upon the hypothesis of a one-to-one correspondence between E3 and M3...". However, it is statements like these that show Crothers' poor grasp of mathematical concepts. The mapping I requested should PROVE the hypothesis, not be developed based on the assumption that that the hypothesis your trying to prove is already correct!

The fact of the matter is that for a general manifold (of any dimension) there is no one-to-one correspondence between it and Euclidean space - this is why we need coordinate charts, i.e. the plural of chart! Indeed, it is well known (and there is a mathematical proof) that the sphere requires AT LEAST two coordinate charts to completely cover it. If you only needed one chart (i.e. one copy of Euclidean space) then making an atlas of the world would be a very simple affair.

So why should I read past the first few lines of a mathematical argument when they already contain statements that are well known to be false.

Again to prove me wrong all you have to do is simply write down a map that entails a one-to-one correspondence between all the points of the 1D circle and 1D Euclidean space. I wish you the best of luck.

J. Sharples

Hermann Wastov said...

Crothers often asserts that there are no known solutions to the Einstein eqns for two or more masses. By this I can only assume he is referring to ANALYTICAL solutions. If this is what he means then he is correct.

However, there are also no known analytical solutions to the general Navier-Stokes equations on a sphere, nor are there any general existence theorems that guarantee their solution - but this does not mean that there is no weather, as we can all plainly attest to! In fact we do a pretty good job of forecasting the weather by solving the equations numerically.

Multibody problems in GR are handled the same way i.e. by solving the equations numerically. The majority of physics relies on numerical solution of PDEs. The numerical methods usually require a well-posed problem for their application. There are many examples of this being done.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Bridgman,

You dictatorial restrictions on what I can discuss is unfair, unscientific and unacceptable; but general practice amongst proponents of the mystical dogmas that proliferate in contemporary science. I will not bow to your directives. I note that you place no such restrictions on my critics, and so I have developed my own webpage, dedicated to your vilification of me and my work, to circumvent your ignoble proclamations. Interested readers will thereby get all the facts. Your attempts to refute me are futile. My arguments are sound and many realise that now.

S. J. Crothers.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Bridgman and Mr. Sharples,

It is easy in principle for you both to prove me wrong. Here is the simple recipe. Do the following:

1. Prove that the Principle of Equivalence and Special Relativity can manifest in a spacetime that by construction contains no matter.

2. Prove that Einstein’s pseudo-tensor is not a meaningless concoction of mathematical symbols.

S. J. Crothers

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

Mr. Crothers,

You have evaded a direct question about MEASURABLE experimental and/or observational implications of your claims. If you can't demonstrate such a connection, then your theory has no contact with REALITY. THAT is unscientific.

If your theory can't explain how the real world works, what good is it?

Real scientists use these symbols to produce numbers which can be compared to real measurements. Yet you seem to use them as part of some mystical incantation.

What did you do when I suggested you provide a link to material? You dumped a bunch of material across five comments that looks no different than the material in your papers. Repeating the same content does not make it more valid so there is no point in posting it here. Anyone who wants to read it can go to your site.

You've got fans? So does Paris Hilton. Fans are not an indication of real accomplishment. Such an emphasis would suggest you are more interested in celebrity than actual achievement. Can your 'fans' make your theory useful? Will they be using your theory in developing the computational precision needed for the next generation of GPS clocks? I rather doubt it.

As I look back over your history of your posts, I notice that you ROUTINELY avoid the mention of comparing your claims to experiment! This suggests that you KNOW this comparison is fatal to your claims, so you don't dare acknowledge the question, probably in the hopes that your 'fans' will never catch on to your evasion!

Anonymous said...

Mr. Bridgman,

It is you who evades and misleads. You frequently refer to my theory. What theory is that? I have proposed no theory whatsoever. I deal only with the internal consistency of the General Theory of Relativity, and that is not my theory. General Relativity is inconsistent as I have argued time and again, but you choose to ignore the facts I have presented to you and my other critics.

General Relativity is in conflict with the usual conservation of energy and so it is invalid, unless one is prepared to reject the usual conservation of energy so well established by experiment. I for one see no reason to do so.

I again request you to refrain from vilification of my person and instead address the simple recipe I have given you and Mr Sharples for proving me wrong. Your remarks containing reference to Paris Hilton are unscientific and irrelevant. Prove me a mug by addressing the two simple elements I have given you to do so, as they are central to the General Theory of Relativity.

I deal only with mathematical physics and so I am concerned only with the internal consistency of theory, both in terms of the mathematics involved and the physical principles upon which it is based. If there is inconsistency then there is error, pure and simple.

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

1) "All models are wrong, but some are useful" (see Crank Science: Worse than Wrong). All theories are incomplete in some way and this can create inconsistencies. Sometimes they guide thinking to the next theory that refined and improves the existing theory. The inconsistency stops use of the theory only when it mis-matches with experiment, such as applying Maxwell's equations at the quantum level. Galilean gravity implies infinite energy, yet we still use it close to the Earth.

2) Since you are making the claim, I make sure that I am referring to your claim by naming you. If I think you misunderstand something, I will say so. My GR is rather rusty, but I followed every one of Sharples examples in his paper, but your papers seemed to obfuscate even the simplest of mathematics. Then you label any complaint about your work as 'vilification'. Professional scientists have to be more mentally tougher than that since any original ideas they present will always be under attack by competitors. However, those who respond to those attacks like you do don't last long in the profession as they eventually alienate even their supporters. If you can't take the heat, you should get out of the kitchen. You are fortunate that I'm not going at you at a level *I* regard as 'vilification'.

3) Your basic interaction model, even in your papers, boils down to claiming that everyone else is an idiot and you're a genius. And you are foolish enough to pull this attitude to people who have REAL contributions in these fields! There is no mystery as to why you are treated poorly.

