What is REAL SCIENCE?

[Bob]

This page is dedicated to Professor Warren Siegel a real live professor of Physics at the State of NY University (SUNY) (in fact is from his page explaining what is a quack/hack calling themselves a physics major, or "new scientist", revolutionary "theorist"..)

I think it is brilliant Thanks Dr. Siegel

He makes my points a whole lot clearer, that I have made in various posts on this Forum and elsewhere about actually building something why that is important; at times we can find ourselves trying to search for an explanation why things may be different from theory and the observed reaction(s), and/or if others can physically duplicate something. When it can't be duplicated, and it remains theoretical, its just noise.

Those who talk the pretty prose, using fancy dialects to amaze and bewilder a lay person (and sell their books, or video's, or plans, or hope to dupe an investor hoping to make a killing for $$$, or are just really wanting something better for the world) are described by Warren pretty succinctly.

Enjoy !

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There is a distinction between "artistic" scientists & true quacks. The former have some bold new hypotheses (i.e., educated guesses) that have not completely confronted reality. (A former advisor of mine had a bumper-sticker-like sign in his office that went something like, "Your new theory is beautiful and elegant. Too bad it's wrong.")

The latter have old ideas that have been fudged to try to reproduce some of the results of new ideas. (For example, anyone sticking to Ptolemaic epicycles after the advent of Copernicus & Kepler would fall into this category. Fairy tales are also old ideas.)

Real quacks would not even make good science fiction authors (even if they claim to have contributed to science fiction stories made into cheap TV sitcoms).

Quacks (also known as "crackpots" or "cranks") want only to talk and not to listen. They are paranoids with delusions of grandeur: Their theory could never be wrong; therefore everyone else's must be. No one will listen to their self-contradictory claims; therefore there must be a world-wide web of conspiracy, lasting generations (apparently even between opposing sides through the World Wars & Cold War) to promote fantastic theories which, for some unexplained reason, seem sufficient for the design & operation of modern technology.

It is easy to distinguish the quacks; although they may seem reasonable at first, they degenerate into absurdity progressively with any conversation. This is because quacks are organic forms of artificial intelligence: They would not pass the Turing test applied to a physics conversation.

(This might be a good problem for a computer science student: Write a quack program, designed to sound as much like a true physicist as possible, then allow it to engage in a conversation with a real quack.)

They simply copy and paste text & equations they have found in 19th century literature, introductory physics textbooks, or the web, none of which they understand well enough to pass a test in school. (A musical description of them can be found in the song "Swinging on a Star", especially the mule & fish parts.)

Whenever questioned on any of their errors, they reply with repetition, non sequiturs, or insults. Eventually the true quacks make the same remarks, some version of almost all those listed below.

Generally, their comments are of 3 types:

Attacks on established theories, based on distaste and fear

"I have proven that special relativity/quantum mechanics/... is wrong."
You mean you did an experiment whose results disagree with the predictions of that theory?

I didn't think so. You mean you proved it is self-contradictory? Not possible: Mathematically it's an elementary system, whose consistency is easy to check. You might as well claim that you can prove 2+2=5. (If you think you can do that, I'm willing to give you $2+$2 change for a $5 bill.) If you think you have found an inconsistency, you have probably made an assumption that is not implied by the theory. The fact is that these theories are not only well confirmed by experiment, but practical use is made of them every single day.

Note: You will not dispell a quack's distaste for modern physics by relating it to classical physics, since they usually do not understand that either. This is an unusual example of "Familiarity breeds contempt."

Quacks seem to dislike modern physics literally because of the word "relativity": In their attacks, they focus on what is relative, not on what is absolute.

They know special relativity says time is relative, but don't understand (or care) that proper time is absolute. In rejecting relativity, they replace it with the ether, rejecting even Galilean relativity, because they refuse to accept that even velocity can be relative. Attacking Einstein is a favorite.

They know general relativity says reference frames are arbitrary, but don't know that it's curvature that displays the physics. They've heard that the uncertainty principle says there are things you can't measure, but don't know what you can measure.

Apparently they view modern physics as an attempt to limit their personal freedom. Their egotism does not allow them to accept any frame of reference as equal to their own.

Consequently they are basically 19th century physicists, except for the fact that they don't understand even that. They focus on attacking the physics of the 1st quarter of the 20th century & its results, oblivious to the fact that it is backed up by all the dependent theories & results since then.

They want to return to the "good old days", & constantly refer to archaic papers, as if history had anything to say about recent experimental results.

Thus quacks are in perfect agreement with the alleged statement of the Commissioner of the US Patent Office in 1899, "Everything that can be invented has been invented." So it's not surprising they reject ideas developed by someone while working @ the Swiss Patent Office a good several years later.

Quacks are dogmatists: Their point of view is a belief.

A belief is something one assumes to be true because one wants it to be true. They only come up with "proofs" or "evidence" to sway non-believers to their belief.

So you can waste your time disproving all their fallacies, but it won't matter to them, because they were invented only for you, & are totally irrelevant to their conviction.

For those of you quacks who want to know what it's like trying to explain 20th century physics to someone like you, I suggest you go to this web site and try to explain 19th century physics to the people there.

