(Gregory L. Hansen)
Message-id:

In an article in Physics Letters A (vol. 250, 1-11, 1998) Van Flandern
notes that if gravity as a centrally acting force propagated at a finite
speed, planets would observably decay in their orbits, and used some
modern data of the Earth's motion to put the propagation speed of
gravity at greater than 2e10 c. It read sort of like a Usenet post.

It is interesting that editors don't mind publishing such
stuff about which everybody who read even "Feynman's
Lectures" know what's Van Flandern's error (too bad
Van Flandern had no opportunity to read Feynman) but
they (editors) consider not interesting to physicists the
answer to a question why the expansion of the universe
is accelerating. Shouldn't those editors go through some
mandatory course about what is interesting to physicists
and what is not?

-- Jim

Jim Jastrzebski wrote:
It is interesting that editors don't mind publishing such
stuff about which everybody who read even "Feynman's
Lectures" know what's Van Flandern's error (too bad
Van Flandern had no opportunity to read Feynman) but
they (editors) consider not interesting to physicists the
answer to a question why the expansion of the universe
is accelerating. Shouldn't those editors go through some
mandatory course about what is interesting to physicists
and what is not?

If what I think is going on here is (and my understanding may be way off)
then I am inclined to agree. But some more knowledgeable folk may have a
different take that sorts it out. But I am dammed if I can see it.

Thanks
Bill

Bill wrote:

Jim Jastrzebski wrote:
It is interesting that editors don't mind publishing such
stuff about which everybody who read even "Feynman's
Lectures" know what's Van Flandern's error (too bad
Van Flandern had no opportunity to read Feynman) but
they (editors) consider not interesting to physicists the
answer to a question why the expansion of the universe
is accelerating. Shouldn't those editors go through some
mandatory course about what is interesting to physicists
and what is not?

If what I think is going on here is (and my understanding may be way off)
then I am inclined to agree. But some more knowledgeable folk may have a
different take that sorts it out. But I am dammed if I can see it.

It's prosaic. Van Flandern was successful at getting a blatantly
incorrect paper (about relativity) published in a journal which
isn't known for quality peer-review on the subject of relativity.

See http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/RelWWW/wrong.html#speed


---Tim Shuba---

"shuba" wrote in message ...
Bill wrote:

Jim Jastrzebski wrote:
It is interesting that editors don't mind publishing such
stuff about which everybody who read even "Feynman's
Lectures" know what's Van Flandern's error (too bad
Van Flandern had no opportunity to read Feynman) but
they (editors) consider not interesting to physicists the
answer to a question why the expansion of the universe
is accelerating. Shouldn't those editors go through some
mandatory course about what is interesting to physicists
and what is not?

If what I think is going on here is (and my understanding may be way off)
then I am inclined to agree. But some more knowledgeable folk may have a
different take that sorts it out. But I am dammed if I can see it.

It's prosaic. Van Flandern was successful at getting a blatantly
incorrect paper (about relativity) published in a journal which
isn't known for quality peer-review on the subject of relativity.

See http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/RelWWW/wrong.html#speed

And he knows how to manipulate a jpeg:
http://www.metaresearch.org/solar%20...iles/proof.asp

Dirk Vdm

Dirk Van de moortel wrote:

And he knows how to manipulate a jpeg: http://www.metaresearch.org/solar%20...iles/proof.asp

A very clear image of a foot kicking a soccer ball.

--
Barry

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to
entertain a thought without accepting it.
-- Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)

"Bill Hobba" wrote in message ...
Jim Jastrzebski wrote:
It is interesting that editors don't mind publishing such
stuff about which everybody who read even "Feynman's
Lectures" know what's Van Flandern's error (too bad
Van Flandern had no opportunity to read Feynman) but
they (editors) consider not interesting to physicists the
answer to a question why the expansion of the universe
is accelerating. Shouldn't those editors go through some
mandatory course about what is interesting to physicists
and what is not?

If what I think is going on here is (and my understanding may be way off)
then I am inclined to agree. But some more knowledgeable folk may have a
different take that sorts it out. But I am dammed if I can see it.

Not that I'm more knowledgeable, but if this newsgroup is a judge
those articles (TVF, SC) are very interesting to physicists. As for
the cosmology it doesn't exactly fit into the journal's usual
material, interesting though it may be.

