Nassim Haramein solves Einstein's dream of a unified field theory?

Originally posted by Bobathon
Unfortunately it seems that it's technically correct to refer to it as 'peer-reviewed' by virtue of the fact that it was chosen by 'peers' at the conference at which it was presented, regardless of whether they had any expertise in or familiarity with the subject of the paper.

Hi there Bobathon, and thanks for chiming in. I admit I have things to learn so don't take this the wrong way, but what is your source for saying this is technically correct?

So if he attends a conference on flower arranging and submits a physics paper there, if the other flower arrangers read it he can claim the physics paper was peer reviewed even though they were flower arrangers?

I can't prove you wrong* but I can ask you to back up that claim please, thanks.

And if it is true, that's shocking.

*Edit to add: I did find this definition:

www.linfo.org...

Peer review is the evaluation of creative work or performance by other people in the same field in order to maintain or enhance the quality of the work or performance in that field.

The word peer is often defined as a person of equal standing. However, in the context of peer review it is generally used in a broader sense to refer to people in the same profession who are of the same or higher ranking.

In no way does that source agree with your claim, The peers doing the reviewing must be in the same profession according to that.

Hi Arbitrageur! We've met elsewhere online, I believe

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

Originally posted by Bobathon
Unfortunately it seems that it's technically correct to refer to it as 'peer-reviewed' by virtue of the fact that it was chosen by 'peers' at the conference at which it was presented, regardless of whether they had any expertise in or familiarity with the subject of the paper.

Hi there Bobathon, and thanks for chiming in. I admit I have things to learn so don't take this the wrong way, but what is your source for saying this is technically correct?

My source is the AIP conference proceedings site:
scitation.aip.org...

It's a shame. To a scientist, if you claim to be published in peer-reviewed conference proceedings it means very little. To a layman, who takes 'peer review' to be the heart of scientific excellence, it is misleading.

To a new age cult following with deep prejudices against the mainstream scientific establishment, it's just plain ironic. But they seem bizarrely pleased with it. I can only presume they believe they've made a vital incursion into enemy territory! (I'm being a little facetious now.)

*Edit: your quote re peer review is correct, in principle. AIP will rely on the conference to choose its papers wisely. They clearly haven't done so in this case.

Originally posted by Bobathon
Hi Arbitrageur! We've met elsewhere online, I believe

Until you said that, the bell didn't go off. I don't know if we have or not, but I feel like I know you now.

Are you the author of this blog? azureworld.blogspot.com...

If so you have my highest admiration and respect, I've spent hours reading though several of your blog entries about Nassim Haramein's work this weekend, as you patiently answered the questions of those who responded to your blog. You're incredibly patient my friend!


(more than me I'm afraid, but I'm trying to be more patient)

Anyway I think you've done a real service by informing the non-professional community about aspects of Haramein's work that they didn't understand. One of the entries in your comments section was from someone who had paid something like $400 to spend a weekend with Haramein, becore he realized he was a fraud. And I thought to myself that you have probably saved a number of other people $400 by not getting sucked into the same trap!

For anyone interested in learning more about the topic of this thread, bobathon's blog is very informative, I've quoted it several times in this thread. I highly recommend reading it.

Regarding the peer review, thanks for providing the source, I must agree with you that the conference didn't choose its papers wisely.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Yes, I will try to make a new thread sometime in the near future with more succinct and direct questions, and narrow them down a bit into less.

I agree that nature does not argue about nature.

We are unique in that privilege.

For the sake of arguing, I must represent the wave side of physics... because the reductionist side of viewing things as 'particles' has gone too far IMO.

Space-time is a fluid medium. This is how gravitational waves propagate. This is why there is no such thing as a vacuum(only approaching less density of ZPE).

Differences in vacuum density results in motion and fluctuations, which allows phenomenon such as gravity and EM to emerge from the entropy of the system. The fluctuations go between condensing and radiation, + and - around a 'neutral' balance/level of organization.(neutron?)