"But it's obvious nonsense!"
Then why does it work so well?
"You're wrong!"
That's just contradiction, not an argument.
"BUT I HAVE PROVEN YOU WRONG!!"
I already responded to that remark. And your caps lock key is stuck.
(Maybe you should use a bigger font.)
Update: I have already been yelled @ with a much bigger font --- another prediction confirmed.

Promotion of a new unified theory, based on laziness and pride

"My theory is prettier than the accepted one."
Take it to an art dealer.

"But Einstein/Feynman/... himself said that a theory must be pretty."
You have already admitted you reject their theories.

"My theory is better philosophically".
Take it to church.

"My theory agrees with the Bible/Quran/..."
The author of that book has not written any papers with testable predictions. Furthermore, many of the claims of that book are disputed (quite violently) in most parts of the world.

"My theory cures the common cold".
Take it to the hospital. (You now qualify as a quack in the strictest sense.)

"My theory makes more sense."
What could possibly make more sense than to have a theory that agrees with nature, as determined by experiment? If your theory only makes you feel better about its subject, it is a placebo, not a cure.

"Experimental verification isn't important in science."
Look up "scientific method" in the dictionary. Science is the study of the real world. If you make a claim in court, you need real evidence to back it up. If you make a bet, you have to provide a way to test that bet in a way that is unambiguous. It must be either right or wrong; there is no third alternative for a meaningful statement.

Note: The quacks I get are always theorists.

I don't think that's just an accident, or because I'm also a theorist, but because theory is easier for quacks than experiments.

(People who do cold fusion or sell snake oil are a level above these sorts.) It never occurs to them that there are a large number of experiments with which their new theory must agree.

The only response I have ever gotten from a quack to that criticism was that all the experimenters had purposely misinterpreted their raw data to make it agree with accepted theory.

This was in spite of the facts that:

He had never seen the raw data.

He had no clue as to how the experiment was done.

He didn't know any of the experimenters, at least not enough to slander their integrity.

The experiments were performed by many groups of people over a period of 60 years.

The first such experiment preceded the first theoretical calculation of the quantity.

His own prediction was 10,000,000 standard deviations off of the most recent experimental and theoretical ones (although it's doubtful he knew what a "standard deviation" was).

His theory was not capable of describing the dynamics necessary to perform any experiment to measure the quantity.

Apparently this quack was under the impression that all experimenters and theorists were part of a huge conspiracy, dating back decades (if not centuries), to unanimously support one theory. (If only cooperation between scientists were that good...) This is another example of how quacks are ignorant not only of physics, but also of psychology.

"My theory doesn't need any complicated math."

Then how do you calculate anything? Science is not just knowing "what goes up must come down", but when and where it comes down.

Note: Quacks come in slightly different levels of sophistication in math. Some use only words, and no numbers whatsoever, but lots of pictures. (However, with today's technology, it's easy for some of them to copy & paste equations they think look nice.)

The worst one I ever corresponded with claimed that dimensions did not physically exist, but were just abstract mathematical concepts, and you could never prove the existence of anything unless you could do it without equations.

After giving him the examples of directions, he claimed that "up" and "down" did not physically exist.

Better ones actually know arithmetic, but no algebra, so even E=mc2 is usually beyond them.

They will quote lots of numbers, which they "predicted" by some numerology, but never functions (like cross sections).

They don't understand units, or conventions, and will not appreciate that some constants of nature may be more natural with extra factors of 2π or so, or that some are actually not constants (like running couplings).

Since quacks never get over special relativity & quantum mechanics, even the ones who "re-derive" those results never get to doing the same for general relativity or quantum field theory.

They take great pride in what they take as reproducing the physics of Maxwell's equations or maybe even the Schrödinger equation, but have no awareness of the equations of Dirac or Einstein (gravity).

They have no understanding of the meaning of "approximation" or "perturbation expansion".

The worst don't even know how to make order of magnitude estimates, to determine what is & isn't relevant to a problem. One actually told me that in the problem of an artificial satellite orbiting the Earth, the motion of the Earth about the true center of their mutual orbit was not negligible, in spite of the fact that the satellite's mass was over 20 orders of magnitude smaller than the Earth's.

"Numbers aren't important in science."
I guess you can throw out your clock.

"How you explain something is more important than the numbers."
Try that the next time you pay a bill.

"You have to spend some time studying my theory."
I already spent some time: You don't need to eat a whole apple to know it's rotten. How much time did you spend getting an education in physics?

"Why don't you spend some time telling me what's wrong with my theory?"
Why don't you take a course? That's what they're for: So that many people can be taught the same thing at the same time, making more efficient use of the instructor's time. The instructor's office hours are for those who already took their own time studying the course material.

"My theory totally replaces the accepted one."
Sorry, science doesn't work that way. Why do you think theories get accepted in the first place? Because scientists like them? No, because experiments verify them.

And if some experiment agrees with some theory, that fact isn't changed by the invention of a new theory. The worst (or best) that can happen is that a new experiment disagrees with that theory, or an old experiment is done more accurately and is no longer in perfect agreement.

Then the old theory is recognized as an approximation to the truth, that doesn't apply in all situations, or works only to so many decimal places.

That's why classical mechanics is still taught in spite of quantum mechanics, and non-relativistic mechanics is still taught in spite of special relativity, and your neighborhood butcher didn't throw away his scales when general relativity was discovered.

