- #1
thefurlong
- 3
- 1
I hope this is right place to post this. I just wanted to get this off of my chest. I am frustrated, and depressed because I am an outsider to the physics community. I am posting this with the hope that somebody else might be able to add perspective to my situation. I apologize if that's vague.
Allow me to tell you a little about myself. I have taken about 3 years worth of formal physics classes. At the end of my third year, I lost the job I was in, and hence my source of income for paying for schooling, and then ended up getting a new job which required me to table my schooling for the time being.
Since then, I have taken to studying physics on my own, but as almost anyone who has attempted self-study outside of academia can attest, it is slow going. My job, and my daily obligations constantly get in the way of my ability to progress. Since leaving school, I have familiarized myself with more advanced topics in classical EM, finding this site to be instrumental in my understanding. In addition to this, I have been slowly learning GR, and the current book I am reading (slowly) is Rindler's Relativity. I wish I could say that I have gotten far, but alas, I am only at the discussion of Static and Stationary Spacetimes (though I have found Index notation and the Levi-Civita tensor to be extremely useful in my other studies).
Another source of interference with learning GR is my own independent research. You see, I have gotten this idea in my head that I now know enough about Classical Electrodynamics and Modern Physics to be able to do original research. Last December, I stumbled into several, enticing discoveries in this subject, which resulting in me pretty much dropping everything else to focus solely on working out their implications. It has gotten to the point where I can actually construct mathematically consistent candidate theories based on my core ideas.
Now, I understand that this might be a foolish thing to do, as I am nowhere near an expert on modern physics. Nonetheless, I can't argue with what I have found, and, moreover, I can't seem to stop myself from thinking about them.
As an example of this, I was reading a QM book when I encountered the formula for work done on a magnetic dipole moment. I had known about this equation before, but reading this book brought it to the forefront of my mind, in which I immediately recognized that an anomalous equation I had been dealing with looked almost exactly like it, which made me consider that it might indicate the presence of a magnetic dipole. I immediately halted reading this book, and set to work on possible implications.
Since making those discoveries, the rate of new ideas/discoveries has stubbornly not subsided, despite my attempts at rigorously trying to break them. Indeed, just last weekend, I found that the Lorentz factor emerges in a novel way that I hypothesized would happen. (The reasoning was roughly, my idea X leads to equation Y. However, equation Y should be consistent with SR, hence, the Lorentz factor must naturally fall out from it, though maybe not in an obvious manner. I have not used any postulates from SR in my reasoning. This is also not the first time that I have theoretically confirmed an original hypothesis). I would like to note that despite that I haven't made much progress in truly understanding modern physics, I have learned several useful mathematical/physical techniques in exploring my own ideas.
On the other hand, the 800 lb gorilla in my room is that I don't even employ modern methods. I never use Lagrangians or Noether's Theorem, know next to nothing about Representation Theory, and 2nd quantization, and have not yet gotten the hang of Ricci Calculus. There are tremendous holes in my education, and yet, no matter how hard I try to defer my ideas, they distract me, constantly inviting me to work out more implications.
I fear that I am stuck in a quagmire. I am in an unfortunate place where I am not around people who understand enough of physics to competently assess my ideas. All anyone I know ever does, when I talk about my work, is vacantly nod their head and utter the same old tired variants of "You're a genius" or "That went way over my head." Even when I break it down for them, and put it in as simple, accessible terms as possible, I get the same reaction. It's like their brains preemptively decide that whatever I have to say will not make sense to them because it's "physics."
Because of this I have pretty much given up on talking about my ideas. I don't want people to call me a genius. I want to share what I have found with the world and get a reaction.
On the other hand, I can be quite intense while talking about physics, and so, in the rare occasion that I do meet someone proficient enough to sort of assess the gist of my ideas, I feel that I scare them off, probably because I have been holding my ideas in for so long. Conversely, I feel like my ideas are mature enough, at least in a knowledge vacuum, to be published, and so I foolishly worry that someone smarter than me will scoop them and work out the implications before I do, if I talk about them in too much depth. I am personally acquainted with people with professional backgrounds, but I fear that they will dismiss my ideas not on their actual flaws, but on the fact that the some of them superficially resemble outmoded or unfashionable ideas. (I am aware of and accept the reasons these unfashionable ideas have been rejected.)
