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"Top questions and doubts about UFO whistleblower, Luis Elizondo "

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So you are saying I should waste my time investigating your specific "reputable" torsion "scientists", but it's ok for you to ignore the point that the whole idea is regarded as pseudo-scientific nonsense that is against the principles of basic physics?

Why don't you give me a couple of actual peer-reviewed scientific papers from actual reputable scientific journals by those "reputable scientists", as after all, that's how actual science is done and published, and let's talk about torsion "science" then.

Obviously, and annoyingly, virtually all the papers are in Russian and haven't been translated into English. Many if not all were published in reputable scientific journals. I don't think you would be wasting your time, but that's just my opinion of course. I don't ignore the fact that one or two individuals have proclaimed in Wikipedia etc. that "torsion is pseudoscience," but when you explore the thing in more depth you realise that "we think all torsion research is pseudoscience because two researchers have come up with a rather absurd theory about torsion" would be a more honest conclusion. Swanson gives the basic references but I haven't been able to get English translations of them.

If giving a dog a bad name is the scientific method, then maybe there is something wrong with it. It sounds suspiciously similar to a medieval monk accusing some unfortunate of heresy. Nor do I share your fervent and almost touching belief in the special status of "peer reviewed papers." Using phrases like "the whole idea is regarded as pseudo-scientific nonsense" is hardly an objective response to the experimental evidence that has been put forward by Kozyrev and many others, not just in Russia. Now you may well examine that evidence, and the independent work of Reddish in the UK, and consider that it is unconvincing and that you still reject it, and if you did I would accept that, because we are all entitled to our opinions. But to refuse to spend a few hours examining the findings that have been reported and indeed replicated, and to base your decision upon the biassed claims of a couple of people who have presented an extremely distorted picture in online encyclopedias, is not science as I see it.
 
Obviously, and annoyingly, virtually all the papers are in Russian and haven't been translated into English. Many if not all were published in reputable scientific journals.

So have you actually checked what those journals are? How have you evaluated their reputability?

I don't ignore the fact that one or two individuals have proclaimed in Wikipedia etc. that "torsion is pseudoscience,"

One or two individuals? Did you for example read the article I linked before from The Moscow Times where the chairman of the Commission on Pseudoscience and Research Fraud of Russian Academy of Sciences told how the Russian Academy of Sciences has labeled that pseudoscientific many times?

but when you explore the thing in more depth you realise that "we think all torsion research is pseudoscience because two researchers have come up with a rather absurd theory about torsion" would be a more honest conclusion. Swanson gives the basic references but I haven't been able to get English translations of them.

So let's check that Swanson fellow "in more depth", so that you can see how ridiculous those wacky pseudoscientists are that you are trying to advertise here.

So he has written some funny little paper on a journal called "Subtle Energies & Energy Medicine" that is published by "the International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine" which is about "energy medicine", "applied spirituality" etc. Obviously that's not about real science.

I can't find any actual peer-reviewed publications by that Swanson, or really any kind of validation he would be qualified to talk about physics, but he is apparently trying to advertise pretty much all pseudo-scientific nonsense there is, like that energy healing, ESP, psychokinesis, remote viewing, prophecy, ghosts etc. and makes all sorts of invalid claims related to physics, such as cold fusion being "duplicated in various forms in over 500 laboratories around the world" and speed of light "has been exceeded in several recent experiments" etc.
FAQs

That man is a joke.

As for his funny little paper, he for example advertises among others those same fraudulent torsion "scientists":

"Dr. Gennady Shipov (Shipov, 1993) developed a rigorous mathematical theory for torsion, and his predictions have been confirmed by several Russian scientists (Akimov, 1995, 1997)."

And that Kozyrev you also tried to advertise is probably this fellow:
He was considered to be one of the most promising astrophysicists in Russia. Kozyrev was a victim of the Stalinist purges of the Pulkovo Observatory. Started by the accusations of a disgruntled graduate student, most of the observatory staff died as a result. Kozyrev was arrested in November 1936 and sentenced to 10 years for counterrevolutionary activity. In January 1941, he was given another 10-year sentence for "hostile propaganda". While incarcerated, he was allowed to work in engineering-type jobs. Due to the lobbying by his colleagues, he won an early release from detention in December 1946.[1] As a result of his imprisonment he was mentioned in The Gulag Archipelago by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn.[2]

During his imprisonment, Kozyrev attempted to continue working on purely theoretical physics. He considered the problem of the energy source of stars and formulated a theory. But in his isolation, he was unaware of the discovery of atomic energy. After his release, Kozyrev refused to believe the theory that stars are powered by atomic fusion.

Kozyrev was a bold thinker and was respected by prominent scientists of his time (Arkady Kuzmin, Vasily Moroz, and Iosef Shklovsky all speak highly of him), even though his work was often of a very doubtful nature. Among these theories was the claim that the polar caps of Mars were purely atmospheric cloud formations, rather than ice-covered ground.
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Kozyrev - Wikipedia

So apparently he did some valid astrophysics, then his career was destroyed, and he lost the plot.

If giving a dog a bad name is the scientific method, then maybe there is something wrong with it. It sounds suspiciously similar to a medieval monk accusing some unfortunate of heresy. Nor do I share your fervent and almost touching belief in the special status of "peer reviewed papers." Using phrases like "the whole idea is regarded as pseudo-scientific nonsense" is hardly an objective response to the experimental evidence that has been put forward by Kozyrev and many others, not just in Russia. Now you may well examine that evidence, and the independent work of Reddish in the UK, and consider that it is unconvincing and that you still reject it, and if you did I would accept that, because we are all entitled to our opinions. But to refuse to spend a few hours examining the findings that have been reported and indeed replicated, and to base your decision upon the biassed claims of a couple of people who have presented an extremely distorted picture in online encyclopedias, is not science as I see it.

Cut the crap and wake up. You obviously don't have a clue what science is and how it's done, especially if you take loons like that Swanson seriously. And the fact of the matter is, you can't link even a single peer-reviewed paper from any reputable journal. That's what pseudo-science is. Nonsense.
 
If one plugged in a total energy of all the gluons inside planet Earth into energy-stress tensor, with corresponding density etc., would he get the same space-time curvature as Earth's gravitational field creates? In short, can one link Quantum Chromodynamcis and GR?
The tremendous elegance and power of the Einstein field equation is that it works regardless of the nature of the underlying fields that contribute to it. Put simply, it’s a true general theory in both senses of the term (general relativism regardless of the coordinate system, and generally applicable).

