Wacky Physics: It must be right, because the math works!

The New England Skeptical Society interviewed Adams on their podcast, The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. You can get the podcast at http://www.theskepticsguide.org/skepticsguide/podcastinfo.asp?pid=51, which also has an extended email conversation between NESS president Dr. Stephen Novella and Adams.

All of this -- all of Adams's cosmology -- is to handle the fact that he just can't accept plate tectonics.

Be warned, the interview gets quite painful to listen to.

Wow/woo. I'm not sure I was ready for something so scary, this early in the morning. Need some coffee now.

Planck. Max Planck. (Against the rules of German orthography, BTW.)

Obviously, the reason my head is spinning now is because of the Coriolis effect due to the rotating universe, jam-packed with PMPs.

A pity, since at one time I liked Neal Adams' naturalistic style in his comics. But artists seems often afflicted by kookery, as engineers from the other side of an imagined cultural divide. Perhaps it is the same psychological mechanisms behind, a strong "can do" attitude.

So let me get this straight:

If I propose that the entire universe is in fact made out of, say, squirrels and nuts, and that one squirrel has a mass of 1/1840th of the proton weight, then I can wave my hands and say "the math works!" and my entire theory - including all the wacky bits about gravity being the inherent attraction that squirrels have for nuts, and any repulsive force being the nuts trying to get away - is proven?

Wow, this fundamental particle physics is easier than I thought. I wonder if I can get a research grant for building a squirrel accelerator...

Waitaminnit, this guy's a graphic artist? No wonder his CGI work is so awful.

Fortunately, the basic prototype technology necessary to build a squirrel accelerator is already in place, though it is not (ahem) completely reliable.

Ahhh, Thompson, Dirac, and Anderson were so close! If only they had been clever enough to predict/find the PMP! What a drag :(

Hey, these last few articles (this one and nullity) are really bumming me out. Mainly because about halfway through the article I say to myself "Well, It could work." and then feel incredibly dumb for considering it by the end of the article. (and i still say on this one that it could be true but he hasn't actually provided any evidence for it. or perhaps I want it to be true because it's so much simpler than the standard model, much like string theory.)

But the articles have also kinda bummed me out because I always liked the idea that one guy with a crazy idea could be right (i.e. Einstein). You got any of those type articles (the ones that involve theories that are long shots but are actually reasonable) laying around?

Torbj&oml;rn:

But artists seems often afflicted by kookery, as engineers from the other side of an imagined cultural divide.

People who fall for things are often termed "suggestible". I have a suspicion that "suggestible" is just a form of "creative".
Consider a typical (non-hoax) alien abduction "victim", for example. Someone has a real physiological experience. (Let's say a seizure in the temporal lobe, which is one common theory.) It's a bit traumatic, as you'd expect. And the brain gets some sensations which it doesn't understand.
Now imagine that you're the sort of person who is constantly inspired by what you see to create things (i.e. an artist). A weird, traumatic experience like that is going to set your brain off creating things.
In many respects this is no different from the hundreds of paintings that Van Gogh painted when he was manic. It's tempting to say that "artists are mad", which might be slightly true in a metaphorical sense, but it's no more true than it is for engineers. Engineers are also creative, for the most part.
For the record, I have no evidence for this theory. Not being trained in psychology or psychiatry, I have no idea how one would go about testing it or even stating it formally. I haven't, shocking though it may seem, even checked if the math works.

Actually, I think it's unfair to both Einstein and physics to use the one-guy-with-a-crazy-idea story. That's a creation of the popular press, not a scientific reality. The idea that curved-space geometries might be relevant to physics was current in the 19th century already; Gauss actually did some surveying between mountain peaks to find out whether we were living in a flat or curved space, and mathematicians like Clifford (yay for bivectors!) were, IIRC, speculating about gravity as a curvature.

Einstein was in a position to bring that concept to fruition, because he'd already (in special relativity) made use of a metric tensor (Minkowski flat metric for SR) for the spacetime action; substituting the metric for a curved spacetime then gives you an action where the geodesics are gravitational trajectories. I should stop now, as I'm getting out of my depth, but it would be great if MCC could write something qualitative about GR. Hint, hint :)

Well, I wasn't just talking about general relativity, but the man as a whole (or rather, special relativity, general relativity, and the photoelectric effect) and the fact that he was working in a patent office at the time.