4) I had a discussion about two years ago with a fairly well-known cosmologist about how energy conservation in GR is discussed. The major points where we found agreement was that a) GR defines conserved quantities that look like classical energy-momentum conservation when examined on a local scale, and b) this classical comprehension of energy-momentum conservation does not map cleanly to the cosmological scale, so this is the source of the claims of non-conservation of energy in things such as cosmological redshift. (Would you agree with that summation of the GR conservation of energy issue, Jason?).

So your statements become at best *redundant* since

1) Many inconsistencies in GR are already known. If you go around aggressively repeating these issues, especially if you present them as YOUR original idea, you'll quickly get a bad reputation. Who wants to listen to someone who repeatedly screams "The sky is BLUE!" :^)

2) If you are not presenting an alternative theory that resolves the problem, then you make no claims that have experimentally testable implications. Your statements become useless.

Therefore, why should anyone listen to you?

The EU guys seem to be pushing you as someone whom they can show as writing mathematically complex-looking papers that they can use to deny the validity of GR in the GPS system (Scott Rebuttal. I. GPS & Relativity).

As I stated in the comment above on May 1:
"The sad part is Mr. Crothers seems to have some actual talent in mathematics, but has a habit of treating every criticism of his work as a personal attack instead of learning and addressing the issues raised."

Do yourself a favor. Actually LEARN some science!

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

Jason Sharples has sent me a couple of papers responding to Mr. Crothers. I've staged them on my main site, accessible via these links:

On Crothers' counter-examples to the Kruskal-Szekeres extension. June 25, 2010

Watching the World Cup. July 8, 2010

Apologies for my delay in getting these posted.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Bridgman,

Why don't you stop insulting me and just prove me completely wrong by the very simple recipe I have given you and Mr. Sharples. I reiterate; do the following:

1. Prove that the Principle of Equivalence and Special Relativity can manifest in a spacetime that by construction contains no matter.

2. Prove that Einstein’s pseudo-tensor is not a meaningless concoction of mathematical symbols.

That is all you have to do. Mr. Bridgman and Mr. Sharples, I await your proofs.

S. J. Crothers

jlb said...

Mr. Bridgeman:

I am starting late in this thread, I thank you for you patience.
Concerning your post of Sunday, June 7, 2009 entitled, “Some Preliminary comments on Crothers’ Relativity Claims”.

I wanted to check out the sources used as references. The very first one gave me pause.
I am a simple person so I just googled the reference.
1. S.J. Crothers. On the vacuum field of a sphere of incompressible fluid. Progress in Physics, 2:76–81, July 2005.
This is what I found at this location.
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=S.J.+Crothers.+On+the+vacuum+field+of+a+sphere+of+incompressible+fluid.+Progress+in+Physics%2C+2%3A76%E2%80%9381%2C+July+2005.&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&fp=3340bd4cc4e0f847

The first item is this website. Fair enough
The second item is the critique I am reading about on this website by the author Jason J. Sharples of S J Crothers. Fair enough
The third item is (scribd.com) site, pay for an article by Ruggero Maria Santilli, sorry not me, Fair enough
The fourth item is the same article as the third item by RM Santilli, from his website. Free to download, cool, this was interesting enough to include the link here: http://www.i-b-r.org/docs/HMMC-1-02-26-08.pdf
Item five, does not load, Fair enough.

RM Santilli is interesting and provocative. New technology does not mean crackpot. Harvard and MIT credentials aside, he unlike some people is building real machines in the real world of applied physics. He wants to put shoeleather on the math.
RM Santilli holds the same as S J Crothers on the big bang and black holes. Refer to section 1.4 pages 55-71.
In fact he has as an Appendices 1.A and adds “ad litteram”, without changing a letter Crothers’ Critical Analysis of General Relativity. Quite trustworthy and respectful since you say that his math skills are so bereft of order and understanding of the real issues.
Sir: I am a first time poster and I have only one thing to say.

Answer the two questions posed by Mr. Crothers.

1. Prove that the Principle of Equivalence and Special Relativity can manifest in a spacetime that by construction contains no matter.

2. Prove that Einstein’s pseudo-tensor is not a meaningless concoction of mathematical symbols.

Thank You, jlb

Anonymous said...

Mr. Crothers,

The reply you're after is accessible in the blog Dr Bridgman posted on July 8. Just click on "Watching the World Cup".

You should also post this reply on your own website.

J.Sharples

Anonymous said...

jlb:

Thanks for your interest in this discussion and for bringing the book by Santilli to my attention.

I have not read the entire book (I simply can't afford the time at the moment) but a few things caught my attention. For example see figure 1.5 on page 17. The figure purportedly shows "Further visual evidence of the lack of applicability..." but the figure is actually a cartoon of a water filled glass with a straw in it... WTF???

If the author is talking about Cerenkov radiation, then I suggest you read Cerenkov's Nobel Lecture in which he discusses how Cerenkov radiation is in complete agreement with relativity.

Note I have also replied to Crothers demands.

J.Sharples

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

As of the time of posting this comment, I have posted a minor update to J. Sharples' article, "Watching the World Cup", available at the same link above.

Christian said...

Dears W.T."Tom" Bridgman and Jason Sharples, dear readers,
even if I have no time to discuss in details all the errors by Mr. Crothers in his unscientific claims against Einstein's General Relativity, you could be interested in my paper "A clarification on the debate on "the original Schwarzschild solution", accepted for publication in Electronic Journal of Theoretical Physics, pre-print in http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.6031, where I have shown that Mr. Crothers' argumentation on the fact that Schwarzschild’s original paper refutes the notion of black holes is totally wrong.
Best wishes,
Christian Corda

Anonymous said...