And even if you or someone else eventually finds a replacement for special relativity or quantum mechanics, it will not change the fact that experiments have already proven non-relativistic physics and classical physics to be wrong. You can only go forward, not backward; there is no nostalgia in physical law, it is not fashion.

"I know my theory is right, without wasting my time learning the accepted theories."
Science doesn't work that way, either.

The fact is, the accepted theories already work, so why replace them?

To start with, you have to reproduce all the correct results of the established theories: That means you first have to learn those theories, then check that your new theory can successfully reproduce their correct results.

After all, if they're so wrong, why do they work so well? (dohhhh...)

Secondly, to replace the old theories, you have to do better: Successfully predict something the old theories don't.

In other words, your new theory has to agree with the old theories where they agree with experiment, and also agree with experiment where the old theory disagrees.

But how would you know all that if you haven't studied the old theories in the first place? Would you read a movie review by someone who didn't see the movie?

"I can explain all of physics, and I didn't need to go to graduate school or study any graduate textbooks."
Would you allow yourself to be operated on by a surgeon who never went to med school?

"Oh, yeah, all that medicine they teach in college is a waste of time. I learned surgery all by myself at home! Yeah, from the internet! Oh, lots of practice -- every Thanksgiving, when I carve the turkey!

I even removed my own X-organ! That's what those stupid M.D.'s call a liver -- or is it a spleen? And I didn't even need an anesthetic! Now just hold still while I make the initial carv-, er, incision..."

Personal attacks, as a diversion from their failure

"That's what they told Galileo."
I know Galileo, and you're no Galileo. On the contrary, you're one of the "they", people who, without any evidence in their favor, contradict real scientists. (Actually, "they" to whom you refer have been dead for over 300 years. The world has changed a bit since then.)

Note: Quacks usually contradict Galileo, by rejecting Galilean relativity.

They also often personally attack Einstein, claiming his useful stuff was done by Lorentz, who found fewer results based on more assumptions (like ether).

I even got one claim that Voigt did Lorentz transformations 1st, ignoring the fact that he got them wrong. Apparently, being 1st is more important than being right.

That allows them to stay in the 19th century, & pretend special relativity is wrong because Einstein didn't discover anything.

"The establishment always rejects new ideas."
2+2=5 isn't new, but it is wrong.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean you're right.

Actually, there is no "establishment" in science: Scientists often disagree, until nature (through experiment) determines who's right, just like people making a bet. But quacks always welsh on their bets, never admitting they're wrong.

"I knew you were going to say that!"
Then why are we having this conversation?

Then that is the first prediction you have made that has proven true.

"I knew you wouldn't listen, you scientists are too arrogant and closed-minded."
Look in the mirror.

Note: Quacks, like criminals, often blame others for their own crimes.

They call real science "belief".

If you try to explain to a quack the actual physics at even high school level, he will immediately claim that you are the one who is ignorant.

The amazing thing is that many quacks claim to have read this very page, & yet repeat the exact mistakes listed here.

They have a predictable, uncontrollable compulsion to make these same errors. When realizing they have done so, their guilt then forces them to accuse me of those very faults.

"I'm going to talk to a real scientist instead."
Good luck.

Note: Long ago a professor of mine told me that he got letters from 2 quacks, so he forwarded each's letter to the other. He got back an angry letter from one saying, "Why did you introduce me to this quack?"

"I spend my time helping humanity, you waste your time on garbage."
No, you waste your time trying to convince people who know their theories work that they don't, when all the evidence is in their favor. I only spend part of my time on garbage, and only when it contacts me first.

"You %$#@@%# $% #%#* *#%!!"
You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.
Note: Some quacks have blogs, to try to attract moral support from other quacks.

I found one such site devoted exclusively to attempted character assassination of physicists.

I was criticized for my physical attributes, including some bigotry I haven't heard since elementary school.

Quacks are totally oblivious to the fact that childish behavior serves only to destroy any shred of credibility they might have had left, & they will not hesitate to disseminate this as widely as possible. (Apparently their parents never taught them internet manners.)

Mental illness is common, but most of the afflicted can still function in today's society (although often this is because they are retired). Most people continue to use computers, even if some deny the science they are based upon. (Quacks are hypocrites as well as ingrates.)

The situation is less serious in physics than biology: Some people pass laws to prohibit or restrict the teaching of evolution, but there have been no serious attempts to outlaw special relativity or quantum mechanics since the days of Hitler & Stalin (which failed because nuclear science required them).

Fortunately, the world depends on the technology derived from modern physics for its economy, communication, leisure, etc. Not from theories unproven by experiment.

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We'll bring up a few more of Dr. Siegel's Insights for the LayPerson wanting to understand Physics in subsequent posts.

ref: http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/~siegel/plan.html

[Tesla_WTC_Solution]

This might be the longest post I've read this month. And Bob, it held my attention like my nose was in a vice.
Even when irritated you possess a very interesting turn of phrase -- and this is very educational -- there is good guidance, educational advice, a method to apply to academic loose ends.

One problem with modern people is that they are no longer maturing/developing/growing up the way people used to.
You will continue to be frustrated with most of them, even the ones modern society considers "bright" are nothing like "the way things were".

Now, I disagree with CNN's statement that "the internet is destroying religion" -- quite the opposite -- but is it destroying good science/proper measure?