I'll admit that it might be a little unfair to term him 'one guy with a crazy idea', and I imagine much of his popculture status was fabricated both by the media and himself, but unless I'm grossly mistaken he wasn't exactly a model of the 'traditional' scientist. Another example might be Leibniz (actually I might be thinking of someone else who was described to me as an attorney and an amateur mathematician who made some fairly influential mark on mathematics.)

My point was that the focus of this article (other than "the math works lolol") almost seemed to be "well, he's an artist, so obviously he can't have any good ideas." Again, maybe it's just wishful thinking, but I'd like to believe people can still make important contributions to mathematics and science without having to be specialist in the given technical field they are contributing to. But I suspect those days are long gone.

Anyway, yeah, if not, a nice general relativity piece would do.

OK, the positron-electron thing may be nuts, but I believe the centrifugal force idea is worthy of the type of serious discussion it receives here: http://xkcd.com/c123.html

Jon:

In math, there is the fascinating case of the Indian mathematician Ramanujan. He was a completely self-taught mathematician living a life of poverty in India. He ended up sending letters to several famous mathematicians containing some of his number-theory proofs. At least two of the receivers just ignored it because they couldn't understand
what he'd written. Fortunately, one of the receivers recognized what he'd done, and realized that the proof sketched in the papers was well beyond the ability of any of the great mathematicians of the day.

This leads to one of my favorite quotes in all of mathematical history: "a single look at them [Ramanujan's equations] is enough to show that they could only be written down by a mathematician of the highest class. They must be true, for if they were not true, no one would have had the imagination to invent them."

Hardy arranged for Ramanujan to come to Cambridge. Unfortunately, Ramanujan didn't stay there longer, and died of TB shortly after moving back to India.

Ramanujan is remembered as a mathematician on a par with the very greatest mathematicians in history.

I'll try to do some research to gather more information about him, and put together a post. He's a fascinating person who deserves to be remembered, and definitely *the* pre-eminent example of the lone genius toiling in isolation.

Re Stephen Wells

Actually, the most pertinent mathematical work for the predecessor to general relativity was by the French Mathematcian Poincare' and the German Mathematician Riemann who both developed the field of geometry now known as Riemannian geometry.

Jon said: "My point was that the focus of this article (other than "the math works lolol") almost seemed to be "well, he's an artist, so obviously he can't have any good ideas.""

I would say that the disdain that science-types have for the Neil Adams types comes more from the fact that such people usually demonstrate only the shallowest comprehension of the subject they profess to have attained complete understanding of. It's not that his being an artist means he has no good ideas, it's more that without knowing all the subtleties of the work done before, one can't expect to make meaningful contributions. Artists and musicians would feel similar annoyance with a person who had claimed to create the 'next great art revolution' without any knowledge of art history and technique.

Working alone isn't the problem, as MCC's example of Ramanujan illustrates - it's working in isolation/ignorance which is discrediting. On a related note, I often tell people about what I call 'crazy old man syndrome', in which a respected thinker goes into isolation and comes out with ideas that are dated, irrelevant, or simply bat$#!+ insane. Two examples that come to mind are Descartes (and his line of reasoning after, 'I think, therefore I am'), and Wolfram's 'A New Kind of Science'.

My theory of everything in the universe being carried around by rabbits must be correct, then.

Since the math works. And no, it's a secret, you can't see it, you'll just have to take my word for it. Or else my rabbit will get you.

There is such copious writing on the life and work of Ramanujan, that I wonder what Mark can say that is new. Switching from extreme youth to a puzzling take on the elderly:

I believe that "gg" insufficiently appreciates Descartes, as the example given is naive. Similarly, I had a low first impression of Wolfram's NKS, until an insighful review by Dr. Rudy Rucker, in the American Mathematical Monthly, convinced me to re-read it. That interested me enough to have had a poster session at the most recent Wolfram NKS Conference.

Wasn't Perelman a "a respected thinker goes into isolation and comes out with ideas that..." turned out to solve the Poincare conjecture?

