Null Physics anyone?

[Reality Check]

He is only saying that infinity needs to be re-defined surely.
He cant mean the whole of mathematics.
He does not redefine the whole of mathematics - just the bits of it that he needs to support null geometry.
For example he redefines a line as as the one-dimensional space (equation 2.1):

0 = (....+0+0+0+...)

i.e. as a series of geometric points that can somehow be summed up as zero. He conveniently forgets that a line consists of separate points at different locations since a line has an extent. His definition is basically a line with all its points at 1 location (no extent).

He then goes on to redefine two and three dimensional space (planes and volumes) using his unique and confusing notation of powers:

0 = (....+0+0+0+...)2
0 = (....+0+0+0+...)3

[Reality Check]

So then a quark consists of a quark, as far as the current paradigm is concerned. Some would say it's substructure consists of nothing

My point here was, when someone says and I quote

"This ignores the fact that a point has a location in space and so contains information. Information is not nothing."

and I say

"The location information that a point contains is relative to whose view point.
Ours, inside space or outside space?"

and then you say

"I don't understand the question"

and then I say

"what I am asking is, if you are for example on Mars or 3000 light years away, would your co-ordinate system's point of origin be the same?
ie x,y,z or x1,y1,z1"

and then you say

"I think you may be a little confused about the concept of coordinate system. It's just an arbitrary set of labels for points. You can put the origin wherever you choose, regardless of where you are."

I am not confused about co-ordinate systems, I know that the point of origin can be anywhere.
However,if the point as some would say contains information of location, my question is which co-ordinate system would it be, and if the point of origin moved would it update its information. If not, then how could the point hold its location information.

The point is that there is information about the location. The form of the information is not important. It can be in any coordinate system with any origin (or none) that you like.

This line of points. What do they consist of? Particles? Nothing? What?

A line consists of points.


This is what my argument is about about the 1 cubic metre of golfballs and 100 cubic metres of footballs. When you get to infinity, which you never do, the golfball sets volume is always is smaller because the volumes were different when you started.

How could the golfballs be bigger than the footballs, they were smaller when you started the infinite sets. Its not about the size of an individual golf or football, its about the size of the container 1 cubic metre versus 100 cubic metres. The spatial volume of the initiating sets.

I think you are messing with my brain for your entertainment:D

So far we have discussed this in philosophical terms and not in mathematical terms.

You are discussing this in philosophical terms (wrong part of the forum for that by the way).
Everyone else including Witt are discussing this in mathermatical terms - note his use of the word axiom, the many theorems and equations.


As far as Witt and Stenger --

Stenger says "Our universe may be no more than re-arranged, re-structured nothingness"

Witt says "Everything is constructed of nothing"

Whats different?

The word "may". Also a citation for Stenger's quote so that it can be seen in context might be useful.


Witt also says the following --

1. Matter and antimatter are always created in equal, yet opposite amounts, whose electrical sum is zero.

2. Positive and negative electrical fields sum to a neutral universe with zero net electrical charge.

3. Energy is conserved in all interactions: the magnitude of of the universes energy has zero change.

4. Space is a collection of points, little bits of nothingness itself, embodiments of the geometric zero.

5. Charge must be conserved in particle interactions, the sum of charge differences is zero.

6. Momentum is conserved, so the universe's net momentum remains constant at zero.

What are your comments on these points as they sound quite reasonable to me.
They are the standard laws of conservation of mass, charge, momentum and energy in physics (except for 4 which is his special bit of nonsense). These have been in use for centuries.

[Almo]

Here's a bunch of quotes from Victor Stenger, particle physicist (retired).

"On the face of it, symmetry appears to have nothing whatsoever to do with modern physics"

That is clearly an incorrect statement. One of the fundamental particles was discovered by filling in a missing spot in a matrix to make it symmetric. That predicted a particle, so they looked for it and found it.

Unless he has some funny definition of symmetry, or was referring to something else or...

:confused:

[Skwinty]

Well RC,
I apologise for discussing this philosophically.
I am not a philosopher nor a mathematician. I am just using words here.
Does one have to speak in formulae in this thread.
How else am I supposed to discuss these issues.

If the general consensus here is that I should remove myself, please say so and I will.

Please define point as in line of points. Is the point a dimensionless object as per the link I supplied in an earlier post. Please clarify how the point contains location information.

The Stenger quote comes from "The never ending days of being dead" by Marcus Chown Chapter 7 "Patterns in the Void" pages 144 and 145.

Also check Stengers website and the powerpoint presentation called "Lawhigh".

Please understand I am also skeptical of Null Physics, but then to be honest, I am also skeptical of the opinions of posters on this forum. (given that most do not disclose their credentials)
I like to work things through by looking at a cross section of opinions before forming ad hominem opinions.

[Almo]

I like to work things through by looking at a cross section of opinions before forming ad hominem opinions.

As has been stated before: If someone comes to you saying "I know medical science! Diseases are caused by triangles." It's pretty safe to ignore anything he says related to medical science.

Witt does not seem to understand the very fundamentals of physics or math. Hence anything else he says about these fields is suspect.

[Skwinty]

That is clearly an incorrect statement. One of the fundamental particles was discovered by filling in a missing spot in a matrix to make it symmetric. That predicted a particle, so they looked for it and found it.

Unless he has some funny definition of symmetry, or was referring to something else or...

:confused:

My apologies, I missed the second part a few lines down the page.

The missing bit is "However it turns out to be crucial"

I relied on the "On the face of it" bit.

It doesnt change this statement however

"Now , I understand that "nothing" the "void" is the very epitomy of symmetry." which was made by me.

[Skwinty]

As has been stated before: If someone comes to you saying "I know medical science! Diseases are caused by triangles." It's pretty safe to ignore anything he says related to medical science.

Witt does not seem to understand the very fundamentals of physics or math. Hence anything else he says about these fields is suspect.

Yes, point taken. But as a non physicist and non mathematician, i dont know that until I explore it.

As far as the medical example you give, only a moron would believe that.

[sol invictus]

So then a quark consists of a quark, as far as the current paradigm is concerned. Some would say it's substructure consists of nothing

Whatever.

I am not confused about co-ordinate systems, I know that the point of origin can be anywhere.

I might have believed you, had it not been for the next thing you asked:

However,if the point as some would say contains information of location, my question is which co-ordinate system would it be, and if the point of origin moved would it update its information. If not, then how could the point hold its location information.

??

Coordinate systems are like words. They are totally arbitrary labels for real physical things. Your question makes as much sense as asking: "Well, if cows are called "cow" in English, and you move to Spain where they're called "vaca", what happened to the cow in the field near my house?

Answer: nothing.

This line of points. What do they consist of? Particles? Nothing? What?

What does your current location consist of?

This is what my argument is about about the 1 cubic metre of golfballs and 100 cubic metres of footballs. When you get to infinity, which you never do, the golfball sets volume is always is smaller because the volumes were different when you started.

You missed the point again. Build your collection using units of 100 cubic meters of golfballs and 1 cubic meters of footballs. In the end you have infinity of each, but your conclusion about which is bigger is reveresed.

Point being, you must know how an infinity is defined before you can compare it to another.

I think you are messing with my brain for your entertainment:D

Well, yes... but what I'm saying is true.

My apologies, I missed the second part a few lines down the page.

The missing bit is "However it turns out to be crucial"

I relied on the "On the face of it" bit.


That's what happens when you take quotes out of context. Symmetry is the central idea of modern particle physics.

[Almo]

As far as the medical example you give, only a moron would believe that.

That may be true, but the number of mathematically inclined people on this board who say Witt is wrong should be enough, especially coupled with Witt's inability to get any traction in peer-reviewed physics and math journals.

At some point, with fields you're not an expert in, you just have to let go or you're going to be stuck chasing up all sorts of goofball theories. Let go of Null Physics. It's not going anywhere anyway.

Spend your time reading up on what's going on with the LHC instead. That's much more interesting.

[sol invictus]

Witt also says the following --

1. Matter and antimatter are always created in equal, yet opposite amounts, whose electrical sum is zero.

Obviously false. Look around you - how much antimatter do you see? It's also known to be false from particle accelerator data, where we have proof that matter and anti-matter are not symmetric and are not created in equal amounts (look up CP violation, for example).

2. Positive and negative electrical fields sum to a neutral universe with zero net electrical charge.

Probably true. Standard physics.

3. Energy is conserved in all interactions: the magnitude of of the universes energy has zero change.

The most basic physics of all.

4. Space is a collection of points, little bits of nothingness itself, embodiments of the geometric zero.

Gibberish.

5. Charge must be conserved in particle interactions, the sum of charge differences is zero.

Basic physics.

6. Momentum is conserved, so the universe's net momentum remains constant at zero.

Same.

[Reality Check]

Well RC,
I apologise for discussing this philosophically.
I am not a philosopher nor a mathematician. I am just using words here.
Does one have to speak in formulae in this thread.
How else am I supposed to discuss these issues.

If the general consensus here is that I should remove myself, please say so and I will.

Please define point as in line of points. Is the point a dimensionless object as per the link I supplied in an earlier post. Please clarify how the point contains location information.

The Stenger quote comes from "The never ending days of being dead" by Marcus Chown Chapter 7 "Patterns in the Void" pages 144 and 145.

Also check Stengers website and the powerpoint presentation called "Lawhigh".

Please understand I am also skeptical of Null Physics, but then to be honest, I am also skeptical of the opinions of posters on this forum. (given that most do not disclose their credentials)
I like to work things through by looking at a cross section of opinions before forming ad hominem opinions.
No you do not have to speak in formulae. I was just reminding you that there is an entire other section in this forum if you want to speak "philosophically". There are plenty of philosophers there.

Please do not remove yourself but you should keep in mind that this is the "Science, Mathematics, Medicine and Technology" topic. An occasioned digression into philosophy is OK.

Point (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_%28geometry%29): In geometry, topology and related branches of mathematics a spatial point describes a specific point within a given space that consists of neither volume, area, length, nor any other higher dimensional analogue. Thus, a point is a 0-dimensional object. Because of their nature as one of the simplest geometric concepts, they are often used in one form or another as the fundamental constituents of geometry, physics, vector graphics, and many other fields.
or
Point (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Point.html): A point 0-dimensional mathematical object, which can be specified in n-dimensional space using n coordinates.

Line (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_%28mathematics%29): A line can be described as an ideal zero-width, infinitely long, perfectly straight curve (the term curve in mathematics includes "straight curves") containing an infinite number of points. In Euclidean geometry, exactly one line can be found that passes through any two points. The line provides the shortest connection between the points.

[Tubbythin]

Obviously false. Look around you - how much antimatter do you see? It's also known to be false from particle accelerator data, where we have proof that matter and anti-matter are not symmetric and are not created in equal amounts (look up CP violation, for example).


Doesn't the BarBar and Belle data only show CP violation in decay? Isn't CP violation in production reserved for things like the MSSM?

[Vorpal]

Well, when Einstein wrote GTR, it was assumed that the universe was static hence the cosmological constant. GTR as I understand was primarily about gravity and not the size of the universe. This theory initiated relativistic cosmology.
You miss the point. Pretty much the only way the null axiom makes sense is if it's referring to the the Einstein field equation--which identifies mass-energy, momentum, and stress with Ricci curvature of spacetime. The field equation doesn't care whether the universe is static, finite, or infinite (although it does predict that a static universe is unstable, no matter what the cosmological constant is).

What sin was I referring to?
Perhaps I misunderstood the point of referencing your quote. But it nevertheless remains the case that philosophy of science should be guided by actual science, or else it is simply blind flailing about. I don't see Mr. Witt's work as being based on actual science because his webpage shows that he does not understand it.

I am not confused about co-ordinate systems, I know that the point of origin can be anywhere.
However,if the point as some would say contains information of location, my question is which co-ordinate system would it be, and if the point of origin moved would it update its information. If not, then how could the point hold its location information.
This information is the relationship with every other point, not through any particular coordinate system. Say we're in Euclidean space. For any point P, moving the origin from O to O' does not change certain invariants, such as the distances OP or O'P. It merely changes the numbers on our coordinate axes.

This is what my argument is about about the 1 cubic metre of golfballs and 100 cubic metres of footballs. When you get to infinity, which you never do, the golfball sets volume is always is smaller because the volumes were different when you started.
So? Value and limit are not the same thing. Imagine that it is an hour before midnight and you have an empty urn of infinite capacity and infinitely many balls indexed by the natural numbers. You put in balls #1-10 and immediately remove ball #1. Half an hour before midnight, you put in balls #11-20 and remove ball #2. A quarter-hour before midnight, you put in #21-30 and remove #3, and so on.
Q: How many balls are in the urn at midnight?
A: None. (To make this obvious, ask yourself: if the urn is not empty, which ball is in the urn?)
Similarly, you're finagling with limits involving volume. That's not counting. How do tell if two sets have the "same number" of elements? You lay try to lay them side by side in a one-to-one fashion.
Golfball1 <--> Football1, Golfball2 <--> Football2, ...
And since you can do so in a way that each golf ball is identified with exactly one football and vice versa, there are the same number of golf balls as footballs. Regardless of their individual volumetric comparison.

It's even true if we count volume. Imagine, for convenience, that each golf ball and each football are sized to be a whole number of cubic units. Then we can straightforwardly do the same kind of identification as above, with "volume unit #n of golf balls" identified with "volume unit #n of foot balls", and conclude that the entire collections both have the same volume (which happens to be infinite).

[Vorpal]

I think you are messing with my brain for your entertainment:D
(Psst, guys... next, let's tell him that 0.9999.... = 1.)

[Scott1972]

(Psst, guys... next, let's tell him that 0.9999.... = 1.)

There is a special hell for people like you.

[Dr. Trintignant]

The statement infinity+1>infinity is mathematically false, as I have already proven for you.

Depends on your number system. That's true for the integers and reals, but not true for the surreals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surreal_numbers) (not that this has anything to do with null physics, of course).

- Dr. Trintignant

[sol invictus]

Depends on your number system. That's true for the integers and reals, but not true for the surreals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surreal_numbers) (not that this has anything to do with null physics, of course).


Agreed on all counts. Earlier I was more catious (I said that Witt would have to be very careful how he defined arithmetic operations, or something to that effect), but I quickly realized these considerations were so far beyond the level of the discussion it wasn't worth keeping them.

Doesn't the BarBar and Belle data only show CP violation in decay? Isn't CP violation in production reserved for things like the MSSM?

I'm not sure what you mean... those experiments produce lots of Bs and Bbars. It's true there is an intermediate unstable state (the upsilon 4s resonance), but I don't see the relevance.

Anyway Witt's statement was not really about CP, but about C. For example the fact that kaons spontaneously turn into their antiparticles proves his claim false. The fact that they turn into anti-kaons at a different rate than anti-kaons turn into kaons proves that a more clever version of his statement - that CP is conserved - is also false. And just by looking around you can see there's a major problem from the very beginning - how much anti-matter do you see?

[Stir]

Skwinty: I think possibly the difficulty in understanding a 'point' and its relationship to a coordinate system is due to your (often stated) description of a point 'containing' its location ... as though if you could grab a point and peel it open, there would appear a set of numbers describing its location ... the word 'contains' in this context is completely misleading ... better would be to say a point is associated with a location which may be described in relation to a coordinate system of choice

[Tubbythin]

I'm not sure what you mean... those experiments produce lots of Bs and Bbars. It's true there is an intermediate unstable state (the upsilon 4s resonance), but I don't see the relevance.

Hmm. Neither am I entirely. I'm working from hazy memory. Is it true that the B0 and B0 bar have the same lifetime but that the decay branching ratios to the CP analogues states differ? Does that even make a word of sense?


Anyway Witt's statement was not really about CP, but about C. For example the fact that kaons spontaneously turn into their antiparticles proves his claim false. The fact that they turn into anti-kaons at a different rate than anti-kaons turn into kaons proves that a more clever version of his statement - that CP is conserved - is also false.
My understanding is that CP violation was first observed with the two pion decay of the K0long. And hence, K0 short and K0 long are not CP eigenstates. Is your above statement just another way of saying what I've just said?


And just by looking around you can see there's a major problem from the very beginning - how much anti-matter do you see?
Agreed. I wasn't objecting to you saying Witt was wrong.

[Skwinty]

Skwinty: I think possibly the difficulty in understanding a 'point' and its relationship to a coordinate system is due to your (often stated) description of a point 'containing' its location ... as though if you could grab a point and peel it open, there would appear a set of numbers describing its location ... the word 'contains' in this context is completely misleading ... better would be to say a point is associated with a location which may be described in relation to a coordinate system of choice


hi stir, yes i agree, i was arguing against RC's statement here below.

"This ignores the fact that a point has a location in space and so contains information. Information is not nothing."

[Skwinty]

Whatever. .

Sol, your words were and I quote "The goal of elementary particle physics is to answer that question. Our current paradigm includes various possibilities. The simplest one (and that of our best model, which is incredibly accurate) is that there exist truly elementary point particles which cannot be divided further. So they consist only of themselves, if you want"

That is why I said a quark then consists of a quark.
If a quark has no substructure then its can be said that its substructure consists of nothing, but as you say "whatever"



I might have believed you, had it not been for the next thing you asked:..

Here I think you are missing the point. I was arguing against RC's statement that a point contains information.( I am not talking about a point particle here)
If you consider a void which implies an area of absolutely nothing. No matter,energy or anything, you could could still apply the idea of a point within that space, and that point could be defined by any co-ordinate system. (with any point of origin). Does that 0 dimensional point contain any location information? If it does, would this information update if some interstellar disturbance distorted and moved this void a distance of say 10 light years, as its location would have changed. I dont think so. The observer might deduce that, but the point wouldnt know any bettter.
The laws of science do not restrict the universe, only physicists.



Coordinate systems are like words. They are totally arbitrary labels for real physical things. Your question makes as much sense as asking: "Well, if cows are called "cow" in English, and you move to Spain where they're called "vaca", what happened to the cow in the field near my house?

Answer: nothing...

Yes, I get that, but please tell me if the point in the void contains location information.



What does your current location consist of?..

A house, furniture land laptop etc. I dont live in a void where there is nothing and if I did, it wouldn't be a void because I would be there.



You missed the point again. Build your collection using units of 100 cubic meters of golfballs and 1 cubic meters of footballs. In the end you have infinity of each, but your conclusion about which is bigger is reveresed.

Point being, you must know how an infinity is defined before you can compare it to another...

This, was my argument way back, that on the way to infinity the smaller volume set would always be smaller and the larger volume set would always be bigger, because thats how they started.
Infinity is a never full hotel no matter how many bus loads of tourists arrive.
Theres always room for one more.




Well, yes... but what I'm saying is true..

I thought scientist's were not interested in the truth. That was for philosophers. Scientists are only interested in good explanations, although sometimes they give lousy explanations.


That's what happens when you take quotes out of context. Symmetry is the central idea of modern particle physics.

Now you are taking my quotes out of context.
You ignored the statement directly after the quote.
where I said that nothing was the very epitomy of symmetry.

Anyway, enough of null physics, infinity and trading cyber punches, lets discuss Frank Tipler, possibly another crackpot.:D

[Reality Check]

hi stir, yes i agree, i was arguing against RC's statement here below.

"This ignores the fact that a point has a location in space and so contains information. Information is not nothing."
Hi Skwinty: Do you agree that a point has a location?
If so there must be information about that location. That information is associated with the point. The word "contains" is shorthand for the point has associated location information.
This includes point particles since they are mathematically decribed as points.

The only situation that I can think of where a point need not have a location is a universe consisting of a single point. In that case there is no need to be able to tell points apart (e.g. to define lengths) and so a location is not needed.

[Skwinty]

Hi RC
Yes, a point has location to the observer, but the point is unaware of its location.
A point in the void can by definition only be nothing.

[Reality Check]

Hi RC
Yes, a point has location to the observer, but the point is unaware of its location.
A point in the void can by definition only be nothing.
A geometric point by definition is not nothing: Point (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_%28geometry%29)
In geometry, topology and related branches of mathematics a spatial point describes a specific point within a given space that consists of neither volume, area, length, nor any other higher dimensional analogue. Thus, a point is a 0-dimensional object. Because of their nature as one of the simplest geometric concepts, they are often used in one form or another as the fundamental constituents of geometry, physics, vector graphics, and many other fields.
(emphasis added)
Note the absence of the words nothing and void.
Also see: Point Definition (http://www.mathopenref.com/point.html) and MathPlanet: point. (http://planetmath.org/?op=getobj&from=objects&id=8173)

In a sense you are right about a single point in a void, e.g. if we had a universe that consisted of a single point then no location information would be needed. In that universe a point could be "nothing" (but we really need a definition of "nothing"). Personally I think that the void is nothing but a point is something, i.e. if the void is nothing then how can something in it (a point) also be nothing without being the void?

But what happens when there is another point in the universe?
If that point is also nothing then it is identical to the first point. This is a really boring universe with no length defined and no volume. In fact add an infinite number of identical points and you have Terry Witt's universe!
If that point can be distinguished from the first point then the points have information that make them different. Information is something not nothing. A point that has associated information is something not nothing.
Thus if you want to describe this universe which we observe has quantities such as length in it then you need points with locations so that length, etc. is defined. Therefore a property of a point is its location.

[Vorpal]

I can't believe the debate devolved into a question of grade-school geometry that could be resolved via two minutes on Google.

"... the intuitive meanings will serve: a point is a location, ..." -- McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology, p. 671 (1997 ed)
"Similarly, a point is the idealization of a dot or a spot or a location." -- Dodge, Euclidean Geometry and Transformations, p. 2
"A point in space can be envisioned ... but nevertheless possessing a specific location." -- Geometry DeMystified, p.137
"There are three important features about a point: location, location, and location!" -- A Complete Idiot's Guide to Geometry

Most geometry books take 'point' as a primitive (i.e., it is a term defined solely by the axioms), so it is still a 'something'. The axioms allow you to determine what is and what isn't a point--why in the world would anyone give criteria for recognizing a 'nothing'? (What would that mean, anyway?)

[ben m]

This entire thing is ridiculous. You can define "nothing" in various ways such that geometrical points are or are not "nothing". Neither answer is particularly enlightening.

Wake me up when you've determined whether essence precedes existence, and whether the four Aristotelian elements must consist of an infinitely divisible substance.

[Perpetual Student]

Fascinating! This week’s issue (Aug 2, 2008) of Science News includes two full page ads (inside front cover and inside rear cover) for Witt’s book. I’ve lost count of the times I have seen this ad. What is his purpose? Is he a megalomaniac, lusting to see his name in print? Does he really think he will win over the learned physics community by first convincing the general science reading public? Is he some kind of physics Kevin Trudeau, hoping to make millions selling his book to unsuspecting worldwide science dodos? And the biggest question of all is: does he really believe his ill founded theories? As I said, it’s fascinating!

[sol invictus]

Hmm.

This is getting pretty off-topic, so maybe let's save it for another thread (if someone wants to start one on CP violation).

In brief, if standard model interactions respected CP, SM eigenstates would also be CP eigenstates. Instead, they are not and hence (in the CP eigenstate basis) oscillate back and forth. That means the same initial particle can decay into both CP odd and CP even final states.

[sol invictus]

<snip>

I'm really not sure how to respond usefully to most of that, so I won't.

There was a question about the meaning of location (or point) in a totally empty void. Even in a completely empty void, locations have meaning so long as you define them relative to something. But that something can simply be the origin of coordinates.

Think about it like this. Suppose our space is empty except for two objects. Now we can clearly define the motion of one object with respect to the other. In fact we might as well pick a coordinate system (and we can always do so) in which the first object remains at the origin while the other one moves around. So now we are describing the motion of the second object with respect to some coordinate system. But now we can forget about the first object, which no longer plays any role, and so we are happily describing the location of a single object in an otherwise totally empty void.

An even better way to see that locations have meaning is to recall that in general relativity, accelerated objects behave fundamentally differently from non-accelerated ones. Therefore not all motions are equivalent even in a completely empty void - you can tell if you're accelerating.

[Skwinty]

Obviously false. Look around you - how much antimatter do you see? It's also known to be false from particle accelerator data, where we have proof that matter and anti-matter are not symmetric and are not created in equal amounts (look up CP violation, for example).

Hi Sol
I was under the impression that the laws of physics predicted a 50/50 split in matter/antimatter. Sure, antimatter is not easily detected or produced.
I read that when antimatter was produced in the lab, albeit it vey small amounts,the same amount of matter was produced. I will read up on CP violations.

[sol invictus]

Hi Sol
I was under the impression that the laws of physics predicted a 50/50 split in matter/antimatter.

Nope, absolutely not. If they did they'd be in trouble since there is essentially zero antimatter around. While there might be other ways to explain that, we also know from lab experiments that the laws of physics do not apply to antimatter in the same way they apply to matter. Moreover they do not apply to a mirror image world the way they do to ours, and they don't even apply to antimatter in a mirror image world the same way (that's CP violation).

They do, however, apply in the same way to anti-matter in a mirror image world with time reversed :).

Sure, antimatter is not easily detected or produced.
I read that when antimatter was produced in the lab, albeit it vey small amounts,the same amount of matter was produced.

No, that's not the case in general (although it is almost true for certain specific kinds of antimatter).