Anyway, I will leave this post at this point. I apologize for the length. Thank you for taking the time to read it.
Allow me to tell you a little about myself. I have taken about 3 years worth of formal physics classes. At the end of my third year, I lost the job I was in, and hence my source of income for paying for schooling, and then ended up getting a new job which required me to table my schooling for the time being.
Since then, I have taken to studying physics on my own, but as almost anyone who has attempted self-study outside of academia can attest, it is slow going. My job, and my daily obligations constantly get in the way of my ability to progress. Since leaving school, I have familiarized myself with more advanced topics in classical EM, finding this site to be instrumental in my understanding. In addition to this, I have been slowly learning GR, and the current book I am reading (slowly) is Rindler's Relativity. I wish I could say that I have gotten far, but alas, I am only at the discussion of Static and Stationary Spacetimes (though I have found Index notation and the Levi-Civita tensor to be extremely useful in my other studies).
Another source of interference with learning GR is my own independent research. You see, I have gotten this idea in my head that I now know enough about Classical Electrodynamics and Modern Physics to be able to do original research. Last December, I stumbled into several, enticing discoveries in this subject, which resulting in me pretty much dropping everything else to focus solely on working out their implications. It has gotten to the point where I can actually construct mathematically consistent candidate theories based on my core ideas.
Now, I understand that this might be a foolish thing to do, as I am nowhere near an expert on modern physics. Nonetheless, I can't argue with what I have found, and, moreover, I can't seem to stop myself from thinking about them.
As an example of this, I was reading a QM book when I encountered the formula for work done on a magnetic dipole moment. I had known about this equation before, but reading this book brought it to the forefront of my mind, in which I immediately recognized that an anomalous equation I had been dealing with looked almost exactly like it, which made me consider that it might indicate the presence of a magnetic dipole. I immediately halted reading this book, and set to work on possible implications.
Since making those discoveries, the rate of new ideas/discoveries has stubbornly not subsided, despite my attempts at rigorously trying to break them. Indeed, just last weekend, I found that the Lorentz factor emerges in a novel way that I hypothesized would happen. (The reasoning was roughly, my idea X leads to equation Y. However, equation Y should be consistent with SR, hence, the Lorentz factor must naturally fall out from it, though maybe not in an obvious manner. I have not used any postulates from SR in my reasoning. This is also not the first time that I have theoretically confirmed an original hypothesis). I would like to note that despite that I haven't made much progress in truly understanding modern physics, I have learned several useful mathematical/physical techniques in exploring my own ideas.
On the other hand, the 800 lb gorilla in my room is that I don't even employ modern methods. I never use Lagrangians or Noether's Theorem, know next to nothing about Representation Theory, and 2nd quantization, and have not yet gotten the hang of Ricci Calculus. There are tremendous holes in my education, and yet, no matter how hard I try to defer my ideas, they distract me, constantly inviting me to work out more implications.
I fear that I am stuck in a quagmire. I am in an unfortunate place where I am not around people who understand enough of physics to competently assess my ideas. All anyone I know ever does, when I talk about my work, is vacantly nod their head and utter the same old tired variants of "You're a genius" or "That went way over my head." Even when I break it down for them, and put it in as simple, accessible terms as possible, I get the same reaction. It's like their brains preemptively decide that whatever I have to say will not make sense to them because it's "physics."
Because of this I have pretty much given up on talking about my ideas. I don't want people to call me a genius. I want to share what I have found with the world and get a reaction.
On the other hand, I can be quite intense while talking about physics, and so, in the rare occasion that I do meet someone proficient enough to sort of assess the gist of my ideas, I feel that I scare them off, probably because I have been holding my ideas in for so long. Conversely, I feel like my ideas are mature enough, at least in a knowledge vacuum, to be published, and so I foolishly worry that someone smarter than me will scoop them and work out the implications before I do, if I talk about them in too much depth. I am personally acquainted with people with professional backgrounds, but I fear that they will dismiss my ideas not on their actual flaws, but on the fact that the some of them superficially resemble outmoded or unfashionable ideas. (I am aware of and accept the reasons these unfashionable ideas have been rejected.)
Anyway, I will leave this post at this point. I apologize for the length. Thank you for taking the time to read it.