Wasn't Linus Pauling?

How about Wittgenstein, a deeply, almost cultishly respected philosopher? He, late in life, rejected his earlier theory, and wrote a new Big Book.

Should Einstein not even have tried to find a unified field theory?

Is Tina referring to "Harvey" or to Fibonacci? Fibonacci is much MUCH more important than his rabbit sequence indicates. In a sense, he launched a Singularity in 1202 A.D., and a mini-renaissance in Europe, through his books, his introducing Arabic Numerals to Europe (see my entry on Arabic numerals at MathWorld) and his work at the court of the intellectual powerhouse Emperor Frederick II.

Pseudonym:

It is all ad hoc, of course. Convenient 'explanations' are exactly that, coat hangers for 'facts' that are induced from a few examples. I think I can state as much, without checking the math.

Oh, and to sketch my ad hoc fully, I also include the isolation effect gg discuss but in the form of isolation from facts. Ie kooky engineers and artists are often discussing ideas (such as convenient ad hocs ;-) where they don't get the feedback from observations that a 'can do' shot gun approach needs in order to give results.

As Ramanujan's name has been brought up, this isn't totally off-topic:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6194731.stm
Although it doesn't belong in teh "bad maths" category.

Bob

Vos Post wrote: "Wasn't Perelman a "a respected thinker goes into isolation and comes out with ideas that..." turned out to solve the Poincare conjecture?"

Certainly you can find people who go into isolation and still solve important problems. It just seems to be extremely unlikely, and my impression is that a researcher does their work no favors by ignoring all that has/is being done in the field, or cherry-picking the stuff that they like (as Adams seems to have done). If the field is stagnant (because the researchers are stumped), than one isn't necessarily losing ground. If the field is vibrant and active, a single researcher is almost certainly losing ground, and may end up 'discovering' truths that have been common knowledge in the community.

I didn't think my comment about Descartes was particularly 'naive' - I don't know anyone who really feels his philosophy really proved the existence of God and the universe. Of course, it was quite influential, and he made massive, massive contributions throughout the sciences.

Finally, my comment was not meant to be an attack on elderly scientists (the term 'crazy old man syndrome' is admittedly inappropriate) - my former thesis advisor is over 80 now and still doing great work. And the examples I used to illustrate are/were not particularly old men at the time of their writings. I just don't feel the need to respect the efforts of people who ignore and/or don't understand (as in Adams' case) the work of their supposed peers.

It's a shame to see Neal Adams spending time on this nonsense (or making obnoxious commercials, for that matter). He is an extremely talented creative artist who revitalized comic art by bringing in a modern commercial illustration style, and almost single-handedly raised the standard of artistic expertise in the field. And he was also a pioneer in organizing comics workers to gain more artistic and financial independence at a time when they were virtually peons of the big publishers.

Dear gg,

Thank you for what I accept as a friendly amendment.

One of my Math teachers, the amazing Tom Apostol at Caltech, 82, is now Professor Emiritus for over a decade, publishing more than ever, and winning awards from AMS for his papers.

It is clearly NOT true, as sometimes taught by the romantically deluded, that Mathematics is a young person's game. You can even start abstract Math in middle age, as was the case of another of my teachers, Dick Dean, who had been a meteorologist who didn't know that Group Theory existed until his 40s.

And look at the prodigious Euler accomplished as an old man -- and blind to boot!

Hey, give this guy a break, PMPing ain't easy!

Jon - "I want it to be true because it's so much simpler than the standard model"

The only reason it is simple is because it doesn't explain anything (and thus really conveys no information). Working out the math on theories which actually predict things tends to be more involved.

Vos Post: 'Thank you for what I accept as a friendly amendment.'

Hey, I couldn't possibly claim that math & science are a young person's game - I'm well into my 30's and am having an increasingly difficult time thinking of myself as a 'young professional'!

There are a lot of myths about physicists and mathematicians and the way their work is done that get kind of irksome. One is the notion of these fields being a "young person's game", another is indirectly the subject of this post, the "genius outsider" - someone who comes from outside and produces a major revolution. Of course it happens sometimes, but the general public love this story so much that they will believe someone like Neal Adams simply because he ISN'T a physicist or mathematician.

