Re: The Positron and the Trend of Physics Toward Religion
- From: "Bill Hobba" <rubbish@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 06 Aug 2005 07:37:32 GMT
"Nth Complexity" <u8666992@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:l.1123299014.1090148925@[82.96.100.100]...
> "I think that there is a moral to this story, namely that it is more
> important to have beauty in one's equations that to have them fit
> experiment. If Schroedinger had been more confident of his work, he
> could have published it some months earlier, and he could have
> published a more accurate equation. It seems that if one is working
> from the point of view of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one
> has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress. If there
> is not complete agreement between the results of one's work and
> experiment, one should not allow oneself to be too discouraged, because
> the discrepancy may well be due to minor features that are not properly
> taken into account and that will get cleared up with further
> development of the theory."
> -- Paul Dirac, Scientific American, May 1963.
>
> One often hears Dirac's mantra from the modern crackpot theoretical
> physicists. Particularly in such fields as string theory, experiment
> is not even a concern to the clowns. But this disturbing trend has
> been going on for a long time.
>
> For those of you not familiar with the work of Paul Dirac, a bit of the
> story will be useful. With the advent of quantum mechanics, it was
> discovered that electrons sometimes behave as waves. However, the
> theory of electron waves at that time was not consistent with
> Einstein's theory of special relativity. Dirac's most famous work was
> developing a theory of electron waves consistent with relativity. But
> there was a problem: Dirac's theory implied the existence of particles
> with the same mass and opposite charge to the electron, which had never
> been seen. But Dirac stuck to his theory, and a few years, this
> particle, called the positron, was discovered.
>
> Unfortunately, some physicists got carried away with Dirac's success.
> It made them willing to construct theories that included all sorts of
> things that no one had ever seen, just because it made the theory
> nice. They hoped that in a few years, their new inventions would
> likewise be detected. But this is usually not the case.
>
> Examples of this kind of thought abound in physics:
>
> The idea of spontaneous symmetry breaking, a part of the modern
> Standard Model of particle physics, says that the laws of physics are
> symmetric in ways that the results of particle experiments are not
> symmetric in. To explain this apparent discrepancy, the direction in
> which the symmetry is broken is allowed to vary from place to place.
> It is turned into an asymmetry of the world around us instead of the
> basic laws of physics. The trouble with this is that if it is true, we
> ought to see places where the direction changes abruptly from one way
> to another. These places are called "topological defects," and
> depending on their shape, they are known as domain walls, cosmic
> strings, monopoles, and textures. Many theoretical physics papers have
> been written about them. Yet they do not exist.
>
> The modern theoretical model of electrons and related particles called
> leptons requires that the particles have no mass. Since they clearly
> do have mass, an interaction with a particle called the Higgs particle
> was introduced to cause electrons to have mass. But where is the Higgs
> particle?
>
> Various theories have attempted to unify all known forces into a single
> field described by one gauge theory with one group. A gauge theory,
> BTW, is a very symmetrical and elegant way of describing a field, which
> of course means that crackpot physicists will want to play with them
> whether or not what they are doing described the real world. Some of
> these theories predicted that protons, the very stuff most of the non-
> imaginary universe is made of, ought to undergo radioactive decay.
> Physicists assembled huge tanks of ultra-pure water deep underground,
> and waited in earnest for just a few of the hydrogen atoms to decay.
> None of them ever did.
>
> The rims of galaxies appear to rotate so fast around the galactic
> center that the galaxy would tear itself apart according to current
> gravitational theory. This has led to the well-known postulation of so-
> called "dark matter."
>
> In addition, observations of the geometry of the universe do not agree
> with theories of nuclear reactions in the early universe on how much
> stuff there is in the universe. This has led to the idea that most of
> the matter in the universe is not made of atoms, but is of an
> undiscovered type of particle that passes directly through us without
> us even noticing. Worse, neutrinos, which have been observed and are
> the only things we know of that do pass through ordinary matter well
> enough to make the cut, have been shown not to fit the bill. The
> imaginary particles are called "WIMPs."
>
> And even more ... some physicists think that rather than modifying the
> equations of gravity to account for the observation that the universe
> is flying apart at greater and greater speeds, it is better to
> postulate a new, bizzare kind of energy that would be by far the
> primary ingredient in the universe, if it existed, beating out even the
> WIMPs several times. You have probably heard of it ... it's
> called "dark energy."
>
> Supersymmetry, the foundation of crackpot string theory, posits a
> suggestion that attempts to one-up Dirac by promising for every
> particle a "superpartner." Superpartners, unlike antimatter have
> different masses and spins. Not one of them has ever been detected
> after many more years of looking.
You seem very glib about throwing the word crackpot around. At least string
theory makes predictions (none of which has been falsified) whereas
crackpots that post on sci.physics.relativity are big on saying what is
wrong with current physics (nothing concrete mind you - just rubbish like
math can not be reality and similar junk) but small on making actual
predictions. I suspect there is a moral there somewhere. As someone once
said the difference between philosophers and scientists is scientists have a
full waste paper basket. In a similar vein I hypothesize a difference
between a crackpot and a scientist is crackpots criticize physics on grounds
that can not be tested so can never be proven wrong; (witness Nth
Complexity's effort) while genuine scientists also like to be proven wrong
because at least they know one approach that will not work.
BTW do you really think alt.politics.economics, alt.impeach.bush and
alt.religion.christian.baptist are appropriate groups to post this on -
posting such could be indicative of troll like behavior and we all know Nth
Complexity is not a troll. And alt.fan.nth-complexity?????????????. Yea
Nth Complexity is a dead serious poster interested solely in science - no
doubt about it.
Bill
>
> You can practically pick up any theoretical physics paper nowadays to
> find a detailed description of something new that does not exist.
> Physicists believe in such things not because there is evidence, but
> because they want them to be real. It's gotten so bad that it begs a
> question. What is the difference between the invisible world of
> religion and the invisible world of modern theoretical crackpot
> physics? And why is so much taxpayer money wasted on the latter, but
> none into the former?
>
> -- Nth Complexity --
> -- Have A Nice Day! --
> "The teaching of science and mathematics must be purged of its
> authoritarian and elitist characteristics, and the content of these
> subjects enriched by incorporating the insights of the feminist,
> queer, multiculturalist and ecological critiques." -- A.D.S.
>
>
>
>
>
> --
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