Still catching up from more than a day (and more than a blog-cycle) without power. Guide for the Amateur Physicist, which (if I were to have input) might be subtitled “This is why your missive isn’t science,” or, if I were Mike Myers in an SNL sketch, it might be “If it’s not physics, it CRAP!”
[U]ntil your theory can be described mathematically, it has no hope of making clear predictions about the results of experiments. You must be able to get actual numerical answers to problems using your theory. This is an ironclad requirement.
Which renders the (unfortunately all-too-common) “My ‘theory’ has no math. Can you please verify it?” inquiry moot.
Horsepucky. Contemporary physics theory predicts what it is told to predict (remember proton decay half-life and Supr-Kamiokande? How ’bout CAST and the search for solar axions?) A good experimentalist eats (all but the best) theorists for breakfast. What is the theory for high temp supercons?
http://physics.nist.gov/GenInt/Parity/cover.html
Yang and Lee, 1957. No numbers, fast track Nobel Prize/Physics.
Oppose single crystal test masses of enantiomorphic space groups P3(1)21 and P3(2)21 quartz in an Eotvos balance. Do (metaphoric) left and right shoes vacuum free fall identically? It cannot be calculated. It can only be observed. Both GR (Equivalence Principle) and string theory (BRST invariance) can be empirically falsified at the founding postulate level by a footlnote outside theory. Somebody should look.
I almost titled the post “How not to be a crackpot”, but I figured that it would instantly close the minds of the actual crackpots – who I’d honestly like to nudge in the direction of real physics. The gentleman above provides a data point supporting the hypothesis that such a goal may be unrealistic.