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Jul 6, 2011

CERN by Not Updating Its Three-Years-Old Safety Page Compromises the Quoted Scientists

Posted by in categories: existential risks, particle physics

The safety page of CERN — http://press.web.cern.ch/public/en/lhc/safety-en.html – is 3 years old. Everything written there is outdated. The scientists quoted by name and word therefore are at risk to lose their face. For their statements which are taken to represent their best reasoned opinion are misleading in case any new safety-relevant results have surfaced in the meantime.

Therefore I ask the scientists, quoted verbatim by CERN as its supporters, to update their reasoned opinions. Specifically, I dare ask the following 8 persons to update:

1) Dear Nobel Laureate Vitaly Ginzburg:

Do you still uphold your 2008 public statement that you think that any concern

“that LHC particle collisions at high energies can lead to dangerous black holes is rubbish. Such rumors were spread by unqualified people seeking sensation or publicity”?

I dare mention a recent scientific paper of mine in this context:

http://www.wissensnavigator.com/documents/einsteins-equivale…t-l-m-.pdf

If you allow I would love to talk to you in person since I admire your work and spirit.

2) Dear Nobel Laureate Sheldon Glashow:

Do you still uphold your 2008 statement that

“the risks involved in the operation of the LHC […] are merely hypothetical and speculative and contradicted by much evidence and scientific analysis”

inspite of new findings that have accrued in the meantime?

3) Dear Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek:

Please, allow me to ask you the same question as Dr. Glashow, since you signed the same text.

4) Dear deeply respected Professor Stephen Hawking:

Do you still uphold your 2008 statement

“The LHC is absolutely safe”?

In particular, would you declare that Hawking radiation – the best and possibly only survival guarantee for the planet – has not been ruled out or made less likely by the Telemach theorem, quoted under point 1 above?

5) Dear Professor Penrose, dear Sir, dear Roger:

Do you still stick to the expression that

“I certainly have no worries at all about the purported possibility of LHC producing microscopic black holes capable of eating up the Earth. There is no scientific basis whatsoever for such wild speculations”?

I trust that you know my results obtained over the last three years which the original report does not reflect?

Specifically: would you agree that new evidence needs to be taken into account?

6) Dear Lord Martin Rees:

Do you still say

“There is no risk in LHC collisions, and the LSAG report is excellent”
from the basis of current developments?

7) Dear Nobel Laureate Gerard ‘t Hooft:

Do you still uphold your three years old public conclusion

“We fully endorse the conclusions of the LSAG report: there is no basis for any concerns about the consequences of new particles or forms of matter that could possibly be produced at the LHC”?

If so, please state why you are sure that the Telemach theorem, which proves non-evaporation and non-chargedness of black holes, is false. (In our E-mail correspondence for which I thank you, you dropped out when I asked you this question.)

8) Dear Professor Hermann Nicolai of the Albert-Einstein-Institute:

Are you still upholding, after having seen the new Telemach paper which as you know profited from a discussion we had in 2009, your three years old opinion that
“Rossler’s argument is not valid: the argument is not self-consistent”?

Coda:

I was emboldened toward bringing up these questions by the Administrative Court of Cologne’s official appeal to the German minister of science to convene a “scientific safety conference.”

Since time is running out as the “luminosity” (the danger-determining parameter) is being increased every day at CERN, I ask the 8 distinguished scientists to give their public answers as soon as possible.

Otto E. Rossler, Chaos researcher, university of Tubingen

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Comments — comments are now closed.


  1. Hansel says:

    You have disproved nothing of the LSAG report.

    But thans for affirming to be not interested in becoming disproved. In the other comment section you are not even able to answer very basic questions about your wrong equations and here you are presenting the next piece of bullshit-bingo.

  2. luis sancho says:

    I would rather say that everything at CERN is out of date, including sadly the program of research. Indeed, with the completion of the SLOAN mapping of grand scale systems in the Universe, there is now definitive proof that the Universe is a fractal; hence the continuous universal big-bang is false (see New Scientist June, 21) and quark-gluon soups only provoke local big-bangs (quasars in case of explosion of hyper-black holes in galaxies, supernovas, novas and planetary big-bangs in case of smaller quark-gluon soups). So at best the success of CERN will mean merely the explosion of planet Earth. What is then the theoretical models that describe best the fractal Universe? The general fractal models of Mandelbrot in the 80s, expanded in the 90s by Nottale to quantum space (scalar relativity) and myself to all general systems (www.unificationtheory.com, ISSS conferences), and in the 2000s to quantum gravity by Ambjorn, Jurkiewicz and Loll (Causal triangulation) give the correct answers to all the questions CERN pretends to resolve with the LHC. The fact that those models are still not mainstream science even if the experimental method has proof them shows that CERN is not only endangering our species but the future of science, as its enormous financial and industrial power dictates big science. Thus we now have a new religion of power, the big-bang and the Higgs and a new planetary menace, the LHC for the sake of… money not of science
    Luis Sancho

  3. Hansel says:

    Nothing is outdated but your own belief that you have some “results” which would contradict anything.

    You were not adressing the quantum effect hawking radiation in any paper. You have nothing which would prove your claim that neutron stars are protected. You have not even understood your own equations as was clearly shown in the “Five Fateful Coincidences”-comments.

    The conclusion is that you are not in the position to ask anything from this real scientists. If your behaviour in the email-correspondence with T-Hooft was like your actual behaviour in the otherc omment-section (no answers to questions, no precise definitions of variables but much of psychological blabla) then it is not really surprising that he stopped writing.

  4. Robert Houston says:

    Members of the Lifeboat community who are interested in minimizing existential risks to our planet should support Professor Rossler in his heroic efforts to call to world attention the need for a fair and independent safety review of the potential dangers of black hole production by CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. Its 2008 in-house safety study, the LSAG report, was conducted by CERN’s own employees and amounted to a whitewash. Even so, it and a 2008 technical report by Giddings and Magano (G&M) of CERN acknowledged that all previous safety arguments for the collider were either false (1999, “impossible to produce black holes”), invalid (2000, comparision with cosmic rays hitting Earth), or questionable (2003, evaporation of black holes by Hawking radiation). With this history of crumbling rationales, the new safety argument presented in 2008 concerning cosmic rays hitting dense neutron stars and white dwarfs also needs to be reassessed in light of new information.

    In fact, the G&M report of CERN acknowledged a serious problem. “However,” they wrote, “known neutron stars have strong magnetic fields” (p. 23). These are up to a trillion times stronger than the magnetic fields that shield the Earth from solar emissions and cosmic rays. Thus deflected or weakened, cosmic rays may be unable to produce black holes on neutron stars or white dwarfs, which also have powerful magnetic fields. For this and other reasons, the existence of such stars may not be an adequate model for the safety of the LHC.

    In fact, Nobel laureate Gerard ‘t Hooft, whom Dr. Rossler addressed above, was a member of CERN’s Scientific Policy Committee (SPC), which reviewed the 2008 safety documents. His committee judged the evidence for the neutron star safety argument to be inadequate, stating that “this argument relies on properties of cosmic rays…that…require confirmation” (SPC report, 2008, p. 3).

    Because any outside safety review may threaten careers and funding for the LHC and other colliders, Dr. Rossler has been subjected to a virulent campaign of personal attacks arising from that community and attempting to discredit him and all safety concerns. On several threads, his critics were so eager to debunk his recent Telemach theorem that they ignored principles of elementary algebra in critiquing the first equation. This was a formula in which the term T represented a unit of time (e.g. 1 hour). The critics slyly “forgot” that T was already defined and treated the first T as an unknown (X) thereby seeming to reverse the original result, which had conformed to Einstein’s theory of time distortion in an accelerating rocket. This was like their claiming that the equation 1A = 2B means that 2A = 1B. Thus, Rossler’s critics have been not only vicious but illogical in their comments.

  5. Hansel says:

    As long as you don’t understand the arguments in the other thread (e.g. the equations) you should keep silent. It was clearly shown that the T was NOT defined. Rössler changed the defintion more than one time without being able to define even the dimension.

    The point is that Rössler has no arguments. For example the famous neutron star protection consists only of his statement. No derivation, no explanation, absolutely nothing which would meet at least the lowest standard of scientific evidence. His “Telemach” is inconsistent and based on fundamental misunderstandings of general relativity. His Charge-related part of the “paper” is completely confused and already completely contradicted by nature itself. And so on. From the pojnt of view of a scientist (it does not matter if employed at CERN or not) there is nohting worth to deal with.

    additional it is Rössler who attacks personally scientists all over the world by comparing them with nazis or terrorists. Interestigly you have nothing to say about a very scientific heading like “Osama bin CERN”.

    And you, Houston, have proved not the first time that you have not even understood a single word of the comments in the other thread about this equation. The same is true for your cherry-picking in safety reports etc. Again you are citing this single sentence from G&M about the magnetic fileds. Again you have not read the following parts — e.g Appendix G where this point is addressed.

  6. Hansel says:

    “Because any outside safety review may threaten careers and funding for the LHC and other colliders,”

    That is complete bullshit — but as it is obvious that you have no other arguments than this kind of conspiracy theory: have you ever thought about the fact that the people working at CERN and other research centers have themselves families and children.? According to you there are thousands of people faking papers and lying to the world because of their career? Or thousans of people who are in fact dogmatic and stupid idiots believing blindly the statements of some Nobel-Laureates…yes, there must be some truth in it. :D :P

  7. TRMG says:

    “his critics were so eager to debunk his recent Telemach theorem that they ignored principles of elementary algebra in critiquing the first equation. ”

    Houston, these paragraphs are readily available still, for everyone to cite and demonstrate your complete failure and embarrassment. So in your position I would rather stop boasting and go back to middle school, like it was suggested to you earlier.

    “This was a formula in which the term T represented a unit of time (e.g. 1 hour). ”

    Which one represents “1 hour”—T_tail or T_tip? Does T_tail represent “1 long hour” and T_tip “1 short hour”? You don’t really believe this, do you? Learn about the difference between “physical quantity” and “units of measurement.”

    “The critics slyly “forgot” that T was already defined […]”

    Aside from the fact that this definition doesn’t work, Rössler seemed to have forgotten it too at one point, where he wrote:

    “Local” proper time is the time experienced by a resting person. That is the time T_downstairs about which the whole world agrees with Einstein it is slowed by the gravitational redshift factor. ” (Otto Rössler on June 26, 2011 6:05 am, Five Fateful Coincidences)

    But maybe it was his evil critic’s fault, confusing poor Rössler with their voodoo-algebra, and making him forget the meaning of his own “theorem.”

    But wait, Robert Houston obviously forgot that “T represented a unit of time” too, and once made the reasonable assumption that T, as symbol for the physical quantity “time,” refers to a variable amount of these units instead, leaving of course open the possibility that one *but only one* of both Ts can refer to exactly one unit. But strangely enough he could believe this only until it was spelled out for him that this interpretation immediately invalidated Rössler’s equation. Robert Houston wrote with firm conviction:

    “Early on July 1, TRMG clarified that he agrees with Rossler and DESY that “a clock attached to the rocket’s ceiling…ages faster than a clock attached to its floor.”
    He asked, “Does Rossler’s Eq. (1) – T_tail=T_tip * (1+z) – correctly capture DESY’s description of the situation?”
    Answer: It does, for it will yield a larger number of time units (minutes, hours) for the faster clock [at the tip—TRMG] and do so in accordance with the Rindler metric (z). ” (Robert Houston on July 1, 2011 10:08 pm )

    So it had to be explained to him:

    “If you take a positive number, like T_tip, and multiply it by a number larger than 1, like 1+z, you get an even larger number–T_tail in this case. But T_tail should be smaller, because it pertains to the slower aging clock at the bottom. ”

    At which point Robert Houston dropped out. Right, someone had problems understanding basic algebra.

  8. TRMG says:

    BTW, Houston, over at “Five Fateful Coincidences” we just discovered that Eq. (2)—L_tail = (1+z)*L_tip—is even worse, than Eq. (1). L is different from the “gothic R” distance, though Rössler emphasizes that both should be equal. Maybe you should apply your algebraic skills to this conundrum.

  9. DaFreak says:

    The fact that they haven’t made any changes means that they still support their statements. Do I have to change the edit dates on my own website every day just to let people know i still stand behind what I say?

    These are all very respected and well known scientists. As soon as they would feel that something is off they would ask for their quotes to be removed.

  10. Hansel says:

    Hey,there is only ONE scientist in the world. All the others are stupid and dogmatic idiots. :D

  11. AnthonyL says:

    “have you ever thought about the fact that the people working at CERN and other research centers have themselves families and children?”

    This is a standard objection to anyone who says the 10,000 scientists associated or at the LHC are lemmings headed towards the abyss without a valid safety argument. It is certainly irrational for any of them to risk the lives of their wives/husbands and children on the basis of a crumbling safety argument, after other arguments have been abandoned one by one, as Hoston points out.

    All you are pointing out is that they would have to be 100% irrational, unless there were other considerations involved. One other consideration here might well be the social and psychological burden of going against the grain of the group that one is a member of, which can be very great. Much scientific achievement especially nowadays is based of shared thinking and assumptions, as well as maintaining good relations with the group.

    To decide that on your own review the safety arguments are not viable (as most physicists involved readily admit in personal conversation, I have found) and then to stand aside from your vast group and ask it to think and behave differently is a tall order, unless you have very weighty personal convictions and fears.

    The tendency is probably to ignore the critics and comfortably assume that safety is in good hands. Then also there is really no way of predicting the chances of disaster when there is not even an agreed upon forecast of what will emerge, just differing hopes based on different speculations.

    The truth is quite clear, that physicists are taking the whole of humanity on a joy ride where the theoretical possibility of erasing the planet is greater than zero, but no one “feels” the chances are anything more than infinitesimal.

    The fact that all 10,000 physicists want to “feel” the same, especially about the possibility of interrupting the experiment while ignorant outsiders debate whether they should go ahead or not, is presumably a much heavier consideration that risking the lives of their loved ones to what they “feel” is an infinitesimal degree.

    In the first atomic explosion there was a similar fear that the entire atmosphere of the planet would be consumed in a chain reaction, and the possibility was set aside. Presumably the human race will be lucky this time too. But not because the phycsicists are behaving purely rationally.

  12. I thank Robert Houston who under the condition that I have not been falsified supports my position. He strongly helps my request to get the benefit of the doubt in the sense of a first counter-proof, or else the conference necessary to speed up the search for one.

    Second, I have to concede that the quote from my part (“Local” proper time is the time experienced by a resting person. That is the time T_downstairs about which the whole world agrees with Einstein it is slowed by the gravitational redshift factor”, June 26, 2011 6:05 am, Five Fateful Coincidences) needs to be cleansed of the symbol “T-downstairs”. My apologies!

    Thank you, AnthonyL.

    (I was travelling.)

  13. Hansel says:

    Ah, now the symbol has to be removed from your sentence..interesting. You really have no idea about the meaning of your own equations as this was not the first time TRMG has confronted you with your statement. . Thanks for the proof. Again there is the question: what is the dimension, the defintion, the meaning of your T?

    BTW :You are falsified long ago. And your results were never relevant for any safety issues at the LHC or the related physics. You have not disproved hawking radiation as you have never dealed with the quantum effect described by hawking.

    The LSAG-report described very accurate a worst case scenario of hypothetical non-evaporating black holes. All assumptions made their are the worst case especially concerning of accretion of matter etc. As you have not introduced any argument why white dwarfs or neutron stars should be protected against accretion your “scenario” is complete irrelevant. (And again, only to say that there is a prpotection is not enough. You ignore this usually but that in fact is the proof that you are not a scientist any longer but a agitator who wants to be on the big stage. )

  14. Robert Houston says:

    Hansel, you’re the one who’s been acting like an agitator, interlacing your comments with poison pen insults. Is your case so weak that you must resort to personal attacks? Indeed it may be, for the safety arguments you uphold have been undermined by CERN’s own theorists as well as outside physicists, independent of Dr. Rossler.

    Hawking radiation, for example, has been questioned by a number of scientists besides Rossler. Even the 2008 technical report by Giddings and Mangano of CERN admitted that “elements of the original derivation [by Hawking] of black hole radiance rely on assumptions that are apparently not valid” (p. 3). More recently, a published paper by two physicists including Rothman of Princeton supported the findings Russian physicist Vilkovisky that “black holes lose only ten percent of their mass to Hawking radiation before evaporation ceases” (Abs). See: http://arxiv.org/abs/0911.2368v3 .

    Dr. Rossler’s 2008 hypothesis that superfluidity may protect neutron stars by rendering them “transparent” to black holes received strong supporting information in Feb. 2011, when NASA reported that its Chandra X-ray satellite found direct evidence of the superfluidity of a young neutron star. Thus, CERN’s neutron star argument may now be out-of-date, for its theorists never considered superfluidity, which may prevent such stars from stopping microscopic black holes. It is believed that these would be little larger than neutrinos, which travel easily out of the core due to the superfluid state. This state develops at birth, according to a Belgian astrophysicist: “About one minute later, the protoneutron star becomes TRANSPARENT to…neutrinos that are copiously produced in its interior. This allows the neutrinos to escape easily and carry away energy, so that the protoneutron star cools down…” (N. Chanel, Ph.D. “A Stellar Superfluid” Physics 4: 14, 2011) [Emph. added]. Since a near light speed mBH may shoot through a 12 mile neutron star in about 1/10000 of a second, it would have little chance to accrete matter.

    Hansel contended earlier that App. G of CERN’s G&M report somehow contradicted my statement that the powerful magnetic fields of a neutron star would weaken cosmic rays. In actuality, App. G states, in regard to neutron stars, that “typical magnetic fields…lead to great energy losses…for relativistic cosmic rays.”

    Hansel also pointed out that CERN scientists have families and children. But that reality is all the more reason for them to conform to the party-line in order to maintain their careers and income. Interviewed by the New Yorker in 2007, CERN’s then science chief admitted that its scientists are instructed to tell the public, if asked, that the risk of the LHC is “zero.”

    I appreciate TRMG’s patient explanations to me, both above and in the “5 coincidences” thread, of why he believes Rossler’s Eq. 1 was wrongly formulated. We all knew what Dr. Rossler meant, however, and the concentration on this triviality of form seems like a legalistic effort to avoid issues of substance. From the start, everyone agreed with Rossler (and Einstein) that time slows down in the tail of the accelerating rocket and is faster in the tip. Everyone also agreed that T stood for a unit of time (a second or an hour). Indeed, on the right side of the equation T was treated as equal to 1 by TRMG, who calculated in an example that T * (1+1) equals 2. Therefore, T on the left side (T_tail) must also equal 1. Rossler had presented a formula of equivalence in which the left side is predetermined, as in M = K * 1.6 (for mile to km). Thus, the left side of the formula describes the clock in the tail and the right side describes the clock in the tip: T_tail = T_tip * (1+z). Rossler’s formula was thus correct, showing slower time in the tail than the tip.

    Dr. Rossler presented a theorem, and a theorem is expressed algebraically in the form of one or more formulas. Please recall from elementary algebra that “a formula expresses one quantity in terms of the others” and that in it “the symbol for the expressed quantity is on the left side with its coefficient equal to unity.” Thus, “the numerical coefficient is 1, implied though not written explicitly” (from a mathematics textbook). Sorry, TRMG, you’ve been the one in error.

  15. Hansel says:

    that “typical magnetic fields…lead to great energy losses…for relativistic cosmic rays.”

    Cheryy picking again. Tgere are some numbers and a conclusion. Tell us!

  16. Hansel says:

    Annd again you have no idea about the meaning or understanding of equations. You shold take TRMGs advice serious! Go back to school and learn some basic math and don’t bother anyone again with this very private algebra.

  17. TRMG says:

    Houston, please stop. This is painful.

    “Everyone also agreed that T stood for a unit of time (a second or an hour). Indeed, on the right side of the equation T was treated as equal to 1 by TRMG, who calculated in an example that T * (1+1) equals 2. Therefore, T on the left side (T_tail) must also equal 1.”

    Because T_tail equals 2, as just shown in the previous sentence, it must also equal 1.

    “Rossler had presented a formula of equivalence in which the left side is predetermined, as in M = K * 1.6 (for mile to km). Thus, the left side of the formula describes the clock in the tail and the right side describes the clock in the tip: T_tail = T_tip * (1+z). Rossler’s formula was thus correct, showing slower time in the tail than the tip.”

    Thus? You didn’t demonstrate anything. You contradicted yourself before you even started.

    “Please recall from elementary algebra that “a formula expresses one quantity in terms of the others” and that in it “the symbol for the expressed quantity is on the left side with its coefficient equal to unity.” Thus, “the numerical coefficient is 1, implied though not written explicitly” (from a mathematics textbook). Sorry, TRMG, you’ve been the one in error. ”

    Well, if a random quote from a random algebra text referring to god-knows-what mentions the number “1,” then this certainly proves me wrong. And really? A formula expresses one quantitiy in terms of others? Wow, that’s really strong stuff. I must have neglected this deep insight completely. Thanks for reminding me.

    Please, Houston, don’t try to fake knowledge in algebra. You obviously have no idea how ridiculous this looks. Use your algebra textbook to study, not for lame quote-mining like every other text. This doesn’t work well with mathematics anyway.

    BTW: “We all knew what Dr. Rossler meant, however, and the concentration on this triviality of form seems like a legalistic effort to avoid issues of substance. ”

    That is true. He most likely meant gravitational time dilation.

  18. Hansel says:

    “conform to the party-line in order to maintain their careers and income”

    Yes. They all accept and know that the world and all their lifes will be extinct in 5 years. Yes, despite this fact they all prefer to remain on the “party-line”. Yes, that’s it!

    Sorry, Houston, but start thinking! Thousands of scientists and all completelxy brainwashed — that is ridicoulous. The possilbility that Rössler could be wrong with his wrong equations came never to your mind. In contrast you take his inabilities, his scaremongering as a kind of proof for him being right. As long as you remain on your very private algebra level you have shown again in your comment you will not be able to judge anything of Rösslers ” work, e.g. his non-understanding of very basic concepts of general relativity, his inability to define even the simple equation etc.

  19. TRMG says:

    “Dr. Rossler’s 2008 hypothesis that superfluidity may protect neutron stars by rendering them “transparent” to black holes received strong supporting information in Feb. 2011, when NASA reported that its Chandra X-ray satellite found direct evidence of the superfluidity of a young neutron star. ”

    Right, just like the hypothesis that voodoo works receives strong support by the existence of pins.

  20. Robert Houston says:

    Voodoo? It was a finding from NASA and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, etc., published by the Royal Astronomical Society and Physical Review Letters. All reports describe it as the first “direct evidence” of the superfluidity of the core of a neutron star. As the Belgian astrophysicist explained, the finding demonstrates that a neutron star is in a superfluid state that makes it “transparent” to the escape of neutrinoes from its core and out of its crust. Since microscopic black holes may be no larger, this means they too may transit the star without being stopped, just as Rossler hypothesized in 2008. This renders CERN’s neutron star safety argument essentially obsolete.

    Hansel wrote regarding CERN scientists, “They all accept and know that the world…will be extinct in 5 years.… This is ridiculous.” Yes it is, but I never said it. To maintain their noble self-image and avoid cognitive dissonance, they all believe that the risk of the LHC is minimal or insignificant, and trust the CERN Theory Dept. which issued a comforting whitewash report to that effect. Dr. Ellis, the chairman of the safety group, later admitted that its report was written mainly for PR purposes.

    A show of Olympian disdain does not change the fact that TRMG and Hansel made a giant error in elementary algebra. Perhaps use to solving for unknowns in research, they misinterpreted the left side of a formula as being an unknown to be defined by the right side, when in fact the left side of a formula is normally defined as 1, whether implicit or explicit, and is not altered by what happens on right side per se. Thinking the left side is always an unknown, TRMG might interpret M = K * 1.61 to mean that 1.61 miles equals one kilometer. This is similar to how he misinterpreted Rossler’s formula, T_tail = T_tip * (1+z) as meaning that T_tail was larger. In actuality, the formula meant that (1)T_tail is smaller than (1+z)T_tip.

    All this tedious hair-splitting might have been avoided if everyone had simply agreed that T = 1 hour as displayed on the local clocks and was not an unknown quantity..

