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Since When Is Physics Untestable?

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  Since When Is Physics Untestable? Pentcho Valev <pvalev@yahoo.com> - 2016-07-13 02:21 -0700
    Re: Since When Is Physics Untestable? mlwozniak@wp.pl - 2016-07-13 03:03 -0700
      Re: Since When Is Physics Untestable? Thomas Heger <ttt_heg@web.de> - 2016-07-14 07:29 +0200
    Re: Since When Is Physics Untestable? Jack Chardy <jackc@outlool.org> - 2016-07-13 19:47 +0000
    Re: Since When Is Physics Untestable? Pentcho Valev <pvalev@yahoo.com> - 2016-07-13 22:36 -0700
      Re: Since When Is Physics Untestable? Thomas Heger <ttt_heg@web.de> - 2016-07-14 08:37 +0200
      Re: Since When Is Physics Untestable? Pentcho Valev <pvalev@yahoo.com> - 2016-07-14 08:50 -0700

#387680 — Since When Is Physics Untestable?

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/what-happens-when-we-cant-test-scientific-theories 
 Frank Close, professor of physics at the University of Oxford: "What happens when we can’t test scientific theories? [...] In recent years, however, many physicists have developed theories of great mathematical elegance, but which are beyond the reach of empirical falsification, even in principle. The uncomfortable question that arises is whether they can still be regarded as science. Some scientists are proposing that the definition of what is "scientific" be loosened, while others fear that to do so could open the door for pseudo-scientists or charlatans to mislead the public and claim equal space for their views."

http://backreaction.blogspot.bg/2016/07/pulsars-could-probe-black-hole-horizons.html 
 Sabine Hossenfelder said... "Well, that's what I'm saying, there are no quantitative predictions from any of these scenarios. On the risk of appearing cynical, it's like they don't want their ideas to be testable."

 piein skee said... "You're not cynicaL to think it, because it's plausible for lots of more general reasons, why a quiet aversion to tests should be taking root at the moment, despite tests being also what everyone agrees most needed. E.g. if no-one else is getting tested, then you're going to be the only one who got it wrong. You'd think there'd be prestige - logically and sensibly there would be - but when something has been missing for a long time, the basic channels through which ideas get considered and win or lose favour will rewire, into what we increasingly have, which is about ever elongating beauty contexts, media profile, getting a name for yourself. Without prediction, that's just the default drift of the stream and what you need most in an ever elongating process that may never conclude, is an idea that never goes away. It's much more advanced in the multiverse community than yours, but if you want to know where it's going to be in a few years look there. Question: why is max tegmarks multiverse better than david deutsch's? Max Tegmark is sexier. You get the same default in poorly performing corporate environments, and much elsewhere besides. It's no-ones fault and people can't be blamed for putting their families and career prospects first, and if the single standout way to get offered a better job is beauty contests, media savvy and lots of prose practice - which it is if there's no predictions - then people will do what they have to. But 'Science' cannot endure, even if prettier more eloquent scientists with higher profiles and sexy ideas can." [end of quotation]

It isn't true that physics has become untestable "in recent years" - actually it has been so since 1915:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fudge_factor 
 "A fudge factor is an ad hoc quantity introduced into a calculation, formula or model in order to make it fit observations or expectations. Examples include Einstein's Cosmological Constant..." 

http://discovermagazine.com/2004/sep/the-masters-mistakes/ 
 "In 1916 Einstein found what he considered a glitch in his new theory of general relativity. His equations showed that the contents of the universe should be moving— either expanding or contracting. But at the time, the universe seemed the very definition of stasis. All the data, facts, and phenomena known in the early 1900s said that the Milky Way was the cosmos itself and that its stars moved slowly, if at all. Einstein had presented the definitive version of the general theory of relativity to the Prussian Academy of Sciences the previous year, and he was not inclined to retract it. So he invented a fudge factor, called lambda, that could function mathematically to hold the universe at a standstill. [...] Lambda, also known as the cosmological constant, has come in handy of late." 

http://www.amazon.com/Magnificent-Universe-Ken-Croswell/dp/0684845946 
 Ken Croswell, Magnificent Universe, p. 179: "Ever since, the cosmological constant has lived in infamy, a fudge factor concocted merely to make theory agree with observation." 