[Skwinty]

They do, however, apply in the same way to anti-matter in a mirror image world with time reversed .

By this, are you referring to big bang conditions where the antimatter/matter production was almost equal. Matter only had to outnumber antimatter by say 10 ppb and the the remaining matter is what we see today?



No, that's not the case in general (although it is almost true for certain specific kinds of antimatter).

The specific kinds of antimatter you refer to here would be for example?

Electron/positron?
Neutron/Antineutron?
Proton/Antiproton?

[Reality Check]

By this, are you referring to big bang conditions where the antimatter/matter production was almost equal. Matter only had to outnumber antimatter by say 10 ppb and the the remaining matter is what we see today?

The specific kinds of antimatter you refer to here would be for example?

Electron/positron?
Neutron/Antineutron?
Proton/Antiproton?
Hi Skwinty: You may want to read the Wikipedia on CP violation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP-violation).
CP violation happens both today and in the conditions of the Big Bang. The Big Bang produced exactly the same amount of matter and antimatter but CP violation means that some reactions in the inital universe produced more matter than antimatter.

A specific particle that shows CP violation is the kaon.

[sol invictus]

By this, are you referring to big bang conditions where the antimatter/matter production was almost equal.

No - I was referring to the CPT theorem, which underlies all of this discussion.

The specific kinds of antimatter you refer to here would be for example?

Electron/positron?
Neutron/Antineutron?
Proton/Antiproton?

Well, there are some exactly conserved charges (and some almost conserved charges). All reactions conserve the exact ones - total electric charge, for example, never changes. You can't start with a neutral pion and have it decay to two electrons and a positron, because that would violate conservation of charge (and angular momentum and lepton number for that matter). Instead, the neutral pion could decay into an electron and a positron.

There is no conserved charge associated with matter versus anti-matter. There's not even an approximate one. However it is true that anti-particles always have the opposite charges as their matter counterparts, and so charge conservation forbids some matter/antimatter asymmetric processes.

[Elvis666]

The back cover of the September 2008 issue of Astronomy magazine is an ad for "Our Undiscovered Universe" depicting a young boy writing repeatedly on a blackboard, "I believe in the Big Bang", with the caption underneath, "YOU WON'T".

On page 15, there is a companion ad with a blackboard reading "Null Physics 101" and "This is not on your syllabus", with the caption below it reading "It should be." This ad has a quote from The Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, "His book is significant contribution to a topic that is still far from settled."

This is not a professional organization, but an amateur group. I will not be purchasing one of their Handbooks this year, even though is is useful and it will be the first time in many years that I pass on it. I'm working my way through the back issues to see the context of the quote.

EDIT: I will not be researching this after all, since you have to be a member to download the old issues.

[BRENTEFS]

Very well said. I have the book and find it to be an unbelieveble accomplishment by someone unknown in the world of physics. One important point that most can't seem to grasp is that Mr. Witt is not doing this for the monetary rewards he will receive from book sales. This is most probably his lifes work and contradicts the "standard model" and the interpretation of the redshift that led physicists to conclude the expansion of the universe and conversely the "BIG BANG". His energy conservation model is easy reading for someone with less than a Mensa IQ and to me is much more of a believable model.

[Third Eye Open]

Very well said. I have the book and find it to be an unbelieveble accomplishment by someone unknown in the world of physics. One important point that most can't seem to grasp is that Mr. Witt is not doing this for the monetary rewards he will receive from book sales. This is most probably his lifes work and contradicts the "standard model" and the interpretation of the redshift that led physicists to conclude the expansion of the universe and conversely the "BIG BANG". His energy conservation model is easy reading for someone with less than a Mensa IQ and to me is much more of a believable model.

Ahhhh. Life would be so much simpler if 'Easy to Understand' = 'True'

[Paul]

Very well said.:confused:

I have the book and find it to be an unbelieveble accomplishment by someone unknown in the world of physics.What is it that you find unbelievable? That Witt has made unsubstantiated claims to have overturned physics, or that a very wealthy man can spend large amounts of money promoting his pet ignorance?

One important point that most can't seem to grasp is that Mr. Witt is not doing this for the monetary rewards he will receive from book sales.On the contrary, this is very easy to grasp, but not important; if Witt was just in it for the money, he would have stuck with what he appears to be rather good at.

His energy conservation model is easy reading for someone with less than a Mensa IQ and to me is much more of a believable model.Are we to assume from this that you believe that some of the most complex physics currently being studied should be easily accessible to people who aren't smart and don't want to study physics?

[sol invictus]

Very well said. I have the book and find it to be an unbelieveble accomplishment by someone unknown in the world of physics. One important point that most can't seem to grasp is that Mr. Witt is not doing this for the monetary rewards he will receive from book sales. This is most probably his lifes work and contradicts the "standard model" and the interpretation of the redshift that led physicists to conclude the expansion of the universe and conversely the "BIG BANG". His energy conservation model is easy reading for someone with less than a Mensa IQ and to me is much more of a believable model.

Another anonymous first time poster comes in and says something good about Witt. How odd and unprecedented!

[DrRocket]

Very well said. I have the book and find it to be an unbelieveble accomplishment....

Precisely

[Reality Check]

Another anonymous first time poster comes in and says something good about Witt. How odd and unprecedented!
Oddly enough his very first post (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=3910085#post3910085) was to nominate for The Language Award a post in this thread from 6 October 2007.

[Skwinty]

Another anonymous first time poster comes in and says something good about Witt. How odd and unprecedented!

Is this the troll in Sol making this statement? :eek: Every poster has a first post. Hardly unprecedented if its another!
Given that 99% of posters of this forum are anonymous, using the names of mythical gods, kings, emperors, gladiators,cute furry animals and miscellaneous nom de plumes to hide behind.

I believe that Witts detractors actually do more good for Null Physics than the odd poster who see's something positive in Null Physics.
This thread has had close to 50,000 views world wide and most of the posts are from a handfull of detractors.
Not bad advertising for Null Physics.

[Paul]

This thread has had close to 50,000 views world wide and most of the posts are from a handfull of detractors.
Not bad advertising for Null Physics.You appear to be assuming that most casual viewers of this thread have the same difficulties with the comprehension of information as Witt's more ardent supporters.

[Skwinty]

You appear to be assuming that most casual viewers of this thread have the same difficulties with the comprehension of information as Witt's more ardent supporters.
I am not assuming anything, merely stating the obvious.
Even bad publicity is good publicity.:rolleyes:

[sol invictus]

Is this the troll in Sol making this statement? :eek: Every poster has a first post. Hardly unprecedented if its another!

There's nothing unprecedented about it at all - that was precisely my point! Many times in this thread new accounts have posted some kind of glowing endorsement of Witt's book and then disappeared without a trace. Almost as if someone were registering multiple accounts to try to prop up his or her crackpottery...

Given that 99% of posters of this forum are anonymous, using the names of mythical gods, kings, emperors, gladiators,cute furry animals and miscellaneous nom de plumes to hide behind.

But 98% of those posters are not trying to sell a book and/or promote some kind of woo (OK, 98% might be an overestimate).

I believe that Witts detractors actually do more good for Null Physics than the odd poster who see's something positive in Null Physics.
This thread has had close to 50,000 views world wide and most of the posts are from a handfull of detractors.
Not bad advertising for Null Physics.

I don't think the "all publicity is good publicity" thing goes here. This book is heavily advertised in major media, so it already has much greater exposure than could be provided by this thread. Most of the viewers probably come here after a google search they made based on an ad, read enough to realize the book is garbage, and leave without another thought. It's hard to imagine anyone reading this thread and coming away with a more positive impression than they arrived with.

[Skwinty]

But 98% of those posters are not trying to sell a book and/or promote some kind of woo (OK, 98% might be an overestimate).

I must agree with you here. I find it hard to even read some of the twaddle one finds in the paranormal,conspiracy,religion and philosophy sections.
Even bad science is more palatable but then thats only my opinion.
As far as Null Physic's is concerned, at least Witt is making corrections as he goes along. He has retracted his galactic core luminosity prediction.

[Reality Check]

I must agree with you here. I find it hard to even read some of the twaddle one finds in the paranormal,conspiracy,religion and philosophy sections.
Even bad science is more palatable but then thats only my opinion.
As far as Null Physic's is concerned, at least Witt is making corrections as he goes along. He has retracted his galactic core luminosity prediction.
I would say that he has not gone as far as retracting the prediction. The last that I remember from the NP forum (it has been unavailable for the last few days while it is updated) is that his team is trying to find some way of hiding the radiation from his galactic core. His cosmology collapses if there are no galactic cores, e.g. one at the center of our galaxy. It also collapes if the core is not hot enough to "disassociate" compound nuclei into hydrogen (280,000K according to the OUU calculations).
His prediction was wrong due to the many observations of our galactic center. So now he and his team is trying to fix it by either shifting the peak of the radiation to an unobserved bit of the spectrum or creating a new gravitational effect that hides the radiation.

If his forum was up I would tell him about another problem with galactic cores - we do not observe the impact of the vortical inflow on the surface of the core. As page 333 of OUU states the Milky Way's total vortical inflow is ~18 solar masses per year. All of this mass hits the surface of the galactic core - a body with a mass of 3.7 million solar masses and a radius just over that of the Schwarzschild radius. The energy released in the impact is not small and would not be constant (we would expect the occasional actual star to hit the core).

[Perpetual Student]

his team is trying to find some way of hiding the radiation from his galactic core.

They should try epicycles -- that worked for a couple of thousand years.

[Skwinty]

I would say that he has not gone as far as retracting the prediction.

If you look at the errata part of the web site he says he has removed this from his list of predictions and moved it to calculations.
Wasn't it you who gave him credit for making corrections?

[Reality Check]

If you look at the errata part of the web site he says he has removed this from his list of predictions and moved it to calculations.
Wasn't it you who gave him credit for making corrections?
I don't remember giving him credit for corrections - your comment was the first that I heard of this.
I have found his errata document (http://www.ourundiscovereduniverse.com/downloads/OUUPostPublicationErrors.pdf):
Page 359, Milky Way Core’s luminosity
The Milky Way core’s luminous properties were calculated in Chapter 16, but unlike the other quantified predictions in Appendix A, they currently have no corroborating theoretical or observational evidence. As such, core luminosity should be considered a calculation, not a prediction, and should not be included in the list.
and he is wrong. A calculation from a theory is a prediction of that theory. That is the definition of a prediction.
The fact that there is no "corroborating theoretical or observational evidence" is a problem with the prediction and does not make it a printing error. If the core does not have the luminosity as calculated then it does not exist and null cosmology is wrong.

[Skwinty]

I don't remember giving him credit for corrections - your comment was the first that I heard of this.



My apologies, it was Zosima who gives him credit for making corrections.

[Reality Check]

My apologies, it was Zosima who gives him credit for making corrections.
Are you talking about this post:
Howdy, ya'll

I think I should try to steer clear of Witt's site for a while, we're starting to get on each others' nerves.

If nothing else I'm impressed that he learned the value of the internet after just one encounter with JREF. I guess he figured that rather than persuade people on these forums he had the resources to manufacture consensus by building his own forum.

One thing that's got me is where did that The Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada quote come from? Is this published somewhere or is it just something that someone told him over the phone. From what he's said about FIT, its pretty obvious that Witt is willing to exaggerate the amount of praise and consensus that there is for the theory.

ETA: To Witt's credit, he could have used his powers of moderation to silence opposition on the forum and he hasn't. The whole time I've been posting there I've been just cringing in expectation of the moment the BanHammer comes down and it hasn't. (Which is more than I can say for many more 'respectable' sites like BoingBoing).
Then the credit is about the NP forum not corrections to his book.

[Skwinty]

Are you talking about this post:

Then the credit is about the NP forum not corrections to his book.

Nope, this one.

"*I think the fact that he has shifted his position somewhat is actually a good thing. Modifying and improving a theory in response to criticism is always good, no matter how wild the theory is."

post 424

[Tubbythin]

I believe that Witts detractors actually do more good for Null Physics than the odd poster who see's something positive in Null Physics.
This thread has had close to 50,000 views world wide and most of the posts are from a handfull of detractors.
Not bad advertising for Null Physics.

I don't get it. How is it doing him any good? Sure bad publicity is still publicity, but if he isn't trying to make money how are there any positives in this?

[Skwinty]

I don't get it. How is it doing him any good? Sure bad publicity is still publicity, but if he isn't trying to make money how are there any positives in this?

Well, I think people talk about it, even if they say derogatory things about it and it probably will generate more sales because of peoples curiosity.
I recall this being the case with other books of this type.
People are curious and may buy the book just to see if it is as bad as others say.

Thats is all I mean. No hidden agenda.

[Tubbythin]

Well, I think people talk about it, even if they say derogatory things about it and it probably will generate more sales because of peoples curiosity.
I recall this being the case with other books of this type.
People are curious and may buy the book just to see if it is as bad as others say.

Thats is all I mean. No hidden agenda.

But if his aim is not to make money, what good are the extra sales? They're not going to make people more likely to take him seriously.

[Skwinty]

But if his aim is not to make money, what good are the extra sales? They're not going to make people more likely to take him seriously.

But at least they talk about him

[sol invictus]

But at least they talk about him

How pathetic.

[Tubbythin]

But at least they talk about him

And..? That's good how?

[Skwinty]

And..? That's good how?

The motives of Witt are known only to him.
What perhaps is pathetic is the fact that his detractors seem to be obsessed with "bringing him down"and branding him as a crank.
Why?
If he is as wrong as his detractors say, then he should pose no threat to the current paradigm.
Is it jealousy of his financial success or because he has the audacity to question and refer to perceived failings of modern science?

Show me any scientist who has been 100% correct in any of his work.
Now be honest about Witt, sure he has made some mistakes according to the current paradigm, but is he 100% wrong? I cant judge either way because I am not qualified, only interested in the subject.

If you say that he is 100% wrong, then I would assume that you have analysed his work extensively. If you haven't , then you are blowing hot air.

Do you think that bad publicity affected the sales of Peter Woits "Not even Wrong" or Lee Smolin's "The Trouble with Physics" and I believe there was lots of bad publicity associated with both books
.
These books can be seen in any bookstore world wide and they must be selling or they wouldn't be there. Now you can say that only dodos or morons buy them, but then not everyone can be as clever as Witts detractors and they themselves may well be morons in other fields.

Then consider what publications or peer reviewed papers have his detractors credited to their names. If there are any, are they providing links or references to them?

The point is that is easy to anonymously post criticism's of other peoples work, but at least he has the courage to to say this is who I am and this is what I think, whats your opinion of my work?

[sol invictus]

What perhaps is pathetic is the fact that his detractors seem to be obsessed with "bringing him down"and branding him as a crank.

Obsessed with Witt? Please. There is certainly a strongly addictive element to posting on this forum (as I'm sure you're fully aware), but it has nothing to do with Witt.


If he is as wrong as his detractors say, then he should pose no threat to the current paradigm.

That's not true at all. Astrology is total bunk, and yet it poses a (relatively mild, in my opinion) threat to the current paradigm. Same goes for various other sorts of snake oil.

Is it jealousy of his financial success or because he has the audacity to question and refer to perceived failings of modern science?

Go read a few other threads on this forum - say the one where buzz lightyear claims that various rocks were excreted by giant serpents (it's pretty amusing). Are the naysayers there jealous, or resentful of his "audacity"? Which is it?

Show me any scientist who has been 100% correct in any of his work.
Now be honest about Witt, sure he has made some mistakes according to the current paradigm, but is he 100% wrong? I cant judge either way because I am not qualified, only interested in the subject.

Please re-read your paragraph there. You are equating not quite 100% correctness with not quite 100% wrongness. I've noticed this several times with you - you have a strong tendency to focus on absolutes. Once something isn't absolute it's equivalent to everything else that isn't absolute.

If you say that he is 100% wrong, then I would assume that you have analysed his work extensively. If you haven't , then you are blowing hot air.

What would it mean for something to be 100% wrong? That's as nonsensical as Witt's writings about physics.

These books can be seen in any bookstore world wide and they must be selling or they wouldn't be there. Now you can say that only dodos or morons buy them, but then not everyone can be as clever as Witts detractors and they themselves may well be morons in other fields.

No one has said anything of the kind - where did that straw man come from?

The point is that is easy to anonymously post criticism's of other peoples work, but at least he has the courage to to say this is who I am and this is what I think, whats your opinion of my work?

As an anonymous poster yourself you're on pretty shaky ground there. Regardless, the criticisms posted here are not arguments from the authority of the posters, so their authority on the topic is not relevant. And have you considered the possibility that some posters might prefer to hide their identities and authority precisely so as to allow a more open discussion?

[Skwinty]

Obsessed with Witt? Please. There is certainly a strongly addictive element to posting on this forum (as I'm sure you're fully aware), but it has nothing to do with Witt. .

Yes,the addictive element is clearly present. Lots of Witt thrills too.



That's not true at all. Astrology is total bunk, and yet it poses a (relatively mild, in my opinion) threat to the current paradigm. Same goes for various other sorts of snake oil..

Please expand on the dangers of astrology.



Go read a few other threads on this forum - say the one where buzz lightyear claims that various rocks were excreted by giant serpents (it's pretty amusing). Are the naysayers there jealous, or resentful of his "audacity"? Which is it?.

Sure, its amusing but hardly serious. Witt is trying to be serious.



Please re-read your paragraph there. You are equating not quite 100% correctness with not quite 100% wrongness. I've noticed this several times with you - you have a strong tendency to focus on absolutes. Once something isn't absolute it's equivalent to everything else that isn't absolute..

Well, how would you grade his book?
All right or all wrong or half half?
100% right is all ticks next to the answers.
100% wrong all crosses next to the answers.
And no gold star either.


What would it mean for something to be 100% wrong? That's as nonsensical as Witt's writings about physics..

Buzzlightyear and serpent excretia (all wrong, 100% wrong, all crosses and no gold star)



No one has said anything of the kind - where did that straw man come from?.

This is a post by Perpetual Student no 527. Here is the "straw man"

Fascinating! This week’s issue (Aug 2, 2008) of Science News includes two full page ads (inside front cover and inside rear cover) for Witt’s book. I’ve lost count of the times I have seen this ad. What is his purpose? Is he a megalomaniac, lusting to see his name in print? Does he really think he will win over the learned physics community by first convincing the general science reading public? Is he some kind of physics Kevin Trudeau, hoping to make millions selling his book to unsuspecting worldwide science dodos? And the biggest question of all is: does he really believe his ill founded theories? As I said, it’s fascinating!



As an anonymous poster yourself you're on pretty shaky ground there. Regardless, the criticisms posted here are not arguments from the authority of the posters, so their authority on the topic is not relevant. And have you considered the possibility that some posters might prefer to hide their identities and authority precisely so as to allow a more open discussion? If some famous physicist were posting here in the clear, many would be afraid to question her statements and the discussion would probably be much more muted and less interesting for all, including her.

Sure I do not exclude myself from being an almost anonymous poster.
My photo is on my avatar, I have stated my profession and in certain threads I have stated precisely where I work. My identity is a easily found given my forum name is a big clue.
Also I try not to pass derogatory comments about anyone, which is more than can be said for a lot of posters on this forum.
The motto of this forum is friendly discussion and do not attack the arguer.

[Tubbythin]

The motives of Witt are known only to him.

So how can you justify the statement:

I believe that Witts detractors actually do more good for Null Physics than the odd poster who see's something positive in Null Physics.


?


What perhaps is pathetic is the fact that his detractors seem to be obsessed with "bringing him down"and branding him as a crank.
Why?
If he is as wrong as his detractors say, then he should pose no threat to the current paradigm.
Is it jealousy of his financial success or because he has the audacity to question and refer to perceived failings of modern science?

Well if he went through the peer review system like everyone else his work wouldn't get published. And then we wouldn't be debunking his theory. And you wouldn't be throwing accusations of jealousy round without any evidence. Simple.


The point is that is easy to anonymously post criticism's of other peoples work, but at least he has the courage to to say this is who I am and this is what I think, whats your opinion of my work?
So does everyone who's ever been published in PRL, ApJ, NPA...

[Tubbythin]

Sure, its amusing but hardly serious. Witt is trying to be serious.


If he wants to be taken seriously he should try to get his work in to peer reviewed journals.

[sol invictus]

Please expand on the dangers of astrology.


It's part of a more general threat to the current scientific paradigm, which this forum exists in part to combat. Doing so does not require any extra motivation beyond a general interest in science and skepticism. I'd rather not expand more on that, as it's rather off-topic for this thread.

Well, how would you grade his book?
All right or all wrong or half half?
100% right is all ticks next to the answers.
100% wrong all crosses next to the answers.
And no gold star either.

I haven't read his book, nor will I. My opinion is based on his posts on this forum, the excerpts I've seen of the book, and a few posts on his own forum I saw. I can't assign a number to how wrong he is - I think that would be quite meaningless. For one thing many statements are not even wrong - just gibberish. Many of the rest are true, but are well-known standard physics. I can say that I have not seen anything which originated from him which has any chance of being correct.

Buzzlightyear and serpent excretia (all wrong, 100% wrong, all crosses and no gold star)

OK, good example :). Witt is not as bad as that, I'll grant you.

This is a post by Perpetual Student no 527. Here is the "straw man"

This doesn't seem connected to what you said about Woit and Smollin, but perhaps I misunderstood your earlier comment.


Also I try not to pass derogatory comments about anyone, which is more than can be said for a lot of posters on this forum.


Witt fits all the symptoms of what I consider to be a mild mental illness - he's a classical example of the "I know the theory of everything and everyone that came before is wrong and the establishment is suppressing me because it's afraid of my new ideas" physics crank. Believe it or not, I have personally encountered examples of at least 30 such people in the last decade or so. For something so specific it's far more common than you might think.

[Skwinty]

So how can you justify the statement:...

The statement said nothing about Witts motive.
It was a personal belief about good and bad publicity.




Well if he went through the peer review system like everyone else his work wouldn't get published. And then we wouldn't be debunking his theory. And you wouldn't be throwing accusations of jealousy round without any evidence. Simple....

Since when does posing a question equate to "throwing accusations around". However, if the cap fits,by all means wear it.


So does everyone who's ever been published in PRL, ApJ, NPA...

Agreed. Have you been published?

[Tubbythin]

The statement said nothing about Witts motive.
It was a personal belief about good and bad publicity.
So in what sense do you think this thread is doing Null Physics good?


Since when does posing a question equate to "throwing accusations around". However, if the cap fits,by all means wear it.
As I read it, your question implied it was a distinct possibility. I could have misunderstood you of course.


Agreed. Have you been published?

Not yet. But my name should be on at least two papers being submitted to peer reviewed journals in the next year.

[Skwinty]

With respect to the addictiveness of this forum, I cant wait for winter to be over so I cant indulge in my other addiction, Amateur Astronomy and Astrophotography. Perhaps I can win one of Witts monthly photo competitions. $500US to ZAR is a tidy sum. Some new astrogear perhaps.
Then you wont be hearing too much from me.

[Skwinty]

So in what sense do you think this thread is doing Null Physics good?.

I've been through this in earlier posts


As I read it, your question implied it was a distinct possibility. I could have misunderstood you of course..

No problem

Not yet. But my name should be on at least two papers being submitted to peer reviewed journals in the next year.

I am looking forward to reading these papers. Be sure to let me know where to find them once published. Good for you.

[Perpetual Student]

Skwinty:

I will state why I find Witt’s book so objectionable. The following is taken from his own web site:

“Terence Witt studied physics at Oregon State University, but soon became disenchanted with the emptiness of its standard models and switched his major to electrical engineering. Witt graduated with a BSEE in 1984.”

Well, that’s it! As an undergraduate, he decided the standard models of physics were wrong. All the geniuses of the twentieth century:

Einstein
Bohr
Schroedinger
Heisenberg
Born
Feynman
Hawking
Others (omitted due to my ignorance)

Are wrong! A BS student at Oregon State decided they were all wrong!

His education went as far as a BS in EE!

Based on comments I’ve read on this and his own forum, much of what he says does not stack up to experimental evidence, which is the whole point of physics – to explain what actually happens in the real world. Further, the mathematics he uses (concerning infinity) is ludicrous.

He has written a book to the general science reading public instead of a paper (or book) for peer review. Is the average accountant, dentist or astronomer who reads his book supposed to convince the learned word of physicists of the worth of his theories? What more is there to say?

[OnlyTellsTruths]

So in what sense do you think this thread is doing Null Physics good?

This really isn't about anything aside from selling books.

[buzz lightyear]

Buzzlightyear and serpent excretia (all wrong, 100% wrong, all crosses and no gold star)




AW, what about a nice little ,maybe........ red star and a "good effort" comment.
After all it is........ original, and I did include pictures:D

[Wangler]

Skwinty:

I will state why I find Witt’s book so objectionable. The following is taken from his own web site:

“Terence Witt studied physics at Oregon State University, but soon became disenchanted with the emptiness of its standard models and switched his major to electrical engineering. Witt graduated with a BSEE in 1984.”

Well, that’s it! As an undergraduate, he decided the standard models of physics were wrong. All the geniuses of the twentieth century:

Einstein
Bohr
Schroedinger
Heisenberg
Born
Feynman
Hawking
Others (omitted due to my ignorance)

Are wrong! A BS student at Oregon State decided they were all wrong!

