Refuting Einstein: a media controversy in Ireland
At first, professional physicists paid very little attention to the story. In the few instances where their opinion was sought, the ‘debate’ was portrayed as one voice against another, not as the overwhelming consensus of 100 years of scientific evidence against one engineer. Most of all, the debate was portrayed as Kelly vs Einstein – I do not recall a single journalist draw attention to the fact that physicists’ belief in relativity stems not from a belief in Einstein, but from the mountain of experimental evidence that supports the theory (a confusion of the context of discovery with the context of justification).
The author makes a lot of good observations about what’s bad in science journalism, most of which I agree with and have pointed out a number of times in the past, such as manufacturing controversy by making it appear that both sides have equal merit. Sacrificing scientific accuracy for the sake of the appearance of neutrality is something that ultimately undermines your credibility. When the average reader gets the message that relativity is a religion, you’re doing it wrong.
Dr. Kelly challenged a rigorously derived mathematical model from within. GR is but ten equations. GR is flawless as derived (e.g., Ashtekhar) and validated by prediction vs. observation. GR can still be incomplete (Equivalence Principle postulated), re teleparallel gravitation (EP not required) of which it is a subset.
Physics deeply postulates all material bodies vacuum free fall identically – parallel trajectories and identical rates, the Equivalence Principle, EP. The EP is universally observed true for all measurable observables in all venues at all scales. Look down. Your shoes are different! By how much?
DO OPPOSITE SHOES FALSIFY THE EP?
Examine spacetime geometry with test mass geometry. A left foot is not detected by socks and left shoes. Massless photons are excluded by prior observation, arxiv:0912.5057, 0905.1929, 0706.2031. Right shoes are the test of a vacuum left foot.
If the vacuum is observed to be anisotropic toward fermionic mass distribution, Noether’s theorems no longer couple vacuum isotropy to conservation of angular momentum. Parity is an absolutely discontinuous symmetry and therefore outside Noether (i.e., continuous Lie groups). There would no contradiction if fermionic mass had a (very small!) non-zero minimum value of angular momentum. The MOND residual is then sourced and dark matter is uncreated.
Would there be a better day than empirically – very selectively, reproducibly, and without contradiction of prior observation – falsifying GR, QM, conservation of angular momentum, the standard model, SUSY, dark matter, and all quantum gravitations with one vacuum symmetry experiment?
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/erotor1.jpg
Two geometric parity Eotvos experiments.
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/norbors.gif
Specific rotation is not atomic mass distribution.
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz4.htm
A full explanation, with citations.
Somebody should look. The worst it can do is succeed.