NYT - 7/13/10 - "Gravity Does Not Exist", but pseudoscience rules
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From: PD on 15 Jul 2010 12:46 On Jul 14, 5:42 pm, "Robert L. Oldershaw" <rlolders...(a)amherst.edu> wrote: > On Jul 14, 4:25 pm, PD <thedraperfam...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > You're spending too much time watching popularizations and not enough > > time reading the literature which might provide you with the actual > > predictions of the holographic conjecture and so on. > > ----------------------------------------------------------- > > Perhaps you would like to tell us what the "actual predictions of the > holographic conjecture" might be. Sure, I'll give you one, which you could have easily looked up yourself. Without the holographic principle, spacetime is blurry only at the Planck scale, which is well below our experimental sensitivity. But the holographic principle limits the amount of information that can be captured in one (N-1)-dimensional "pixel", and this would raise the intrinsic foaminess of spacetime to as high as 1E-16 m, which is a domain that is in principle accessible to us. The "blurriness" of interactions would be measurable at that resolution, just as we now see measurable effects of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle for things like bound electrons. For laypeople, there is a NewScientist article about it from January 2009. The lesson, once again, is not to try and glean whether something is good physics by listening to TV shows. You can get from TV shows what is worth looking up, and then it's pretty straightforward to get to the better documentation from there. > > Does Paul the German octopus "seer" make the predictions? > > Please give us the details. ;) > > [ I'll bet jesters cannot even come up with one ]
From: spudnik on 15 Jul 2010 13:03 no such things, your strewing of various pop-sci artifacts, primarily the copenhagenskoolers' -- alas, poor Schroedinger's cat is dead -- long-live Schroedinger's cat! EPR is a manifesto of herr doktor-professor Albert's reification of Newton's imploded corpuscular untheory -- see R. Young! so, go-ahead, and actually dig into that study of fullerenes, instead of your useless macroing-off of the subject -- way the ****, off, perhaps deliberatley illiterate (in the sense of, every problem is really a wordproblemma .-) > How did physics get so screwed up to the point where a C-60 molecule > can enter, travel through, and exit multiple slits simultaneously, and > travel through the divider separating the slits, without losing > momentum and exit the slits simultaneously, and interfere with itself, > all the while if there are detectors at the exits the C-60 magically > exits a single slit instantaneously, or has determined in the past to > enter one slit or multiple slits depending upon their being detectors > at the exits to the slits when it gets there in the future? --les ducs d'oil! http://tarpley.net --forsooth, the Queen of the quadrivium! http://wlym.com
From: mpc755 on 15 Jul 2010 13:20 On Jul 15, 1:03 pm, spudnik <Space...(a)hotmail.com> wrote: > no such things, your strewing of various pop-sci artifacts, > primarily the copenhagenskoolers' -- alas, > poor Schroedinger's cat is dead -- long-live Schroedinger's cat! > > EPR is a manifesto of herr doktor-professor Albert's reification > of Newton's imploded corpuscular untheory -- see R. Young! > > so, go-ahead, and actually dig into that study of fullerenes, > instead of your useless macroing-off of the subject -- way the ****, > off, > perhaps deliberatley illiterate (in the sense of, > every problem is really a wordproblemma .-) > How does a C-60 molecule enter, travel through, and exit multiple slits simultaneously without losing momentum? How does a C-60 molecule travel through the divider without losing momentum? It doesn't. A C-60 molecule travels a single path and always enters and exits a single slit in a double slit experiment. It is the associated dark matter displacement wave which enters and exits multiple slits. > > How did physics get so screwed up to the point where a C-60 molecule > > can enter, travel through, and exit multiple slits simultaneously, and > > travel through the divider separating the slits, without losing > > momentum and exit the slits simultaneously, and interfere with itself, > > all the while if there are detectors at the exits the C-60 magically > > exits a single slit instantaneously, or has determined in the past to > > enter one slit or multiple slits depending upon their being detectors > > at the exits to the slits when it gets there in the future? > > --les ducs d'oil!http://tarpley.net > > --forsooth, the Queen of the quadrivium!http://wlym.com
From: Robert L. Oldershaw on 15 Jul 2010 18:12 On Jul 15, 12:46 pm, PD <thedraperfam...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > Sure, I'll give you one, which you could have easily looked up > yourself. > > Without the holographic principle, spacetime is blurry only at the > Planck scale, which is well below our experimental sensitivity. But > the holographic principle limits the amount of information that can be > captured in one (N-1)-dimensional "pixel", and this would raise the > intrinsic foaminess of spacetime to as high as 1E-16 m, which is a > domain that is in principle accessible to us. The "blurriness" of > interactions would be measurable at that resolution, just as we now > see measurable effects of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle for > things like bound electrons. For laypeople, there is a NewScientist > article about it from January 2009. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Well, there are some problems with this prediction. (1) It is not unique to the "holographic" fantasy. Various quantum gravity fantasies have predicted spacetime foam models on various scales. (2) Notice that you do not specify the scale at which the foam is supposed to appear. You say "as high as 1E-16 m". So you do not have a specific quantitative prediction. You have a hand-waving pseudoprediction of a range of multiple orders of magnitude. Sort of: one prediction fits any data, right? (3) Your pseudoprediction is highly adjustable. If any foaminess at any subquantum scale appears, you will claim proof of "holography", but no definitive prediction has been made and so the claim will be technically invalid MOST IMPORTANTLY TWO SEPARATE OBSERVATIONS HAVE CALLED ALL SPACETIME FOAM MODELS INTO QUESTION. (A) The Fermi team has shown that the Lorentz Invariance violations pseudopredicted by "foam" models appear to be falsified by recent gamma-ray results. (B) Maccione et al [ http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1003/1003.5468v2.pdf , published in PRL?] claim even stronger constraints on any spacetime foam model, which would resoundingly falsify your "holographic" pseudoprediction. So tell me again, Mr. "40-watt" PD, who has less credible grounds for their claims, and whose knowledge is based on superficial sources? Try again, pilgrim? RLO www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
From: PD on 15 Jul 2010 18:34
On Jul 15, 5:12 pm, "Robert L. Oldershaw" <rlolders...(a)amherst.edu> wrote: > On Jul 15, 12:46 pm, PD <thedraperfam...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > Sure, I'll give you one, which you could have easily looked up > > yourself. > > > Without the holographic principle, spacetime is blurry only at the > > Planck scale, which is well below our experimental sensitivity. But > > the holographic principle limits the amount of information that can be > > captured in one (N-1)-dimensional "pixel", and this would raise the > > intrinsic foaminess of spacetime to as high as 1E-16 m, which is a > > domain that is in principle accessible to us. The "blurriness" of > > interactions would be measurable at that resolution, just as we now > > see measurable effects of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle for > > things like bound electrons. For laypeople, there is a NewScientist > > article about it from January 2009. > > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > > Well, there are some problems with this prediction. > > (1) It is not unique to the "holographic" fantasy. Various quantum > gravity fantasies have predicted spacetime foam models on various > scales. Yes, that's true. And if foaminess at that scale is detected, then this test will not favor the holographic principle over competing models. However, it will certainly lend support to the holographic principle (as well as the others) and make it clear that any prejudgment about the holographic principle being fantasy is unwarranted. > > (2) Notice that you do not specify the scale at which the foam is > supposed to appear. You say "as high as 1E-16 m". So you do not have > a specific quantitative prediction. You have a hand-waving > pseudoprediction of a range of multiple orders of magnitude. Sort of: > one prediction fits any data, right? Not really. There are a class of models that include the holographic principle. For explication purposes, let's say there are three and label them M1, M2, and M3. What you would know if you saw the fuzziness predicted by M3 at 1E-16m is that M1 and M2 are ruled out, but that M3 is (one of the) favored. > > (3) Your pseudoprediction is highly adjustable. If any foaminess at > any subquantum scale appears, you will claim proof of "holography", > but no definitive prediction has been made and so the claim will be > technically invalid Not at all. See the above. > > MOST IMPORTANTLY TWO SEPARATE OBSERVATIONS HAVE CALLED ALL SPACETIME > FOAM MODELS INTO QUESTION. > > (A) The Fermi team has shown that the Lorentz Invariance violations > pseudopredicted by "foam" models appear to be falsified by recent > gamma-ray results. Which foam models are falsified? > > (B) Maccione et al [http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1003/1003.5468v2.pdf > , published in PRL?] claim even stronger constraints on any spacetime > foam model, which would resoundingly falsify your "holographic" > pseudoprediction. You need to reread the paper. What the paper considers is whether a space-foam model that would account for a *completely different* measured phenomenon -- energy-dependent arrival times of gammas from extragalactic sources -- is consistent with yet *other* experimental data, namely the high-enertgy spectrum of cosmic rays. What was established is that if such a model can be made to fit the high-energy spectrum of cosmic rays, it can no longer account for the observed delays of gammas, and so that the space-foam model would not account for both. This in no way rules out space-foam models based on the holographic principle. Indeed, the space-foam models considered are the ones where the foam scale is at the Planck length, which are the ones where the holographic principle is completely omitted! > > So tell me again, Mr. "40-watt" PD, who has less credible grounds for > their claims, and whose knowledge is based on superficial sources? > > Try again, pilgrim? So let's back up a minute. On what grounds do you say again that the holographic principle is idle fantasy and unscientific? It seemed to me you were saying so because it was scientifically UNTESTABLE. Now you are saying you believe it was TESTED and RULED OUT (which was an error on your part, but let's leave that aside for a second). If the model can be put to scientific test and ruled out, then it cannot be judged as unscientific because it is untestable, no? So, once we establish that it is a testable idea and not unscientific babble, then we can at least discuss the proper scientific investigation of a viable scientific idea. PD |