Refuting Einstien is of no importance as this fraud has been exposed.

The relativity is nothing more than cabalistic crap.

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

To Anonymous:
The day someone can demonstrate a relativity-free GPS system, or a working GPS receiver interpreting the received signals with whatever alternative you advocate, you statement might have some validity. Until then, your statement is only wishful thinking.

The GPS signal specification is a public document
Wikipedia: GPS Signals

GPS Standard Positioning Service (SPS) Performance Standard

Anonymous said...

Concerning Big Bang Cosmology, it is invalid by the invalidity of General Relativity. It is also worth noting the following. Cosmology is not a science at all; it is theology. The relativistic cosmologists generally fail to mention to the general public and their students the fact that the Big Bang Cosmology was first conjured up by the Belgian mathematician and priest Georges Lemaitre. Thereby Lemaitre introduced a creation event into the equations of General Relativity and hence infused physics with the notion of God and His creation of the Universe. The Big Bang theory has been ratified by the Vatican owing to Lemaitre’s creationism. All Lemaitre did was substitute one creation event with another creation event. Indeed, Lemaitre admitted to the Swedish Nobel Prize winner in physics, Hannes Alfvén, that he came up with the idea to accord with Christian theology and the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas. Alfvén was not impressed. Here is what Alfvén reported: “I was there when Abbe Georges Lemaitre first proposed this theory," he recalled. Lemaitre was, at the time, both a member of the Catholic hierarchy and an accomplished scientist. He said in private that this theory was a way to reconcile science with St. Thomas Aquinas' theological dictum of creatio ex nihilo or creation out of nothing. “There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time," Alfvén explained. "It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago. Since religion intrinsically rejects empirical methods, there should never be any attempt to reconcile scientific theories with religion. An infinitely old universe, always evolving, may not be compatible with the Book of Genesis. However, religions such as Buddhism get along without having any explicit creation mythology and are in no way contradicted by a universe without a beginning or end. Creatio ex nihilo, even as religious doctrine, only dates to around AD 200. The key is not to confuse myth and empirical results, or religion and science."

Furthermore, in January 1933, Georges Lemaitre travelled with Albert Einstein to California for a series of seminars. After the Belgian detailed his Big Bang theory, Einstein stood up applauded, and said, “This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened.” So evidently Einstein was actually a creationist, revealing thereby that he too was actually theological in his real disposition, despite his often overt cryptic claims that he was not. Now Big Bang Cosmology only has the façade of science because it is couched in the mantle of complicated, but meaningless, mathematics, in terms of General Relativity which is an invalid theory because it violates the usual conservation of energy and momentum and is therefore in conflict with experiment on a very deep. Before the Big Bang theory there was actually no alleged ‘scientific’ basis attached to the question of the creation of the Universe. Only theology dealt with this question then. It still does.

Anonymous said...

Let me preface this by saying that I am pretty late to this party, and that I have no formal mathematical training. In fact, despite great interest in these subjects, my understanding of mathematics is such that much of what is discussed here is over my head. That being said, as I follow this discussion it seems as though Crothers continues to argue from fallacious standpoints. Mr. Crothers, the very point of this discussion thread is to point out apparent flaws in the mathematics behind your theories. Instead of responding and correcting the analysis of these flaws, you resort to flawed arguments. If you are unfamiliar with fallacies I recommend searching 'Burden of Proof' and to a lesser extent, 'Argument from Ignorance'.

Again, only as someone analyzing this discussion, I would side with the writer of the blog, only because Crothers is so poor at constructing valid arguments. Perhaps this is why Mr. Crothers often feels 'vilified'.

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

The reponse to the comment above concerning Lemaitre is posted under Is Big Bang Cosmology a 'Creationist' Model?.

Anonymous said...

W.T."Tom" Bridgman wrote:
"On Crothers' counter-examples to the Kruskal-Szekeres extension [http://homepage.mac.com/cygnusx1/contrib/sharples/KSdoc.pdf]. June 25, 2010

Watching the World Cup [http://homepage.mac.com/cygnusx1/contrib/sharples/ReplyBS.pdf]. July 8, 2010"

These links no longer work. Apparently Apple shut down their homepage.mac.com site in 2012.

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

To anonymous,

The revised links to these papers are:

"On Crothers' counter-examples to the Kruskal-Szekeres extension
and
Watching the World Cup

The simple fix is replace
http://homepage.mac.com/cygnusx1/
with
ttp://www.crankastronomy.org/
in the link.
I've been slowly fixing these issues as I find them in the main articles, but there seems to be no easy way to fix them in the comments.

Tom

Bruno Suric said...

Only one thing remains to be followed... Pure scientific approach. And that is the very doom of anything that calls itself science and CANNOT perform direct observation and exoeriment. Now you be the judge and make up your mind - and rember the basic concept of big bang science"in the beggining there was nothing, and then suddenly everything came to be......bullshit."

Anonymous said...

You are a bullying cunt fuck off

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

To Bruno Suric,

Yet stuff appears out of 'nothing' all the time.
Wikipedia: Virtual Particles

We've measured it in laboratories.
Wikipedia: Casimir Effect

If I knock a ball off a table, it hits the floor with more energy than it started. Do you understand where that energy comes from?

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

To Anonymous:

Perhaps you are referring to Mr. Crothers?

After all, Mr. Crothers has made numerous mathematical and conceptual errors while claiming that the mathematics behind the GPS and other precision technologies is invalid. Mr. Crothers' basis for claiming the designers and building of these systems are incompetent is no more than his 'say so'. Mr. Crothers has yet to deal with the fact that to current experimental precision, these 'wrong' theories generate numbers for various tests that we can MEASURE. Mr. Crothers has provided no alternatives of equivalent capability (see also Some Preliminary Comments on Crothers' Relativity Claims).