His education went as far as a BS in EE!

So a big part of your objection is that he only has a Bachelor's Degree?

Are you serious?

:eye-poppi

[sol invictus]

So a big part of your objection is that he only has a Bachelor's Degree?

Are you serious?


It wasn't my argument, but I don't see what you find invalid about it. Obviously a formal degree doesn't prove one understands anything, and the lack of one doesn't prove one doesn't understand it. It is, however, a very strong indication.

Suppose I came along with a miracle cure for the common cold. All of modern medicine is wrong, I say, totally wrong - there are no such things as these invisible "viruses" doctors talk about. I have a much simpler and easier to understand mechanism - you just have to avoid moonlight at all costs, and your cold will be cured (after all, the moon is a cold place!). No one will listen because my theory threatens the whole medical establishment - they just have too much to lose.

What would you think about that? If you found out that my medical qualifications stopped at a bachelor's in psychology (a subject more closely connected to medicine than EE is to the kind of physics Witt is discussing), would that not be a rather important piece of evidence in the case for my quackulence?

[Skwinty]

Perpetual Student:

I'll start with a direct quote from Witts book.

"Yet after all the progress - after Socrates, Aristotle and Lucretius paved the way for Newton, Planck and Einstein, after tens of thousands of scientists have probed deeply into Nature - no-one has a clue of "WHY" the universe is here, how it really works, or what it is ultimately composed of" end quote.

The main complaint here, as I see it, is that science doesnt ask the "WHY". Now, I dont interprete this as meaning that science is wrong, rather that science is concerned with theories that agree with measurement and observation.

Freeman Dyson says the following

"This is often the way it is in physics - our mistake is not that we take our
theories too seriously, but that we do not take them seriously enough. It is always hard to realize that these numbers and equations we play with at our desks have something to do with the real world. Even worse, there often seems to be a general agreement that certain phenomena are just not fit subjects for respectable theoretical and experimental effort..............But as soon as we mention the words value and
purpose, we run into one of the most firmly entrenched taboos of
twentieth-century science. Hear the voice of Jacques Monod (1970), high priest of scientific rationality, in his book _Chance and Necessity_:

"Any mingling of knowledge with values is unlawful, forbidden."

Monod was one of the seminal minds in the flowering of molecular biology in this century. It takes some courage to defy his anathema. But I will defy him, and encourage others to do so. The taboo against mixing knowledge with values arose during the nineteenth century out of the great battle between the evolutionary biologists led by Thomas Huxley and the churchmen led by Bishop Wilberforce. Huxley won the battle, but a hundred years later Monod and Weinberg were still fighting Bishop Wilberforce's ghost. Physicists today have no reason to be afraid of Wilberforce's ghost. If our analysis of the long-range future leads us to raise questions related to the ultimate meaning and purpose of life, then let us examine these questions boldly and without embarrassment. If our answers to these questions are naive and preliminary, so much the better for the continued vitality of our science..................................... .Goedel proved [see Nagel and Newman (1956)] that the world of pure mathematics is inexhaustible; no finite set of axioms and rules of inference can ever encompass the whole of mathematics; given any finite set of axioms, we can find meaningful mathematical questions which the axioms leave unanswered." end quote.

It has often been stated by posters on this thread who have devoted much to the study of science, that the purpose of science is to describe reality and not explain it.

When lay men ask the "WHY" question of scientists, the answer is often that it is a meaningless question or the layman does not have the knowledge and understanding of science.

Now, I agree that some of Witts statements have been provocative to say the least, so a back lash is not unexpected. However, in my opinion, a lot of his descriptions make sense, although I cannot comment on the math and most of the physics as I am not qualified to do so.

With respect to the list of great scientists, whom you say Witt has said are wrong, I looked up all references to the greats in his book.
Witt mentions most on your list and a number of others not on your list.

From what I see, he never said they were wrong, in fact he states that he bases his theories on logical extensions of their physics.
If he takes issue with some of their conclusions then he is doing what every scientist does.

I agree that the infinity issue sounds ludicrous, but then has infinity really been tamed. Read the thread "Are we allergic to infinity" and see the range of opinions.

Agreed, he never went the route of peer review and that was an error, if the objective was to be accepted by the scientific community.

However, when you consider his prime questions, what would the scientific community have to say.
Here are his prime questions.

quote
1.Why does the universe exist?
2.Where did it come from?
3.What, at the smallest level is it made of?
4.What caused it?
5.What existed before the beginning?
6.Where did all the material come from?
7.Why did the Big Bang happen and does time predate the Big Bang?
end quote.

Are these questions not worthy of an answer and will mainstream science answer these questions?

Sol: Benjamin Franklin was a politician who discovered electricity. Bill Gates was a college student who pioneered the personal computer. Michael Faraday was a bookbinder who rewrote electromagnetism

[sol invictus]

Sol: Benjamin Franklin was a politician who discovered electricity. Bill Gates was a college student who pioneered the personal computer. Michael Faraday was a bookbinder who rewrote electromagnetism

Did you even read what I wrote? Your examples are completely irrelevant (not to mention wrong).

As for your list of questions (which are rather redundant, by the way), they are mostly well within the purvue of mainstream cosmology. Real scientists are working on questions like those very actively, publishing countless papers and books. These are people that actually have an education in the field, that have bothered to learn what we know about physics so far, what experiment and observation tells us, which past theories have succeeded and which have failed. They have put in the years and years of hard work necessary to understand the advanced mathematics that goes into modern physics. They submit their papers for review, accept corrections, compare their predictions to experiments, and learn from their mistakes. These are people spread across the world, some alone, most in groups, collaborating, discussing, talking with each other and with physicists in other areas. I don't know if they will ever answer those questions, but it's perfectly possible.

That's science. What Witt does is delusional.

[BRENTEFS]

With respect to the addictiveness of this forum, I cant wait for winter to be over so I cant indulge in my other addiction, Amateur Astronomy and Astrophotography. Perhaps I can win one of Witts monthly photo competitions. $500US to ZAR is a tidy sum. Some new astrogear perhaps.
Then you wont be hearing too much from me.
Still talking about money. $500 is not a tidy sum. It won't even fill the fuel tanks on a semi.

[Skwinty]

Did you even read what I wrote? Your examples are completely irrelevant (not to mention wrong).

.

The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself.[5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Faraday#cite_note-4) At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Riebau) and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Watts)' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity.

Benjamin Franklin (January 17 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_17), 1706 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1706) [O.S. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates) January 6 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6), 1705 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1705)] – April 17 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_17), 1790 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1790)) was one of the Founding Fathers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founding_Fathers_of_the_United_States) of the United States of America (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States). A noted polymath (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath), Franklin was a leading author (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Author) and printer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_%28publisher%29), satirist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire), political theorist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_philosophers) politician (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician), scientist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientist), inventor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventor), civic activist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activism), statesman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statesman) and diplomat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy). As a scientist he was a major figure in the Enlightenment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enlightenment) and the history of physics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics) for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity).

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_computer) revolution.
After Intel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel) released the Intel 8080 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8080) CPU (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU), Gates realized that this was the first computer chip which cost less than $200 that could run BASIC, making it the most affordable chip at the time to run inside a personal computer.[16] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#cite_note-wzxoxv-15)

REF WIKIPEDIA

[Skwinty]

Still talking about money. $500 is not a tidy sum. It won't even fill the fuel tanks on a semi.

Convert it to South African Rands and its about R3500.00.

My 40 litre tank holds about R400.00 worth of gas.
R3500.00 will buy some stuff here.

[Skwinty]

Obviously a formal degree doesn't prove one understands anything, and the lack of one doesn't prove one doesn't understand it. It is, however, a very strong indication.

Yes i did read your post, and my examples relate to the statement in bolding

Suppose I came along with a miracle cure for the common cold. All of modern medicine is wrong, I say, totally wrong - there are no such things as these invisible "viruses" doctors talk about. I have a much simpler and easier to understand mechanism - you just have to avoid moonlight at all costs, and your cold will be cured (after all, the moon is a cold place!). No one will listen because my theory threatens the whole medical establishment - they just have too much to lose.


Who are you appealing to with this example, ducks, must be given your quackery.

[sol invictus]

The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself.[5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Faraday#cite_note-4) At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder...

And? The fact that he was an apprentice for a while makes him a "bookbinder"? Note also that he was born in the 1700s, a rather different time.

Benjamin Franklin ....

And? After reading that, you describe him as a "politician"? He was far more than that; most relevantly he was a scientist and inventor throughout his life. Note also that he was born in the 1700s, rather a long time ago.

Gates...

And that makes him a "college student"?

What do any of these odd collection of examples have to do with Witt? If even a little bit of what Witt claims were true, all of the physics and mathematics of the last five centuries would collapse. It would be the greatest revolution in human history - it would mean everything we've done is wrong, every successful prediction of science a coincidence... Witt, unlike all the examples you gave, believes everybody else is wrong. He isn't trying to build on what came before, he's trying to replace it completely. There's a word for people that can't accept reality.

Yes i did read your post, and my examples relate to the statement in bolding

No, not really. The first two were from a time when most of human knowledge could be contained in a few books. Gates was much more a businessman than a technician. And you (as usual) seem to be unable to understand the difference between "absolute" and "strong".

Who are you appealing to with this example, ducks, must be given your quackery.

Evasion and attempt at personal attack noted. The analogy is quite exact. Try to respond to it - ducking and running isn't going to help your case.

[Skwinty]

And? That makes him a "bookbinder"? Note also that he was born in the 1700s, a rather different time..

He started as an apprentice to a bookbinder. He was self educated. The point is, because you dont have a degree, doesn't mean there are strong indications that you do not understand advanced concepts.


And? After reading that, you describe him as a "politician"? He was far more than that; most relevantly he was a scientist and inventor throughout his life. Note also that he was born in the 1700s, rather a long time ago..

Nothing wrong in saying he was a politician given he was a member of both Continental Congresses and the committee that wrote the Declaration of Independence. Benjamin Franklin was one of the last true Renaissance men, excelling in politics, diplomacy, journalism and science.



And that makes him a "college student"?.

When he was in the eighth grade, the Mothers Club at the school used proceeds from Lakeside School's rummage sale to buy an ASR-33 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASR-33) teletype (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletype) terminal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_terminal) and a block of computer time on a General Electric (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Electric) (GE) computer for the school's students.[11] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#cite_note-10) Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_programming_language) and was excused from math classes to pursue his interest. He wrote his first computer program on this machine: an implementation of tic-tac-toe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tic-tac-toe) that allowed users to play games against the computer. wiki

Hardly the traits of a business man. This side came later.
http://www.stevenlevy.com/index.php/other-books/hackers
This is a good book to read for info on the heroes of the computer revolution

What do any of these odd collection of examples have to do with Witt? If even a little bit of what Witt claims were true, all of the physics and mathematics of the last five centuries would collapse. It would be the greatest revolution in human history - it would mean everything we've done is wrong, every successful prediction of science a coincidence....

Nothing in particular. Thats why it was at the end of my post addressed to you.(As another part of a post address to Perpetual Student).
For someone who refuses to read his book you make a lot of asumptions about what he claims. And if you read my post, you would know that according to what I have read in the book, he does not say science is wrong. It is a gross exaggeration to say that all of the physics and mathematics of the last five centuries would collapse.



No, not really. The first two were from a time when most of human knowledge could be contained in a few books. Gates was much more a businessman than a technician. And you (as usual) seem to be unable to understand the difference between "absolute" and "strong"..

See above. Please give an example of my as usual penchant for being unable to understand the difference between absolute and strong.

Evasion and attempt at personal attack noted. The analogy is quite exact. Try to respond to it - ducking and running isn't going to help your case.

Please Sol, what am I evading. You give an example that only a moron would take seriously and then accuse me of a personal attack. The comment related to your example. When I said your quackery it related to your moonshine story. If you are saying that your moonshine story is an analogy to Witts theory, then really the issue is not worth discussing with you. And in any event, you are more than prepared to called others a quack, crank or crackpot directly, so why the sensitivity?
As for the duck and run, when have I done that?

As for "Try to respond to it - ducking and running isn't going to help your case" perhaps you should heed your own advice"

[Tubbythin]

He started as an apprentice to a bookbinder. He was self educated.

From that wiki article:

At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures
Doesn't sound like self-education to me.


For someone who refuses to read his book you make a lot of asumptions about what he claims. And if you read my post, you would know that according to what I have read in the book, he does not say science is wrong. It is a gross exaggeration to say that all of the physics and mathematics of the last five centuries would collapse.
He basically says out understanding of nuclear physics is completely wrong!

[Skwinty]

From that wiki article:

Doesn't sound like self-education to me.



The same wiki,
The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself.

[Skwinty]

He basically says out understanding of nuclear physics is completely wrong!

I dont see too much Nuclear Physics in the book. Do you?

[Tubbythin]

The same wiki,
The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself.

He made 300 pages of lecture notes from the lectures of one of the most eminent scientists of the time!

[Tubbythin]

I dont see too much Nuclear Physics in the book. Do you?

He says the neutron is made of a proton and an electron!

[Skwinty]

He made 300 pages of lecture notes from the lectures of one of the most eminent scientists of the time!


That says a lot for the capacity of a largely self educated person with out a degree, don't you think.

Its bedtime now in South Africa. Have a busy day tomorrow.
Will check in tomorrow.

[Tubbythin]

That says a lot for the capacity of a largely self educated person with out a degree, don't you think.

Its bedtime now in South Africa. Have a busy day tomorrow.
Will check in tomorrow.

I made a lot more lecture notes before I had my degree than after.

[Perpetual Student]

Swinty:

Of course there have been many self educated contributors to science over the centuries. Twenty first century physics, however, has accumulated such a vast body of information, requiring a deep understanding of mathematics and the complex relationships associated with relativity, quantum theory, the standard model, etc. that self educated contributors (for even very minor contributions) have become non-existent. Benjamin Franklin wouldn’t have a chance today.
Is it possible that Witt is onto something? Of course yes, but I would evaluate the probability as vanishingly small. Sol invictus put it well when he(she) made the point that he would be overturning centuries of the work of incredibly talented people. Consider also that there are thousands of brilliant workers in physics throughout the world working in labs, particle accelerators, and their offices today that have not produced one iota of Witt’s ideas! How likely is it that he is onto anything? As an undergraduate student, he decided the standard models were wrong! As I said, the chances are practically zero.
I have a modest background in Mathematics and I can readily see that his “premises” are nothing more than mystical assertions of little value, which are then the foundation of conclusions reached with much misguided logic and an ignorance of experimental evidence.

[Tubbythin]

Is it possible that Witt is onto something? Of course yes, but I would evaluate the probability as vanishingly small.

Almost null?

[Perpetual Student]

Swinty:
As to the question: why does the universe exist? It appears unlikely that anyone -- physicst, theologian, philosopher -- will ever have an answer to that question that will satisfy any thinking person but himself.

[Reality Check]

I dont see too much Nuclear Physics in the book. Do you?
Much of parts II and III ("Physics of Energy" and "Physics of Matter") is Nuclear Physics. This incudes his statement that there are only 4 fundemental particles, that the neutron is made up a proton and electron, and all of his "core dynamics".

[Wangler]

He made 300 pages of lecture notes from the lectures of one of the most eminent scientists of the time!

Who cares how many lecture note pages he had?

What's important (to some) is whether he had that one special piece of paper (degree or diploma) of sufficient weight (apparently higher than high school or bachelors).

[Wangler]

Much of parts II and III ("Physics of Energy" and "Physics of Matter") is Nuclear Physics. This incudes his statement that there are only 4 fundemental particles, that the neutron is made up a proton and electron, and all of his "core dynamics".

Ahh, I still remember making that same "neutron is a proton and electron" discovery when I was a kid.

I thought I had solved the universe. :D

[sol invictus]

He started as an apprentice to a bookbinder. He was self educated. The point is, because you dont have a degree, doesn't mean there are strong indications that you do not understand advanced concepts.

What an odd thing to say... not being educated in a topic is not a strong indication you don't understand it's advanced concepts?

And if you read my post, you would know that according to what I have read in the book, he does not say science is wrong. It is a gross exaggeration to say that all of the physics and mathematics of the last five centuries would collapse.

He has made many statements here and elsewhere which, were any of them true, would have the effects I described. I don't care whether he understands that - it's irrelevant.

Please Sol, what am I evading.

Addressing the analogy. What Witt is saying is as ridiculous as in my example. The only differences is that laypeople know a little more about medicine than theoretical physics, so it's easier to recognize. That's why I picked it as an example.

If you are saying that your moonshine story is an analogy to Witts theory, then really the issue is not worth discussing with you.

Very well. But ask yourself this - in a field which you know very little about, like physics, how are you going to distinguish between total nonsense and cutting edge ideas, if not by the opinions of experts?

[Tubbythin]

Who cares how many lecture note pages he had?

What's important (to some) is whether he had that one special piece of paper (degree or diploma) of sufficient weight (apparently higher than high school or bachelors).

My point was that Skwinty's claim that he was self-educated was rubbish, at least in the areas where his major work was done.

[Paulhoff]

Someone that has something to say:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/murray_gell_mann_on_beauty_and_truth_in_physics.ht ml

Paul

:) :) :)

[Wangler]

My point was that Skwinty's claim that he was self-educated was rubbish, at least in the areas where his major work was done.

Understood.

I think that for the last few decades, it has been harder and harder for one to be "self-educated", as there is so much knowledge gathered by others laying around in libraries and stuff.

Way back then, it may have been easier, but probably quite an accomplishment to be truly "self-educated".

[Perpetual Student]

Who cares how many lecture note pages he had?

What's important (to some) is whether he had that one special piece of paper (degree or diploma) of sufficient weight (apparently higher than high school or bachelors).

OK, since you’ve been harping on this point I’ll respond.
As a layman, I have the educational background for only a partial understanding of the most complex aspects of modern physics. I have to rely on experts to fill in the blanks. Consequently, credentials help me evaluate the likelihood that the views I get from others are worthwhile.
As one whose formal background in physics consists of only a single undergraduate courses in “twentieth century physics,” I have a respect for self education, since I have done a great deal of it myself – not only in physics but in other areas as well. Credentials do not automatically lead to wisdom and a lack thereof does not indicate ignorance.

Srinivasa Ramanajun was one of the most remarkable mathematicians of the early twentieth century. He was largely self-educated. He sent his original ideas to the greatest mathematicians in England at the time with no recognition until G. H. Hardy finally recognized his genius and sponsored his travel to England. It is a remarkable story about an incredible genius and perhaps, historically, the single most astonishing achievement for one who studied so much on his own.

But Ramanajun spent his life doing mathematics and virtually nothing else – he often failed all his subjects except mathematics. Is there any parallel with Witt? Did Witt spend his life immersed in physics? Or did he spend most of it making millions running his own company and marketing medical equipment? So, now he is spending his life marketing his book. How likely is it that he is on to something valid? He decided, as an undergraduate, that much of the foundations of twentieth century physics is wrong. How credible is that? His book has been paraded around popular science periodicals for months. Has any established physicist (one with credentials) looked at his work and said, “Ha -- this is it!” I don’t believe so -- and until that happens I have no choice but to remain very skeptical. . When Gell-Mann says, “Wow, this guy has something here,” then I’ll rethink the whole thing, and say, “How could I have been so stupid?!?”

In the meantime, I do know only enough physics to be dangerous and enough mathematics to see fundamental flaws in his thinking – all on my own. Some of his ideas are downright adolescent.

So, as I said, the likelihood that he is on to something valid is extremely small – really really small!

[Wangler]

But Ramanajun spent his life doing mathematics and virtually nothing else – he often failed all his subjects except mathematics.

Not to beat this to death, but if Ramanajun took classes in mathematics, was he truly self-educated?

I certainly agree that the chances of Witt being on to something are vanishingly small.

[Perpetual Student]

Not to beat this to death, but if Ramanajun took classes in mathematics, was he truly self-educated?

I certainly agree that the chances of Witt being on to something are vanishingly small.

I guess we are not that far apart.

Ramanujan was self-educated to a significant degree (the mathematics he learned in school was relatively rudimentary and out of date). He derived many mathematical results that he was not aware had already been discovered and then went on to obtain further new results. His knowledge of current mathematics was extremely poor since he had no contact with Europe. It is amazing that he re-derived so many important concepts and then went beyond contemporaries in Europe.

“It was in the Town High School that Ramanujan came across a mathematics book by G S Carr called Synopsis of elementary results in pure mathematics. This book, with its very concise style, allowed Ramanujan to teach himself mathematics, but the style of the book was to have a rather unfortunate effect on the way Ramanujan was later to write down mathematics since it provided the only model that he had of written mathematical arguments. The book contained theorems, formulae and short proofs. It also contained an index to papers on pure mathematics which had been published in the European Journals of Learned Societies during the first half of the 19th century. The book, published in 1856, was of course well out of date by the time Ramanujan used it.” (Article by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson)

There is an excellent biography written some years ago by Robert Kanigel. If you are interested, it is a fascinating story. It is a testament to how much a self educated person -- who also happens to be extraordinarily talented and single mindedly driven -- can achieve.

[Skwinty]

My point was that Skwinty's claim that he was self-educated was rubbish, at least in the areas where his major work was done.

Firstly, to put things into perspective.
The claim that Faraday was largely self educated, is not my claim, it is the claim of Wikipaedia.
You chose,erroneously, to give me credit for that claim even though you read the article.

He says the neutron is made of a proton and an electron!

Secondly, as to the neutron being composed of a proton and electron disproving the field of nuclear physics.
This very description was believed by scientists in the early days of nuclear physics. This error did not impede
the progress of nuclear physics, hence the atomic bomb, nuclear power and other related developments.
So I fail to see,how this description of the neutron, disproves the entirety of nuclear physics.

Suppose I came along with a miracle cure for the common cold. All of modern medicine is wrong, I say, totally wrong - there are no such things as these invisible "viruses" doctors talk about. I have a much simpler and easier to understand mechanism - you just have to avoid moonlight at all costs, and your cold will be cured (after all, the moon is a cold place!). No one will listen because my theory threatens the whole medical establishment - they just have too much to lose.

What would you think about that? If you found out that my medical qualifications stopped at a bachelor's in psychology (a subject more closely connected to medicine than EE is to the kind of physics Witt is discussing), would that not be a rather important piece of evidence in the case for my quackulence?

Here's an analogy for you. A realistic one, not one as inane as moonshine causing influenza.

"Suppose a primitive native, with no prior contact with modern civilization, found a digital watch on a jungle trail.
Being the shaman of his village, he studies this object and soon recognizes patterns in the symbols it displays.
Eventually, he develops a model of the precession of the symbols, and wows his tribesman by predicting the
appearance and moment of arrival of the next cipher. Yet he has no idea what the watch is or why it was laying
on the trail in the first place. These are insignificant details, he tells his ignorant compatriots, because he knows
what the next symbol is going to look like and approximately when it will appear, and this remarkable foreknowledge
transcends all other considerations. As Physics creeps into the twenty-first century, its methodology bears an uncanny
resemblance to the approach used by our friend with the digital watch. Scarier still, many physicists would not see this
as a problem."
Analogy courtesy of Terence Witt.
On the lighter side:
A biologist, physicist and mathematician are sitting at a sidewalk cafe drinking coffee. They observe two people walk into
the building across the street and a few minutes later three people walk out of the building.
Biologist says:
Good grief, they must have reproduced!
Physicist says:
Rubbish, theres not enough empirical data!
Mathematician says:
Whats the matter with you fools, can't you understand that there is minus one person in the building!

[sol invictus]

Here's an analogy for you. A realistic one, not one as inane as moonshine causing influenza.

Again you refuse to address this issue. How do you, as a layperson with little knowledge of physics, decide whether Witt's theory is as ridiculous as my moonshine? If I were you I would trust the opinion of those with more knowledge in the field, but you are unwilling to do that. So how did you decide that? Why do you think the moonshine theory is more ridiculous than Witt's?


Secondly, as to the neutron being composed of a proton and electron disproving the field of nuclear physics.
This very description was believed by scientists in the early days of nuclear physics. This error did not impede
the progress of nuclear physics, hence the atomic bomb, nuclear power and other related developments.


That is totally incorrect. The idea that the neutron could be a proton plus an electron was ruled out when its mass was measured accurately, merely two years after it was discovered in the first place in 1932.

It is simply impossible for the neutron to be a proton plus an electron, because the neutron is more massive than a proton plus an electron. I don't understand what is hard to understand about that. Anyone making that claim is just ignoring 70 years of experimental results - results which are in fact at the basis of the standard model and all of nuclear physics. It is just as ridiculous as ignoring the evidence that diseases are caused by microbes and not moonshine.

[ben m]

Secondly, as to the neutron being composed of a proton and electron disproving the field of nuclear physics.
This very description was believed by scientists in the early days of nuclear physics. This error did not impede
the progress of nuclear physics, hence the atomic bomb, nuclear power and other related developments.
So I fail to see,how this description of the neutron, disproves the entirety of nuclear physics.

Ah, I see. It's OK to believe something false, as long as it was once thought to be true. Sign me up for some Homeopathic Allergy Drops---they were as plausible as anything else in 1800! Don't tell me that "there are zero atoms left in a 10C dilution"---everyone in 1500 knew that matter is infinitely divisible.