As I see it, Van Flandern's paper was a review, pointing out as others
have that some of gravity's properties (stable orbits) look at first
examination to indicate superluminal action. The rebuttal paper
showed that superluminal propagation speeds are not necessary, and
contained arguments not in "Lectures on Physics". No experiment has
been performed to settle the matter conclusively.

I should also point out that others have opined against superluminal
gravity with "argumentum ad hominem", which while tempting in this
case is obviously not a legitimate argument.

(luke) wrote in message


"Bill Hobba" wrote in message
...
Jim Jastrzebski wrote:
It is interesting that editors don't mind publishing such
stuff about which everybody who read even "Feynman's
Lectures" know what's Van Flandern's error (too bad
Van Flandern had no opportunity to read Feynman) but
they (editors) consider not interesting to physicists the
answer to a question why the expansion of the universe
is accelerating. Shouldn't those editors go through some
mandatory course about what is interesting to physicists
and what is not?

If what I think is going on here is (and my understanding may be way off)
then I am inclined to agree. But some more knowledgeable folk may have a
different take that sorts it out. But I am dammed if I can see it.

Not that I'm more knowledgeable, but if this newsgroup is a judge
those articles (TVF, SC) are very interesting to physicists. As for
the cosmology it doesn't exactly fit into the journal's usual
material, interesting though it may be.

As I see it, Van Flandern's paper was a review, pointing out as others
have that some of gravity's properties (stable orbits) look at first
examination to indicate superluminal action. The rebuttal paper
showed that superluminal propagation speeds are not necessary, and
contained arguments not in "Lectures on Physics". No experiment has
been performed to settle the matter conclusively.

I should also point out that others have opined against superluminal
gravity with "argumentum ad hominem", which while tempting in this
case is obviously not a legitimate argument.

The original point was that while Van Flandern's paper may
be interesting to physicists despite some rather elementary
errors, which explanation might be found in "Lectures on
Physics", the solution to the problem why the expansion of
the universe looks as if it were accelerating might be interesting
to physicists as well. Yet e.g. editor of "Phys. Rev. Lett."
doesn't consider it interesting enough to physicists (as he says)
to even bother with reading the paper to see if there are any
errors (as he says).

The point was that what is interesting isn't easy to evaluate and
so it might be good to introduce some standards so the authors
don't need to waste time and money on preparing their papers
in a format accepted by the journal only to learn that he writes
about something that physicists aren't interested in (like e.g.
the fact that Einsteinian gravity explains the cosmological
redshift, "anomalous" acceleration of space probes, and even
the accelerating expansion, without necessity of assuming
even that the expansion of the universe is real; it might be real
but it doesn't have to in order to produce the same numerical
results -- not interesting to readers of "Phys. Rev. Lett."
though and therefore can't be even evaluated for possible
errors because no one will ever read the stuff making the
pain of spending a lot of money on about 50 lb of textbooks
to verify the results, not to mention buying and learning TeX
to prepare the paper in proper format, even grater).

-- Jim

(Jim Jastrzebski) wrote in message ...
(luke) wrote in message


"Bill Hobba" wrote in message
...
Jim Jastrzebski wrote:
It is interesting that editors don't mind publishing such
stuff about which everybody who read even "Feynman's
Lectures" know what's Van Flandern's error (too bad
Van Flandern had no opportunity to read Feynman) but
they (editors) consider not interesting to physicists the
answer to a question why the expansion of the universe
is accelerating. Shouldn't those editors go through some
mandatory course about what is interesting to physicists
and what is not?

If what I think is going on here is (and my understanding may be way off)
then I am inclined to agree. But some more knowledgeable folk may have a
different take that sorts it out. But I am dammed if I can see it.

Not that I'm more knowledgeable, but if this newsgroup is a judge
those articles (TVF, SC) are very interesting to physicists. As for
the cosmology it doesn't exactly fit into the journal's usual
material, interesting though it may be.

As I see it, Van Flandern's paper was a review, pointing out as others
have that some of gravity's properties (stable orbits) look at first
examination to indicate superluminal action. The rebuttal paper
showed that superluminal propagation speeds are not necessary, and
contained arguments not in "Lectures on Physics". No experiment has
been performed to settle the matter conclusively.

I should also point out that others have opined against superluminal
gravity with "argumentum ad hominem", which while tempting in this
case is obviously not a legitimate argument.