Oh, and then there's Mr. Crothers' whining that I won't release his tome-sized comments on my blog when he has his own site where he can post anything he wants, and does.

Mr. Crothers insults researchers with REAL accomplishments while presenting nothing equivalent of his own.

Sylvia Austin said...

Why won't Jason Sharples and Bridgman debate Stephen Crothers on the Internet for the world to see?

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

To Sylvia Austin,

I cannot speak for Dr. Sharples, but it is largely pointless to 'debate' Mr. Crothers, beyond what is done with periodic posts on the topic.

It has been repeatedly demonstrated that Mr. Crothers understanding of mathematics and physics in general, and relativity in particular, are questionable.

Mr. Crothers begs for attention by insisting others must prove him wrong when:

1) it has already been done (though I've got a list of even more examples of Mr. Crothers' errors that should be written up one day…)

2) This point is even sharper when we consider the fact that much of the physics and mathematics Mr. Crothers claims is wrong is in fact applied daily in working technologies (GPS and other precision timing applications).

How are Mr. Crothers' tactics different from those used by the geocentrists (A Summary of Geocentrism Issues) who claim Newtonian physics is wrong when it is routinely applied to sending spacecraft to other planets?

The weight of the experimental evidence means that the burden of proof is STILL on Mr. Crothers.

David Sadler said...

The more we learn how political and biased scientists are, the less credible modern science becomes.

The more we learn just how little modern science knows, the more we are dumbstruck by the current inability of modern science to determine the reality of the most common physical phenomena in our daily lives; to name four specifically, gravity, the electron, the photon and the Sun.

Yes, we can apply the known attributes of these phenomena to some practical use, but how much more could we do if we actually understood the reality of these phenomena so we could apply their full potential to our use.

The central source of the electron charge appears to be approaching a size so small that actually identifying the point source of the charge might be as elusive as assigning the actual source of gravity.

"Pray do not ascribe that notion [gravity as essential and inherent to matter] to me, for the cause of gravity is what I do not pretend to know ..."
-- Isaac Newton in a letter to Mr. Bentley at the castle in Worcester, January 17, 1692

Those engaging in science need a big dose of humility instead of pounding their chest as though they know it all. They don't.

Crothers is doing scientists a favor by causing them to rethink what they think they know and have taken as the gospel simply because it is the Standard Model of this period in history.

This period will pass along with many of the ideas science currently holds as 'fact.' History shows us this over and over.

Science is not consensus. It is for rebels, radicals and non-conformists. Real scientists will rock the boat and upset the apple cart of the current models. Ask Copernicus, Galileo and Newton.

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

Funny you should claim mainstream science is 'biased. Everyone pushing a 'worldview' is pushing their own version of well-established science (Pseudoscience & 'World-View').

Yet that same well-established science is still making real tech while the 'worldview'-based science is not.

Mr. Crothers has made all kinds of excuses to get away from the fact that Dr. Sharples exposed Crothers lack of understand of the math, and the science, of relativity.

One common characteristic of every researcher that revolutionized and revised our understanding of a field is that they had a VERY good understanding of that field. Einstein understood Newtonian physics and electromagnetism very well. Similarly, Maxwell understood electromagnetism very well. Mr. Crothers has demonstrated that he does not have an equivalent understanding of relativity or gravity.

As for rocking the boat, the Flat-Earthers, Geocentrists, and creationists are using the similar arguments, also expecting their claims to be vindicated any day now.

David Sadler said...

I won't belabor the point, but 'well established science' is an oxymoron since standard models change with the generations.

We are constantly told that science is self-correcting. The problem is that because of the inertia of politics, science usually self-corrects after the status quo dies out and the new ideas of new generations ascend to become the standard model of a new period.

The current standard model of any period is the model of consensus which eventually will be upset by some hooligan. But the hooligan will most likely be roundly criticized and ostracized as was Galileo, Alfred Wegener and others.

This is exactly what Copernicus told Pope Paul III in the dedication to his, "On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres."

Copernicus tells the Pope that the Pythagoreans avoided writing anything down about their philosophies and chose instead to pass along their knowledge verbally. Why? To avoid the criticism of their contemporaries.

The point is this. Let me use a personal example. My work sees a lot of conflict among the people involved in a project. Since each project is severely constrained by time and budgets, conflicts must be resolved quickly so issues can be resolved and the project can move to completion.

While people resist vehemently, I require the parties to a conflict to meet where each can make their arguments (which most usually include accusations) and where the other party can respond. By this method, days of dragging out these types of issues are normally resolved in one meeting.

This is why a public debate on the Internet would be most beneficial in this dispute between Sharples and Crothers.

This back and forth has really gone on long enough. It's time to allow them to design their debate on the contested areas and then allow them to make their case on the Internet where questions can be fielded from the global audience.

There is no good reason not to do this. Crothers is gaining a global audience. His work is being noticed and it is generating considerable positive feedback to him from disgruntled scientists who feel compelled to remain silent for political and economic reasons. Make no mistake, Crothers is building a scientific following.

For the sake of argument, would you, Mr. Bridgman, be willing to host such a debate over the Internet with live video/audio and while taking questions from the global audience? If not, I'm sure such a service could be found without much trouble.

I for one would tune in and help in anyway I could to make it happen.

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

To Dave Sadler (part 1),

As for criticism in science, it is by actually dealing with those criticisms that the science advances. If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. Self-proclaimed geniuses presenting flawed math claims and ignoring experimental evidence are quickly ignored, and justifiably so. They might enjoy some limited attention from gullible fans, but the beauty about cranks is there are loads of other cranks trying to get attention for THEIR 'revolutionary' idea.