[Tubbythin]

Firstly, to put things into perspective.
The claim that Faraday was largely self educated, is not my claim, it is the claim of Wikipaedia.
You chose,erroneously, to give me credit for that claim even though you read the article.
You used the claim here ('http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=3921259&postcount=582'). Whether he was largely self-educated or not is something of a moot point. The point is that in science where he made a name for himself, he was taught by one of the foremost scientists of the time.



Secondly, as to the neutron being composed of a proton and electron disproving the field of nuclear physics.
This very description was believed by scientists in the early days of nuclear physics. This error did not impede
the progress of nuclear physics, hence the atomic bomb, nuclear power and other related developments.
So I fail to see,how this description of the neutron, disproves the entirety of nuclear physics.

As Sol says, this is utter rubbish. As another example, the Fermi theory of beta decay was developed in 1934, 11 years before the atomic bomb.

ETA:Not to mention the fact that if Witt was correct then the last 40 years of particle physics are all wrong. I wonder how many Nobel laureattes he's taking on?

[Skwinty]

Again you refuse to address this issue. How do you, as a layperson with little knowledge of physics, decide whether Witt's theory is as ridiculous as my moonshine? If I were you I would trust the opinion of those with more knowledge in the field, but you are unwilling to do that. So how did you decide that? Why do you think the moonshine theory is more ridiculous than Witt's?

Sol, you refuse to address the opinions of respectable scientist's in my previous posts. Your analogy has no correlation to Witt and Null Physics. If it does, its in your mind and fallacious. There is however, good correlation between physicists and the primitive with the digital watch.

That is totally incorrect. The idea that the neutron could be a proton plus an electron was ruled out when its mass was measured accurately, merely two years after it was discovered in the first place in 1932.

I have a physics text book published in 1984 that states and I quote:
"Thus, it must be concluded that the fundamental particles-the proton, neutron and electron-are not really fundamental particles....Neutrons have no net electrical charge. They are thought to be a combination of a proton and electron....A hydrogen atom consists of one proton that is orbited by one electron and is electrically neutral....A neutron is a very tightly bound combination of an electron and proton, that, consequently, is electrically neutral"(read here no orbiting electron).
Abraham Pais also mentions this in "Subtle is the Lord".
Hence, this is not a Witt invention.
Reactor physicists do not talk about quarks, chemists deal mainly at the molecular level and particle physicist's deal with quarks etc.

t is simply impossible for the neutron to be a proton plus an electron, because the neutron is more massive than a proton plus an electron. I don't understand what is hard to understand about that. Anyone making that claim is just ignoring 70 years of experimental results - results which are in fact at the basis of the standard model and all of nuclear physics. It is just as ridiculous as ignoring the evidence that diseases are caused by microbes and not moonshine.

I agree with the mass of the neutron being greater than that of the proton and electron. This difference is called mass defect. This difference is the binding energy. When a free neutron decays via beta decay to a proton, electron and anti-neutrino, the anti-neutrino comes from this energy and satisfies the laws of conservation. Speaking of neutrino's, do we actually know what a neutrino is?
Have any experimental results been proved wrong? Of course they have.
Now, is my physics text book wrong? As I said, it was published in 1984 and not 1931.

What is ridiculous is that anyone ignores the evidence that microbes cause disease , and instead blames moonshine. Unless of course you drink too much moonshine with added snake poison and other vile and disgusting things.

As for my understanding of physics, I may not have a degree in physics but my discipline is electrical engineering with 27 years experience in the nuclear industry, so I have some understanding of physics, perhaps more than a little.

[Skwinty]

You used the claim here (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=3921259&postcount=582). Whether he was largely self-educated or not is something of a moot point. The point is that in science where he made a name for himself, he was taught by one of the foremost scientists of the time.
Yes, I quoted the claim, that does not make it mine.
So he got tickets from some benefactor to attend some lectures. He didnt speng 6 years at a University to obtain a Phd.
My point was that you dont have to have a degree to add some benefit to mankind, which was in reply to a statement of Sol's that not having a degree in a specific discipline was a strong indication that you didnt understand the discipline. Please keep my statements in context to the discussion.

[sol invictus]

Sol, you refuse to address the opinions of respectable scientist's in my previous posts.

Huh? Where?

Your analogy has no correlation to Witt and Null Physics. If it does, its in your mind and fallacious. There is however, good correlation between physicists and the primitive with the digital watch.

How do you know? This is supposed to be a forum for skeptics - on what evidence do you base that conclusion?

I have a physics text book published in 1984 that states and I quote:
"Thus, it must be concluded that the fundamental particles-the proton, neutron and electron-are not really fundamental particles....

As far as we know, the electron is a fundamental particle. What book is this?

Neutrons have no net electrical charge. They are thought to be a combination of a proton and electron....

That is simply wrong, or at best extremely sloppy and misleading.

Abraham Pais also mentions this in "Subtle is the Lord".

You'll have to give an exact quote.

Hence, this is not a Witt invention.

He may not be the first person to have thought of it, but that does not change the fact that it is wrong, and in contradiction with 70 years of experimental data.

I agree with the mass of the neutron being greater than that of the proton and electron. This difference is called mass defect. This difference is the binding energy.

No! Binding energies are negative by definition. If when you put two things together they have MORE energy than when they were far apart, they repel each other - you had to do work to force them together.

Think, for example, of a hydrogen atom. It has less energy than a free electron plus a free proton, because the electron is bound to the proton.

Have any experimental results been proved wrong? Of course they have.

Sure - every experiment in the last 70 years was wrong, and Witt is correct.

Now, is my physics text book wrong? As I said, it was published in 1984 and not 1931.

The quote you gave (perhaps out of context?) is wrong. If you like I can give you tens, perhaps hundreds, of references, all of which will tell you that the neutron is a bound state of three quarks.

Here's the first quote I found with the google:

(Professor of Physics emeritus, Rutgers University)

It is tempting to say that a neutron consists of a proton plus an electron;
the mass of the electron would make up 40% of the mass difference. This
argument is totally invalid. It would be equally valid to say that a proton
consists of a neutron plus a positron (a positron has exactly the same mass
as an electron, but is positively charged). The validity of using this
argument in both directions is strengthened by the fact that neutrons in
neutron rich nuclei beta decay into an electron and a neutrino while protons
in proton rich nuclei beta decay into a positron and a neutrino. For
example a N13 (nitrogen 13) nucleus decays into C13 (carbon 13), a positron,
and a neutrino with the release of 2.221 MeV.


The charge of the proton adds some electromagnetic energy to the proton
mass, but the magnitude of that effect is not only impossible to calculate,
but works in the wrong direction.


Quarks give the best chance to explain the proton-neutron mass difference by
"hand-waving". A proton consists (mainly) of two up quarks and one down
quark. A neutron consists (mainly) of one up quark and two down quarks.
Current estimates are that the up quark has a mass in the range 2-8 Mev and
the down quark 5-15 MeV. So replacing one up quark in the proton by a down
quark would increase the mass by something between -3 MeV and +13 MeV.
Clearly this is not a precise calculation, but it is (mostly) in the right
direction and could overcome the electromagnetic contribution and produce
the correct answer. There are other known contributions to these masses
including interactions with the weak and strong interactions, but this is
probably already more than you want to know about this subject!


As for my understanding of physics, I may not have a degree in physics but my discipline is electrical engineering with 27 years experience in the nuclear industry, so I have some understanding of physics, perhaps more than a little.

You obviously do not have any expertise at least in this area of physics.

[ben m]

I have a physics text book published in 1984 that states and I quote:
"Thus, it must be concluded that the fundamental particles-the proton, neutron and electron-are not really fundamental particles....Neutrons have no net electrical charge. They are thought to be a combination of a proton and electron....A hydrogen atom consists of one proton that is orbited by one electron and is electrically neutral....A neutron is a very tightly bound combination of an electron and proton, that, consequently, is electrically neutral"(read here no orbiting electron).


This textbook is wrong. Not uncommon for middle- and high-school science materials, which (sadly) are often written by nonscientists who simply copy factoids from the previous edition. See, for example, "Why Johnny Can't Learn from Textbooks I Have Known" (http://scitation.aip.org/vsearch/servlet/VerityServlet?KEY=AJPIAS&ONLINE=YES&smode=strresults&sort=chron&maxdisp=25&threshold=0&possible1=Mario+Iona&possible1zone=article&OUTLOG=NO&viewabs=AJPIAS&key=DISPLAY&docID=6&page=1&chapter=0) by Mario Iona.


Abraham Pais also mentions this in "Subtle is the Lord".


He mentions, in a footnote on page 360 (OUP 2005 paperback edition) that on its first discovery it was thought to be an electron and a proton. He does not say that's what he, or anyone else, continued to believe post-1930-ish.

What was your point, Skwinty? I think it was "Because Terence Witt has reinvented an old wrong idea, rather than inventing a new wrong idea, it can't be too wrong, so he's not a crackpot."

[Skwinty]

Huh? Where?.

Post 575

How do you know? This is supposed to be a forum for skeptics - on what evidence do you base that conclusion?.

So what evidence do you give for the moonshine.
The digital watch analogy is self explanatory

As far as we know, the electron is a fundamental particle. What book is this?.

Technical Physics by Clarence Green published by Prentice Hall


You'll have to give an exact quote..

I will supply you a quote in a few days, I must have the book returned to me first.

He may not be the first person to have thought of it, but that does not change the fact that it is wrong, and in contradiction with 70 years of experimental data..

Then dont imply that its a Witt invention



No! Binding energies are negative by definition. If when you put two things together they have MORE energy than when they were far apart, they repel each other - you had to do work to force them together.

Think, for example, of a hydrogen atom. It has less energy than a free electron plus a free proton, because the electron is bound to the proton..

Is this incorrect "Binding energy is the energy equivalent of the mass defect"




Sure - every experiment in the last 70 years was wrong, and Witt is correct..

You going from the sublime to the ridiculous here


The quote you gave (perhaps out of context?) is wrong. If you like I can give you tens, perhaps hundreds, of references, all of which will tell you that the neutron is a bound state of three quarks..


Quarks give the best chance to explain the proton-neutron mass difference by "hand-waving".


I thought hand waving had a negative connotation.

You obviously do not have any expertise at least in this area of physics.

I don't recall saying that I did.

[Skwinty]

This textbook is wrong. Not uncommon for middle- and high-school science materials, which (sadly) are often written by nonscientists who simply copy factoids from the previous edition. See, for example, "Why Johnny Can't Learn from Textbooks I Have Known" (http://scitation.aip.org/vsearch/servlet/VerityServlet?KEY=AJPIAS&ONLINE=YES&smode=strresults&sort=chron&maxdisp=25&threshold=0&possible1=Mario+Iona&possible1zone=article&OUTLOG=NO&viewabs=AJPIAS&key=DISPLAY&docID=6&page=1&chapter=0) by Mario Iona.



He mentions, in a footnote on page 360 (OUP 2005 paperback edition) that on its first discovery it was thought to be an electron and a proton. He does not say that's what he, or anyone else, continued to believe post-1930-ish.

What was your point, Skwinty? I think it was "Because Terence Witt has reinvented an old wrong idea, rather than inventing a new wrong idea, it can't be too wrong, so he's not a crackpot."

My point is, I got the book for nothing, I am reading it, comparing to what I know and other literature and discussing it in this thread called Null Physics Anyone. The reason I debate it is because not one of you will ever admit that the mainstream is ever wrong in any manner. You will however roundly dismiss Witt as a crackpot over what seems to me to be a small semantic issue. And on top of it without reading the book.
Reality Check at least made an effort, although he did say he did not read it all, only specific aspects.

I know it appears as though I am defending Witt, but I am just trying to understand what the facts are. I apologise for not being as clever and erudite as you folk, but I like to think that it is better to think incorrectly rather than not think at all. This being a forum for skeptics, I am being skeptical of you folk as well.

With regards to authors copying factoids, it really is sad if they only copy certain factoids and not others and then do this for 50 years. My point here is there must be many college text books that say the same thing about the composition of neutrons.

[Reality Check]

Hi Skwinty:
There are a few textbooks out there that describe the neutron as a combination of a proton and electron. But hopefully they only do this to temporarily simplify things for the reader. I am sure that your textbook goes onto describe the quarks inside the neutron.
But Technical Physics by Clarence Green may be a physics for technicians textbook (he may also be the author of a couple of books about servicing AM, FM, and FM stereo receivers). In that case quarks might not even be mentioned.

The digital watch analogy is good but the Witt shaman predicts that after 99 will appear after 12 and than when we open the watch up it will contain nothing. Real science predicts that 1 appears after 12 and then the watch actually contains stuff.

[The Man]

Is this incorrect "Binding energy is the energy equivalent of the mass defect"

Yes but as Sol stated the "Binding energy" is negative and thus so is the "mass defect". You need to add energy to separate the particles as such the mass of the bound state is less then (not grater then) the sum of the masses of the free particles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_energy


Because a bound system is at a lower energy level than its unbound constituents, its mass must be less than the total mass of its unbound constituents. For systems with low binding energies, this "lost" mass after binding may be fractionally small. For systems with high binding energies, however, the missing mass may be an easily measurable fraction.


There are better sources of information then some free out of date and out of print book.

[sol invictus]

Post 575

I'm not sure what you want me to respond to. Dyson's quote goes exactly against Witt's nonsense - he says we should take our equations more seriously, while you claim we should regard Witt's fundamental mistakes as "details".

So what evidence do you give for the moonshine.

There is as much evidence for it as for Witt's theory: none. That's precisely my point. Again, why do you think Witt should be taken more seriously than that?

Technical Physics by Clarence Green published by Prentice Hall

Never heard of the book or the author, and I don't see any info about either online. That quote is wrong.



Quarks give the best chance to explain the proton-neutron mass difference by "hand-waving".


I thought hand waving had a negative connotation.

He was asked for a heuristic explanation of the mass difference. The real explanation is technical and hard.


With regards to authors copying factoids, it really is sad if they only copy certain factoids and not others and then do this for 50 years. My point here is there must be many college text books that say the same thing about the composition of neutrons.

I just checked the two intro college texts I have on my shelf. One doesn't discuss neutrons; the other correctly says they are made of quarks. I also have many more specialized physics books and I am certain not one makes that statement.

[ben m]

The reason I debate it is because not one of you will ever admit that the mainstream is ever wrong in any manner.

Eh? OK, here goes: there are two 100% mainstream interpretations of quantum mechanics: Many Worlds and Copenhagen. If you stretch you can make it three, if I understand Bohm correctly. Two out of these three are definitely wrong; at most one is right. We don't know which one.

The Standard Model of Particle Physics does not give a correct picture of ultra-ultra-high-energy interactions. It is, therefore, at best an "effective theory" which is approximately correct---and by "approximately" I mean "to fifteen decimal places" at low energy.

General Relativity in the version with no cosmological constant is wrong. Of the mainstream proposed modifications---quintessence, cosmological constant, etc.---most or all are wrong. Zero or one is right. We won't know which ones are wrong until we have more data.

Of the dozens of varieties of string theory, zero or one is correct and the rest are wrong. We don't know which one.

Of the hundreds or thousands of predictions for what the LHC will see, most or all of them are wrong. A subset of them may be right. We'll find out when we do the experiment, eh?

Anything whatsoever in "accepted" modern physics may be wrong---but the wrongness has to be something special that hasn't shown up in past experiments. That's why we still work in physics, Skwinty. Not to congratulate ourselves over and over on Feynman's or Einstein's successes, but to check whether or not they got it right in the 3rd or 5th or 100th decimal place, or in unusual combinations, under extreme conditions, etc..

Seriously, Skwinty---"we never admit we're wrong" isn't true in a great many domains, and it isn't problem in the domains where there is no evidence whatsoever that we're wrong.

[Tubbythin]

As for my understanding of physics, I may not have a degree in physics but my discipline is electrical engineering with 27 years experience in the nuclear industry, so I have some understanding of physics, perhaps more than a little.

Just curious... does this ('http://www.alaskajohn.com/physics/charts/binding_energy.jpg') graph mean anything to you?

[Tubbythin]

The reason I debate it is because not one of you will ever admit that the mainstream is ever wrong in any manner.

I believe the mainstream was wrong about the existence of an aether. I think most people will agree with me on this one.
Steady state cosmology used to be a mainstream theory (I think). I think that's wrong.
The plum pudding model of the nucleus was wrong.
It seems Einstein was wrong about his hidden variables interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Ptolemy's geocentric universe was wrong.
Neutrinos used to be thought to be massless. That's almost certainly wrong.
...

[sol invictus]

The reason I debate it is because not one of you will ever admit that the mainstream is ever wrong in any manner.

You always have trouble with the same thing... for you, everything must be absolute. If we point out that many of Witt's statements are false, that must mean that not one of us will ever admit the mainstream is ever wrong in any matter.

Much of what Witt is saying is in such basic conflict with reality that if it's correct it would mean not that one thing is wrong, but nearly everything in modern physics. It's the difference between my moonshine example, in which if it were true nearly all of modern medicine would be nonsense, and some new or evolving theory of regarding an HIV vaccine or something. Witt isn't saying a few things could be improved, which we all agree on - he's saying throw the whole thing out and replace it with what I say.

[godless dave]

There are many things in physics that the mainstream theories don't account for, and there are almost certainly areas where the mainstream theories are wrong. They will be corrected by physicists who do research and publish in peer-reviewed journals, physicists who can back up their conclusions with data and who make that data available so other physicists can replicate their findings.

Witt hasn't done any of this, nor has he explained why some of his conclusions contradict the available data.

[Skwinty]

Just curious... does this (http://www.alaskajohn.com/physics/charts/binding_energy.jpg) graph mean anything to you?

Yes, it means that each element's nucleon has a specific binding energy. If you wish to break up the nucleon, you would need to apply an equivalent energy to the nucleon to cause the disintegration. and thus overcome the binding energy.

The context I had in mind when discussing the binding energy in a previous post, was that of the free neutron, which decays via beta decay to a proton, electron and anti-neutrino. In this scenario, no external energy is being applied.

Fermi's theory of the anti-neutrino in the 30's, which had nothing to do with quarks, given that quarks only came into the equation in the late 60's. Fermi"s theory was also initially rejected for publication.
As far as I know, the anti neutrino was detected in the late 50's.

[Skwinty]

Hi Skwinty:
There are a few textbooks out there that describe the neutron as a combination of a proton and electron. But hopefully they only do this to temporarily simplify things for the reader. .

This being my point. What is wrong with explaining things in simpler terms,rather than complicating things with a bag of quarks.
As,i said, Reactor physicists do not deal in quarks, only particle physicists.
that is why, I think, that Witt is not wrong when he uses the description he does. If he was writing a book about particle physics , then he would be wrong to use that description.

The digital watch analogy is good but the Witt shaman predicts that after 99 will appear after 12 and than when we open the watch up it will contain nothing. Real science predicts that 1 appears after 12 and then the watch actually contains stuff.


I dont follow your reasoning here, given that a digital watch deals with 60 seconds, 60 minutes, 12 or 24 hours.
The date side deals with a max of 31 days, 12 months and the year 99 will appear after 98. The opening of the watch and finding no stuff is also confusing, as no matter what the shaman predicts, on opening the watch he will always find something.

[Skwinty]

As for not admitting the errors of the mainstream, I do realize that the mainstream can be wrong and that the experiments and peer reviews make the neccessary corrections. When a physicist is wrong about something, does he get labelled as a crackpot and drummed out of town.
I don't think so. I was hoping to get some sensible reply from Sol, other than
Quote:
Skwinty:Have any experimental results been proved wrong? Of course they have.


Sol:Sure - every experiment in the last 70 years was wrong, and Witt is correct.

[Skwinty]

Witt fits all the symptoms of what I consider to be a mild mental illness
Sol, when you make statements like this, are you speaking as a physicist, psychic, physician or an absolutist.

[Tubbythin]

Yes, it means that each element's nucleon has a specific binding energy. If you wish to break up the nucleon, you would need to apply an equivalent energy to the nucleon to cause the disintegration. and thus overcome the binding energy.
A nucleon is a proton or a neutron. Thus all nuclei (except 1H) have multiple nucleons. The curve is the average binding energy per nucleon as a function of the number of nucleons. If you take the average binding energy (ie the value on the y axis) for a point and multiply it by the nucleon number (ie the value on the x-axis) then you get the total binding energy of that nuclide. Divide this by c2 and this is the mass less than the sum of the masses of its constituent nucleons of the nuclide in question.


The context I had in mind when discussing the binding energy in a previous post, was that of the free neutron, which decays via beta decay to a proton, electron and anti-neutrino. In this scenario, no external energy is being applied.
But proton rich nuclei decay by beta+ decay without the need to supply any extra energy as well. This was known about in the early 1930's. And makes no sense if the neutron consists of a proton and an electron.


Fermi's theory of the anti-neutrino in the 30's, which had nothing to do with quarks, given that quarks only came into the equation in the late 60's. Fermi"s theory was also initially rejected for publication.
As far as I know, the anti neutrino was detected in the late 50's.
It was Pauli's theory of neutrinos. Fermi merely accepted this. Fermi's theory was rejected by Nature but published in Zeitschrift fur Physik in 1934. I never said it did have anything to do with quarks.

[Tubbythin]

This being my point. What is wrong with explaining things in simpler terms,rather than complicating things with a bag of quarks.
As,i said, Reactor physicists do not deal in quarks, only particle physicists.
that is why, I think, that Witt is not wrong when he uses the description he does. If he was writing a book about particle physics , then he would be wrong to use that description.


It makes no sense in the context of nuclear physics either!

[Skwinty]

A nucleon is a proton or a neutron. Thus all nuclei (except 1H) have multiple nucleons. The curve is the average binding energy per nucleon as a function of the number of nucleons. If you take the average binding energy (ie the value on the y axis) for a point and multiply it by the nucleon number (ie the value on the x-axis) then you get the total binding energy of that nuclide. Divide this by c2 and this is the mass less than the sum of the masses of its constituent nucleons of the nuclide in question..

Thanks for a concise and clear explanation here.


But proton rich nuclei decay by beta+ decay without the need to supply any extra energy as well. This was known about in the early 1930's. And makes no sense if the neutron consists of a proton and an electron..

What happens to the binding energy in this instance?


It was Pauli's theory of neutrinos. Fermi merely accepted this. Fermi's theory was rejected by Nature but published in Zeitschrift fur Physik in 1934. I never said it did have anything to do with quarks.

On what basis did Nature reject this theory and why did Zeitschrift accept the theory?
I didn't imply that you said that, rather just stating that quarks weren't part of this scenario.

[Skwinty]

It makes no sense in the context of nuclear physics either!

Why do Reactor physicists not refer to quarks in their calculations?

[Tubbythin]

Thanks for a concise and clear explanation here.
No problem.


What happens to the binding energy in this instance?

The excess energy is shared between the positron, neutrino and the daughter nucleus. In much the same way that the excess energy is shared between the electron, anti-neutrino and proton in neutron decay.


On what basis did Nature reject this theory and why did Zeitschrift accept the theory?
Apparently Nature thought it was too speculative. Presumably Zeitschrift disagreed.


I didn't imply that you said that, rather just stating that quarks weren't part of this scenario.
I agree that principles of beta decay can be understood without understanding quarks. But saying the neutron is composed of a proton and an electron does not make sense.

[Tubbythin]

Why do Reactor physicists not refer to quarks in their calculations?

Because they don't need to.

[Reality Check]

This being my point. What is wrong with explaining things in simpler terms,rather than complicating things with a bag of quarks.
As,i said, Reactor physicists do not deal in quarks, only particle physicists.
that is why, I think, that Witt is not wrong when he uses the description he does. If he was writing a book about particle physics , then he would be wrong to use that description.

It depends on the context. If you are not interested in high energy physics then you can ignore the existence of quarks. This allows simpler calculations. Likewise rocket scientists do not need to use General Relavity to describe orbits around the Earth, etc.
But the fact that you need quarks to describe the results of high energy collisions means that they exist.

If Witt was using it as a "description" then that would be valid. But he is not. He states that a neutron is actually a bound state of a proton and electron. He states that quarks do not exist, e.g. on page 227 of OUU: "It [the Strong Force] has nothing to do with the illusory phantasms called quarks"


I dont follow your reasoning here, given that a digital watch deals with 60 seconds, 60 minutes, 12 or 24 hours.
The date side deals with a max of 31 days, 12 months and the year 99 will appear after 98. The opening of the watch and finding no stuff is also confusing, as no matter what the shaman predicts, on opening the watch he will always find something.
The point is the difference between what conventional science predicts and observes and what Witt's null physics predicts. He would proceed from the assumption that the watch contains nothing using crazy math and predict that the watch will always display 99 after 12. When observations show that 1 appears after 12 then Witt will say this in null mathemetics 99 is really 1.

[sol invictus]

As for not admitting the errors of the mainstream, I do realize that the mainstream can be wrong and that the experiments and peer reviews make the neccessary corrections. When a physicist is wrong about something, does he get labelled as a crackpot and drummed out of town.

