Andrei Lebed, equivalence principle

[greswd]

Thanks for clarifying.

I thought you were going to answer my question haha

 

[Dr. Courtney]

I thought you were going to answer my question haha

The question of whether a pop science article accurately represents the views of the scientist and paper it is trying to explain to a general audience is simply much less interesting than how the assertions of the underlying paper can be experimentally tested.

At some level, all pop science articles misrepresent or overly simplify the issues they are attempting to convey to a more general readership. I long stopped worrying about that. Since my observation is that most lay readers have lost the essential connection between theory and experiment, I tend to focus on the basic point that theoretical predictions need to be tested before we assert whether we know they are true or not.

Delving more deeply into the subtleties of where and how the pop science article accurately represents the underlying text and where things are represented inaccurately requires a lot of time and effort to explain to lay readers and is not a particular strength in areas where I have not done it before. Sorry to disappoint.

 

[greswd]

If I'm understanding him correctly, then there is no reason that it has to be in free fall. It could be in a moving elevator or contained in a spacecraft whose rockets were thrusting. I think the reason he talks about a spacecraft is that he wants to make a very large change in gravitational potential.

Do the thrusters have to be thrusting? I thought the purpose of the spacecraft was to take the hydrogen to a location of microgravity only.

 

[greswd]

The question of whether a pop science article accurately represents the views of the scientist and paper it is trying to explain to a general audience is simply much less interesting than how the assertions of the underlying paper can be experimentally tested.

At some level, all pop science articles misrepresent or overly simplify the issues they are attempting to convey to a more general readership. I long stopped worrying about that. Since my observation is that most lay readers have lost the essential connection between theory and experiment, I tend to focus on the basic point that theoretical predictions need to be tested before we assert whether we know they are true or not.

Delving more deeply into the subtleties of where and how the pop science article accurately represents the underlying text and where things are represented inaccurately requires a lot of time and effort to explain to lay readers and is not a particular strength in areas where I have not done it before. Sorry to disappoint.

Alright. Then I'll ask, does the article make any crucial mistakes or errors?

 

[Dr. Courtney]

Alright. Then I'll ask, does the article make any crucial mistakes or errors?

Possibly, but these have been discussed by others above in this very thread, so I won't repeat them. However, since there are clear predictions, an experimental test would be a better arbiter than expert opinions.

 

[greswd]

Possibly, but these have been discussed by others above in this very thread, so I won't repeat them. However, since there are clear predictions, an experimental test would be a better arbiter than expert opinions.

Sorry, by errors, I mean: is there anything from Lebed's paper that the UA article reports incorrectly?

 

[DrDu]

This is a longer article by Lebed: http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ahep/2014/678087/ref/ (open access, does not appear to be on arxiv).

I don't buy a word of this!
Look at his equation 28 at t=0:
$\psi'(r)=\sum a_n \psi_n(r)=\psi_1+\sum_{i>1} \frac{-\Phi/c^2 V_{n,1} }{E_n-E_1}\psi_n(r)$ where $V_{n,1}$ is given by eq. 32.
This is nothing else as the first order time independent perturbation series for the ground state of H_0 eq 26 as it should be. Namely, on adiabatic switching, we have transformed the ground state of H in the absence of the field into the ground state of H with potential $\Phi$. Clearly, the new ground state will be stable (as any ground state is) and can't decay into anything else.

 

[greswd]

I don't buy a word of this!
Look at his equation 28 at t=0:
$\psi'(r)=\sum a_n \psi_n(r)=\psi_1+\sum_{i>1} \frac{-\Phi/c^2 V_{n,1} }{E_n-E_1}\psi_n(r)$ where $V_{n,1}$ is given by eq. 32.
This is nothing else as the first order time independent perturbation series for the ground state of H_0 eq 26 as it should be. Namely, on adiabatic switching, we have transformed the ground state of H in the absence of the field into the ground state of H with potential $\Phi$. Clearly, the new ground state will be stable (as any ground state is) and can't decay into anything else.

But doesn't that mean Lebed is contradicting his own assertion?