The original point was that while Van Flandern's paper may
be interesting to physicists despite some rather elementary
errors, which explanation might be found in "Lectures on
Physics", the solution to the problem why the expansion of
the universe looks as if it were accelerating might be interesting
to physicists as well. Yet e.g. editor of "Phys. Rev. Lett."
doesn't consider it interesting enough to physicists (as he says)
to even bother with reading the paper to see if there are any
errors (as he says).

Well, APS is different from Elsevier.. Perhaps you forgot to check
who the reviewer was and reference one of his papers?


The point was that what is interesting isn't easy to evaluate and
so it might be good to introduce some standards so the authors
don't need to waste time and money on preparing their papers
in a format accepted by the journal only to learn that he writes
about something that physicists aren't interested in (like e.g.
the fact that Einsteinian gravity explains the cosmological
redshift, "anomalous" acceleration of space probes, and even
the accelerating expansion, without necessity of assuming
even that the expansion of the universe is real; it might be real
but it doesn't have to in order to produce the same numerical
results -- not interesting to readers of "Phys. Rev. Lett."
though and therefore can't be even evaluated for possible
errors because no one will ever read the stuff making the
pain of spending a lot of money on about 50 lb of textbooks
to verify the results, not to mention buying and learning TeX
to prepare the paper in proper format, even grater).

Sounds interesting to me.. I don't think the answer lies in properly
"educating" the reviewers. In fact, that could be the problem.
Rather, use arxiv.org, try other publishers, talk to professors, and
keep at the books. Good luck - luke

PS - buying TeX?

In article ,
(Jim Jastrzebski) wrote:
snip

With some work put into this one can find out enough to
create an acceptable TeX file. At least mine has been
accepted by Phys. Rev. Lett. after I spent about a day on
guessing how TeX works and reading tons of advice by
several good Samaritans. I still didn't learn how to make
integrals (so I avoided them) and what is the TeX way of
making refs other than with plain text.

A very nice man offered to buy a TeX manaul from his university
book store and send it to me. IIRC, the manual was
about $50..including the round of beer.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

(luke) wrote in message


talk to professors, [...]

It happens that unless the stuff is printed in some scientific
journal no professor or otherwise has time to read those two
pages and tell what might be wrong with it. E.g. Prof. William
Press (then the head of Harvard Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics where I was a student) kept it for two weeks
trying to find the time, couldn't, gave up, and returned the
paper advising me to find someone with more time. Margaret
Geller from the same place (the only other person there
working "in universe" according to my astronomy teacher)
had policy of not discussing redshifts. She preferred to
discuss her new dress with her friend when I tried to ask
her about the possibility that my paper might make sense.

It happens that except me apparently no one is interested
in how Einsteinian gravity (not GR which is presently defined
as something with symmetric g_ik and so is unable to
explain cosmological redshift without an expansion) predicts
the illusion of accelerating expansion without any real
expansion needed.

When I try to doscuss it in sci.physics.... the only evaluation
I get is from guys who understand only Newtonian gravity,
but the effect is purely relativistic since it is proportional to
1/R where R is radius of curvature of space, so it doesn't help
much. It seems that without publishing it nothing reasonable
can be done about it. Yet editors understand only the
Newtonian gravity as well. E.g. an editor from "Nature" wrote
to me that in his opinion matter "attracts" photons equally
from all directions so no redshift is possible in a stationary
universe. About 80 years after Einstein an editor from "Nature"
still believes in gravitational attraction. Possibly editors from
all other scientific journals as well. So it looks hopeless
unless there are big problems with the present official model.

PS - buying TeX?

Theoretically TeX is "free" but when one tries to download
it then it turns out that there is no clear info what files to
download and also that all the websites recommended for
downloading from are broken. Also one gets an info that
the webmasters are not paid so they don't have to keep
those files downloadable, and that one can avoid all those
problems when buying a membership and a CD with an
older versions of TeX, and therefore very cheap. When all
the fees are added together one ends up with paying $80
and gets finally something that works without a manual
though (may be purchased separately).

With some work put into this one can find out enough to
create an acceptable TeX file. At least mine has been
accepted by Phys. Rev. Lett. after I spent about a day on
guessing how TeX works and reading tons of advice by
several good Samaritans. I still didn't learn how to make
integrals (so I avoided them) and what is the TeX way of
making refs other than with plain text.

-- Jim