A Popular Pseudoscience Video on General Relativity: Analysis & Criticism

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The discussion critiques a pseudoscientific video that proposes adding a fifth term to the spacetime interval in general relativity, suggesting it relates to gravitational time dilation. The validity of this addition is questioned, as it does not appear to solve any existing problems in the framework of general relativity and lacks proper transformation methods for curved spacetime. Concerns are raised about the video's reception, with many viewers praising it without critical analysis, potentially leading to misinformation. The creator's background in physics is also doubted, suggesting reliance on popular science rather than a solid understanding of the mathematics involved. Overall, the thread highlights the challenges of addressing pseudoscience in popular media.
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So I saw a video recently a guy on YouTube did in General Relativity from a channel with almost no subscribers. It really blew up and now has over 100k views. In the video he does explain a lot of correct things about GR and gets some things wrong but at the end he proposes a new 5D model that will basically solve every problem with gravity including merging it with quantum mechanics.
Here is the video: [link deleted by moderators]
His basic idea is to take the spacetime interval and add a 5th term for the 5th dimension he is describing so it looks like: $$\Delta S^2 = c^2\Delta t^2 + c^2\Delta w^2 - \Delta x^2 - \Delta y^2 - \Delta z^2 $$
where w is the difference in time between 2 events that 2 observers experience due to gravitational time dilation so:

$$w = T_0 - T_1$$ where $$T_0 = T_1 \sqrt{1-2GM/rc^2}$$

I'm not really well versed in GR but this doesn't really seem right. I mean the units work out. From how I understand the interval given 2 events all observers should agree on the interval between the 2 events. Given a set of events in 1 frame I can transform these coordinates to another frame and get their coordinates and it should match up.

I'm not sure how one would go about this transformation with w, maybe the same way as time? Then how would that work in a curved spacetime? It seems very pseudo-scientific, he doesn't show how this solves anything at all and the best criticism I can leverage against this given my limited knowledge is that it doesn't seem to solve any problems and he just added a term and said it does something important.

The thing that irks me is more that nobody in the comments section as far as I can see has criticized this, they're all saying that its a brilliant video and that he should publish his work in a paper. The video creator even replies saying that hes working on it and new videos are coming. I'm a bit concerned that he is going to keep pushing this out and people are going to keep believing it.

I think GR is so far above most people's heads that if he starts spitting out equations people aren't going to question it. Even a self-proclaimed physics degree holder in the comments says his work is good. Am I missing something here? Don't get me wrong, I'm glad he's pursuing understanding these hard topics. I also like his quality editing style, but I think he is basically getting all his physics knowledge from popular science videos and is not well-versed in the math.
 
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Your suspicion that this video is not a reliable source is correct. Trying to debunk this kind of pseudoscience is an endless task, one for which PF is neither suited nor intended.

Thread closed.
 
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Moderator's note: Spin-off from another thread due to topic change. In the second link referenced, there is a claim about a physical interpretation of frame field. Consider a family of observers whose worldlines fill a region of spacetime. Each of them carries a clock and a set of mutually orthogonal rulers. Each observer points in the (timelike) direction defined by its worldline's tangent at any given event along it. What about the rulers each of them carries ? My interpretation: each...

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