So we don’t even need to know the physics of QCD in order to accurately calculate the stress-energy tensor for a composite body like the Earth, because we only need to know the overall energy density of the matter it’s composed of, it’s momentum density, it’s momentum flux, the internal pressure and shear stresses, and the value of its electromagnetic stress-energy tensor (comprised of the field energy and Poynting vector and Maxwell stress tensor components). The underlying cause for the rest mass of the atoms is irrelevant in GR, because we can measure the resulting rest mass directly and simply plug that into the equation. In other words, even if QCD were found to be completely wrong, it wouldn’t matter – GR would still give us the same correct description of the spacetime metric.

As The greatest thing about GR is that it was completely developed from the first principles and than it later was independently confirmed by experiments.
Yeah you can’t argue with the classical beauty of GR – it’s an unvarnished triumph for theoretical physics and the scientific method.

Other theories, like QM or QFT were simply curve-fitted onto experimental data. QFT is matching electron's behavior down to 12 digits because it was shoehorned all the way. But when QFT is tested on muons, electron's first cousin, than it only matches about 5-6 digits. So, QFT is still unfinished. More shoehorning on the way
It’s actually a lot more complicated than that – yes, there are many features of QFT that were simply derived from observations and then gathered together into a single theory, sort of like Frankenstein’s monster. But it has evolved substantially, and revealed all kinds of elegant underlying principles and symmetries, which have provided a dizzying variety of exotic predictions that we’ve found to be correct experimentally.

Where I part ways with the orthodoxy is that I think there’s an underlying theory – and stochastic electrodynamics (SED) may be it. SED has successfully predicted an impressive range of quantum phenomena from first principles (which most people don’t even know is possible). Imo, we should be focusing on that more than string theory, because if it’s actually the underlying foundation for quantum field theory, the potential physical ramifications for future technologies is mind-boggling.

Obviously, and annoyingly, virtually all the papers are in Russian and haven't been translated into English. Many if not all were published in reputable scientific journals. I don't think you would be wasting your time, but that's just my opinion of course. I don't ignore the fact that one or two individuals have proclaimed in Wikipedia etc. that "torsion is pseudoscience," but when you explore the thing in more depth you realise that "we think all torsion research is pseudoscience because two researchers have come up with a rather absurd theory about torsion" would be a more honest conclusion.
Yeah that’s one of the many problems at Wikipedia – the groupthink over there reinforces itself by taking the least favorable examples of work on an unorthodox theory, and then misrepresenting those bad examples as central pillars for the theory, in order to discredit it. I also see this happening all of the time with “fact checking” outlets like Politifact and Snopes. It's the inverse of cherry-picking. And it’s a very sneaky and dishonest strategy, but it’s now widely prevalent.

I did a little digging yesterday and found this interesting paper about Einstein-Cartan torsion field theory:

“Spacetime torsion as a possible remedy to major problems in gravity and cosmology,” Poplawski, 2011
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1106.4859.pdf

I haven’t given it a proper sit-down reading yet, but it looks promising, and it seems to provide the kind of observational motivation that I was looking for by proposing explanations for dark energy and dark matter, as well as the intrinsic spin of particles.

And as I was doing a little follow-up just now, I found an example of Wikipedia’s annoying bias against unorthodox theories like this. In their article about Einstein-Cartan theory they say:

“In the Einstein–Cartan theory, the Dirac equation becomes nonlinear and therefore the superposition principle used in usual quantization techniques would not work.”

Which sounds like a deal-breaker, because we know that the superposition principle works. But it turns out that the nonlinearity only manifests at extremely high energy densities, and this nonlinear form of the Dirac equation could actually resolve the ultraviolet divergence problem in quantum field theory:

[0910.1181] Nonsingular Dirac particles in spacetime with torsion, Poplawski, 2010

So this all merits some very careful scrutiny after all. But I do think it’s very important for papers to pass the peer-review process. Because unless you’re an expert in a specialized field like this (which very few people are), it’s easy to miss key flaws in a theoretical argument or mathematical derivation, which can render an entire paper moot. And when the peer-review process fails, it tends to fail in the direction of the benefit of the doubt (by accepting suspect experimental claims for example) rather than the other way around (rejecting interesting work just because it’s unconventional). And especially nowadays with mountains of rubbish being mixed in with very credible papers on unjuried clearinghouse sites like ResearchGate, it’s way too easy to find nicely formatted superficially valid-looking papers that have no scientific merit whatsoever.
 
I did a little digging yesterday and found this interesting paper about Einstein-Cartan torsion field theory:

“Spacetime torsion as a possible remedy to major problems in gravity and cosmology,” Poplawski, 2011
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1106.4859.pdf

Here's a reminder as there's now an obvious risk of some readers confusing this with those Russian scams:
Torsion fields really do exist, in the advanced physics of Einstein-Cartan theory. However, the concept has been adopted by woo-salesmen who love the sciency sound to the phrase, but stand no chance whatever of understanding the truly scary equations of the real Einstein–Cartan theory. Accordingly, the torsion fields you are liable to hear about on such thoroughly unscientific outlets as Coast to Coast AM have approximately the same validity as a fortune cookie.
Torsion field - RationalWiki

Poplawski is a real theoretical physicist who is talking about that real Einstein–Cartan theory, not the snake oils those energy healers etc. are selling.
Nikodem Popławski - Wikipedia

Here's an overview that's related to that paper:
https://phys.org/news/2012-05-black-hole-universe-physicist-solution.html
 
So we don’t even need to know the physics of QCD in order to accurately calculate the stress-energy tensor for a composite body like the Earth, because we only need to know the overall energy density of the matter it’s composed of, it’s momentum density, it’s momentum flux, the internal pressure and shear stresses, and the value of its electromagnetic stress-energy tensor (comprised of the field energy and Poynting vector and Maxwell stress tensor components). The underlying cause for the rest mass of the atoms is irrelevant in GR, because we can measure the resulting rest mass directly and simply plug that into the equation. In other words, even if QCD were found to be completely wrong, it wouldn’t matter – GR would still give us the same correct description of the spacetime metric.

OK, I proposed plunging gluons into GR in order to possibly find a source of gravity, not to verify GR. From QCD we know that gluons & quarks are source of inertial mass. If energy of gluons, scaled to size of Earth, would produce the same gravitational field as Earth than we'll know that curving of space-time caused by gluons is actual source of gravitational mass.

My, naive, idea goes like this: equivalence principle holds because the energy of gluons that is producing inertial mass is the same as energy of glouns that curves space-time and creates gravitational mass and gravitational field. That would than be a classical equivalence principle defined on QCD level and two theories would be united.

What would be your criticism of that?

- - - - - - - - - - -
I overheard in one of public lectures by one of public physicists, that in theory of Quantum Gravity, QG, we can calculate these things. Apparently the only problem with QG is that it can't be experimentally confirmed, because gravitational field of atoms is very small.

Does QG actually states what particles are source of gravity?
 
