Pal Sahota apparently found my previous post and may have taken offence at me using the words "crackpot physics" to describe his hypothesis. Over Twitter, he asks:
@sigmaleph Has @google paid you? Over 8900 views & many Profs & Phd's re-tweeted it. Its a hypothesis & could be wrong.Your qualifications?
— Pal Sahota (@searchasyoutype) March 15, 2014
I would've replied through the same medium, but I find the character restriction rather, well, restricting.
So, point 1: No, Google hasn't paid me. Presumably this question was prompted by the fact that he claims he invented search-as-you-type and Google stole it from him. My post was purely for the love of making fun of bad physics and there were no venal interests whatsoever.
Also, if Google wanted to discredit him, I'm sure they could've found someone with a much greater audience than me. My readership is largely non-existent.
Point 2: What does the number of views have to do with anything?
Point 3: Were any of those professors and PhDs physicists? That seems relevant. Also, a retweet is not an endorsement.
Point 4: It could be wrong, yes. Further, it actually is wrong. Of that I have already spoken.
Point 5: I don't have a degree in physics yet, though I'm working towards one. Thus, the only qualification I claim is that I know much more about physics than Pal Sahota.
This is evident by looking at his theory. The very format of his argument is flawed, relying overtly in qualitative verbal arguments rather than quantitative mathematical reasoning. There's exactly one equation in the entirety of the alpha-negatron document, Einstein's famous E=mc2, and his attempt to fit it into his theory is severely flawed (I elaborate on that in my previous post, see the second bullet point)
Anyone actually doing physics would, at the very least, make some rough calculation showing, for example, that the alpha-negatrons actually do mediate an interaction of the same order of magnitude as gravity (or any other of the millions of effects he attributes to his pet particle). That he doesn't means he either can't do it, or he doesn't even know what a physics theory looks like.
Anyone who were to seriously propose a theory in physics would, at the very least, get past the 19th century. His particle is clearly classical in behaviour, ignoring pretty much everything in quantum physics except for occasional lip service.
And that's just the generalities of the thing. I brought up plenty of specific mistakes even a lowly physics student like myself should catch, like claiming light is a longitudinal wave or ignoring that the mass/proton number ratio is not constant in all elements (or between different isotopes of the same element). I even provided references to famous experiments that invalidate his theory, like the Michelson-Morley interferometer or Millikan's oil drop.
Those are my qualifications, Pal Sahota. You're welcome to challenge them.
No comments:
Post a Comment