Favorite crackpot theories.

[matthyaouw]

I'm sure you've all heard a lot of them in your time, so share with me some of the most rediculous ones, or ones that amuse you most.

I just stumbled across this little beauty:

http://www.nov55.com/geol.html
The person explains in vaguely how soil formation through the means of breakdown of rock is impossible, and instead, soil must have come from space. Along the way, he demonstrates little to no understanding of any soil or geological processes.
The line that cracks me up the most has to be "Sediments and shale have no similarities"

 

[fourier jr]

there's a guy called zecharia sitchin who is apparently the only person in the world who can "correctly" read & interpret ancient sumerian clay tablets. according to him, the nice God from the New Testament is an alien called Enki (actually true in mainstream) & his evil brother Enlil from the planet Nibiru. We can't see Nibiru anywhere because it's so far away; it comes close to Earth only once every 3600 years or so. according to Sitchin, humans were part of one of Enki's genetic engineering experiments and Enlil thought is was stupid & tried to kill everyone off. he was God in the Old Testament & Enki was the nice God from the New Testament who wanted to take care of everybody. way back whenever there were nuclear wars, etc between the rest of the 'gods' from Nibiru & it's all written in the Bible.

 

[mapper]

^^ at least the bible would make a lot more sense.

 

[SpaceTiger]

http://www.timecube.com !

 

[mapper]

^ Just read a bit of that. Was reminded of the time on the Subway where this guy was having a rather perplexing conversation with himself.


Cliffs on what the jist of what he's talking about? I tend not to read things where I am called stupid twice in one sentence.

 

[SpaceTiger]

Cliffs on what the jist of what he's talking about? I tend not to read things where I am called stupid twice in one sentence.

No idea, but I couldn't stop laughing the first I heard of it. I felt bad cause they guy appears to have a very serious mental disorder.

 

[Grogs]

No idea, but I couldn't stop laughing the first I heard of it. I felt bad cause they guy appears to have a very serious mental disorder.

If you'll scroll down to the bottom of the [time cube] page, you'll find a few diagrams that seem to explain the core of his theory. If I'm understanding it correctly, he's defined 4 points on the Earth's surface 90 degrees apart, and since each of them experiences a full day during a rotation of the Earth, there are really *4 days* per every rotation of the Earth, rather than just 1.

As for a mental condition, I wouldn't presume to diagnose him, but he makes the following statement on his webpage:

My wisdom so antiquates known knowledge, that a psychiatrist examining my behavior, eccentric by his academic single corner knowledge, knows no course other than to judge me schizoprenic.

 

[FredGarvin]

I always get a laugh out of this:

http://www.voyagehollowearth.com/

 

[The Bob]

I love the one when Thomas Huxley has finished a lecture and an old lady stands up:

As Thomas Huxley concluded a lecture on Darwin, he was immediately accosted by a little, old lady who challenged him to refute her conviction that the world, which was flat, rested on the back of a turtle. Before Huxley had a chance to respond, the lady concluded:

"I know what you are going to ask, Mr. Huxley, and the answer is ‘turtles all the way down.’"

That one gets me every time. :rofl:

The Bob (2004 ©)

 

[Pengwuino]

http://www.nov55.com/geol.html
The person explains in vaguely how soil formation through the means of breakdown of rock is impossible, and instead, soil must have come from space. Along the way, he demonstrates little to no understanding of any soil or geological processes.

I wonder who these people are. I really want to meet em. I wonder what credentials make him a "biologist"!

 

[Pengwuino]

http://www.timecube.com !

"Male+female cancel each out." What class do i need ot take to understand this math equation?

 

[SpaceTiger]

If you'll scroll down to the bottom of the [time cube] page, you'll find a few diagrams that seem to explain the core of his theory.

Yeah, I love the one that says "Jesus lives here." :rofl:

 

[SpaceTiger]

"Male+female cancel each out." What class do i need ot take to understand this math equation?

Introduction to Politics, of course.

 

[Moonbear]

I wonder who these people are. I really want to meet em. I wonder what credentials make him a "biologist"!

The same ones that make me qualified to build the next space shuttle. :rofl: You can claim to be anything you want, it doesn't make it true.

