Check out this article from the Arizona Republic: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/1116b2noeinstein1116.html
Recap: Einstein was an idiot and General Relativity is a farce.
Has anyone heard of this Bob Henderson guy?
Would any of you be surprised at “letters to the editor” supporting him?
Even though I shouldn’t be, I am still amazed at the ignorance of some people.
Ed
I’d like to read a synopsis of his counter to the theory of relativity, specifically how light does not bend (if he does make that contention.)
This guy may have worked with my grandfather (at RCA in Moorestown, NJ) who died in the early 1980’s but would now be in his 80’s himself and spent the bulk of his career there.
I’d like to read a synopsis of his counter to the theory of relativity.
He doesn’t have one (at least, not according to the article in the OP). He just doesn’t understand relativity. So he says it’s rubbish. He thinks Newtonian physics is just fine. Because he can understand that.
Apparently he’s an electrical engineer. Not a physicist.
I did a google search on both him and his book title and I couldn’t find anything. I have to guess then that his book is being published by some independent publisher(Probably himself).
It would be interesting to review though.
Hmmm, believe this guy or the smartest people in the world. Tough choice…
Henderson is a ‘scientist’…therefore if he thinks Einstein was wrong, he can go ahead and design experiments that
will prove that Einstein was wrong…search his name and how research papers do you find? bah…huh…well…nevermind… but then again, it’s probably easier to say ‘he was wrong’ using the ‘iterative proof’ (I like this concept) rather than an actual proof…
OK, this guy is a little off, but there are many scientists that are starting to question certain aspects of the general theory of relativity, more particularly that the laws of physics are uniform through the universe. Many believe that gravity works differently on a galactic scale, or larger scales. Currently reading a really fascinating book “In Search of Dark Matter” and the principal refutation of the existence of dark matter is that the laws of gravity are not uniform.
There is a difference between questionining models based on experimental data and just bluntly saying ‘it’s crap’…
Einstein did exactly that with Newtonian mechanics. He realized that the model didn’t work in some situations and
needed to be refined. He didn’t call Newton a charlatan though
There is a difference between questionining models based on experimental data and just bluntly saying ‘it’s crap’…
Einstein did exactly that with Newtonian mechanics. He realized that the model didn’t work in some situations and
needed to be refined. He didn’t call Newton a charlatan though
I wonder how this guy explains the changed positions of the stars exposed by the total eclipse in 1919…
I don’t think he tries to explain anything. I’m guessing, since I haven’t read his book, that he takes some effects of general relativity that produce different results with Newtonian Physics and touts that as proof that GR is wrong.
I doubt that he tries to disprove any of the empirical data or experiments that have been conducted that verify GR. I wonder if he can explain the photoelectric effect with Newtonian Physics?
Ed
Or closer to us…go explain Mercury’s orbit with Newtonian mechanics…good luck. Now using relativity, everything falls into place…
Judging by your handle, I am absolutely certain that you are well aware that dark matter doesn’t refer to matter that is simply cold so we can’t see it radiate.
Presenting this photo as proof of dark matter is right up with that graph that “proved” that we have passed a tipping point with respect to global warming and that we are all doomed as a result. That graph showed the temperature going up and the temperature going down tracking CO2 concentrations. A tipping point would, by definition, be the case in which the temperature continued to go up even after CO2 concentrations fell.
Why do you post what you must know is total nonsense?
That is the point I was trying to make, but didn’t do it too well. This guy sounds crazy.
“Well, that’s because there is a large contribution from matter that is neither interacting (other than gravitationally) nor emitting radiation… some might call it… dark matter.”
If something is cold, it won’t emit radiation. We can see the stars in the photo because they are hot and kicking out lots of photons for us to collect. We can’t see the block holes in the photo since they don’t emit radiation, not counting whatever happens to be falling into them at any given time. We also can’t see burned out stars. These all have mass. They could also explain why a center of gravity is skewed away from the bulk of the radiation.
Your photo simply doesn’t prove what you say it proves any more than your prior graph proved a tipping point.
I grant that dark matter provides a more elegant explanation for the skewed center of gravity.