With different vibrations of this medium, cymatical geometry arises and forms life, minerals, atomic structure, etc.

Thats my arguing stance and presuppositions.

Which is why Haramein's ideas(in a broad sense) are so compelling and attractive.

reply to post by Bobathon


Great blog you have going there bobathon, just started digging into it.

Question about this though:

Science doesn't – will never and should never – work by someone having a 'vision' which he has convinced himself is the truth, and then trying to force some equations to fit the fantasy without any respect for evidence or for reasoning. Especially if in the meantime they go around claiming they've already proved it. Equations aren't a means of rhetoric. At least they're not in any decent society. In some messed-up world where people are encouraged to worship the equation despite not understanding what it means or what it implies, perhaps they are becoming a means of rhetoric.

Descartes and Newton appear to be directly contradicting what you are saying here. Descartes based much of his work on his 'visions' in his 'oven' or whatever it was. Newton was on a mission to justify his belief in god. They are two prominent examples among many.

And I think it is naive to suggest that there aren't scientists who worship equations rather than reality.

ETA:

Why would something need to contract anyway? If space itself expands, then there just is more space. Why would anything need to contract to make room for it? [3]

So is space over-unity? Where are we getting more space? Something from nothing?

Can you see how mysterious inflation is, and 'dark energy'?

In physical cosmology, astronomy and celestial mechanics, dark energy is a hypothetical form of energy that permeates all of space and tends to increase the rate of expansion of the universe.[1] Dark energy is the most popular way to explain recent observations and experiments that the universe appears to be expanding at an accelerating rate. In the standard model of cosmology, dark energy currently accounts for 73% of the total mass-energy of the universe.[2]
dark energy

Thanks for the welcome!

Originally posted by beebs
Descartes and Newton appear to be directly contradicting what you are saying here. Descartes based much of his work on his 'visions' in his 'oven' or whatever it was. Newton was on a mission to justify his belief in god. They are two prominent examples among many.

And I think it is naive to suggest that there aren't scientists who worship equations rather than reality.

No, they're not contradicting it at all. I agree that vision, inspiration, intuition, dreams, spiritual experiences, powerful insights... all these things play a vital role in science, especially cutting-edge developments. I'd never argue against that. At their best, scientists are passionate, emotional human beings seeking truth. The difference is what happens next.

Do you concoct an interpretation of your vision and fix it in a theory, and go collecting facts that appear to back it up, ignore facts to the contrary and take up arms against people who argue with it, or do you say to yourself "wow, that's a fantastic way to see the world, I wonder if there's actually any truth in it and how far it actually works"?

One of the primary differences between pseudoscience and true science is that pseuds devote most of their time to looking for confirmation, and choose whatever seems to fit their idea and present it in appealing ways to persuade others; whereas scientists devote most of their time to looking for counter-evidence and counter-arguments, because they know that a single meaningful discrepancy with observation is enough to tell them it's a dead end. www.youtube.com...

There's surely no doubt which camp Haramein is dedicated to.

If anyone does worship an equation rather than the reality then they've lost the plot. They're not doing science. It's extremely simple. Of course scientists do all sorts of things that aren't science – many have strong religious beliefs which can't be justified scientifically, and there's nothing wrong with that. Scientists also go out and enjoy themselves, or drink too much, nothing wrong with that either. They're human beings.

In addition to being probably the greatest scientist that has ever lived, and having his own religious views, Newton was also on occasion arrogant, scheming and deeply unpleasant. That doesn't justify anyone else being that way.

If you're suggesting that being on a mission to justify their belief in god is somehow a legitimate part of science, I hope you're not serious.

reply to post by beebs

So is space over-unity? Where are we getting more space? Something from nothing?

Can you see how mysterious inflation is, and 'dark energy'?

I'm not sure what you mean by "where are we getting more space". We're getting more space... in space! We're getting it between clusters of galaxies.

Yes, it's mysterious and fascinating... I'm not sure what your point is. Are you saying that we shouldn't investigate it scientifically? That we should declare it to be silly? That we may as well fill in the gaps in our understanding about it with mystical guff?