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The tremendous elegance and power of the Einstein field equation is that it works regardless of the nature of the underlying fields that contribute to it. Put simply, it’s a true general theory in both senses of the term (general relativism regardless of the coordinate system, and generally applicable).

So we don’t even need to know the physics of QCD in order to accurately calculate the stress-energy tensor for a composite body like the Earth, because we only need to know the overall energy density of the matter it’s composed of, it’s momentum density, it’s momentum flux, the internal pressure and shear stresses, and the value of its electromagnetic stress-energy tensor (comprised of the field energy and Poynting vector and Maxwell stress tensor components). The underlying cause for the rest mass of the atoms is irrelevant in GR, because we can measure the resulting rest mass directly and simply plug that into the equation. In other words, even if QCD were found to be completely wrong, it wouldn’t matter – GR would still give us the same correct description of the spacetime metric.


Yeah you can’t argue with the classical beauty of GR – it’s an unvarnished triumph for theoretical physics and the scientific method.


It’s actually a lot more complicated than that – yes, there are many features of QFT that were simply derived from observations and then gathered together into a single theory, sort of like Frankenstein’s monster. But it has evolved substantially, and revealed all kinds of elegant underlying principles and symmetries, which have provided a dizzying variety of exotic predictions that we’ve found to be correct experimentally.

Where I part ways with the orthodoxy is that I think there’s an underlying theory – and stochastic electrodynamics (SED) may be it. SED has successfully predicted an impressive range of quantum phenomena from first principles (which most people don’t even know is possible). Imo, we should be focusing on that more than string theory, because if it’s actually the underlying foundation for quantum field theory, the potential physical ramifications for future technologies is mind-boggling.

Yeah that’s one of the many problems at Wikipedia – the groupthink over there reinforces itself by taking the least favorable examples of work on an unorthodox theory, and then misrepresenting those bad examples as central pillars for the theory, in order to discredit it. I also see this happening all of the time with “fact checking” outlets like Politifact and Snopes. It's the inverse of cherry-picking. And it’s a very sneaky and dishonest strategy, but it’s now widely prevalent.

I did a little digging yesterday and found this interesting paper about Einstein-Cartan torsion field theory:

“Spacetime torsion as a possible remedy to major problems in gravity and cosmology,” Poplawski, 2011
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1106.4859.pdf

I haven’t given it a proper sit-down reading yet, but it looks promising, and it seems to provide the kind of observational motivation that I was looking for by proposing explanations for dark energy and dark matter, as well as the intrinsic spin of particles.

And as I was doing a little follow-up just now, I found an example of Wikipedia’s annoying bias against unorthodox theories like this. In their article about Einstein-Cartan theory they say:

“In the Einstein–Cartan theory, the Dirac equation becomes nonlinear and therefore the superposition principle used in usual quantization techniques would not work.”

Which sounds like a deal-breaker, because we know that the superposition principle works. But it turns out that the nonlinearity only manifests at extremely high energy densities, and this nonlinear form of the Dirac equation could actually resolve the ultraviolet divergence problem in quantum field theory:

[0910.1181] Nonsingular Dirac particles in spacetime with torsion, Poplawski, 2010

So this all merits some very careful scrutiny after all. But I do think it’s very important for papers to pass the peer-review process. Because unless you’re an expert in a specialized field like this (which very few people are), it’s easy to miss key flaws in a theoretical argument or mathematical derivation, which can render an entire paper moot. And when the peer-review process fails, it tends to fail in the direction of the benefit of the doubt (by accepting suspect experimental claims for example) rather than the other way around (rejecting interesting work just because it’s unconventional). And especially nowadays with mountains of rubbish being mixed in with very credible papers on unjuried clearinghouse sites like ResearchGate, it’s way too easy to find nicely formatted superficially valid-looking papers that have no scientific merit whatsoever.

The significant part of your post is copied here:

"I did a little digging yesterday and found this interesting paper about Einstein-Cartan torsion field theory:

“Spacetime torsion as a possible remedy to major problems in gravity and cosmology,” Poplawski, 2011
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1106.4859.pdf

I haven’t given it a proper sit-down reading yet, but it looks promising, and it seems to provide the kind of observational motivation that I was looking for by proposing explanations for dark energy and dark matter, as well as the intrinsic spin of particles.

And as I was doing a little follow-up just now, I found an example of Wikipedia’s annoying bias against unorthodox theories like this. In their article about Einstein-Cartan theory they say:

“In the Einstein–Cartan theory, the Dirac equation becomes nonlinear and therefore the superposition principle used in usual quantization techniques would not work.”

Which sounds like a deal-breaker, because we know that the superposition principle works. But it turns out that the nonlinearity only manifests at extremely high energy densities, and this nonlinear form of the Dirac equation could actually resolve the ultraviolet divergence problem in quantum field theory:

[0910.1181] Nonsingular Dirac particles in spacetime with torsion, Poplawski, 2010

So this all merits some very careful scrutiny after all."


Indeed. And future physics will recognize the original contribution of the much-beleaguered Kozyrev to increased understanding of how 'the physical universe' works.
 
Here's a reminder as there's now an obvious risk of some readers confusing this with those Russian scams:

Torsion field - RationalWiki

Poplawski is a real theoretical physicist who is talking about that real Einstein–Cartan theory, not the snake oils those energy healers etc. are selling.

@Realm, you seem to be short on critical thinking skills given your inability to distinguish between the work of theoretical physicists in Russia and popular misuses of it by nonphysicists attempting to sell products. Self-critical awareness of the limitations of your actual information base concerning these different actors and activities in Russia would have prevented you from your recent rants here, and also your abusive remarks to @Carl Grove:

"Cut the crap and wake up. You obviously don't have a clue what science is and how it's done, especially if you take loons like that Swanson seriously. And the fact of the matter is, you can't link even a single peer-reviewed paper from any reputable journal. That's what pseudo-science is. Nonsense."

It occurred to me after you quoted material concerning Kozyrev's imprisonment by the Soviet thought police that you ought to recognize how much you resemble them. Who do you think you are? You sound like a would-be Commissar of Thought Control.
 
Indeed. And future physics will recognize the original contribution of the much-beleaguered Kozyrev to increased understanding of how 'the physical universe' works.

And what exactly was that contribution?

@Realm, you seem to be short on critical thinking skills given your inability to distinguish between the work of theoretical physicists in Russia and popular misuses of it by nonphysicists attempting to sell products. Self-critical awareness of the limitations of your actual information base concerning these different actors and activities in Russia would have prevented you from your recent rants here, and also your abusive remarks to @Carl Grove:

"Cut the crap and wake up. You obviously don't have a clue what science is and how it's done, especially if you take loons like that Swanson seriously. And the fact of the matter is, you can't link even a single peer-reviewed paper from any reputable journal. That's what pseudo-science is. Nonsense."