  21. AnthonyL says:

    “Yes. They all accept and know that the world and all their lifes will be extinct in 5 years. Yes, despite this fact they all prefer to remain on the “party-line”. Yes, that’s it!”

    (See above AL post) Hansel, with all due respect to your mostly pertinent remarks, often amusingly acute, it is irritating to write a post for your keenly perceptive attention and have you totally ignore it. Could it be that, given your evident youth, you are out of your depth discussing the psychology of science politics?

    The complaint of the gloomsters is that people in large groups switch off independent thinking about basic assumptions, which neglect is why original minds like Einstein, and troublemakers visiting from another field, can come up with improvements to them, when thousands did not.

    Here the shared assumption is that the chances of the Devil popping out of the cauldron are infinitesimally low, but some thoughtful outsiders fear it is more than that. Only a review can determine how careful we should be, though even a review may not come up with a good answer until we have more evidence, eg from cosmologists, about how things are elsewhere in this exciting but somewhat fearsome universe.

    Of course, no one working on the LHC is going to be enthusiastic about switching their vast pet investment off while we all wait for telescope data to give us more reassuring safety theory. But that seems to be what is indicated by a careful reading of the CERN texts, which as Houston shows, quietly make key admissions.

    When those admissions are put together with new speculations about how sure we can be of current theory about Hawking radiation, neutron stars and white dwarfs etc, it is clearly time for CERN officials, if they want to be publicly responsible, to review the situation in an objective manner.

    Fat chance of that, of course, but this is what the gloomsters (who are not in fact pessimists, so much as sensitive to the fact that we dont know enough to proceed with real confidence, and that infinitesimal chances of total catastrophe are not something we should ignore) are pointing out, quite sensibly.

    By the way, one factor which none of the defenders here are taking into account are just how wrong vast numbers of scientists can be, something we are finding out now that so many basic assumptions are proving wrong in medicine.

    But then, every replacement of a scientific paradigm reminds us of this, and also reminds us how strenuously the prominent people in a field, and all their followers, resist it.

  22. AnthonyL says:

    ” This is similar to how he misinterpreted Rossler’s formula, T_tail = T_tip * (1+z) as meaning that T_tail was larger. In actuality, the formula meant that (1)T_tail is smaller than (1+z)T_tip.” — Houston

    @Houston The algebraic formulation a=(1+z) b means that a is greater than b.

    How does Rossler’s formula, T_tail=T_tip*(1+z), mean the opposite?

    It states T_tail=(1+z)T_tip, ie a=(1+z) b, which means a is greater than b, that T_tail is bigger than T_tip. T_tip is the smaller value, because it has to be multiplied by some number greater than one to meet the value of T_tail.

    This is elementary algebra. There must be some misunderstanding of the terms. Perhaps you have one inverted. Rossler referred to PERIOD rather than TIME in his correction of what he meant. He seemed to mean he was referring to units of time (periods) being larger (relatively) in a slower clock. So a multiplication sign instead of a dividing line in the formula was in order. But he didn’t elaborate.

    Whatever the mixup, your statements that a=(1+z) b means b is greater than a are only going to suffer scorn and derision, which may unfairly stain your perfectly accurate “quote mining” of CERNs self defeating safety arguments.

    When CERN contradicts its own propaganda, quietly, in hidden corners of its texts, it deserves quote mining, to show the public what it really believes.

    What it and all its physicists really believe is that there is no certainty about the future but we are all 10,000 of us optimists, so let’s not hear of any annoying logical flaws in our purported rationality from panty waist outsiders.

    Light the fuse!

  23. AnthonyL says:

    @Houston OK I think I see what you want to mean with your so-called private algebra. The clock at the tip will show 2hrs, say, when the clock at the tail will only show 1 hour. So you believe that the formulation T_tail=T_tip (1+1) expresses this relation.

    In fact, it expresses the opposite, if it is algebraic. Algebraically, if T_tail is 1, then algebraically T_tip would resolve as T_tail/2, which would be 1/2 hr, or 12.30. So it is not a correct equation, if it is algebraic.

    The correct algebraic equation would be T_tip=T_tail*2. Then time at the tip would be double time at the tail, 2pm where time at the tail is only 1pm, 4pm where tail is 2pm, and so on.

    You seem to want some kind of different formulation where T_tail is the time at a certain point of reconciliation, and T_tip is the time at the same point of reconciliation, and one might write “time at the T_tail is 1 when time at the T_tip is x2’, meaning when T_tail is 1 o’clock, then T_tip would be two o’clock. This is a very odd way of looking at it, and not algebraic.

    Algebraically, it would still be properly expressed as T_tip = T_tail (1-z), not what you write, which is the opposite.

  24. TRMG says:

    AnthonyL: “There must be some misunderstanding of the terms.”

    Or Rössler simply got the equation wrong. Remember how he uses it subsequently in the paper: He mentions the “global constancy” of the speed of light as being L/T. What is that supposed to mean if T is not the time and L the distance measured by an observer? By deviating from the meaning “proper time” he is just defining the rest of his paper away. Also he makes it pretty obvious that he regards Eq. (1) as just Einstein’s “well known finding.” This strongly suggests he means the same as Eq. (30) in Albert Einstein, “Über das Relativitätsprinzip und die aus demselben gezogene Folgerungen,” Jahrbuch der Radioaktivitaet und Elektronik 4 (1907); translated “On the relativity principle and the conclusions drawn from it,” in which Rössler confused the meaning of sigma (local time) and tau (coordinate time).

    “which may unfairly stain your perfectly accurate “quote mining”… ”

    I was referring especially to his quoting SPC. To summarize its gist as “His committee judged the evidence for the neutron star safety argument to be inadequate,” is borderline to flat-out lying. If they deemed something inadequate, why did they conclude the section about black holes with “On the basis of all these findings, we can conclude that there is no danger of whatever kind from the hypothetical production of black holes at the LHC.”?

    “… of CERNs self defeating safety arguments. ”

    Wait a minute. Who is alternating between mutually inconsistent arguments, assuming sometimes the existence and sometimes the non-existence of Hawking radiation, depending on which point he’s just wishing to make?

    Houston wrote: “More recently, a published paper by two physicists including Rothman of Princeton supported the findings Russian physicist Vilkovisky that “black holes lose only ten percent of their mass to Hawking radiation before evaporation ceases” ”

    If Rothman confirmed that a black hole loses ten percent of its mass, then he defies Rössler who allegedly found that it loses none, and vice versa. Could you constrain the discussion at least to a consistent set of worries?

  25. TRMG says:

    “Remember how he uses it subsequently in the paper: He mentions the “global constancy” of the speed of light as being L/T.”

    Sorry, I meant to say “… global constancy of c as meaning L/T=const.”

  26. TRMG says:

    Houston: “All this tedious hair-splitting might have been avoided if everyone had simply agreed that T = 1 hour as displayed on the local clocks and was not an unknown quantity.. ”

    Rössler claimed to talk about gravitational time dilation, where symbols like t or T typically refer to the physical quantity called “proper time,” each of which may represent a variable amount of seconds, hours, etc. And BTW it really makes no sense to use the definition “T=1 hour” for *two* variables that are not even equal. I hope your algebra textbook will agree so far.

    Also it is a strange coincidence that in General Realtivity there actually is a formula that is well-known, just as Rössler claims, and that relates two local proper times at different locations only with the upper and the lower T interchanged.

    The hair-splitting started when Rössler was confronted with this fact.

  27. AnthonyL says:

    “I was referring especially to his quoting SPC. To summarize its gist as “His committee judged the evidence for the neutron star safety argument to be inadequate,” is borderline to flat-out lying. ” TRMG

    Oh come on, TRMG, don’t give way to this kind of impulse to tar and feather informative contributor Houston for supposely misleading you when the fault is yours, since clearly you haven’t read the SPC document carefully enough — and it’s only four pages!

    Sheez, I thought you were above such shenaningans, which are the kind of excess which makes objective observers think you have an emotional impetus against anyone who might tell CERN to stop lighting the fuse to what may be the biggest implosion in the history of the solar system.

    I know, I know, you have read the conclusion, which confirms everything you would like to be true about the LHC. You must feel it is a love letter to your fondest dream:

    “To summarize, we fully endorse the conclusions of the LSAG report: there is no basis for any concerns about the consequences of new particles or forms of matter that could possibly be produced at the LHC. ”

    In fact, it is a disgraceful piece of flying propagandist fancy representing their irresponsibility (at the behest of our favorite PR man at CERN, perhaps?) in not even paying attention to their own reservation on the previous page. To whit:

    (Third paragraph on page 3:) “A powerful argument applicable also to higher energies is formulated making reference to observed neutron stars, but this argument relies on properties of cosmic rays and neutrinos that, while highly plausible, do require confirmation, as can be expected in the coming years.”

    TRMG, let’s stop fooling around with sniping at Otto Rossler from heaviliy fortified embattlements and just deal with the nub of the problem with the LHC and its fat headed record of inconsistently stating and abandoning safety reassurances over the past decade.

    I assume that you know what the SPC is referring to in the paragraph above, but for the benefit of anyone else reading this thread let’s spell it out.

    1) Physicists who circle the CERN wagons against anyone suggesting that mBHs created by the LHC are a danger that might consume the planet like to lie to the public. They like to tell the public that it couldn’t happen on Earth, because cosmic rays have been bombarding Earth since aeons ago, which is no more than the LHC will imitate. Ergo, no danger.

    2) In fact, they know very well this is nonsense, because there is a great difference between a mBH created by a cosmic ray and the ones that may be created by the LHC. The former is the result of a high speed collision in a single direction which sends any product such as a mBH off into deep space at colossal speed, so it will not have any chance to do damage here. In the LHC, however, any mBH will be the product of two protons hitting each other head on, resulting, like any head on impact of two cars on a highway, in debris which may travel at little net velocity, which will not escape the Earth, but may well linger to swallow CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, you, me and eventually the entire planet, unless other problems prevent it.

    3) So Giddings and Mangano came up with a new safety argument. Neutron stars. SPC would have loved to accept Giddings and Mangano’s resort to neutron stars as a safety reassurance for the LHC. The idea was that their existence is proof that a mBH if created by the LHC will not gobble up the earth, because they have not consumed neutron stars, which like the Earth have been bombarded with cosmic rays throughout time.

    4) But as the above paragraph coyly notes — even you missed it, and you are in the field, for God’s Sake — they had to admit it had one big problem. All known neutron stars are protected by superdense magnetic fields which average a trillion times the power of those that protect the Earth. If cosmic rays can get through these highly dense magentic fields, they would be unlikely to have enough energy left to create mBHs from collisions.

    5) There is another problem which has emerged, as you have discussed here earlier. The entire neutron star might be superfluid. Their surfaces have already been shown to be superfluid, but this February new data analyzed by the Royal Astronomical Society and others showed that their core is apparently also superfluid. In other words, neutron stars may be transparent to cosmic rays and give rise to no collisions and no mBHs to hang around and eat them anyway. So they are no safety assurance for the LHC either. Goodbye neutron stars, folks, we need another safety exhibit!

    6) Let’s note that none other than Otto Rossler was the first to suggest publicly that neutron stars might be superfluid and thus unable to stop cosmic rays and their collision products such as mBHs from hanging around, just as the Earth is unable to do so. Given that neutron stars are so dense, this is an unexpected result and Otto Rossler can count it as a triumph of his theorizing, since it is turning out to be true. One good reason to pay attention to Otto, instead of trying to sweep what he says under the carpet with nitpicking sallies against some picayune line error you think you have detected.

    7) The neutron star being a failed safety argument as it stands right now, what are we left with? White dwarfs! But how good are they as the sole exhibit of how cosmic reality shows the LHC is safe? Not much! A million times less dense than neutron stars, but still a billion times as dense as the earth, and with still super powerful magnetic fields quite probably strong enough to cripple cosmic rays going through them.

    8) But hey, the stalwart defenders of the faith cannot easily be put down. Aren’t there any with much lower magnetic fields, that might let cosmic rays do their thing? they asked. Of the 50,000 or so known white dwarfs in this galaxy, they found eight –EIGHT — that filled the bill. Five of these are counted from one study alone.

    9) The entire safety rational of CERM now rests on these eight. Yet even these were demolished as safety exhibits by Rainer Plaga in his 2008 paper (see section 4 of his paper On the potential catastrophic risk from metastable quantum-black holes produced at particle colliders, 2008, including follow up appendices refuting objections).

    10) Plaga noticed that Giddings and Mangano had arbitrarily set the minimum size of a mBH at a point where it could be stopped by the density of a white dwarf. (“ I further question that these risk analyses are complete for the reason that they exclude plausible black-hole parameter ranges from safety consideration without giving any reason”) The only reason they offered for this was that potential behavior was not well understood below that level. Plaga stated without refutation that they could easily be smaller. Giddings and Mangano have offered no further rebuttal of Plaga’s paper after an embarrassing first try in 2008 which confused equations in Plaga’s paper.

    11) Let us also note that Otto Rossler is also distinguished by having noticed the same flaw independently in 2008 (is that not right Professor — your observation was not derived from Plaga, was it?)

    All in all, TRMG, not a very good basis for your scorn of Otto Rossler and your apparent assumption that the SPC and other reviewing committees at CERN have been very objective in their assessments of risk at the LHC. Let’s be honest, they are propagandists, like everyone else at CERN, terrified of losing the LHC as the Americans lost their huge collider in the nineties.

    That won’t happen, because it is politically impossible, unless motivated by budgetary constraints which turn severe in an economic collapse in Europe. And even then, how much money is involved now in running the LHC? The darn thing is already designed and built. If I delivered a new Ferrari to your door, as a gift, would you listen to your wife telling you not to drive it because you might have an accident?

    It is also impossible because no one outside CERN is willing to examine the situation thoroughly and see where the public is being misled, except Rainer Plaga, Otto Rossler, Eric Johnson and a couple of related web sites, and my own commentary site Science Guardian, none of which have any serious chance of stopping a bureaucratic/scientific/propaganda/social machine bigger than the vast apparatus it controls beneath the surface of Switzerland and France.

    So you can afford to be calm and objective in discussing this topic in your expert and witty fashion, and accede to my mild request not to call anyone “almost a liar.” Right?

  28. TRMG says:

    AnthonyL: “Sheez, I thought you were above such shenaningans, which are the kind of excess which makes objective observers …”

    LOL, which supposedly means observers like yourself?

    “In fact, it is a disgraceful piece of flying propagandist fancy representing their irresponsibility (at the behest of our favorite PR man at CERN, perhaps?) in not even paying attention to their own reservation on the previous page. To whit:

    (Third paragraph on page 3:) “A powerful argument applicable also to higher energies is formulated making reference to observed neutron stars, but this argument relies on properties of cosmic rays and neutrinos that, while highly plausible, do require confirmation, as can be expected in the coming years.””

    Does this sound anything like “We find the argument inadequate” to you? I for one *don’t* think they are calling the argument inadequate, but highly plausible and powerful, and thus, by implication from what they write in their conclusion, as sufficient. In other words, the opposite of what Houston claimed they were saying. One may not agree with their assessment, but Houston did not say that *he* found the argument insufficient, which would be perfectly legitimate, but obviously dishonestly tried to let ‘t Hooft and his Nobel prize fame make the point for him.

    “TRMG, let’s stop fooling around with sniping at Otto Rossler from heaviliy fortified embattlements and just deal with the nub of the problem with the LHC and its fat headed record of inconsistently stating and abandoning safety reassurances over the past decade. ”

    Do you fear Rössler will cease to appear as credible authority regarding LHC concerns, if we continue? Anyway, not interested. (Maybe we should just agree that each of us thinks of the other sides’ arguments as despicable propaganda and simpy stop listening to each other. So I assume I can safely ignore your 11 points. Just skimmed through them.)

    [Points 1) −11). Regarding your points 5) and 6) I think they were already answered and you may want to carefully re-read our past discussion of the issue, because you considerably missed the point (just like Houston). BTW, Rössler was not the first one to suggest superfluidity in NS, but to fabricate the claim that this would somehow decrease their accretion speed. And, no this is no “result” or triumph of his theorizing, but made out of thin air.]

    “All in all, TRMG, not a very good basis for your scorn of Otto Rossler…“
    Maybe, but the basis for my scorn of Rössler are presumably not your 11 points, but my reading of his papers and my debating him. I consider this more than sufficient.

    “…and your apparent assumption that the SPC and other reviewing committees at CERN have been very objective in their assessments of risk at the LHC. ”

    My “apparent assumption”? The point was not whether the SPC report was objective, or if their assessments were correct, but whether Houstons claims about what they were saying were true.

  29. I am very much impressed by the above discussion. I dared make myself more vulnerable by writing a new post yesterday.

    I cannot say how grateful am. Especially to RH and AL.

    By the way: Can anyone object that an infinite risk, made finitely probable, can rationally be beaten by a finite small cost (like having to make a short pause for the scientific safety conference requested by the Cologne Administrative Court)?

  30. TRMG says:

    TRMG: “I for one *don’t* think they are calling the argument inadequate, but highly plausible and powerful, and thus, by implication from what they write in their conclusion, […] as sufficient. ”

    “regard it” is missing before “as sufficient.” Sorry.

  31. AnthonyL says:

    Dear me, TRMG, the above is not your usual witty, devil may care post, it seems rather winded. Did I drop a bunkerbuster on your redoubt? It seems you are still collecting your thoughts, and have been able only to feebly utter repetition of previously countered points.

    One awaits with particular interest your justification of your fond belief that mBHs scooting through a superfluid neutron star can somehow find the time and power to accrete matter ie neutrons in the form of neutronium, which is all they have available for consumption. Can a mouse swallow an elephant? So far, we have merely your own assertion, without any convincing reasoning. Let’s note that your favorite comedy team Giddings and Mangano worked out that significant accretion would not develop for up to several weeks, whereas as Houston points out mBHs would cross and leave the star in a fraction of a second — say 1/10,000 — at nearly the speed of light.

    In reply to your few specific points, yes, I am an objective observer, without a stake in the outcome except I can easily see that there is a clear moral, legal, social and scientific case for a review of the juggernaut’s progress toward the limit of its operation. I am sorry if you are not an objective observer, since I believe you have a moral duty to be so, given that the human race is at stake, not to mention our only planet. Perhaps you should ask your wife or girl friend what to do, if you lack this perception yourself. If you lack either, please confide in your mother.

    The SPC can intone “powerful and highly plausible” as much as they like, and “conclude that there is no danger of whatever kind” as their firm belief re white dwarfs, which hacks everywhere can pass on to the general public without challenge, but the fact remains this fervent and somewhat self satisfied faith has a hole in it, and they had to admit the hole, and did it rather honestly, which is that the highly plausible and powerful claim is made on a basis which is speculative, properties of cosmic rays that “do require confirmation.” So the reality is that we have to wait upon that confirmation if we are to have the evidence based, realistic confidence in their conclusion that matches their self serving religious faith in it.

    Thus far the safety argument is inadequate, for that reason. And they said so, discreetly. Very discreetly. You missed it, it seems, which is presumably the intention. You are the victim of their propaganda, TRMG, ironically enough. Their cleverness outwitted you too, it seems.

    You may base your scorn of Otto Rossler on whatever you like — apparently, as you say, only on your nit picking his claims yourself without giving him the benefit of the doubt, which he deserves given his perceptions ahead of the crowd, as noted above.

    He is in the business of being ahead of the crowd, and I was giving you two examples where he had shown it. You haven’t given us anything of the kind, which would be good, since you are critiquing Rossler, but appear to be a non starter in his field, which is original thinking in science. A certain modesty would therefore be in order, don’t you think, a certain discretion? Rather than “liar” etc?

    As to the objectivity of the CERN safety review committees, this is a very important consideration, given their responsibility for the human race and the planet, which credible theorists say they are risking to some real extent. Sorry that you don’t think public responsibility is something they should feel. Perhaps you don’t feel it yourself, is that right? If you do, why would you say it is irrelevant whether they are objective or not?

    More to the point, why do you apparently feel that it is irrelevant whether you are objective or not? Bias is not part of good science or its debate. One thing that betrays your bias is that you say you only have skimmed what I wrote above. That is indeed the product of confirmation bias. One tends to skim those things one suspects attack one’s fond belief.

    We have read what you have written without partiality and in the hope of enlightenment, and we would hope you could repay the compliment.

    Be that as it may, your post adds up to ignoring the record I have laid out, which is that the safety arguments of CERN have crumbled year after year, and the current one doesn’t amount to enough to justify proceeding without review. It doesn’t matter whether Rossler’s theoretical doubts are correct, it doesn’t matter whether Plaga’s are, or that often the various arguments contradict each other or are inconsistent, as you have noted. There is enough credible doubt (for 67 pages of it, see lhcconcern.info Critical Revision of LHC Risks) and not enough safety reassurance to proceed without review, if we are rational.

    But I merely point this out. Rationality is not what I expect from science politics. It is hard enough to get it in science. Only idealists like Rossler still plead for it, to the scorn of people like yourself well tutored in the conventional scheme, who ignore the inevitable changes in that scheme that will doubtless occur in the future.

    Rossler is not a very good pr person for himself and his ideas, in modern media terms, as has been noted here on Lifeboat. But as I have said before, original thinkers from Einstein down are often the least well groomed candidates for media presentation and political leadership. They often like to laugh too much to be taken as seriously as they might. And in science, their ideas may be exceptions to the conventional scheme, and be vulnerable to potshots at their details, but their general ideas may prove out nonetheless.

    All your comments show is that you have a good grasp of the standard scheme. This makes them valuable. But your scorn of Rossler on that basis is overblown, and your neglect of the history of CERN’s failure to find good safety arguments and to respond to the public welfare is itself irresponsible.

  32. Hansel says:

    “When CERN contradicts its own propaganda”

    It does not. The point is that R. Houston did not read the complete texts and did not understand most of them. For example, there is nothing proved by his selctive citation:

    “Giddings and Mangano of CERN admitted that “elements of the original derivation [by Hawking] of black hole radiance rely on assumptions that are apparently not valid” (p. 3)”

    The following section discusses the scientific evidence supporting the existence of hawking radiation and the arguments against it. The section ends with this formulation of the aim of the study:

    “Despite these very strong arguments for black hole decay, the possibility of manufacturing
    microscopic black holes on Earth suggests that one conduct an independent check of their
    benign nature. For that reason, this paper will test the hypothesis that the statements of
    this subsection are false, by investigating possible consequences of hypothetical black holes
    that do not undergo Hawking decay.”

    As always Houston read only parts of the text. There is nothing contradicting the propaganda but a carefully presented discussion of the state of research in the field. The following paper deals with the assumption that hawking radiation does not exist. At this point Rösslers “results” are already irrelevant.

    BTW by comparing the G&M-paper and Rösslers blabla you have a good example of the difference between a well-written scientific paper with logical derivations, well defined equations and so on and some piece of crackpottery containing total confused non-sequiturs.

  33. AnthonyL says:

    “BTW by comparing the G&M-paper and Rösslers blabla you have a good example of the difference between a well-written scientific paper with logical derivations, well defined equations and so on and some piece of crackpottery containing total confused non-sequiturs.”

    Fair enough, as a literary judgment, I grant you, but even if this very suggestive difference in style was a perfect guide as to who is right or wrong, which it isn’t, it’s completely irrelevant to what CERN and its parade of slipping safety claims look like, which is now essentially an empty vessel full of sound and fury yet signifying nothing.

    For which you guys take no responsibility, when in fact CERN’s reviews are the only set of safety arguments we have, yet, as described above, they are full of holes, sidestepping, contradictions, retractions, and general leaks of the fact that they don’t really hold up and are just as speculative and fantasy laden in the end as those of their critics.

    That is the nature of the beast, I don’t blame them, the whole house of cards of cosmological theory is subject to dispute and revision, with some people treating Stephen Hawking as God, for example, and others saying that his reasoning in a certain respect is drivel.

    One thing is certain, however, everyone involved is human, and to be human is to be subject to error, and human groups are just as subject to be in error as individuals.