If fudge factors are a legitimate tool in theorizing, what is the point of testing the theory built in this way? General relativity is an empirical model - Einsteinians are free to introduce, change and withdraw fudge factors until the "theory" manages to predict anything Einsteinians want. Then the prediction turns out to be confirmed by observations (surprise surprise). Two more examples of successful fudging: 

1. By introducing the fudge factor -2g (NEGATIVE acceleration of light falling towards the source of gravity, e.g. in the gravitational field of the Earth), Einstein and his mathematical friends made relativity predict the gravitational redshift, a prediction originally made by Newton's emission theory of light:

http://www.speed-light.info/speed_of_light_variable.htm 
 "Einstein wrote this paper in 1911 in German. [...] ...you will find in section 3 of that paper Einstein's derivation of the variable speed of light in a gravitational potential, eqn (3). The result is: c'=c0(1+φ/c^2) where φ is the gravitational potential relative to the point where the speed of light c0 is measured. Simply put: Light appears to travel slower in stronger gravitational fields (near bigger mass). [...] You can find a more sophisticated derivation later by Einstein (1955) from the full theory of general relativity in the weak field approximation. [...] Namely the 1955 approximation shows a variation in km/sec twice as much as first predicted in 1911." 

http://www.einstein-online.info/spotlights/redshift_white_dwarfs 
 Albert Einstein Institute: "One of the three classical tests for general relativity is the gravitational redshift of light or other forms of electromagnetic radiation. However, in contrast to the other two tests - the gravitational deflection of light and the relativistic perihelion shift -, you do not need general relativity to derive the correct prediction for the gravitational redshift. A combination of Newtonian gravity, a particle theory of light, and the weak equivalence principle (gravitating mass equals inertial mass) suffices. [...] The gravitational redshift was first measured on earth in 1960-65 by Pound, Rebka, and Snider at Harvard University..."

2. Recently LIGO conspirators made a detailed and totally new prediction of black hole collisions and resulting gravitational waves (Einstein regarded both black holes and gravitational waves as nonexistent) and the observations made by the conspirators gloriously confirmed their prediction. That is, Einstein's empirical model was fudged and then the gravitational wave signal was faked accordingly.
 
Here Michel Janssen describes endless empirical groping, fudging and fitting until "excellent agreement with observation" was reached: 

https://netfiles.umn.edu/users/janss011/home%20page/EBms.pdf 
 Michel Janssen: "But - as we know from a letter to his friend Conrad Habicht of December 24, 1907 - one of the goals that Einstein set himself early on, was to use his new theory of gravity, whatever it might turn out to be, to explain the discrepancy between the observed motion of the perihelion of the planet Mercury and the motion predicted on the basis of Newtonian gravitational theory. [...] The Einstein-Grossmann theory - also known as the "Entwurf" ("outline") theory after the title of Einstein and Grossmann's paper - is, in fact, already very close to the version of general relativity published in November 1915 and constitutes an enormous advance over Einstein's first attempt at a generalized theory of relativity and theory of gravitation published in 1912. The crucial breakthrough had been that Einstein had recognized that the gravitational field - or, as we would now say, the inertio-gravitational field - should not be described by a variable speed of light as he had attempted in 1912, but by the so-called metric tensor field. The metric tensor is a mathematical object of 16 components, 10 of which independent, that characterizes the geometry of space and time. In this way, gravity is no longer a force in space and time, but part of the fabric of space and time itself: gravity is part of the inertio-gravitational field. Einstein had turned to Grossmann for help with the difficult and unfamiliar mathematics needed to formulate a theory along these lines. [...] Einstein did not give up the Einstein-Grossmann theory once he had established that it could not fully explain the Mercury anomaly. He continued to work on the theory and never even mentioned the disappointing result of his work with Besso in print. So Einstein did not do what the influential philosopher Sir Karl Popper claimed all good scientists do: once they have found an empirical refutation of their theory, they abandon that theory and go back to the drawing board. [...] On November 4, 1915, he presented a paper to the Berlin Academy officially retracting the Einstein-Grossmann equations and replacing them with new ones. On November 11, a short addendum to this paper followed, once again changing his field equations. A week later, on November 18, Einstein presented the paper containing his celebrated explanation of the perihelion motion of Mercury on the basis of this new theory. Another week later he changed the field equations once more. These are the equations still used today. This last change did not affect the result for the perihelion of Mercury. Besso is not acknowledged in Einstein's paper on the perihelion problem. Apparently, Besso's help with this technical problem had not been as valuable to Einstein as his role as sounding board that had earned Besso the famous acknowledgment in the special relativity paper of 1905. Still, an acknowledgment would have been appropriate. After all, what Einstein had done that week in November, was simply to redo the calculation he had done with Besso in June 1913, using his new field equations instead of the Einstein-Grossmann equations. It is not hard to imagine Einstein's excitement when he inserted the numbers for Mercury into the new expression he found and the result was 43", in excellent agreement with observation." 