 

[gnome]

I would never say that any particular one was my favorite; there are too many to choose from. But this one just arrived in the mail from a "financial advisor", so it's my "favorite of the day". Presumably, it's meant to convince the prospective customer (i.e., sucker) to buy some tax-deferred annuity or whatnot. I'll just copy it down here, exactly as I received it:

The Miracle of Compound Interest​

A person has accumulated $50,000 and looks for a savings vehicle like a savings account, treasury bill, zero coupon bond, corporate bond, money market fund, certificate of deposit, mutual fund, to invest in. The person does very well and earns 9% over a 35 year period. The $50,000 becomes $1,020,698. The miracle of compound interest! Unfortunately there are some toll booths and eroding factors along the way. All the financial instruments mentioned above are subject to taxes. Suppose this person was in a 28% marginal tax bracket. The total taxes paid to Uncle Sam would be $271,795. Adding the taxes to the original cost of $50,000 and subtracting from our total we now have $698,903. Still not bad the net earnings are still 14 times the original principal.

There is an accounting term called "lost opportunity cost". What it means essentially is that if you spend a dollar you then have lost what that dollar could have become with interest and time. If our investor did not have to pay the tax on their investment how much money did this person give up by paying those taxes? Well the answer is $335,733. That is what could have been earned on those tax dollars. So what we have now is:

$1,020,698 Compounded Savings Account @ 9%
-___50,000 Original Principal Investment
-__271,795 Income Taxes Paid
-__335,733 Lost Interest on Taxes Paid
__________________________________
$__363,170 Net Result


There is one more eroding factor which should be quantified to measure our final result. How much will that number above be worth thirty five years from now? Assuming a 3% inflation rate, every dollar will lose 65 cents in value over the 35 year period. $1,020,698 x .65 = $663,453 gone.

Subtracting the loss to inflation from the above net result we have a loss of $300,283!

I guess some MBA thought of this one.

 

[Pengwuino]

haha, the the time cube... 'wisest human being on earth'.

 

[BicycleTree]

I think that the Time Cube is a joke, and a pretty good one.

 

[gnome]

Time Cube

Apparently he doesn't think it's a joke. That is one sick puppy!

 

[BicycleTree]

What makes you think he doesn't think it's a joke?

 

[Danger]

Someone suggesting that I was Tribdog in disguise was one of the more cracked ones that I've heard recently.

 

[Nereid]

1) Expanding Earth (sorry, I don't have a link) - we had someone here at PF seriously present this to us, for our consideration. It is certainly a fecund crackpot - how many inconsistencies can you (the skeptical enquirer) come up with, within 10 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day, ...?

2) Gravity is a nuclear force - I like it for its combination of inventiveness (in a limited way) and blithe ignorance of quantum mechanics.

3) I no longer have any details of this one, but its author (used to be?) active on the string theory forum ... it had to do with how the CMBR temperature was asymptotic to pi (the author had - apparently - not the faintest inkling of the arbitrariness of the (Kelvin) temperature scale!).

 

[Huckleberry]

'Time Cube'
Kind of reminds me of this quote from Shakespeare

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

And I stumbled blindly into this one myself and didn't know what to make of it. https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=534763#post534763

Question: Has anyone done the calculations, based on your theory of changing speed of light, to see if the radiometric dating of fossils and rocks goes from the current value of billions of years down to thousands of years? Is it available on the Internet? Can you please give me a summary? Thank you.

ResponseThank you for your request for information. Yes, the calculations have been done to convert radiometric and other atomic dates to actual orbital years. This is done on the basis outlined in our Report of 1987 and the new paper just undergoing peer review. Basically, when light-speed is 10 times its current value, all atomic clocks ticked 10 times faster. As a consequence they registered an age of 10 atomic years when only one orbital year had passed. For all practical purposes there is no change in the rate of the orbital clocks with changing light speed. The Earth still took a year to go around the sun.

Now the redshift of light from distant galaxies carries a signature in it that tells us what the value of c was at the time of emission. The redshift data then give us c values right back to the earliest days of the cosmos. Knowing the distances of these astronomical objects to a good approximation, then allows us to determine the behaviour of light speed with time. It is then a simple matter to correct the atomic clock to read actual orbital time. Light speed was exceedingly fast in the early days of the cosmos, but dropped dramatically. At a distance of 20 billion light years, for example, the value of c was about 87 million times its current value. At that point in time the atomic clocks were ticking off 87 million years in just one ordinary year. When the process is integrated over the redshift/cDK curve the following approximate figures apply.

