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From: Pentcho Valev on 23 Jun 2010 01:02
Confessions made in moments of aberration:

http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/pdf/files/975547d7-2d00-433a-b7e3-4a09145525ca.pdf
Albert Einstein 1954: "I consider it entirely possible that physics
cannot be based upon the field concept, that is on continuous
structures. Then nothing will remain of my whole castle in the air,
including the theory of gravitation, but also nothing of the rest of
contemporary physics."

http://articles.courant.com/2009-03-26/news/thorson0326.art_1_science-education-theory-of-general-relativity-arthur-eddington
"Albert Einstein strengthened science through his contributions, but
he may have inadvertently crippled science education through his
example. This notion is supported by an editorial, "Redefining Science
Education," published in January by Bruce Alberts, editor in chief of
the journal Science. His main concern is that "many college-educated
adults in the United States," including teachers, "fail to understand
that science is a way of knowing completely different from mysticism,
tradition and faith." Science is based on "evidence that can be
logically and independently verified," rather than on personal
authority. Most of the public accepted Einstein's 1915 theory of
general relativity based on his authority, rather than on the evidence
presented."

http://plus.maths.org/issue37/features/Einstein/index.html
John Barrow: "Einstein restored faith in the unintelligibility of
science. Everyone knew that Einstein had done something important in
1905 (and again in 1915) but almost nobody could tell you exactly what
it was. When Einstein was interviewed for a Dutch newspaper in 1921,
he attributed his mass appeal to the mystery of his work for the
ordinary person: Does it make a silly impression on me, here and
yonder, about my theories of which they cannot understand a word? I
think it is funny and also interesting to observe. I am sure that it
is the mystery of non-understanding that appeals to themit impresses
them, it has the colour and the appeal of the mysterious."

http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_5.html
John Baez: "On the one hand we have the Standard Model, which tries to
explain all the forces except gravity, and takes quantum mechanics
into account. On the other hand we have General Relativity, which
tries to explain gravity, and does not take quantum mechanics into
account. Both theories seem to be more or less on the right track but
until we somehow fit them together, or completely discard one or both,
our picture of the world will be deeply schizophrenic."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/science/26essay.html
"The worrying continued. Lawrence Krauss, a cosmologist from Arizona
State, said that most theories were wrong. "We get the notions they
are right because we keep talking about them," he said. Not only are
most theories wrong, he said, but most data are also wrong..."

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/87150187.html
"Dark Energy: The Biggest Mystery in the Universe (...) "We have a
complete inventory of the universe," Sean Carroll, a California
Institute of Technology cosmologist, has said, "and it makes no
sense."

http://www.beilstein-institut.de/bozen2004/proceedings/CornishBowden/CornishBowden.pdf
Athel Cornish-Bowden: "The concept of entropy was introduced to
thermodynamics by Clausius, who deliberately chose an obscure term for
it, wanting a word based on Greek roots that would sound similar to
"energy". In this way he hoped to have a word that would mean the same
to everyone regardless of their language, and, as Cooper [2] remarked,
he succeeded in this way in finding a word that meant the same to
everyone: NOTHING. From the beginning it proved a very difficult
concept for other thermodynamicists, even including such accomplished
mathematicians as Kelvin and Maxwell; Kelvin, indeed, despite his own
major contributions to the subject, never appreciated the idea of
entropy [3]. The difficulties that Clausius created have continued to
the present day, with the result that a fundamental idea that is
absolutely necessary for understanding the theory of chemical
equilibria continues to give trouble, not only to students but also to
scientists who need the concept for their work."

ftp://ftp.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/pub/SISTA/markovsky/reports/06-46.pdf
"From the pedagogical point of view, thermodynamics is a disaster. As
the authors rightly state in the introduction, many aspects are
"riddled with inconsistencies". They quote V.I. Arnold, who concedes
that "every mathematician knows it is impossible to understand an
elementary course in thermodynamics". Nobody has eulogized this
confusion more colorfully than the late Clifford Truesdell. On page 6
of his book "The Tragicomical History of Thermodynamics" 1822-1854
(Springer Verlag, 1980), he calls thermodynamics "a dismal swamp of
obscurity". Elsewhere, in despair of trying to make sense of the
writings of some local heros as De Groot, Mazur, Casimir, and
Prigogine, Truesdell suspects that there is "something rotten in the
(thermodynamic) state of the Low Countries" (see page 134 of Rational
Thermodynamics, McGraw-Hill, 1969)."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev(a)yahoo.com
From: Pentcho Valev on 25 Jun 2010 01:24
Genetics is based on Mendel's first and second laws.

Thermodynamics is based on the first and second laws of
thermodynamics.

Relativity is based on Einstein's 1905 first and second postulates.