Yes, I would have to say that is true -- and I would be forced to agree with much of your post, in spite of me having achieved most of the stupidity points possible during this exercise.



One approach to this problem of ignorance and education gap is to take Skywizard's style -- make a habit of posting educational stuff fairly often, for people who are not as developed to find and read. I.e. most people would not even know what to Google in order to produce a Skywizard article. But folks like you with a lot of experience under their belts need to be more proactive in the educational sector/arena.

We can't just pull our hair our and wish for the way things were a few years ago either -- believe me, I'd LOVE the chance to go back and do school over again, college again, to really apply myself. But I can't time travel (that I know of), so any education will be taking place in the present/future.


Although a short (or long) sharp shock does work, it causes resentment in the pupil.
The same respect that we give to wild creatures works on dim humans as well .
But it takes a lot more time/patience to Tame the Fool than to Tame the Beast.


I sure hope I didn't piss you off somehow, Bob.
It's hard to make everyone happy, especially those smart guys.

p.s.

[joeecho]

Isn't science about understanding something from its basic 'building blocks' and building a theory/ story around that?

What I find interesting is how science and science FICTION follow similar lines. It's only a matter of a TIME/ SPACE difference.

What is real and what is the illusion (fiction)?

Red M&M? Blue M&M? Someone had the bright idea to mix them together and get a 'real illusion', a 'grand illusion' if you will.....

[Atlas]

They will quote lots of numbers, which they "predicted" by some numerology, but never functions

Yeah, I noticed this quite a number of times.

"How you explain something is more important than the numbers."
Try that the next time you pay a bill.

Hell yeah!

You can only go forward, not backward; there is no nostalgia in physical law, it is not fashion.

Speaking of which, I posted a thread quite some time ago but received no 'scientific' comment yet:

The Doomsday argument : 95% chance of extinction within 9,120 years

[araucaria]

Quackery is of course a very real phenomenon, that’s for sure. But to avoid the straw man argument, we need also to consider how some reputable mainstream scientists lose their status and become ‘maverick’ or ‘alternative’ scientists. Unlike quacks, who never seem to reach the verifiable/verified prediction stage, these scientists have put out Unlike quacks, who never seem to reach the verifiable/verified prediction stage, these scientists have made unlikely predictions that have subsequently been verified.
[Edit: see http://etheric.com/predictions-part-...d-climatology/]Unfortunately, their open-mindedness also tends to lead them into other areas such as the paranormal, which are by definition bunkum with no proof required.

Tesla is of course the most illustrious example here. His innovations in electricity stopped being interesting when the power could no longer be metered. Too often, science and technology are in bed with banksterism.

Take Tom van Flandern. He was a mainstream astronomer until he wasn’t. He begins his Preface to Dark Matter… saying

Something is wrong with science – fundamentally wrong. Theories just keep getting stranger and stranger.

He talks about inertia in science, and over-specialization. He quotes Charles Sanders Pierce:

The first and primary obligation of any philosopher or scientist is to do nothing that would block enquiry.

Van Flandern’s methodology is deductive, going from cause to effect, rather than inductive reasoning, proceeding from effect to cause. In this way, he can start out with a one-particle universe and work his way up. You can dismiss him as a theorist, but does not the scientific method involve forming theories and testing them? That is what he does. The process is one of building upon solid ground, whereas scientists often fail to see the falsity of their basic assumptions (such as redshift being exclusively a velocity effect, which it is not).

Or take Paul LaViolette. His Subquantum kinetics theory was not deemed publishable in any physics journal, but occupied a whole special issue of the International Journal of General Systems. Hence you have one peer-review system saying no, and another saying yes. And here again, it is not any shortcomings with respect to the scientific method that takes him out of the mainstream. It is the unacceptable ideas that his method produces – such as the likelihood of pulsars being an ETI communications network. And again, we come up against the unscientific notion of some ideas being unacceptable.

Or take the late Brian O’Leary, a self-confessed scientific heretic, who went from being a Princeton professor to being a free energy advocate, advising presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. He had been a political activist ever since his career as an astronaut headed for Mars was derailed and the money siphoned off for the Vietnam war.

The Energy Solution Revolution, his account of the suppression of new technology, includes a quote from the philosopher Bertrand Russell that sounds like a new law of physics:

The resistance to a new idea increases as the square of its importance.

Along with one from the researcher Eugene Mallove, who is one of so many who have been brutally murdered:

If the Scientific Establishment trusts only in its textbook theories and if they disbelieve people of good will who have the means of bringing (new energy) forward and choose ‘not to look through the telescope’, the consequences will be that these wondrous technologies will not be developed as rapidly as they would otherwise – or they may not be developed at all! This has been and will be a monumental tragedy for virtually every category of human experience, all of which will be transformed by these now apparently ‘unwanted’ discoveries. Eugene Mallove, www.infinite-energy.com, 2004

Or take Rupert Sheldrake. In the preface to The Science Delusion, he writes:

I have spent all my adult life as a scientist, and I strongly believe in the importance of the scientific approach. Yet I have become increasingly convinced that the sciences have lost much of their vigour, vitality and curiosity. Dogmatic ideology, fear-based conformity and institutional inertia are inhibiting scientific creativity.
With scientific colleagues, I have been struck over and over again by the contrast between public and private discussions. In public, scientists are very wary of the powerful taboos that restrict the range of permissible topics; in private they are often more adventurous.