    Lets face it, gentlemen, you behave like professional defenders of CERN and the LHC, with Peter Howell having a site devoted to attacking Rossler, etc etc. Why is it necessary to behave in such a way? To outsiders, it implies one thing very strongly. Your position is so weak that you have to counter attack critics, it seems. You feel you cannot afford to just sit on your hands. The public and politicians might be swayed to demand a review.

    If your position was strong, would you need to bother?

    It is a mistake for it forces your critics to deconstruct what you say and how you behave, and do it in public. You would be better off pretending to be open minded and public spirited, and not be so rude with the “liar” and “lying” remarks.

    But I guess you physicists are all too terrified of outside review that you even lie to the public, peddling the false notion of what Brina Greene calls the cosmic ray 1 argument (that they have been hitting the Earth for billions of years without creating havoc, so why should the LHC be a danger?), and now maintaining the similar fairy tale that neutron stars and white dwarfs are locked down safety exhibits.

    Sorry to seem to represent Rossler as having come up with superfluidity at the core of neutron stars, as you know the idea has been around since 1970 in 60 or more papers, but he was the first and so far only guy who saw that this would mean that mBHs couldn’t consume them.

    But no one reading this should suppose that the safety of the LHC stands or falls with the rightness or wrongness of Rossler. The whole picture is much bigger.

    By the way, I am not saying that I don’t support your position of going ahead with the LHC. I am merely pointing out how childishly irresponsible it is. As Rossler himself says, it all deserves the review which a German judge called for. He is just one person calling for this review. I’d say almost anybody in possession of the facts who can read the literature of the issue will agree that it deserves review.

    The only way to avoid it may well be the smokescreen you raise with all you potshots against Rossler and anyone who on his side asking for a review.

  34. TRMG says:

    AnthonyL: “It seems you are still collecting your thoughts, and have been able only to feebly utter repetition of previously countered points. ”

    That’s strange, because I have the impression that you still have problems understanding what I am really saying, for which I don’t blame you though.

    Regarding NS it’s the other way round. I am waiting for the justification how a superfluid could avoid being accreted. So far I don’t see one, and every one I could imagine defies the Equivalence Principle, that gravity affects matter regardless of its equation of state. I made this point eralier. It hasn’t been countered

    “In reply to your few specific points, yes, I am an objective observer, without a stake in the outcome except I can easily see that there is a clear moral, legal, social and scientific case for a review of the juggernaut’s progress toward the limit of its operation. I am sorry if you are not an objective observer, since I believe you have a moral duty to be so, given that the human race is at stake, not to mention our only planet. ”

    I can reassure you that, regarding your own criterion, I am as objective as you are. But admittedly I don’t accept any moral duties from you.

    “Thus far the safety argument is inadequate, for that reason. And they said so, discreetly. Very discreetly. You missed it, it seems, which is presumably the intention. You are the victim of their propaganda, TRMG, ironically enough. Their cleverness outwitted you too, it seems. ”

    No, I just think that the complete sentence that Houston mangled doesn’t prove that they say or believe the argument to be insufficient. And you have not provided a better quote so far either. You may of course think that they are dishonest or irrational in their conclusion, given what you, but again not they, call a “speculative” assumption, but that doesn’t seem to be the point Houston was trying to make. So presumably he missed their secret confession too or otherwise he would have quoted it.

    Furthermore, I don’t base my own assessment of black hole risks on the SPC report as you seem to imply by calling me a victim of their propaganda. Again, the point in question was *what* they said, not whether it was true or honest or objective or rational. I am not implying that these are unimportant questions, as you apparently understood. It’s just not a point I am interested in discussing with you.

    “You may base your scorn of Otto Rossler on whatever you like – apparently, as you say, only on your nit picking his claims yourself without giving him the benefit of the doubt, which he deserves given his perceptions ahead of the crowd, as noted above. ”

    I gave him the benefit of a doubt just the moment I decided to read his papers. By finishing there was not much doubt left to benefit him, to be honest. He can’t ask for more credit than that I think.

    BTW, what you perceive as nit picking is probably owed to the triviality of Rössler’s errors. I didn’t claim that my arguments are original (to the contrary) or “in the business of being ahead of the crowd” or what not. I just claim that they are true and undoubtedly refute Rössler. That it doesn’t take more than one perceptive look at a textbook or even wikipedia to recognize that, may conflict with the high regards you hold for Rössler, but it doesn’t make the counter arguments any less true.

    “He is in the business of being ahead of the crowd, and I was giving you two examples where he had shown it. ”

    No I think you falsely attributed the hypothesis of a suprafluid phase in NS to him. What was the other example? That superfluids can’t be accreted by Black Holes?

    “You haven’t given us anything of the kind, which would be good, since you are critiquing Rossler, but appear to be a non starter in his field, which is original thinking in science. A certain modesty would therefore be in order, don’t you think, a certain discretion? Rather than “liar” etc? ”

    No, I don’t think so. I think that Rössler deserves every scorn and comtempt he gets for what he does, which is his attention-seeking with scientific imposture and crackpot physics; his being immune to the most trivial counter arguments, which he tries to answer with nonsensical ad-hoc excuses; and his trying to cover up his ignorance of basic facts with jargon laden hokum, like “light levels connected by jumping photons” etc.

    BTW, I didn’t call him a liar, and if I’m not mistaken this is the 3rd time you accuse me of that against your better knowledge.

    “As to the objectivity of the CERN safety review committees, this is a very important consideration, given their responsibility for the human race and the planet, which credible theorists say they are risking to some real extent. Sorry that you don’t think public responsibility is something they should feel. ”

    I do, and I think reagarding safety issues they lived up to their responsibility excellently. I know you don’t agree so please don’t bother telling me.

    “Perhaps you don’t feel it yourself, is that right?”

    In regard to LHC? No, I don’t feel any public responsibility. Why should I?

    ” If you do, why would you say it is irrelevant whether they are objective or not? ”

    I didn’t say that. Really.

    “More to the point, why do you apparently feel that it is irrelevant whether you are objective or not? ”

    I don’t. What are you even talking about?

    “One thing that betrays your bias is that you say you only have skimmed what I wrote above. ”

    Sorry, but I did that because I think they’re unrelated to any of my points here, which were not LHC safety in general, but the tenability of Rössler’s claims (and, less important, Houston’s quote-mining above).

    “We have read what you have written without partiality and in the hope of enlightenment, and we would hope you could repay the compliment.”

    It just seems that we don’t agree about what points we’d like to discuss. I am not interested in discussing every aspect of LHC safety with you. None of us I regard as qualified to do that, so it would be a waste of time.

    “But I merely point this out. Rationality is not what I expect from science politics. It is hard enough to get it in science. Only idealists like Rossler still plead for it, to the scorn of people like yourself well tutored in the conventional scheme, who ignore the inevitable changes in that scheme that will doubtless occur in the future. ”

    Well, I already explained why I’m unable to see the idealism in what Rössler does.

    I previously observed that Rössler’s supporters were trying to dismiss the possibility that he could be countered with textbook knowledge out of hand by resorting to dull platitudes like possible paradigm-shifting, against the resistance of dogma entrenched in “conventional schemes,” etc. That’s all nonsense. Yes, to refute Rössler you need Relativity 101, nothing beyond that, because he is that trivially wrong. Period. You know, all these “conventional schemes” you’ll find in the textbooks are there for a reason other than pure ignorance on the scientist’s part. Still the speed of light is calculated “Distance over time,” not “Distance over temporal wavelength”, whatever that is, and time is gravitationally dilated in a way that extends intervalls further upstairs, not the other way round, and it simply will remain so. And this is what Rössler is horribly confused about. Fabricating stories around this simple fact about his “being presumably ahead of the crowd,” or the other sode’s “ignoring the inevitability of future scheme changes,” or something along these lines, means you really, really missed the boat here.

  35. Peter Howell says:

    AnthonyL wrote: “… with Peter Howell having a site devoted to attacking Rossler,…”.

    Anthony, you seem to know more about what I am doing than myself. Can you please send me the link to the site I am running to ‘attack Roessler’? I was not aware I am having any site on the web, beside my university page.

    Peter H.

  36. TRMG says:

    “No I think you falsely attributed the hypothesis of a suprafluid phase in NS to him.”

    I just recognized that you clarified this point in your following comment.

    “…but he was the first and so far only guy who saw that this would mean that mBHs couldn’t consume them. ”

    No he didn’t “see” this. It’s just a shot in the dark, clearly targeted against the worst-case scenarios that do assume stable black holes anyway. He presents no justification for this at all, and it seems at odds with our understanding of gravity. Not the friction, but the density determines accretion speeds.

  37. AnthonyL says:

    Thank you TRMG for a very finely worded extensive response to what I wrote above, which is stated with the kind of analytical reliability and firm verbal grasp that is a pleasure and a relief after the admitted vagueness and insufficient formalism in conventional terms — ok let’s say unintelligibility to the average reader — of some of the Rossler blog posts being discussed in these threads, well skewered by Hansel and yourself.

    Apologies if I ascribed “liar”, “lying” etc to you, it must have been Hansel/hnasel, who appears thus to be the junior member of your team. Apologies to Peter Howell of DESY if he is not writing a scathing blog devoted mostly to Rossler, as suspected by the gloomsters who read RelativKritisch. See http://elnaschiewatch.blogspot.com/2010/07/otto-rossler-has-…years.html
    But let’s note he is not very nice to Rossler here (“hateful”, anyone?)

    However, once again, I plead on his behalf that the business of original ideas in advanced physics and cosmology is conducted at least initially on a level of intuition which leaves conventional texts behind when trying to advance and reformulate them, so it may read like crackpotism to those who are only bringing received wisdom to bear when evaluating it. You have to cut visionaries some slack, and get beyond simply nitpicking from the battlements of established understanding, if progress is ever going to take place. Remember Max Planck, who found such strong early resistance to his radical notions that he stated a rule for paradigm replacement: Science advances funeral by funeral.

    This is standard stuff to me, since my interest in incorrect prevailing scientific belief (paradigms contradicted in the scientific literature) began with familiarity with the debate in AIDS whether HIV could possibly be the cause, and with the scientists and literature of the field, where the absurd claims of the former were only resolved by high level critiques in the latter. Yet they continued, and still continue, to be the basis of public policy in the field, and the rationale for billions spent. On my site http//:www.Science Guardian, which explained all this, professional defenders of the status quo would appear and try to make the critics look wrong with endless attacks on their smaller assertions, without successfully refuting their larger ones.

    But, as you say, you are not interested in the overall issue of whether there should be a review of CERN running the LHC up to its maximum, you are simply interested in showing that Rossler is a crackpot with a faulty grasp of basic relativity. With all due respect, this seems to be precisely the same behavior on the nit picking level.

    The fundamental issue that concerns the public not to mention the planet is whether there should be an outside review or not. It is not whether Rossler himself is wrong or not, especially when he has said he will be delighted if anyone would trouble to show it convincingly. This is because Rossler is not the only critic raising doubts. There is Rainer Plaga, now seemingly being ostracized for it, Adrian Kent in Camcridge who actually wrote a paper in 2004 pointing out that no one had analyzed the acceptable level of risk in colliders (50 trillion to one, if radiation risk was a guide, which no one has matched yet in talking up safety, since there are no risk assessment experts on any of the CERN panels), Martin Rees now reformed but earlier in 2003 Our Final Hour fearful of the possibility of stable and negatively charged strangelets which CERN in 1999 admitted would chain react the planet into a 100 m asteroid, Eric Penrose and 20 scientists also fearful of strangelets, even young Luis Sancho, hysterical at the renewed startup a few months ago.

    The point is that some of these people may to a greater or lesser extent look like inhabitants of outer space, but physicists are lying to the public that Cosmic Ray 1 is a safety reassurance, as I wrote in my last post at scienceguardian. The CERN safety reassurances have more holes than a sieve. We need a review. You don’t think this is something to concern you? That’s what I mean by detecting group think here.

    When one individual, Otto E. Rossler in this case, is thinking for himself and the world, and his critics are thinking as a self interested status quo group, one tends to credit the individual as much as the group, however strong the grasp of basics might be in the latter, and however far out the mode of expression of the former might seem.

    Just take strangelets, for example. CERN denies they are expected, yet their individual scientists say they may well come, a detector is built and in place, and the possibility they will be stable and negatively charged, and thus smoke the Earth, seems to exist. We don’t even need an extra dimension for them to pop up, as we do with mBHs.

    But as I say, the human race got away with the first atom bomb, so maybe it will get away with this adventure. But all reason and reasonableness indicates not that all CERN critics are crackpot gloomsters, and the safety arguments are false or weakening by the hour — as in the past — , and that a review should take place.

    But returning to the micro level, the only one on which you are willing to operate here, why is Rossler wrong to say that mBHs will wiz through totally superfluid neutron stars and not have time to accrete anything? Is your definition of superfluid a private one? You are contradicting Giddings and Mangano and their stipulation of several seconds to several weeks for an mBH to accrete significantly, who are now also out of date.

  38. AnthonyL says:

    “Yes, to refute Rössler you need Relativity 101, nothing beyond that, because he is that trivially wrong. Period. You know, all these “conventional schemes” you’ll find in the textbooks are there for a reason other than pure ignorance on the scientist’s part. Still the speed of light is calculated “Distance over time,” not “Distance over temporal wavelength”, whatever that is, and time is gravitationally dilated in a way that extends intervalls further upstairs, not the other way round, and it simply will remain so. And this is what Rössler is horribly confused about”

    Why can’t you make this a formal statement, then, to which he has to reply or fold?

  39. AnthonyL says:

    Correction: Sorry, G and M said a “fraction of a second to at most a few weeks for significant accretion to occur.” But even if this was enough time as they zoom through the neutron star at nearly the speed of light, what the heck are they going to accrete anyway — neutrons, which are 1000 times their size? Neutrons bound in neutronium? No free quarks, no electrons which have combined under super intense gravity with protons to form neutrons, what?

    There is no lunch for them to eat.

  40. EQ says:

    “heck are they going to accrete anyway – neutrons, which are 1000 times their size?”

    But you can apply this also to the situation on earth. If even in the gigh-density situation of a neutron star core they accrete nothing because all other stuff is “too big” for them, then this is also true for a black hole in earths matter which is much less dense…

  41. AnthonyL says:

    @EQ Wouldn’t it be the opposite? On earth when created sometime with nil net momentum a) they would linger and have as much time as they needed, and b) they could consume smaller things more readily. The superfluid super dense core would nonetheless be superfluid, giving them no time to accrete as they would zip straight through in 1/20,000 sec.

    How a superdense core could be superfluid I leave up to the experts in relativity such as TRMG.

  42. AnthonyL says:

    Hansel, thank you, but your comments are difficult to follow. Are you saying that mBHs could traverse neutron star superfluidity much more slowly, and that they therefore could accrete neutrinos? If so please explain further, if you wish.

  43. Otto E. Rossler says:

    Very interesting that neutrinos now are being declared to be the last savior of humankind. All absolutely speculative. And moreover at variance with the fundamental rprinciples of quantum mechanics (specifically the indistinguishability principle which by the way is classical in its basis).

    But it is nice to see what irrational allegiance can produce. Freud’s subconscious as the last and only savior: by misleading the poor victims.

  44. AnthonyL says:

    I replied to a post of Hansel’s just now and it has vanished in two hours.

  45. Otto E. Rossler says:

    Can you give the gist?

  46. TRMG says:

    AnthonyL: “Yet they continued, and still continue, to be the basis of public policy in the field, and the rationale for billions spent. On my site http//:www.Science Guardian, which explained all this, professional defenders of the status quo would appear and try to make the critics look wrong with endless attacks on their smaller assertions, without successfully refuting their larger ones. With all due respect, this seems to be precisely the same behavior on the nit picking level.”

    Without knowing how this discussions went, I am reminded of a comment you made earlier (in the “five fateful…” thread), and I think we may have diametrically opposed conceptions of what constitutes a scientific discussion. The smallest flaw can completely overthrow your whole argument, if it’s irremediable. If that’s the case, then there is simply no bigger picture left to refute or even address. This is why we, the people “tutored in the conventional schemes,” like to apply the method of *analyzing*. We are not impressed in view of grandiose claims and big pictures (at least we try not to be), but we dismantle them and look what they are made of. A supposed argument consisting only of false assumptions or non-sequiturs does not mysteriously become sound in the process of putting its pieces back together. The advantage of pondering the seemingly “minor claims” is that the discussion stays focussed and more people should be able to follow it. And it is a perfectly legitimate approach. The proper response would not be an appeal to squint a little in view of the big picture, but to show how the flawed claim can be remedied, or that your argument does not essentially depend on it.

    “But, as you say, you are not interested in the overall issue of whether there should be a review of CERN running the LHC up to its maximum, you are simply interested in showing that Rossler is a crackpot with a faulty grasp of basic relativity. ”

    No, to be honest I’m doing this more out of curiosity about the reactions of his supporters or LHC critics in general, not because I think Rössler is an important target. And I think there is a intriguingly universal pattern here: every time one particular claim is refuted they’ll say, “Well, it doesn’t matter anyway if it’s true, we have enough of them left.” You did this yourself. You are just collecting statements, regardless of their mutual consistency or viability, and if one fails you’ll try the next one. But you still refuse to drop the refuted claim from your collection, because it is their quantity, not quality that appears so impressive.

    “The point is that some of these people may to a greater or lesser extent look like inhabitants of outer space, but physicists are lying to the public that Cosmic Ray 1 is a safety reassurance, as I wrote in my last post at scienceguardian. The CERN safety reassurances have more holes than a sieve. We need a review. You don’t think this is something to concern you?”

    Just some remarks. Remember, we are talking about worst-case scenarios here, which doesn’t simply mean that there is no Hawking radiation. It also means there is a mechanism that neutralizes all stable black holes, and there is a particular number of extra dimensions (for whose existence there is no empirical evidence in the first place). If I remember correctly, even if disregarding astrophysical arguments, only in the case D=6 there can be any danger from neutral stable black holes, or otherwise accretion would be too slow.

    In particular, what your critique seems to ignore completely is that “Cosmic ray 1″ is perfectly valid *unless* virtually all generated black holes are electrically neutral. But they are produced by colliding charged particles and thus produce charged black holes that, when hitting the earth get stopped due to electromagnetic interactions, even with large initial momentum. (Rössler is probably aware of this, and thus invented the “unchargedness theorem”—what a fateful coincidence, given that even by his standards the way he arrives there stands out as exceptionally stupid.) So already by abandoning “Cosmic ray 1″ you must implicitly assume that some rather strange things are going on, i.e. the mBH must quickly neutralize without being able to emit particles or radiation.

    That these discussions already start by assuming some peculiar quirks in the natural laws that make them biased against the safety of humanity, but are otherwise completely unjustified, is the reason why I’m not particularly concerned, and find the characterization “more holes than a sieve” less than convincing.

    ***

    Reagarding the superfluidity issue you’ve now completely lost me. I don’t even understand the scenario you are describing. It *doesn’t* seem to be identical to Rössler’s. If I understand you correctly you assume the black holes to escape the NS before “having time” to accrete. But this is simply not what’s happening. They start accreting as soon as they hit the surface, which is one of the causes that considerably slows them down immediately and renders them unable to escape. (The other substantial one being the scattering in their long range potential.) Then there is simply nothing to hinder them from accreting further. Stopping and accreting are not independent processes occuring successively.

    “But returning to the micro level, the only one on which you are willing to operate here, why is Rossler wrong to say that mBHs will wiz through totally superfluid neutron stars and not have time to accrete anything? ”

    First, I don’t think that’s exactly what he’s saying. He acknowledges that they are stopped (nearly) immediately in the outer crust. Then he expects them to orbit through the star, accreting only its non-superfluid parts in the crust and somehow evading the matter in the superfluid.

    “Is your definition of superfluid a private one? You are contradicting Giddings and Mangano and their stipulation of several seconds to several weeks for an mBH to accrete significantly, who are now also out of date. ”

    ??? I meditated upon this several minutes now and fail to see the contradiction. My point is that the definition of superfluid is irrelevant. As long as it consists of ordinary matter subject to gravitational interaction, which is universal, then its thermodynamical state does not matter.

    “But even if this was enough time as they zoom through the neutron star at nearly the speed of light, what the heck are they going to accrete anyway – neutrons, which are 1000 times their size? Neutrons bound in neutronium? No free quarks, no electrons which have combined under super intense gravity with protons to form neutrons, what? ”

    It’s irrelevant whether they’re free or not. Gravitation becomes as strong as nuclear forces near the horizon of a micro black hole, so it easily breaks individual neutrons out of the surrounding matter. The same is true in principle for the quarks inside the neutron. Even if there are strong forces constraining the matter near the horizon, once something crossed it, it simply proceeds to the singularity, where eventually gravity exceeds every bound. There is nothing to prevent that.

    ***

    TRMG: And this is what Rössler is horribly confused about”
    AnthonyL: “Why can’t you make this a formal statement, then, to which he has to reply or fold? ”

    You keep asking me that, but never explain how my previous statements fail to be “formal” enough. They even contain formulas. I have no idea what you are missing. Are you waiting for Rössler to fold? This will never happen. He continues to reply of course with increasingly evasive inanities.

  47. Otto E. Rossler says:

    Dear TRGM: I believe more and more I know who you are.

    You laugh at new results. Everything you say is based on not believing the new findings without making an attempt at understanding them. When you came close once, you lost contact to that identity. The information content becomes zero in such a case.

    Scholasticism was allegedly the downfall of the middle ages. Now it shows its deadly head with a vengeance. If not soon a young scientist comes to your aid by correcting you, you left a sad mark. I feel sorry about AL’s precious time sacrificed on replying to your group.

    By the way: Who knows about the Security Council’s decision?

  48. EQ says:

    New findings which are not even consistent on a very basic level are not even a result.
    And you know exactly what I mean. You avoid any answer to shown serious errors in your “paper”.

  49. EQ says:

    By the way: Who knows about the Security Council’s decision?

    Delusional!

  50. Otto E. Rossler says:

    Do I read you right, dear EQ, that you would be unhappy if the responsible highest body of the planet addressed the issue?

    Even though the worst thing you have possibly to fear according to your own statements is that your own claims at safety will be confirmed.

    It is heartening (and disquieting) to see that the subconscious of my adversaries has a heart of flesh and blood. I could embrace you all.

  51. EQ says:

    No, I wanted to express that it is obvious that ou have lost any bounding to reality.

  52. Otto E. Rossler says:

    Psychology as the last weapon of the whole scientific commmunity against a maximally simple proof (Telemach) that it is unable to understand and hence respond to?

    Remember that the lay audience that is watching takes you for a represenative of the community. And since no Nobelist contradicts you, you have a very high standing here. I admire your courage, dear EQ.

  53. EQ says:

    The proof is wrong as shown. It is inconsistent. The basic equations are wrong which is the reason for your avoidance of any kind of clarification.

    The person who is evading a discussion by writing nonsensical psychological stuff (dogmatism etc) are you, Rössler.

  54. AnthonyL says:

    “Without knowing how this discussions went, I am reminded of a comment you made earlier (in the “five fateful…” thread), and I think we may have diametrically opposed conceptions of what constitutes a scientific discussion. The smallest flaw can completely overthrow your whole argument, if it’s irremediable. If that’s the case, then there is simply no bigger picture left to refute or even address. This is why we, the people “tutored in the conventional schemes,” like to apply the method of *analyzing*. We are not impressed in view of grandiose claims and big pictures (at least we try not to be), but we dismantle them and look what they are made of. A supposed argument consisting only of false assumptions or non-sequiturs does not mysteriously become sound in the process of putting its pieces back together. The advantage of pondering the seemingly “minor claims” is that the discussion stays focussed and more people should be able to follow it. And it is a perfectly legitimate approach. The proper response would not be an appeal to squint a little in view of the big picture, but to show how the flawed claim can be remedied, or that your argument does not essentially depend on it.”

    Well stated, a nice accurate formal statement. No thoughtful scientist would disagree with you, I hope, although there are two assumptions you make which I should clarify.

    The “nit picking” at Science Guardian was in error, and it came from the fantasy side, where people try to shore up a prima facie silly claim, that real immune collapse is caused by an inert 9 kilobase retrovirus and not by the obvious standard threats (recreational drug intake, insufficient nutrition, familiar diseases, lethal medication). Thus it was an offering of fantasy bred by fantasy, against conventional science which perfectly well explained the supposedly novel disease HIV/AIDS.