Pentcho Valev

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#387681

General theories were never falsifiable. 
General assumptions of a model should avoid
the risk. Changes of them are too costly. 
Any information engineer know that.

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#387733

Am 13.07.2016 12:03, schrieb mlwozniak@wp.pl:
> General theories were never falsifiable.
> General assumptions of a model should avoid
> the risk. Changes of them are too costly.
> Any information engineer know that.
>
What you describe is like a person, who has one foot nailed to the ground.

If you ask him, why he does not remove the nail and walk around freely, 
he would answer, this would be too risky.


TH

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#387715

Pentcho Valev wrote:

> http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/what-happens-when-we-cant-
test-scientific-theories
>  Frank Close, professor of physics at the University of Oxford: "What
>  happens when we can’t test scientific theories? [...] In recent years,
>  however, many physicists have developed theories of great mathematical
>  elegance, but which are beyond the reach of empirical falsification,
>  even in principle. The uncomfortable question that arises is whether
>  they can still be regarded as science. Some scientists are proposing
>  that the definition of what is "scientific" be loosened, while others
>  fear that to do so could open the door for pseudo-scientists or
>  charlatans to mislead the public and claim equal space for their
>  views."

Physics as expected becomes very unstable. Decades after decades with no 
breakthroughs of any color. It looks like the characteristic of a 
capacitor loading or discharging currents. Exponentially slower. To a 
point, there is nothing more to load or discharge. The inverse of the 
Moors Law. Good post, Dr. Pentcho.

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#387734

The unlimited freedom to fudge the "theory" until it predicts anything one wants goes hand in hand with the temptation to fudge and even completely fabricate the evidence "confirming" the prediction. All evidence allegedly confirming Einstein's relativity is either fraudulent or inconclusive but Einsteinians have produced so much of it that no critical examination is possible - any criticism is overwhelmed and buried in the Augean stables. The fraud production was started by Arthur Eddington - perhaps the greatest fraudster in the history of science. His first (1919) fraud was breathtaking but his second was even more spectacular - in 1925 Eddington was already a gang boss: 

http://preterism.ning.com/forum/topics/can-we-trust-the-data 
 "Consider the case of astronomer Walter Adams. In 1925 he tested Einstein's theory of relativity by measuring the red shift of the binary companion of Sirius, brightest star in the sky. Einstein's theory predicted a red shift of six parts in a hundred thousand; Adams found just such an effect. A triumph for relativity. However, in 1971, with updated estimates of the mass and radius of Sirius, it was found that the predicted red shift should have been much larger - 28 parts in a hundred thousand. Later observations of the red shift did indeed measure this amount, showing that Adams' observations were flawed. He "saw" what he had expected to see." 

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010AAS...21530404H 
 "In January 1924 Arthur Eddington wrote to Walter S. Adams at the Mt. Wilson Observatory suggesting a measurement of the "Einstein shift" in Sirius B and providing an estimate of its magnitude. Adams' 1925 published results agreed remarkably well with Eddington's estimate. Initially this achievement was hailed as the third empirical test of General Relativity (after Mercury's anomalous perihelion advance and the 1919 measurement of the deflection of starlight). It has been known for some time that both Eddington's estimate and Adams' measurement underestimated the true Sirius B gravitational redshift by a factor of four." 