So yes, while there will always be quacks, they are not the real problem. The real issue that is always being skirted is with science itself. There are far too many people looking into the sex life of the fruit fly, and to make sure of their generous funding, doing so with particular reference to climate change or some such, and not nearly enough doing the kind of science we need.

[Carmody]

Taken from another thread, which I think gets to the point of how the maverick in science and physics can be seen to have rounded an unseen corner and been lost to logic, lost to science. How they expand their science into the esoteric, how they themselves can get lost or lose those who might try and follow. How the mind of self and individual must change in order to grasp the new.

Essentially, the obvious...which is old steps cannot become new steps until they are new steps. (Duh!, but not so obvious for most folks) Due to the complexity of the issue they may not be realized by those who frame themselves in the old steps. This is outside of the idea of investing the old step self blindly into the new step. Self must capitulate first, into creating the internal frameworks for the new step ... and that is a task for self, not externalization and integration without proper internal controls and internal steering. The problem is that the reformation of self and the new data happen at the same time.

Posted by Carmody (here)
As well, the vector analysis (Kron's math, etc) describes the potential for interaction/reaction/etc, in the physical space, in time, in relation to time.

So it's not abstract vs real. It's real vs finding an avenue in the math to describe the interactive into a space and place we cannot easily define in the human mind. To create a relational parameter for transference of ideas..in a thing which cannot be idealized in this space, as components of it are not real in this space. Not yet, anyway. We're dealing with reflection/fold-back.... into our 'reality'.

Basically, philosophical mathematics as a true and real formative descriptor/interactive, which is bit of a problem for some....

Think of higher dimensions being composed of frequential/geometric/angular-vectoral relational patterning, with regard to their interactive in this 'space'.

The complexity and reach of our pattern analysis is neither deep enough, complex enough, nor targeted properly enough to get to an initial point of grasp, in order to get to the initial point of idealization of the components, in human relational terms.

At least with respect to science.

Humans can 'get it' - just fine. Which is why you have situations like the CIA hanging around with the Dali Lama. It's not just the politics.

It requires a duality of analysis, in logic and intuitive, as a single grouped system. An actual whole and holistic approach.

Currently, science is of only one half of the human mind (linear logic only), and will forever struggle to grasp it, without getting there.

Logic is the child of mind, the child of awareness, the child of consciousness. If it wishes to reach for the stars, so to speak, it will have to re-own and re-integrate it's origins. It must have the ladder and frameworks required to make the reach - and right now, it does not.

To clarify, I think that this thread or possibly, what is meant by it's presence -is important. (the forum seeming to move to incoherent idealism in projections, at this time)

The problem is that as 'mind' clears old and moves into new, the signal to noise level invariably reaches a minimum of a 50/50% split. Part of the process. This happens on the individual level and the global level, in various forms and ways.

Emergence into clarity, requires dumping the old so the new can get in (human mental reorganization). Part of that process is, inescapably... an initial phase of actual and real insanity (from individual to global), with regard to how people view the idea and process.

The trick, in human societal and global coherence and stability terms, is to do it as slowly and carefully as is possible.

At some point, relatively speaking, all the wheels of everyone must be off the ground at nearly the same time. Within the idea and the reality of the slip or motion, is the motion into chaos. It cannot be avoided -only mitigated.

[ulli]

The road to truth must lead to the discovery of the self, and it's confusing complexity.

And only when the confusion which inevitably accompanies the journey into the inner unknown is embraced, can there be moments of intense light, clarity, and high knowledge downloads can begin.

Then true creativity is turned on, and our potential as collective myth makers becomes evident to one's self as well as others.
We can only hope that today's so called scientists can do a U-turn, and temporarily give up their addiction to consensus. The inner self cannot be discovered any other way.

However, once it is discovered then the need for consensus among the new visionaries and myth makers is paramount.
How can one person alone repair the mess?
Critical mass is needed.

[Hervé]

Posted by araucaria (here)
[...]

Along with one from the researcher Eugene Mallove, who is one of so many who have been brutally murdered:

If the Scientific Establishment trusts only in its textbook theories and if they disbelieve people of good will who have the means of bringing (new energy) forward and choose ‘not to look through the telescope’, the consequences will be that these wondrous technologies will not be developed as rapidly as they would otherwise – or they may not be developed at all! This has been and will be a monumental tragedy for virtually every category of human experience, all of which will be transformed by these now apparently ‘unwanted’ discoveries. Eugene Mallove, www.infinite-energy.com, 2004

[...]

[Cardillac]

science is nothing more than a system of measurements regarding our five senses; then enter the 6th sense (telepathy, psychic abilities, etc.) which can NOT be measured by conventional science (let alone the existence of the human soul) which is why conventional science (now enter the concept of power-hungry religious priests who were the first sources/inventors of 'science') still does not recognize the existence of the human soul/telepathy, etc.; BUT: if one pays enough money to the church(es) we have a 'free' ticket to "heaven" and suddenly our souls become a monetary-based reality (even true spirituality has become a business)...