Genetics is flourishing, thermodynamics and relativity are dying. Why?

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000313/
Jos Uffink: "The Second Law made its appearance in physics around
1850, but a half century later it was already surrounded by so much
confusion that the British Association for the Advancement of Science
decided to appoint a special committee with the task of providing
clarity about the meaning of this law. However, its final report
(Bryan 1891) did not settle the issue. Half a century later, the
physicist/philosopher Bridgman still complained that there are almost
as many formulations of the second law as there have been discussions
of it (Bridgman 1941, p. 116). And even today, the Second Law remains
so obscure that it continues to attract new efforts at clarification.
A recent example is the work of Lieb and Yngvason (1999)......The
historian of science and mathematician Truesdell made a detailed study
of the historical development of thermodynamics in the period
1822-1854. He characterises the theory, even in its present state, as
'a dismal swamp of obscurity' (1980, p. 6) and 'a prime example to
show that physicists are not exempt from the madness of crowds' (ibid.
p. 8).......Clausius' verbal statement of the second law makes no
sense.... All that remains is a Mosaic prohibition ; a century of
philosophers and journalists have acclaimed this commandment ; a
century of mathematicians have shuddered and averted their eyes from
the unclean.....Seven times in the past thirty years have I tried to
follow the argument Clausius offers....and seven times has it blanked
and gravelled me.... I cannot explain what I cannot
understand.....This summary leads to the question whether it is
fruitful to see irreversibility or time-asymmetry as the essence of
the second law. Is it not more straightforward, in view of the
unargued statements of Kelvin, the bold claims of Clausius and the
strained attempts of Planck, to give up this idea? I believe that
Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa was right in her verdict that the discussion
about the arrow of time as expressed in the second law of the
thermodynamics is actually a RED HERRING."

http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=317&Itemid=81&lecture_id=3576
John Stachel: "Einstein discussed the other side of the particle-field
dualism - get rid of fields and just have particles."
EINSTEIN'S 1954 CONFESSION: "I consider it entirely possible that
physics cannot be based upon the field concept, that is on continuous
structures. Then nothing will remain of my whole castle in the air,
including the theory of gravitation, but also nothing of the rest of
contemporary physics."
John Stachel's comment: "If I go down, everything goes down, ha ha,
hm, ha ha ha."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/genius/
"Genius Among Geniuses" by Thomas Levenson
A clue to EINSTEIN'S 1954 CONFESSION: "And then, in June, Einstein
completes special relativity, which adds a twist to the story:
Einstein's March paper treated light as particles, but special
relativity sees light as a continuous field of waves. Alice's Red
Queen can accept many impossible things before breakfast, but it takes
a supremely confident mind to do so. Einstein, age 26, sees light as
wave and particle, picking the attribute he needs to confront each
problem in turn. Now that's tough."

http://books.google.com/books?id=JokgnS1JtmMC
"Relativity and Its Roots" By Banesh Hoffmann
Another clue to EINSTEIN'S 1954 CONFESSION: "Moreover, if light
consists of particles, as Einstein had suggested in his paper
submitted just thirteen weeks before this one, the second principle
seems absurd: A stone thrown from a speeding train can do far more
damage than one thrown from a train at rest; the speed of the particle
is not independent of the motion of the object emitting it. And if we
take light to consist of particles and assume that these particles
obey Newton's laws, they will conform to Newtonian relativity and thus
automatically account for the null result of the Michelson-Morley
experiment without recourse to contracting lengths, local time, or
Lorentz transformations. Yet, as we have seen, Einstein resisted the
temptation to account for the null result in terms of particles of
light and simple, familiar Newtonian ideas, and introduced as his
second postulate something that was more or less obvious when thought
of in terms of waves in an ether."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev(a)yahoo.com
From: Pentcho Valev on 25 Jun 2010 10:37
PHYSICS EDUCATION: CRISIS OR DEATH?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/nov/22/schools.g2
"But instead of celebrating, physicists are in mourning after a report
showed a dramatic decline in the number of pupils studying physics at
school. The number taking A-level physics has dropped by 38% over the
past 15 years, a catastrophic meltdown that is set to continue over
the next few years. The report warns that a shortage of physics
teachers and a lack of interest from pupils could mean the end of
physics in state schools. Thereafter, physics would be restricted to
only those students who could afford to go to posh schools. Britain
was the home of Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday and Paul Dirac, and
Brits made world-class contributions to understanding gravity, quantum
physics and electromagnetism - and yet the British physicist is now
facing extinction. But so what? Physicists are not as cuddly as
pandas, so who cares if we disappear?"