No scientist should ever encourage blind faith in anything. If you ever feel that anyone is trying to make you believe in dark energy, or anything else, you have every right to stand up and ask questions. What has actually been observed? What's the evidence? What is the value is of that perspective? What are the alternative perspectives and why is this one any better?

(If instead of asking questions and investigating and weighing up the alternatives, you come back by telling them you refuse to believe it, and then try to convince them of your interpretation that puts your own intuition above any kind of logical analysis of the observations, then you might find that most scientists are not particularly impressed. Not that you'd do anything like that... but many people do.)

reply to post by beebs

Your question: "is space over-unity?"
If you mean "is space just increasing on its own?" then yes.

If you mean "in the dark energy model of the cosmos, is energy just increasing on its own?" then that depends on what you mean by energy...
Energy as we normally think of it: yes. You're perfectly free to lasso a distant galaxy and use the expansion of space between here and there to drive a turbine if you want 'free energy' from the vacuum.
Energy in the general relativistic sense: no, it's perfectly conserved, as ever. Nothing special going on at all.

reply to post by Bobathon


When observations become compromised (observer effect, uncertainty principle), then it is the powerful tool of imagination which we must use to comprehend that which cannot be seen.

I brought up inflation and 'dark energy' because it is an anomaly to the prevailing paradigm. Same as ZPE, and the WPD.

I am not sure how space can expand. Its expansion is a force. That force entails energy and work.

How/Why can space exert a force. Where does the energy come from which is expanding?

How can energy or space increase 'on its own'? (Over-Unity?)

I explore for incompatible anomalies, which are telltale signs of a failing paradigm, and a symptom of a scientific revolution. I am convinced we are on the verge.

Therefore, I try (among others) to reconcile those anomalies in a more comprehensive framework using imagination and intuition. Haramein's dynamic(not his faulty maths) is what is attractive because it reconciles the most.

Originally posted by beebs
I brought up inflation and 'dark energy' because it is an anomaly to the prevailing paradigm. Same as ZPE, and the WPD.

Getting somewhat off the thread topic of Haramen here, are you sure you don't want to start another thread to discuss the more general physics questions not specific to Haramein's work?

Dark matter and dark energy are mysterious. But the standard model has a substantial amount of observational evidence to back it up, though these mysteries are gaps in the model. It's possible the standard model may be dramatically revised when the mysteries are solved, or it's possible we may finally determine the causes of these effects will fit into the standard model quite nicely. We won't know until we solve the mysteries.

But what doesn't make sense is to say that

1. The standard model with lots of evidence has some gaps
2 Therefore we should replace the standard model with model "X" which has far less evidence to support it.

Pointing out gaps in the standard model doesn't really do anything to make any other theory more right. If another theory can explain more things than the standard model, it will be accepted, eventually. But Electric Universe can't do that and Haramein's work really can't even be taken seriously.

I am not sure how space can expand. Its expansion is a force. That force entails energy and work.

How/Why can space exert a force. Where does the energy come from which is expanding?

How can energy or space increase 'on its own'?

You have lots of company in the scientific community. Virtually nobody (that I know of) expected the dark energy result of accelerating expansion of the universe. So we all have unanswered questions about why and how that happens, or if our observational evidence may be flawed though it doesn't seem so at this point.

But the fact that this is mysterious doesn't make Haramein any more right, if that's what you're trying to imply.

reply to post by beebs

I am not sure how space can expand. Its expansion is a force. That force entails energy and work.

If I understand Haram ein in a broad sense, he is looking for a universal gravitational force that explains everything from quantum resonance to galactic orbits.

We have learned that if we supercool atoms close to absolute zero removing all the random heat generated energy they resonate in a very stable manner at fixed frequencies accurate to 17 decimal places or more when compared to similar reference atoms.

