What is the Intriguing Theory of Null Physics?

[stewartcs]

Has anyone heard of this theory? A friend on mine is reading a book on it and said it was very interesting. Anyone else read it?

CS

 

[thinkies]

I'm probably not the best guy to answer this, but I am sure this is the first time I am hearing such a word (null physics)...o.0

 

[stewartcs]

I'm probably not the best guy to answer this, but I am sure this is the first time I am hearing such a word (null physics)...o.0

Here is the book link...

http://nullphysics.com/

CS

 

[Wallace]

Hmm it's seems that you can buy The Meaning of Life for just $59 for the Hardback edition. Perhaps I'm a little cynical but I'll go with 'if it sounds too good to be true it probably is' on this one.

 

[russ_watters]

From the description, the title translates to "not physics". Ie, this is not a theory, it's just pseudophilosophical daydreaming.

 

[russ_watters]

I found this post on another forum:

I went through the few book excerpts, in as much detail as possible, on the web page. More detail on the crackpottery of this book:

It makes the Remedial Crackpottery 101 "discovery" that the neutron is just a proton and an electron stuck together. This is vaguely plausible if the only thing you know about neutrons is that they are neutral, and weigh a bit more than a proton. It's totally implausible if you know how neutrons decay, what electron-proton scattering looks like, or anything else.
It proposes that photons lose energy over time, and that's why the night sky isn't uniformly bright. If this occurred, it would do very odd things to the spectra of distant objects; no such effect is seen. This speculation has hung around for decades, Witt seems totally unaware of it. Google for "Tired Light"; the wikipedia article is good.
He makes the confident "prediction" that "future experiments" will show the 3He nucleon separation to be 1.639 fm. Didn't he Google for "3He nuclear charge radius"? It has been the subject of hundreds of experiments. The radius is more than 1.9 fm; there's no way to get that from 1.64 fm nucleon spacing.
He predicts that stars in the Milky Way have an average drift of 1.5 km/s towards the Galactic Center. Didn't he Google for "radial velocity survey"? The data is already there. http://www.rave-survey.aip.de/rave/ . (I don't know what the answer is; I'd have to download the catalog and make some plots. Seriously, though, this is like publishing a book saying "If my theory is correct, then 1890s-vintage Michaelson interferometers will detect a huge ether wind. Future research may test this theory ... ")
He gives a whole appendix showing how, because redshift moves light from one band to another, distant objects dim faster within the optical band than they dim overall. Uh, Terrence? We knew that, thanks. Astronomers (a) have telescopes capable of measuring pretty much all wavelengths, and (b) know how to add.

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=94861

So I was wrong. If it were just philosobabble, it wouldn't be wrong, it would just be useless. But it says concrete things about reality that are in the domain of physics - and is straightforwardly wrong about them. That makes it pure crackpottery.

 

[moe darklight]

The guys has been buying 2-page adds in Discover magazine for some time now.

I haven't read it, but if it just mumbo-jumbo pseudo science, I'd be rather disappointed at the magazine allowing it to be printed and to be associated with it.
I tried to look for secondary sources about it, reviews, etc. and didn't find anything, which leads me to believe that it is a whole lot of nothing.

EDIT: oops didn't see your post there russ. So it is just that.

 

[stewartcs]

Ah, so now I know not to waste my time reading it.

Thanks...

CS

 

[stewartcs]

I found this post on another forum: http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=94861

So I was wrong. If it were just philosobabble, it wouldn't be wrong, it would just be useless. But it says concrete things about reality that are in the domain of physics - and is straightforwardly wrong about them. That makes it pure crackpottery.

Thanks Russ, that thread was very useful...although very long it is worth reading.

CS

 

[michael879]

while I am fully confident this theory is either total bs or completely undistinguishable from current theories experimentally, a lot of the claims he makes on his website are incredibly misleading. Most of them are horribly out of context (which begs the question as to WHY he would make them so out of context), and he does have some type of explanation for them.

For example, the neutron = proton + electron thing. I read his reponse on that forum and also emailed him with some questions. While I don't know the math behind his theory, it at least seems to be self consistent.

His basic idea is that everything is made from electrons, protons, and photons. However these particles can take on multiple states, bound and free are the terms he uses I believe. An electron in a hydrogen atom is "free" and has a radius of something like 10^-13 meters and a spin of 1/2. An electron in a neutron is bound to a proton and has a radius comparable to the radius of a proton and a spin of 0. A neutron is formed from a neutrino (or an anti neutrino, don't rly remember its not important), and electron, and a proton just like in "real" physics (maybe it emits a neutrino? I rly don't remember but I know its the same as in the accepted theories). The difference is that a neutrino is a "bound" photon with a spin of 1/2, and the proton is a fundamental particle not made of quarks.

Anyway, I am just saying that a lot of his seemingly ridiculous claims do have explanations that at least make them logical. Like I said before, it is very likely his theory is either wrong or a rewording of current physics with some metaphysics mixed in. However, from what I've read about it I believe it is AT LEAST likely to be logically consistent. While he is not a physicist he does have physics grad students working with him (so he says), and he does have a PhD. I find it hard to believe any intelligent person would publish a theory that isn't self-consistent.

 

[cristo]

Since it's been established by russ that this is crackpottery, as per PF guidelines, the topic is not open for discussion here. Thread closed.