It occurred to me after you quoted material concerning Kozyrev's imprisonment by the Soviet thought police that you ought to recognize how much you resemble them. Who do you think you are? You sound like a would-be Commissar of Thought Control.

Just give your answer about that contribution first and then we can talk about those thinking skills. It's obviously quite telling already how you try to twist that information about what happened to Kozyrev's career to a cheap ad hominem against me.

And since you have so liked those posts by Carl Grove, could you also answer if you for example agree about these 12 points of Claude Swanson:
FAQs
 
Back to the thread, and a question for Luis, as what ye' say ?
Expert Reveals the Photo at the Center of the Pentagon UFO Story Is Fake

It's summarized quite well there:
Despite the organization boasting a collection of highly qualified government officials and experts, the fact that the To The Stars Academy didn't put due diligence into researching the photo or its connection to the Nimitz incident makes them less than trustworthy when it comes to separating facts from fiction. This is reinforced by DeLonge's claim in November that a CGI hoax video of a triangular UFO was genuine, despite quickly being revealed as a fake, similar to the "alien interview" that went viral on YouTube in 2016.

If the Academy is going to live up to its reputation, it had better start getting a better fact-checking team fast.

It was a stupid blunder from TTSA, they just copied that photo from the FighterSweep article, which used that and several other images for illustration only, and never claimed any of those were connected to the event:
https://fightersweep.com/1460/x-files-edition/

It was even more revealing how they told an inaccurate and sensationalized version of that story in their announcement event. That mixed facts with fiction even more.

The fact that the picture still haunts them a couple of months later and is used to discredit the Nimitz incident in the media just shows how much it matters to get the details right when it comes to credibility. Those who are not that familiar with the story can easily get the impression that the whole event was a dud just because of that.

And what's more, I haven't seen them trying to make any corrections to any of their mistakes. Including how that pilot report reveals how someone probably hastily googled the identifier for USS Princeton, and didn't notice it was the wrong one, one that sunk during WW2.
 
The Roswell Slide saga was complete with blurred images as well.

That's too bad because I just want to believe ...lol

Seriously, the amount of time (hundreds of hours) spent here by various forum members attempting to find answers likely rivals or exceeds anything out there.
 
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Hi all,

I know I'm new here and perhaps I am overstepping my bounds when I request, most humbly, that we keep comments on this thread related to the topic, "Top questions and doubts about...Elizondo."

It becomes tiresome to log in and find 30+ new replies to this thread that have little to no connection to the original topic. Perhaps a moderator or commenter could divert off-topic discussions to a different thread for, say, speculative physics or remote viewing?

Just a request from the peanut gallery. Thanks all!

-Cu
 
I know I'm new here and perhaps I am overstepping my bounds when I request, most humbly, that we keep comments on this thread related to the topic, "Top questions and doubts about...Elizondo."

It becomes tiresome to log in and find 30+ new replies to this thread that have little to no connection to the original topic. Perhaps a moderator or commenter could divert off-topic discussions to a different thread for, say, speculative physics or remote viewing?

I agree with you, but I will still make one last post about that topic after this, since I have already collected the data for it, and I want to highlight the wider problems that the conversation reflects.

As for the connections to the original topic, the way this went off the rails basically just reflects how Elizondo and TTSA went off the rails. This thread was originally about Elizondo, who has given the impression of being a rational guy in all the interviews I have seen, and I haven't seen him talking about any pseudo-scientific nonsense anywhere. But since he is now associated with the TTSA, this thread, like most conversations concerning him pretty much anywhere, quickly turn into questions about the TTSA as a whole. That's just the way it goes, your reputation is highly dependent on the associations you have, and usually even so that the negative things are more likely to be linked to you.

TTSA in turn is publicly advertising for example telepathy, "ultra-experiences" and their ridiculous plans of building spaceships with more or less non-existing resources. It's all tied together, especially when it comes to credibility. And apparently many who put (once again) their hopes of "disclosure" on the TTSA this time are willing to accept whatever they are selling and whatever their means. As Jason Colavito pointed out:

In generally glowing fringe media coverage of the company’s launch, no one has followed the money to see where the cash is going. This speaks both to the laziness of journalists—who focus on celebrity and “access” over facts—and to the tacit agreement of fringe types to protect their gravy train at all costs.
...
In short, this is what TTS AAS is all about: Big cash payments in a for-profit entertainment company. This is hardly a nonprofit selflessly pursuing “truth.” “Disclosure” is simply a product sold for profit.
Not Quite a "UFO IPO": Tom DeLonge Is Seeking Your Investment in "To the Stars" to Give Himself a $700,000 or More Payday

Since they are talking about that pipe dream of building a spacecraft, and don't really have the slightest chance of actually building one with any conventional means, those who buy that idea have to put their hopes in technologies that are within the realms of sci-fi, at the moment at least. So they need something like anti-gravity. But there's the problem that, as far as actual science is concerned, nobody knows if that is actually possible. The best we have now are speculative theories that cannot be validated experimentally, mostly concern the early stages of the universe instead of something that could be realistically built here, and we lack the necessary knowledge to evaluate if they are actually possible at all. It requires significant theoretical progress before such possibilities can be evaluated properly, and who knows how long that takes, and that progress also doesn't have anything to do with UFOs.

That's why TTSA and their believers desperately need shortcuts, like anti-gravity materials dropping from the sky or pseudo-scientific ideas that promise what they want, even if those promises are based on ignorance and lies. And that's what we have seen here. When one takes that route, anything seems to go, even old scams that have been exposed ages ago. And when you accept one piece of nonsense, why not accept the rest of it as well. It doesn't really matter anymore once you give up the usual standards of rational thinking.

It's a repeating pattern I have seen so many times, especially when talking to religious fundamentalists, creationists etc. They just want to stick by their comforting lies, since the reality doesn't answer to their hopes. Those conversations follow the same sort of patterns. True believers do not care about the evidence and information that has been provided, they are in denial, and since they are unable to actually answer the arguments, they try to blame the messenger, with whatever vague accusations they can invent. And when everything fails, they eventually plea for their right to just believe whatever they like without and against all evidence. Since for them faith is a virtue. Which is pretty much the opposite to what science is.

Eventually, all this is linked together by those who sit on the other side of the fence, and the media, and people like Elizondo are associated with all sorts of things their associates and supporters are supporting, even if he isn't the one that should be blamed. As long as these patterns keep repeating, there's no point in blaming the scientists or the media for not being taken seriously.
 
That's too bad because I just want to believe ...lol

Yeah, that pretty much summarizes the problem. Things start to go south the moment people cannot differentiate their hopes from actual facts anymore.

Seriously, the amount of time (hundreds of hours) spent here by various forum members attempting to find answers likely rivals or exceeds anything out there.