Consider the debate around the BICEP2 results (Are the BICEP2 Results Invalid? Probably Not.), which will not invalidate Big-Bang cosmology, only revise some understand of the very early stages. Wegener (Wikipedia) actually DID a great deal of work to back up his claim. Wegener was right about the continents moving, but he was wrong on the mechanism. It would take additional discoveries to vindicate the idea that the continents moved.
--
As for how science is 'overturned'? It might look that way to those who follow the press-releases more than the actual science.

- The shape of the Earth is known to deviate from perfectly spherical, a fact that has been the subject of a number of 'discoveries' from the 1700s to the 1960s, but the Flat-Earthers will never be vindicated.

- Did Einstein eliminate Newtonian motion and gravity? Nope, Einstein defined an underlying mechanism, but many of the predictions remained the same. The predictions were refined in limits of high speed and high mass which were beyond the experimental limits of earlier researchers. In most Earth-based applications, their mathematical predictions are indistinguishable by all but the most sensitive instruments. While we know general relativity is incomplete, whatever replaces it will still make many of the same predictions, just resolve the problems at even more extreme limits.

- The basic equations of fluid mechanics (Wikipedia: Navier-Stokes equations) have been unchanged for over 100 years, but we steadily refine our understanding of parts of the equations like turbulence, viscosity, etc. Similar refinements have advanced plasma physics.

The actual history reveals science has been more refined, than overturned, as we learn about the details of various processes.

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

To Dave Sadler (part 2),

Now to issues more specific to Crothers…

* Are Crothers 'followers' using his results to compare to actual experiments or use in real technologies? If not (and I'm pretty sure they're not), they are more fans than followers. If no one but Mr. Crothers can do the computations to test them for experimental validation, then how are Mr. Crothers' 'followers' any different from members of a religious organization or cult with Mr. Crothers as the High Priest who delivers them his claimed 'Truth' which they have no capability of testing? Many others with experience using relativity in Real World Applications have demonstrated the Mr. Crothers understanding of General Relativity is flawed.

* Crothers can't seem to decide what his issue with relativity is. Some of his writing seems to suggest he thinks the entire theory is flawed. Others just complain about the Schwarzschild solution. Crothers never actually presents any testable theory. His focus appears to be to 'beat' relativity by exposing claimed 'flaws'. How is this different from creationists trying to defeat evolution or Big-Bang cosmology based on claimed 'flaws' or 'problems'?

* Crothers makes bizarre mathematical claims, such as claiming certain systems are 'unsolvable'. Yet we solve similar 'unsolvable' systems all the time, non-linear systems with feedbacks, electromagnetism, plasmas, fluid dynamics for designing aircraft. The general N-body problem in Newtonian gravity is 'unsolvable' in closed form for all but a few special cases for cases of more than two particles (N>2). We solve this system routinely for space travel to send missions around the solar system (where N>8) (see N-Body Simulations). Or does Crothers believe space flight is a hoax?

* As for Crothers' whines about me 'censoring' him, you might note that there are a number of links to content on his site in the comments above. I just don't let him cram pages of text in my comment stream or post generic links to his site - which is SPAM.

* Instead of a 'show' debate, perhaps one should insist on Crothers playing by the actual rules of science that made new technologies possible (see Doin' Astronomy (and Science in General)…).

* Why should I give Crothers' 'arguments' more attention than the dozens (hundreds?) of others who make bizarre claims about relativity (such as those listed here, which isn't even a complete list, Crank.net: Relativity)?

* Science gets settled by presenting mathematical models that match experimental results, NOT by showy 'debates' that do nothing but give higher profiles to pseudo-scientists. Why I should aid in Crothers' aspirations for publicity? He will receive no additional attention from me beyond his claims that I decide to address.

Crothers claims undermine the real understanding of relativity, which is critical for the GPS system and other precision technologies. With his Electric Universe 'buddies' and their false claims about nuclear energy and huge electric fields in and around stars, they undermine the science behind nuclear energy and space flight. Interesting that these three fields were areas where the U.S. was not only leading the world but also fields that have serious implications for the U.S. economy and national defense should the national experience-base in these fields decline.

I will not assist them in their aspirations for higher-profile publicity.

Anonymous said...

Crothers feels vilified because he's too much of a loon to realize everything he says comes off as offensive.

I know nothing about the mathematics involved here, but without a shadow of a doubt anyone would conclude that Crothers is just a bitter little man who only uses attacks against others as defense to his ideas.

Stephen - if you truly aren't a crackpot, perhaps use some more tasteful ways of arguing. You act like a freaking child.

Anonymous said...

@David Sadler: Do you understand Crowthers' ideas, sufficiently well to try to explain them to an audience well-versed in the relevant mathematics? If not, do you know of anyone else who is (other than Crowthers himself)?

Does anyone - reading this comment - know of any such person, even indirectly?

The impression I get is that no one can explain Crowthers' ideas in their own words. Am I wrong?

If I am not wrong, then why is it, after all these years now, that no one can (apparently)?

A debate may be good for one thing: explaining Crowthers' ideas to a wider audience. However, unless and until someone can be found who could stand in for Crowthers in such a debate (with or without his OK), surely there's nothing to debate, is there?

In the historical cases of Copernicus, Galileo, Alfred Wegener and others you cite, there were certainly people who could present the 'hooligan' side in a debate, and very well too. That no one can present Crowthers' ideas - in a world with vastly more people with the relevant knowledge, and of vastly greater communications reach, that surely tells you something, wouldn't you say?

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

Mr. Crothers and his friends are abusive towards other scientists because they have been taught that true geniuses are often ridiculed by their colleagues. However, they make the mistake of assuming the inverse is also true.

By being abusive towards other scientists and getting a few of them to respond in kind, cranks reinforce their delusion that they are geniuses themselves.