No, of course not. But that's because when professionals make mistakes it's not something basic. It's an interesting new cutting edge theory which turns out not to work when some new data comes out, or perhaps was incorrectly calculated, or maybe didn't fully take into account some existing piece of experimental data. Other competent and knowledgeable physicists might well have made the same mistake, and they can recognize that. So while mistakes can be embarrassing and sometimes even damaging, a few of them certainly don't end your career, and particularly clever (but ultimately wrong) ideas can even aid it considerably (technicolor is a good example).

But such mistakes have nothing to do with claims like "quarks don't exist" - such statements are as good as moonshine.

[sol invictus]

Why do Reactor physicists not refer to quarks in their calculations?

I'm sure they do in some cases. Most of the time they don't need to, because they only need approximate answers, and nucleons are good enough for that.

You see, if Witt were saying I'm going to regard neutrons as a bound state of an electron and a proton, even though I know that's not an exact description, because it will be good enough for my purposes that might be fine. It certainly wouldn't mean that if he were correct physics would all be wrong. But no - Witt says quarks don't exist and the neutron is exactly a bound state of an e- and a p+. If these statements were correct much of physics since 1934 would be wrong.

[Skwinty]

I agree that principles of beta decay can be understood without understanding quarks. But saying the neutron is composed of a proton and an electron does not make sense.

Perhaps my reasoning stems from the fact that a free neutron decays into a proton, electron and anti-neutrino. It seems logical to say then, that the neutron, in some form or another, contains the recipe for a proton, electron and anti-neutrino. Yes, this can be explained, correctly, by the different variety of quarks which constitute the neutron, from a particle physics viewpoint.

If one had the capacity to unite a proton, electron and anti-neutrino, would this not result in a neutron? In other words, is this equation reversible n -> p+e+an to p+e+an -> n ?

[Skwinty]

You see, if Witt were saying I'm going to regard neutrons as a bound state of an electron and a proton, even though I know that's not an exact description, because it will be good enough for my purposes that might be fine. It certainly wouldn't mean that if he were correct physics would all be wrong. But no - Witt says quarks don't exist and the neutron is exactly a bound state of an e- and a p+. If these statements were correct much of physics since 1934 would be wrong.

I accept your point here. Witts statement is based on poor descriptive technique. He assumes that quarks dont exist because, the quark , as I understand, cannot exist in isolation like a neutron or proton.

[Skwinty]

The point is the difference between what conventional science predicts and observes and what Witt's null physics predicts. He would proceed from the assumption that the watch contains nothing using crazy math and predict that the watch will always display 99 after 12. When observations show that 1 appears after 12 then Witt will say this in null mathemetics 99 is really 1.

I apologise if I seem a bit dense here, but, when I look at a digital watch tick over, bearing in mind the analogy that I am primitive and memorising a pattern, I will never see a 12 followed by a 99. How could I maintain my credibility as a shaman and predict that 99 follows 12?

The nothing bit, I think, stems from the fact that the watch, under infinite magnification, would reveal more nothing (empty space) than something.

[sol invictus]

Perhaps my reasoning stems from the fact that a free neutron decays into a proton, electron and anti-neutrino. It seems logical to say then, that the neutron, in some form or another, contains the recipe for a proton, electron and anti-neutrino. Yes, this can be explained, correctly, by the different variety of quarks which constitute the neutron, from a particle physics viewpoint.


I tried to point this out before, with no luck. Let me try again: many particles - in fact probably all - have multiple decay modes. Even the neutron can decay into a p+, e-, and anti-neutrino, OR into a p+, e-, anti-neutrino, AND photon, or into the same with other numbers of extra photons. So, does the neutron have photons inside it too? How many?

Other particles have more interesting decays. For example, the pi+ can decay in all of the following ways (v is a neutrino, av an anti neutrino, μ+ an anti muon, etc.):

μ+ ν
μ+ ν γ
e+ ν
e+ ν γ
e+ ν pi0
e+ ν e+ e−
e+ ν ν ν
etc.

So - what is the pi+ made of?

If one had the capacity to unite a proton, electron and anti-neutrino, would this not result in a neutron? In other words, is this equation reversible n -> p+e+an to p+e+an -> n ?

Yes - any reaction can be reversed in principle. For example all of the above in reverse can form a pi+.

[sol invictus]

I accept your point here. Witts statement is based on poor descriptive technique. He assumes that quarks dont exist because, the quark , as I understand, cannot exist in isolation like a neutron or proton.

What it really boils down to is success. Nothing more, nothing less. The standard model is incredibly successful - it makes correct and in some cases almost unbelievably precise predictions for the results of every one of the (literally) trillions of experiments that have been carried out to test it. It manages that because it is the current end result of centuries of physical and mathematical research, with tens of thousands of very smart and careful researchers painstakingly trying every alternative they could think of, reluctantly discarding almost all of them, and keeping the tiny fraction that actually matched what we saw in the world.

If Witt can come up with a model which can match the standard model, or even which has the remotest hope of someday matching it, people will pay lots of attention to him. Instead, he makes statements which are inconsistent with even the first and most basic results in particle physics from the 30's. Therefore, he gets labeled a crackpot - which he is, by definition of the term (at least by mine).

By the way, I know of at least one interesting example of a guy - he had a degree in physics, but from years before, and had spent 20 years or so working a blue collar job in a factory. As a hobby he reads the physics archives online, and occasionally writes papers. He wrote one a few years ago which scooped one some very famous physicists were working on - it wasn't quite right, but it had the right idea and most of the correct math. That got their attention.

How did they react? Did they label him a crackpot and try to bury his ideas? No - they flew him out to their university (one of the best in the world) and had him visit for a few months (this was one of the few times he'd ever been on a plane). He turned out to be very smart indeed.

[Skwinty]

I tried to point this out before, with no luck. Let me try again: many particles - in fact probably all - have multiple decay modes. Even the neutron can decay into a p+, e-, and anti-neutrino, OR into a p+, e-, anti-neutrino, AND photon, or into the same with other numbers of extra photons. So, does the neutron have photons inside it too? How many?

Other particles have more interesting decays. For example, the pi+ can decay in all of the following ways (v is a neutrino, av an anti neutrino, μ+ an anti muon, etc.):

μ+ ν
μ+ ν γ
e+ ν
e+ ν γ
e+ ν pi0
e+ ν e+ e−
e+ ν ν ν
etc.

So - what is the pi+ made of?



Yes - any reaction can be reversed in principle. For example all of the above in reverse can form a pi+.

I accept your point.
One question though, a photon is not a particle, it is a form of energy.
So if the beta+ decay produces a proton, electron, anti-neutrino and a photon, where does the extra energy come from and doesn't this violate the laws of conservation.

[sol invictus]

I accept your point.
One question though, a photon is not a particle, it is a form of energy.
So if the beta+ decay produces a proton, electron, anti-neutrino and a photon, where does the extra energy come from and doesn't this violate the laws of conservation.

The photon is a particle - it just happens to be massless. Until recently it was believed that neutrinos were massless as well.

The energy comes from the kinetic energy of the electron, proton, etc. The sum of their masses is less than the mass of the neutron (as we've been discussing). That difference must therefore be carried away in the kinetic energy of the products of the decay - in other words they fly away from where the neutron was rather than just sitting there. Some of that kinetic energy can be converted into photons without violating any laws of physics (well, you have to be careful with angular momentum since the photon is spin 1, but it works out).

[Skwinty]

The photon is a particle - it just happens to be massless. Until recently it was believed that neutrinos were massless as well.

The energy comes from the kinetic energy of the electron, proton, etc. The sum of their masses is less than the mass of the neutron (as we've been discussing). That difference must therefore be carried away in the kinetic energy of the products of the decay - in other words they fly away from where the neutron was rather than just sitting there. Some of that kinetic energy can be converted into photons without violating any laws of physics (well, you have to be careful with angular momentum since the photon is spin 1, but it works out).

Ok, I understood the photon to behave as a paticle or a wave and that it has relativistic mass (and no rest mass). Are you saying that a free neutron decays with different kinetic energies for each decay, or is something else involved that causes this.

[sol invictus]

Ok, I understood the photon to behave as a paticle or a wave and that it has relativistic mass (and no rest mass). Are you saying that a free neutron decays with different kinetic energies for each decay, or is something else involved that causes this.

It's just that the excess energy can be distributed in many different ways among the kinetic energies of the three final-state particles - or some of it can be "used" to make a photon in addition. The total energy is fixed (it's just the neutron mass, at least if we are talking about an isolated neutron at rest) but how it is shared among the three particles is not determined by any conservation law.

It's like a bomb (which is a bound state of smoke - did you know that?) exploding. The total energy yield is fixed, but precisely how the smoke and other particles behave - like how much energy a given particle ends up with - will be different in each explosion.

[Skwinty]

By the way, I know of at least one interesting example of a guy - he had a degree in physics, but from years before, and had spent 20 years or so working a blue collar job in a factory. As a hobby he reads the physics archives online, and occasionally writes papers. He wrote one a few years ago which scooped one some very famous physicists were working on - it wasn't quite right, but it had the right idea and most of the correct math. That got their attention. .

Can you give a link to this story. Sounds like a very interesting read.

[sol invictus]

Can you give a link to this story. Sounds like a very interesting read.

There's nothing written about it (as far as I know). Sorry.

[Reality Check]

I apologise if I seem a bit dense here, but, when I look at a digital watch tick over, bearing in mind the analogy that I am primitive and memorising a pattern, I will never see a 12 followed by a 99. How could I maintain my credibility as a shaman and predict that 99 follows 12?

The nothing bit, I think, stems from the fact that the watch, under infinite magnification, would reveal more nothing (empty space) than something.
You are right - you could not maintain your credibility. But Witt is doing the equivalent of predicting that 99 will come after 1 - what does this say about his credibility?

Some examples:

He states that an electron has no intrinsic magnetic moment. But anyone in physics would have quickly told him about the Stern–Gerlach experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern%E2%80%93Gerlach_experiment) done in 1922 (and repeated many times since then) that shows that electrons have intrinsic angular momentum and so have intrinsic magnetic moment since they are charged.
He states that the super-massive black hole at the center of our galaxy is actually a "galactic core" that recycles stars to make new hydrogen. This means that it is very energetic and eats stars.
He was unaware that the galactic center has been under observation for decades. The energy he predicted has never been detected. Oddly enough no one has observed that stars are disappearing from the vicinity of the black hole, even though monitoring the positions and motions of these stars is a technique for determining the mass of the black hole.
He redefines infinity to have a magnitude so that he can say suff like "infinity + 1 > infinity".
He forgets that this basically invalidates some (all?) of the mathematics that he is about to use in the rest of the book.
He redefines a line ("one-demensional space" in his terminology) as "0 = (...0+0+0...)" where "0" is a point which he has defined as nothing.
He never actually defines what the operation of addition is for his "points".
He never defines how to measure a length in his "geometry" given that all of the points are nothing.

[Perpetual Student]

He states that an electron has no intrinsic magnetic moment. But anyone in physics would have quickly told him about the Stern–Gerlach experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern%E2%80%93Gerlach_experiment) done in 1922 (and repeated many times since then) that shows that electrons have intrinsic angular momentum and so have intrinsic magnetic moment since they are charged.
He states that the super-massive black hole at the center of our galaxy is actually a "galactic core" that recycles stars to make new hydrogen. This means that it is very energetic and eats stars.
He was unaware that the galactic center has been under observation for decades. The energy he predicted has never been detected. Oddly enough no one has observed that stars are disappearing from the vicinity of the black hole, even though monitoring the positions and motions of these stars is a technique for determining the mass of the black hole.
He redefines infinity to have a magnitude so that he can say suff like "infinity + 1 > infinity".
He forgets that this basically invalidates some (all?) of the mathematics that he is about to use in the rest of the book.
He redefines a line ("one-demensional space" in his terminology) as "0 = (...0+0+0...)" where "0" is a point which he has defined as nothing.
He never actually defines what the operation of addition is for his "points".
He never defines how to measure a length in his "geometry" given that all of the points are nothing.
[/LIST]

It should be obvious by now to readers of this forum that he is a nothing more than a semi-educated "flat-earth" type crackpot!

[Paulhoff]

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/4880489de0b480839.gif (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=13383)

Paul

:) :) :)

Geez Skwinty

[Skwinty]

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/4880489de0b480839.gif (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=13383)

Paul

:) :) :)

Geez Skwinty

Well, you can't say I'm a hit and run poster.
:wackyskeptical:

[Paulhoff]

Well, you can't say I'm a hit and run poster.
:wackyskeptical:
You can't say that I have to be knocked out to get it.

Paul

:) :) :)

[Skwinty]

You can't say that I have to be knocked out to get it.

Paul

:) :) :)


If any one is trying to knock me out, then they must try a lot harder.

[Skwinty]

You are right - you could not maintain your credibility. But Witt is doing the equivalent of predicting that 99 will come after 1 - what does this say about his credibility?



Hi Rc

You are changing the analogy by introducing a malfunctioning digital watch.

I get every one's point about not agreeing with Witt's theories.
The fact that I don't have the education in physics and mathematics as the rest of you folk, probably makes his theories sound plausible to me.

At the end of the day, for all mankinds knowledge and wisdom, can it be said that every thing we know is actually correct. Sure we can say that observation agrees with theories and predictions, but does that make it true?

[Paulhoff]

If any one is trying to knock me out, then they must try a lot harder.
You've been knocked out, you haven't woke up yet.

Paul

:) :) :)

[Bluefire]

You are changing the analogy by introducing a malfunctioning digital watch.


No, only a "malfunctioning" prediction.


At the end of the day, for all mankinds knowledge and wisdom, can it be said that every thing we know is actually correct.


Not everything we think we know is correct, sure, but noone here has claimed that, and that observation has no bearing on this discussion.


Sure we can say that observation agrees with theories and predictions, but does that make it true?

It makes it tentatively the best approximations we have. Science never claimed that we are at the end of the road, and neither does this have any bearing on the Witt discussion.

[Reality Check]

Hi Rc

You are changing the analogy by introducing a malfunctioning digital watch.

I get every one's point about not agreeing with Witt's theories.
The fact that I don't have the education in physics and mathematics as the rest of you folk, probably makes his theories sound plausible to me.

At the end of the day, for all mankinds knowledge and wisdom, can it be said that every thing we know is actually correct. Sure we can say that observation agrees with theories and predictions, but does that make it true?
I am not saying that the watch is malfunctioning. The watch is working normally and displays 1 after 12. But Witt's shaman would predict that 99 will appear after 12 and redefine 99 as 1 when 1 actually appears.

It is not about agreeing with Witt's theories. It is just that they are wrong as shown by our observations of the universe.

Science is never true as in "absolute truth" because science is about observations and these are never absolutely true. Science is about getting as close to the truth as we can.

[sol invictus]

A thorough (and rather entertaining) review of Witt's book has appeared here (http://web.mit.edu/~bmonreal/www/Null_Physics_Review.html).

Enjoy ;).

[Skwinty]

A thorough (and rather entertaining) review of Witt's book has appeared here (http://web.mit.edu/~bmonreal/www/Null_Physics_Review.html).

Enjoy ;).

Hi Sol, read the review and can only say


Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, that when I grasp it - in a decade, a century, or a millennium - I will say to myself, how could it have been otherwise? How could I have been so stupid for so long?

[Perpetual Student]

A thorough (and rather entertaining) review of Witt's book has appeared here (http://web.mit.edu/~bmonreal/www/Null_Physics_Review.html).

Enjoy ;).

It is remarkable that someone with so much energy, creativity and imagination as Witt would not try to gain a better understanding of real physics. What a waste!

[BRENTEFS]

A thorough (and rather entertaining) review of Witt's book has appeared here (http://web.mit.edu/~bmonreal/www/Null_Physics_Review.html).

Enjoy ;).
Thanks for the link. I have been patiently waiting for someone who has read the book and has the formal education to point out its various flaws. I still am left to ponder his concept that the universe is self sustaining and has existed for infinity because of his "energy conservation" conclusions for galaxies. I find this much more probable than a tiny spec of matter with infinite density and infinite brightness exploding and creating everything. I seem to have read somewhere that " matter can neither be created nor destroyed"

[Reality Check]

Thanks for the link. I have been patiently waiting for someone who has read the book and has the formal education to point out its various flaws. I still am left to ponder his concept that the universe is self sustaining and has existed for infinity because of his "energy conservation" conclusions for galaxies. I find this much more probable than a tiny spec of matter with infinite density and infinite brightness exploding and creating everything. I seem to have read somewhere that " matter can neither be created nor destroyed"
It would be nice if the universe catered to the personal wishes of people and was eternal, static, infinite, etc. However it has the nasty habit of allowing observations that show that it is definitely not eternal, changes with time and may not even be infinite.

Matter can be destroyed - collide any particle and its anti-particle together and they convert to energy. It can also be created, e.g. the creation of pairs of virtual particles, Hawking radiation, etc.


As the review points out Witt has ignored thermodynamics and especially the second law which makes his ""energy conservation" conclusions for galaxies" invalid. Personally I am amazed that he was not aware (until I pointed it out) that the center of the Milky Way has been under observation for decades and:
We do not see the radiation from the hot "galactic core" he uses to recycle stars.
We have not seen stars vanishing from the vicinity of the galactic center (to be recycled). He even calculates a figure of ~18 solar masses that have to be converted per year for his cycle to be valid in the Milky Way! Astronomers have been plotting the positions and motions of stars within a few lightyears of the galactic center for a dozen years now. They have never noticed any vanishing stars.
The real problem for the crackpots that try to create new fundemental theories of physics is that they have no idea of the extent and volume of data from observations and experiments that is the basis for our current picture of the universe. It is highly unlikely that an individual's theory will overthrow much of current physics.

[TriangleMan]

A thorough (and rather entertaining) review of Witt's book has appeared here (http://web.mit.edu/~bmonreal/www/Null_Physics_Review.html).

Enjoy ;).

That's a great link - made my day. Is Witt still advertising his book in all those magazines? It has been what, 6 months now?

[godless dave]

At the end of the day, for all mankinds knowledge and wisdom, can it be said that every thing we know is actually correct. Sure we can say that observation agrees with theories and predictions, but does that make it true?


Of course not. But if observation disagrees with theories and predictions, then we know the theories and predictions are not true. And that's the case for Witt's hypotheses - they contradict what is observed.

[Skwinty]

Of course not. But if observation disagrees with theories and predictions, then we know the theories and predictions are not true. And that's the case for Witt's hypotheses - they contradict what is observed.

Hi Godless Dave
long time no hear.
Your statement is true only if you are making the correct observation for the theory/prediction.

with regard to null physics, now that Ben M has reviewed the entire book and revealed his credentials, I have as previously stated, seen the error of my ways.

[The Man]

Sure we can say that observation agrees with theories and predictions, but does that make it true?

The key is not so much saying what is true, but demonstrating what is false and I am sure “Null Physics” falls into that category (the latter not the former).

[Reality Check]

Interesting little tidbit: The Null Physics forum (http://www.ourundiscovereduniverse.com/forum/) on Terry Witt's Our Undiscovered Universe has vanished and been replaced by a photo competition.
This looks like the typical behaviour of a crackpot when faced with critisms of their "theory" - run away and hide!

[Wangler]

Interesting little tidbit: The Null Physics forum (http://www.ourundiscovereduniverse.com/forum/) on Terry Witt's Our Undiscovered Universe has vanished and been replaced by a photo competition.
This looks like the typical behaviour of a crackpot when faced with critisms of their "theory" - run away and hide!

I see that they are not having a forum member vote on the pictures: only they decide!

Still seems as if the Null Physics crowd is still avoiding "peer review".

:)

[Paulhoff]

I see that they are not having a forum member vote on the pictures: only they decide!

Still seems as if the Null Physics crowd is still avoiding "peer review".

:)
It is called "NULL peer review".

Paul

:) :) :)

[sol invictus]

Anyone else get the feeling that all the blogs on that site are written by the same person?

[Reality Check]

Benjamin Monreal's review (http://web.mit.edu/~bmonreal/www/Null_Physics_Review.html) of "Our Undiscovered Universe" by Terence Witt has inspired me to write my own review (http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~fiski/ouu_review.html) pointing out a few more flaws in the book.
Hopefully people will discover Ben's review or mine before wasting their money on the book.

[jadey]

I have found this thread to be extremely enlightening, not so much to the subject of Null Physics (I can't personally follow all the deep physics conversations), but to the scientific review process.

By now, mine is a familiar story: saw the advertisements ... googled Null Physics ... landed on this thread ... took several days to get through all of the posts ... wish I could understand more of the concepts.

I was surprised by the immediate dismissal of the author as being a crackpot, and felt like the rebuttals were close-minded and a bit harsh. My sentiments were in line with gratuitous python in the sense of "we don't have all the answers so let's hear the author out". It was interesting to read the dialogue when Terri Witt was engaged, especially when the posts were civil.

After completing the entire thread, I better appreciate why many members of the forum reacted so strongly. It seems odd that the author chose to develop this entire "paradigm shift" in an apparent vacuum for 25 years(?). It seems that it would have been more fruitful to come forth with an approach like "hey physics community, I've got this interesting paradigm shift, lets see if it holds water". Perhaps he tried and received a cool reception, but I would think if there was anything promising in his ideas, some physicists would have joined his cause. Even if they didn't, he could still carry the torch and publish a book as he has done. So, he had nothing to lose by coming forth with his concepts earlier (funding was apparently not an issue).

In closing, I'm not qualified to comment on the physics, but I find the author's approach lacking. I find it highly suspect that this book is the first anybody has heard of Null Physics.

Thanks to all who participated, and for Ben M. and Reality Check reviews. I think it took longer to read the thread than it would have taken to read the book, but I probably learned more :boggled: I'm now addicted to this JREF forum ;)

[Stir]

A thorough (and rather entertaining) review of Witt's book has appeared here (http://web.mit.edu/~bmonreal/www/Null_Physics_Review.html).

Enjoy ;).

Thank you Sol I! And thank you, thank you, thank you Benjamin Monreal!!!

My favorite line from the review: "Null Physics relies on a standard-of-proof that would embarrass a homeopath. "

[MainframeX]

I came to this thread because I have been curious about Null Physics due to the exuberant ad spaces in several magazines and since I haven't read it I can't personally conclude that its content holds any merit though reading from the comments on this thread I suspect that Mr Witt offers an interesting perspective though possibly imaginary in his approach to a unifying particle. Again I haven't read it so i can't judge but I doubt its more imaginary that current String Theory which in my opinion is an imaginary mathematical representation of theoretical physics with no possible verifiable experimentation is/has been a travesty to physics for the last 30-40 years and has stagnated a whole generation of physicists from exploring different venues in physics because String Theory was adopted as the mainstream theoretical branch to mainstream physics resulting in not only study but jobs being offered only for physicists versed in String Theory. Its actually a great pity again in my opinion.

Anyway, I also have worked on theoretical physics theories resulting in not only mathematical verification but also experimental and just like Mr Witt have put it into a book but mine is absolutely free. The following is my own promo ad which I'm not spending millions on promoting (which makes Mr Witt a better businessman than me but I don't believe physics should be a business) and yup its bold but so what...we all self promote at varying degrees. My only intent is to inspire a different perspective and direction in physics.

Goto: www[dot]gpofr[dot]com

"A new theoretical physics ebook documents a very significant discovery. In this ebook release over a year ago in late 2007 to a specific group of people, a new relativistic mass equation is derived which equates the relativistic mass of Jupiter (1.898x10^27 kilograms) to the value of an electron charge (1.6x10^-19 coulombs) EXACTLY! This validates the author's initial hypothesis with undeniable accuracy. There is no deviation in the math. It is rock solid because it is so simple! For the first time in the history of science an exact relationship between atomic and star systems has been discovered. Neils Bohr was the first to postulate that there was a similarity between atomic systems and star systems, and his theories gave rise to quantum physics, but never did he detail, nor anyone else, an exact relative link between the two until now. This wonderful discovery was something the author, Robert DeMelo, did not expect to find but the new equation was the one that gave insight into this relationship which was the catalyst why this ebook was written. The new relativistic mass equation was derived using the Reality Scale value of S, a constant value also derived in the ebook, which remarkably related to the speed of light and Euler's mathematical constant (two other Universal constants) and was further derived from a new relativistic mass-density equation. Essentially mass-gravity at the celestial scale is equal to charge at the quantum scale. It is unification at a very fundamental level. Anyone who knows anything about physics knows this is very significant.

This is something the world needs to be aware of because the ramifications of derivative theories based on this discovery are huge. The most significant derivative theories include whole new gravity and relativity theories which are also detailed in the ebook. In specific reference to the new gravity theory, it basically states that gas giant planets interact with eachother as electrons would with eachother at a much slower rate of interaction. It further states that objects of similar size and mass-density repel each other and objects of significantly different size and mass-density attract each other, thus actual gravity is not just an attraction force but also a repulsion force dependent on the physical composition and structure of the objects in interaction."

[sol invictus]

Again I haven't read it so i can't judge but I doubt its more imaginary that current String Theory which in my opinion is an imaginary mathematical representation of theoretical physics with no possible verifiable experimentation is/has been a travesty to physics for the last 30-40 years and has stagnated a whole generation of physicists from exploring different venues in physics because String Theory was adopted as the mainstream theoretical branch to mainstream physics resulting in not only study but jobs being offered only for physicists versed in String Theory. Its actually a great pity again in my opinion.