    Ptolemy, as it were, fighting a rearguard action against Galileo.

    In your case, you are discussing how standard accepted proven science conflicts with Rossler’s claims, which you suggest are fantasy. This is the reverse situation. Galileo against Ptolemy. In this case you are doing the same thing we were doing at Science Guardian, defending good science, as you believe.

    I agree that if you can show that any vital link in Rossler’s line of reasoning is broken, however small it is, then his whole theorem has to be abandoned, as he says he will be delighted to find.

    Have you done this? I have the impression you claim he had a basic equation reversed, but that he denied this, and suggested that inverting one term solves the misunderstanding, and that what he wrote in his Telemach theorem matches Einstein if you do.

    I am merely asking for a formal statement of this objection of yours, or whatever you feel is the clincher, to see whether Rossler will reply with a formal rebuttal.

    There also seem to be other allegations that he has got things wrong. Couldn’t we have them formally stated too, in the same paragraph?

    I can believe that informal and imprecise objections might be validly ignored by a man intent on saving the world from an 8% chance of ending in five years, as he has committed himself publicly to do if he can, even by being proved wrong. A formal objection is something he has said here he would be pleased to answer, if you give it.

    You say you don’t see how you have not already delivered such a formal statement, but please reference your own paragraph above. It takes a clear formal position on what is a useful scientific dialogue. Could you not simple write out a paragraph in the same precise style stating the flaw in Rossler’s thinking, why it is wrong, and why it means his entire conCERN is misplaced?

    After all, you could probably manage it verbally for a colleague who asked you what is going on at Lifeboat with you and Rossler. And if asked by a judge in a court of law, or a review panel, you would do it, wouldn’t you?

    By the way, why the need for anonymity? Would you be accused of spending public money on hanging about on obscure Web threads? Or are you actually assigned by CERN to quash Rossler? Gloomsters demand to know. What is the need to post anonymously, in Hansel’s case in three different ways of spelling Hansel?

  55. Hansel says:

    “Have you done this?”

    Yes, he has done it. The equation is wrong and if Rössler wants to repair it by redefining the T he gets in trouble with other parts (e.g. L/T).

    His claims are not consistent. His “line of reasoning” does not exist if you read it carefully. And this conclusion has nothing to do with a Galilei-Ptolemy –analogy which does not apply here. In contrast to Rössler Galilei had a logical derived line of arguments, based on observations. Rössler has only a few non sequiturs which are not supported by experimental observations (e.g. the mass-to-charge proportionality is already ruled out by nature itself, there are many particles with completely different masses but same charges)

  56. Hansel says:

    “8% chance”

    Have you ever asked yourself where he derived this 8%?

    I have a hint for you. There is nothing behind it, not a single piece of logical reasoning. Three years ago he compared the LHC with russian roulette. In that game you have a chance of 16% to be killed if you play it with a single bullet. As the LHC is now running with half the power (7TeV) Rössler adjusted his old value to 8%. Thats it.

  57. AnthonyL says:

    “Yes, he has done it. The equation is wrong and if Rössler wants to repair it by redefining the T he gets in trouble with other parts (e.g. L/T).
    His claims are not consistent. His “line of reasoning” does not exist if you read it carefully. And this conclusion has nothing to do with a Galilei-Ptolemy –analogy which does not apply here. etc ”

    This is an example of what I mean — it doesn’t do as a formal challenge, however true you might feel it is, in each part, Hansel/Hnasel/Hansell. And the Galilei-Ptolemy analogy applies here in the sense I wrote it, which is that you are defending proven science against what you say is a loose fantasy. The analogy is flattering to you, in fact, Hnasel. So the fact that you mistook it demonstrates the problem. Shots fired from a half cocked gun may be acceptable in a Web thread, and may even wound the target, but they have to be more carefully prepared, aimed and fired before they serve as an Exocet missile fired into the flank of a moving destroyer, which is what you face here.

    Your point that the 8% is simply half the 16% of a Russian roulette turn is a good example of a wounding shot, though. I must admit I imagined that there was more to it. So 1 in 12 would be the more exact figure for the chance he is stating that the world will end, and it is no less a guess than any other estimate of the chances of disaster?

    Surely the true estimate of the risks of BH/strangelet/whatever disaster emerging from the LHC is unknown, as long as the products of the LHC are unknown? No one knows whether they are infinitesimal or sizeable. Therein lies the problem.

    Anyhow, perhaps you would like to account for your anonymity? It would seem that the postings of a staunch, relentless scrapper on behalf of received wisdom would be a matter of pride for a conformist such as yourself, who might even hope for a medal for it. Why so bashful?

    Do you have something to be ashamed of, or is it that you are modest by nature?

  58. Hansel says:

    “what you say is a loose fantasy.”

    Because it is. There is a difference between Galilei and Rössler as I already said. Rössler is not automatically in the same situation as Galilei because he claims to have found something new. No one would talk about Galilei if his arguments had not been consistent, based on clear observations. Or, to say it more clearly, if Galilei had presented “arguments like Rössler did, no one would remember him today.

    In Rösslers case he has already problems to define his very first equation.

    ” I must admit I imagined that there was more to it.”

    It is not. The question is how can someone take a guy serious who presents “derivations” of that kind.

  59. AnthonyL says:

    I assume everybody lacks a Page 1/2 etc on this thread, as I do, as well as other threads on Lifeboat? Then to retrieve the initial 50 comments, just change the number in this url to 1 from 2:

    lifeboat.com/blog/2011/07/cern-by-not-updating-its-three-years-old-safety-page-compromises-the-quoted-scientists/comment-page-2#comment-87270

    Thus page 1, the first 50 Comments, is here

    http://lifeboat.com/blog/2011/07/cern-by-not-updating-its-th…ment-87270

    The second page, page 2, is here

    http://lifeboat.com/blog/2011/07/cern-by-not-updating-its-th…ment-87270

    TRMH wrote a particular fine post to which I replied, luckily by quoting its relevant passage. But the other parts of it were extensive, and worth reading by any newcomers to the thread.

    Dr Rossler, the post by Hansel to which I replied was nothing more than I quoted when asking him to explain: “Hansel, thank you, but your comments are difficult to follow. Are you saying that mBHs could traverse neutron star superfluidity much more slowly, and that they therefore could accrete neutrinos? If so please explain further, if you wish.”

    It vanished, for no reason that I am aware of. He appeared to think that mBHs will not traverse neutron stars without accretion, like TRMG, and that my description of your reasons for saying they will is wrong.

    But perhaps you will wish to reply to them both nonetheless, since they contradict what you have claimed. Do you differ with them in your reasoning or on the evidence, or both?

    Also, where is there evidence that the UN Security Council has acted in relation to the LHC?

  60. Otto E. Rossler says:

    Dear EQ: Quote: “The proof is wrong as shown.”

    Why make assertions that you cannot prove? Please, be so kind as to repeat in what point that you made you see your proof to lie. Other readers will be equally grateful. Thank you .

  61. Hansel says:

    Rössler, this is getting ridiculous now. Go back to the “Five…” thread and answer to the last post of EQ there. TRMG has said the same before.

  62. EQ says:

    EQ on July 11, 2011 1:00 am
    It is obvous that you are working with two different T’s at the same time in your “paper”. If T is a time (as suggested by your L/T than your eq 1 is wrong. If T is something different then your “L/T=c” has a problem. It is not consistent with the rest of your paper. And errors like this toether with unfounded non-sequiturs can be found everywhere in your “paper”

  63. EQ23 says:

    EQ wrote on July 11, 2011 1:00 am
    It is obvous that you are working with two different T’s at the same time in your “paper”. If T is a time (as suggested by your L/T than your eq 1 is wrong. If T is something different then your “L/T=c” has a problem. It is not consistent with the rest of your paper. And errors like this toether with unfounded non-sequiturs can be found everywhere in your “paper”

  64. Peter Howell says:

    @AnthonyL:

    You may not want to hear this, but just for the record: neither am I with DESY (I said, I have worked there as a fellow scientist), nor am I paid by them or CERN, nor is any of the websites you’re mentioning operated or supported or affiliated with any of these research institutions. I understand your desire to make this link (at least have the public believe in such a link), as it adds to the strategy of creating a monstrous picture of evil physicists and the global conspiracy against poor Roessler. Reality is: no such thing exists.

    Interestingly you are also bashing me for not being nice to Roessler, calling him a hateful person. That’s true and I stick to it. If I would make comparisons between you and Osama Bin Laden or Hitler, how would you call me? Would you call me a nice, warm and charming person? No you wouldn’t. But that’s exactly what Roessler does, and it’s okay for you. This is just a prime example of the double standards that you and others are using when defending Roessler.

    The same holds true for your repeating claim that the critics of Roessler should come up with a formal statement, to which Roessler should reply. How more formal than using equations with clearly defined variables can you go? If you read the various posts on this blog alone, open minded and unbiased, you will quickly see, that Roessler stopped the discussion always when he had to respond to such formal facts. He either opened a new threat with a new allegation, or stated that “the thinking of his critics is old-fashioned and that the formalism cannot be used for his new wonderful results”. The problem is: 1+1=2. And if Roessler’s claims are not holding up against this old-fashioned logic, than he might claim that his ‘1’ is a different ‘1’ than the rest of the world uses, but that doesn’t change a thing — he is disproved.

    Coming back to your argument with Hansel and TRMG, we have to state that Roessler so far has been unable to give a clear, consistent and convincing definition of his “T”. Are we in agreement so far? The two alternative definitions he has come up with so far are contradicting itself within 2 paragraphs of his claims, as it has been shown multiple times here (and to see that you just need to understand basic, high-school algebra, this no ‘theoretical physics voodoo’, trust me). I hope we are still in agreement. So it is clear that Roessler’s claims are wrong, as they are not consistent in itself, plus – as we discussed before – they are contradicting EMPRICIAL EVIDENCE.

    That is an important fact, that again, a lot of Roessler’s supporters (ok, there are not that many), don’t get. If his claims contradict what we see in reality, can observe in nature or experimental proof, it automatically means his findings are wrong. Any new theory must be able to describe existing empirical evidence. When Einstein came up with his RT, it was new territory. However, his theories didn’t contradict Newton, it EXPANDED Newton’s findings beyond a certain set of external parameters. You can still describe the falling apple using Newton, the result will be the same using RT.

    I understand it is sexy to lean towards the guy calling doomsday in public and claiming he has found a new understanding of our world. Much more sexy than the real way science is done, which is hard and often boring testing new hypothesis against reality and checking them on consistency, let alone the work that needs to be done to formulate all this in a formal and stringent way so it can be replicated by others. None of this is true for Roessler’s claims.

    Let me be clear, I have no interest in convincing you personally, everyone s entitled to her or his opinion. But Roessler is a liar. He actually git the benefit of the doubt from many scientists, he even was invited to CERN to discuss his claims and concerns. From what I hear, these meetings were similar to the discussions here – as soon as he was asked to formally explain his claims and give definitions, he started his chantry of “new science that cannot be understood with old thinking”, but didn’t engage in a scientific discussion.

    The real intriguing question is: Roessler claims to be a professor whose only motivation is to save the world. He also claims that this can be done in a couple of days by a conference that discusses his findings. So why on earth, hasn’t he hosted this conference in the last 3 years at his university? And if such conference would take place, why would someone invite Roessler? What would there be to discuss? The first question at this conference would be: ”Prof. Roessler, in you equ. (1), what exactly does ‘T’ stand for?”. And then, see above.

    Peter H.

  65. AnthonyL says:

    By the way, since TRMG and Hansel appear to be operating as a kind of Laurel and Hardy comedy team, is the following claim by a Rossler defender accurate in regards to you two? Are you indeed a “pair” assigned by CERN to quash Rossler? If so, is the assignment official or unofficial? Paid or voluntary? Full time or parttime?:

    “This appears similar to the full time effort of physicists who blogged in pairs at “LHC Concerns.com” in 2008 in an effort to calm and refute concerns about CERN and the Large Hadron Collider, This effort began shortly after CERN announce it would direct 10 of its employees (http://www.lhcfacts.org/category/cern/lhc-bloggers/) to blog on the web in pairs, to help educate the public about CERN and the LHC.”

    The full post reproduced at El Naschie Watch http://elnaschiewatch.blogspot.com/2010/07/prof-otto-e-rossl…to-el.html links to LHCFacts, Professor Rossler’s blog, where there is a page portraying the full CERN blogging team. This is at http://www.lhcfacts.org/category/cern/lhc-bloggers/
    However, there is nothing there to say that they are “paired” and sent out to attack Rossler.

    What there is there are photographs of each blogger. One has to say, if one judges faces, that they all look exactly what one expects adult nerd/whiz kids to be, happily immature overgrown kids, whose thinking about whether their project risks the planet would never take place except to defend it from funding threats like Rossler, Plaga, Kent, Blodgett, Wagner etc.

    In the nature of the beast, I suppose. As even Rossler mentioned above, everybody involved is autistic. But Professor, autism tends to go with a kind of purity and honesty in dealing with others, does it not? So why are you the only person here concerned with the fate of the planet? Wouldn’t TRMG and Hansel be in the same mold?

    I guess their planet saving instincts have devolved into collider saving instincts, and truth in science as they see it instincts. Both admirable enough, but the planet would seem to be the bigger concern.

  66. EQ23 says:

    Prof. Roessler, in you equ. (1), what exactly does ‘T’ stand for?

  67. Peter Howell says:

    AnthonnyL wrote: “What there is there are photographs of each blogger. One has to say, if one judges faces, that they all look exactly what one expects adult nerd/whiz kids to be, happily immature overgrown kids,…”
    Wow, that is a new low. I assume you look like a combination of Brad Pitt, Marlon Brando and Humphrey Bogart. That is a really STRONG argument. Now I have to belive that Roessler is right. Unbelievable…

  68. Hansel says:

    Where is Rössler?

  69. AnthonyL says:

    @Peter Howell, I rush to correct your imaginings. I am not a knee jerk defender of Rossler, I am merely a professional science journalist trying to get people to express themselves clearly so one can report the story accurately.

    So I have simply asked for people not to use words like liar lying etc which tend to defeat an open and productive discussion where everyone feels what they think and say is acceptable even if others disagree with it and perhaps even prove it wrong.

    You know very well ad hominem stuff is officially and in practice banned from any decent conference, though the ban may often be evaded by making it very subtle. One of the great assets of America is that its democratic ethos holds that all deserve their hearing, however misguided or logically challenged they may be.

    But then I also urged that people here refine and formalize what they say so that it is clear to all, agreed upon or else clearly contradicted, with reasons, by Rossler, or not, as the case may be, so that it is reportable, to where chambermaids will understand it, at least in outline.

    So far it hasn’t been done. Anyone reading these threads would have to work their way through collecting bits here and bits there and assemble the picture themselves. GIven the hiding of previous pages of Comment by Lifeboat’s software unless you work out how to retrieve them, we doubly need a formal summary of The Basic Objection which Rossler Has Not Answered.

    You say that Rossler is slippery and evades any arrow fired in his direction without firing back and therefore any conclusive rebuttal is impossible, and we all have to judge him on this basis. But I was hoping for more. After all, it seems very clear that CERN safety arguments are a mess. Why can’t you guys make a formal statement? A short one? Is your thinking a mess too?

    You may have a point is asking Why cant Professor Rossler mount a conference of his own at his own university? Let him answer that. Maybe they won’t respond to his request for that. You need a certain amount of support for that kind of thing. Perhaps he doesn’t have it. Only he can say. Given the amount of disrespect he has received from CERN, after they had him visit there, perhaps any such conference is a non starter.

    Let me also correct you on my own attitudes, if I may. I am happy for you to deny that CERN is linked in a global conspiracy of evil physicists against poor Rossler, and that you still work for DESY. But no one imagined anything so direly stated. I was simply checking the degree of group mentality he has to contend with, which by definition is considerable.

    Saying that Rossler is a “hateful” person for talking of Osama bin Cern
    is absurd. He is referring to his view of CERN as a terrorist organization terrorizing the world with the threat of complete destruction, and its organized repression of conCERN. Those who share his conCERN understand his colorful metaphors, which are no more extreme than the fate of the planet he fears. Anyhow, I believe you mean hate filled, not hateful.

    You say “The problem is: 1+1=2. And if Roessler’s claims are not holding up against this old-fashioned logic, than he might claim that his ‘1’ is a different ‘1’ than the rest of the world uses, but that doesn’t change a thing – he is disproved.” Exactly. So do it.

    Rossler can’t consistently define T? He is contradicting empirical evidence? State it in summary, for him to reply to or fail. That is what is done in a court of law or science.

    Show him an Einstein contradicting Newton. God, the material of these threads is not that far ranging. It is odd that professional physicists, and apparently one academic one at that, cannot nail down a simple formal challenge, which Rossler cannot evade, but has to answer, as he has said he is willing to do.

    I personally do NOT think it “sexy to lean towards the guy calling doomsday in public and claiming he has found a new understanding of our world”. I think real science is sexy. I am precisely asking that you “formulate all this in a formal and stringent way”, and thus rebut Roessler’s claims.

    However loose Rossler’s “chantry of “new science that cannot be understood with old thinking”” which with he evaded scientific discussion at CERN, you say, give us a bunkerbuster that he can’t evade.

    Or you will have to forgive us for concluding that your own science is just as loose a chantry as his!

  70. EQ23 says:

    The bunkerbuster ist mentioned above. The question is asked not the first time. Up to now Rösser avoids any answer but prefers to write about dogmatism.

    It is unbelievable you have not seen this.

  71. AnthonyL says:

    @Peter Howel, who said “AnthonyL wrote: “What there is there are photographs of each blogger. One has to say, if one judges faces, that they all look exactly what one expects adult nerd/whiz kids to be, happily immature overgrown kids,…”
    Wow, that is a new low. I assume you look like a combination of Brad Pitt, Marlon Brando and Humphrey Bogart. That is a really STRONG argument. Now I have to belive that Roessler is right. Unbelievable…”

    I said they looked to me (subjective assessment) like overgrown schoolboys. I didnt say I didn’t like them for it. I’d expect much more from them than Brad Pitt, Marlon Brando and Humphrey Bogart, though I believe the last two were quite interesting men.

    I certainly didnt say it proved Rossler right. What it argues is that such people however delightful might still tend to have the attitude of “to hell with the panty waist gloomsters, let’s light the fuse and see what happens.” Which is what they did with the atom bomb, by the way. The record of risk assessment in major steps in nuclear physics or indeed any science is not great ie it is not really part of science yet. But it should be, given the doubts on continuing collider escalation.

    I should have thought an academic could distinguish between an argument about scientific truth and an observation about people’s attitudes suggested by their expressions. And between looks and expression.

  72. Hansel says:

    Ah, Rössler prefers to write new lies about being unproven while his “unproven” theorem is collapsing.

  73. Hansel says:

    Sorry, “about being not disproved ”

  74. The time period T in Telemach was described in the Telemach paper here on Lifeboat.

    T, the unit period of clocks downstairs, is larger than the unit period T upstairs. The usual term for that is “redshift.” I am very astonished that any physicist would contradict me here. The equation is Einstein’s, not mine.

    Dr. Howell appears to be under peer pressure. But it is a heart’s desire of mine to tell him that I am not hateful and never was. I am only crying fire as loud as I can. And if this sounds like bashing, it is not a hateful one and never was. A warning is not even a bashing, is it? Would you have expected in my place — when all you are asking for is a rebuttal to a scientific insight, coming-in in time –that the planet would refuse to answer you and instead prefer to continue what has been shown to be a lemmings’ ride?

    But if you cannot yield the disproof I am waiting for (assertions mean nothing in science as you know), please, give me the right vocabulary for waking up the planet. I promise I will be forever grateful.

  75. Hansel says:

    Time period. Thats not a time. So L/T in your paper is what?

  76. AnthonyL says:

    So the previous post, a dig I believe by Hansel, at Rossler telling us he had posted another top blog post about his “unproven” theorem, has vanished.

  77. AnthonyL says:

    Sorry, it reappeared.

  78. Hansel says:

    No, the T was not defined in your socalled paper. That is the reason the people were asking you about the T etc.

    Your answers were not conclusive. One time it as the proper time, next tie it was a diffuse period without exact definition, then a kind of frequency and in the end all of it together, depending on the question.

    However, as EG wrote above the T as a not “period” is in contrast to your use of the T in other equations. As was also mentioned, this issue appears not the first time in this and other threads (originally introduced by TRMG if my memory is correct). You avoid any clarification.

  79. Hansel says:

    “One time it was the proper time, next time it was a diffuse period without exact definition, ”

    Sorry

  80. Dear Hansel: Thank you for being more friendly. I said in the paper that I was referring to Einstein’s identical finding, did I not?

  81. TRMG says:

    Rössler: “The equation is Einstein’s, not mine.”

    Can you give a reference where Einstein used the same equation?

  82. EQ says:

    Your equation is not showing Einsteins finding.

  83. Peter Howell says:

    Osama Bin Roessler (AnthonyL said above it’s okay to call you this, as this only references to my subjective believe you are threatening peace on earth with your wrong accusations) — you can use tour stereotype propaganda blunder (that has been used by Goebbels before, but just as reference, I am in no way comparing you to Goebbels) that there is such thing as peer pressure. But please answer some of my questions: why are you not organizing such conference by your own? As a distinguished professor with lots of resources, daily intimate interaction with Nobel laureates — it should be easy for you to pull this off. And while you are answering questions: what does ‘T’ means in you equations?

    Peter H.

  84. The Einstein redshift has exactly this size. Very astonishing that you are asking, TRGM.

    The original reference is Eq.(30a) of his famous paper of 1907.

    It reads:

    sigma = tau*(1+phi/c^2),

    with “tau the time of the system in the initial point of the coordinates” (p. 456) and “sigma the local time of a point event” (p. 456). Phi is the gravitational potential. Whereby both sigma and tau are time differences (periods, in modern parlance).

    I hope this can help you understand Telemach.

  85. EQ says:

    Define your variables and equation according to this equation.

    Please in a mathematical way!

  86. I am waiting for TRGM.

  87. EQ says:

    Again avoiding clarification? Where is your T in the equation? And how is the (1+z)-term defined according to the equation above?

  88. EQ says:

    Correction: Where are your Ts?

  89. TRMG says:

    Rössler: “The original reference is Eq.(30a) of his famous paper of 1907.
    It reads:
    sigma = tau*(1+phi/c^2),
    with “tau the time of the system in the initial point of the coordinates” (p. 456) and “sigma the local time of a point event” (p. 456). Phi is the gravitational potential. Whereby both sigma and tau are time differences (periods, in modern parlance).”

    Where Phi = gx. At the point where the upper clock rests (at the tip of the rocket) we have larger x, which means larger local time difference sigma.

    Or in Eisteins’s own words at the beginning of §19 (my emphasis):

    “Befindet sich in einem Punkte P vom Gravitationspotential Φ eine Uhr, welche die Ortszeit angibt, so sind gemäß (30a) ihre Angaben 1+Phi/c² mal *größer* als die Zeit τ, d. h. sie läuft 1+Phi/c² mal schneller als eine gleich beschaffene, im Koordinatenanfangspunkt befindliche Uhr. ”

    “If a clock showing local time is located at point P of gravitational potential Phi, then, according to Eq. (30a), its reading will be (1+Phi/c²) times *greater* than the time tau, i.e, it runs (1+Phi/c²) times faster than an identical clock located at the coordinate origin.”

    Did you get this? The clock at higher potential Phi (upstairs that is) runs 1+Phi/c² faster, which means, according to Einstein himself, that its local time sigma is 1+Phi/c² times *larger*.

    Again: faster running clock, larger local time. Now “period” is allegedly your “modern parlance” for local time difference. So your period should be larger too at the tip, if you are agreeing with Einstein, but Eq. (1) doesn’t say so. Now what?

  90. Hansel says:

    I have this strange thought that we have this not the first time in the discussion…

  91. TRMG says:

    200 comments later Rössler will apologize for being so inattentive in stating that “period is the modern parlance for local time differences,” and that we should remove “local time difference” from this statement, leaving us with modern parlance for nothing again.

