Science popularizers are guilty of providing a bad education when they promote the idea that there are new, special people who are coming up with new ideas rather than rediscovering ideas that have been understood throughout most of human history. These special people are given awards for expressing these ideas in their own, private languages and for failing to notice that they are saying the same thing that someone else just said five minutes ago or that someone else just said five hundred years ago.
Take this young man’s insight that life is a natural consequence of thermodynamics and entropy. He ‘discovered’ this idea in 2013.
First Support for a Physics Theory of Life | Quanta Magazine
First support? First? Really?
I think these special people are frequently myopic, egotistical dipshits and that top universities collect them like so many playing cards, knowing that they will work very hard if they are praised and, if they are dumb enough, they will never figure out what it is that they are really working on and why they are being given a subsistence living to work on it.
The thing is that most people who were paying attention in their high school or college classroom learned that life is a negative entropy system and if nobody ever asks them questions about the relationship between life and entropy, then they will never decide to tell everyone what they learned:
In the language of quantum entropy, when you see an object organize itself after an application of energy, you are watching time flow backward locally. A leaf growing out into space is a manifestation of time flowing backward. When your body gives energy to your mind so that it organizes itself to access memories, time is flowing backward in your mind but you experience this as time flowing forwards because this flow is you.
How is time anything other than spatial expansion?
These sorts of questions on Quora are the only reason that I bothered to take a moment to search my memory for the stories I was told in a classroom twenty years ago.
My point is that most popular science discoveries are not revealing for the first time a brand new or complicated idea. They are merely announcing a reformulation or repetition of an old idea that takes a bit of time and thought to understand.
Why does the popular science media want us to believe that the connection between life and entropy was discovered by a young man just last year? Why do I get the feeling that this Nobel prize for topology was given for turning something simple into something impenetrably complex? Why do I get the feeling that these students believe that they have just invented the wheel?
Personally, I think that the illusion that scientific research is evergreen needs to stop because it is designed to dupe people who are easily duped into jumping onto a hamster wheel and running at full speed until they collapse. Maybe these hamster wheels prevent these people from becoming serial killers, but, personally, I think it is cruel to put someone on a hamster wheel with the illusion that they are actually going to get somewhere through their efforts.
There is a reason that research is called research; it means to search again and understand again all of the things that people in the past understood. When we discover old truths and mistake them for something new, we are demonstrating that our culture is in a state of collapse and that the narrative we are passing on to the next generation has fully degenerated.
Even the editors of Quanta magazine (probably one of the best pop-sci magazines we have right now) can’t agree on which narrative they are supposed to be promoting.
Quanta Writers and Editors Discuss Big Ideas in Science and Math | Quanta Magazine
Every year, we get a new discovery about gravity which just amounts to a re-branding of an older idea in a private language invented by some dipshit.
You may think that I am being unnecessarily lewd, but dipshit is an excellent word. It signifies that the person enjoys the smell of their own excrement.
Seriously. If you think you just ‘discovered’ something, you should be embarrassed. It means that you haven’t spent enough time in the library. I don’t think that you should need to wait until you track down the source of the idea in the library before you tell anyone about it. I just think that students should be far more humble about their ‘discoveries’.
Disclosure of bias — I am in a mood today and I habitually complain about pop science and bad experimental design.
There are a lot of people out there who are confused by the narrative the popular science or sci-comm industry has been promoting in past decades. They may have read Lee Smolin’s book or Woit’s book and they were confused by the insistence that there is a great mystery associated with black holes and general relativity. Most of them never consider the possibility that the mystery is a fraud used to draw their attention and waste their time. Most of them never considered that the solution to the mystery has been known since the day the mystery was created and that the true purpose of the mystery was to get large numbers of people to spin in endless circles, talking past one another as they shoot their solutions to the mystery into the void of the internets.
They all sing out in their own private languages:
- Did you know that general relativity does not conserve energy!?
- How could anyone think that a theory that does not conserve energy could be blended with a quantum theory that does conserve energy?
- How could anyone think that theories that define space and time in different ways could be blended together!?
In short, the black hole puzzle is itself an intellectual black hole designed to eat the mental energy of all who fall into its embrace. The solution is so simple, it is embarrassing to anyone who sees it.
