illuminating science

23/5/2006

Crackpots (again)

Filed under: — Joel @ 10:43 am

I know I shouldn’t do this, but…Someone’s been sort-of spamming my blog with revelations that they have uncovered the fundamental laws of the universe - the theory proudly titled graviomagnetism. This site is quite wacky, and although not as crazy as many crackpot sites is clearly written by someone who hasn’t properly researched current theories of general relativity, gravity and electromagnetism. Note that that’s not to say those theories are right, but a pretty strong requirement of any new model would be to fit into these existing theories (that have yet to be proved wrong) or, alternatively, show how these theories fit into some new, larger theory. In particular, his section on black holes is incredibly simplistic:

In a black hole matter is compressed in a very small volume, the particles have very small volume in which to vibrate, the temperature is a measure of particles agitation, it implies that the temperature is near to 0 Kelvin because particles have very small space for agitation, there is hardly no thermal radiation, the radiation is minuscule (Hawking radiation), when a photon falls on the black hole the reflection is minuscule because the particles are in a very confined space, they can hardly vibrate to reemit light, the photon is converted to masse. That is why black holes are black.

Not to say that’s not an attractive explanation, but it just doesn’t hold water. Particles can be compressed into a very small volume (like “electron degnerate” or “neutron degenerate” matter, where electrons or neutrons are packed as closely as they can physically go) and still be incredibly hot. Neutron stars (neutron degenerate matter) are an excellent example of this which we’re pretty certain exist). This is kind of like the explanation I had for paper when I was 4 years old - I knew it was made out of wood, so I thought they just took trees and sliced them up very thinly! I even have the illustrated “textbook” that I wrote explaining the whole process :)

Anyway, if you’re bored, have a read - the introduction with lots of name dropping is particularly entertaining (okay, I’m being horrible, I know!) But my favourite comment is the unfortunate typo before he starts onto black holes: “Before getting a head…”

Powered by WordPress