    BTW, I would also be interested to hear answers to Peter Howell’s questions.

  92. Hansel says:

    And in the meantime he would have written three or four new posting with the statement to be not disproved.

  93. Quote from TRMG: The clock at higher potential Phi (upstairs that is) runs 1+Phi/c² faster, which means, according to Einstein himself, that its local time sigma is 1+Phi/c² times *larger*.

    Yes, because the local periods are SMALLER upstairs. Agree‘?

  94. PassingByAgain says:

    Rossler: you wrote ten posts above that, in Einstein’s equation, “sigma and tau are time differences (periods, in modern parlance)”. TRMG showed five posts above that, if sigma is upstairs and tau is downstairs, sigma is larger than tau. You don’t seem to disagree with that. But then your last sentence, “the local periods are SMALLER upstairs”, appears to be in direct contradiction with the statement that sigma>tau. Once again, are the variables sigma and tau in Einstein’s equation what you call the “local periods”? If that is the case, you are contradicting Einstein. And if that is not the case, WHAT is it that you call “local period”? Is its dimension seconds or 1/seconds?

  95. TRMG says:

    No, you just said that your periods are the same as the local times. And don’t tell me they are different. I asked for a reference where Einstein uses your equation, and Eq. (30a) doesn’t refer to “periods” only to local times.

  96. TRMG says:

    I was replying to Rössler of course.

  97. PassingByAgain says:

    So, Rossler: are the “local periods” of your latest post the same as the “periods, in modern parlance” of your previous post or are they something different? In the latter case, how are they defined? What are their dimensions?

  98. Peter Howell says:

    I think Roessler is unable to process complex questions, so let’s break it down to ‘yes or no’ ones:

    Is the dimension of you so called ‘local periods’ a second? Andplease just answer yes or no.

  99. Hansel says:

    He will never answer to this. It would be to precise. To be precise means to increase the chance to become disproved in a way even a layman can see.

  100. We are talking here about clocks having different ticking rates upstairs and downstairs, right?

    You can now vote which clock is faster.

    Tell me. Then we can go on.

  101. PassingByAgain says:

    So, Rossler: are the “local periods” of your latest post the same as the “periods, in modern parlance” of your previous post or are they something different? In the latter case, how are they defined? What are their dimensions?

  102. Peter Howell says:

    No Roessler! We are not voting. You have been asked a simple yes/no question. If you are not answering this question, you are agreeing that you have been proven wrong. We can agree on this — or vote on this if you prefer!

  103. TRMG says:

    Rössler: “You can now vote which clock is faster.”

    Oh god, you just don’t get it.

    “Tell me. Then we can go on.”

    No, because which one’s faster has never been the issue. Just answer the questions and stop evading. What is it that you mean by “(local) period”? What’s its dimension, second or 1/second? Can we expect a clear answer for once?

  104. Peter Howell says:

    So it is official, Roessler declares defeat! I am curious if his groupies and supporters will accept this or still ask for a ‘formal quote’ to which Roessler should react. But how much more formal (and easier) than a yes or no question can you get?

  105. Hansel says:

    We are not talking about the clocks but about whether your equation is describing them correct.

  106. AnthonyL says:

    “Is the dimension of you so called ‘local periods’ a second? And please just answer yes or no.” Peter Howell

    Does this make any sense? Why does it matter whether they are seconds, minutes, hours, whatever? It’s the relationship between the two time flows which matters, doesn’t it? Between upstairs seconds (either number or length in terms of the downstairs passage of time) and downstairs seconds (either number or length in terms of the upstairs passage of time). You get two hours upstairs equal to one hour downstairs, say. Whether this is because one unit downstairs equals two upstairs or whether one unit upstairs is half the “length” of the downstairs time unit (period) is something that only Einstein, Rossler and TRMG can say. Personally I would vote for the former, if I read Einstein right. But I don’t think it makes any difference. We are just comparing rate of flow of time as measured in differently accelerating places.

  107. AnthonyL says:

    Sorry, in different places accelerating at the same rate.

  108. Hansel says:

    Anthony, minutes,seconds, hours etc are all mesurement units for the same physical quantity. The dimension is the same.

    The question is important!

  109. Me says:

    @AnthonyL: you say you are a science journalist? For what outlet? “News of the world?” i hope you’re better in hacking dead people’s mobile phones than in explaining science.

    Don’t you really understAnd the difference between the “dimension” of a variable and its “value”? Minutes, hours, days and weeks are just multiples of second, it makes no difference. If the dimension of the infamous ‘T’ is seconds, than you can write its VALUE in yny of these multiples (i. e T = 120s = 2 min = 0.333 h etc.). But it mames a whole kf a difference if the dimension is second or 1/second!

    The fact that Roessler is refusing to answer this simple question, proves he doesn’t know what his ‘T’ means. And as it has been shown here, his equations are inconsistence and wrong. Therefore he is proven wrong!

    Peter H.

  110. Me says:

    Damn phone — apologies for typos!

  111. Hansel says:

    I think there is nor reason for Herman Nicolai to change his opinion about Rösslers “results”:

    “Rossler’s argument is not valid: the argument is not self-consistent”

    This was definitely proved (not for the first time) above. Q.E.D.

  112. Otto E. Rossler says:

    No one here is claiming there is a mistake in my paper. At least they cannot point it out. If you continue to believe you have one, please, put it into an intelligible form — intelligible even to me. For this stuff really is difficult.

    The best physicist on this website clearly is AnthonyL. Also he is the kindest person (which is strongly correlated in history). Do we not want to help the planet and each other?

  113. Hansel says:

    Oh yes. All the people were writing here was about an obvious wrong equation and inconsistent variables in your paper.

    In science we call this normally a mistake.

  114. Hansel says:

    Show that you can point out something. For example, answer the questions:

    What is it that you mean by “(local) period”? What’s its dimension, second or 1/second?

  115. EQ says:

    “No one here is claiming there is a mistake in my paper.”

    You have a lot of nerve to write a sentence like this directly below the definite proof that this kind of statement is completely wrong

  116. Hansel says:

    And again there was a long silence. I guess the next article is already in preparation. :D

  117. Otto E. Rossler says:

    I have just answered on the other thread (Can Cern…).

    You still have to show why my equation and Einstein’s (which I quoted for you in detai) are not identical except for nomenclature, as I take it to be your opinion. Or does your criticism extend to his 1907 paper?

  118. Hansel says:

    If the T has the dimension of a second then your eq 1 is wrong as was shown weeks ago.

    Q.E.D.

  119. TRMG says:

    “You still have to show why my equation and Einstein’s (which I quoted for you in detai) are not identical except for nomenclature”

    No, this is precisely what was shown above: If one interprets your “periods” as “modern parlance” for Einstein’s “local times,” as you suggested, then your Eq. (1) states the opposite of his Eq. (30a). So your equations differ by more than nomenclature. Just go to the previous page and read my reply again.

  120. EQ23 says:

    How is the term 1+z defined? ;)

  121. Anthony L says:

    Let’s note that we are now at Page 3 of this “compromises” thread. The other two pages of 1–50 and 51–100 comments are at

    lifeboat.com/blog/2011/07/cern-by-not-updating-its-three-years-old-safety-page-compromises-the-quoted-scientists/comment-page-X#comment-87148
    where X is 1 or 2. This is X=3.

    @AnthonyL: you say you are a science journalist? For what outlet? “News of the world?” i hope you’re better in hacking dead people’s mobile phones than in explaining science.” Me

    Dear me, what’s this? Extraordinary how the Web brings out a poster’s true colors, in this case apparently those of a superannuated physics whiz kid. Surely Me is not You, Peter Howell? Someone hijacked your name, didn’t they?

    By the way, the late News of the World’s staff included no more than two people who were even around when the crooked phone hacking was perpetrated. Did you know that?

    Let’s follow TRMG’s and Rossler’s example and write cogent posts without ad hominem ridicule, please, always the sign of pride before a fall. You even mistake the point I was making. I precisely said the units of time could be anything — the length of a donkey’s bray, if you like — it is the relation between the two flows which matters. As you then say, whether it is T or 1/T.

    But you still haven’t sorted that out yet with the patient and tolerant and civil Rossler. Please do so and let us know the final result, instead scorning journalists who merely ask questions, and therefore by definition cannot be wrong.

    Why is it that after hundreds of posts you cannot formulate a simple ormal choice for Rossler to have to respond to, which can be reported to the world?

    I begin to suspect what he is too kind to say, that he can’t bear to leave the fast lane for the slow lane. The matter is important, but one tires of explaining things to people who think that their misunderstanding is your mistake.

    I hope that is not true.

  122. Anthony L says:

    Sorry, “Formal choice”

  123. Hansel says:

    Sometimes I have the very strong feeling that Anthonyl read another thread.

    Again Rössler has to relate his equation to Einstein’s in a formal way. Up to now he only claims that the equatios are the same but he has not shown ist precisely (mathematical). Which of his variables represents which variable in Einsteins equation etc.

  124. Peter Howell says:

    @AnthonyL: Amazing, another unfounded accusation from you, but we are getting used to. No, I am not working for DESY, I am not a paid editor from CERN, I am not running websites, I am not making fun of Roessler’s name and no, I am not a split personality and user ‘Me’ is not me.

    But admitted, I liked his comment and found it quite amusing. And interestingly that you immediately take side with Murdoch’s criminal methods, clearly giving additional insight into your ethical and moral standards — similar to your cooperation with Roessler here. But I guess, Roessler calling you the best physicist around here must have been a real ego-booster for you.

    On the facts: this is getting boring. Roessler is unwilling to answer questions on his accusations and claims, questions as simple and legitimate as on the dimension of variable he uses to accuse CERN of destroying earth. The fact that he isn’t willing or capable to do so, should be your uttermost concern. You keep asking the critics of Roessler for a formal statement which has been done. But you do not turn around and ask Roessler to give the simple answer to the simplest question of all: what is the dimension of the variable ‘T’?

    Almost every time I am receiving a paper form colleagues, I have questions on clarity of descriptions and definitions, which are always immediately and thankfully answered – because common understanding of the issues is the basis for real scientific discussions. Roessler is refusing to give that clarity of his thinking, therefore he is refusing to have others supporting him in his thinking therefore he is not at all interested in saving the earth. His sole mission is a crusade against the scientific community, probably for reasons of hurt ego.

    It should be clear by now to everyone with a clear mind that Roessler is disproved, that he most likely doesn’t even understand his own claims and equations and that hi rants here and elsewhere are scientifically unfounded. Obviously blogs like this with a naive audience (to be nice) is the perfect stage for him. Did you ever ask yourself why he never published his ‘findings’ in a credible scientific journal?

    AnthonyL: you are a journalist, do your job. Some investigation into Roessler’s background, reaching out to CERN and other institutions will help you. Just google some of the stuff (incl. myself so you don’t always confuse me with someone or something else). It’s not that difficult, it just require some time.

    I am not optimistic that anything we say here will convince you, let alone Roessler, as you are approaching this not open minded and not from a logic driven and scientific point of view. For you this is almost religious, science is bad, physicists are worse and Roessler is god. When I read some of the posts here by you (completely uncritical of Roessler) or people like Robert Houston (obviously a 14 year old kid confusing Roessler with Justin Bieber giving his unconditional love for him – however, as his blood pressure is a multiple of his IQ, he might want to stop posting or see a doctor), I am shocked to see how difficult it is to assess the basics of physics and algebra. And here I start wondering if it is society’s fault (as in educational system) or if it is our fault (as in we as scientists) to package these points in a more accessible format.

    But if you want to save the earth, and in Roessler’s mind are the best physicist round here, may I beg for you to ask him a simple question:

    “What is the dimension of ‘T’?”

    Peter H.

  125. PassingByAgain says:

    Peter: Rossler answered the question in another thread:

    “The clock period T is usually defined in minutes or seconds or whatever time unit you choose: a certain multiple of a temporal wavelength.”

    This closes the matter: Rossler’s eq.(1) is flat-out wrong (not that he will ever admit it, of course…)

  126. Anthony L says:

    Peter Howell’s latest effort: “@AnthonyL: Amazing, another unfounded accusation from you, but we are getting used to. No, I am not working for DESY, I am not a paid editor from CERN, I am not running websites, I am not making fun of Roessler’s name and no, I am not a split personality and user ‘Me’ is not me.

    But admitted, I liked his comment and found it quite amusing. And interestingly that you immediately take side with Murdoch’s criminal methods, clearly giving additional insight into your ethical and moral standards – similar to your cooperation with Roessler here. But I guess, Roessler calling you the best physicist around here must have been a real ego-booster for you.”

    Amazingly inarticulate. The incapacity to read straight and think straight is surely the first disqualification for credibility around here, certainly in the eyes of any journalist. And all caused by a reasonable suspicion that Peter Howell was also Me, posting here!

    Well, at least Howell is willing and eager to be assessed on the merits of his own posts, and not someone else’s, and to take responsibility for what he says. That is admirable.

    It also makes onlookers wonder anew why the distinguished TRMG and the lively, spelling challenged — his own supposed name, no less! — Hnasel camouflage their real names. Do they have something to be ashamed of? One would think they would imagine themselves covered with glory for trying to put a spanner in Rossler’s bid to get a review of CERNthink.

    Why hide? No one has yet answered this conundrum, but many have guessed at the answer. Perhaps it is because their colleagues would laugh at them taking Rossler seriously, they fear, probably accurately, since scorn is the first defense of group think — CERNthink in this case — against revision.

    Or perhaps it is because they have been assigned by CERN to play whack-a-mole on the Web? Perhaps it is because they have a weak grasp of the basics in their field, which are at issue here, and want to cover themselves and their confusion when this is exposed. Who can say, as they continue silence on the point?

    Anyhow at least we have Peter Howell willing to put his name to his posts, though modesty prevents his adding more specificity eg his affiliations, etc., which we are told to google. OK so we tried “peter howell physicist genius” . Hmmm. Retired MI6 agent? Wait, is this it? “Peter Howell, a mathematician at the Mathematical Institute in Oxford, England, a breakthrough in 2003 on the viscosity of honey, co author? Why do we have to guess?

    Anyhow, it is hard to take seriously as a scientist anyone who cannot follow a simple point, to whit, those on the staff of the News of the World when it was folded did not include anyone with any responsibility for the phone hacking scandal, since all but two had been hired since, and the two were not involved.

    So “interestingly that you immediately take side with Murdoch’s criminal methods, clearly giving additional insight into your ethical and moral standards – similar to your cooperation with Roessler here” is not good evidence of your reading and thinking performance, Sir, since it states the facts incorrectly, and makes a false implication, that I am cooperating with Rossler here any more than cooperating with the disordered rabble following along with TRMG in harassing him, which is the only response to Rossler which has even the semblance of a formal critique of him after — what is it? — 500 posts now?

    Yet even the distinguished TRMG cannot manage a simple formal paragraph stating where Rossler’s thinking has a large hole in it, as requested by Rossler. What’s wrong with you guys? The world is waiting.

    Quite honestly it is unbelievable to me that people of high competence in the field of physics (I am assuming this about you all, though evidence so far is insufficient) cannot express themselves formally in a debate with someone they claim is an obvious crackpot. Are you verbally or logically challenged? Do you make your judgments intuitively, without fully reasoning them out till later?

    How then can you not respect Rossler’s intuition?

    But to claim you have nailed him on a single equation, and yet be unable to write up your claim in a straightforward manner for him to answer, but simply to bleat “What is the dimension of T?”, when it appears to all onlookers that the dimension of T is completely beside the point, it is the relation of one T to another T that is at issue, is a marvel to behold.

    Were all your physics exams multiple choice? If so, inquiring minds demand to know which universities you attended.

  127. Anthony L says:

    By the way, just for information, the Me post had at the end, the apparent signature, Peter H. viz:

    “Me on July 14, 2011 12:07 am
    @AnthonyL: you say you are a science journalist? For what outlet? “News of the world?” i hope you’re better in hacking dead people’s mobile phones than in explaining science.

    Don’t you really understAnd the difference between the “dimension” of a variable and its “value”? Minutes, hours, days and weeks are just multiples of second, it makes no difference. If the dimension of the infamous ‘T’ is seconds, than you can write its VALUE in yny of these multiples (i. e T = 120s = 2 min = 0.333 h etc.). But it mames a whole kf a difference if the dimension is second or 1/second!

    The fact that Roessler is refusing to answer this simple question, proves he doesn’t know what his ‘T’ means. And as it has been shown here, his equations are inconsistence and wrong. Therefore he is proven wrong!

    Peter H.”

    Yet the apparently young (judging form his love for ad hominem comments) Peter Howell states it was not him. Well, the suspicion is more than reasonable, wouldn’t you say? Why else would “Me” attached Peter H. to the bottom of his post?

    All in all, the evidence is growing by the hour that the CERN counterattack by the assigned Rossler death squad (if that is what it is) is a shambles, crippled by the almost absolute incapacity of its members to keep anything straight, including their own assumed names, or the spelling thereof.

  128. TRMG says:

    AnthonyL, the paragraph you are looking for is in the paper by Einstein that Rössler gave as a reference. I quoted from it on the previous page. I suggest you stop giving speeches and simply go read it.

    Einstein, “On the Relativity Principle and the Conclusions drawn from it” (1907)

  129. PassingByAgain says:

    AnthonyL, the “formal statement” you keep asking for has been made many times over:

    Rossler’s eq.(1) says: T_up = T_down/(1+z)
    Einstein and countless textbooks say: T_up = T_down*(1+z)

    the two equations are in clear contradiction with each other. Is that not formal enough for you? What do you want more?

    BTW, if you think that “the dimension of T is completely beside the point” you haven’t understood much of this discussion. The only way to save Rossler’s eq.(1) would be to assume that his definition of T differs from the one used by everybody else. Indeed, at some point Rossler stated that T is a frequency. Hence the insistence in asking him whether the dimension of T is seconds or 1/seconds. Now he appears to retract that earlier statement and states that the dimension of T is seconds. If that is the case, his T has the same meaning as the T in Einstein’s equation, therefore either Rossler’s equation is wrong or Einstein’s equation is. Which one would you put your money on?

  130. TRMG says:

    “What do you want more? ”

    I asked the same question 100 times. He doesn’t tell you; he just keeps demanding the final, ultimate, formal paragraph, and insists that it’s our failure to deliver, not his to understand. Probably a damage due to prolonged Rössler exposure.

  131. Hansel says:

    “. What’s wrong with you guys?”

    Wrong is that you are not able to see a formal statement. There were so many of them now in several threads that it is unbelieveable you have not seen them. .

  132. Anthony L says:

    “Is that not formal enough for you? What do you want more?”

    Two equations compared, with one correct according to Einstein, are not enough, if Rossler has stated that you didn’t understand his own act of simply inverting the definition of one of the terms, thus making them consonant. A nail which isn’t banged in far enough will slip from the fingers and a sore thumb will result.

    Similarly, an incapacity to make a full statement of the great hole you have found in the fabric of Rossler’s thinking, instead telling your admiring audience to go read Einstein’s words, or why do you need more than two conflicting equations, will get you nothing but two claims contradicting each other.

    That is not a damning dismissal of Rossler’s claim. You have to spell it out, in all its glory as a “logic driven and scientific point of view”. All the ad hominem stuff questioning your audience’s capacities and motives (Roessler is God, we need better schools, CERN is not a conspiracy, etc) is just so much avoidance.

    To quote you back to yourself: Almost every time I read a post from you, I have questions about the clarity of description and the definitions involved. In your summary I expect them to be immediately and thankfully answered, and that you then present that summary to Rossler, because common understanding of the issues is the basis for real scientific discussions.

    Yes, Sir. Put your case in a proper paragraph, so the jury can follow it, and the accused may answer the charge.

    You do know what a paragraph is, do you? It consists of a number of words expressing a series of thoughts and facts in logical sequence, so that they lead up to and justify a conclusion, which in this case your allegation that Rossler doesn’t know what he is talking about.

  133. TRMG says:

    “Two equations compared, with one correct according to Einstein, are not enough, if Rossler has stated that you didn’t understand his own act of simply inverting the definition of one of the terms, thus making them consonant. ”

    Wow, maybe you should have taken the hint about the dimensions more seriously. He is *not* talking about frequencies.

  134. Anthony L says:

    “Wow, maybe you should have taken the hint about the dimensions more seriously. He is *not* talking about frequencies”

    Good example of what I mean, TRMG. Perfect, in fact.

    Aren’t Web threads fun? Just post off the top of your head, no need to formulate points fully and correctly. Just suggest, with a glib sentence, that the recipient should do the work.

    No wonder Rossler doesn’t waste his energy responding to too much. And then of course you accuse him of evading you.

    More and more, it appears that you don’t have what it takes. Surely this is not true?

  135. PassingByAgain says:

    Here (again) is the paragraph, broken down in bullet points for your convenience:

    1) Einstein says: T_up = T_down*(1+z)
    2) Rossler says: T_up = T_down/(1+z)
    3) the two equations above are mutually contradictory if T is defined in the same way in both equations.
    4) Rossler consistently refuses to give a physical definition of T, but from his latest statements it sounds like T is indeed defined in the same way in the two equations.
    5) if that is the case, the two equations are in contradiction.
    6) Einstein’s equation is confirmed by experiment.
    7) therefore, if Rossler’s equation contradicts Einstein’s, Rossler’s equation is disproved by experiment.

    There’s no way out of it, unless Rossler explains why the T in his equation should be different from the T in Einstein equation. He has not done that so far (or, more precisely, he has put forward a number of mutually contradictory statements on the subject).

    Is your jury satisfied?

  136. TRMG says:

    If he had inverted the terms, their dimension would become 1/second. He says [T]= second. So that’s not it.

  137. PassingByAgain says:

    and if TRMG’s statement is too cryptic for you, let me spell it out: the inverse of a period is a frequency. Periods are measured in seconds, frequencies are measured in 1/seconds.

    If by “inverting the definition of one of the terms” you mean that Rossler’s T is a frequency, then its dimension should be 1/seconds. But now Rossler says that the dimension is seconds, therefore it appears that Rossler’s T is *not* a frequency, but rather a period just as Einstein’s T.

    Clear now?

  138. PassingByAgain says:

    whoops, sorry for the duplication TRMG

  139. TRMG says:

    No problem! I think lately he’s not so fond of my comments anyway. ;-)

  140. Dear children: I start being grateful to you. You at last found a way to say what you mean. And it is not what I mean and what every unbiased reader of my paper would understand.

    T is the unit clock period , upstars and downstairs. (The temporal wavelength, the duration of one second.) Seconds are longer downstairs.

    So they were to Einstein. (You got Einstein wrong.)

    Okay?

  141. Anthony L says:

    Passingbyagain (another anonymous pseudonym, what is this? a parade of shame, of fear of being shown up, what?) begins to lay it out in admirably straightforward fashion, of which he can be proud, since no one else here seems to be capable of trying. And he has gotten a response from Rossler, as I predicted.

    But sadly, there is still some work to be done. Apparently, physicist/mathemticians with good minds hate to lay it all out in rows, since they are used to solving formulae and equations, not writing text books. But the jury need more before they can see either side clearly.

    You have to define your terms if you are to complete the project, Passingby. What is the first T , what is the second, what is z, and what is the relation described by the equation, in words, and how does it figure in the Rossler scheme of things?

    Then Rossler will give you a full answer, I predict, which will either dismiss the objection by demonstrating how his equation is correct if you define the terms his way, and justifying the redefinition, or admit that you have exploded his entire scheme.

    It seems to me that given the fact that he is as competent as most speculative theorists in the area judging from his attractor and a few other results in chaos and physics (I believe), and from the fact he had the friendship of Wheeler, and thus is unlikely to have misunderstood Einstein in 1907, on such a very simple point, your fastening on this point at such length may be an embarrassment which justifies your hiding behind anonymity. But I wait with interest to see.

    Certainly TRMG has no business saying that I do not enjoy his posts, I have spent many posts here almost prostrate with admiration for the fact that he can write coherent paragraphs, apparently unusual for physicists. Evidently he does not read mine with the same careful attention, let alone pleasure. I am sorry to see it.

    One likes to think flattery has its effect, but no matter.

