🚀 go-pugleaf

Einsteiniana filled with enthusiasm:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/02/23/dark-energy-universe.html
"We live at a very interesting time, namely the only time in which we
can empirically verify that we live in a very interesting time,"
Krauss said.

The same Einsteinian giving more detail as to why Einsteinana is
filled with enthusiasm:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/science/26essay.html
"Lawrence Krauss, a cosmologist from Arizona State, said that most
theories were wrong. "We get the notions they are right because we
keep talking about them," he said. Not only are most theories wrong,
he said, but most data are also wrong..."

Other physicists:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/nov/22/schools.g2
"We are nearing the end of the "World Year of Physics", otherwise
known as Einstein Year, as it is the centenary of his annus mirabilis
in which he made three incredible breakthroughs, including special
relativity. In fact, it was 100 years ago yesterday that he published
the most famous equation in the history of physics: E=mc2. But instead
of celebrating, physicists are in mourning after a report showed a
dramatic decline in the number of pupils studying physics at school.
The number taking A-level physics has dropped by 38% over the past 15
years, a catastrophic meltdown that is set to continue over the next
few years. The report warns that a shortage of physics teachers and a
lack of interest from pupils could mean the end of physics in state
schools. Thereafter, physics would be restricted to only those
students who could afford to go to posh schools. Britain was the home
of Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday and Paul Dirac, and Brits made world-
class contributions to understanding gravity, quantum physics and
electromagnetism - and yet the British physicist is now facing
extinction. But so what? Physicists are not as cuddly as pandas, so
who cares if we disappear?"

http://archives.lesechos.fr/archives/2004/LesEchos/19077-80-ECH.htm
"Physicien au CEA, professeur et auteur, Etienne Klein s'inquiète des
relations de plus en plus conflictuelles entre la science et la
société. (...) « Je me demande si nous aurons encore des physiciens
dans trente ou quarante ans », remarque ce touche-à-tout aux multiples
centres d'intérêt : la constitution de la matière, le temps, les
relations entre science et philosophie. (...) Etienne Klein n'est pas
optimiste. Selon lui, il se pourrait bien que l'idée de progrès soit
tout bonnement « en train de mourir sous nos yeux »."

Einstein predicting the present enthusiasm in 1954; the prediction
makes John Stachel hysterically happy:

http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=317&Itemid=81&lecture_id=3576
John Stachel: "Einstein discussed the other side of the particle-field
dualism - get rid of fields and just have particles."
Albert Einstein 1954: "I consider it entirely possible that physics
cannot be based upon the field concept, that is on continuous
structures. Then nothing will remain of my whole castle in the air,
including the theory of gravitation, but also nothing of the rest of
contemporary physics."
John Stachel's comment: "If I go down, everything goes down, ha ha,
hm, ha ha ha."

Pentcho Valev wrote:

http://www.physorg.com/news4999.html
"The widely accepted idea that the universe began with a Big Bang
could be wrong, according to astrophysicists who took part in a
"Crisis in cosmology" meeting in Portugal and reported in this month's
Physics World magazine. According to the standard Big Bang theory, the
universe began in a hot dense fireball about 13 billion years ago and
has been expanding ever since. But despite plenty of evidence to
support the theory, not everyone is convinced. Eric Lerner of
Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, who organized the Portuguese meeting,
says that certain properties of the cosmic microwave background - the
so-called "echo of the Big Bang" - do not match predictions from the
theory. Others are unhappy that cosmologists have had to introduce
weird concepts like dark matter and dark energy to explain the
universe. Mainstream scientists, however, have hit back, saying that
we just need to tweak the Big Bang model and tie up "loose ends"."

Mainstream scientists are going to tweak the Big Bang model forever
because this brings billions:

http://www.physorg.com/news179508040.html
"More than a dozen ground-based Dark Energy projects are proposed or
under way, and at least four space-based missions, each of the order
of a billion dollars, are at the design concept stage."