“They laughed at Galileo. They laughed at Newton. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
--Carl Sagan

David Sadler said...

@Anonymous,

W.T."Tom" Bridgman uses his real name. Stephen Crothers uses his real name. I use my real name and my website is attached. I'll need your real name and proof of it before engaging in conversation with you.

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

To David Sadler,

Gee, the one Anonymous commenter you're complaining about is just rephrasing some of the same challenges that I posed above, specifically the first bullet item, which you evade.

I have yet to find ANYONE using Crothers' 'reinterpretation' of relativity to do any Real World applications of relativity. Most of his 'followers' seem to be incapable of doing the math, and the others that have some mathematical background seem to be promoting their OWN pet reinterpretations of relativistic effects, with the same level of 'success', or rather FAILURE.

If Crothers or one of his 'followers' cannot demonstrate things that can be compared to experiment, then Crothers' claims have no credibility.

We have measured many of these predictions in the laboratory (and have been incorporated into technologies) and many other indirect predictions in cosmic environments.

Tests of Special Relativity

Tests of General Relativity

don grant said...

I would be interested in hearing any rebuttal to the claim that big bang theory is a modern version of creationism.....

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

To Don Grant,

You're in luck. I had addressed this claim some time ago, from opposite sides!

Is Big Bang Cosmology a 'Creationist' Model?

Anonymous said...

@David Sadler: I may be Adam Riess, or a high-school dropout single mother trying to keep clear of an abusive ex. The objective validity of what is written has nothing to do with who writes it, does it?

In any case, I thought I was providing you an opportunity to strengthen your request: let's take you at your word when you write "Crothers is gaining a global audience. His work is being noticed and it is generating considerable positive feedback to him from disgruntled scientists who feel compelled to remain silent for political and economic reasons. Make no mistake, Crothers is building a scientific following." If so, then it would be almost trivially easy to find one of these scientists, who understands Crowthers' work well, and ask her to take Crowthers' side in a debate, wouldn't it?

Actually, I guess you couldn't do that; as you need my real name and proof of it before engaging in conversation with me, you can't converse with any of these 'disgruntled scientists' (because they 'feel compelled to remain silent'). But then, come to think of it, if you won't converse with any of these people who you claim are the 'scientific following' Crowthers is building, how do you know they even exist?

Consistency is a funny thing, wouldn't you say?

Bruno Suric said...

again read carefully:

These are some of the things Croters talks about:

The current state of physical science would suggest that science is neither fully self-correcting, nor does it willingly acknowledge blunders that inevitably occur when we tackle some of the toughest questions that can be asked. In fact, subjective interference in the supposedly objective scientific process has reached scandalous proportions. The last 100 years are replete with examples illustrating the failure of the scientific method to produce realistic answers. In 1915, Albert Einstein published his magnum opus, the General Theory of Relativity. In due course, British astronomer Arthur Eddington led an expedition to photograph the eclipse of the Sun, and record the bending of starlight by gravity as predicted by Einstein. Newton’s laws also predict the displacement of light paths by massive objects, known as half-deflection. Eddington himself later declared that “The measures pointed with all too good agreement to the ‘half-deflection,’ that is to say, the Newtonian value which is one-half the amount required by Einstein’s theory.” Another example is the solar neutrino problem. The Standard Solar Model was specific in its prediction of neutrinos emanating from core nuclear fusion from the Sun. From the 1960s on, neutrino observatories were set up to track neutrinos coming from the Sun. All the neutrino observatories gave the same answer, without exception: The flux of neutrinos coming from the Sun was a fraction of what it should have been. Clearly, nuclear fusion could not be the sole source of solar energy. Did the scientific method kick in and declare the hypothesis falsified? Not at all, quite the contrary. In 2002, Ray Davis and Masatoshi Koshiba won the Nobel Prize for Physics for establishing that only a third of the expected solar neutrinos were getting to the Earth. Somehow that result was taken as verification of the Standard Solar Model.

Bruno Suric said...

Consistency is a funny thing, wouldn't you say?

Try scientific approach :)

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

Mr. Suric should take his own advice. Part of the scientific approach is REPRODUCIBILITY.

I've written on the lame claim about the original Eddington observations of gravitational deflection.

Supporters of this claim seem oblivious to the fact that this was far from the only time in history these observations could be done, and have been repeated, and improved upon, in the 90+ years since. The Hipparcos data has measured the deflection to an accuracy of 0.3%, far more than enough to exclude the Newtonian model of light deflection. See
Relativity Denial: The 1919 Solar Eclipse.

The claims about the standard solar model and neutrinos is so flawed it will take an entire post which should appear next week.

Anonymous said...

@Bruno Suric: Crowthers' (with an 'h') published material has many shortcomings, of several kinds; however, I don't recall him making the two utterly outrageous claims you made (re tests of gravitational deflection by the Sun, and solar neutrinos).

Can you cite publications by Crowthers which contain either of the two claims (or both)?

Yes, consistency includes checking that what Bruno Suric writes aligns with objective reality. ;-)

Bruno Suric said...

we are talking apples and pears.
no amount of data will be enough to persuade anyone here. we all believe in reality and truthfulness of what we claim to be the real deal.
gentlemen, if it makes is easier for you to live on, you are right.

no matter how much mainstream wants me to believe in point like structures, infinite densities, and other, brought into existence, ideas of dark this and dark that, i will not follow.

invoking concepts and treating them as facts is nonsense on a big bang scale. anything or anyone claiming that matter can be created to begin with, only to remove any logical next step by introducing the idea that it makes no sense to ask what was there before matter was created because there was no before.......
really? really?

wow ! clap your hands, hey ho clap your hands!!!!

it takes arrogance, lameness, utter self love and desperate need to be in the limelight, to come up with an idea which allows one to erase, in one stroke, anyone's attempt to question and correct.

obviously what i wrote has nothing to do with Crothers, S.J, but is a brief take on "modern" science that has brought most of mainstreams ideas into existence,
and allowed for ridicule and bullying of ones logical and real 3d view of universe around one.