"People who fall for things are often termed "suggestible". I have a suspicion that "suggestible" is just a form of "creative".

I think as some truth in that. An artist (generally) needs to basically respond to gut feelings, because he or she is actually in the business of portraying feelings. In that context, critical analysis is probably counterproductive, if a creation 'works' then it is good.

Now there is nothing to keep an artist from 'switching gears' and getting into analytical scientific mode, but not that many people can easily make the jump (in either direction)

Another discussion of solitary versus social research.

Groups, Graphs, and Erdös Numbers
Ivars Peterson
Science News online
Week of June 12, 2004; Vol. 165, No. 24

"Mathematical research is generally thought to be a solitary pursuit. And some mathematicians do indeed spend their professional lives in lone contemplation of a single problem."

"The dramatic announcement in 1993 by Andrew Wiles of Princeton University that he had proved Fermat's last theorem appeared to belong to this category of discovery. Wiles had isolated himself from the rest of the mathematical community for nearly 8 years to work on the problem. Only a select few were aware of what he was trying to accomplish."

"Nonetheless, Wiles relied heavily on the work of mathematicians who had previously tackled the same problem. He occasionally tested his ideas on a handful of trusted experts in areas of mathematics relevant to his approach. When reviewers later discovered a flaw in his original chain of logic, Wiles obtained help from one of his former graduate students, Richard Taylor, to fill in the gap and complete the proof."

"In general, mathematical research is a remarkably social process. Colleagues meet constantly to compare notes, discuss problems, look for hints, and work on proofs together...."

Since the rise of email, the web, and blogs, this "working together" need not be face-to-face. More and more of my coauthors are people that I never see in meatspace, or only years after we start collaboration.

The internet is, to me, primarily collaborationware.

How sad for somee otherwise creative people to isolate themselves in a dead-end comic book cosmos.

I understand that Neal Adams never finished high school.

What bothers me most about his geology and physics theorizing is the adolescent, hyperbolic style of his writing: embarrassingly narcissistic and unsophisticated. And, because of Neal's professional backgound as a comics artist, it does nothing to dispel the false impression that graphic stortytelling (comic books) is an essentially childish effort.

When I first heard of Neal's science quackery about ten years ago I was disappointed; I've been a fan of his comics work all my life, and in fact his stuff was the first, biggest influence in the development of my own drawing abilities when I was a child.

What if he's right?
Do the continents of earth, really, actually, fit together seemlessly on a smaller globe, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle? If this is true then the Earth grew; 600 million years for the first doubling, 65 million years for the second doubling (of size)
and to top it all off, at this rate, 6 million years from now, it will double it's size again.
Neal Adams theory of PMP's is his explanation of why the planet is growing. Can any of you come up with a conventional theory as to explain how this could happen? Perhaps fission or something.

lunk:

Do the continents of earth, really, actually, fit together seemlessly on a smaller globe like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle?

That depends on just what kinds of manipulations you're willing to permit.

The conventional (and extremely well-supported) theory does have the continents fitting together
in a single supercontinent called Pangea at some point in the past. They do fit - provided you're willing to allow a variety of twist, bends, stretches and compressions of the land-masses.

So if you're willing to allow a bit more twisting, bending, stretching, and compressing, you can make it almost fit together on a smaller globe.

But that doesn't prove anything. Because you can also twist and bend and fit them perfectly onto a flat disk; or onto the surface of a cube, or onto a section of a sphere.

The key question about things like this is mechanism. Neal Adams' theory is a complete crock of nonsense that doesn't make sense, and cannot possibly work. The fact that it can explain something that doesn't need explaining doesn't help it. If there were some actual evidence that the earth used to be smaller, that would be fine - but his only evidence for a smaller earth is his PMP theory - which doesn't actually make sense when you look at it. But when you look for evidence against an expanding earth, you find huge amounts of things that are inconsistent with it - ranging from the stability of the orbits in the solar system, to the observations of moving continental plates, to fossils... It's simply completely inconsistent with the real evidence.

And even it's math is wrong. The only thing he gets right is a kind of simple summing - which is manipulated to make it work, with no reason for the manipulations other than the fact that they make it work in a trivial way. But the math of gravity, of orbital mechanics, of basic physics, particle interaction, motion, relativity - they all utterly fall apart under his theory - his math is completely inconsistent with real observations.