1 million years before present (BP) atomically is actually 2826 BC with c about 70,000 times c now.

63 million atomic years BP is an actual date of 3005 BC with c about 615,000 times c now.

230 million atomic years BP is an actual date of 3301 BC with c about 1.1 million times c now.

600 million atomic years BP is an actual date of 3536 BC with c about 2.6 million times c now.

2.5 billion atomic years BP is an actual date of 4136 BC with c about 10.8 million times c now.

4.5 billion atomic years BP is an actual date of 4505 BC with c about 19.6 million times c now.

15 billion atomic years BP is an actual date near 5650 BC with c about 65.3 million times c now.

20 billion atomic years BP is an actual date near 5800 BC with c about 87 million times c now.

But I also try to keep this in mind...

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
Albert Einstein
US (German-born) physicist (1879 - 1955)

 

[KingNothing]

I once read a PDF by someone who made several outrageous claims about motor oil, including:

-change oil every 30,000 miles or more
-oil changes arent necessary
-running a car without oil for thousands of miles is perfectly acceptable

 

[JamesU]

People are just stupid. Everyone on the internet says something stupid because they know people will read it, out it on their website, and they'll get attention

I came up with that one on my own!

 

[motai]

http://www.timecube.com !

Agreed. It will either make you laugh or get a headache. Or both. At the same time.

Quoting tribdog from the thread Timecube! in the archives: "Hmmm I wonder if anyone has emailed him to say that cubes don't have 4 corners..."

 

[i_wish_i_was_smart]

wow, these things are always whack, i never know if they are serious, or just joking, if i should believe them or not hehe clearly ita always not. but they can be very convincing lol

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

David Icke can be pretty entertaining.
I remember hearing and interview once on Coast to Coast with this guy who was talking about bovine growth hormones and the effects it has on us through the milk that these cows produce. He sounded like he was talking about an illuminati conspiracy. And the way he constantly referred to young girls breasts was just terrible yet incredibly entertaining.

 

[SOS2008]

And I stumbled blindly into this one myself and didn't know what to make of it. https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=534763#post534763

Your Accelerated Evolution Theory is pretty good. My Dream Theory is way better than my Dirt Theory.

Dream Theory is based on the need to experience REM in order to remain psychologically balanced--Most specifically emotional balance. If we do not experience fear, anger, sadness, etc. for a length of time, our brain will create a dream that will make us have these feelings. In order to really have the feeling, our brain must use a certain amount of truth/realism. So if you dream your girlfriend is cheating on you (to create the feeling of jealousy) but it's in some bizarre scenario, the bizarre aspect doesn't matter. It only mattered that you felt jealousy.

Signed, Crackpot (A.K.A. no data to support this assertion). :tongue2:

 

[Huckleberry]

And conversely, if you're girlfriend is cheating on you and you catch her, then you can dream that it never happened and be happy again.

By the way, I didn't make up the theory linked to my post. It's the work of some guy named Setterfield, and he's serious.

 

[JamesU]

damn this thread moves fast...

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

damn this thread moves fast...

You should try tracking the thread killer thread.

 

[Chronos]

Time cube, flat Earth and hollow earth, are imposing nominees. I humbly nominate the obscure, but talented, Gavin Menzies for his map of the world. I happen to love bacon sandwiches, hence am admittedly biased in favor of anyone who finds them inspiring. A sampler:
http://hnn.us/articles/1308.html

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Crackpot theories? How about everything by Richard C. Hoagland.
http://www.enterprisemission.com
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/timages/page/Hoagland0425b.jpg

One of Hoaglands favorite resume items is his stint as science advisor to Walter Cronkite and the CBS evening news. It turns out that today is Hoagland's birthday and he was on Coast to Coast AM. Cronkite called in, of all people, and hammered Hoagland for misleading him with his "mumbo jumbo", so many years ago. Happy Birthday Richard! :rofl:

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

One of Hoaglands favorite resume items is his stint as science advisor to Walter Cronkite and the CBS evening news. It turns out that today is his birthday and he was on Coast to Coast. Cronkite called in, or all people, and hammered Hoagland for misleading him with his "mumbo jumbo", so many years ago. Happy Birthday Richard!

Oh damn... lol that's hilarious. I'll have to see if I can hear the second run after I get off work.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

It's right after the 10:30 [PST] break. I came in on the tail end at about 10:38 I believe...