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/ingdahl2.html
"But there has been a marked global decrease of students willing to
study physics, and funding has decreased accordingly. Not only that,
the best students are not heading for studies in physics, finding
other fields more appealing, and science teachers to schools are
getting scarcer in supply. In fact, warning voices are being heard
about the spread of a "scientific illiteracy" where many living in
technologically advanced societies lack the knowledge and the ability
for critical thinking in order to function in their daily
environment."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/may/22/highereducation.education
Harry Kroto: "The wrecking of British science....The scientific method
is based on what I prefer to call the inquiring mindset. It includes
all areas of human thoughtful activity that categorically eschew
"belief", the enemy of rationality. This mindset is a nebulous mixture
of doubt, questioning, observation, experiment and, above all,
curiosity, which small children possess in spades. I would argue that
it is the most important, intrinsically human quality we possess, and
it is responsible for the creation of the modern, enlightened portion
of the world that some of us are fortunate to inhabit. Curiously, for
the majority of our youth, the educational system magically causes
this capacity to disappear by adolescence.....Do I think there is any
hope for UK? I am really not sure."

http://archives.lesechos.fr/archives/2004/LesEchos/19077-80-ECH.htm
"Physicien au CEA, professeur et auteur, Etienne Klein s'inquiète des
relations de plus en plus conflictuelles entre la science et la
société. (...) « Je me demande si nous aurons encore des physiciens
dans trente ou quarante ans », remarque ce touche-à-tout aux multiples
centres d'intérêt : la constitution de la matière, le temps, les
relations entre science et philosophie. (...) Etienne Klein n'est pas
optimiste. Selon lui, il se pourrait bien que l'idée de progrès soit
tout bonnement « en train de mourir sous nos yeux ». (...) Cette
perception d'une « science mortifère » se double d'une « culture du
ressenti », sorte de sésame passe-partout utilisé pour justifier
l'acquisition, l'évaluation ou le rejet des connaissances. « J'ai eu à
faire récemment à un jeune étudiant en sciences qui n'était pas
d'accord avec la théorie de la relativité d'Einstein pour une raison
étonnante : il m'a dit qu'il ne la sentait pas », indique-t-il en
riant à moitié. Au bout du compte, ce soupçon d'imposture permanente
débouche sur une idée simple qui fait des ravages : « En sciences
comme ailleurs, tout est relatif. » Dans ce contexte, la vulgarisation
est d'un maigre secours car « la pédagogie ajoute du bruit et augmente
la confusion »."

http://mneaquitaine.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/loccident-face-a-la-crise-des-vocations-scientifiques/
"L'Occident face à la crise des vocations scientifiques. Le mal
s'accroît, mais le diagnostic s'affine. Les pays développés, qui
souffrent, sans exception, d'une désaffection des jeunes pour les
filières scientifiques, pointent du doigt la façon dont les sciences
sont aujourd'hui enseignées. Trop de théorie, pas assez de pratique ;
des enseignements qui n'invitent pas au questionnement... (...) ...les
sciences physiques, grandes victimes de ce rejet collectif des jeunes
Européens, dégringolent (- 5,5 %)."

http://www.buckingham.ac.uk/news/newsarchive2006/ceer-physics-2.html
"PHYSICS IN TERMINAL DECLINE? In CEER's latest report, published 11
August 2006 and funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, Professor
Alan Smithers and Dr Pamela Robinson show that the decline in physics
as student numbers fall and university departments shut is more
serious than is generally appreciated."

http://www.wellingtongrey.net/articles/archive/2007-06-07--open-letter-aqa.html
"I am a physics teacher. Or, at least I used to be. My subject is
still called physics. My pupils will sit an exam and earn a GCSE in
physics, but that exam doesn't cover anything I recognize as physics.
Over the past year the UK Department for Education and the AQA board
changed the subject. They took the physics out of physics and replaced
it with... something else, something nebulous and ill defined. I worry
about this change. I worry about my pupils, I worry about the state of
science education in this country, and I worry about the future
physics teachers - if there will be any. (...) UPDATE 2009: After
much frustration I'm leaving teaching England in physics. I've
started a side business in time management and am taking a break from
the profession."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev(a)yahoo.com
From: Pentcho Valev on 27 Jun 2010 07:32
Karl Popper used to teach that theories can be refuted by a single
experiment. Einsteinians agree with Popper but, on the other hand,
they have discovered that experiments confirming Newton's emission
theory of light, a theory which contradicts Einstein's 1905 light
postulate by stating that the speed of light is VARIABLE, gloriously
confirm Divine Albert's Divine Theory:

http://groups.google.com/group/sci.physics.relativity/msg/44abc7dbb30db6c2
John Norton (a famour Einsteinian): "THE MICHELSON-MORLEY EXPERIMENT
IS FULLY COMPATIBLE WITH AN EMISSION THEORY OF LIGHT THAT CONTRADICTS
THE LIGHT POSTULATE."
Tom Roberts (a famous Einsteinian): "Sure. The fact that this one
experiment is compatible with other theories does not refute
relativity in any way. The full experimental record refutes most if
not all emission theories, but not relativity."
Pentcho Valev: "THE POUND-REBKA EXPERIMENT IS FULLY COMPATIBLE WITH AN
EMISSION THEORY OF LIGHT THAT CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT POSTULATE."
Tom Roberts: "Sure. But this experiment, too, does not refute
relativity. The full experimental record refutes most if not all
emission theories, but not relativity."