A substantial fraction of those who read about popular science mysteries of physics will identify a wrong assumption, feel like a genius and go out to tell everyone that they have figured out the mystery — only to discover that no one cares because the system is designed to teach nonsense. Many people end up feeling irritated to discover that they’ve been tricked by a bunch of pop-sci assholes who’s primary purpose is to distribute mental malware that absorbs the attention of people who like puzzles.
Then again – without assholes, we’d all be full of shit. I just find it strange that the physics system cleanses itself of its waste by distributing it upon the lay public like so much manure. A toilet would be more civilized and when you pile uncomposted manure onto a garden, nothing can grow. The fresh byproducts of research shouldn’t be fed to the public without first composting them. Pop-sci authors need to learn this principle, otherwise the sense that physicists wallow in muck will persist and usful byproducts of the endeavor may never take root.
A kind reader recently wrote to me about what he had learned from reading popular science books:
on page 3 of the new book “The Trouble with Gravity” (September 2019), the author Richard Panek asks Prof. Kip Thorne of CalTech: “What is gravity?”. Prof. Thorne replies: “That’s a meaningless question”. After getting his Nobel prize, he now publicly confesses not knowing what gravity is. What a joke!
https://www.site4systemdynamics.com/
On page 256 of his book “The Trouble with Physics”, Lee Smolin writes: “I believe there is something basic we are all missing, some wrong assumption we are all making. If this is so, then we need to isolate the wrong assumption and replace it with a new idea.”
He goes on to note that —
- Textbooks state that field equations of GR possess 10 independent solutions. But, Einstein chose to relate the curvature and the energy-momentum tensors of his equation by a proportionality constant. Since these two tensors are real, symmetrical, and commuting, there exists a non-singular tensor that simultaneously diagonalizes them. Therefore, there can be no more than 4 independent solutions. In short, Einstein’s field equations are mathematically ill-posed.
- We are told that spacetime is curved and dragged around by a massive body. If true, then the spacetime 4-vector represents a physical field. Any such vector must be expressible as the sum of a divergence-free component and a curl-free component (a well-known theorem by Helmholtz). If spacetime is a dynamic field, then spacetime is a function of spacetime. But, this is physically impossible.
- The Schwarzschild solution employs the Newtonian condition at infinity, but does not make use of the most important boundary condition, namely, the gravitational field on the surface of the source mass (the Sun). Thus, a mathematical singularity arises, yielding an unphysical result (a black hole).
- The correct theory of gravity must address the problem of galaxy creation and evolution. GR fails this important test because Einstein and his contemporaries believed that our galaxy is the Universe (the existence of external galaxies was confirmed in the late 1930’s). Therefore, Einstein’s theory cannot describe how the bar structure of a galaxy is formed and why it later curves into a spiral.
- The most popular narrative is that GR passes all the solar system tests. This is absolutely not true. Consider, for example, the perihelion advance of Mercury. The unresolved advance is about 600 arcseconds per century. GR predicts an advance of only 43 arcseconds. The remaining amount (more than 90 percent) comes from Newtonian gravity. But, this linear addition is mathematically incorrect because both Newton’s law and Einstein’s field equations are highly nonlinear differential equations and therefore the superposition principle does not hold. In other words, one cannot simply add amplitudes and phases due to the actions of the outer planets. It is also physically incorrect because Newtonian gravity is a non-local theory (an action-at-a-distance law) and GR is a field or local theory. Their results cannot be mixed. Thus, GR fails this important solar system test.
- LIGO’s latest assertion about gravitational waves is another example. The best way to refute somebody’s theory is to find flaws in their equations. “Gravitational waves generated by two objects having unequal masses do not exist.” Please note that these are not my words. This statement belongs to general relativists. Let me repeat it again. The theory of general relativity forbids the wave event reported by the LIGO-VIRGO collaboration!
- On page 470 in Chapter-16: Gravitational Radiation of the book titled “Black Holes”, Shapiro and Teukolsky write: “By conservation of angular momentum, there is no magnetic dipole radiation in general relativity”. Two pages later, they say: “Note that no angular momentum is carried off if the source is axisymmetric”. In other words, if two coalescing black holes (or neutron stars) are purely spherical and have equal masses, then there will be no radiation, otherwise the system will emit dipole radiation due to non-zero angular momentum. The most recent LIGO claim involves two objects with vastly different mass values. The mass-ratio is 9 (LIGO paper ArXiv 2006.12611). This means that the alleged merger event does not have symmetrical mass distribution about the common axis of rotation as the objects spiral in towards each other. Since angular momentum changes both in magnitude and direction, dipole radiation must exist. But, this contradicts the relativistic wave theory because General Relativity forbids the existence of dipole radiation. Only quadrupolar and higher-order radiation are allowed. See, for example, page 974 of “Gravitation” book by Misner, Thorpe, and Wheeler.