Also note that your photograph is doctored for effect. I don’t think those pink and blue clouds were seen by the Hubble. I take as a given they were added accurately to show the gravity fields as discovered by that observation among many others.
Will look at your paper later. Not a big fan of dark matter myself, until someone shows me a bucket of it. Of course, presumably, if someone did, I wouldn’t even know it. Matter that basically has no properties other than mass is hard to imagine.
To shed a little light on the subject, I will post an outlining of my newly discovered and successfully tested Unified Theory in my signature line. (You will never view quarks, strings and soylent green the same way again!) Stand by for amazement…
I’ll engage in debate after you’ve read the paper:
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0611496
Ouch. My pea-sized brain hurts.
I tried to read your paper, but it is clearly above my pay grade.
I take as a given that in this system they are very cleverly able to establish that there are two local centers of gravity and that they do not come even close to aligning with the visible mass. I am just going to have to accept that as a given, because establishing such a fact is quite complex. I am guessing it has something to do with the bending of light from more distant light sources as the light passes by this system. Observe the distortion, turn the (big freakin) crank, and you get the mass distribution.
What I don’t get is why this is proof of dark matter as opposed to matter that is simply too cold to see. I am going to guess that you will say that there is no model that allows for cold (visible) matter on one side of a gravity well and hot (visible) matter on another. I can’t explain why a galaxy or cluster of galaxies would have such a configuration, but I also don’t see why dark matter would be distributed in such an asymetrical fashion either.
What I do get from your article is that there is something very peculiar going on in the area shown by the photograph. I do not dispute that. I do dispute that your photograph can be characterized as “proof” of dark matter. Even the article refers to everything it offers, which is way more than just a photo, only as direct evidence.
I have no idea what dark matter is or why it should exist, but the plain fact is, the stuff is real and this observation has me convinced to a very high probability (although it was pretty high before).
This is kind of where I was. I think one of the coolest things is watching/listening/reading stuff from someone who has a deep knowledge base about something. My Mom has a PhD in Theology and reading some of her stuff is impressive. My Dad is the same way when you talk to him about casting aluminum engine parts.
Not that you need any validation from me, but I think it is cool that you can speak on a topic like this with so much clarity. Thanks.
Bernie
I admit that sounds like a very cool and compelling explanation. I certainly don’t have an alternative explanation other than just saying that photo just shows a bunch of collisions going on which are very hot because of the collisions and the areas not yet colliding are cool so we can’t see them. I doubt that explanation is compelling, and certainly not cool. I didn’t read the stuff about arguably disproving varying gravitational models since I don’t harbor such ideas, rightly or wrongly.
Still, dark matter and dark energy just seem like something we have made up to provide explanations of whatever we don’t understand to make things behave according to the models we have. We make it up rather than saying our models suck under a lot of conditions. It sounds like the all pervasive ether of pre relativity days that provided the one true reference frame. We never did get a bucketful of that either.
If there is so much of it, presumably dark matter is all around us, we just can’t detect its presence. Its only property is gravity or maybe mass and it is thinly distributed so the gravity cancels out and/or gets lost in the noise. Possible, but pretty hard to believe.
I think it is more likely that we are not far removed from pre Einstein days and our basic understanding of the physical world is primitive.
Still, if I understand you correctly, you use lensing as proof that the effect of gravity is constant through the Universe, but you assume that gravity is constant as part of that equation. That didn’t come out right, but hopefully you understand what I mean. What if gravity’s effect is not constant? The warping is caused by gravity, as we define it, right?
I am not taking one side or the other, just trying to understand. Here is what I know/believe, that the Universe is governed by laws, there is some design by it. I cannot believe all that is is just a random occurence. I also find it difficult to believe that we, at our current state of understanding, can definitively state that the laws that we see from our little speck are all constant throughout this vast Universe.
It is about time for another prodigy, another Einstein, that takes us that next leap forward in our understanding. One of my partners believes that may be Lee Smolin, but I don’t know. When I read about his fecund universes theory, I can’t help but think of that crappy Disney movie the Black Hole.