Which is why communities like this could be a valuable but underutilized resource for those who are actually interested in finding facts. But TTSA for example doesn't really seem to be interested about any feedback really. We have seen the various answers they have given to people, which pretty much amounts to "can't tell, contribute by buying our stock".

Speaking of which:
To The Stars Academy

2,704

Investors
$247,851
Amount Raised

Whoa, did that actually happen or is it an error? If it happened, it may be all over for them.

I have sort of expected that the one suspicious extra million they got in October might disappear at some point, but it was only a couple of days ago that they still had something like 2.3 million.

Archived snapshot from the Internet Archive, taken today 12:42:37:


2,704

Investors
$2,434,231

Amount Raised

So the number of investors is the same, but $2,186,380 has disappeared somewhere. Most likely explanations are probably some sort of error or they have had to return money back to the so called investors.

Here's their latest investment update from Saturday, 2 days ago:
To The Stars Academy

So they are urging people to complete the investment processes. Does anyone know how their processes actually work? Is it so that they haven't actually received at least some of that money yet, more like promises, and if people don't finalize those processes now, their investments won't actually happen? That would explain a lot...

Edit:
seems like it was a temporary problem, as now it's back to:
2,721
Investors
$2,449,001
Amount Raised
 
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I won't bother to respond to the more objectionable comments but merely reiterate that you haven't actually referred to any of the experimental results. Anyone ignorant of the topic reading your remarks would just skim over them and feel obliged to agree. It's as though someone was to write a dismissive critique of relativity theory without once mentioning any of its implications or any of the experiments conducted to check its validity, and just reported critical comments made by supposedly reliable sources. Well, let's just take one experiment of Kozyrev's, in which he used an extremely sensitive torsion detector to assess the effects of the torsion waves emitted by different types of process. He found that processes that decrease entropy (e.g., plant growth or water freezing) generate left handed torsion, which processes that increase entropy (e.g. evaporation of acetone, plant death or sugar dissolving) produce right handed torsion. A long series of very well controlled replications were run by Lavrentiev and his associates. They created a closed environment in which a hermetically sealed container with parabolic reflective walls (torsion waves are partially reflected by aluminium, a finding confirmed by Reddish) was set up so that a process situated at one focal point would produce torsion waves focussed on the other focal point, where a special detector was situated. In order to ensure that results would not be compromised by experimental errors and variations in possibly significant background factors, Lavrentiev requested the State Inspector for Measurements to oversee the set up. Here are the results:upload_2018-1-22_17-45-47.png
And here is the legend:

Figure 7. Four curves are plotted on the graph,
corresponding to four different cases. The first
and fourth from top down are caused by
entropy decreasing processes, producing left
handed torsion, SL. The second and third cases
are caused by entropy increasing processes, which
generate right handed torsion, SR. The
horizontal axis is time, in minutes. M is the
mass of the glass float.
Case [1] is the cooling of boiling water, where
ΔM=3.50 ± 0.15 mg, Δρ=-(1.5 0.1) g/cm2;
Case [2] is sugar dissolution in water, 6
minutes, where ΔM=2.20 ± 0.15 mg,
Δρ=+(0.9 0.1) g/cm2;
Case [3] is liquid nitrogen evaporation, 6
minutes, where ΔM=-4.65 ± 0.1 mg,
Δρ= +(1.9 0.1) g/cm2;
Case [4] is human metabolism, 1 minute,
where ΔM=1.8 ± 0.15 mg,
Δρ= -(0.7 0.1) g/cm2;

In short, although using a radically different way of detecting torsion, Lavrentiev et al derived the same results as Kozyrev. I think that these results (which were published in a major Russian journal) are quite convincing. Swanson (whatever his interest in other subjects you would also feel uneasy with) reviews quite a number of other equally strange findings.

It so happens that the Chairman of the "Commission on Pseudoscience and Research Fraud" is Edward Kruglyakov, who for many years pursued a one man vendetta against Shipov and his theory of torsion, and who somehow persuaded the Russian Accademy of Science to set up the said Commission and to appoint him as its head! I am pretty sure that he is the author of the Wikipedia article which uses the Physical Vacuum theory as a way of condemning all torsion research, even though Swanson, and others, find it acceptable.

Finally, if you really think that "energy healing, ESP, psychokinesis and remote viewing are "all pseudoscientific nonsense", I wonder what you are doing on a site devoted to such topics?
 
As promised, here's one last example what separates pseudo-scientists from real ones, although true believers of the former presumably continue to ignore all actual evidence.

As should be already clear, torsion "scientist" Claude Swanson belongs to that group of snake oil salesmen who may actually manage to damage not just people's understanding of science but their health as well by spreading ideas of whatever distance energy healing, similarly how torsion field pseudo-science has been used to sell homeopathy. There are already too many examples what can happen when gullible and vulnerable people replace real health care with those kinds of miracle cures. It should be obvious why advertising such nonsense is highly immoral. Additionally that Swanson is making blatant and ridiculous lies about scientific research, so it should be pretty obvious what kind of man he is.

But let's take one more example from that paper by Mark Krinker (which is not peer-reviewed or published in any journal, and his credentials are also highly questionable), submitted to arxiv on 28 Apr 2010. Here's a part from the introduction, plus the relevant references from the end, that refers specifically to Kozyrev, who seems to have several fans/worshippers here:

The special role of rotation was then shown by Soviet physicists N.A Kozyrev in his theoretical and experimental works with gyroscopes [2] and later by A.I.Veinik in his study of chrono-related effects [3]. It’s important to stress that Kozyrev and his colleagues observed variation of the weight of gyroscopes with non-stationary spinning. The results of Kozyrev’s experiments on the high-speed non-stationary gyroscopes were confirmed by other researchers [4]. The theory and practice of the torsion fields got a powerful development in works of G.I Shipov and A.E. Akimov in 90’s and our days.
...
2. N.A Kosyrev. Possibility of Experimental Study of Properties of Time. Original title: O Vozmozhosti Experimental’nogo Issledovaniya Svoistv Vremeni. Pulkovo, September 1967.
3. Veinik A.I. "Termodinamika rjealnyh processov.", Minsk, Nauka i Tehnika, 1991, 576 p. (Russian) ("Thermodynamics of real processes.")
4. Hayasaka H., Takeuchi S. "Anomalous weight reduction on a gyroscope's right rotation around the vertical axis of the Earth. //Phys.rev.lett., 1989, # 63, p.2701-2704.
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1004/1004.5161.pdf

So they make the claim that spinning gyroscopes are losing weight and that has been even confirmed by research by Hayasaka in 1989.