It's a crock.

Do the continents of earth, really, actually, fit together seemlessly on a smaller globe, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle?

Yes, they fit roughly. But that is predicted from plate tectonics. When the continental plates are stretched by movements in the fluidlike hot mantle beneath, they eventually break apart. Thus the fit.

If this is true then the Earth grew;

That doesn't follow. Either one of the plates are pressed beneath the other (subducted) where the plates meet, and becomes recycled when it melts in the mantle. Or they collide instead, for a while, in which case the plates push up to become new mountain ranges. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics )

This recycling or rebounding of plates explains the fit on collide sides. Grinding explains the fit on slide sides. If there is ever a theory where everything fits, this is it! :-) :-) :-)

At one time, it was said that oil and water don't mix (on earth) The reason given was very complex. Now it turns out that if the oil and water is degassed first, they do mix.
The science was wrong.
There must be a way of testing this theory of Neal Adams' growing earth by exact measurments of this planet over time...or something.
What sort of test could prove or disprove this theory?

What sort of test could prove or disprove this theory?

Mark noted: "But the math of gravity, of orbital mechanics, of basic physics, particle interaction, motion, relativity - they all utterly fall apart under his theory - his math is completely inconsistent with real observations."

A load of tests disproving it, right there.

MY EXPERIMENT:
I just took a globe of the Earth, traced and cut out (on thin paper) all the continents on the planet and taped them back together, and get this, they fit perfectly, next to each other, without the oceans! Now, I have a much smaller globe.
What are the odds of all these different shapes fitting together without gaps or overlap on a smaller ball?!?
Do this experiment yourself.

CONCLUSION: THE EARTH MUST HAVE GROWN. The oceans are the "stretch marks" of its' expantion.

My next question is: How?

What are the odds of all these different shapes fitting together without gaps or overlap on a smaller ball?!?

Something quote close to 100%.

You see, the continents do not fit together perfectly. You are lying if you say that you actually did cut out the shapes of the continents, and fit them together. Because they don't fit.

They do fit together if you model them as being slightly elastic - so they can bend, stretch, and compress slightly.

So, you can push them all together into a single land mass, provided that kind of elasticity. And if you do that, the way that continental drift theory says you should, you find a single large landmass at one point in history. And because of the elasticity, you'll also find that any landmass creating by pushing them together will be roughly roundish.

Now - take any roughly roundish shape, and wrap it around a ball with approximately the same surface area. Surprise! If it's slightly elastic, then you can fit it so that it covers the surface of the ball.

Now - take away the elasticity. The shapes do not fit together. Neither continental drift nor Neal Adams expanding earth work.

Adams' theory explains nothing that isn't already explained by drift. And Adams' theory is wildly inconsistent with gravity, with orbital mechanics, with fossil records, with geological records, with relativity, with, well, just about everything. It's hard to name a single field of science which doesn't include something which is inconsistent with Adams' nonsense.

I also need to comment that your prose style is remarkably similar to that of Adams on his website. Dare I suggest that you're a sockpuppet?

To me it looks like there may be small parts of the theory which Adams' espouses (it's not all Adams' theory, btw) that could argue for a growing planet. For instance, some of the larger lifeforms (particularly insects) of hundreds of millions of years ago don't appear adequately explained to me by atmospheric differences (though I don't really feel qualified to judge). But some of the physics stuff is clearly and obviously a ridiculous fabrication, as Mark CC illustrates above.

I can't say I thoroughly understand the essence of the original theory (which deals with how geodes grow and how this relates to planetary growth), but it seems clear that, even if such growth were assumed, any radically increased Earth mass difference since the very recent (geologically speaking) age of the Dinosaurs can't be accounted for by geode growth (such a rate of growth, extrapolated backwards, would make for a zero diameter planet BILLIONS of years later than the actually known time period of the first formation of the earth).

Btw, I don't think that the physics (which Mark CC rightly excoriates) were in the first multi-decades-old theory.

"You see, the continents do not fit together perfectly. You are lying if you say that you actually did cut out the shapes of the continents, and fit them together. Because they don't fit."