Larry

[araucaria]

Posted by Cardillac (here)
science is nothing more than a system of measurements regarding our five senses; then enter the 6th sense (telepathy, psychic abilities, etc.) which can NOT be measured by conventional science

Well Larry, I would disagree with that. One of the most spectacular examples of measurable psychic phenomena is reported by James Spottiswoode in a paper reported by David Wilcock. In his meta-analysis of twenty years’ worth of psychic research totaling hundreds of different trials, he ‘found that the earth’s alignment with the galaxy could create up to a 450 percent increase in psychic accuracy each day – within one hour of 13.30 local sidereal time’ (DW, The Source Field, p.409).
Spottiswoode S.J.P. Apparent Association between anomalous cognition effect size and sidereal time.
http://www.treurniet.ca/GCP/JSE_Spottiswoode.pdf

Abstract
Nothing is known about the physical mechanism of anomalous cognition (AC), or ESP. A
first step towards generating focused hypotheses would be the discovery of a physical
parameter which clearly modulated AC performance. In this paper, an association
between the local sidereal time (LST) at which a trial occurs and the resulting effect size is
described. In an existing database of 1,468 free response trials, the effect size increased
340% for trials within 1 hour of 13.5h LST (p= 0.001). A independent database of
1,015 similar trials was subsequently obtained in which trials within 1 hour of 13.5h LST
showed an effect size increase of 450% (p = 0.05) providing confirmation of the effect.
Possible artifacts due to the non-uniform distribution of trials in clock time and variations
of effect size with experiment are discussed and rejected as explanations. Assuming that
some unknown systematic bias is not present in the data, it appears that AC performance
is strongly dependent upon the LST at which the trial occurs. This is evidence of a causal
connection between performance and the orientation of the receiver (i.e., a term for
subject or participant), the earth and the fixed stars.

See also: Spottiswoode S.J.P. & May E.C. Anomalous Cognition Effect Size: Dependence on Sidereal Time and Solar Wind Parameters.
http://www.jsasoc.com/docs/PA-GMF.pdf

The beauty of this analysis for me is the fact that the data come from different times of year, different places on the globe, and different times of day, because LST is always out of synch with earth time, and variably so as well, hence things like circadian issues are eliminated. Also, it is a parameter that would have been totally absent from the thinking behind all the experimental designs, ensuring that the trials were completely blind.

[Cardillac]

@araucaria

many thanks for your incredibly detailed response- greatly appreciated-

"The beauty of this analysis for me is the fact that the data come from different times of year, different places on the globe, and different times of day, because LST is always out of synch with earth time"-

time does not exist; it's an illusion; only 'clocks' exist- time/clocks: they're a man-made illusion (like start with priests and Pope Gregory whats-his-number who came up with the idiotic Gregorian calender lobbing off 9 (12?) days from the Julian calender to fit the Gregorian calender which still doesn't work out correctly because we have to add another day to the year every four years- how idiotic is that?-

anyway, where is the PROOF there are 60 seconds to a minute/60 minutes to an hour/24 hours a day/7 days a week, etc.?- there is none- it's all an illusion and the illusion is based upon the (attributed to) Sumerian sexigesimal system (if we're to believe this)-

my point: time is an illusion, only a concept of our conscious mind; our subconscious knows no time; and clocks were a creation of (guess what?) our manipulated conscious minds-

stay well!-

Larry

[ulli]

Time is measured by day and night. By observing seasons.
Also by observing orbits. The earth orbits around the sun 365 1/4 rotations around its own axis. These are not mental constructs, but real.
There is a predictable regularity of the movement of the moon, the planets, the stars.

The sub-divisions into hours, minutes and seconds, IOW, to measure real time, are a convenience for humans, to agree on collective action.
Not always a bad thing. It depends how one wants to use it.

[Tesla_WTC_Solution]

Those who said the 6th sense is not measurable -- the truth is more of a mixed bag.
There have been LOTS of successful ESP experiments.

But these fall under the category of things like the J Meson and November Revolution.
To quote a very stupid scientist at CERN, "it is not good for a hypothesis if it demands the introduction of another hypothesis".

No, the opposite is true-- the only things worth investigating are those which raise even more questions.

Questions are ropes that lead to progress.

without questions the human mind has no purpose.


The Society for Psychical Research would have hurt feelings if they heard "you can't measure/document the 6th sense".
Then what have they been doing for 100 years?
Does it mean they are forced to give their knowledge for free?
Or sell to highest bidder like a pair of fancy underwear?


No.


Science begins with respectful curiosity.

p.s. ESP is difficult to measure because of the nature of the unconscious mind.
it's hard to force this mind to act. it also needs something to observe, like a threat or a reward. the unconscious is a highly trained but sometimes stupid animal.