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

My response to Bruno Suric's claims about the Standard Solar Model, solar neutrinos, and falsification, can be found at
Falsifying Scientific Models.

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

I have removed two comments posted to this stream that I consider link spam (Wikipedia), attempting to raise the profile of crank science sites.

One is posted to an inappropriate thread as it is a link to YET ANOTHER solar model under the 'electric sun' banner (see The Sad State of Electric Suns: Not So Bright) demonstrating that they STILL do not have a model suitable for simulating the solar system radiation environment, needed for planning spacecraft missions (see the Death by Electric Universe posts linked here).

The other comment was a link to a paper by Stephen Crothers spinning his harassment of professional scientists as a win for him. Mr. Crothers, has STILL not provided any EXPERIMENTAL evidence of his claims against relativity (Wikipedia: Tests of General Relativity). The comment suggested there were ongoing attempts to sucker some professional scientist to 'debate' Mr. Crothers (see Pseudoscience, 'Debates' & Unintended Consequences).

Hans Schatten said...

http://www.themistsofavalon.net/t7453-the-factuals-versus-the-old-age-bs-or-oabs#106739

The 'Electric Universe' or EU model is a fake science Bob. I am addressing here the general websites linked to the 'thunderbolt project' and related forums and websites. The correspondent David Sadler below is one of administrators of such a forum; but the general debate below is on a rather more technical footing, regarding one contributer of Stephen J. Crothers, who is often cited by EU adherents as having the necessary mathematical background to support and enhance the ideas of the 'Electric Universe' proposals.
It is basically a vehement and passionate attempt to 'bash' the 'Standard Models' in contemporary physics and cosmology, which are historically validated and tested every day in the laboratory and 'proven' nowadays in the 'correct' workings of the GPS system in say motor vehicle navigation and location and the observed physical facts in many experiments from Cerenkov radiation of electron scattering to the correct calculations of basically standard Newtonian mechanics to send space probes to comets visiting the local star system from the outer regions of that solar system.
For anyone interested to separate scientific fact from fictions, I am sharing a 'lively' debate between the EU forum and website advocates and a particular Einstein-Big Bang 'basher' in a well 'you tubed' 'alternative' mathematical physicist in a Stephen J. Crothers.

Perusing this 'debate', anyone can clearly discern the relative validities of the respective arguments for and against scientific sounding, but relatively easily debunked claims of a real 'alternative science or physics or cosmology'. Many links to original papers and discourses are provided in this discourse from 2009 to the present time. I might add that many of the claims of the EU camp refers to the 'alternative' cosmological model of a 'real cosmologist, known as Hannes Alven, who simply attempted to provide a parallel interpretation to the 'Big Bang Cosmology' proposing a 'Steady State ' a la Fred Hoyle (another real qualified scientist) as an Infinite universe in time and space. Alven simply tried to introduce the importance of cosmic electromagneto-dynamics into the scientific library and related this to testable and analytic predictions also related to the intergalactic and interstellar media of ionised gas and plasma physics.
Unfortunately some not qualified 'alternative scientists' have hijacked Alven's scientific approach to 'test and propose' new ideas and models for their own nebulous and sometimes ad hominem and dogmatic agendas. The debate below could illustrate this for the inquisitive and unbiased reader.

By the way Bob, there is a real 'alternative science' regarding the electromagneto-dynamic nature of the universe. But this does not propose non existent supercurrents between galaxies and starsytems produced say in the Alven-Klein model, which has not found any evidence in nature. Rather it introduces the magnetic charge of the magnetic monopole as a Pre Big Bang physical entity, which gave existence to the material nature of the Big Bang constituents, which later evolved into neutron stars and galaxies and later generation stars. There is much detail as to the technicalities and nature of the actual 'magnetic currents' which became a 'missing ingredient' in the Standard Cosmology. It is the nature and existence of the magnetic monopole, on the gravitational galactic level and which is also found in the strong nuclear interaction of the inner (sub)atom as a magnetic colour charge, which is more at the end of a rainbow as the 'pot of gold' Hannes Alven was envisaging, than the falsified and physically untenable 'Electric Universe' proposal.

Abraxasinas, October 26th, 2014

Anonymous said...

It is funny to read your copy paste from big bang bible.
Get a life and open your eyes.
Thank you for hours of comedy material.
Yours truly,
21. Century kid.

Anonymous said...

http://www.quantamagazine.org/20141025-dwarf-galaxies-dim-dark-matter-hopes/

Please publish this if you dare :)

You can sell your diploma on eBay.
Don't forget to include some lollipops in order to get buyers. Sucking is a great way to spend an afternoon. Sure, you should know all about it, you've spend years sucking it.

Post this comment if you dare. I'll be watching, you preposterous asshole.

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

To 21. Century kid.

Do you know how much of science behind your so-called 'big bang bible' laid the basis for the technology you're using to read this?
Cosmos in Your Pocket",
'Out There' Astrophysics Impacts Technology (again)

I have a life. My science understanding has opened opportunities for me that pseudo-scientists can only dream of.

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

To Anonymous,

Posted, and responded: Yet Another Claimed Stake-through-the-Heart of Big Bang Cosmology?

Fernando Casas said...

Dear Mr. Bridgman:

First of all, I'd like to congratulate you for running this blog. It is very instructive and, for a layman like me, even though I can't follow the mathematics, quite interesting!