    By the way, Rossler has already punctured your balloon with “T is the unit clock period , upstairs and downstairs. (The temporal wavelength, the duration of one second.) Seconds are longer downstairs.” hasn’t he?

    He has to define his terms, after you define yours, but this is what I imagine he means: Seconds are longer downstairs, if you can talk in terms of standard time of some kind to measure them by, away from both locations, free of the acceleration being applied to both locations in the rocket, which I believe is called coordinate time.

    You have three locations, then. One with coordinate time, on Earth, say, and two rocket locations, one with proper time of the upstairs clock and one with proper time of the downstairs clock. (God, physicists are bad linguists — proper time would be so much more readily understood as the time now called coordinate time on Earth, say).

    On the rocket, if one hour downstairs flows by at the same rate as two hours upstairs, seconds on the downstairs clock are double the “period” or length of seconds upstairs, measured in coordinate time, just as hours on the downstairs clock are double the “period” or length of seconds on the upstairs clock, coordinate time. Obviously.

    So you have to divide a second downstairs by something to get a second upstairs. If this is what Rossler means, who can object. It means that one second on the clock downstairs passes at the same time as two seconds, say, on the clock upstairs.

    Observed from some place in coordinate time, free of rocket acceleration, say on Planet Earth, this will be visible or measurable in some way. I presume experiments have shown this. It accords with Einstein’s saying that the clock in the tip will record more time passing than the clock in the tail. It accords with Rossler stating that an hour in the tail in equivalent to two hours at the tip. Why, it even fits Houston’s private algebra!

    If this is the case no wonder you guys don’t want to formalize what is revealed to be a trivial point. You remind me of the statue of Laocoon and his sons with the wriggling and writhing serpents binding their legs and ankles.

    Serpents of your own making, in this case.

  142. PassingByAgain says:

    Please, not again this pathetic nonsense about longer seconds. Can’t you see the inconsistency of your own statements?

    Otto E. Rossler on July 14, 2011 1:50 pm (Lifeboat time)
    “The clock period T is usually defined in minutes or seconds or whatever time unit you choose”

    Otto E. Rössler on July 15, 2011 12:11 pm
    “T is the unit clock period , upstars and downstairs. (The temporal wavelength, the duration of one second.)”

    So, let’s take both of your statements as good:

    1) T is defined in seconds
    2) T is the duration of a second

    now, how much is the duration of a second expressed in seconds? Surprise: it’s 1, both upstairs and downstairs.

    Second are *not* longer downstairs. What matters is that spacetime is curved. When going from point A to point B the clock downstairs travels a shorter path in spacetime — therefore it counts fewer seconds — than the clock upstairs. It’s you who get Einstein wrong, old fool.

  143. Anthony L says:

    This darn comment thread is about to roll over and thus lose its display all preceding posts written so far, and I should hate for the superb writing of TRMG, Hansel, PassingBy, Me, PeterHowell, EQ23, etc to disappear down Lifeboats black hole without proper recognition for their service in hounding Rossler like baying Bassett hounds who think they have a fox holed up in a den, so let’s note that the correct way to retrieve them is to simply use this url

    lifeboat.com/blog/2011/07/cern-by-not-updating-its-three-years-old-safety-page-compromises-the-quoted-scientists/comment-page-X#comment-87472

    and write in a page number (1, 2 etc) instead of X.

  144. PassingByAgain says:

    AnthonyL: I was replying to Rossler of course.

    As to your text above about proper time vs coordinate time, it is such a jumble that I cannot even start to deconstruct it. I can only tell you again to read the chapter of the MTW textbook that Rossler was so unwise to quote as if it confirmed his thesis (it doesn’t, of course). Forget about rockets, just think of the situation with two clocks at different heights in the Earth’s gravitational field. As I mentioned already in an earlier post, the MTW textbook says:

    “Proper time equals Lorentz coordinate time for both observers, since they are at rest in the Earth’s Lorentz frame”

    Again, the meaning of a second is the same for both observers. The observer above counts more seconds just because it travels through a longer path in spacetime.

  145. Anthony L says:

    “Second are *not* longer downstairs. What matters is that spacetime is curved. When going from point A to point B the clock downstairs travels a shorter path in spacetime – therefore it counts fewer seconds – than the clock upstairs. It’s you who get Einstein wrong, old fool.”

    Dear me, “old” is a perjorative? I don’t agree. Often old people see farther than young people, despite the American worship of youth. That’s why we should be careful of underestimating older people who are still open minded and capable of original thinking. Their review of some received notion might be worth more than the truculent ingenue’s.

    You can’t agee that it is a matter of wording? Tell the guy who grows a long white beard and lies in his grave for years in the time it takes for his son to visit a star at near light speed and return that his son took a short cut in curved spacetime. All he knows is that he experienced more years.

    When local clocks are compared in the accelerating rocket you find that one has gone to 1pm and the second has gone to 2pm. Express that in any way you like, account for it in any way you like. One has experienced a time flow of double the other. The hour in proper time of one local clock is equivalent to two hours in the other proper time shown by the other local clock. Adjust for curved space-time and you find them the same, and one not “longer” than the other?

    Wow, a breakthrough concept!

    That’s why we need definitions of each term, I’d say. We are, after all, trying to predict the properties of micro black holes.

  146. Anthony L says:

    “As to your text above about proper time vs coordinate time, it is such a jumble that I cannot even start to deconstruct it. I can only tell you again to read the chapter of the MTW textbook that Rossler was so unwise to quote as if it confirmed his thesis (it doesn’t, of course). ”

    Please inform us at what point the text becomes a jumble for you? I took pains to make it plain to all. That way your corrections of it would be plain too.

    Alas, you have not given us those corrections. You have referred only to a primary source, a textbook unfortunately missing in English from the university library. I hope you are not the one who borrowed it.

  147. PassingByAgain says:

    AnthonyL:

    1) how is calling Rossler “old fool” less respectful than him addressing his critics as “children”?

    2) you are once again mixing up the twins paradox (a consequence of time dilation for observers that are in motion with respect to each other) with the slowing down of clocks at rest in a gravitational field. They are two completely distinct effects.

    3) one hour of one clock is *not* equivalent to two hours of the other clock. One clock takes a path through spacetime which is one-hour long and the other takes a different path through spacetime which is two hours long. It was indeed a breakthrough concept hundred years ago and I understand that it’s difficult for you to visualize, but it’s pretty much bread-and-butter physics nowadays — and it’s confirmed by experiment. Again, read an elementary textbook if you don’t believe me.

  148. Hansel says:

    Rössler thinks still about absolute frames of reference in relativity. Funny :D

  149. Anthony L says:

    Correction: Sorry it is the collected work of Einstein which is missing in one vol — 3- from the library. I’ll look in the textbook to see if it says that time slows down in the lower part of the accelerating rocket, as DESY says. But all agree here with this at this thread — what is your point?

  150. PassingByAgain says:

    Again, think of TRMG’s car mileage analogy:

    -we meet in Bonn with our cars, mine is much faster than yours.

    -in the time in which you go to Koln and back to Bonn, I go to Berlin and back to Bonn (I am assuming you are German here, otherwise check a map).

    -when we compare our meters, mine has counted many more miles than yours.

    would you say that this happens because your miles are longer than mine? Or because my car traveled a longer distance?

  151. Hansel says:

    Ah, dear old fool, how long is a second by the way? :D

  152. A: “The observer above counts more seconds just because it travels through a longer path in spacetime.”

    B: “Tell the guy who grows a long white beard and lies in his grave for years in the time it takes for his son to visit a star at near light speed and return that his son took a short cut in curved spacetime. All he knows is that he experienced more years.”

    Thank you for this classical dialogue!

  153. Hansel says:

    Old fool, your understanding of relativity is like all your other bullshit. I would bet that if someone looks very carefully at your past “results” he will find the same nonsensical crank-science.

    Perhaps we should add a RösslerPlag to all this other plag-blogs now working on plagiarism in doctoral dissertations in germany.

  154. TRMG says:

    “All he knows is that he experienced more years.”

    No he knows more: No matter whether he counts years, 3/4 years, 2/3 years, 1/2 years, or whatever, it’s always more. This is how he knows that he experienced more *time*.

  155. Someonewho said (quote) “the observer above counts more seconds” refuses to accept that the clocks downstairs count fewer seconds in the same time? Come on.

    And: I insist that you call me “dear old fool,” dear son.

  156. Hansel says:

    Rössler equation is therefore still wrong. He has to apologize for some accusations and comparisons he made during his crusade against the scientific community AND science itself.

  157. I had replied to Hansel.

  158. “He counts more” is also okay.

  159. EQ23 says:

    In the same time — how do you measure this “same time”? In relativity and according to all experiments there is nothing like an absolute time you could use for comparisons like this.

    You have not understood relativity at all. I recommend to you to read the MTW again. This time more carefully.

  160. TRMG says:

    “Someonewho said (quote) “the observer above counts more seconds” refuses to accept that the clocks downstairs count fewer seconds in the same time?”

    Don’t know to whom this refers, but if it’s not the same number of seconds, then it’s also not “in the same time.” In fact time dilation makes it difficult to talk of “the” time. So this question is quite confused.

  161. Hansel says:

    To speak of same times after Einstein contradicts Einstein. It refers more to Newton.

  162. Hansel says:

    Rösslers equation is therefore still wrong. He has to apologize for some accusations and comparisons he made during his crusade against the scientific community AND science itself.

  163. PassingByAgain says:

    TRMG: it refers to me (1:25 pm Lifeboat time), but of course my statement did not contain anything like “in the same time”.

    BTW, I already asked Rossler for his take on this sentence from MTW:

    “Proper time equals Lorentz coordinate time for both observers, since they are at rest in the Earth’s Lorentz frame”

    but he did not react. Could he now please oblige and tell me whether that statement is consistent with his idea of “shorter seconds”?

  164. Hansel says:

    How long is a shorter second?

  165. Hanselllll says:

    How long is a shorter second?

  166. Anthony L says:

    “Would you say that this happens because your miles are longer than mine? Or because my car traveled a longer distance?”

    The latter. You imply some analogy. What is it?

    Interesting you think your post above explains something. However, re Rossler’s use of the word “children” for you lot, I suppose that is patronizing, and grant the point, except that all the insults flung in his direction for no good reason (and guaranteeing minimal response, the opposite of what should be sought) justified the word, better than his own posts justifying “old fool”.

    Re what you state above , “you are once again mixing up the twins paradox (a consequence of time dilation for observers that are in motion with respect to each other) with the slowing down of clocks at rest in a gravitational field. They are two completely distinct effects.”

    This strikes me as not matching basic physics. They are both examples of time dilatation, as it used to be named, one of kinematic time dilation and one of gravitational time dilation. The only difference is that the former is an extreme effect compared to the latter, and also that more recently than Einstein (who said they were equivalent) that a sideways or tidal effect of gravity has also to be taken into account in practice, which surely Einstein would have been aware of too if anybody had asked.

    I don’t know who should go back to study elementary texts but since Einstein’s is not such a difficult scheme conceptually as it must have seemed when he came up with it, I prefer to think from basic principles. Some say that textbooks forget to explain principles properly to students nowadays, they are overly crammed with examples.

    All I know is that Einstein decided that gravity and acceleration had the same effect on objects and was overjoyed at this conceptual breakthrough, which he thought was his best ever. Given that nothing accelerated very rapidly in his day, it was a pretty good brainwave, I’ll grant you. He didn’t know about pilots blacking out in jet planes when they experience too much G. One wonders what his source was. Was he pressed into the seat of a racing car, or feel the sideways pull of a toboggan or a skate, and start wondering if gravity was the same thing?

    Anyhow, the young heretic came up with thought experiments to do with trains and such, according to his book explaining it to children, which I have around here somewhere. Clocks would run at different rates in accelerating rockets or on top of mountains, etc

    Whatever, the equivalence principle stated that gravity and acceleration were interchangeable, and since gravity involved distance from an object, and acceleration involved time, this indicated that time and distance were as interchangeable as gravity and acceleration, so Bingo! he had the special and soon the general relativity of spacetime.

    Be that as it may, you now say PassingBy that “One clock takes a path through spacetime which is one-hour long and the other takes a different path through spacetime which is two hours long. It was indeed a breakthrough concept hundred years ago and I understand that it’s difficult for you to visualize, but it’s pretty much bread-and-butter physics nowadays – and it’s confirmed by experiment. Again, read an elementary textbook if you don’t believe me.”

    Well, I wouldn’t argue with it, so I don’t feel any need to go to an elementary textbook. It is simply what relativity means. Time and space are interchangeable, just as gravity and acceleration are, or they translate into each other, in some way, defined experimentally over the years after Einstein came up with this stuff.

    But let’s note that the standard way of “explaining” this stuff by drawing a matrix and showing a large ball (the Earth) falling into a depression in the matrix presupposes gravity acting on it, so is no way to explain how gravity translates into spacetime.

    As for all of this meaning that “one hour of one clock is *not* equivalent to two hours of the other clock”, I stand by what I said, it is a matter of wording. If you prefer, one could say that the clock in the lower part of the rocket will show time according to a certain relation to the clock time in the upper part of the rocket. Ceteris paribus.

    What we are discussing is the relation between the two, whether the upper clock moves faster that the lower clock, or vice versa. We agree that the upper counts more hours. You object if Rossler says the periods ie seconds ticked off by the lower clock are “longer”, because there are fewer of them in the same coordinate time passage.

    To you the use of the word “period” or the idea that the units of time recorded by the upper clock are shorter than those recorded by the lower clock is null and void, it seems You say it is all a matter of traversing longer or shorter distances in spacetime, where time will figure larger or smaller in the formula. Hansel seems to agree, saying “Rössler thinks still about absolute frames of reference in relativity. Funny”.

    I dont see that either remark shows us that Rossler doesn’t follow relativity, and I don’t see where he implied there were absolute frames of reference in relativity. He just used an equation which, given the definition of terms in it, matched Einstein. All you have to is show his definition of terms is wrong. So define them yourselves, contradict his, and Bob’s your uncle, as they say in Britain.

  167. Anthony L says:

    Sorry, kinetic time dilation.

  168. PassingByAgain says:

    AnthonyL:

    I am repeating things that have been told to you over and over and it’s quite late for me now, so you will excuse me if I’m brief.

    1) the analogy is simple: the faster car is like the faster clock, and the miles in the meter are like the seconds counted by the clock. You readily agree that the faster car has covered a longer distance (as opposed to having shorter miles) but then you swallow Rossler’s view that the faster clock has shorter seconds (as opposed to measuring a longer interval of proper time).

    2) again, the twin paradox of special relativity (which is presumably what you refer to when you write “Tell the guy who grows a long white beard and lies in his grave for years in the time it takes for his son to visit a star at near light speed and return”) has nothing to do with gravitational time dilation. And no, the two phenomena are not linked by the equivalence principle. See what TRMG told you on June 24, 2011 11:57 pm in “Five Fateful Coincidences”.

    3) it’s NOT a matter of wording: just as you agree that “the faster car travels a longer distance” is correct and “the faster car has shorter miles” is incorrect, you should understand that the same applies to the two alternative descriptions of the clock situation. “the faster clock measures a longer time” is correct, “the fastest clock has shorter seconds” is incorrect.

    4) besides, nobody yet addressed the blatant inconsistency of Rossler statements: if both 1) “T is measured in seconds” and 2) “T is the length of a second” are true, then T is the length of a second in seconds, i.e. T=1 for both the upstairs and downstairs observers.

  169. PassingByAgain says:

    P.S., AntonyL wrote:

    “[Rossler] just used an equation which, given the definition of terms in it, matched Einstein.”

    since you are convinced that “given the definition of terms in it” Rossler’s equation matches Einstein’s, perhaps you will answer the question that Rossler declined to answer:

    what is the relation between the variables “T_tip” in Rossler’s eq.(1) and “sigma” in Einstein’s eq.(30a)?

  170. Anthony L says:

    “Old fool, your understanding of relativity is like all your other bullshit. I would bet that if someone looks very carefully at your past “results” he will find the same nonsensical crank-science.”

    Is this an example of enhancing understanding between discussants about science and the LHC?

  171. PassingByAgain says:

    P.P.S. AnthonyL:

    ignore point 3) of my post above, as I mentioned it’s very late for me and I did not think it through well enough. In fact, the “paradox” of the twin situation is not the fact that after the trip to the star (and back) the traveling twin is older than the other. This fact is a trivial consequence of time dilation in special relativity, and indeed has nothing to do with gravitational time dilation or the equivalence principle. The real “paradox” is the fact that at first sight the situation seems reversible, i.e. from the point of view of the traveling twin it is the earthbound twin who moved away and then came back at nearly the speed of light, therefore it is the earthbound twin who should be older. The situation however is not really symmetric, because the traveling twin experiences acceleration and deceleration at the turnaround point. Now, the effect of the turnaround on the traveling twin can be explained fully within special relativity, but it can also be explained through gravitational time dilation and the equivalence principle.

    Anyway, I just wanted to be precise, and this has nothing to do with the discussion on Rossler’s eq.(1).

  172. PassingByAgain says:

    ERRATUM: for “older” read “younger” (it’s REALLY late and I should go to bed)

  173. Anthony L says:

    Impressive adjustment, rather well expressed, except that the last line contradicts the fourth line, as follows:

    Final statement:
    the effect of the turnaround on the traveling twin can be explained fully within special relativity, but it can also be explained through gravitational time dilation and the equivalence principle.

    Previous statement:
    the traveling twin is older than the other. This fact is a trivial consequence of time dilation in special relativity, and indeed has nothing to do with gravitational time dilation or the equivalence principle.

    Um, your bedtime must still be interfering with your posting!

    I know nothing except the triviality that acceleration is the same thing in physical effect as gravity and vice versa, so I imagine the effect can be produced by scooping him up and whizzing him off to a nearby star (rather like Monty Python’s Keeper of the Gate scoops you up if you don’t know the answer to some question such as How does special relativity work, exactly?) and back, which is acceleration and deceleration, or by gravitational time dilation, involving his change in position relative to some gravitational matrix which only Einstein, TRMG, Hansel, Me, Peter Howell and you can explain, if Rossler doesn’t inform us first.

    Personally I have to say that at this stage relative to bedtime my own mind crumbles and I start wondering what about Einstein’s scheme will be improved upon in more enlightened future times, and hoping its explanation will be reduced from a logical hall of mirrors to something with the intelligible simplicity and familiarity of a curvaceous blonde from the pages of Maxim.

    Your point that the earthbound twin should be younger to the traveling twin as well as vice versa seems quite right, in relative terms. Therefore the acceleration and deceleration of the younger twin must be in reference to some common matrix where the older doesn’t move much.

    Anyhow, my trivial complaint is that no one has yet applied this to any interesting possibility, such as if you wanted to marry some beautiful girl and her parents said you were too old for her, you should be able to whiz off to Pluto and back fast enough to solve their objections. Of course, she might meet someone else else in the interim, given that women are fickle, as the finest aria in Rigoletto informs us.

    Surely it would be more constructive for nuclear physicists to apply their giant minds to such a possibility, than insist on running a gargantuan collider to the hilt — seven times previous energies — when they do not have any clear idea at all what might result, and Rossler’s guess seems as good as anybody’s else’s, and so does Plaga’s, pace Hansel, TRMG etc.

    What we need is Einstein. Come back Albert, all is forgiven.

  174. Anthony L says:

    Sorry, PassingBy, I did not mean to ignore your explanatory post which you corrected, but I should point out that you meant to correct 2) rather than 3), right?

    Anyhow re what you wrote

    “1) the analogy is simple: the faster car is like the faster clock, and the miles in the meter are like the seconds counted by the clock. You readily agree that the faster car has covered a longer distance (as opposed to having shorter miles) but then you swallow Rossler’s view that the faster clock has shorter seconds (as opposed to measuring a longer interval of proper time).”

    Do I? Shorter relative to what? I am not sure that Rossler believes the faster clock has shorter seconds. Where is his quote?

    I stand by the view that one should be careful to define exactly what one means with every term when discussing relativity and its unexpected effects in how one variable changes in relation to another, and its apparent theme that there is nothing absolute to measure in the universe in either distance or time.

    I am sure that there are more units of time in a longer interval of time measured by a clock you are standing next to, than in a shorter interval. That would merely be a definition of longer time and shorter time.

    But whether there are fewer such units of time measured during that longer interval by a clock below me in a gravitational field, or whether those units of time measured by the lower clock are “longer” in some sense than the ones measured by my clock, and therefore there are fewer of them, I have no idea, and it would seem to be to make no difference whatsoever which one Rossler chooses.

    Certainly the accepted scheme would state the former wording, but a philosopher would surely say that there is no way of choosing. If Rossler is trying to work out the attributes of black holes, he can think of it any way he likes so long as he keeps the algebraic relationship correct, no?

    I don’t think a “unit of time” has any fixed physical value that is the same in both clock locations, unless you measure those units of time with reference to some other clock entirely independent of the two locations and outside the gravitational field. You agree with that, surely?

    The only relation one is interested in here surely is the simple relation between the two times elapsed, however you care to express it. This is what expresses the different effect of different clock positions in the gravitational field. That is all Rossler needs to maintain correctly, n’est’ce pas?

    2) Are you withdrawing this one? If not what are you now saying?

    3) The racing car and its miles covered is not a perfect analogy, is it? Velocity and distance are defined by a simple arithmetical formula for their relationship (V=distance/time). When you say as alternative descriptions of the clock situation. “the faster clock measures a longer time” is correct, “the fastest clock has shorter seconds” is incorrect, you are saying it is repeating the obvious racing car mistake.
    But to me it is only expressing the correct relationship in clumsy terms, philosophically speaking. Supposing we said, “the faster clock shows more seconds”? That would be correct.

    Rossler has said he agrees with Einstein in this equation. Apart from objecting to his uncertain English language, what evidence do we have that he doesn’t agree with Einstein?

  175. Hanselllll says:

    ““what is the relation between the variables “T_tip” in Rossler’s eq.(1) and “sigma” in Einstein’s eq.(30a)?””

    That was exactly my point a few days ago. Rössler ignored the questions for good reason: he can not answer it.

  176. Hanselllll says:

    “Rossler has said he agrees with Einstein in this equation. ”

    come on, it was more than one time shown that his equations says something different. It does not matter what he is babbling around the equation

  177. TRMG says:

    AnthonyL: “I am sure that there are more units of time in a longer interval of time measured by a clock you are standing next to, than in a shorter interval. That would merely be a definition of longer time and shorter time.
    But whether there are fewer such units of time measured during that longer interval by a clock below me in a gravitational field, or whether those units of time measured by the lower clock are “longer” in some sense than the ones measured by my clock, and therefore there are fewer of them, I have no idea, and it would seem to be to make no difference whatsoever which one Rossler chooses. ”

    You have probably no idea which statement is the correct one, because you don’t know what relativity predicts in that case. It is very unambiguous: There are two different intervals to consider here—the local time downstairs and the local time upstairs. Then, in a gavitational field, the lower clock measures a shorter *time intervall* than the upper clock. You seem to think that relativity merely states sthat the number of seconds the lower clock counted is less, but that is not the case. It states that the “number of seconds” *times* “the duration of one second,” i.e. the physical quantity *time* that is measured by the lower clock, is less. Do you see the difference? The duration of “1 second” is explicitly included in the statement. It makes no sense to express a difference in two physical quantities in terms of their differing units. The quantities itself are different *regardless* of the units you chose to express them in numerically. This is why the options you offer are not two equalliy valid viewpoints.

    Let’s please you with a formal statement about this. We have a physical quantity T, say. It’s a product of a numerical value N (also often called {T}, which is too clumsy for me now) and a unit of measurement u (often called [T]), such that T = N * u. Now, N is just a number like 1,2,3,4, 5.92762728, but u is an example of a physical quantity itself, for u = 1*u, which means it is a product of the numerical quantity 1 and a unit, namely itself, and thus fits the definition of “physical quantity.” (This, BTW, is why it doesn’t matter whether you talk of “periods,” “local times,” or “units.” These are all just certain amounts of time, so all equations about them are the same.) If T is the physical quantity time, then T= N*u expresses the following: “The amount of time represented by T equals N times the amount if time reresented by u.” Now we consider two physical quantities T_up = N_up * u_up and T_down = N_down * u_down, and compare them.