Also, Einsteinians find it tedious to constantly repeat that
experiments confirm both Newton's emission theory of light and Divine
Albert's Divine Theory. So they omit Newton's emission theory of light
and constantly repeat that experiments gloriously confirm Divine
Albert's Divine Theory:

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001743/02/Norton.pdf
John Norton: "Einstein regarded the Michelson-Morley experiment as
evidence for the principle of relativity, whereas LATER WRITERS ALMOST
UNIVERSALLY USE IT AS SUPPORT FOR THE LIGHT POSTULATE OF SPECIAL
RELATIVITY......The Michelson-Morley experiment is fully compatible
with an emission theory of light that contradicts the light
postulate."

http://www.amazon.com/Faster-Than-Speed-Light-Speculation/dp/0738205257
Joao Magueijo: "I am by profession a theoretical physicist. By every
definition I am a fully credentialed scholar-graduate work and Ph.D.
at Cambridge, followed by a very prestigious research fellowship at
St. John's College, Cambridge (Paul Dirac and Abdus Salam formerly
held this fellowship), then a Royal Society research fellow. Now I'm a
lecturer (the equivalent of a tenured professor in the United States)
at Imperial College. (...) A missile fired from a plane moves faster
than one fired from the ground because the plane's speed adds to the
missile's speed. If I throw something forward on a moving train, its
speed with respect to the platform is the speed of that object plus
that of the train. You might think that the same should happen to
light: Light flashed from a train should travel faster. However, what
the Michelson-Morley experiments showed was that this was not the
case: Light always moves stubbornly at the same speed. This means that
if I take a light ray and ask several observers moving with respect to
each other to measure the speed of this light ray, they will all agree
on the same apparent speed!"

http://www.hawking.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=64&Itemid=66
Stephen Hawking: "Interestingly enough, Laplace himself wrote a paper
in 1799 on how some stars could have a gravitational field so strong
that light could not escape, but would be dragged back onto the star.
He even calculated that a star of the same density as the Sun, but two
hundred and fifty times the size, would have this property. But
although Laplace may not have realised it, the same idea had been put
forward 16 years earlier by a Cambridge man, John Mitchell, in a paper
in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Both Mitchell
and Laplace thought of light as consisting of particles, rather like
cannon balls, that could be slowed down by gravity, and made to fall
back on the star. But a famous experiment, carried out by two
Americans, Michelson and Morley in 1887, showed that light always
travelled at a speed of one hundred and eighty six thousand miles a
second, no matter where it came from. How then could gravity slow down
light, and make it fall back."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/21/AR2010042105274.html
"Robert Pound, 90, confirmed a key Einstein theory, dies (...) "People
had presumed that Einstein was probably right" about the frequency
shift, but it was extremely small and hard to measure, said Paul
Horowitz, a Harvard professor of physics and electrical engineering.
Yet, Horowitz said, Mr. Pound found a way to do it."

http://focus.aps.org/story/v16/st1
"Before he worked out the general theory of relativity, Einstein had
already deduced that gravity must affect a light wave's frequency and
wavelength. Light moving upwards from Earth's surface, for example,
shifts to longer wavelength and lower frequency, as gravity saps it of
some energy. But the effect is tiny in earth's modest gravity. In 1960
Robert Pound and Glen Rebka of Harvard University finally succeed in
testing this crucial prediction, and they reported their results in
PRL. Today the so-called gravitational redshift is essential for
understanding the cosmos and operating the Global Positioning System
(GPS)."

http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/Cyberia/NumRel/EinsteinTest.html
"In 1960, Robert V. Pound and Glen A. Rebka demonstrated that a beam
of very high energy gamma rays was ever so slightly redshifted as it
climbed out of Earth's gravity and up an elevator shaft in the
Jefferson Tower physics building at Harvard University. The redshift
predicted by Einstein's Field Equations for the 74 ft. tall tower was
but two parts in a thousand trillion. The gravitational redshift
detected came within ten percent of the computed value. Quite a
feat!"

Pentcho Valev
pvalev(a)yahoo.com
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