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1980QJRAS..21..246H 
 "...Eddington asked Adams to attempt the measurement. [...] ...Adams reported an average differential redshift of nineteen kilometers per second, very nearly the predicted gravitational redshift. Eddington was delighted with the result... [...] In 1928 Joseph Moore at the Lick Observatory measured differences between the redshifts of Sirius and Sirius B... [...] ...the average was nineteen kilometers per second, precisely what Adams had reported. [...] More seriously damaging to the reputation of Adams and Moore is the measurement in the 1960s at Mount Wilson by Jesse Greenstein, J.Oke, and H.Shipman. They found a differential redshift for Sirius B of roughly eighty kilometers per second." 

http://irfu.cea.fr/Phocea/file.php?file=Ast/2774/RELATIVITE-052-456.pdf 
Jean-Marc Bonnet-Bidaud: "Le monde entier a cru pendant plus de cinquante ans à une théorie non vérifiée. Car, nous le savons aujourd'hui, les premières preuves, issues notamment d'une célèbre éclipse de 1919, n'en étaient pas. Elles reposaient en partie sur des manipulations peu avouables visant à obtenir un résultat connu à l'avance, et sur des mesures entachées d'incertitudes, quand il ne s'agissait pas de fraudes caractérisées. [...] Autour de l'étoile brillante Sirius, on découvre une petite étoile, Sirius B, à la fois très chaude et très faiblement lumineuse. Pour expliquer ces deux particularités, il faut supposer que l'étoile est aussi massive que le Soleil et aussi petite qu'une planète comme la Terre. C'est Eddington lui-même qui aboutit à cette conclusion dont il voit vite l'intérêt : avec de telles caractéristiques, ces naines blanches sont extrêmement denses et leur gravité très puissante. Le décalage vers le rouge de la gravitation est donc 100 fois plus élevé que sur le Soleil. Une occasion inespérée pour mesurer enfin quelque chose d'appréciable. Eddington s'adresse aussitôt à Walter Adams, directeur de l'observatoire du mont Wilson, en Californie, afin que le télescope de 2,5 m de diamètre Hooker entreprenne les vérifications. Selon ses estimations, basées sur une température de 8 000 degrés de Sirius B, mesurée par Adams lui-même, le décalage vers le rouge prédit par la relativité, en s'élevant à 20 km/s, devrait être facilement mesurable. Adams mobilise d'urgence le grand télescope et expose 28 plaques photographiques pour réaliser la mesure. Son rapport, publié le 18 mai 1925, est très confus car il mesure des vitesses allant de 2 à 33 km/s. Mais, par le jeu de corrections arbitraires dont personne ne comprendra jamais la logique, le décalage passe finalement à 21 km/s, plus tard corrigé à 19 km/s, et Eddington de conclure : "Les résultats peuvent être considérés comme fournissant une preuve directe de la validité du troisième test de la théorie de la relativité générale." Adams et Eddington se congratulent, ils viennent encore de "prouver" Einstein. Ce résultat, pourtant faux, ne sera pas remis en cause avant 1971. Manque de chance effectivement, la première mesure de température de Sirius B était largement inexacte : au lieu des 8 000 degrés envisagés par Eddington, l'étoile fait en réalité près de 30 000 degrés. Elle est donc beaucoup plus petite, sa gravité est plus intense et le décalage vers le rouge mesurable est de 89 km/s. C'est ce qu'aurait dû trouver Adams sur ses plaques s'il n'avait pas été "influencé" par le calcul erroné d'Eddington. L'écart est tellement flagrant que la suspicion de fraude a bien été envisagée." 

Pentcho Valev

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#387737

Am 14.07.2016 07:36, schrieb Pentcho Valev:
> The unlimited freedom to fudge the "theory" until it predicts anything one wants goes hand in hand with the temptation to fudge and even completely fabricate the evidence "confirming" the prediction. All evidence allegedly confirming Einstein's relativity is either fraudulent or inconclusive but Einsteinians have produced so much of it that no critical examination is possible - any criticism is overwhelmed and buried in the Augean stables. The fraud production was started by Arthur Eddington - perhaps the greatest fraudster in the history of science. His first (1919) fraud was breathtaking but his second was even more spectacular - in 1925 Eddington was already a gang boss:
>

Maybe the name 'Max Plan(c)k' is actually a pun - meaning 'large piece 
of wood'.

So we had to ask, if certain people have really existed (like e.g. 
Newton or Shakespeare) and had the name they bear and have done what 
they are famous for.

It would make some kind of sense, since somehow real science could 
eventually be dangerous to certain commercial interests, since people 
tend to believe in those, whom they regard as heroes.

So heroism is dangerous and needs to be faked in every single case.

To make fun of people, stupid 'pun-names' are used (like 'shake the bear').

(or: Hit-ler -> the man who hits)

So, how certain are you, that Picasso ('ace of spades' - for instance) 
has actually painted his many thousand pictures himself?

And who wrote all these books, you regard as masterpieces?