A true vacuum has no dimension, when you go to measure the expansion of the universe you are using one set of resonance standard to measure another much larger and slower resonance. Maybe the Universe isn't expanding its your measurement tool that is contracting? In that case you could postulate that Harameins universal gravity is effecting your measurement tool to a greater degree than the larger scale much slower resonance of the universe during an expansion phase.

reply to post by beebs

Observer effect and uncertainty principle don't compromise observations. Inflation and dark energy aren't anomalies to the prevailing paradigm, not at all. Expansion isn't a force. In fact, expansion doesn't even require a force.

These aren't telltale signs of a failing paradigm, they're telltale signs that you haven't come to grips with these things conceptually. They're really worth exploring a bit more before you dismiss them.

Of course you're totally free to ignore what science is actually telling us, and make the rules up yourself as to what is acceptable and what is not. I don't know what to say about that, other than it seems a bit daft. Like someone arrive in a foreign country, refusing to take any notice of how people actually speak and preferring to make it up according to their imagination.

I suggest you start your own thread entitled "the laws of physics I like and the ones I don't like, and why we should make them all fit my imagination so that I don't have to learn anything", I'm sure you'll get plenty of takers.


reply to post by Bordon81

Maybe the Universe isn't expanding its your measurement tool that is contracting?

That's an interesting question... physicists have tried this idea, and the laws of physics work out exactly the same. So I guess we'll never know. In fact it makes the question of which one is "really" happening a bit meaningless.

The difference for the contracting reference frame idea is that it implies that everything else is contracting at precisely the same rate – including the laws of electromagnetism, the gravitational constant, the dimensions of the nuclear forces, everything. Because so long as we don't look to distant galaxies, everything else stays the same. It works out a hell of a lot easier to just say the large-scale cosmos is expanding, and leave everything else alone.

The idea of the cosmos expanding is far more conceptually natural and elegant than the alternative, so if you want to select one as "real", the old Occam's razor gives a pretty clear result.

I went ahead and created another thread, although I do not endorse or feel good about my lack of polish on it...

For more general investigations into physics, not clearly linked to the topic in this thread, go here:

Physical Inquiries



ETA:

Bobathon, I will reply to you in that thread rather than here.

Dr. John J. Kineman at the University of Colorado wrote the first paper referencing the Schwarchild proton. Is the University of Colorado a useless reference or peer review? Dr. Kineman references Nassim's paper under the Gravity section if you would like to read it. According to the new paradigm, mass is not thrown away, it is hidden at the center of a proton where gravitational pull of a black hole balances out the equation.

journals.isss.org...

Originally posted by Zules
Dr. John J. Kineman at the University of Colorado wrote the first paper referencing the Schwarchild proton. Is the University of Colorado a useless reference or peer review? Dr. Kineman references Nassim's paper under the Gravity section if you would like to read it. According to the new paradigm, mass is not thrown away, it is hidden at the center of a proton where gravitational pull of a black hole balances out the equation.

journals.isss.org...

I don't see where that paper was ever accepted for publication. The pieces of paper will sit still for anything you want to write on them.

Originally posted by Zules
Dr. John J. Kineman at the University of Colorado wrote the first paper referencing the Schwarchild proton. Is the University of Colorado a useless reference or peer review?

I think so in this case. The university of Colorado didn't review it did they?

Look at his background:

envs.colorado.edu...

John J. Kineman received his Ph.D. in Environmental Studies in 2007. He holds a Bachelors of Science degree from UCLA (1972) in Earth Physics, and a Master of Basic Science degree from CU Boulder (1979) combining ecology and biogeography. He retired from a career with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2005 after 27 years service, the last 20 years of which he was working in ecoinformatics.

If he wrote a paper about environmental science, the subject of his PhD degree, I would tend to assign it some credibility based on his credentials.

On the other hand, his selection of Haramein's paper as a reference shows a significant lack of knowledge in the field he chose to write about, apparently outside his area of expertise.

