Once upon a long time ago there was a land called Plutophysia and it was ruled by General R. Tivity. The General, in his salad days, had developed quite a reputation for predicting the weather, and indeed for some phenomena he had skill. When he had said "Today it will rain!" it always did. When he said "Go to the beach" everyone went.
Then one day a strange apparition appeared: a vast swirling column of wind and dust which knocked down a grain silo. The country folk came to the General and described the phenomenon. The General, with perfect confidence said
"Ah yes. It is caused by an invisible wind God: a Chindi!"
and he directed his scientists to look for these wind Gods. Egon, the lead scientist scratched his head, and then other parts of his body, as he tried to think. Nothing occurred to him. Eventually, some leaders of industry came to him and said
"We have a machine that can detect wind Gods, but it is very expensive".
"Never mind!" said Egon "I have the General's ear!"
"Having his purse would be better.." said the industrialists.
"The two are connected" said Egon and sure enough before long there was a fine industry building machines to detect the Wind Gods. This went on for some time, because invisible wind Gods are difficult to detect.
After several decades of waiting, the folk of Plutophysia became fed up since many farms had been torn apart by the phenomena. They were also tired of hearing the words 'wind God', and the scientists and industrialists were getting so fat that they had to carry them around in wheelbarrows. One day an unimpressive scruff from The Shire was brought in to see the old General and said
"General, I can predict these swirls of wind! They are caused by heating of air near the ground which rises".
The General said "What is this idiot babbling about? What are heat and air?".
But the scruff insisted
"I can predict they all occur at the hottest times. I have the data to prove it! Furthermore we can make flying machines based on this idea and move away to a better place..".
The General said "Enough!" and looked to his industrial advisors and top scientists.
"What say you to this young miscreant?".
They conferred "We would say sire that he is a dangerous lunatic and it would be best to lock him away from the general public lest your reputation for weather prediction be called into question."
The General decided quickly.
"Quite right. Guards! Put him in jail. Oh, and burn that data will you? Nasty profit-less stuff to have lying around".
Some wise people complained at this insult to free speech and scientific inquiry. Most eventually forgot about it so as not to lose their jobs in the wind-God detector machine factories. Some did not forget and also ended up in gaol. So Plutophysia spent all its money on the machines and was ruined. In the end all that was left was a huge ring of machines surrounding the broken farms, and a few old codgers living by the shattered remains of a prison, but building an air balloon..
Then one day a strange apparition appeared: a vast swirling column of wind and dust which knocked down a grain silo. The country folk came to the General and described the phenomenon. The General, with perfect confidence said
"Ah yes. It is caused by an invisible wind God: a Chindi!"
and he directed his scientists to look for these wind Gods. Egon, the lead scientist scratched his head, and then other parts of his body, as he tried to think. Nothing occurred to him. Eventually, some leaders of industry came to him and said
"We have a machine that can detect wind Gods, but it is very expensive".
"Never mind!" said Egon "I have the General's ear!"
"Having his purse would be better.." said the industrialists.
"The two are connected" said Egon and sure enough before long there was a fine industry building machines to detect the Wind Gods. This went on for some time, because invisible wind Gods are difficult to detect.
After several decades of waiting, the folk of Plutophysia became fed up since many farms had been torn apart by the phenomena. They were also tired of hearing the words 'wind God', and the scientists and industrialists were getting so fat that they had to carry them around in wheelbarrows. One day an unimpressive scruff from The Shire was brought in to see the old General and said
"General, I can predict these swirls of wind! They are caused by heating of air near the ground which rises".
The General said "What is this idiot babbling about? What are heat and air?".
But the scruff insisted
"I can predict they all occur at the hottest times. I have the data to prove it! Furthermore we can make flying machines based on this idea and move away to a better place..".
The General said "Enough!" and looked to his industrial advisors and top scientists.
"What say you to this young miscreant?".
They conferred "We would say sire that he is a dangerous lunatic and it would be best to lock him away from the general public lest your reputation for weather prediction be called into question."
The General decided quickly.
"Quite right. Guards! Put him in jail. Oh, and burn that data will you? Nasty profit-less stuff to have lying around".