Billions also force mainstream scientists to ignore and eventually
suppress any alternative idea, although in moments of aberration they
admit: "We have a complete inventory of the universe," Sean Carroll, a
California Institute of Technology cosmologist, has said, "and it
makes no sense."

http://www.sciscoop.com/2008/10
"Does the apparently constant speed of light change over the vast
stretches of the universe? Would our understanding of black holes,
ancient supernovae, dark matter, dark energy, the origins of the
universe and its ultimate fate be different if the speed of light were
not constant?.....Couldn't it be that the supposed vacuum of space is
acting as an interstellar medium to lower the speed of light like some
cosmic swimming pool? If so, wouldn't a stick plunged into the pool
appear bent as the light is refracted and won't that affect all our
observations about the universe. I asked theoretical physicist Leonard
Susskind, author of The Black Hole War, recently reviewed in Science
Books to explain this apparent anomaly....."You are entirely right,"
he told me, "there are all sorts of effects on the propagation of
light that astronomers and astrophysicists must account for. The point
of course is that they (not me) do take these effects into account and
correct for them." "In a way this work is very heroic but unheralded,"
adds Susskind, "An immense amount of extremely brilliant analysis has
gone into the detailed corrections that are needed to eliminate these
'spurious' effects so that people like me can just say 'light travels
with the speed of light.' So, there you have it. My concern about
cosmic swimming pools and bent sticks does indeed apply, but
physicists have taken the deviations into account so that other
physicists, such as Susskind, who once proved Stephen Hawking wrong,
can battle their way to a better understanding of the universe."

http://www.springerlink.com/content/w6777w07xn737590/fulltext.pdf
Astrophys Space Sci (2009) 323: 205211
Misconceptions about the Hubble recession law
Wilfred H. Sorrell
"The question is this: Do astronomical observations necessarily
support the idea of an expanding universe? Almost all cosmologists
believe as sacrosanct that the Hubble recession law was directly
inferred from astronomical observations. As this belief might be ill-
founded... (...) It turns out that the Hubble recession law was not
directly inferred from astronomical observations. The Hubble recession
law was directly inferred from the ad hoc assumption that the observed
spectroscopic redshifts of distant galaxies may be interpreted as
ordinary Doppler shifts. The observational techniques used by Hubble
led to the empirical discovery of a linear dependence of redshift on
distance. Based upon these historical considerations, the first
conclusion of the present study is that astronomical evidence in favor
of an expanding universe is circumstantial at best. The past eight
decades of astronomical observations do not necessarily support the
idea of an expanding universe. (...) Reber (1982) made the interesting
point that Edwin Hubble was not a promoter of the expanding universe
idea. Some personal communications from Hubble reveal that he thought
a model universe based upon the tired-light hypothesis is more simple
and less irrational than a model universe based upon an expanding
space-time geometry. The second conclusion of the present study is
that the model Hubble diagram for a static (tired-light) cosmology
gives a good fit to the Type Ia supernova data shown in Fig. 2. This
observational test of a static (tired-light) cosmology model also
proves that it is wholly possible to explain the supernovae data
without requiring any flat Friedmann model universe undergoing
acceleration."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,757145,00.html
Monday, Dec. 14, 1936: "Other causes for the redshift were suggested,
such as cosmic dust or a change in the nature of light over great
stretches of space. Two years ago Dr. Hubble admitted that the
expanding universe might be an illusion, but implied that this was a
cautious and colorless view. Last week it was apparent that he had
shifted his position even further away from a literal interpretation
of the redshift, that he now regards the expanding universe as more
improbable than a non-expanding one."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/6057362/Give-scientists-the-freedom-to-be-wrong.html
Martin Rees: "Over the past week, two stories in the press have
suggested that scientists have been very wrong about some very big
issues. First, a new paper seemed to suggest that dark energy the
mysterious force that makes up three quarters of the universe, and is
pushing the galaxies further apart might not even exist."

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/87150187.html
"Dark Energy: The Biggest Mystery in the Universe (...) "We have a
complete inventory of the universe," Sean Carroll, a California
Institute of Technology cosmologist, has said, "and it makes no
sense."

http://io9.com/5528758/ask-a-physicist-why-believe-in-dark-matter
"And don't even get me started about Dark Energy. It's the stuff that
accelerates the universe, and if you think you've got a problem with
Dark Matter, wait'll you see Dark Energy. It's no so much that we
don't understand where Dark Energy could come from; it's just that the
"natural" value (the one that comes out of reasonable assumptions
based on vacuum energy) is about 10^100 times the density that we
actually observe. For my money, this is the absolute biggest problem
in physics."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com