TH

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#387759

The story of LIGO is actually the story of people uncontrollably fudging general relativity and rehearsing evidence fake for years. The dress rehearsal took place in 2010: 

http://www.thenational.ae/arts-life/the-review/why-albert-einstein-continues-to-make-waves-as-black-holes-collide#full 
 "Einstein believed in neither gravitational waves nor black holes. [...] Dr Natalia Kiriushcheva, a theoretical and computational physicist at the University of Western Ontario (UWO), Canada, says that while it was Einstein who initiated the gravitational waves theory in a paper in June 1916, it was an addendum to his theory of general relativity and by 1936, he had concluded that such things did not exist. Furthermore - as a paper published by Einstein in the Annals of Mathematics in October, 1939 made clear, he also rejected the possibility of black holes. [...] On September 16, 2010, a false signal - a so-called "blind injection" - was fed into both the Ligo and Virgo systems as part of an exercise to "test ... detection capabilities". At the time, the vast majority of the hundreds of scientists working on the equipment had no idea that they were being fed a dummy signal. The truth was not revealed until March the following year, by which time several papers about the supposed sensational discovery of gravitational waves were poised for publication. "While the scientists were disappointed that the discovery was not real, the success of the analysis was a compelling demonstration of the collaboration's readiness to detect gravitational waves," Ligo reported at the time. But take a look at the visualisation of the faked signal, says Dr Kiriushcheva, and compare it to the image apparently showing the collision of the twin black holes, seen on the second page of the recently-published discovery paper. "They look very, very similar," she says. "It means that they knew exactly what they wanted to get and this is suspicious for us: when you know what you want to get from science, usually you can get it." The apparent similarity is more curious because the faked event purported to show not a collision between two black holes, but the gravitational waves created by a neutron star spiralling into a black hole. The signals appear so similar, in fact, that Dr Kiriushcheva questions whether the "true" signal might actually have been an echo of the fake, "stored in the computer system from when they turned off the equipment five years before"." 

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2076754-latest-rumour-of-gravitational-waves-is-probably-true-this-time/ 
 "In 2010, before LIGO had been upgraded to its present sensitivity, a textbook chirp that looked like two black holes colliding came through. The team drafted a paper and sent maps of where the signal may have come from to astronomers, who searched for a counterpart with other telescopes. There was just one problem: the signal was a fake deliberately injected into the data stream to make sure the team would be able to spot a real one. The dramatic opening of a sealed envelope revealed that fact to 300 team members in the room, with 100 more watching via a video link." [Note that in 2010 not only LIGO members were deceived - astronomers all over the world were misled into wasting time and money and looking for the non-existent black hole collision.] 

http://motls.blogspot.bg/2016/02/ligo-journal-servers-behind-scenes.html 
 " On September 9th, the LIGO folks were already convinced that they would discover the waves soon. Some of them were thinking what they would buy for the Nobel prize and all of them had to make an online vote about the journal where the discovery should be published. It has to be Physical Review Letters because PRL (published by the APS) is the best journal for the Nobel-prize-caliber papers, the LIGO members decided. Five days later, Advanced LIGO made the discovery. Four more days later, as you know, they officially started Advanced LIGO. ;-) "

LIGO's fraud is getting more and more exposed:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304581873_Open_Letter_to_the_Nobel_Committee_for_Physics_2016 
 Open Letter to the Nobel Committee for Physics 2016, W.W. Engelhardt, JET, Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik: "The Nobel Committee is informed that according to Professor Karsten Danzmann (Albert Einstein Institut) the LIGO detectors are not calibrated as expected from the statement in the discovery paper: "The detector output is calibrated in strain by measuring its response to test mass motion induced by photon pressure from a modulated calibration laser beam [63]". The claim that gravitational waves have been detected is not substantiated experimentally, since direct calibration data, namely mirror displacement as a function of laser power moving the mirrors, are not published. [...] In view of Prof. Danzmann’s statement one must suspect that LIGO was not calibrated as announced in the discovery paper with the consequence that the claim having detected a gravitational wave is not substantiated experimentally. It is quite possible that GW150914 was a test signal injected into the system before the science run started."

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Does_a_Fraudulent_Joke_stand_behind_the_Discovery_of_Gravitational_Waves 
 Does a “Fraudulent Joke” stand behind the Discovery of Gravitational Waves? [See also the comments on the publication.]

Pentcho Valev

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