It must be gratifying for string theorists to be attacked so vehemently by so many total nutjobs.


"A new theoretical physics ebook documents a very significant discovery. In this ebook release over a year ago in late 2007 to a specific group of people, a new relativistic mass equation is derived which equates the relativistic mass of Jupiter (1.898x10^27 kilograms) to the value of an electron charge (1.6x10^-19 coulombs) EXACTLY!

Wait, wait - I know!! M = (M/Q)*Q???

[Tubbythin]

Again I haven't read it so i can't judge but I doubt its more imaginary that current String Theory which in my opinion is an imaginary mathematical representation of theoretical physics with no possible verifiable experimentation is/has been a travesty to physics for the last 30-40 years and has stagnated a whole generation of physicists from exploring different venues in physics because String Theory was adopted as the mainstream theoretical branch to mainstream physics resulting in not only study but jobs being offered only for physicists versed in String Theory.

Does the book contain better sentence structure and punctuation than the above?

[MainframeX]

It must be gratifying for string theorists to be attacked so vehemently by so many total nutjobs.



Wait, wait - I know!! M = (M/Q)*Q???

You're assuming I'm not a String Theorist, but you're right that was harsh of me but I was only quoting Dr. Lee Smolin.

[sol invictus]

You're assuming I'm not a String Theorist, but you're right that was harsh of me but I was only quoting Dr. Lee Smolin.

Well, one thing I can tell you is the assertion that ST "stagnated a whole generation of physicists from exploring different venues in physics because String Theory was adopted as the mainstream theoretical branch to mainstream physics resulting in not only study but jobs being offered only for physicists versed in String Theory" is a bald-faced and trivially falsified lie.

There have been a total of around 1-2 USA faculty jobs going to string theorists each year for the past 7 or 8 years at least. There are perhaps 200 on faculties in the entire country (a guess, probably an overestimate), compared to at least 30,000 physicists. Only a small minority of departments have any string theorists at all on their faculties; to claim the subject has stagnated an entire generation is paranoid nonsense.

The truth is that Smolin is an advocate of a theory called loop quantum gravity, which is a far less successful attempt at a theory of quantum gravity. His agenda is to grab as many resources as he can. Take anything he says with a large quantity of salt.

[MainframeX]

Dr Lee Smolin is a respected theoretical physicist whose research doesn't include String Theory. The fact is, preference is given to those who have studied and know string theory for many "theoretical" research physics positions not the classical physics positions that include your typical science teacher who is expected to teach and not research. This falls inline with what you mentioned that string theorist are a small percentage because theoretical research positions are also small in number.

[sol invictus]

Dr Lee Smolin is a respected theoretical physicist whose research doesn't include String Theory.

False.

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?irn=1505882
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?irn=1434306

The fact is, preference is given to those who have studied and know string theory for many "theoretical" research physics positions not the classical physics positions that include your typical science teacher who is expected to teach and not research.

That's simply and demonstrably false. I'm quite familiar with the state of the faculty job market in theoretical physics, and very, very few string theorists have been hired over the last 5-10 years. If you don't believe me, you can check for yourself

Smolin quite simply lies about that, for his own gain.

This falls inline with what you mentioned that string theorist are a small percentage because theoretical research positions are also small in number.

No - all of those physicists do research. There are few if any tenure-track faculty positions (which are the ones I was talking about) which do not require a significant research component.

[MainframeX]

False.

{links sites referenced}


With all do respect, you're citing his work from all the way back to 1985/86 when string theory became popular. How about his most recent work in theory of quantum gravity. Over time people, including me, drop old theories and work for something more promising with far greater potential. He didn't develop string theory but he adopted it over 20 years ago in order to do whatever he was attempting to do at that time 2 decades ago.



That's simply and demonstrably false. I'm quite familiar with the state of the faculty job market in theoretical physics, and very, very few string theorists have been hired over the last 5-10 years. If you don't believe me, you can check for yourself

Smolin quite simply lies about that, for his own gain.


Preference doesn't mean you have to be a full fledged string theorist or the position has to be at all to do with string theory. If you're apt enough to understand the complexity of string theory then it is a definite nice to have on any resume demonstrating a level of intelligence in abstract thinking and mathematics, but the unfortunate aspect is that those who study string theory are taught to think that string theory will result in a grand unification theory for all of physics but has so far only resulted in a very ugly disjointed ensemble of imaginary mathematics with no practical possibility for application. Dr. Smolin perhaps dropped his pursuit of finding anything solid with string theory many years ago when he, like me, realized it was all untestable (unverifiable).

To say he is a liar is extreme. Perhaps not well informed is a better option. And I will definitely stick to the fact that he is well respected by a good many people in the science community.


No - all of those physicists do research. There are few if any tenure-track faculty positions (which are the ones I was talking about) which do not require a significant research component.

Then you're aware of US statistical information I am not aware of (I'm Canadian btw), but what kind of research? Does it have anything to do with grand unification research such as string theory or does it have to do with specific fields of research such as astrophysics, superconductivity or condensed matter research where research results can be made into viable applications thus the incentive is in viable, application potential research. Each respective field has its own research with many sanctioned and sponsored by private industry and some in partnership to with universities. Perhaps Dr. Smolin is overzealous in his string theory claims but you can't absolutely disprove his claims especial in regards to preference of one candidate over another unless you work for a national job board catering to physicists. Maybe you do but I don't think you do.

I will stick to the fact that string theory has been promoted by mainstream physics as an acceptable field of theoretical research while alternative venues are frowned upon such as Dr Smolin's quantum gravity theory. You can't content the masses from thinking outside the box of mainstream opinion especially in regards to theoretical research. My main point here is that string theory has failed to produce anything predictable or application worthy over the course of almost 40 years but an ugly mishmash of imaginary mathematics.

[sol invictus]

If you're apt enough to understand the complexity of string theory then it is a definite nice to have on any resume demonstrating a level of intelligence in abstract thinking and mathematics, but the unfortunate aspect is that those who study string theory are taught to think that string theory will result in a grand unification theory for all of physics but has so far only resulted in a very ugly disjointed ensemble of imaginary mathematics with no practical possibility for application.

That's a very bold claim you're making! String theory is "imaginary mathematics" - whatever in the world that means - with "no practical possibility for application". And precisely how are you in a position to know that? Is that what Smolin told you to think?

Perhaps Dr. Smolin is overzealous in his string theory claims but you can't absolutely disprove his claims especial in regards to preference of one candidate over another unless you work for a national job board catering to physicists.

Smolin has made claims as extreme as that no one but a string theorist had been hired in years - I'd have to dig up the precise quote, but it was blatantly false. Most of the time he's talking to people that have no other immediate source of information and believe him based on his credentials, so he can get away with it.

I will stick to the fact that string theory has been promoted by mainstream physics as an acceptable field of theoretical research while alternative venues are frowned upon such as Dr Smolin's quantum gravity theory.

That's a far cry from your original claim. Now tell me - who, precisely, would you like to have making such decisions if not physicists? Would you put Smolin in charge, to decide who to hire and what people should work on? Or a committee of non-experts? What will they tell young Ph.D. students that decide on their own that they want to study string theory - no, it's forbidden? You seem to find physicists and their professional opinions - the people whose careers depend on this, who are the experts, spend their days and nights working on the topic, struggling for jobs and publications, who have the most at stake - to be misguided fools in need of some advice. It's really weird.

You can't content the masses from thinking outside the box of mainstream opinion especially in regards to theoretical research. My main point here is that string theory has failed to produce anything predictable or application worthy over the course of almost 40 years but an ugly mishmash of imaginary mathematics.

Again, "imaginary mathematics". FYI string theory has produced several Fields medalists - that's the highest award in math, analogous to the Nobel prize (there isn't one for math), except awarded only once every four years rather than every year. Two string theorists got it, and at least one other mathematician working on string theory. The truth is that ST sparked a revolution in a major field of mathematics - algebraic geometry - and has lead directly to some of the most exciting developments in the entire field in the last two decades.

Moreover it's had broad and far-reaching applications to many areas of physics, from QCD (which was its original purpose) to gravity to nuclear physics to superconductivity and the quantum Hall effect. It's an extremely powerful and versatile theoretical tool - whether it is the correct theory of everything is another question entirely, but without doubt it has had a major impact and made major contributions to theoretical physics and mathematics.

None of that is true for loop quantum gravity. It has produced no mathematical insights, and it has no application to other fields. It is an obscure and small subfield that has gone nowhere.

[MainframeX]

That's a very bold claim you're making! String theory is "imaginary mathematics" - whatever in the world that means - with "no practical possibility for application". And precisely how are you in a position to know that? Is that what Smolin told you to think?



Smolin has made claims as extreme as that no one but a string theorist had been hired in years - I'd have to dig up the precise quote, but it was blatantly false. Most of the time he's talking to people that have no other immediate source of information and believe him based on his credentials, so he can get away with it.



That's a far cry from your original claim. Now tell me - who, precisely, would you like to have making such decisions if not physicists? Would you put Smolin in charge, to decide who to hire and what people should work on? Or a committee of non-experts? What will they tell young Ph.D. students that decide on their own that they want to study string theory - no, it's forbidden? You seem to find physicists and their professional opinions - the people whose careers depend on this, who are the experts, spend their days and nights working on the topic, struggling for jobs and publications, who have the most at stake - to be misguided fools in need of some advice. It's really weird.



Again, "imaginary mathematics". FYI string theory has produced several Fields medalists - that's the highest award in math, analogous to the Nobel prize (there isn't one for math), except awarded only once every four years rather than every year. Two string theorists got it, and at least one other mathematician working on string theory. The truth is that ST sparked a revolution in a major field of mathematics - algebraic geometry - and has lead directly to some of the most exciting developments in the entire field in the last two decades.

Moreover it's had broad and far-reaching applications to many areas of physics, from QCD (which was its original purpose) to gravity to nuclear physics to superconductivity and the quantum Hall effect. It's an extremely powerful and versatile theoretical tool - whether it is the correct theory of everything is another question entirely, but without doubt it has had a major impact and made major contributions to theoretical physics and mathematics.

None of that is true for loop quantum gravity. It has produced no mathematical insights, and it has no application to other fields. It is an obscure and small subfield that has gone nowhere.

I dont know where you're getting your information, but string theory, under the scientific method, is untestable and thus unverifiable and concludes with no predictable results...I know. String theory has not predicted a single thing that can be verified over the last 40 years so no there has been no "viable" applications arising from it. Under all intents and purposes it shouldn't be considered a scientific "theory" at all. You got one thing right, it was popular and has been championed by individuals like Dr. Michio Kaku who walks a fine line on fringe science with books such as "Physics of the Impossible", which I found fascinating though highly "imaginary" and yes I know it was an exploratory work. If you're going to talk about Dr. Lee Smolin might as well bring Dr. Kaku up. Both research what they want and perhaps both conclude with "imaginary mathematics" but I seriously doubt that Dr. Kaku is more respected than Dr. Smolin and I for one respect both of them.

You know imaginary mathematics I can guarantee this (you're a smart individual) though you might not be obviously aware of it. I was fortunate that one of my physics professors instilled this in me many years ago. "Imaginary" mathematics has to do with the context of the math. A very simple example that describes imaginary mathematics is the following: "Johnny has (or dreams of) 3 pink flying elephants." The math is correct (there are 3) but the context is completely imaginary. To make this a bit more complex, physics is not a direct representation of math. Math is a direct representation of physics. If it doesn't exist in the physical, mathematics cannot readily define it and runs the risk of becoming imaginary contextually. And this is where string theory has fallen in regards to its coupling of individual verifiable physics theories. Without any verifiable experimentation, string theory's context has become imaginary. No mainstream physics theory, even theoretical should be unverifiable and much less run for 40 years under this same premise. Einstein's theory of relativity ran many years without verification but it wasn't 40 years and besides that Einstein never lost touch with the physically "real" of his physics context. I'll be the first to say string theory had a good start. The idea of string theory was highly promising before everyone and their uncle decided to add their own interpretation. It has become very ugly and highly imaginary.

And in regards to mathematical awards. Good for them. The mathematics in string theory is complex and the fact it has "sparked a revolution in a major field of mathematics - algebraic geometry" is good for mathematics but not for physics. You can't lose touch with the physical context in physics otherwise it's just math...most likely imaginary.

[sol invictus]

I dont know where you're getting your information, but string theory, under the scientific method, is untestable and thus unverifiable and concludes with no predictable results...I know.
(my bold)

OK, end of discussion then. False and totally unsupported assertions really aren't very interesting.

[MainframeX]

(my bold)

OK, end of discussion then. False and totally unsupported assertions really aren't very interesting.

Hey, you're entitled to your opinion and I'm not trying to make you look bad by countering your opinion but I am entitled to mine opinion.

I did lookup some other sources to support my claims to string theories "unverifiableness". Wikipedia under the classification of "theory" states the following:

en[dot]wikipedia[dot]org/wiki/Theory

"Currently unverifiable theories
The term theory is regularly stretched to refer to speculation that is currently unverifiable. Examples are string theory and various theories of everything. In the strict sense, the term theory should only be used when describing a model derived from experimental evidence and is provable (or disprovable). It is considered sufficient for the model to be in principle testable at some undetermined point in the future."

Though I'd take Wikipedia with a grain of salt as well so consider the following:

www[dot]google[dot]ca/search?hl=en&rlz=1C1CHMI_enCA306CA306&q="string+theory"+unverifiable&btnG=Search&meta=

And the only reason I said "I know" is because I've worked with string theory.

[sol invictus]

Hey, you're entitled to your opinion and I'm not trying to make you look bad by countering your opinion but I am entitled to mine opinion.

Don't worry, you're not capable of making me look bad.


"Currently unverifiable theories
The term theory is regularly stretched to refer to speculation that is currently unverifiable. Examples are string theory and various theories of everything. In the strict sense, the term theory should only be used when describing a model derived from experimental evidence and is provable (or disprovable). It is considered sufficient for the model to be in principle testable at some undetermined point in the future."

First of all, "currently unverifiable" is completely different from "untestable and thus unverifiable and concludes with no predictable results", which is what you said. That's called shifting the goal posts.

Second, the wiki is wrong for several reasons.

every new theory is not verified when it is proposed - how could it be, if it's a new theory? So when it's first proposed it's always "currently unverifiable".
string theory is not really one theory - it's a collection of theories - and some of those are verifiable as soon as the LHC starts up, which will be soon, and some others are verifiable using cosmological data right now.
the Popperian definition of scientific theory, which is probably the best one, is not that at theory be verifiable, it's that a theory be falsifiable. All versions of string theory could be falsified tomorrow, in quite a few different ways.
no theory can every be truly "verified" - one can have very high confidence in it, but it can never be proven. In fact if any theory was every truly proven it would no longer be falsifiable, and hence not science.


Anyway, this discussion is completely off topic in this thread. If you want to continue it, start a new thread and quote these posts. Otherwise it should stop, as it violates the rules of this board.

[MainframeX]

Don't worry, you're not capable of making me look bad.



First of all, "currently unverifiable" is completely different from "untestable and thus unverifiable and concludes with no predictable results", which is what you said. That's called shifting the goal posts.

Second, the wiki is wrong for several reasons.

every new theory is not verified when it is proposed - how could it be, if it's a new theory? So when it's first proposed it's always "currently unverifiable".
string theory is not really one theory - it's a collection of theories - and some of those are verifiable as soon as the LHC starts up, which will be soon, and some others are verifiable using cosmological data right now.
the Popperian definition of scientific theory, which is probably the best one, is not that at theory be verifiable, it's that a theory be falsifiable. All versions of string theory could be falsified tomorrow, in quite a few different ways.
no theory can every be truly "verified" - one can have very high confidence in it, but it can never be proven. In fact if any theory was every truly proven it would no longer be falsifiable, and hence not science.


Anyway, this discussion is completely off topic in this thread. If you want to continue it, start a new thread and quote these posts. Otherwise it should stop, as it violates the rules of this board.

In order for string theory or any scientific theory to be "falsifiable" or "verifiable" it must be "testable" and for it to be testable it must conclude with "predictions" either mathematically or experimentally (both relating to physical context) so that the predictions can be proven false or positive. It isn't that hard.

What?! The LHC is testing predictions in the Standard Model (one specifically is the Higgs boson) not string theory predictions of which none exist. There is only one test, if they decide to run it or observe (or can observe it) that can possibly disprove string theory based on some imaginary, poor, choppy string theory mathematics and interpretations of this math. If the LHC detects short-lived "mini black holes" then maybe it will hold some merit, but honestly I think its doomed on this claim. I think its an publicity effort in order to be involved somehow with the multi-million dollar LHC project. My opinion string theory is dead and I for one have gone elsewhere in search for my answers to existence. I hold much more promise in my own theories than string theory (www[dot]gpofr[dot]com) because you can at least test them and the math is more compelling...no it's not a theory of everything but in my opinion it unites charge with mass essentially quantum physics with Newtonian, Einsteinian physics at a very fundamental level (at least the math shows this very simplistically that a 12 year old can easily understand it) which string theory has never done with any mathematics to prove it, but you don't have to take my word for it and it is just a "theory". I research physics for the shear pleasure of it and I do get very passionate about it. I do respect the string theories mathematical contributions and work of doctors Smolin and Kaku and even that of Mr. Witt (once I get to reading it). I actually don't think anyone is wrong in the approach to deciphering physics and strongly advocate different perspectives, but what I am strongly against are institutions favoring one theory over another especially if the "favoured" theory has run 40 years untested. Statistically perhaps I'm not as well informed as you, or perhaps I'm putting to much emphasis in relation to my own personal experiences with string theory and my own knowledge of the scientific market.

[Reality Check]

In order for string theory or any scientific theory to be "falsifiable" or "verifiable" it must be "testable" and for it to be testable it must conclude with "predictions" either mathematically or experimentally (both relating to physical context) so that the predictions can be proven false or positive. It isn't that hard.

What?! The LHC is testing predictions in the Standard Model (one specifically is the Higgs boson) not string theory predictions of which none exist. There is only one test, if they decide to run it or observe (or can observe it) that can possibly disprove string theory based on some imaginary, poor, choppy string theory mathematics and interpretations of this math. If the LHC detects short-lived "mini black holes" then maybe it will hold some merit, but honestly I think its doomed on this claim. I think its an publicity effort in order to be involved somehow with the multi-million dollar LHC project. My opinion string theory is dead and I for one have gone elsewhere in search for my answers to existence. I hold much more promise in my own theories than string theory (www[dot]gpofr[dot]com) because you can at least test them and the math is more compelling...no it's not a theory of everything but in my opinion it unites charge with mass essentially quantum physics with Newtonian, Einsteinian physics at a very fundamental level (at least the math shows this very simplistically that a 12 year old can easily understand it) which string theory has never done with any mathematics to prove it, but you don't have to take my word for it and it is just a "theory". I research physics for the shear pleasure of it and I do get very passionate about it. I do respect the string theories mathematical contributions and work of doctors Smolin and Kaku and even that of Mr. Witt (once I get to reading it). I actually don't think anyone is wrong in the approach to deciphering physics and strongly advocate different perspectives, but what I am strongly against are institutions favoring one theory over another especially if the "favoured" theory has run 40 years untested. Statistically perhaps I'm not as well informed as you, or perhaps I'm putting to much emphasis in relation to my own personal experiences with string theory and my own knowledge of the scientific market.

I agree with sol: This is a really old thread on a totally different topic.
Please start a new thread.
You are a new member and so may have to wait a bit before you can do so.

Please do not waste your money on Witt's crackpot book.
See this review of “Our Undiscovered Universe” by Terence Witt from a professional physicist: http://web.mit.edu/~bmonreal/www/Null_Physics_Review.html

Also see my review at http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~fiski/ouu_review.html


The flaws of this crackpot book are many and include:

Redefining the concept of infinity as a length with magnitude.
Defining a line as a series of points written as zeros, treating them as numbers so that they add up to zero and then treating the number zero as a point again!
A really bad atomic model "proving" that a electron orbiting a proton has a ground state that it cannot decay from by creating a new physical law.
Using the high school description of a neutron as a proton plus an electron and not realizing that this is just his atomic model!
Postulating that galaxies have "galactic cores" which are super massive objects that are not quite black holes and not realizing that the centre of the Milky Way is well observed. These recycle stars into hydrogen. Oddly enough astronomers have not noticed dozens of stars vanishing from the galactic centre in the many images that they have taken over the last few decades.
Conclusion: Bad mathematics and even worse physics.

ETA
I also had a look at www[dot]gpofr[dot]com. All I had to do is look at the first few pages to see that it is a usual crackpot web site (even worse than Witt's book!).
Using the new relativity mass equation derived in this ebook, Jupiter's relativistic mass (1.898x10^27 kg) is EXACTLY equivalent to the charge of an electron (1.6x10^-19 Coulombs) which validates the author's initial hypothesis with undeniable accuracy.

Neils Bohr was the first to postulate that there was a similarity between atomic systems and star systems, and his theories gave rise to quantum physics, but never did he detail, nor anyone else, an exact relative link between the two until now.

and the more obviously crackpot bits from its list of concepts:

* Touch on Evolution, Entropy, Aging and its link to Earth.
* Explaining Existence.
* Detailing The Possibility of The Existence of God.


But perhaps I am wrong. I am sure that you can point me to a list of peer-reviewed papers by the author on his theory :rolleyes: !

[Saraliz]

FYI:
I found a recent review by author Dr. Melvin Morse. I found it interesting reading!

See my next post.
Sara


)

[Saraliz]

FYI:

Here is a recent review by author Dr. Melvin Morse. He also posted some comments about Randi. If you want to read another viewpoint, I recommend his web site.

Sara

OUR UNDISCOVERED UNIVERSE BY TERENCE WITT

BOOK REVIEW BY MELVIN L MORSE MD FAAP

SPIRITUALSCIENTIFIC.COM

Just when you thought you were starting to understand quantum physics, here comes Terence Witt with Our Undiscovered Universe in which he challenges virtually all the accepted assumptions underlying our current perception of reality. Terence Witt’s Universe is infinite, timeless (no beginning and no end), with no Big Bang, no accelerating galaxies away from the center, and no sub-sub atomic particles such as quarks. Instead, he postulates that the Universe consists of nothing! This is why he calls his theory “Null Physics”. But not just empty space, not that kind of nothing. Terence Witt’s view of the Universe is that is consists entirely of curved space, gravity, and energy forming a complex balance of matter and anti-matter, energy and dark energy, all adding up to nothing at all.

I love this sort of book as it forces scientists to re-examine their most cherished assumptions. As a physician-consciousness researcher, I have used the quantum non-local reality physical reality model as the best fit to understand our current scientific concepts of consciousness. However, Witt’s book forces all of us to re-examine everything that we believe to be real. I am not qualified to do the math needed to critically evaluate his book, but my best guess is that ultimately he will be proven wrong. He is so thoughtful and thought provoking, however, that the book is well worth it for the hours of discussion it has provoked between me, my wife, and friends.

It is clear, well organized and simply written. It is often funny. You don’t need to be a mathematician to understand his basic concepts. He presents a broad comprehensive theory of reality which incorporates subatomic reality, ordinary reality, and the latest understandings of astronomy and cosmology. He has great lines such as describing modern physicists as being so astonished by their experimental findings that they have become “infused with a hysterical mysticism”.

He does a great job of summarizing the basic principles of quantum physics in one of the best and succinct presentations I have read for the non-physicist. He accurately points out the many flaws in the current scientific model and he nicely outlines the mainstream understanding of the difficulties in creating a coherent unified theory of reality given the constraints of the current paradigm. Let’s face it, there is plenty of room within modern theoretical physics for Witt’s Null Physics, given that many no longer feel the Big Bang is a viable theory and mainstream physicists state the Universe is made mostly of “dark energy” and “dark matter” and that we have no idea what they are.

His critics are legion, yet mainly consist of anonymous chat room “experts” and graduate level physicists who have not read his book. The substance of their criticism consists mainly of repetitively chanting “crack pot, crack pot” over and over again. Sort of a Lord of Flies meets the Internet gone really really bad. As Harold Bloom points out in The Lucifer Principle, “the most insubstantial things we call ideas . .can lead to the basest cruelties.” I have reviewed the websites of Witt’s critics and understand their concerns. These primarily young men are in the process of establishing themselves within their fields. It takes a sense of confidence and maturity to read Witt’s book which most people are going to completely disagree with. By challenging our basic beliefs, Witt forces a healthy re-examination of the fundamental assumptions of modern physics and a greater understanding of whatever model of reality we ultimately end up with.

I have written peer reviewed articles with theoretical physicists, and I showed the book to them. They hemmed and hawed, and muttered ridiculous, and yet ended with a healthy respect for what Witt is trying to accomplish. One internationally recognized theoretical physicist told me that “he is totally wrong, really doesn’t get it at all. However, if he is right, he is on the right track, I would work on his math, some of it needs complete revisions, but for a first effort, not bad, not bad at all.” It is telling that he declined me to allow his name to be used, given the controversy the book has created. Scientific American has recently decided to refuse Witt’s advertisements for his book, a sad commentary of the power of the current Scientific Fundamentalist movement (see side bar). No one wants to offend them or they too will have to suffer an Internet onslaught of chanting science drones.