Some wise people complained at this insult to free speech and scientific inquiry. Most eventually forgot about it so as not to lose their jobs in the wind-God detector machine factories. Some did not forget and also ended up in gaol. So Plutophysia spent all its money on the machines and was ruined. In the end all that was left was a huge ring of machines surrounding the broken farms, and a few old codgers living by the shattered remains of a prison, but building an air balloon..
12 comments:
Getting frustrated, perchance? :)
However did you guess? :)
Mike,
Although most people thought that it was supposed to end when you left high school, being at odds with "The Group" is still an lonesome uphill battle. The "little minds" of the world who have nothing to contribute themselves, invariably move into politics, administration, regulatory agencies, and school boards where their lack of ability and vision can be perpetuated in the fashion of a virus.
The only upside is perhaps that they no longer have the ability, in most cases, to actually dispatch heretics of the prescribed "Religion". Praise be to the Aether, the Hula Hoop, Jogging, String Theory, Glucosamine and Chondroitan, Global Warming, Dark Matter and other certainties of the moment. Archimedes, Ptolemy, Galileo and others got the Hammurabi version of the prescribed treatment.
My favorite fairly recent example is Doctor Barry Marshall who had the unmitigated gall to challenge the medical experts by suggesting that peptic ulcers were primarily caused by a bacteria, not as the true believers knew, from stress and eating spicy foods. He was ridiculed as a charlatan and backwoods Australian country doctor. The fact that the makers of Maalox, Tums, and others profiting from the billion dollar spent on ulcer palliatives were funding the critics never seemed to be mentioned by the critics. Marshall was eventually found to be correct. This is not a tale from ancient history. This example of established ignorance and monied interest trying to silence a purveyor of a theory based upon experiment all occurred in the last 20 years.
Not every theory that challenges the prevailing beliefs is correct. However, when existing theories give results that are clearly wrong some other explanation is required. Eventually someone of integrity has to cry out as in the Hans Christin Anderson morality tale, "The king has no clothes." Invariably the court clowns and entourage with a vested interest in the status quo decry such an open challenge to the established order. In the past the charges included words like,"heretic", "treason", "non-believer" or "revolutionary". The current wording is, "Violates the Laws of Physics" and "Challenges Known Scientific Facts".
It is most galling that the modern method of the "small minds" is to invoke science as a shield. Anyone with any knowledge of the Scientific Method knows that there is no such thing as a "Law of Physics" or a Scientific Fact". All that is available in science is a theory that has as yet not been found to disagree with experiment. We use the best theories we have to try to obtain productive results. Almost invariably some aspect of existing theories prove to be lacking in some respect. That does not mean that imperfect theories cannot be used where they apply. Newtons "Laws of Motion" are used all the time. It is an inescapable consequence of the Scientific Method that absolute laws and certainty are not available to scientists. Only Philosophers and fool's have the benefit of absolute certainty. The question to ask of those who ridicule new concepts as being against the "Laws of physics" is in which category, Philosopher or fool do they belong
Jimmy Johnson
Mike - the mathematics is pretty simple without fudge factors and you keep finding more things that it explains. You can use it to predict things that can then be shown to match the predictions. I see no good reason not to use the theory, except for the problem of getting my head around Unruh waves which seem to be light-speed limited yet can instantly adjust their allowed wavelengths to the edge of the universe - that far-distant Rindler horizon. Even then, if the theory gives such nice predictions we'd be fools not to use it simply because of not understanding why it works yet. After all, we do have the same problem in quantum theory of "apply it because it works and don't worry about why".
We also have the same problem of instantaneous action at a distance (thus infinite speed and not light-speed limited) in quantum theory, and that the probability of a particle being anywhere in space never actually reaches zero, so as well as being where we measure it it's also over there, and over there... all at the same time. Some things take a long time to swallow, like believing six impossible things before breakfast.
I'm sure we'll make sense of this at some point and achieve a somewhat different view of how the universe actually works. In the meantime, the main thing is not to fall into the trap of believing any of the laws we know are infallible. The Big Bang theory even puts Conservation of Energy up for grabs, after all, and that's a mainstream theory that's taught as truth.
Is Horizon mechanics really any more difficult to accept than that the underlying space is expanding? In any case, how can you actually measure whether the dimensions of empty space are changing....