I do give him credit for one thing though, he at least addresses some of the discrepancies with Haramein's theory that Haramein failed to address. How does he do this? That's the best part (from his paper in the link you posted):

a sufficiently large but finite mass-density
would ‘hide’ itself inside “Schwarzschild protons” before reaching the singularity. A
quantum vacuum energy of 1034 gm. / cm is sufficient density to establish a black hole at
the radius of a proton. One would then be left with an external space-time geometry that
would again correspond to the original model, with the apparent mass of protons that
does not include their zero point energy. The geometry is consistent with the idea that we
are, in fact, inside a black hole where the infinite mass-density is hidden in the above
manner, thus explaining the origin of matter.

The question naturally arises as to how the inside of a black hole would not experience
tremendous gravitational compression (which has been the assumption of standard
cosmological models). The answer lies, again, in the nature of space-time scaling and the
assumption that gravity is nothing more than space-time curvature. In that case, mass and
gravity have only relative local meaning, because theoretical curvatures in every direction
of distributed mass-density simply nullify each other. There is no absolute frame of
reference for the scale of space-time other than history, so it is only in cosmological
observation that we can observe effects of general mass-density.

So he says, the reason the Schwarzchild proton doesn't measure as massive as the theory dictates is because.....

we are all inside a black hole.

He's not the first to propose that but it's not any more credible to me the 2nd time.

As Carl Sagan said in my signature, it's good to have an open mind, and I try, but it's not good to have your mind so open your brain falls out and that's exactly what it feels like for me to think we are inside a black hole. But if someone points me to enough evidence that's the case, I might be persuaded to believe it. I'm not persuaded by either this paper nor the other paper I read making the "we are inside a black hole" claim.

I noticed the paper appears in some "proceedings" which is the same way Haramein's paper appears, so it didn't appear in a peer-reviewed journal, right?

reply to post by Zules

According to the new paradigm, mass is not thrown away, it is hidden at the center of a proton where gravitational pull of a black hole balances out the equation.

So in this theory the energy content of a proton is bound by the gravity of a black hole?
I have read a lot of different pseudo scientific theories. I personally like the ones that use harmonic resonance as part of their binding scheme. The accuracy of atomic clocks may indicate resonance plays such a role. When you consider the large amount of radiant energy released in matter to energy conversions it is obvious there is very strong binding at those tiny nuclear dimensions.

We don't get to play with the supercooled traps and X ray lasers at Los Alamos and neither does Haramein but its fun to to play along. I remember seeing some old photo's of Feynman and the gang out in the desert in 1947. He used to use body language as a kind of game to get people thinking in some of the photo's. Either that or he was just trying to pull a few legs.

reply to post by Arbitrageur

I'm not persuaded by either this paper nor the other paper I read making the "we are inside a black hole" claim.

Be careful...

A wise man once said:

Nature doesn't really care what you're opposed to.

I would like it if it would behave one way or the other, but nature doesn't care what I want or expect any more than it cares what you think.

I'm not sure what kind of evidence we could search for, besides theoretical models which are more comprehensive with the tools we already have.

It would be interesting to devise a specific experiment to try to figure out if we are inside of a black hole.

Originally posted by Zules
Dr. John J. Kineman at the University of Colorado wrote the first paper referencing the Schwarchild proton. Is the University of Colorado a useless reference or peer review?

Again, it's conference proceedings, so 'peer review' in that context means very little.

I'm not sure it's claimed to be peer reviewed. Most conference papers are not, they're just papers presented at a conference. If it was reviewed, the 'reviewers' would have been a selection of participants on the systems science conference it was presented at.

Dr Kineman may be a qualified environmental scientist and systems theorist, but he's no cosmologist. If his intention was to present some basic cosmological systems ideas to a system science audience, it's irresponsible of him to cite fringe crap like Haramein.

reply to post by Bobathon


Be careful of ad hominem and argument from authority...

What if it was peer reviewed? Would those peers then be irresponsible?

And peer review in general is a nasty quagmire. If he discusses it with a colleague, isn't that peer review? The premises can still be valid, even if it ends up being wrong.

"We now know a thousand ways not to build a light bulb." - Edison