    First, what would it tell you if I reveal to you that N_1 > N_2? Not much, because you don’t know about the meaning of u_1 and u_2 yet, which is arbitrary. But it *could* mean that T_1 > T_2 *if* u_1 = u_2, and this is why in calculations, we typically choose the same units for the same physical quantities, so that all relevant relations are immediately conspicuous in the physical quantity’s numerical value. Do you agree so far? I assume you do and continue.

    Now here’s the important thing: Relativity, like *any other physical theory* makes predictions about physical quantities. (This is such a truism about physical theories that I don’t care to elaborate.) And what does Relativity predict in regard to local times in a gravitational field? It predicts T_down= T_up / (1+z) , with z >0 (This is essentially the meaning Eq. (30a) of Einstein’s paper). This prediction makes no reference to seconds or hours or other units. It just states something about the relation of two physical quantities. Now we can choose some units to express this relation *quantitatively*. As an example, if we choose u_up = u_down = 1 second, then T_down = N_down* 1 second, and T_up = N_up * 1 second, and we would have immediately “N_down = N_up/(1+z).” This equation only references numbers, not physical quantities anymore, and it makes exactly the same statement about the N’s as the original equations made about the T’s.

    Now the N-equation is what we observe if we use *identical clocks*, which use equal units u. (If we used clocks with different units of time, then the relation between the N’s would be messed up, but still the relation between the quantities T would be unaltered.) And we know that the clocks we use are identical in the sense that u_1 = u_2, because they employ the same physical mechanism to measure time *and* they are *ideal* under the conditions we want to use them. Ideal means, in a word, that their clockwork is not physically influenced by gravity, and this requires that we use e.g. atomic clocks instead of pendulums to measure the effects of gravitational time dilation. (Of course we could in principle use pendulums, since we quantitativly know the influence that gravity exerts on the pendulum’s period, but you see what I mean. The important thing is: there is no similar such influence of gravity on the inner clockworks of atoms, and so it’s advantageous to use them instead.)

    And now here is what’s wrong with Rössler’s claim. He acknowledges the experimental facts, I think, that for *identical* and *ideal* clocks N_down = N_up/(1+z) (smaller number of seconds downstairs). But at the same time he says that the reason for this relation is a difference in the u’s. This should by now strike you as quite odd, if not flat-out wrong, because I just told you that, according to relativity, the relation between N_up and N_down is a consequence of both u’s being *equal*, and their being equal is a consequence of both clocks being *identical* and *ideal*. He goes on to claim that the difference in the respective units is expressed by his Eq. (1), which reads in our notation u_down = (1+z) u_up. Now here is what that implies for the *physical quantities* (remember, these are the things that are predicted by relativity.) We start with the triviality

    T_down = N_down * u_down.

    Using the equation for N_down we know to be experimentally verified for identical ideal clocks, we get:

    T_down = N_up/(1+z)*u_down.

    Using Rössler’s equation for u_down we get

    T_down = [ N_up/(1+z)] *[ u_up* (1+z)]

    Cancelling the factors 1+z, we obtain

    T_down = N_up * u_up = T_up.

    So Rössler implies T_down = T_up. This is what’s behind the remarks about Rössler implicitly assuming an absolute time. And this equation certainly is not what relativity predicts. Now you could probably still think this is just a matter of perspective, because what is phenomenologically known is only the equation involving the N’s, not the T-equation, but, first, this is not what Rössler says himself. He assumes to be safely in the realm of relativity with all his claims. And relativity clearly pedicts somethng else. Second, it’s not true, because it ignores the phenomenology of the systems (atoms) we use to define “second,” but that’s another story, and its details are not important to understand the main issues here. Furthermore it ignores that we don’t use Relativity only to predict gravitational time dilation. We use it for a lot of other different thing, e.g. planetary orbits. None of this would work with T_up = T_down.

  178. TRMG says:

    “Using the equation for N_down we know to be experimentally verified for identical ideal clocks, we get:

    T_down = N_up/(1+z)*u_down.”

    Here I should have used brackets, so read this as

    T_down = [N_up/(1+z)] *u_down.

  179. PassingByAgain says:

    AnthonyL wrote:

    1) “Do I? Shorter relative to what? I am not sure that Rossler believes the faster clock has shorter seconds. Where is his quote?”

    you do (Anthony L on July 15, 2011 3:43 pm) and Rossler believes (innumerable quotes, the latest is Otto E. Rössler on July 15, 2011 12:11 pm )

    “But whether there are fewer such units of time (…), or whether those units of time measured by the lower clock are “longer” (…), I have no idea, and it would seem to be to make no difference whatsoever which one Rossler chooses. ”

    of course it does make a difference. The rest of Rossler’s theorem is based on his incorrect “choice” (if you write eq.(1) correctly, everything else crumbles)

    2) “Are you withdrawing this one? If not what are you now saying?”

    I realized that I had expressed myself incorrectly in one point and I amended my statement. If only other people behaved in the same way we wouldn’t be having this discussion…

    I simply shouldn’t have used the term “twin paradox” to refer to the fact that you were mentioning, i.e. that the twin who goes to the star and back ends up younger than the earthbound twin. This is not a paradox and can be easily described from the point of view of the stationary twin in terms of the time dilation of special relativity (you don’t need the equivalence principle to explain it) . The apparent paradox arises when you try to describe the situation from the point of view of the traveling twin.

    Anyway, as I already suggested, it will be simpler if we forget about rockets and focus on the situation of two clocks at rest in the Earth’s gravitational field, as described in both the MTW textbook and Einstein’s equation 30a (and as replicated by the experiment)

    3) “The racing car and its miles covered is not a perfect analogy, is it?”

    it might not be a perfect analogy, but it should help you see the silliness of the “shorter seconds” statement.

    “Supposing we said, “the faster clock shows more seconds”? That would be correct.”

    your “the faster clock shows more seconds” is fully equivalent to my “the faster clock measures a longer time”, and is definitely not the same as “the fastest clock has shorter seconds”.

    4) “Rossler has said he agrees with Einstein in this equation. Apart from objecting to his uncertain English language, what evidence do we have that he doesn’t agree with Einstein?”

    Rossler’s English language seems fine to me, the problem is his physics. The evidence of the disagreement is that, taken at face value, Rossler’s eq.(1) is in flat cotradiction with Einstein’s eq.(30a). You claim that this is due to the fact that the variables are defined differently? Very well, then tell me please:

    what is the relation between the variables “T_tip” in Rossler’s eq.(1) and “sigma” in Einstein’s eq.(30a)

    Rossler consistently avoids clarifying this, and we can’t go inside his head and see what (if anything) he really means.

  180. PassingByAgain says:

    …and of course I hadn’t seen TRMG’s detailed explanation…

  181. TRMG says:

    …which I hope is understandable, despite some grammar/orthography issues.;-)

    Also I have another erratum: The variables in the 3rd paragraph below the quote from Anthony should be “N_up” instead “N_1,” and “N_down” intsead “N_2,” and “u_up, u_down” respectively . I changed the symbols after writing and forgot this paragraph.

  182. Hanselllll says:

    I predict that we will never see any kind of precise relation between the variables in Einsteins equation and Rösslers crap-equation.

  183. “It predicts T_down= T_up / (1+z) , with z >0 (This is essentially the meaning Eq. (30a) of Einstein’s paper).”

    Beautiful statement, dear TRGM.

    And it is right.

    The only problem: My Eq.(1) — and if correctly interpreted Einstein’s Eq.(30a) — means something else. Namely, that in one second of the upper time, 1/2 second of the lower time took place (on an idealized neutron star, to be very specific). That is, the “temporal wavelength” [and then also the spatial wavelength] is LONGER downstairs in comparison to above. My Figure 1 of 1998 (“Gravitational slowing-down of clocks”), which is never being mentioned again here, demonstrated this fact to the eye.

    It is precisely because the time progresses more slowly below, that any time passed there “in the same time” (verifiable by sending the twin clock in question up) is shorter relative to the unit time valid there. This is one and the same situation: “If time passes more slowly, unit time intervals are longer.” All of this is trivial. Thus all the above is nothing but a war about words.

    Why then? With the aim — so someone could fret — to block progress towards discussion of Eq.(2) with which the trouble of CERN’s begins. “Filibustering” is the technical term for such a strategy.

    The latter interpretation has two sides to it. On the one hand it would greatly enhance respect for the wakefulness of the partisan discussants. On the other, it would detract from their honesty. So I prefer the older one that analogical thinking is no longer being taught or encouraged on the planet. The planet would have to die from not thinking.

  184. PassingByAgain says:

    Rossler: your figure 1 of 1998 is not being mentioned again because 1) nobody but TRMG could see it and 2) TRMG explained that it is incorrect. Now you say: “My Eq.(1) – and if correctly interpreted Einstein’s Eq.(30a) – means something else”. So, could you please finally answer this question:

    what is the relation between the variables “T_tip” in your eq.(1) and “sigma” in Einstein’s eq.(30a)?

    Thanks

  185. Hanselllll says:

    That is a real concvincing argument, Rössler. Repeating thesame wrong stuff. Wow.

  186. Hanselllll says:

    “in the same time”

    There is nothing like that, old fool.

    (on an idealized neutron star, to be very specific)

    and somewhere else? The observed redshift is depending on the observer.…so another obsever observes something different. According to your “ontological” crap this would mean that the clock is running with different “lengths of seconds simultaneously.

  187. Hanselllll says:

    Lets not forget the still open question: What are the relationship between the variables in Einsteins and Rösslers equation?

    Dar old fool, why are you avoiding to answer this?

  188. With pleasure.

    Einstein’s 1907 equation, Eq. 30a on his page 457 of his paper “On the relativity principle and the conclusions drawn from it,” reads

    “sigma = tau (1 + Phi/c^2)”

    And he says (on the next page) that the upper clock – obviously referring to sigma – runs faster by the factor in the bracket. He then mentions on the page after that “the spectral lines” [of atoms] on the sun therefore ought to possess a “longer wavelength” than more up in the gravitational potential on on earth, because of slower clocks on the sun.

    My Eq.(1) of Telemach (on “Osama bin CERN”) reads:

    “T_tail = T_tip *(1+z), (1)

    where z+1 is the local gravitational redshift factor that applies in the Rindler metric (Einstein called it 1+Phi/c^2, Phi being the gravitational potential…)”

    Now your question (quote):
    “what is the relation between the variables “T_tip” in your eq.(1) and “sigma” in Einstein’s eq.(30a)?”

    Answer: Einstein’s sigma is the upper clock’s rate which is faster than that of the lower clock; my t_tail is the period of the lower clock which is longer than that of the upper twin clock by the same numerical factor.

    Since T_tail/T_tip = sigma/tau, one might guess that T_tau = sigma and T_tip = tau, but this would be misleading since here TWO inversions occur. First, we go from numbers to reciprocals, second we go from upstairs to downstairs. I leave the task of algebraically disentangling this mess (so that we come up with an expression for the ratio of T_tail to sigma (which you seem to be looking for) to you. Please, tell me – the formula will be very enlightening to every reader since this logical mess was too hard to disentangle for the algebraically minded majority so far.

  189. P.S. This answer was mean for PasserByAgain (the intermediaries were not yet visible).

  190. Hanselllll says:

    “I leave the task of algebraically disentangling this mess (so that we come up with an expression for the ratio of T_tail to sigma […] to you.”

    No, that is YOUR homework. Yau claim to be the big scientist, you are the one who accuses scientists being modern nazis and so on. So it is your personal task to formulate correct equations.

    BTW, now the T is again a frequency? A few days ago T was a time measured in seconds. Now it seems you have changed it again.

  191. Polemics is not science, as we agree. Why don’t you help constructively?

    My own polemics, for which I always feel ashamed, are not scientific but purely humane in character: if someone is about to kill his own children, it is not nice to politely look away. But that is just a personal opinion.

    I need everyone’s assistance to find out if the time for an unwarning call has come. Please help me find a sufficient reason for that. If not, please ask the UN Security Council how they decided.

  192. PassingByAgain says:

    Rossler: sorry but it’s your mess, YOU sort it out.

    “Einstein’s sigma is the upper clock’s rate which is faster than that of the lower clock. my t_tail is the period of the lower clock which is longer than that of the upper twin clock by the same numerical factor. ”

    RATE??? I’d rather think that the dimension of sigma is seconds (i.e., sigma is a time interval). Moreover, I am asking you for the *mathematcal* relation between sigma and T_tip (I mean, is sigma=T_tip? sigma=1/T_tip? or something else?) and you only give me blah blah about sigma and T_tail.

    “Since T_tail/T_tip = sigma/tau, one might guess that T_tau = sigma and T_tip = tau, but this would be misleading since here TWO inversions occur. First, we go from numbers to reciprocals, second we go from upstairs to downstairs.”

    FROM NUMBERS TO RECIPROCALS? What is that supposed to mean? Again, is the dimension of T_tip seconds or 1/seconds? and what about the dimension of sigma?

    “I leave the task of algebraically disentangling this mess (so that we come up with an expression for the ratio of T_tail to sigma (which you seem to be looking for) to you.”

    No thanks. Even if you will never bring yourself to admit it, you must have realized by now that “this mess” means simply that your equation is inconsistent with Einstein’s: you start by assuming that 1) T_tip = sigma and 2) both your equation and Einstein’s are correct, and you end up with T_tip = tau, in contradiction with 1).

    It seems to me that you are in pretty bad shape here. Can you save yourself by finally “sorting out your mess” and producing the relation between T_tip in your eq.(1) and sigma in Einstein’s eq.(30a)?

  193. No one with a better insight?

  194. PassingByAgain says:

    don’t be pathetic and just answer the damn question

  195. TRMG says:

    Rössler: “The only problem: My Eq.(1) – and if correctly interpreted Einstein’s Eq.(30a) – means something else. Namely, that in one second of the upper time, 1/2 second of the lower time took place ”

    This would not be “something else,” and it’s thus not what your equation describes. You certainly agree that 1 second (tip) > 1/2 second (tail), do you? Then compare with Eq. (1), but without changing the interpretation of the symbols along the way this time.

    “This is one and the same situation: “If time passes more slowly, unit time intervals are longer.””

    This was addressed at length in my comment. Simply repeating your statement is not an argument.

    “Why then? With the aim – so someone could fret – to block progress towards discussion of Eq.(2) with which the trouble of CERN’s begins. ”

    If you wanted to discuss Eq. (2) so badly why did you ignore all comments about it so far?

  196. Anthony L says:

    Thanks to TRMG for a handsome explication, which I shall read carefully after reading a breakthrough paper in biology that unfortunately just arrived. Rossler has generously managed two full answers, too, which is also great progress.

    But can we have fewer bad tempered potshots? The style in which a certain youth expresses himself here is about as unscientific as you can get. I will need a strong whiskey at sundown before trying to appreciate his genius.

    What a pity this discussion can’t be conducted by all in considered and well worded fashion. Anything less just muddies the waters. But I guess Hanselllll is Robin to TRMG’s Batman, is that it?

  197. PassingByAgain says:

    AnthonyL: Rossler has not “generously managed two full answers”. He wrote some random blah blah while accurately avoiding an answer to the precise question he is asked. When he was left without other arguments, he demanded an interlocutor with “more insight”. Read the full exchange: how does your hero look now?

  198. Eleni Koutso says:

    All,

    I can agree with Anthony L, that the emotional tone of this discussion must be toned down a bit.

    Has PassingByAgain any opinion on my post in the top thread (about any natural processes that can generate slow black holes)?

    Thank you,
    Eleni K

  199. PassingByAgain says:

    Eleni,
    I frankly don’t know what post you are talking about. Anyway no, I am not interested in debunking your pet theory

  200. Eleni Koutso says:

    PassingByAgain (and Peter Howell, and EQ, and TRMG),

    I am acting to support your side, so you should work with me to provide support to my idea, which may be a way to refute Professor Rossler’s claims.

    This is an attempt to provide a way to disprove Professor Rossler’s claims, so it is acting for your argument on this thread. My question is simple: are there any natural processes that can lead to slow moving uncharged black holes (like maybe two cosmic rays colliding somewhere, or particle collisions in a supernova remnant), if Professor Rossler is correct? If there are, and they are common, this can refute Professor Rossler’s argument.

    Thank you,
    Eleni Koutso

  201. PassingByAgain says:

    Hi Eleni,

    sorry if I was a bit rude in the message above, you will become rude too if you hang around this debate for more than a day. Your idea sounds reasonable, but it would take the discussion in a completely different direction (on which I surely cannot contribute anything that is not already in the LSAG report or in the Mangano-Giddings paper). Besides, there is no guarantee that Rossler would accept that kind of refutation either.

    Here we are trying to address what appears to be a very trivial mistake in the first equation of Rossler’s “theorem”, and still he managed to wiggle around for nearly a month without giving one single straight answer. If you want to support “my side” (I mean, the side of people writing down explicit formulae and accepting their implications) you could just join me in asking Rossler:

    what is the relation between the variables “T_tip” in your eq.(1) and “sigma” in Einstein’s eq.(30a)?

  202. I would very much welcome arguments along Ms. Koutso’s lines. I brought this topic up in my second CERN paper of 2008 and asked for counterarguments. There are really many ways to prove the danger to be non-existent. The easiest way is the most preferable one.

    Why it must be Einstein — the most difficult element in the chain of colluding mutually independent scientific safety-relevant results — I do not understand. On the other hand, the wrong interpretation of Einstein’s by Hawking definitively is the deepest reason why all the many thousand affiliates of CERN’s have no qualms about supporting its risky (to say the least) course in obedience to the official line “never say very small, always say zero risk.”

    As long as the chain remains unbroken at every element, the risk unfortunately is far from very small. That it should remain so for more than three years is what is the most appalling.

  203. PassingByAgain says:

    blah, blah, blah

    what is the relation between the variables “T_tip” in your eq.(1) and “sigma” in Einstein’s eq.(30a)?

  204. EQ says:

    Uh, Hawking has interpreted Einstein in a wrong way. A serious accusation from a man who was not able to explain hawking radiation at all. A man who never has adressed a single part of the hawking mechanism.

    what is the relation between the variables “T_tip” in your eq.(1) and “sigma” in Einstein’s eq.(30a)???

  205. Anthony L says:

    PassingBy, short temper is a sign of impatience which is a sign of tendency to cut off alternatives or possible misunderstandings (including yours) which you haven’t considered, or maybe just lack of time to do so.

    Are we to understand you still see no real response and no sense in what Rossler has said, as so many have claimed here in the past? If so, can you just say again in summary what is the significance of your single remaining challenge, since I don’t have the paper of 1907 handy?

    Sorry if this seems like asking you to recite the alphabet.

  206. Anthony L says:

    lifeboat.com/blog/2011/07/cern-by-not-updating-its-three-years-old-safety-page-compromises-the-quoted-scientists/comment-page-X#comment-87589

    This is page 5 of the Comments. The other 1,2,3,4 are found by inserting this url and changing the X to the page # you want.

  207. PassingByAgain says:

    Anthony:

    Rossler wrote down eq.(30a) of Einstein’s paper in this thread (Otto E. Rössler on July 13, 2011 3:57 am) and further quotes from that paper are in (TRMG on July 13, 2011 5:04 am). I already explained to you (PassingByAgain on July 16, 2011 3:29 am — item 4) as well as to Rossler (PassingByAgain on July 16, 2011 10:05 am) why I am asking for the relation between sigma and T_tip.

    Rossler consistently refuses to give an explicit definition of the variable T in his eq.(1), producing instead incoherent and self-contradictory mumblings (sometimes T is a “local period”, sometimes it’s a frequency, sometimes it’s “the duration of a second”, but then “it’s measured in seconds”, and so on). If Rossler could define his mysterious T in terms of a variable whose definition can be retrieved from textbooks, such as the sigma of Einstein, it would be finally possible to decide whether his eq.(1) is in flat contradiction with Einstein’s eq.(30), as it appears by just looking at them, or it is in agreement due to some magical redefinition of the variables.

    My guess is that Rossler himself is well aware of this, which is why he studiously avoids giving a straight answer. First he mumbles something incoherent (Otto E. Rössler on July 16, 2011 9:03 am) closing with the pathetic request that I “disentangle his mess” and write down the relation by myself. Then he asks for another interlocutor with more insight, and starts posting nonsense (e.g. what the email of the UN security council?) on other threads. This is the kind of obstructionist behavior that makes people impatient.

    Now please stop acting as if you were the moderator of a discussion in which you look like you don’t have a clue. Read e.g. TRMG’s excellent explanation (TRMG on July 16, 2011 3:07 am) and decide for yourself. Your long moralizing speeches only shift the focus of the discussion away from Rossler’s equations, and give him an excuse to evade the questions.

  208. PassingByAgain says:

    surprise, Rossler commented on the thread “Can the World Live with the Logic of CERN?”. Now he says that T_tip = K/sigma. I think he’s about to hang himself with his own rope…

  209. TRMG says:

    “sometimes it’s a frequency,”

    Yep, in the other thread we’re just back to “frequency” again. Poor Rössler presents this idea so triumphantly as if it was never imagined by anyone previously, and he’s obviously completely unaware how this approach devastates the whole rest of his Telemach paper. Even though it was repeatedly pointed out.

  210. TRMG says:

    Oops I was too late. ;-)

  211. Otto E. Rossler says:

    Repeat:
    I promised my young readers who suddenly keep silent about Eq.(1) of Telemach also an explicit quantitative version to my verbal proof given yesterday that Eq.(1) is equivalent to Einstein’s Eq.(30a):

    Einstein said: f_up/f_down = 1+z, with z = Phi/c^2;

    Telemach says: P_down/P_up = 1+z, with z = Phi/z^2,

    with f_up = K/P_up, f_down = K/P_down, K constant.

    (Einstein wrote sigma and tau for f_up and f_down, respectively;
    I wrote T_tail for P_down and T_tip for P_up.)

    Hence Telemach merely repeats Einstein. I expect no objections any more from the crowd. Take care.

  212. Otto E. Rossler says:

    Last bastion: the dimension of the constant K.

    Is anyone able to solve this major remaining conundrum on which Telemach and the world now hangs?

    Take care.

  213. TRMG says:

    “Is anyone able to solve this major remaining conundrum on which Telemach and the world now hangs?”

    I opt for “dimensionless,” because you say L/T is a velocity (speed of light).

  214. PassingByAgain says:

    well, it’s YOUR equation so YOU solve the conundrum. What is K?

  215. TRMG says:

    Oh no, wait that doesn’t work. L/T can never be a velocity.

    I think you already saved the earth by admitting that T is a “constant over local time.”

  216. Otto E. Rossler says:

    I already said a constant of whatever dimension that appears both in the enumerator and the denominator of an equation can possess whatever dimensionality you choose: the latter cancels and leaves a pretty “1” in both places.

  217. PassingByAgain says:

    sorry, K does *not* cancel out of the equation T_tip = K/sigma, which we need to finally define T_tip before moving on to your eq.(2). So, again, what is K?

    And please, stick to just one comment thread (e.g. this one)

  218. TRMG says:

    I think he means that it cancels out in the eq.

    sigma/ tau = T_tail/T_tip = const.

    But if he doesn’t care about the dimension let’s just assume K=1.

  219. Otto E. Rossler says:

    Fair enough.

  220. TRMG says:

    So what is c=L/T then? How come your “mass energy” in Eq. (3) doesn’t scale like a frequency, but like a time, in contradiction to the quantum mechanical relation E = h f?

  221. Questions getting beter, we already reached Eq.(3) of Telemach. Please, explain what you have in mind.

  222. PassingByAgain says:

    Rossler: you haven’t answered TRMG (as usual).

    You finally accept that T = 1/sigma

    Since sigma is a time (expressed in seconds) T has to be a frequency (expressed in 1/seconds).

    Now, you write that eq.(2) follows from the fact that c = L/T. We all know what c is, and now you say that T is a frequency. But L is a length (isn’t it?) so you can see that your c has the wrong dimensions (length*time instead of length/time).

    Moral of the story: your eq.(2) is inconsistent with your eq.(1), Telemach is dead.

  223. Quote from Telemach: “If all temporal wavelengths T are increased, the very same thing is bound to hold true for the spatial wavelengths L of the same light waves L_tail = L_tip *(1+z), (2) ”

    Please, explain what you find wrong with this sentence.