[araucaria]

Posted by Cardillac (here)
@araucaria

many thanks for your incredibly detailed response- greatly appreciated-

"The beauty of this analysis for me is the fact that the data come from different times of year, different places on the globe, and different times of day, because LST is always out of synch with earth time"-

time does not exist; it's an illusion; only 'clocks' exist- time/clocks: they're a man-made illusion (like start with priests and Pope Gregory whats-his-number who came up with the idiotic Gregorian calender lobbing off 9 (12?) days from the Julian calender to fit the Gregorian calender which still doesn't work out correctly because we have to add another day to the year every four years- how idiotic is that?-

anyway, where is the PROOF there are 60 seconds to a minute/60 minutes to an hour/24 hours a day/7 days a week, etc.?- there is none- it's all an illusion and the illusion is based upon the (attributed to) Sumerian sexigesimal system (if we're to believe this)-

my point: time is an illusion, only a concept of our conscious mind; our subconscious knows no time; and clocks were a creation of (guess what?) our manipulated conscious minds-

stay well!-

Larry

Larry, I came across this quote only yesterday (in van Flandern) :

A friend of mine once held that time and space were illusions. I told him to meet me at the coffee shop in two hours to discuss it. He was never seen or heard from again. – Joel Frahm

More seriously, to complement Ulli’s comment, I have mentioned on various occasions the Niniveh constant discovered by Maurice Chatelain, e.g. here:

Posted by araucaria (here)
Take Maurice Chatelain’s Nineveh Constant, found on Sumerian tablets (he was a NASA scientist and engineer during the Apollo years). This is a number (70*60^6) that corresponds in seconds to an exact number of periods of everything in the solar system. At least it is nearly exact: it was precisely exact 64,800 years ago. Maurice Chatelain then took the suicidal step of concluding that there had been an ET presence at least back then if not ever since.

The fact that the entire solar system, and probably the entire galaxy and beyond, is calibrated to a precise number of seconds that can be divided by sixty to the power six, suggests as plainly as possible that the second is a fundamental unit of something, other units deriving from this constant being minutes, hours, days, weeks and even thirty-day months (and 360-day years).

If you want evidence of a different kind (although that hardly seems necessary), I am wondering why, as a reasonably fit, healthy male, my heart rate is sixty pulses per minute give or take one or two. I could boil an egg without an egg timer

And here we are getting into harmony, which is about proportion in timing, the synergies of different frequencies. The balancing of frequencies is also to be found in the various forms of physical love. As they rise from male to female and from parent to offspring, a sexual encounter may be seen as predominantly a thing of excitement for the male, of soothing for the female, and a parental relationship as predominantly a thing of excitement for the parent, and of soothing for the child, who is therefore in a very real sense closer to its mother than to its father.

Time is a very persistent illusion, as Einstein described it.

Have a nice [whatever]

PS: Further to Tesla’s comment, Lynne McTaggart’s The Field, and The Intention Experiment are recommended reading.

[Carmody]

Well, coming from and going to, can only exist in a system of differentiation.

This can only exist in a system where all things are not the same, as can the idea of thing exist only in that frameworks.

existentialism, individualism, consciousness, thought, etc...... can only rise from that state of differential and differential exists only in the complex vibrating 'particle' domain. The medium and the message are one and the same.

'Can only rise' is also part and parcel of the problem, as the frameworks also prevents a look outside due to this medium and message being synonymous. The situation creates the basis of exclusivity or exclusion from other frameworks.

Ie, "you".. "can only be"..."in the idea of thought", "from within this context".

One can have the idea of other but frameworks translation to this place is a fundamental that must take place..... as relevance is unto itself. In which there is no guarantee that values and weighting of any kind be maintained or indeed that anything useful can be translated. Even the idea of this itself as potential problem or issue, is in itself not guaranteed to be faultless.

Which is why science arises out of philosophy and cannot, under any possible form of logic in analysis ever escape or be excluded from that point.

And when science attempts to explain fundamentals... it cannot help but be in error if it proclaims 'facts'.

For it can be seen..on the fundamental level, that no facts, of any kind... exist. Only musing and theory exist, in the idea of consciousness possibly being 'real', whatever the hell that means.

In this place the only potential firm thing is the idea of 'I AM', nothing more. That's it.

The rest is speculation based on unknowns. Even logic cannot solve itself.

[Chanlo23]

Posted by Bobd (here)
This page is dedicated to Professor Warren Siegel a real live professor of Physics at the State of NY University (SUNY) (in fact is from his page explaining what is a quack/hack calling themselves a physics major, or "new scientist", revolutionary "theorist"..) I think it is brilliant Thanks Dr. Siegel

This fellow is great! Thanks BobD!

[Bob]

Can a new way to make a LASER beam that is more efficient and uses 1000X less power
than the previous methods show that real science can still make breakthroughs?

Maybe.

Researchers have demonstrated a way to make power-efficient laser-like beams without using light as the excitation.

These current beams, made with electrical current, reportedly use 250 times less power than the older method of using light to excite crystals (such as in the original "ruby laser"), and function efficiently even at room temperature.

This breakthrough is as important as the first "understandings reduced to practice" from the 50's and 60's where the MASER (50's) and ruby LASER (60's) came into being.

Pallab Bhattacharya, lead investigator and designer of the new system from the University of Michigan modestly called the first prototypes a bit less efficient, "only" using 250X less power, although the process can with optimum tweaking the phenomenon, can bring that up to 1000X less power required for a given laser beam power output. His first designs were to create ultra-violet laser light, a process which is extremely energy intensive.

A laser these days, if it is a solid state laser such as used in Laser pointers and CD players, or CD burners, at best, and on average takes about two times as much power INPUT to get an optical beam power out, such as 2 watts in for 1 watt output. That's pretty amazing still when you think of it, having a way to take random energy, put it into a tight directed beam where the power can be transferred over distance. The excess current though in the diode laser MUST be efficiently removed by an adequate heat sink radiator, else it will burn out quickly.