I teach philosophy, and I find it amusing how many logical fallacies are used in many responses. One of my favourites is that, since science is always correcting itself, then it must be wrong all the time (and along come the references to Copernico and Galileo; often forgeting that Copernico was a mistic, who happened to be right about the Earth not being the center of the universe, but not because he had evidence); and therefore, we need these rogue scientists to set the record straight. It is funny: once these rogue scientists corrects everyone else, their findings will become mainstream, and thus, according to this logic, wrong!

Thomas Kuhn said that a paradigm (a theory) must be able to conform to facts in order to displace another paradigm; so far, for what I gather from reading most of the posts in your blog, this new paradigm offered by Crothers can't account for observable phenomena.

Please keep up the good work. I only wish more people would refrain from calling names on their answers.

Fernando Casas

Ps. I'm sorry for not being able to follow the mathematics; I would love to understand why there cannot be a correspondence of E3 with M3. Also I apologize for my english, since it is not my native language.

David Sadler said...

Mr. Casas,

I don't know if you will be able to read this, because it might not be posted by Mr. Bridgman, but in case it is please consider this.

You wrote, "One of my favourites is that, since science is always correcting itself, then it must be wrong all the time (and along come the references to Copernico and Galileo; often forgeting that Copernico was a mistic, who happened to be right about the Earth not being the center of the universe, but not because he had evidence); and therefore, we need these rogue scientists to set the record straight."

If you are speaking of Nicolaus Copernicus, you might be interested in reading his book, "On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres." It is filled with the most minute observations and measurements of stars and planets along with complicated math and geometry. Table after table of nothing but measurements he himself had made and from which he had the courage and audacity to draw out the orbits that shifted the standard model of the day and revolutionized Man's understanding of our place in the universe, which led to many shifts in philosophy.

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

To Fernando Casas,

A common mistake of those using the argument that science "must be wrong all the time" ignores the fact that science does not claim to be an 'absolute truth', but a better and better approach to some 'truth'.

One can argue that the statement 'Earth is round' is false because its shape is actually closer to an oblate spheroid, but even that is not 'exact'. But both statements are certainly more correct than 'Earth is flat'.

Isaac Asimov wrote an excellent essay dealing with this question:
The Relativity of Wrong, by Isaac Asimov

Another issue with 'rogue scientists' is that while we remember people like Copernicus and Wegener (Wikipedia) because some of their ideas were eventually found to be correct, but it took a great deal of work to demonstrate this. But the number of 'rogue scientists' who've been proven right is actually very small compared to the incredible number of cranks who have never been proven to be even approximately correct, but still compare themselves to Galileo or Copernicus and denigrate any who disagree with them. The behavior pattern of cranks is so routine that it's easy to define a scoring system for their behaviors: John Baez's Crackpot Index.

There is nothing wrong with exploring unconventional ideas, and a number of professional scientists have done this. In researching for this blog, I've encountered a number of old papers where a researcher looked at an unconventional idea, developed some test predictions, compared them to experiment, found they didn't work, then published the results as basically a message to others 'if you think this might work, you must address these issues' (see Scientists, Eccentrics, Cranks and Crackpots).

I'm amazed at how many ideas promoted by cranks and crackpots today can be traced back to ideas that actually conclusively failed 50-100 and more years ago.

The final criteria for physical sciences is that the mathematical model must generate numbers that we can compare to actual measurements. This is another failure common to most of the bad science I explore in this blog.

N Bhatt said...

This blog and its comment stream are a good resource for non-science people to follow the vigorous debate on general relativity with S Crothers.

A number of observations have led to my interest in those questioning GR. But I'll point out the most influential here. Simply stated, it is the refusal of too many academics to stop teaching the Aryan Invasion/Migration Theory. This theory has been, in my humble opinion, soundly refuted based on archeological and genetic evidence. Further, it was always rejected by non-science Indian intellectuals on the basis of known cultural practices and literary traditions.

So why was such a flawed theory propagated for well over a 150 years? To me, it's clear that the science was used to create and justify new divisions within Subcontinental societies (e.g., the false and deeply-corrosive Aryan-Dravidian divide). Most respectable universities taught this subject matter across generations, having little regard for legitimate objections from those outside of academic orthodoxy.

If academia from Western countries could pull off such a massive fraud on the back of junk science residing in the annals of their most respected academic institutions, then, for me, all science is up for legitimate questioning. The more I started looking for respectable sources that document questionable science, the more shocking was the picture revealed. Here is one article that documents bad science in cancer research: [http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-05/half-cancer-scientists-have-been-unable-reproduce-studies-survey-finds].

I am now a lot more open-minded about those questioning GR. And that includes any hypotheses that question the link between GR and global positioning systems.

- N Bhatt

Anonymous said...

Light speed is not Constant (to observer) !!

All that we receive with our eyes are the facts of the past (unchangeable). Wavelength of incident light is coming from the past. On incident light, a formula c = λ f stands up. And λ is unchangeable (by our motion). Terms f and c change.

Sorry, I can’t receive E-mail. I don’t have PC.

http://www.geocities.co.jp/Technopolis/2561/eng.html

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

To N Bhatt,

It's generally a bad idea to judge acceptance of physical sciences (which have very well defined standards) based on the much weaker standards in social, or even medical sciences (which are too easily manipulated by politics and money interests).

Are you going to deny the theory of atomic structure or nuclear physics based on the same criteria?

W.T."Tom" Bridgman said...

To Anonymous,

Good luck with that...

Thousands of experiments, and even more repeated uses of relativity in technologies, demonstrate that the speed of light (in vacuo) is constant relative to a given observer.

Tom

Anonymous said...

In addition to the outstanding analysis done by both Sharples and Bridgman, refuting the error ridden claims made by Crothers, here is another superb skewering by a mathematician named W. D. Clinger:

“The Mathematics of Black Hole Denialism”
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=8092280#post8092280