Welcome to Space News from the Electric Universe,
brought to you by The Thunderbolts Project™
at Thunderbolts.info
The following presentation is an adaptation of the Mel Acheson,
Thunderbolts Picture of the Day article, 'Back to Basics',
the link to the article may be found in the description box of this video.
Newton, Einstein, Darwin and the other early explorers of science,
discovered the new world of fundamental laws of reality
and the scientists will come after them are mere colonists.
Continuing this line of thought,
John Horgan writes in the end of science that the late comers have only two choices,
to apply those fundamental discoveries in the construction of derivative theories
or "...to pursue science in a speculative post empirical mode
that I call ironic science...
Ironic science offers points of view, opinions, which are, at best, interesting,
which provoke further a comment.
But it doesn't converge on the truth.
It cannot achieve empirically verifiable surprises that forced scientists
to make substantial revisions in their basic description of reality."
Horgan classifies most modern theories as ironic science.
Super string theory
and the inflationary Big Bang,
and punctuated equilibrium.
This interesting opinion provokes me to make a couple of further comments
a "basic description" of reality is not the same thing as fundamental laws.
Fundamental laws or generalities
reality is concrete.
A description of reality asserts among other things
which fundamental law applies in which real situation.
Between the laws and reality lies the description
in which scientists select which laws to apply.
The accepted description of reality in astronomy
asserts that only the law of gravity applies in space.
The law can be Newton's or it can be Einsteins,
but it cannot be Darwin's law of evolution.
A description of astronomical reality based on Darwin's law
probably wouldn't make any sense.
But the point is that one law is selected and another is not.
Even the particle physicists who lately have invaded astronomy
select only certain fundamental laws
on which to construct their basic description of atomic reality.
This business of selection is so simple as to be not worth mentioning.
But not mentioning it leads to not paying attention to it
which leads to skipping over it in the occasional circumstance
when it may be important.
My next comment of course is that it's important now.
Horrigan and the scientists he interviewed for his book have overlooked a deeper irony.
While the theories of ironic science have been unable to
"achieve empirically verifiable surprises".
Experimental and observational science has produced a flood of them.
Nearly every discovery of the space age
from the Van Allen radiation belts around the earth
to the high velocity winds around Neptune
has been pronounced as a surprise.
And the surprises have been surprising precisely because
they haven't verified the prevailing basic description of reality.
One might think a reasonable plan in this circumstance
would be to take a second look at the fundamental laws selected for one's description.
One doesn't have to resort to anything as ridiculous as consider in Darwin's law.
For instance the laws of electromagnetism have been lying around for over a century
mostly ignored except by a few electrical engineers
because you "can't get charged separation in space".
The problem is that scientists are like the horse led to water,
neither the failure of ironic science to achieve empirical surprises
nor the failure of achieved empirical surprises to verify the accepted description
can force scientists to drink basic provisions if they don't want to.
Selection is the result of wanting to choose
and if you want to defend a theory
you can always find expedient excuses.
Almost nothing outside the solar system and a lot of things inside it
don't obey either Einstein's or Newton's law of gravity.
e.g. The stars in the arms of spiral galaxies revolving about the same velocity
instead of slowing down with distance as gravity predicts.
To make these observations fit the gravitational description of reality
astronomers have chosen to hedge the fundamental law
with a thicket of ironic opinions and points of view that are not empirical.
There might be appropriately configured halos of unseen dark matter
outside the galaxies that produce the observed velocities.
This avoids the necessity of questioning fundamentals,
but it turns the basic description of reality
into an imaginative fantasy that is explanatory
but neither verifiable nor falsifiable.
Modern theories with appropriate adjustments
can explain everything and anything
just as psychoanalysis with childhood trauma.
The dark matter of the mind can explain any behavior.
However the point of science is not merely to explain,
but to find out which explanation is actually the case.
For that you need more than one explanation from which to choose.
This object might be a black hole,
that object might be dark matter,
having disallowed competition from fundamentally different theories.
There's no way to tell if those objects might be something else.
Verification alone is inadequate.
You need to search for alternatives and to test them to gain reliability.
Planting more hedges of ad-hoc hypotheses around the fundamental law of gravity
may appeal to ironic scientists.
But other scientists
mostly outside astronomy are more inclined toward empirical results.
The new field of plasma cosmology has admitted Maxwell's laws of electromagnetism
to the description of astronomical reality.
The properties of electrical discharges applied to the phenomena of space
by such pioneers as Birkeland,
Langmuir
and Alfvén explained the new discoveries without ironic fantasies.
The revised description expects the observations
that are surprising to the standard gravity only version.
And this electrical description is directly verifiable in plasma labs.
Dark matter and 10 dimensional super strings are not.
The reality we think we see is constantly being revised
by what we actually see of a partially known reality.
Usually the revisions are superficial,
but there have been times in the history of thought
when the revisions have reached to the basics.
Plasma cosmology hasn't discovered a new fundamental law
it merely replaces one law - gravity -
with another - electromagnetism -
but the effect on the basic description of astronomical reality
is as great as if a new law had been discovered.
We think we see an entirely new reality
this shouldn't be a surprise!
The Space Age has brought substantial revisions in instrumentation
allowing us to sense the entire electromagnetic spectrum.
From radio wavelengths to gamma wavelengths.
For the first time in human history
we are not restricted to an anthropocentric sensory viewpoint.
The Space Age has also brought substantial revisions in location
allowing us to sense the cosmos from positions off the Earth's surface.
For the first time in human history,
we are not restricted to a geocentric positional viewpoint.
We should expect these revisions in basic viewpoint
to be accompanied by a revision in the basic description of the reality viewed.
The ultimate irony would be that in the face of our liberation
from an anthropocentric and geocentric viewpoint.
We would be unable or unwilling to liberate ourselves
from a traditional way of thinking about reality.