Transferring power or information over a large distance efficiently without the need for solid conductors, or waveguides (hollow pipes able to act like plumbing) is a goal. Inside a computer for instance, chips designed without conduction wires can improve speed of operation, and have less thermal losses as heat consumes energy. (You know your laptop gets hot, that's because of the wasted energy that is radiated from the processing "chips" as they do their work).

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-anw060514.php - is the PRE-PUBLICATION notice of Dr. Bhattacharya's work which will be "officially" published by the 15th.

He says his new process is using geometrically tuned "polaritons", or something that was recognized years ago, as a quasi particle/photon, neither light, nor matter, but having a type of intermediate state.. (K.B. Tolpygo, 1950, Ukraine research - In physics, polaritons are quasiparticles resulting from strong coupling of electromagnetic waves with an electric or magnetic dipole-carrying excitation. They are an expression of the common quantum phenomenon known as level repulsion, also known as the avoided crossing principle. Polaritons describe the crossing of the dispersion of light with any interacting resonance.)

Room Temperature Electrically Injected Polariton Laser is the name of the paper which will be released.

This design for the new "diode laser" reconfigures how the reflective layers and excitation electrodes are placed within the light emitting medium.

Typically these mediums are a mix of gallium oxide, arsenic, nitrogen and other substances to create what are called "HOLES", or receptor areas in the matter to accept (or during donation that which is "left") electrons but allow for photon generation under certain conditions during recombination, "hole filling". Electrons are the "particles" which are called an electrical current when they move. That which is important then is, can electron and hole (receiver for electron) "pairs" be manipulated efficiently? That is where the breakthrough came, theory was there, but reducing to practice (building the thing) was needed, and this is where real science apparently appeared.

What is the importance of revisiting this quasi-particle?

A polariton is a combination of a photon or light particle and an exciton – an electron-hole pair.

The electron is "negatively charged" and the hole is technically the absence of an electron (the receiver location for an electron), but it (the hole) behaves as if it were positively charged.

Excitons will only fuse with light particles under just the right conditions. Too much light or electrical current will cause the excitons to break down too early.

But with just enough "tuning", polaritons will form and then bounce around the system until they come to rest at their lowest energy level in what Bhattacharya describes as a "coherent pool".

There, the polaritons decay and in the process, release a beam of single-colored light, in this case in the ultra-violet part of the spectrum. To create efficient UV laser light without complex "up converter" frequency multiplier crystals in the optical path, directly has been a challenge.

Therefore, to be able to effectively transfer energy, have very high density electronic circuitry, the wavelength of the laser light, has to be small. Small means greater density, more functions can be packed into a given chip size.. all considered then, lower heat, higher switching speeds, shorter distances for the "light" to travel..

And there you go, coherent single wavelength very pure light (photons).

What I read in this is there is a resonance, a very efficient window where this polariton manufacturing process becomes ideal. In resonance there is very low resistance, so there will be very little waste of energy. Maybe the wording here could be called, "Atomically Resonantly Tuned" (artfully manufactured quasi-particle --->photon decay/release). Inside the crystalline structure there are mirrors, to create the optical cavity, as in other diode lasers which generate a "beam".

My guess is the mirrors are also part of the process, a way to shape the polariton field to keep efficiency up. Maybe that is where the power to coherent light efficiency boosts will occur as the technology matures.

This is the closest from what it appears that this new laser design configures:



The above is called a Vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser.

What we don't know yet is what the "failure mode" will be for this new laser, including the operating life-time, the ability to mass produce, and or "ease" to manufacture.

HISTORY

An early demonstration of polaritonic lasing and a comparison to conventional lasing was achieved back in 2003 by H. Deng et al. at Stanford University using optical excitation. Light excitation is wasteful of energy.

In 1996, Imamoglu et al. proposed that a "polariton" based lasing could be achieved. They observed an effect closely related to Bose–Einstein condensation of atoms: A large number of bosonic particles, ( another way to describe polaritons) form a condensate. In other words they "pool" under the right conditions. The "condensate of polaritons", finally provides coherent emission of light when recombination occurs.

Dr. Bhattacharya et al observed this, but he produced (reduced theory to practice) his polariton pool using electricity, not needing the step of creating light to evoke the stimulation.

Published Paper

http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract...ett.110.206403

In 2013,Bhattacharya et al provided this physics explanation:

"Inversionless ultralow threshold coherent emission, or polariton lasing, can be obtained by spontaneous radiative recombination from a degenerate polariton condensate with nonresonant excitation.

"Such excitation has, hitherto, been provided by an optical source.

"Coherent emission from a GaAs-based quantum well microcavity diode with electrical injection is observed here. (Gallium Arsenide material for the laser).

"This is achieved by a combination of modulation doping of the wells, to invoke polariton-electron scattering, and an applied magnetic field in the Faraday geometry to enhance the exciton-polariton saturation density.

"These measures help to overcome the relaxation bottleneck and to form a macroscopic and degenerate condensate as evidenced by angle-resolved luminescence, light-current characteristics, spatial coherence, and output polarization.

"The experiments were performed at 30 K (super-cooled) with an applied field of 7 Teslas."

Again we see that intense magnetic fields and low temperatures were required in early research.