So fans of pseudo-science, take a pause, and try to think if it is realistic to expect that the scientific community at large would have ignored such groundbreaking result for more than half a century and decades after it had been validated? If you really believe so, you obviously don't understand how scientists all over the world are really trying to find phenomenon that would challenge existing theories in hopes of revealing ways to move forward. Do you really expect that understanding of fundamental physics, experimental protocols and equipment have just got worse during all those years, so that the best available information would have been attained in Russia decades ago? Such thoughts indicate quite a bit of disrespect towards the whole scientific community, just like ignoring for example the aforementioned stance of the Russian Academy of Sciences among others in favor of a few scammers.

So what about that research by Hayasaka? Here's the paper, published 18 December 1989:
Phys. Rev. Lett. 63, 2701 (1989) - Anomalous weight reduction on a gyroscope's right rotations around the vertical axis on the Earth

So what do you think would happen if someone actually manages to pass peer-review of a reputable scientific journal with such extraordinary claims? Do you expect some sort of scientific conspiracy to silence it or that they would be ignored? Or do you expect scientists would just believe whatever is published in such journals?

Here's a couple of examples how it hit the news pretty much instantly, both in mainstream and scientific media:

New York Times, December 28, 1989
Two Men and a Gyroscope May Rewrite Newton's Law
...

Japanese scientists have reported that small gyroscopes lose weight when spun under certain conditions, apparently in defiance of gravity. If proved correct, the finding would mark a stunning scientific advance, but experts said they doubted that it would survive intense scrutiny.
...
Unlike the exaggerated claims made for low-temperature, or ''cold,'' nuclear fusion this year, the current results are presented with scientific understatement. The authors do not claim to have defied gravity, but simply say their results ''cannot be explained by the usual theories.''
...
''It's an astounding claim,'' said Dr. Robert L. Park, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland who is director of the Washington office of the American Physical Society, which publishes Physical Review Letters. ''It would be revolutionary if true. But it's almost certainly wrong. Almost all extraordinary claims are wrong.''
...
Dr. Robert L. Forward, a consultant who helps the Air Force investigate advanced forms of propulsion, including claims of anti-gravity devices, said: ''It's a careful experiment. But I doubt it's real, primarily because I've seen so many of these things fall apart.''
...
They reported no experimental errors. They also offered no explanation for the effect and no speculation on the possibility of creating anti-gravity engines for planes and spaceships. In their one concession to vivid language, they called the phenomenon ''extraordinary.''
...
Dr. Forward, who aids the Air Force in its propulsion work, said the sheer volume of bogus anti-gravity claims threw doubt on the validity of the new finding. About a dozen extraordinary claims are made for rotating devices each year, he said, and in nearly all of them the effect turns out to be caused by stray vibrations.
Two Men and a Gyroscope May Rewrite Newton's Law

Side note: Robert Forward is one of those scientists who is often quoted in matters related to anti-gravity, yet his expectation was also some kind of error, as is usual for such claims.

Here's a continuation of the story from New York Times on February 8, 1990
Antigravity Theory of Researchers Is Challenged in Two New Studies
...
Scientists are challenging on theoretical and experimental grounds a recent report by Japanese researchers that small gyroscopes lose weight when spun under certain conditions, apparently in defiance of gravity.
...
But an article today in the journal Nature cast doubt on the Japanese findings, saying subtle errors could account for them.
...
''It is possible to construct an argument to show that vibration in the gyro would lead to a misleading result,'' wrote Dr. S. H. Salter, a mechanical engineer at the University of Edinburgh. For instance, he said, the vibration could be caused by slight differences in the tracks that house the ball bearings at the two ends of the spinning gyroscope, throwing off the experimental readings.

Vibrations Could be Factor

Dr. Salter calculated that the force of such vibrations would be enough to account for the Japanese results.
...
The Japanese work has also been challenged by Dr. James E. Faller, a physicist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He tried to duplicate the Japanese experiment, with some minor differences, but found no losses in gyroscope weight. In an interview, Dr. Faller said a report on his experiment had been accepted by Physical Review Letters. It is to appear Feb. 19, he said.

'Somebody Has to Turn This Off'

''People have shied away from replicating the experiment because they think it's not worth doing,'' he said. ''But somebody has to turn this off before it goes wild.''

He said his apparatus had a sensitivity 35 times that needed to see the reported Japanese effect. ''We got nothing - flat out nothing,'' Dr. Faller said. ''We had the sensitivity and there's nothing. So the question is, Should the world of physics do more and more precise experiments? Surely not.''

At least one other major attempt at replication, this one by a team of United States Government scientists, has failed to get positive results. A member of the team said he could make no comment on the work until it had been accepted for publication by a journal.
Antigravity Theory of Researchers Is Challenged in Two New Studies

Similar story from NewScientist on 17 February 1990:
The Japanese results received so much publicity in the US that Robert Park of the American Physical Society (which publishes Physical Review Letters) said: ‘We have been flooded with calls from around the world. Most are from people claiming to have had the idea first; some say they have a patent on it; several have pointed out that flying saucers work that way.
...
Several pieces of evidence suggest that Hayasaka and Takeuchi had to counter a series of critical reports by referees before their paper was accepted. Physical Review Letters published their paper 18 months after receiving it, which is an exceptional delay for a journal of scientific letters. And the two researchers devote the second half of their paper to anticipating and answering possible criticisms.

Most scientists are sceptical of the claims. They cannot explain the size of the observed weight loss by any of the corrections to Newton’s theory of gravity that they normally apply. And there is no other physical effect that they know of that depends on the direction of spin of a gyroscope.
...
The real test of the experiment will of course come when other groups repeat it. The first such reports are now coming in. A team at the highly-respected joint Institute for Laboratory Astro physics and the National Institute of Standards and Technology at Boulder, Colorado, has repeated the experiment. Jim Faller and his colleagues report no anomalous reduction in the weight of their gyroscopes.

If the results from Japan are true, the consequences would be profound. An explanation for flying saucers remains unlikely, though, because the gyroscope would need to spin at 200 million revolutions per minute to counterbalance all its weight! The main consequence would be the overthrow of our present understanding of the force of gravity. Effects that are based on spin are not new; Einstein himself foresaw their possibility.

The embarrassing part about the present claims would be that the effect is much larger than existing theories with spin effects could plausibly accommodate. Indeed, if the same effect applied to spinning elementary particles, there might be an observable contribution in experiments testing Einstein’s ‘equivalence principle’: that all bodies experience the same gravitation acceleration. Similarly, there could be effects in atomic spectra.
Science: Does a spinning mass really lose weight?