As a scientist who challenged the medical model of consciousness by documenting the near death experiences of children, I will always have a soft spot for intelligent outsiders who dare to take on the scientific status quo. My theories of consciousness are now well accepted enough that they have been replicated by other scientists, and published in the American Medical Association Medical Journals, the Lancet, and the New England Journal of Medicine. The United Nations recently launched a multi-medical center study of near death experiences, yet 25 years ago I was also dismissed as a crackpot.

Ultimately, I am not sure if Mr. Witt’s theories will stand the test of time. It is not my field, and stranger things have happened in the history of science. However, I do know I learned a lot from reading his book, and it stimulated me to rethink my own theories of reality.

[sol invictus]

FYI:

Here is a recent review by author Dr. Melvin Morse. I found it interesting reading!

Sara

Yet another account created solely to shill for Witt's cranky nonsense.... but nice of you to let us know the credibility of the reviewer:

As a scientist who challenged the medical model of consciousness by documenting the near death experiences of children....

'Nuff said.

[Saraliz]

Here is another from Kirkus Discoveries:


Witt, Terence

A bold and controversial new book of physics theory by biomedical engineer and businessman Witt.

Our Undiscovered Universe opens with a quote from Galileo: “In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.” In this case, the “authority” is theconsensus of the modern scientific community and the “single individual” is Witt, who has worked for years to develop “a complete answer to the riddle of our existence.” His theory is called “Null Physics,” and Witt labors to lay its foundations bare, collecting—across some 400-plus handsomely designed pages—a panoply
of complex proofs, tables, exhaustive indices and a handful of gorgeous reproductions of Hubble images, courtesy of NASA. The author’s primary dispute is with the “irredeemably wrong” theory of the Big Bang, held by most scientists to be a relatively sound account of how our universe was born. He also advances an “entirely new scientific paradigm,” the centerpiece of Null Physics. “The Null Axiom” can be described simply: “Existence sums to non-existence, so nonexistence is composed of existence.” The book makes much
of the axiom, which becomes the core of a “unified cosmology.” Hence the “Null”—for Witt, the universe can “only make sense by viewing it as the inevitable and omnipresent substructure of nothingness.” (Correspondingly, the Big Bang must be incorrect, since “nothingness does not transform itself into reality.”) The problem is that while the author snipes frequently
at “arrogant” professional physicists, the author rarely engages their work. There is, for instance, only a rudimentary discussion of quantum mechanics. Eventually, Witt retreats to his own theorems, which he has declined to submit to academic journals for vetting. Still, Our Undiscovered Universe is a brave book, if not exactly an airtight one. The author challenges the status quo—not such an easy thing to do—and his work here is accessible to both the professional and the layman.

A well-written, provocative re-imagining of the world as it was, is and will be.

Another from a reader at Midwest Book Review:

Our Undiscovered Universe: Introducing Null Physics, The Science of Uniform and Unconditional Reality
Terrence Witt
Aridian Publishing Corporation Melbourne
9780978593131 $59.00

I have been interested in physics for most of my adult life because I believe a deep understanding of physics will reveal how the universe works. Since it is, by definition, the hardest of the hard sciences, I have been and continue to be intrigued by certain enigmas in physics which physicists still don't understand.

Wave particle duality is just one example. If you set up an experiment to prove that photons behave as waves then that's the way they behave. If you set it up to prove that photons are discreet particles, then they behave as discreet particles. But it is impossible to set up an experiment that proves they are both particles and waves-simultaneously. The way you choose to set up the experiment determines the result.

The same is true for electrons, which unlike photons, have mass.

Physics attempts to deal with truly fundamental questions like:

Why does the universe exist?
Where did it come from?
What is it made of at the smallest level?

In Our Undiscovered Universe, Terence Witt identifies these as prime questions while pointing out that "they are questions children ask and never get good answers to."

Given my peculiar intellectual bent, on reading that, I was hooked.

Moving on to cosmology he asks equally penetrating questions. "If the universe began in an expansion 13.7 billion years ago, then:"

What caused it?
What existed before the beginning?
Where did all the universe's material come from?
Why did the event happen when it did; does time predate the Big Bang?

More hooks.

Witt is not a physicist, nor am I. He's an engineer and the founder and former CEO of Witt Biomedical Corporation. During Witt's tenure his corporation became the gold standard for cardiac hemodymamic software. I knew that because I spent most of my adult life managing departments of diagnostic imaging in hospitals ranging in size from 120 to 1200 beds. I also taught x-ray and radium physics to students of radiologic technology.

Terence Witt's background was yet another hook.

The first axiom in the book is: EXISTENCE SUMS TO NONEXISTENCE

It means everything came from nothing.

Witt uses mathematics to demonstrate the significance and validity of his axioms, theorems and hypotheses. Unfortunately, I don't have the mathematical chops to follow the equations past high school level algebra. Fortunately, I've been reading about physics for so long that I had little trouble following his narrative exposition.

The book is not for the faint of heart. It is for people with an intense interest in physics and cosmology and who are intrigued by the bulleted questions listed above.

Some of his conclusions are:

There never was a Big Bang
The Universe is not expanding
The Hubble red shift has nothing to do with universal expansion
The universe has always been here and always will be

I found it an exhilarating read; difficult but well worth the effort. After reading it I spent some time online to get a feel for what the established physics/cosmology community thinks of Null Physics.

I can't remember encountering such frank and derisive vitriol. Just Google Null Physics or Terrence Witt and you'll see what I mean. My search using Null Physics yielded 2,620,000 hits. The majority of the ones I read were negative.

In some ways the vitriol is understandable. Witt, after all, decided to publish and promote his work privately thus bypassing the tried and true path of refereed scientific journals.

As I've said, I'm not a physicist and my mathematical skills are poor. I am also, decidedly, not a fan of vitriol. Whether Witt is right or wrong has nothing to do with the extent to which the collective physics and cosmology community's collective noses have been bent out of shape. Only time, not vitriol will tell. Read this book.

[sol invictus]

I can't remember encountering such frank and derisive vitriol. Just Google Null Physics or Terrence Witt and you'll see what I mean. My search using Null Physics yielded 2,620,000 hits. The majority of the ones I read were negative.

Witt's book is the equivalent of a book by a quack doctor on how you can cure yourself of any illness using leeches, or some such. I would certainly hope medical professionals would react with vitriol to something like that (particularly if it was advertised with full-page ads in major medical journals). Why is it surprising that professional physicists react similarly?

Actually, the overwhelming reaction of the physics community has been to totally ignore it - it's just another in the endless succession of silly crackpot theories that come out many times ever year. Since bad physics is less life-threatening than bad medicine, it's OK to ignore.

[Perpetual Student]

"Witt uses mathematics to demonstrate the significance and validity of his axioms, theorems and hypotheses. Unfortunately, I don't have the mathematical chops to follow the equations past high school level algebra."

How could such a person conclude Witt's theories and his book have any merit? Would his favorable conclusions be based on the nice colors used in the book? What a moron!

[Tubbythin]

I also taught x-ray and radium physics to students of radiologic technology.



You taught "radium physics" yet cannot understand that Witt's claim that a neutron is a bound state of a proton and an electron is clearly wrong? I'm struggling to believe you.

[Reality Check]

Here is another from Kirkus Discoveries:
...snip...

Another from a reader at Midwest Book Review:
...snip...
As I've said, I'm not a physicist and my mathematical skills are poor. I am also, decidedly, not a fan of vitriol. Whether Witt is right or wrong has nothing to do with the extent to which the collective physics and cosmology community's collective noses have been bent out of shape. Only time, not vitriol will tell. Read this book.
From their web site (http://www.kirkusreviews.com/kirkusreviews/discoveries/index.jsp):
Kirkus Discoveries, unlike Kirkus Reviews, is a paid-review service that allows authors and publishers of overlooked titles to receive authoritative, careful assessment of their books.
So Terence Witt paid Kirkus Discoveries to do the review. What he got is what he paid for - a 2 sentence and 1 paragraph "review" from an anonymous reviewer which is a lot of quotes from the book and no critical analysis of the contents.

The second reviewer is at least honest in stating that "I'm not a physicist and my mathematical skills are poor". But his good review is then based on his understanding of the text. The problem is that Terence Witt is a good writer even when he is writing nonsense. The reviewer was thus easily fooled by Witt's snake oil.
The reviewer also did not read the book carefully, e.g. the Null Axiom is not the "first axiom in the book" - it is the only axiom in the book.

[Reality Check]

FYI:

Here is a recent review by author Dr. Melvin Morse. He also posted some comments about Randi. If you want to read another viewpoint, I recommend his web site.

Sara
...snip...
As a mater of curiosity: Do you have any association with BRIO who are the people running the PR for Terence Witt's book. I see this person on many PR releases:
Sara Lien
BRIO
Public Relations Director

[Paul]

That would be very naughty, but not entirely surprising.

[Reality Check]

You taught "radium physics" yet cannot understand that Witt's claim that a neutron is a bound state of a proton and an electron is clearly wrong? I'm struggling to believe you.
Hi Tubbythin: It was the reviewer at Midwest Book Review who taught "radium physics".
Saraliz might be a PR person for the advertisers of "Our Undiscovered Universe" by Terence Witt.

[Tubbythin]

Hi Tubbythin: It was the reviewer at Midwest Book Review who taught "radium physics".
Saraliz might be a PR person for the advertisers of "Our Undiscovered Universe" by Terence Witt.

Oops. That's true. I guess my disbelief should be aimed at the reviewer then.

[BFM]

And having a excellent math and science background, I can say that book was a good read, contains novel ideas, and leaves room for additional work, including proofs (mathematical and observational). It almost reminded me of reading Flatland at some point in middle school. I love the fact that it introduces into modern physics the concept of 0 aka the null. How irrational is it that bookkeepers figured it out on the Indian subcontinent several thousand years ago, but the establishment rails against it because of its author/source/method of introduction (I have also invested the time to read this entire thread, quite amusing/frightening I might add...).

I would love to pick apart some of the concepts and ideas in the book and discuss them further, without getting into a gr, sm, qcd, string, whiners and complainers fest. Please Limit this discussion to people who have HONESTLY read the book with an open mind. It took about 1 week an hr a night to digest it, and I believe that it has been one of the best investments of my time recently.

With that in mind I realize there are some mental giants roaming loose on this thread, so before you (and you know who you are) start tearing into this post, which I don't really care if you do or don't, please post the ratio of free hydrogen to ionized hydrogen in free space at the top of your post.

[Reality Check]

And having a excellent math and science background, I can say that book was a good read, contains novel ideas, and leaves room for additional work, including proofs (mathematical and observational). It almost reminded me of reading Flatland at some point in middle school. I love the fact that it introduces into modern physics the concept of 0 aka the null. How irrational is it that bookkeepers figured it out on the Indian subcontinent several thousand years ago, but the establishment rails against it because of its author/source/method of introduction (I have also invested the time to read this entire thread, quite amusing/frightening I might add...).

I would love to pick apart some of the concepts and ideas in the book and discuss them further, without getting into a gr, sm, qcd, string, whiners and complainers fest. Please Limit this discussion to people who have HONESTLY read the book with an open mind. It took about 1 week an hr a night to digest it, and I believe that it has been one of the best investments of my time recently.

With that in mind I realize there are some mental giants roaming loose on this thread, so before you (and you know who you are) start tearing into this post, which I don't really care if you do or don't, please post the ratio of free hydrogen to ionized hydrogen in free space at the top of your post.
Like you, I have read the book. I have even written a review (http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~fiski/ouu_review.html)of it.

What do you think about Terrence Witt redefining infinity (the concept of unboundedness) as a finite length?

How about his really neat derivation that a line is nothing?
Define nothing to be 0.
Define a line to be "...+0+0+0+0+...".
Add up the zeroes to give 0. Thus a line is nothing.
(ignore that fact that you have not defined how to add nothings together and are actually adding zeroes).

[BFM]

Consider the title of this post while reading this. I will admit that, when first approached by this idea, it seemed a little much. After taking the time to ponder it, It eventually hit me as easy to stomach. It required some mental yoga, but the idea that no 2 things are alike, means, nothing is alike. Having had logic classes, I know that one can argue the case, lets not get mired here.

So, What can you do when 2 things (i.e. nothing) are alike, you can add. So as some of our more illustrious posters admitted, that yes, his math is circular. Well that's fine. y=mx+b can when solved for zero certainly looks like 0=0 when b=0, regardless of m. A mathematical proof need only prove itself.

Mr. Check, the fundamental concept of zero is a place holder for nothing. When I said that bookkeepers in India several thousand years ago gave us this concept, it came from an accounting standpoint. The ZERO sum is a useful tool when calculating balances, IE when the miller has received nothing from his customer, the baker. Keep in mind, before this point a lot of great work had been done without in geometry, astronomy etc. I am getting off track here, but I hope we can see eye to eye here.

To further the ideas surrounding zero, or nothing as it were, lets take a look at units, efficient frontiers and limit equations. We live in a would with lots and lots of dimensions and they all have units, because that's how we like it. if you have 0 units of an object, you still have the unit measure. Look at it from at each side of the measure and you will have a relationship that can be bounded. If I were an economist, the relationship would look like an efficient frontier with an included set, and an excluded set. A limit function is a good way to describe all sets of numbers as the approach a real number, bounded by zero and that number. Consider this a good way to describe dimensionless units (What's funny is ocean salinity is one of them, in name only), as approaching a number and no relationship to another parameter.Can and will you admit an infinite amount of a dimensionless unit is smaller than the same amount of a unit with a bounded relationship?

Here comes the yoga part. I can stack papers on my desk. I have signed my name THOUSANDS of times, a smooth unbroken line (i take pride in my signature), however I have never seen a line in my life. Let me go back to flatland for this one. When the square breaks out of his plane of reference to behold a sphere, how tall is the square? If he has no height, that is an unbounded dimension, aghast! When the square visits the universe of the line, they are all points, but they can get out of line! And last the lonely point, which I think I have lost. I don't believe Mr. Witt to be guilty of redefining anything heretical, he is there is a special relationship between zero and infinity that get lost in the translation.

That relationship is the basis of his "funny" math. I know it seems circular, but it works.

PS: If I have a bucket, and it full of nothing what do I have?

[ben m]

please post the ratio of free hydrogen to ionized hydrogen in free space at the top of your post.

Huh? In what field of inquiry "knowing the ratio of HI to HII" the flag of a good scientist? It's not terribly well measured; it varies enormously spatially and over time; the physics governing it is extremely complicated; it doesn't have some interesting conservation law behind it. And you didn't even specify it well---by "free" do you mean "neutral atomic"? By "free space" do you mean not counting stars, or not counting galaxies, or not counting clusters? Your questions strikes me as something akin to asking a geologist to post "the average vapor pressure of the world fossil fuel reserves".

Anyway, <sigh>, averaged over all H in the universe HI is something like 1%. If you care about some other average consult Fukugita & Peebles 2004.

Now, if you found something in the book which you think is right, which you want to compare to something in mainstream physics which you think is wrong, please go ahead and start the conversation. But if I tell you I disagree---which I'm likely to, having read the book and found nothing at all in this category---will that qualify as a "whiners and complainers fest"?

[BFM]

Good reading, didn't quite finish it entirely, however, I would like you to clarify some of the statement you make in your cosmology sections. Your logic seems to be poorly supported in this excerpt. (i have highlighted the parts which irked my logic meter)

"#Lyman-alpha forest.
If you look at the spectrum of light from a distant galaxy then there are absorption lines from the Lyman alpha transition of neutral hydrogen in the clouds between us and the galaxy. Redshift (or even Terence Witt's "lumetic decay") means that the absorption lines happen at different wavelengths corresponding to each cloud and appear at different positions in the spectrum. This is the Lyman-alpha forest. The Gunn-Peterson trough appears when the forest gets so dense that there is no spectrum. The forest shows that there is little neutral hydrogen nearby and that the density of neutral hydrogen increases with distance (and so into the past). The result is that the intergalactic medium (IGM) is at least partially neutral at a redshift of z above 6. This is an indication of the reionization of the IGM between 150 million and one billion years after the Big Bang (at a redshift 6 < z < 20) due to the formation of galaxies.
# IGM neutral hydrogen.
This is an addition to the last point. Galaxies emit ionizing radiation (light) that converts neutral hydrogen in the IGM into ionized hydrogen. This means that in Terence Witt's cosmology there cannot be any neutral hydrogen in the IGM because there is an infinite amount of time for an eternal universe to ionize the hydrogen. Astronomers have detected neutral hydrogen in the IGM and so null cosmology is wrong."

That is a bold statement, as the null cosmology theory has a mechanism to achieve a balance between both states. I am not saying Mr. Witt's math is 100% accurate, however, with refinement, his mechanisms could prove useful. I.E. Why does that balance exist?

[BFM]

the last post was direct to reality checks review. sorry if I made that unclear
now @Ben M.

As far as conflicts and disagreement go, I can handle conflict, you will get no "flaming" out of me. I only seek to ward of the pointless banter.

I really would like to discuss some of the stated mechanisms mr. witt uses. The reason I asked about the Ionized hydrogen ratios was to have a starting point. What would be an appropriate mechanism to achieve a balance in free space, ie not being burned? I only ask this, because I have never seen lightning in space, assuming an localized density would support it.

[Reality Check]

Good reading, didn't quite finish it entirely, however, I would like you to clarify some of the statement you make in your cosmology sections. Your logic seems to be poorly supported in this excerpt. (i have highlighted the parts which irked my logic meter)

"#Lyman-alpha forest.
If you look at the spectrum of light from a distant galaxy then there are absorption lines from the Lyman alpha transition of neutral hydrogen in the clouds between us and the galaxy. Redshift (or even Terence Witt's "lumetic decay") means that the absorption lines happen at different wavelengths corresponding to each cloud and appear at different positions in the spectrum. This is the Lyman-alpha forest. The Gunn-Peterson trough appears when the forest gets so dense that there is no spectrum. The forest shows that there is little neutral hydrogen nearby and that the density of neutral hydrogen increases with distance (and so into the past). The result is that the intergalactic medium (IGM) is at least partially neutral at a redshift of z above 6. This is an indication of the reionization of the IGM between 150 million and one billion years after the Big Bang (at a redshift 6 < z < 20) due to the formation of galaxies.
# IGM neutral hydrogen.
This is an addition to the last point. Galaxies emit ionizing radiation (light) that converts neutral hydrogen in the IGM into ionized hydrogen. This means that in Terence Witt's cosmology there cannot be any neutral hydrogen in the IGM because there is an infinite amount of time for an eternal universe to ionize the hydrogen. Astronomers have detected neutral hydrogen in the IGM and so null cosmology is wrong."

That is a bold statement, as the null cosmology theory has a mechanism to achieve a balance between both states. I am not saying Mr. Witt's math is 100% accurate, however, with refinement, his mechanisms could prove useful. I.E. Why does that balance exist?
What mechanism achieves "a balance between both states"?
All the recycling of matter by his unknown and unspecified mechanism (try to find put how lead is converted into hydrogen in his book) happens inside the galaxy. If there is leakage of neutral hydrogen from galaxies then his recycling fails and galaxies vanish. The conclusion is that null cosmology predicts that either galaxies do not exists or neutral hydrogen in the IGM doe not exist. Both are predictions are false.

What balance?
There is a "balance" so long as we throw away the laws of thermodynamics so that diffuse low temperature radiation can be collected in non-existent hot galactic "cores".

[BFM]

"What mechanism achieves "a balance between both states"?
All the recycling of matter by his unknown and unspecified mechanism (try to find put how lead is converted into hydrogen in his book) happens inside the galaxy. If there is leakage of neutral hydrogen from galaxies then his recycling fails and galaxies vanish. The conclusion is that null cosmology predicts that either galaxies do not exists or neutral hydrogen in the IGM doe not exist. Both are predictions are false.

What balance?
There is a "balance" so long as we throw away the laws of thermodynamics so that diffuse low temperature radiation can be collected in non-existent hot galactic "cores"."

I seem to recall his (witt) black holes eat matter. Like Unicron. Also, his digestive tract involved dropping optimus prime into molten metal. Isn't it relatively safe to say black holes can fracture atomic nuclei? I realize shifting thoughts on black holes causes a stir, but...

What would you suggest be the proper mechanism for HII. As abobe i dont see lightning in space. I would like to think that mr. witt was making an idealized case for a galaxy. Ergo, he was cutting of the crust. Why fail the entire theory then?

PS.My dad always told me crust would make my hair curly yet it didn't

[Reality Check]

Consider the title of this post while reading this. I will admit that, when first approached by this idea, it seemed a little much. After taking the time to ponder it, It eventually hit me as easy to stomach. It required some mental yoga, but the idea that no 2 things are alike, means, nothing is alike. Having had logic classes, I know that one can argue the case, lets not get mired here.

When no 2 things are alike then no 2 things are alike. This includes 2 nothings.


So, What can you do when 2 things (i.e. nothing) are alike, you can add. So as some of our more illustrious posters admitted, that yes, his math is circular. Well that's fine. y=mx+b can when solved for zero certainly looks like 0=0 when b=0, regardless of m. A mathematical proof need only prove itself.

You need to define "nothing", "alike" and then show mathematically that 2 nothings are alike. Then you have to define the operation of addition for alike nothings.

Mathematical proofs that use circular logic are wrong. Your example is not a proof - it is a calculation.


Mr. Check, the fundamental concept of zero is a place holder for nothing. When I said that bookkeepers in India several thousand years ago gave us this concept, it came from an accounting standpoint. The ZERO sum is a useful tool when calculating balances, IE when the miller has received nothing from his customer, the baker. Keep in mind, before this point a lot of great work had been done without in geometry, astronomy etc. I am getting off track here, but I hope we can see eye to eye here.
...snip Zero stuff...
That is right - if you have a definition for addition.
Terence Witt never defines addition in null geometry. He assumes that he can use arithmetic addition of numbers on the symbols that he in his definition of a line. But the zeros in his line are not the number zero. They are points.
By treating the zeros in his definition as numbers rather than pointshe is invalidating his definition of a "line".

Here is a another definiton for his "line":
A line is "...+X+X+X+X..." where the Xs represent geometric points and "a point has no mass, charge, or any other property, except for its position relative to other points".

Now add the X's together using ordinary arithemetic.

What about this definnition of a line:
A line is ".../0/0/0/0/..." where the zeros represent geometric points and "a point has no mass, charge, or any other property, except for its position relative to other points".

Now divide the zeros using ordinary arithemetic.

[BFM]

I think I found the right button. Now I am going to bed as my local time. I will reply to your reply with some Boolean operators. Hopefully that will suffice?

[Reality Check]

I seem to recall his (witt) black holes eat matter. Like Unicron. Also, his digestive tract involved dropping optimus prime into molten metal. Isn't it relatively safe to say black holes can fracture atomic nuclei? I realize shifting thoughts on black holes causes a stir, but...

What would you suggest be the proper mechanism for HII. As abobe i dont see lightning in space. I would like to think that mr. witt was making an idealized case for a galaxy. Ergo, he was cutting of the crust. Why fail the entire theory then?

PS.My dad always told me crust would make my hair curly yet it didn't
Black holes never "fracture atomic nuclei". They compress them into a very small volume and never let them go.
Terrence Witt's core are not black holes. He supplies no mechanism to "fracture atomic nuclei".
His cores do not exist. If they did then we would see the one in the center of the Milky Way. We would see stars vanishing into it. We have observed the center of the Milky Way closely for a couple of decades now and seen neither a cor or vanishing stars.

Why do you expect to see lightning in space?
Neutral hydrogen is ionized by light (electromagnetic radiation or photons). The proper mechanism for HII is the ionization of HI by light.

What is a Unicron?

[Reality Check]

I think I found the right button. Now I am going to bed as my local time. I will reply to your reply with some Boolean operators. Hopefully that will suffice?
We are addressing Terance Witt's crackpot book. Feel free to throw your own Boolean logic at whatever you want. But that will not have anything to do with his book.

P.S. You missied this question:
What do you think about Terrence Witt redefining infinity (the concept of unboundedness) as a finite length?

[BFM]

one last reply. unicron, transformers, the movie, from the 80's??? no more science tonight.

[ben m]

Isn't it relatively safe to say black holes can fracture atomic nuclei? I realize shifting thoughts on black holes causes a stir, but...


No, it's not safe to say that. And Witt is not even just saying that. Witt is saying that black holes suck up both (a) heavy atoms and (b) some sort of microwave-powered energetic electron current, turn it into protons with 100% efficiency, and eject the protons (and only the protons) quietly back out into intergalactic space, at a rate equal to the entire galactic luminosity.

I would like to think that mr. witt was making an idealized case for a galaxy.

In the "black holes break up nuclei" thing, Witt was stating what he thought to be a necessary condition for his entire cosmology model---the whole model is the claim that starlight gets recycled and used for fission. That was not an aesthetic detail to be massaged later, it was one of the keystones.

Why fail the entire theory then?

If you think there is a part worth keeping, please explain it.

[Perpetual Student]

Witt's mathematics is just plain silly and wrong! His cosmology contradicts long established (through countless experiments) physics. His logic is hopelessly flawed. Consequently, his book is worthless!

[ben m]

What would be an appropriate mechanism to achieve a balance in free space, ie not being burned? I only ask this, because I have never seen lightning in space, assuming an localized density would support it.