  224. PassingByAgain says:

    Rossler: you haven’t answered my objection. Quoting for Telemach, just below eq.(2):

    “Formally this conclusion follows from the constancy of the speed of light c (since L/T = c implies L = cT for light waves).”

    if L is a length and T is a frequency then your speed of light c=L/T has the wrong dimensions, length*time. Either eq.(1) is wrong, or eq.(2), which follows from c=L/T, is wrong. Telemach is dead.

  225. PassingByAgain says:

    P.S. my condolences to Odysseh and Penelopeh ;-)

  226. Come on.

    I don’t understand your way of thinking — searching for tidbits that all are based on not wanting to understand.
    L is spatial wavelength, T is the temporal one.

    Do you and your young friends really believe that finding something new is ridiculous and that science is an immutable canon that is very hard to learn and can only be reproduced by the high priests of orthodoxy after a long learning period?

    When I was young, I would have followed the new and exciting, not the monolithic mainstream even though this is risky.

    Of course you have the power on your side — but only as long as you do not reveal your identity and do not start to have an original opinion of your own. It is virtually certain that CERN is wrong; it is quite possible that I am wrong; but the new thing that you might find in between is most likely the future. Take care.

  227. PassingByAgain says:

    blah, blah, blah. What is it that you just said? Nothing!

    My way of thinking consists in writing down explicit formulae and following up on their implications. Let’s go back to the facts:

    1) you finally admitted that, for your eq.(1) to be correct, T has to be a frequency (T = 1/sigma, where sigma is a time interval)

    2) you wrote in Telemach that “formally, [eq.(2)] follows from the constancy of the speed of light c (since L/T = c implies L = cT for light waves).”

    3) if T is a frequency and L is a length, your speed of light c has the wrong dimensions (length*time)

    4) ergo, either your eq.(1) is wrong or your eq.(2) is wrong.

    There’s no way around it, Telemach is dead and no amount of vacuous preaching will resuscitate it.

  228. If an expression of sympathy were nothing, I would agree.

    (Quote: 1) “… sigma is a time interval”

    No, sigma is a frequency with Einstein.

    So the rest of your syllogism breaks down.

  229. eq says:

    That was the final error, Rössler. Einstein wrote explicitly of *times* tau and sigma in his 1907 paper.

    So your arguments brak down. It is time to admit it. And to apologize

  230. PassingByAgain says:

    SERIOUSLY? you are contradicting yourself (and Einstein) again:

    Otto E. Rössler on July 13, 2011 3:57 am:

    “with “tau the time of the system in the initial point of the coordinates” (p. 456) and “sigma the local time of a point event” (p. 456). Phi is the gravitational potential. Whereby both sigma and tau are time differences (periods, in modern parlance).”

    TRMG on July 13, 2011 5:04 am (quoting Einstein):

    “If a clock showing local time is located at point P of gravitational potential Phi, then, according to Eq. (30a), its reading will be (1+Phi/c²) times *greater* than the time tau, i.e, it runs (1+Phi/c²) times faster than an identical clock located at the coordinate origin.”

    Back then you seemed pretty convinced that tau and sigma are times, and Einstein’s own words corroborate that point of view (e.g., “die Zeit τ”).

    Now you’ve suddenly changed your mind? You are clutching at straws, just do yourself a favor and forget about the whole business.

  231. PassingByAgain says:

    Off to the real word, have fun while you make up some new excuse…

  232. PassingByAgain says:

    (world)

  233. TRMG says:

    This is unbelievable. First T and sigma are both local times. Then suddenly today we have an epiphany that sigma = 1/T, which makes T a frequency. Now, just a few hours later, both sigma and T are frequencies, invalidating everything that was said previously, including today’s definition sigma = 1/T. Rössler, seriously, what is wrong with you?

  234. TRMG says:

    And just to make that clear, “sigma” is “Ortszeit,” i.e. local time, according to Einstein, not “Ortsfrequenz”.

  235. PassingByAgain says:

    Isn’t it sad how all of Rossler’s fanboys appear to have abandoned him in these dire times? Robert, Anthony, robomoon, where are you? How does your hero look now?

  236. Hanselllll says:

    robert is learning algebra :D

  237. Sorry. The quote “Sigma is a frequency with Einstein” is nonsense — my fault.

    I apologize for two mistakes. First, I got carried away two days ago, after reading (on p. 456 of Einstein’s 1907 paper) that tau is a “time element” (Zeitelement) even though tau and sigma are a “time” everywhere else in his paper, into believing that this was the central meaning of sigma and tau. Then I made the genuine mistake of transposing “time element” in my mind into “frequency” which is absolute nonsense. I take this back with apologies.

    But: Does this blunder have any consequences regarding the validity of Einstein’s equation (30a)? Clearly not. Does it have a consequence on my equivalent equation (1)? No. The fact that I am a stupid human being (my young son always called me “stupid old grey one” in an affectionate tone) has nothing to do with the validity of Einstein’s equation (30a) or my equivalent Eq.(1).

    I hope you will not give up on trying to find a fault with Eq.(1) in Telemach.

  238. PassingByAgain says:

    Be more explicit, please: are you retracting your earlier statement that the relation between T_tip in your eq.(1) and sigma in Einstein’s eq.(30a) is T_tip = 1/sigma?

    - if that is the case, what is the correct relation between T_tip and sigma?

    - if that is not the case, and you still think that T = 1/sigma, then eq.(2) is incorrect, because eq.(2) follows from the requirement c = L/T, but c has the wrong dimensions to be the speed of light.

  239. Hansel says:

    Rössler got lost in his own equations

  240. We have yesterday’s equation (TRMG 5:51 AM):

    “sigma/ tau = T_tail/T_tip = const. ” ( = 1+ Phi/c^2)

    Here sigma is Einstein’s local time upstairs which progresses faster (Einstein 1907, p. 456), T_tail is the duration of a unit period downstairs which compared to above is longer.

    Where do you see a problem?

  241. P.S.: I answered PassingByAgain not yet seeing Hansel

  242. PassingByAgain says:

    Rossler: I see, you are desperately trying to go back to your hand-waving chatter about “unit periods” and crap like that. It won’t work.

    I am asking you for the mathematical relation between T_tip and sigma, in order to determine in a formal and non-ambiguous way what you mean by T.

    Yesterday you concluded from the equation that you wrote above that T_tip is inversely proportional to sigma, and — since now you agree that sigma is a time — that makes T_tip a frequency. Therefore, the derivation of your eq.(2) is incorrect, because c = L/T cannot be the speed of light. You are still stuck in the contradiction between your eq.(1) and your eq.(2), and Telemach is still dead.

  243. P.S.2: This IS conceptually difficult, otherwise the whole world would not be watching breathlessly.

  244. Quote: “that makes T_tip a frequency”

    Objections, your honor. Think again.

  245. PassingByAgain says:

    To make it simple, please answer this question with a yes or a no:

    do you still stand by your earlier assertions that the relation between T_tip in your eq.(1) and sigma in Einstein’s eq.(30a) is T_tip = K/sigma, where K is an irrelevant constant that can be set to 1?

  246. You did not see my last entry yet.

  247. PassingByAgain says:

    and please don’t give me any more crap like “Objections, your honor. Think again”. Just give explicit answers to the questions.

  248. PassingByAgain says:

    take some time to think up your next desperate move, I am leaving now

  249. Your statement (quote) “that makes T_tip a frequency” is false.

    You have to explain why you make this claim. I cannot reproduce your logical path. Maybe someone else can explain in your stead?

  250. Hansel says:

    Perhaps you should do a dimensional analysis of your equation.

  251. Hansel says:

    “T_tip = K/sigma, where K is an irrelevant constant that can be set to 1″

    What dimension has the T_tip in this equation which was introduced by you, Rössler?

  252. Please, give a detail of what you are driving at.

  253. TRMG says:

    Rössler: “Your statement (quote) “that makes T_tip a frequency” is false. ”

    What? The last thing you managed before getting confused about Einstein’s “Zeitelement” sigma was defining: T = 1/sigma. We assume that this still holds. The inverse of a time interval like sigma is a frequency or a “rate.” (In case you want to reserve “frequency” for periodic processes.) What it certainly is *not* is a “period” or anything else measured in seconds.

  254. Our questions crossed.

    This K was an unnecessary assumption. The above equation quoted from TRMG is much more fitting because more complete:

    “sigma/ tau = T_tail/T_tip = const. ” ( = 1+ Phi/c^2)

    There arises no problem here.

  255. TRMG says:

    “There arises no problem here.”

    Yes, there do arise problems. Only which kind of problems arise depends on your definition of T. So it would be nice if you could finally settle for a definition, so that we can tell you what the problems are.

  256. My last answer was to Hansel.

  257. I appreciate your kind help with the previous page (it worked).

    We had seen that this was false. Why come back?

  258. TRMG says:

    What was false?

  259. PassingByAgain says:

    Rossler: the equation you are hanging to now does not say anything about the definition of T. That equation is simply what you get if you *assume* that both your eq.(1) and Einstein’s eq.(30a) are both true.

    NOW, PLEASE, ANSWER THIS QUESTION WITH A YES OR NO:

    Do you still stand by your earlier assertions that the relation between T_tip in your eq.(1) and sigma in Einstein’s eq.(30a) is T_tip = K/sigma, where K is an irrelevant constant that can be set to 1?

    Don’t think that you can escape the question by waving your hands again. Please save everybody’s time and give a straight answer.

  260. Let me first reproduce the context which is invisible otherweise:
    ——–
    TRMG on July 18, 2011 4:23 am (Edit)
    Rössler: “Your statement (quote) “that makes T_tip a frequency” is false. ”

    What? The last thing you managed before getting confused about Einstein’s “Zeitelement” sigma was defining: T = 1/sigma. We assume that this still holds. The inverse of a time interval like sigma is a frequency or a “rate.” (In case you want to reserve “frequency” for periodic processes.) What it certainly is *not* is a “period” or anything else measured in seconds.

    Otto E. Rössler on July 18, 2011 4:27 am (Edit)
    Our questions crossed.

    This K was an unnecessary assumption. The above equation quoted from TRMG is much more fitting because more complete:

    “sigma/ tau = T_tail/T_tip = const. ” ( = 1+ Phi/c^2)

    There arises no problem here.
    ———————–
    (Then 255 above begins)
    ———————-
    Where are we?
    What is unclear about
    “sigma/ tau = T_tail/T_tip = const. ” ( = 1+ Phi/c^2)
    ?

  261. PassingByAgain says:

    nothing is unclear, but that equation does not say anything about the definition of T. It’s simply what you get if you *assume* that your eq.(1) and Einstein’s eq.(30a) are both true.

    NOW, PLEASE, ANSWER THIS QUESTION WITH A YES OR NO:

    Do you still stand by your earlier assertions that the relation between T_tip in your eq.(1) and sigma in Einstein’s eq.(30a) is T_tip = K/sigma, where K is an irrelevant constant that can be set to 1?

    Don’t think that you can escape the question by waving your hands again. Please save everybody’s time and give a straight answer.

  262. TRMG says:

    Rössler, does T_tip = 1/sigma still hold? Yes or no.

  263. Now PasserBy Again emerged in between (we are all too fast today…). I answer him:

    We have a better equation now which does not introduce a spurious constant. We should stick to the latter.

    Hence, please, re-state your question with respect to an equation that has physical importance:

    “sigma/ tau = T_tail/T_tip = const. ” ( = 1+ Phi/c^2),

    if you can reformulate it for it.

    The equation which you quote, T_tip = K/sigma,
    is unlucky. There is no K anywhere in reality.

  264. TRMG says:

    ““sigma/ tau = T_tail/T_tip = const. ” ( = 1+ Phi/c^2),

    if you can reformulate it for it.”

    The question is about the relation between sigma and the T’s. What is it?

    [ ] T_tail = sigma
    [ ] T_tip = 1/sigma
    [ ] something else.

  265. PassingByAgain says:

    Rossler: “unlucky”? what does that mean? I am quoting an equation that YOU wrote, are you retracting it now?

    Anyway, I like TRMG’s latest formulation of the question that we’ve been asking over and over:

    The question is about the relation between sigma and the T’s. What is it?

    [ ] T_tail = sigma
    [ ] T_tip = 1/sigma
    [ ] something else.

    Please, cut the crap and give an explicit answer.

  266. Otto E. Rossler says:

    Quote: “The question is about the relation between sigma and the T’s. What is it?
    [ ] T_tail = sigma
    [ ] T_tip = 1/sigma
    [ ] something else.”

    Dear TRMG:
    Thank you for your precise question.

    Sigma is a time, tau is a time; L_tail is a time interval, L_tip is a time interval.

    Sigma is the faster-running time upstairs according to Einstein.
    So sigma implies a larger number of ticks (unit wavelengths in time) that a clock is making upstairs compared to downstairs.
    L_tail is the longer interval of one unit time period (the longer unit wavelength in time) which is valid downstairs.

    So L_tail is the temporal wavelength downstairs which is longer there than upstairs.

    IF time runs faster upstairs, its unit wavelengths there are shorter. So the two descriptions are consistent with each other. They say the same thing in terms of their ratios; the equation “sigma/ tau = T_tail/ T_tip = const. = 1+ Phi/c^2” is correct.

    In a layman’s terms: “If the seconds are longer, the cumulative time passed is shorter.”

    I am happy with this result since this is what Telemach implies.

    But you wanted to hear something else, I am afraid. You wanted to hear perhaps that the shorter unit intervals of a faster-running clock upstairs – their periods – are inversely proportional to the ticking rate. The faster the ticking, the shorter the pertinent seconds. But it is not easy to put this into a general formula. Would you do it for me?

    I would say, in terms of your above 3 alternatives and replacing = by the proportionality sign, that the first two equations of your triplet are correct with wavy equality signs. Is this acceptable to you?

  267. Hansel says:

    How long is a second?

  268. Hansel says:

    And by the way you have again avoided to answer precise to the precise question.

  269. Hansel says:

    “But it is not easy to put this into a general formula. Would you do it for me?”

    You are the one introducing an absolute time in time dilation. Therefore you have to formulate your mess.

  270. Otto E. Rossler says:

    No understanding in sight???

  271. PassingByAgain says:

    Rossler: as usual you have not answered the question. “Wavy equality signs” have no place in a rigorous discussion about physics, although they probably provide a good representation of your own mental processes.

    You say:

    2) “Sigma is a time, tau is a time; L_tail is a time interval, L_tip is a time interval.”

    first of all, I suppose that you mean T_tail and T_tip. Second, you now seem to introduce a distinction between “time” and “time interval”. How is “time” different from “time interval”? In which units are “time” and “time interval” expressed, respectively?

    2) “the equation “sigma/ tau = T_tail/ T_tip = const. = 1+ Phi/c^2” is correct. (…) I am happy with this result since this is what Telemach implies.”

    no, this is not “a result”. As I already told you twice, this equation is simply what you get if you *assume* that your eq.(1) and Einstein’s eq.(30a) are both correct, and you combine them. As such, this equation provides *zero* information on whether eq.(1) is correct. Moreover, it does not provide a definition for T, thus we cannot use it to decide whether eq.(2) is correct.

    3) “But you wanted to hear something else, I am afraid. (…) But it is not easy to put this into a general formula. Would you do it for me?”

    Again this pathetic plea that your critics do your homework for you? We cannot know what goes on inside your head, it’s YOUR mess and YOU have to sort it out.

    4) “I would say, in terms of your above 3 alternatives and replacing = by the proportionality sign, that the first two equations of your triplet are correct with wavy equality signs. Is this acceptable to you?”

    Of course I should let TRMG answer for himself, but I’m pretty sure that it’s NOT acceptable for him (anyway, it is certainly not acceptable for me).

    So, once again:

    What is the mathematical relation between the variable T_tip in your eq.(1) and the variable sigma in Einstein’s eq.(30a)?

    Be assured that this will never stop until you give a straight answer.

  272. PassingByAgain says:

    Rossler: moreover, don’t you see how nonsensical is what you write?

    “I would say, in terms of your above 3 alternatives and replacing = by the proportionality sign, that the first two equations of your triplet are correct with wavy equality signs. Is this acceptable to you?”

    First of all, do you want the “proportionality sign” or the “wavy equality sign”? They are different things, you know (neither of them acceptable for our purposes, anyway).

    But let’s take your statement at face value. It implies:

    sigma (wavily equal to, or proportional to) T_tail
    AND
    sigma (wavily equal to, or proportional to) 1 / T_tip

    but T_tail and T_tip obviously have the same dimension, whatever that is.
    Therefore, T_tail and 1/T_tip have different dimensions. How can sigma be proportional (or wavily equal, whatever that means) to T_tail and to 1/T_tip at the same time?

  273. Hansel says:

    Of course in a “safety conference” there would be asked the same questions because Rösslers style of writing a “scientific paper” meets nowhere any scientific standards required for publication.

  274. PassingByAgain says:

    So, once again:

    What is the mathematical relation between the variable T_tip in your eq.(1) and the variable sigma in Einstein’s eq.(30a)?

    Be assured that this will never stop until you give a straight answer.

  275. Otto E. Rossler says:

    Thank you for finding the typo with L_tail and L_tip instead of T_tail and T_tip.

    I have to leave for today but I thank you for your perseverance. Take care.
    I just add in running that we here do not need take units as seriously as you believe. I will comeback to this.

  276. PassingByAgain says:

    oh yeah, please come back to this. And while you are at it, also tell us:

    What is the mathematical relation between the variable T_tip in your eq.(1) and the variable sigma in Einstein’s eq.(30a)?

  277. TRMG says:

    Rössler: “Is this acceptable to you? ” No, because it didn’t answer the question: I want you to define your symbols T unambiguously in terms of well-known physical quantities like local times or frequencies. This means no wavy equality signs, no undetermined proportionality factors, no private jargon like “temporal wavelength.” Just tell us what T is. It doesn’t help if you just call it a time interval, of course, because local time varies. And also, “time interval” contradicts yesterday’s definition T_tip = 1/sigma. Do you have any explanatory remarks to offer about that?

    BTW, you can cut out nonsense like the following one immediately:

    “L_tail is the longer interval of one unit time period (the longer unit wavelength in time) which is valid downstairs. “
    […]
    In a layman’s terms: “If the seconds are longer, the cumulative time passed is shorter.” ”

    It was explained previously why this is complete bullshit, so don’t bother repeating it as if no one ever objected. The cumulative time is number of seconds *times* duration of one second. No matter what you imagine a “longer second” to be, it doesn’t make time intervals shorter, if you increase the duration of the time unit. Or is 2 minutes shorter than 2 seconds?

    “But you wanted to hear something else, I am afraid. You wanted to hear perhaps that the shorter unit intervals of a faster-running clock upstairs – their periods – are inversely proportional to the ticking rate. The faster the ticking, the shorter the pertinent seconds. But it is not easy to put this into a general formula. Would you do it for me? ”

    Oh dear, no I didn’t want to hear anything about shorter unit intervals, because we already refuted that nonsense on the previous page.

  278. Otto E. Rossler says:

    Dear children:

    You made a mockery out of my politeness by demanding I should, in two equal dimensionless ratios, give answers about the relation between the respective cross units.

    So everyone who contributed actively to the mockery will not get any answer from me any more (unless they apologize).

    Shall I refer to them as the “Korean two-finger gang” in the future — “the best and only defenders of CERN’s”?

  279. Anthony L says:

    @PassingBy I wasn’t acting as the moderator, I was merely asking for you people to have better manners of the kind that might drive you to express yourself more cogently and in ordered fashion, in a way that doesn’t demand onlookers have to spend so much time working out what you think is the issue here, and doesn’t leave them with the distinct impression you are not constructive debaters but merely Pekinese snarling, yapping and tearing at poor Rossler’s trouser legs. At least TRMG was setting a good example this weekend, and you appeared to be following.

    You know, I wouldn’t try to write any kind of textbook if I was you, I don’t think you have the capacity to make your own ideas clear, let alone anyone else’s. And you lack the one essential of good comprehensive, let alone original thinkers, which is the capacity to see that you might wrong and say so cheerfully. That Rossler has just demonstrated. Much more impressive than your ranting.

    At the moment, we just have the Pekineses squad pulling at Rossler’s trouser leg, as far as this reader can see, having been drawn away by responsibilities in other directions, including what proved to be a paradigm changing, seminal paper in biology, which will change the course of cancer research. This incoherent scrap is what Web threads lead to, most of the time. No one sane can be bothered to disentangle the mess. What a waste of valuable time.

    Come on TRMG, you can do it!

  280. Hanselllll says:

    Rössler, what is the dimension of the T now?

  281. Hanselllll says:

    Anthony, it is the other way around. very person with a little bit of scientific training sees easily that Rössler avoids to define even the basic equations.

    To discuss papers it is importnat to know exactly the definitions and dimensions of every part of it. Original thinking does not replace clear and precise defintions. And you should really ask yourself why Rössler is not able to give a short and clear answer to the same basic questions as four weeks ago.

  282. Anthony L says:

    @Hansellll absolutely agree, both sides have to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.

  283. PassingByAgain says:

    Anthony: stop preaching. You are indeed wasting your (and our) time, trying to shift the focus of this discussion away from the only thing worth discussing here: the correctness of Rossler’s formulae.

    Rossler: “You made a mockery out of my politeness by demanding I should, in two equal dimensionless ratios, give answers about the relation between the respective cross units.”

    What are you saying now? It sounds totally incoherent, but I guess that you are still referring to the equation “sigma/ tau = T_tail/ T_tip = const.” (but “the respective cross units”? go figure!) Anyway, as long as you keep repeating yourself, I’ll keep doing the same (and I should warn you that I don’t tire easily):

    the equation “sigma/ tau = T_tail/ T_tip = const.” is simply what you get if you *assume* that your eq.(1) and Einstein’s eq.(30a) are both correct, and you combine them. As such, this equation provides *zero* information on whether eq.(1) is correct. Moreover, it does not provide a definition for T, thus we cannot use it to decide whether eq.(2) is correct.

    If you want this discussion to progress, you MUST provide a mathematical definition of T, in terms of some other quantity whose meaning is not ambiguous. Therefore:

    What is the relation between the variable T_tip in your eq.(1) and the variable sigma in Einstein’s eq.(30a)?

    “So everyone who contributed actively to the mockery will not get any answer from me any more (unless they apologize).”

    What is this, another cheap attempt to evade the questions? Not that we got any answers from you so far…

  284. PassingByAgain says:

    Besides, weren’t you supposed to come back and explain to me why units are not important? What made you change your mind?

  285. Anthony L says:

    “Anthony: stop preaching. You are indeed wasting your (and our) time, trying to shift the focus of this discussion away from the only thing worth discussing here: the correctness of Rossler’s formulae.”

    No, I was trying to get you and others to state your critique in terms which others can follow without deconstructing it and then reassembling it in intelligible terms, and to make it complete, and therefore convincing if Rossler doesn’t answer it directly.

    The focus on style in this case is the focus on clarity, evidence, logic and dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, unalloyed by distracting barking, growling, yapping, and trouser gripping. So that your triumphant victory or embarrassing defeat is visible to all who need to appreciate it, in this case the 6.9 billion other inhabitants of the planet.

  286. PassingByAgain says:

    Alas, the level of this discussion has progressively stooped to the level of basic algebra, and could hardly be lower than this — if you can’t follow it I am afraid it is your problem. As for the other 6.9 billion, are you becoming as delusional as Rossler? Nobody cares about this anymore! Rossler had his fifteen minutes of fame in the summer of 2008, until actual scientists looked into his “theories”, concluded that they are a pile of crap, and everybody moved on.

  287. Anthony L says:

    Its the consequences of the basic algebra, PAssingBy, that matter, and by the way, algebra is not “low”. It is delightfully shorn of human emotion of the baser kind.

    The consequence of whether Rossler is right or wrong is the issue, not whether irresponsible schoolboys at CERN managed to pull the wool over the eyes of the untutored and overly awed media.

  288. Hansel says:

    Rössler tries to avoid again serious questions:
    http://lifeboat.com/blog/2011/07/cern%E2%80%99s-last-media-g…ngers-gang