More on "new physics"

[James B. DiGriz]

Tim May wrote:



"Tesla physics" is all the cruft that has developed around some of his 
more obscure (and late) writings, usually mixed together with stuff
Tesla could not have known about at the time of his death. To wit, the 
stuff about zero point energy and perpetual motion machines. And, 
sometimes, mixed together with the usual nutcase stuff about the Hollow 
Earth theory (zeta reticulans colonizing the hollow earth, Greys, 
underground UFO bases, secret Nazi weapons, etc.).




Thought that's what you meant. Wasn't aware that he had developed any 
actual new physics. I do know he was desparate for funds at the end and 
might have fallen prey to some embellishment and license. That he was 
arguably ill-treated might factor into it, too. Too bad his papers were 
spirited away and classified so we can't judge for ourselves, though. 
Look what government paranoia has engendered in this case.

and beyond SS, is NOT the same as saying there are conrmed "problems" 
with electromagnetic theory. There may be, and there are a handful of 
folks doing "foundational" work in E&M, but, so far, there are no 
indications that their foundational work is changing any engineering 
calculations. Quite the contrary, in my view. Electromagnetic theory 
basically "works"--to many decimal places of accuracy. Circuits work as 
expected, antennas work as expected, and there are no "unexplained 
observations" (as usually exist before a new theory arrives). There may 
be some _semantic_ issues, e.g., does a square wave or impulse "really" 
have components that were sent out _before_ the square wave or impulse? 
(A Fourier decomposition of a square wave starting at time t = 0 has 
"sine wave components" spread out over time and adding up in such a way 
as to give the square wave, or the impulse, or any other signal. Some 
think this means deep and mysterious things are happening, something 
having to do with time travel and reversing the aging process, blah blah 
blah.

Henning Harmuth may write fairly eloquently about the "dogma of the 
circle" and how  the Fourier decomposition of a signal into (allegedly) 
a near-infinite series of sine waves is "not real," but for all intents 
and purposes it all works. And the "new physics" people like Bearden go 
way beyond what Harmuth and Barrett are talking about: they bring in 
"curved space-time" and gravitation and antigravity and the ultra-weird 
notion that aging can be reversed by "pumping the conjugate time-axis of 
the Minkowski manifold" (OK, I made this up...don't have time to lift 
one of Bearden's direct quotes...and this will help train me in the 
jargon if I ever become a "new physicist.").

Nut cases like Bearden have the patter of physics down. Very few actual 
physicists waste their time dissecting and refuting Bearden for obvious 
reasons.



Thanks for the references, which aren't familiar to me. I'll check them out.



I urge readers of this list not to waste time on this stuff.



One of the best ways to learn physics is to find out why perpetual 
motion doesn't work. Once [:-)] .


jbdigriz