So the experiment was repeated with higher sensitivities and just like most expected, it turned to be some kind of experimental error. Here are the papers of 3 attempts to replicate it, all with null results:

Gyroscope-Weighing Experiment with a Null Result (J. E. Faller, W. J. Hollander, P. G. Nelson, and M. P. McHugh), 19 FEBRUARY 1990
A recent experiment reporting an anomalous weight reduction for a spinning gyroscope weighed on a pan balance has been repeated in our laboratory. We find no anomalous weight changes of the magnitude reported that depend on rotor speed and/or rotational sense about the vertical axis.
...
We cannot say what possible systematic error or errors would account for the results of Hayasaka and Takeuchi. What we can say is that for our spinning rotor and to the limit of our experimental sensitivity, there is no observed weight change that depends on either the angular speed or sense of rotation.
https://www.researchgate.net/profil...pe-Weighing-Experiment-with-a-Null-Result.pdf

Null result for the weight change of a spinning gyroscope (J. M. Nitschke and P. A. Wilmarth), 30 April 1990
A null result was obtained for the weight change of a right-spinning gyroscope, contradicting the results recently reported by Hayasaka and Takeuchi. No weight change could be observed under a variety of spin directions for rotational frequencies between 0 and 2.2×10^4 rpm. Our limit of -0.025±0.07 mg is more than 2 orders of magnitude smaller than the effect reported by Hayasaka and Takeuchi.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 64, 2115 (1990) - Null result for the weight change of a spinning gyroscope

Null Result for the Violation of Equivalence Principle with Free-Fall Rotating Gyroscopes (J. LUO, Y. X. Nie, Y. Z. Zhang, Z. B. Zhou), June 20, 2001
The differential acceleration between a rotating mechanical gyroscope and a non-rotating one is directly measured by using a double free-fall interferometer, and no apparent differential acceleration has been observed at the relative level of 2×10-6. It means that the equivalence principle is still valid for rotating extended bodies, i.e., the spin-gravity interaction between the extended bodies has not been observed at this level. Also, to the limit of our experimental sensitivity, there is no observed asymmetrical effect or anti-gravity of the rotating gyroscopes as reported by hayasaka et al.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/0111069.pdf

Note that all this happened a couple of decades before pseudo-scientist Krinker was still trying to claim that an invalid result confirms the work of Kozyrev. He makes no mention that the result has been invalidated, and since that is easy to find with a single google search, it is pretty obvious it's not just a matter of ignorance but most likely purposeful dishonesty. So fans of pseudo-science, once again you are trusting liars. And by the way, his paper also references his work on dowsing and feng shui, which once again shows how such people tend to believe all sorts of pseudo-science instead of just one.

NASA has also published a document (December 2006) showing how they need to deal with all sorts of anti-gravity claims all the time, and it also references that paper by Hayasaka:
Based on the experiences of the NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project, suggestions are
offered for constructively responding to proposals that purport breakthrough propulsion using mechanical
devices. Because of the relatively large number of unsolicited submissions received (about 1 per
workday)
and because many of these involve similar concepts, this report is offered to help the would-be
submitters make genuine progress as well as to help reviewers respond to such submissions. Devices that
use oscillating masses or gyroscope falsely appear to create net thrust through differential friction or by
misinterpreting torques as linear forces
. To cover both the possibility of an errant claim and a genuine
discovery, reviews should require that submitters meet minimal thresholds of proof before engaging in
further correspondence; such as achieving sustained deflection of a level-platform pendulum in the case
of mechanical thrusters.
...
Another category of commonly purported mechanical breakthroughs consists of a system of
gyroscopes. A famous example is from the 1973 demonstration by Eric Laithwaite, where a spinning gyro
is shown to rise upward while it is forced to presses (ref. 18). Although such upward motion is a
consequence of conservation of angular momenta, it is easily misinterpreted as an “antigravity” effect
(ref. 19). Laithwaite, a Professor of Applied Electricity at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, 1967–
1975 (ref. 20), went on to patent a device (fig. 7), that claims to produce linear force from such torques
(ref. 21).
...
In 1989 there were reports where a flywheel appeared to lose weight when rotating clockwise (when
viewed from above) when its axis was aligned parallel to the earth’s gravitational field. Oddly, no weight
change was observed during counterclockwise rotation under otherwise identical circumstances (ref. 27).
Two separate attempts to replicate these observations, using higher degrees of sensitivity, failed to
confirm any such effect (refs. 28 and 29).
Since this concept does not involve changing the position or
orientation of the gyro’s axis, it is not in this category of “gyroscopic antigravity”
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20070004897.pdf

As far as science is concerned, that was the end of that story.

But of course none of this matters to true believers, they don't care if their idols are exposed as charlatans one after another. It's the exact same thing with religious fundamentalists, creationists etc. They have their prophets and other holy men, who can't do science, but they are to believed no matter what, even when they obviously lie, most likely because the lies give the sort of comfort that reality doesn't. And if they had to abandon some, there's always the next one and next excuse and next conspiracy.

Just remember that by doing so you earn and deserve the same amount of credibility as those other religiously motivated groups etc. That is basically none. And you are giving a similar contribution to the society in hindering the progress of real science and public understanding of it. You should also understand what kind of damage you are causing for efforts of making UFOs a subject that could be taken seriously and approached scientifically. It doesn't exactly help if the so called UFO community has widespread tendencies for anti-science attitudes, lack of critical thinking, and advertises all sorts of old scams and pseudo-sciences that rational people laugh at.

I have been trying to make the point that the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence doesn't belong to the same category as all sorts of pseudo-scientific and superstitious claims, but it's pretty hard to do that in light of the various common beliefs within that community. It's bad enough when high visibility targets like TTSA have linked themselves to telepathy, ESP etc., and even worse when their supporters so widely accept it.

It really isn't a surprise that real scientist generally do not want to be associated with the subject as it's so likely to bring along those other associations to all kinds of nonsense. In principle, rational discussion about UFOs shouldn't be that far away from SETI, since they are basically searching the same thing. But at the moment SETI scientists hardly have any more interest in having being associated with UFOs in any way. Here's one good example of why. It's a blog post by Jason Wright, known for his work on Tabby's Star, who posted that just a couple of days ago. I will only quote a couple of parts from the beginning and from the end, and I recommend reading that whole post:

SETI tends to get media attention, at an amount disproportionate to the amount of SETI work actually done. There are many reasons for this. One is that it is a topic of genuine interest to much of the lay public. Another is that it is easily sensationalized and conflated with UFOlogy and science fiction by the yellow press.
...
SETI astronomers have had to deal with conflation with UFOlogy and fringe psuedoscience for decades; I hope that more of our colleagues will recognize that we share their disdain for sensationalism and are pulling in the same direction on the issue of sober science communication about good science.
SETI is Not About Getting Attention | AstroWright
 
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Hi all,

I know I'm new here and perhaps I am overstepping my bounds when I request, most humbly, that we keep comments on this thread related to the topic, "Top questions and doubts about...Elizondo."