- Let me briefly mention another major problem. Here, instead of equations, I will point out contradictions in their published pictures (as they say, a picture is worth 1000 words). Please, watch the following video at LIGO’s website: https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/video/gravitational-waves
- Their simulation shows gravitational waves spiraling outward in the plane of the binary black holes, like ripples on a pond. According to the simulation, single strands of waves trail each black hole with zero interference. This is an example of monopole radiation. Once again, GR forbids monopole radiation. Next, take a look at Figure 3.7 on page 160 of the very influential book titled “Gravitational Waves, Volume-1” by Prof. Michele Maggiore. According to this figure, gravitational waves must propagate in every direction and the wave with the strongest intensity is perpendicular to the plane of the black holes. In fact, after Eq.3.338, he writes: “The radiation is maximum in the direction normal to the plane of the orbit”. This simple but fatal contradiction shows that LIGO’s claims cannot be true because their simulated templates are in disagreement with their own wave theory.
- Any one of these flaws and inconsistencies is enough to destroy the argument that GR is the correct description of gravity. Unfortunately, proponents of General Relativity do not take the time to properly study and analyze their theory. Doing so from an experimental and mathematical point of view is a necessity in becoming a successful scientist. Finding flaws in the currently accepted theories of physics is too easy. Proposing and demonstrating the correct theory is an arduous task. After studying the phenomenon of gravity for a long time, my research efforts have led to a new formulation. The alternative theory is based on the superfluid-like behavior of the energy quanta of the gravitational field (i.e. gravitons). Thus, there is a smooth transition from the quantum theory of gravity to the continuum theory of gravity. The new theory obeys the criteria of empirical testability and falsifiability, the hallmarks of the scientific method. The field equations are inherently relativistic and there are no mathematical singularities. Validity of a physical theory is determined not by the number of its proponents but by its success in accounting for experimental data. In this regard, the new theory is in agreement with all the known astronomical observations such as: the observed motion of planets, perihelion advance of inner planets, gravitational redshift and bending of starlight as well as the flat rotation curves of galaxies.
- The mathematical derivations of the new theory, including the relativistic and quantum treatments of gravity, are detailed in a 465-page long academic treatise. Chapter-11 covers the creation of galaxies and shows how the bar structure of a spiral galaxy evolves. Chapter-20 explains the physical origin of the Hubble constant without resorting to dark energy.
My point in drawing attention to this is that people are getting drawn into memetic idea complexes that serve as mental black holes and they are wasting a lot of people’s time by encouraging them to solve ill-posed problems that have been solved a thousand times before in languages that were not designed to be self-contradictory.
I think it would be kinder to let people know that they are wasting their time — before ensnaring them in a pointless phd program. I’m not suggesting that they should quit solving puzzles and instead watch stupid movies, I just think that they should understand that the puzzles are not great, unsolved mysteries waiting for a hero to come along. They are more like Sudoku and the purpose of a physics professor is to help people get better at playing Sudoku.
Maybe the people who created these intellectual black holes had the best of intentions and they believed that these holes would absorb the energy of people who would have otherwise started wars or turned into mass shooters, but my guess is that, back when these pedagogical holes were created, video games hadn’t been invented.
As least the people who play a video game know that they are wasting their time. This isn’t the case with physics training and I think that is a pity.
That is why I am writing a book that will contain a coherent narrative that exposes the redundancies within physics education that send students into intellectual black holes. I have posted a quarter of that book in a Quora space and invite you to take a look. I haven’t published the whole thing, but I’m working in that direction. If you are studying physics, it will change how you see some things.
https://www.quora.com/q/mythsofmodernphysics
I have also posted some science satire in a Quora space. It gives a comedic look at the direction in which scientific culture is headed.
https://www.quora.com/q/nodpqhthrzdnjmqx
Please consider following these spaces as I will be using them as collection point for my effort to organize my thoughts into longer, book-length formats.
I still have some gas left in my tank and haven’t yet given up on what may very well be a useless effort, but if it saves someone from wasting decades of their life, I will consider it time well spent. You don’t have to make the same mistakes I did!
Kirsten Hacker 