Just read this and realized that it didn't make any sense.

What evidence do you have that there the HI/HII ratio is in any sort of balance? It certainly wasn't in "balance" during the CMB transition and the reionization transition; there's no reason to believe it's in balance now.

This ratio doesn't have anything to do with either burning or with lightning.

[BFM]

We are addressing Terance Witt's crackpot book. Feel free to throw your own Boolean logic at whatever you want. But that will not have anything to do with his book.

P.S. You missied this question:
What do you think about Terrence Witt redefining infinity (the concept of unboundedness) as a finite length?

Well, here goes comes the pitch. Boolean logic is a quite powerful tool, and can by brute force, display the words you are reading. I would suggest reading /wiki/Boolean_logic and than make bold mathematical statements discounting that I need to define nothing, and prove addition. The math is simple, however, in a physicist toolbox, the concept of zero is missing. Take absolute zero. Have you ever seen it? you can get damn close, but a nice limit equation has a nice fit and excludes the possibilty, so does all practical theory. Therefor ZERO is not in your included set.

I am going to go eat dinner. I will be back.

[BFM]

Just read this and realized that it didn't make any sense.

What evidence do you have that there the HI/HII ratio is in any sort of balance? It certainly wasn't in "balance" during the CMB transition and the reionization transition; there's no reason to believe it's in balance now.

This ratio doesn't have anything to do with either burning or with lightning.

The statement was not designed to make sense but promote thought. Ionized hydrogen exists free in our universe, just look at what the voyager missions are running into right now in the termination shock of our little solar system. My point is that you and I have never seen evidence that the hii has accumulated to the point to free electron discharged, like you might have in a battery. however the slow buildup of hii, by your admitted mechanisms, would eventually lead to such a scenario. If you have 2 states of 1 element, a good question to ask is why is the ratio such?

[BFM]

No, it's not safe to say that. And Witt is not even just saying that. Witt is saying that black holes suck up both (a) heavy atoms and (b) some sort of microwave-powered energetic electron current, turn it into protons with 100% efficiency, and eject the protons (and only the protons) quietly back out into intergalactic space, at a rate equal to the entire galactic luminosity.



In the "black holes break up nuclei" thing, Witt was stating what he thought to be a necessary condition for his entire cosmology model---the whole model is the claim that starlight gets recycled and used for fission. That was not an aesthetic detail to be massaged later, it was one of the keystones.



If you think there is a part worth keeping, please explain it.


His white dwarf models do look interesting, and are probably worth the mental exercise. I am not the author, so therefore i can't tell you why he would suggest alternate black hole theory, gravitaitional shearing and hawking radiation debate might be another thread.....however, It would be great if he would come again to this forum to clarify.


As for the kesytone of the book, I would argue that he does address other galaxy types, albiet in no detail. This in not particularly bothersome, look at the first autos. I have ridden in a Stanley steamer, and my car is powered by a boxxer engine, both work due the expansion of gas, albeit in two very distinct ways. So don't throw out the kitchen sink.

[ben m]

The statement was not designed to make sense but promote thought. Ionized hydrogen exists free in our universe, just look at what the voyager missions are running into right now in the termination shock of our little solar system. My point is that you and I have never seen evidence that the hii has accumulated to the point to free electron discharged, like you might have in a battery. however the slow buildup of hii, by your admitted mechanisms, would eventually lead to such a scenario. If you have 2 states of 1 element, a good question to ask is why is the ratio such?

HII clouds are already neutral; they're a mix of free protons and free electrons with (except in very special circumstances) no charge separation at all. No charge separation, no voltage, no lightning.

Protons and electrons do not, contrary to popular belief, instantly recombine into neutral atoms; the actual observed (and theoretically understood) behavior is very complex and depends on three-body effects (an e- and and p+ to combine, and some third atom in the vicinity as a sort of catalyst). Moreover, most HII is in fact very hot, far above the ionization temperature.

[BFM]

AS an aside. I don't think at this point in this conversation we can quite hit this topic. We have started beginning of the book with the zero concept. It's not that i don't want to go there or am not prepared to discuss, but the hii / cosmology thing at the end of the book. I believe a discussion should have a natural progression, jumping around might muddy the waters to much to have a useful dialogue. I have some nice polar math that i have worked out, theory complements his work. the concept work like a sheet of paper rolled up in a tube. shrink the diameter with no overlap, you get a tail. overlap, and the paper becomes stronger.

[Reality Check]

Well, here goes comes the pitch. Boolean logic is a quite powerful tool, and can by brute force, display the words you are reading. I would suggest reading /wiki/Boolean_logic and than make bold mathematical statements discounting that I need to define nothing, and prove addition. The math is simple, however, in a physicist toolbox, the concept of zero is missing. Take absolute zero. Have you ever seen it? you can get damn close, but a nice limit equation has a nice fit and excludes the possibilty, so does all practical theory. Therefor ZERO is not in your included set.

I am going to go eat dinner. I will be back.
I would suggest that you read the post:
What do you think about Terrence Witt redefining infinity (the concept of unboundedness) as a finite length?
Boolean logic has nothing to do infinity.

The mathematical definition of infinity is the concept of being without bounds, e.g. in calculus you have limits that tend to infinity.
Infinity is not a number. Infinity is not finite. Infinity does not have physical dimensions.

But Terrence Witt redefines infinity to be finite (he states that it has a magnitude on page 44), gives it the physical dimensions of length and treats it as a number (Infinity is NOT a number (http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2008/10/infinity_is_not_a_number.php)).

The "physicist toolbox" does include zero, e.g. there is zero degrees Celsius.

Boolean logic also has nothing to do with geometry.

Did you notice that:

Terrence Witt's null geometry is not actually a geometry?
In his "geometry" there is no such thing as length, area or volume.
His geometry is never connected to the Euclidean geometry that we know our universe matches locally.
Terrence Witt's null geometry is physically useless since he never defines differentiation?
There is no velocity or acceleration in null geometry.
The fact that null geometry is nonsensical pseudo-mathematics does not really matter because it is not used to derive his physical theories! The first 4 chapters are not used in later chapters.

[Reality Check]

AS an aside. I don't think at this point in this conversation we can quite hit this topic. We have started beginning of the book with the zero concept. It's not that i don't want to go there or am not prepared to discuss, but the hii / cosmology thing at the end of the book. I believe a discussion should have a natural progression, jumping around might muddy the waters to much to have a useful dialogue. I have some nice polar math that i have worked out, theory complements his work. the concept work like a sheet of paper rolled up in a tube. shrink the diameter with no overlap, you get a tail. overlap, and the paper becomes stronger.
Ok - we will ignore the first 4 chapters in his book (after all that is what he does!)

Present your math.

[BFM]

HII clouds are already neutral; they're a mix of free protons and free electrons with (except in very special circumstances) no charge separation at all. No charge separation, no voltage, no lightning.

Protons and electrons do not, contrary to popular belief, instantly recombine into neutral atoms; the actual observed (and theoretically understood) behavior is very complex and depends on three-body effects (an e- and and p+ to combine, and some third atom in the vicinity as a sort of catalyst). Moreover, most HII is in fact very hot, far above the ionization temperature.

This of course is all under the strictest parameters. Lets Assume that the clouds cool at some point and the cooling happens at an uneven rate the electrodynamics of said system would function differently, if said system functioned like a sterling engine. I have one, its neat to watch.

[ben m]

I believe a discussion should have a natural progression, jumping around might muddy the waters to much to have a useful dialogue.

Let's suppose, hypothetically, that we were to spend 10 pages of thread discussing Witt's pseudo-math with you. Let's suppose further that he was right on the whole business and that anything proven in the opening chapters of his book was, in fact, mathematically true. Is that clear? This is a standard approach to counterfactuals.

If we allow all of that, exactly what part of the preceding cosmology muddle would become un-muddied? White dwarfs? Thermodynamics?

If you meant to say "Personally, I'd rather talk about 0 and Infinity than about cosmology" please just say so.

[ben m]

This of course is all under the strictest parameters. Lets Assume that the clouds cool at some point and the cooling happens at an uneven rate the electrodynamics of said system would function differently, if said system functioned like a sterling engine. I have one, its neat to watch.

Listen, a stirling engine works for straightforward and identifiable reasons; this bit here is a thermal barrier which makes this gas over there adiabatic during thus-and-such stroke. There isn't some magic process whereby "uneven heating can do whatever you think would be most interesting".

[BFM]

Let's suppose, hypothetically, that we were to spend 10 pages of thread discussing Witt's pseudo-math with you. Let's suppose further that he was right on the whole business and that anything proven in the opening chapters of his book was, in fact, mathematically true. Is that clear? This is a standard approach to counterfactuals.

If we allow all of that, exactly what part of the preceding cosmology muddle would become un-muddied? White dwarfs? Thermodynamics?

If you meant to say "Personally, I'd rather talk about 0 and Infinity than about cosmology" please just say so.

If I am to understand you correctly, you are not wanting to was your time for an unknown outcome to partially cover a subject. If that is the case, I can honestly look forward to the time we shall spend in this discussion. Pull no punches good sir, just avoid the face ;)

Getting back to the beginning, I have partially laid out my case for my understanding of his null concept. We should maybe come to terms with what is and isn't in agreement here.

[Reality Check]

Getting back to the beginning, I have partially laid out my case for my understanding of his null concept. We should maybe come to terms with what is and isn't in agreement here.
"what is and isn't in agreement here" with what?

If you mean mathematics then nothing in the first 4 chapters is in agreement with any form of mathematical logic.

ETA: To quote Ben's review (http://hep.ucsb.edu/people/bmonreal/Null_Physics_Review.html)

Chapter 1 is where Witt lays out a series of "proofs" derived from what he calls the "Null Axiom". That axiom is: "Existence sums to nonexistence" (pg. 28)---something that Witt calls self-evident after a page of invalid set theory. The central mistake, if I had to identify one, is the claim that "X does not exist" is the same as "everything except X exists". This is utter baloney, whether in formal logic or in set theory or in daily experience. That particular failure shouldn't bother us too much, in this detail-oriented review, because it will never come up again. Nothing in the rest of Witt's book appears to derive from this non-axiom axiom.

If the axiom that you use to derive theorems are wrong then by definition the theorems are wrong. Add in the fact that Terrence Witts "theorems" are doubly wrong since they are not actually theorems (they do not have mathematical proofs).

[BFM]

Listen, a stirling engine works for straightforward and identifiable reasons; this bit here is a thermal barrier which makes this gas over there adiabatic during thus-and-such stroke. There isn't some magic process whereby "uneven heating can do whatever you think would be most interesting".

I am not claiming it to make it do what i need it magically to do. There is some good work out there showing that pressure waves induce ionization. See the cooling work done at RPI, using a sterling engine to refrigerate using pressure waves. Where do you not see a charge separation occurring during this process? If it hasn't been lab tested, it might make a nice tabletop setup.

[BFM]

"what is and isn't in agreement here" with what?

If you mean mathematics then nothing in the first 4 chapters is in agreement with any form of mathematical logic.

:confused:Can we please have a 2 sided conversation where you address my prior statements about null sets? Did what I put forward fall on deaf ears?

[Reality Check]

:confused:Can we please have a 2 sided conversation where you address my prior statements about null sets? Did what I put forward fall on deaf ears?
What prior statements about null sets (sets with no members) :confused: ?

[BFM]

Well, here goes comes the pitch. Boolean logic is a quite powerful tool, and can by brute force, display the words you are reading. I would suggest reading /wiki/Boolean_logic and than make bold mathematical statements discounting that I need to define nothing, and prove addition. The math is simple, however, in a physicist toolbox, the concept of zero is missing. Take absolute zero. Have you ever seen it? you can get damn close, but a nice limit equation has a nice fit and excludes the possibilty, so does all practical theory. Therefor ZERO is not in your included set.

I am going to go eat dinner. I will be back.

The statement where I ask you to consider removing the ownership of zero as a physical state.

[Reality Check]

The statement where I ask you to consider removing the ownership of zero as a physical state.
What physical state "owns" zero? What has this got to do with null sets? What has this got to do with mathematics? What has this got to do with physics? What has this got to do with Terrence Witt's book?

[BFM]

If our language constrains us, I apologize, owns might be the wrong word used hastily but,

What physical state "owns" zero? - Exactly. You made his point. not one can claim that title

This is the first piece of yoga you need to do.

What has this got to do with mathematics?

The second would be to venture into the defined world of boolean logic. It's math, not just for programmers as popularly thought. It arose before the first modern computer.

What has this got to do with Terrence Witt's book?

If you can hit the first two poses, than things get a little clearer.

What has this got to do with physics?

Everything

[Reality Check]

If our language constrains us, I apologize, owns might be the wrong word used hastily but,

What physical state "owns" zero? - Exactly. You made his point. not one can claim that title

This is the first piece of yoga you need to do.

What has this got to do with mathematics?

The second would be to venture into the defined world of boolean logic. It's math, not just for programmers as popularly thought. It arose before the first modern computer.

What has this got to do with Terrence Witt's book?

If you can hit the first two poses, than things get a little clearer.

What has this got to do with physics?

Everything
Are you proposing a new form of mathematics where zero does not exist?
What application does this have in physics?

What has Boolean logic got to to with it? Zero exists in Boolean logic.

You are in the wrong forum for yoga. This is science, mathematics, technology and medicine.

ETA:
Maybe your "poses" are fashion poses :D?

[Reality Check]

What physical state "owns" zero? - Exactly. You made his point. not one can claim that title
I can think of one physical state that "owns" zero - the range of possible temperatures. Just because we cannot get to absolute zero does not mean that it does not exist. Also many temperature scales include zero, e.g. 0 degrees Celsius.

There are also velocities of 0, accelerations of 0, neutral particle (charge = 0), etc.

[BFM]

Are you proposing a new form of mathematics where zero does not exist?
What application does this have in physics?

What has Boolean logic got to to with it? Zero exists in Boolean logic.

You are in the wrong forum for yoga. This is science, mathematics, technology and medicine.

Ha Ha ha. If you don't appreciate the occasional color, just let me know. I only use it to lighten the mood.

No new math proposed here. Zero does exist. Just not as a physical property that can be measure. OK?

If you permit that Zero is not in the set of numbers you and I can measure, how do we treat it. Boolean logic allows for sets to form, and unary operation allows me to say this - Zero is the complementary set of all real numbers.

[BFM]

I can think of one physical state that "owns" zero - the range of possible temperatures. Just because we cannot get to absolute zero does not mean that it does not exist. Also many temperature scales include zero, e.g. 0 degrees Celsius.

There are also velocities of 0, accelerations of 0, neutral particle (charge = 0), etc.

Stop trying to be so damn cute. Einstein might have your head with the velocity and acceleration quote. Don't be so LOCAL. I believe we are both aware of the path here.

[Reality Check]

Ha Ha ha. If you don't appreciate the occasional color, just let me know. I only use it to lighten the mood.

No new math proposed here. Zero does exist. Just not as a physical property that can be measure. OK?

If you permit that Zero is not in the set of numbers you and I can measure, how do we treat it. Boolean logic allows for sets to form, and unary operation allows me to say this - Zero is the complementary set of all real numbers.
Citation please: Where in Terrence Witt's book does he state that there is no physical property that has the value of zero?

Zero does exist and as a physical property that we can measure. How many balls are there in a bag of balls that does not contain any balls?
Is it 1? Is it -1? Or is it a integer between 1 and -1?

[Reality Check]

Stop trying to be so damn cute. Einstein might have your head with the velocity and acceleration quote. Don't be so LOCAL. I believe we are both aware of the path here.
Then you are wrong: You are aware of some path in your head that only you know about.

Please re-derive all of physics without zero quantities.
I suggest that you start with Newton's laws, e.g. what happens to F=ma when the acceleration is zero?

[Reality Check]

If you permit that Zero is not in the set of numbers you and I can measure, how do we treat it. Boolean logic allows for sets to form, and unary operation allows me to say this - Zero is the complementary set of all real numbers.
Real Numbers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Numbers) include zero.
Measurable numbers also include zero. Or if you really want to say that the value zero cannot be measured exactly then you have to extend this to all numbers, e.g. 1, 1/3, pi, etc. All physical quantities that are measured in experiments and observations have uncertainties.

Have fun creating a mathematics on which to base physics in which no numbers can be measured.

Boolean logic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_logic) does not "allow for sets to form". Set theory sets. Boolean logic is a restricted case of set algebra .

[BFM]

Citation please: Where in Terrence Witt's book does he state that there is no physical property that has the value of zero?

Zero does exist and as a physical property that we can measure. How many balls are there in a bag of balls that does not contain any balls?
Is it 1? Is it -1? Or is it a integer between 1 and -1?

Counting is not a physical measure, my good sir. It is a numerical measure.

Wherein his book it lies not, of a statement on physical properties with an absolute zero.

I am making such statements to offer support for the math and theories he has laid before you. You have not addressed the math I have laid out for you, only partially agreeing to it "Just because we cannot get to absolute zero does not mean that it does not exist." Mr. Check, methinks you are arguing with me for the sake of argument. I only move to exclude zero from the set of numbers you get to play with. so please tell me what's is so wrong with that.

[BFM]

Stop trying to be so damn cute. Einstein might have your head with the velocity and acceleration quote. Don't be so LOCAL. I believe we are both aware of the path here.

The path being an argument.......

[Reality Check]

Counting is not a physical measure, my good sir. It is a numerical measure.

It is a physical measure and a numerical measure.

But here is a more physical example:
Put a Geiger couner next to a non-radioactive source. How many clicks do you hear?


Wherein his book it lies not, of a statement on physical properties with an absolute zero.

Then get back to the OP. If you want to discuss his book then discuss it. You are just derailing the thread into your own private obsession.


I am making such statements to offer support for the math and theories he has laid before you. You have not addressed the math I have laid out for you, only partially agreeing to it "Just because we cannot get to absolute zero does not mean that it does not exist." Mr. Check, methinks you are arguing with me for the sake of argument. I only move to exclude zero from the set of numbers you get to play with. so please tell me what's is so wrong with that.
You have not laid out any math.
You have stated your personal opinion that physcial quantities do not include a value of zero. I have shown that this is wrong.

What is wrong with this is that the set of numbers happens to include zero by definition.

[BFM]

Before I go to bed. Where have I stated that I move to exclude zero from the set of real numbers???? I humbly suggest that we watch the language we use, with all of the syntax bashing, is getting to be a little much.:boxedin:. would you prefer to think of you as polite.

[Reality Check]

Before I go to bed. Where have I stated that I move to exclude zero from the set of real numbers???? I humbly suggest that we watch the language we use, with all of the syntax bashing, is getting to be a little much.:boxedin:. would you prefer to think of you as polite.
I humbly suggest that you watch the language you use (emphais added)
If you permit that Zero is not in the set of numbers you and I can measure, how do we treat it. Boolean logic allows for sets to form, and unary operation allows me to say this - Zero is the complementary set of all real numbers.
And my reply to you allowed that you may be thinking abut real or measurable numbers.

P.S. Yet another physical measurement that is zero:
Look at the computer on your desk. What is the net force on it?

ETA: Which of these statements do you disagree with and why:

If you permit that One is not in the set of numbers you and I can measure, how do we treat it. Boolean logic allows for sets to form, and unary operation allows me to say this - One is the complementary set of all measurable numbers.
If you permit that pi is not in the set of numbers you and I can measure, how do we treat it. Boolean logic allows for sets to form, and unary operation allows me to say this - Pi is the complementary set of all measurable numbers.

[BFM]

It is a physical measure and a numerical measure.

But here is a more physical example:
Put a Geiger couner next to a non-radioactive source. How many clicks do you hear?

I would COUNT zero clicks

Then get back to the OP. If you want to discuss his book then discuss it. You are just derailing the thread into your own private obsession.

Sorry, but we haven't gotten past the 4 chapters of math you have a problem with

You have not laid out any math.
You have stated your personal opinion that physcial quantities do not include a value of zero. I have shown that this is wrong.

I have Deifined temperature as a measure, who's best fit would be a limit equation ending at zero. IE. Zero would never be in the set of measured temperatures. You agreed with this statement

What is wrong with this is that the set of numbers happens to include zero by definition.

Absolutely nothing. What is wrong with excluding zero from a set of numbers? By your own admission Boolean logic has a null set.

Goodnight.

[sol invictus]

No new math proposed here. Zero does exist. Just not as a physical property that can be measure. OK?

What utter and complete nonsense. First, zero is not a "property" - it's a number. And of course we can obtain zero in a measurement, just as we can any other number. In fact for many physical quantities zero has no particular special meaning - one can set the zero point wherever one wants (including, for example, at the result of the last measurement).

Your posts indicate a total ignorance of the fundamentals of math (and I really mean the basics - the kind of thing most 10 year olds understand perfectly). Not unlike Witt's book, in fact.

[Reality Check]

Absolutely nothing. What is wrong with excluding zero from a set of numbers? By your own admission Boolean logic has a null set.

Goodnight.
Feel free to exclude any numbers that you like from any set of numbers that you like. The null set is a standard part of set theory. So when you have excluded all of the numbers from your set of numbers you will have a null set.

But we seem to be talking about the set of measureable quantities. Firstly you need to define this set.
Is it any number that has been actually measured in any experiment?
Is it any number that could be measured in any experiment?
Is it any number that can be calculated from all scientific theories (but may not be able to be measured in an experiment)?
Is there a set for each of the units that can be measured, e.g. length, mass. charge, force, angular momentum, temperature, etc?

From your postings you seem to be looking at the first defintion.

Zero is not one of those numbers. I have done many experiments where a value of zero was measured.

But here are some even more physical examples:

Put a Geiger couner next to a non-radioactive source. Attach the counter to an electronic device that outputs the rate of clicks.What rate of clicks does the electronic device tell you?
Put an electrometer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrometer) next to a neutal source. What charge do you measure?
Attach a voltmeter at 2 points on a wire carrying no current. What voltage do you measure?
Look at the computer on your desk. What is the net force on it?

[ben m]

I am not claiming it to make it do what i need it magically to do. There is some good work out there showing that pressure waves induce ionization. See the cooling work done at RPI, using a sterling engine to refrigerate using pressure waves. Where do you not see a charge separation occurring during this process? If it hasn't been lab tested, it might make a nice tabletop setup.

I wonder if you are confused about the difference between "ionization" and "charge separation". There are lots of pressure waves and ionization in plasmas but very rarely charge separation.

Thermoacoustic refrigerators do neither ionization nor charge separation.

I think there was a point to this! Do you think that the lack of lightning bolts in HII regions as an astrophysics puzzle---any more so than (e.g.) the lack of lightning bolts in the ocean? Do you think this puzzle is relevant to Witt somehow?

[Reality Check]

No new math proposed here. Zero does exist. Just not as a physical property that can be measure. OK?

In case you are serious about this bit of nonsense, lets give you the beginnings of a kind of mathematics for this:

Let the set of measurable temperatures be Rt in Kelvin. This set does not include 0 Kelvin (absolute zero). It includes all other real numbers from negative infinity (negative temperature (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_temperature)) to positive infinity.
Let the set of measurable masses be Rm in kilograms. This set includes 0 kg and all positive masses. It does not include negative masses.
Let the set of measurable charges be Rc in electron charges. This set is a set of integers, i.e. {..., -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, ...}.
Let the set of measurable lengths be Rl in metres. This is a set of real numbers that includes 0 but has limits, e.g. the smallest length is the Planck length and the largest length is the size of the universe (which may be infinite).
Continue defining these sets for all measurable units.
BFM: You now have the easy task of deriving Terence Witt's null geometry from these sets.
Have fun :D !

[orange31]

There was a recent interesting interview with Gell Mann in Discover Magazine...I'm not comparing Heisenberg to Witt, just an example of an interesting pitfall affecting a true genius-

http://discovermagazine.com/2009/apr/17-man-who-found-quarks-made-sense-of-universe/?searchterm=gell%20mann




But I did know Werner Heisenberg fairly well. He was one of the discoverers of quantum mechanics, which is one of the greatest achievements of the human mind. But by the time I knew him, although he was not extremely old, he was more or less a crank.

How so?
He was talking a lot of nonsense. He had things that he called theories that were not really theories; they were gibberish. His goal was to find a unified theory of all the particles and forces. He worked on an equation, but the equation didn’t have any practical significance. It was impossible to work with it. There were no solutions. It was just nonsense...... Many of us talked to Pauli and said, “Look, you shouldn’t associate yourself with this. It’s all rubbish, and you have your reputation to consider.” Pauli agreed, and he wrote a letter to Heisenberg saying something like: “I quit. This is all nonsense. There’s nothing to it. Take my name off.” In another letter, Pauli drew a rectangle on the page, and next to it he wrote: “This is to show the world that I can paint like Titian. Only technical details are missing. W. Pauli.” In other words, Heisenberg had provided only a frame, with no picture.

[sol invictus]

There was a recent interesting interview with Gell Mann in Discover Magazine...

That happens relatively often to old, famous scientists. Linus Pauling is a good example (actually Gell-Mann himself is not so far from that...).

The difference is that Witt never made any contributions to physics at all. He's just another one of the thousands of physics cranks that self-publish books of nonsense and try to get people to read them. The only real difference is he has much more money than the average.