It becomes tiresome to log in and find 30+ new replies to this thread that have little to no connection to the original topic. Perhaps a moderator or commenter could divert off-topic discussions to a different thread for, say, speculative physics or remote viewing?

Just a request from the peanut gallery. Thanks all!

-Cu
Christopher O’Brien copied the topic statement directly from the title to a blogpost by Jon Rappaport.
Top questions and doubts about UFO whistleblower, Luis Elizondo

Luis Elizondo actually joined Paracast and put his toe in the water, but since then, just like Elvis, has “left the building.” He had the opportunity to answer questions here but chose not to.

Thus, in the absence of Lue Lue, the topic is not Lue himself, but rather the TOP QUESTIONS and DOUBTS ABOUT Lue Lue. And since Jon Rappaport is not a Paracster here, then the topic is open to any doubts and questions about Lue beyond anything Jon Rappaport has asked.

In the meantime, I offer you this recording of the famous 1963 hit rock’n’roll song by the Kingsmen called “Louie Louie” in the hopes that you might be inspired to contact the real LueLue himself and ask him to return to the Paracast fold where he could then subject himself to interrogation here by people who are far less obnoxious than Jon Rappaport.
 
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You clearly haven’t spoken with a relativist about this subject – I think you should do so, and prepare to be enlightened about the theoretical and experimental validity of general relativity, and the many astounding implications of it.

First off, it's weird that the alerts don't get triggered for me when someone posts on this thread. First time I'm seeing it now, I haven't been ignoring you!

For starters, the equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass is experimentally established to within 10^-13 (one part in ten trillion), the current limit of experimental precision.

Totally agree! They happen to be equivalent, but I have yet to see a compelling reason that they are. It is an interesting question.

Likewise, the stress-energy tensor is as valid as the metric predictions of GR (they're mathematically equivalent), so it's well proven at this point. Every conceivable form of hammer has been taken to GR, and it always prevails. There’s no doubt that it’s correct for modeling all of the effects that we’ve discussed here. When it's superseded by an even more general theory someday (a grand unified theory, presumably), we already know that any future developments won’t obviate its mathematical validity, just as we know that Newtonian mechanics holds true within the nonrelativistic regime. If GR isn't accurate at some level, then we know that it'll only deviate in extremely strong gravity regimes such as neutron stars and black holes, because no deviations from prediction have emerged in all of the regimes that we have been able to test to extremely high precision (which is basically everything short of neutron stars and black holes). If you study it, you’ll find that the better you understand it, the more you’ll agree with me on this.

My argument is not one from belief in or against the stress-energy tensor. It's on how you can influence the tensor to achieve a desired outcome.

And there’s no hand-waving in those papers – they’re solid. They’re derived directly from general relativity – there’s no new theory in there. It’s akin to deriving the concept of a suspension bridge using Newtonian physics – you now it’ll work before you build it because you know that Newtonian mechanics works for structural engineering (except in this case, you’re engineering the spacetime metric instead of steel and concrete). And they were published in the most respected peer-reviewed physics journal on the planet, Physical Review. It’s been three years since those papers came out, and I haven’t seen a single challenge to them in the academic literature (typically it takes less than a year for somebody to find an error that slips past the review panel). And there are no contrivances either – this is fundamental physics, not wild speculation. So it’s safe to say that they’re as credible as general relativity itself, because they were derived directly from the general theory of relativity. And to date, every prediction derived from general relativity has eventually been proven correct - gravitational waves being the latest confirmed prediction among many.

Line one of the paper you reference that I responded to goes as follows:

Negative matter is a hypothetical form of matter who's active-gravitational, passive-gravitational, inertial, and rest masses are opposite to normal, positive matter.
That is pretty much the definition of hand waiving.

Also, tension isn’t a special state of matter: you use it every time that you use a rubber band.


I’m glad to see that you appreciate my enthusiasm. It’s just a shame that you can’t share it.

I want it to be true. I want this to be an engineering problem and not a scientific one.

The problem is that everybody I talks to says that it's not and even the Alcubierre drive probably only works as a thought experiment.

You are a stubborn man, marduk.

True!

That can be advantageous in the treacherous world of ufology, but when it comes to understanding theoretical physics, it’s a major liability. Because you tend to dismiss all of it, even the rock solid stuff. You’re not going to believe that anything is possible until somebody proves it experimentally, which honestly makes these kinds of discussions exasperating, because you’re impervious to everything including peer-reviewed academic findings directly derived from the most successful physics theory in human history. It’s just a personal temperament thing, I suppose. I have the opposite kind of temperament: I’m enthralled with landmark theoretical breakthroughs because I can see their significance and the inevitably of their future developments and applications. This reminds me of the days when physicists first calculated that we could send a man to the Moon: some people guffawed at the "paper proof" that it could be done, while others bristled with enthusiasm. It's up to you to choose which one you want to be - so choose wisely, my brother.

I'm an empiricist. If you want to prove it, demonstrate it exists in reality. Build it and I'll cheer for you in the hopes that it works.

But I won't believe you until it actually does work.

Yes we have many steps to take before we can effectively engineer with applied general relativity. Trust me – I’m keenly aware of that, and I brainstorm about those steps relentlessly. But it’s already inevitable. I recently saw a paper proposing a currently achievable experiment to create a gravitational field in the laboratory using a pair of large superconductive magnets and a Michelson interferometer to detect the gravity generated by its electromagnetic field. So experimental general relativity is about to step through the door.

Ya, I saw that too, and I'm hopeful someone does the experimental verification of that.

I think the Em Drive is the most embarrassing invention since Steorn’s Orbo, except it’s collected many more scalps. Everything that we know about physics indicates that it’s just a weirdly shaped microwave oven that tends to produce tiny measurement errors that beguile experimentalists. The alleged “force” that its proponents claim that it produces, is equivalent to the weight of a grain of sand resting on your palm. It would be a miracle if a searing hot buzzing contraption didn’t produce an elusive jitter in the signal that looked like some kind of anomalous force. But it has about as much theoretical validity as the Dean Drive: total horse pucky. Which is a shame, because the central focus of my intellectual life is the dogged pursuit of a field propulsion system. Sadly, this isn’t it.

Stuff that has no cogent theoretical foundation, like that spinning universe paper and the Em Drive, turn out to be errors about 99.99999% of the time. But that’s why I pay such close attention to that kind of stuff – because when one of them turns out to be valid (which happens about once per century), it changes the game. At his point though it’s going to take a higher level of sophistication than a funny-looking microwave oven to change the game, imo.

Totally agree.

I'm actually on your side with this; however like much in this whole field, caution and skepticism is needed from people within it to be healthy.

And "You just don't understand it" may be an argument that works with others - like the argument my father in law gave me about converting to his religion - but it doesn't work with me.

And I know enough about math and science that I'll need a better argument than that, too.
 
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