Horizon mechanics has an inbuilt paradox, in common with quite a few other theories. However, it works. At some point you may come up with an explanation of the paradox of those Unruh waves being both light-speed limited and instantly adjusting to the horizons. I have a hunch it will be connected to the infinite size of the probability function of matter/energy, and that we are all linked by a universe-wide time-clock. Then again, the person who comes up with the answer may be a student who hasn't got so much to unlearn before making the intuitive leap.
Your main problem is that most people don't like to revise what they know and unlearn the stuff that took so much time and money to acquire. The only way you might get more people recognising HM (or QI) is to redesign Shawyer's EMDrive to produce a really useful amount of thrust. That would be pretty dramatic.
Jimmy: The story of Dr Barry Marshall is a great one. He infected himself to prove his point. There is a lesson there that practical demonstrations in the lab are still the best way to convince, and indeed QI was almost completely ignored until the emdrive data came along. You are right that no theory is perfect, as history shows, they all show their limitations eventually. GR is considered inviolable, but it's flawed like everything else, in this case at very low accelerations. If the dominant physicists could admit that, they'd see that dark matter/energy have been fudges to save GR.
Simon: Good points. Quantised inertia / horizon mechanics (and EPR too) need us to review the nature of old father time in my view (don't accuse me of being unambitious!). I have submitted a paper on that with regard to EPR. The problem for me, with regard to understanding time, are the observations needed to decide between several options. The mainstream flit about with naked logic but it is grounded data that shows the way.
This tale reminds of the Tokamak. ITER has US$14Bn spent so far. The Stellarator Wendelstein 7-X is showing better results with only US$1.06Bn spent. ITER is 'too big to fail', too many careers are at stake, and scientific method will be used to keep the flow of money going to ITER for years to come. If Wendelstein 7-X threatens ITER, it will see its funding cut.
Of course, I am no expert in nuclear fusion. I know barely enough to have an informed opinion.
Ireland: Yes, in these times money is driving the mainstream decisions and not curiosity. It just means that good solutions will not come from the mainstream. This is no surprise: solutions never come from the dominant mainstream since they have no motive. New solutions always come from outsiders :)
/* QI was almost completely ignored until the emdrive data came along */
Because most physicists believed in WIMP dark matter particles (and the rest in axions), supported with SuSY and stringy theorists.
Zephir: As you know supersymmetry (SuSY for short) has now been falsified by the LHC: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/supersymmetry-fails-test-forcing-physics-seek-new-idea/
Because the physicists looked for it at the opposite end of energy density scale. Once they pay their lost bets and realize what's going on, they will return SuSY in the game.
Hi Mike; i just red this on a blog, I thought you may like it:
Let us testably, on a bench top, end dark matter. Baryogenesis and Milgrom acceleration are of the same magnitude.
...1) Big Bang matter and antimatter must exactly cancel (Noether’s theorems coupling exact symmetries and exact conservation laws). However...
...2) Matter visibly exists in excess of antimatter, hence baryogenesis[1], (6.1×10^(-10) bias, hadrons less antihadrons versus photons). Then...
...3) Sakharov conditions: Vacuum has consequential trace background chiral anisotropy toward hadrons. Measure it.
...4) Enantiomers (opposite shoes) embed within chiral vacuum background (mount a left foot) with different energies. Extreme atom-bond scale geometrically chiral-divergent test masses vacuum free fall along non-identical minimum action trajectories, violating the Equivalence Principle.
...5) Test spacetime geometry with geometry[2]. Noether's theorems couple exact vacuum isotropy with exact angular momentum conservation. Vacuum trace chiral anisotropy leaks 1.2×10^(-10) m/s² Milgrom acceleration[3]. The Tully-Fisher relation universally obtains without dark matter, with baryogenesis’ divergence magnitude.
[1] DOI:10.1103/RevModPhys.88.015004, arXiv:1505.01076
[2] www(dot)mazepath(dot)com/uncleal/EquivPrinFail(dot)pdf
[3] DOI:10.12942/lrr-2012-10, arXiv:1112.3960
___
The author is Uncle Al ( @Xemist ) and his website is the second reference.
Best,
Alex
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