🚀 go-pugleaf

A persistent marauder:

http://www.rfdesignline.com/news/225600027
"Ronald Mallett, a professor of theoretical physics at the University
of Connecticut, gave a mind-bending keynote speech on the physics of
time travel to an enthralled audience at the Embedded Systems
Conference here Tuesday morning, describing how black holes, blue
giant stars, and worm holes (tunnels that connect the mouths of black
holes) - some of the strangest things in the Universe - illustrate (at
least in theory) the potential for time travel some day. And that day,
Mallett claimed, is not so far in the future as one might think. (...)
Author of "Time Traveler: A Scientist's Personal Mission to Make Time
Travel a Reality," Mallett explained how the trauma of his father's
unexpected death when he was just ten and H.G. Well's book The Time
Machine set him on a mission to travel back in time and save his
father's life. (...) How weird it must have been, he mused, for 19th
century scientists to discover through their experiments that the
speed of light was constant. "The only way that speed of light can
stay the same is that something else has to be altered. That something
else is time - it has to slow down, as experiments have shown," he
said."

How can a marauder become "a professor of theoretical physics at the
University of Connecticut"? Peter Hayes gives part of the answer:

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a909857880
Peter Hayes "The Ideology of Relativity: The Case of the Clock
Paradox" : Social Epistemology, Volume 23, Issue 1 January 2009, pages
57-78
"The prediction that clocks will move at different rates is
particularly well known, and the problem of explaining how this can be
so without violating the principle of relativity is particularly
obvious. The clock paradox, however, is only one of a number of simple
objections that have been raised to different aspects of Einstein's
theory of relativity. (Much of this criticism is quite apart from and
often predates the apparent contradiction between relativity theory
and quantum mechanics.) It is rare to find any attempt at a detailed
rebuttal of these criticisms by professional physicists. However,
physicists do sometimes give a general response to criticisms that
relativity theory is syncretic by asserting that Einstein is logically
consistent, but that to explain why is so difficult that critics lack
the capacity to understand the argument. In this way, the handy claim
that there are unspecified, highly complex resolutions of simple
apparent inconsistencies in the theory can be linked to the charge
that antirelativists have only a shallow understanding of the matter,
probably gleaned from misleading popular accounts of the theory. (...)
The argument for complexity reverses the scientific preference for
simplicity. Faced with obvious inconsistencies, the simple response is
to conclude that Einstein's claims for the explanatory scope of the
special and general theory are overstated. To conclude instead that
that relativity theory is right for reasons that are highly complex is
to replace Occam's razor with a potato masher. (...) The defence of
complexity implies that the novice wishing to enter the profession of
theoretical physics must accept relativity on faith. It implicitly
concedes that, without an understanding of relativity theory's higher
complexities, it appears illogical, which means that popular
"explanations" of relativity are necessarily misleading. But given
Einstein's fame, physicists do not approach the theory for the first
time once they have developed their expertise. Rather, they are
exposed to and probably examined on popular explanations of relativity
in their early training. How are youngsters new to the discipline
meant to respond to these accounts? Are they misled by false
explanations and only later inculcated with true ones? What happens to
those who are not misled? Are they supposed to accept relativity
merely on the grounds of authority? The argument of complexity
suggests that to pass the first steps necessary to join the physics
profession, students must either be willing to suspend disbelief and
go along with a theory that appears illogical; or fail to notice the
apparent inconsistencies in the theory; or notice the inconsistencies
and maintain a guilty silence in the belief that this merely shows
that they are unable to understand the theory. The gatekeepers of
professional physics in the universities and research institutes are
disinclined to support or employ anyone who raises problems over the
elementary inconsistencies of relativity. A winnowing out process has
made it very difficult for critics of Einstein to achieve or maintain
professional status. Relativists are then able to use the argument of
authority to discredit these critics. Were relativists to admit that
Einstein may have made a series of elementary logical errors, they
would be faced with the embarrassing question of why this had not been
noticed earlier. Under these circumstances the marginalisation of
antirelativists, unjustified on scientific grounds, is eminently
justifiable on grounds of realpolitik. Supporters of relativity theory
have protected both the theory and their own reputations by shutting
their opponents out of professional discourse."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com