Did you try this experiment?

I'm working in 3 dimentions (globe) not 2(paper).

I used the continental shelves as my cutout lines and I estimated the cut in areas like Northern Canada where techtonic stretching is taking place. The main problem I had was the larger continents wrinkled the most when I wrapped them around my smaller globe and taped them together.
TIP: cut the larger continents into smaller parts along the mountain ranges.

I am unsure about Neal Adams math, but "my experimment" does bring into question the theory of pangea and the forever static size of the Earth.

Right... So what you're saying is that if you take the continents on a globe, estimate the edges when they don't fit right, cut landmasses into separate pieces when they don't fit right, and wrinkle the large pieces when they don't fit right, then you can make them fit together on a globe.

How about you go back and read what I wrote in my last post. If you allow elasticity, then you get a roundish supercontinent - and by allowing that same elasticity, you can superimpose any roundish shape onto a globe with equal surface area.

What that means is that the fact that you can fit the pieces onto a smaller globe as long as you permit elasticity means that that fact does not distinguish the expanding earth theory from the continental drift theory. With respect to the shapes of the continents, they make approximately the same prediction.

The only evidence that Adams' theory has is the fit of the continents. Since the drift theory is also completely consistent with it, with respect to that piece of evidence, it's a wash between the two theories.

If you then consider the fact that Adams' theory is inconsistent with pretty much all of physics,
geology, paleantology, and lord knows what else, then it's obvious that Adams' theory is a pile of rubbish. It explains nothing that isn't already explained, and introduces a huge number of new problems that are complete inconsistent with observation.

Take a robbin egg, smash it, now glue all the pieces back together on a chicken egg- space them out like the continents of Earth on the surface of the chicken egg. This is the Earth, as it is now. Now, un-glue them (use wax) and put them back together again, like they were, but, this is important, on the surface of the same chicken egg. You will find that you can make a shape very similar to pangea on one side of the chicken egg, but, does it fit?

Well, almost, with a lot of manipulation, sliding and shifting around. Why? Because it started as a much smaller robbin egg!

I understand this is what the reasoning is behind Neal Adams' theory. Do you agree?

lunk:

That's roughly Adam's argument. But what he conveniently ignores is that the same idea works in reverse.

Take a chicken egg, and smash it. Take a roundish area of shell pieces with roughly the same surface area as a robins egg. Now, glue those pieces onto the surface of a robins egg. You'll find that you can pretty much cover the entire surface of the robins egg with the pieces. But does it fit?

Well, almost, with a lot of manipulation, sliding and shifting around. Why? Because it started as a roundish section of a much larger chicken egg.

The point is, the geometry of the continents fits both theories: the widely accepted drift theory, and Adams' pile of rubbish. But drift is consistent with geology, gravity, orbital mechanics, relativity, paleontology, etc. Adam's theory is completely
inconsistent with all of those areas.

So Adams' theory is consistent with one piece of evidence, and completely inconsistent with thousands of others. Drift is consistent with the same piece of evidence as Adams', and is also consistent with all of the thousands of pieces of evidence that Adams' is not.

What can we conclude from that? Well, that Adams' stuff is a pile of rubbish that is inconsistent with the overwhelming bulk of the evidence, and that drift is a viable convincing theory supported by all of known evidence.

Are you saying that if you draw a random shape on the side of a large ball it will always fit perfectly on a small ball?

Mark: You wrote, "The only evidence that Adams' theory has is the fit of the continents."

That isn't accurate. There are three other bits of "evidence" Adams sites (you have to thoroughly read his website to find these). One is the massive size of lifeforms millions of years in the past. Not only with the largest dinosours, but especially with the gigantic insects of earlier ages, we have the difficulty of explaining how they could have supported their own weight (dinosaurs) or breathed and flew, etc. (insects). As I understand it from other magazine article sources that I can't pinpoint from my memory off-hand, theorists today give what amounts to an ad hoc explanation of greater atmospheric pressures to explain the insects and no real explanations at all for the largest dinosaurs.

But this tiny hole in mainstream science seems to amount to a pinprick in comparison to the massive amounts of real evidence going against the growing planets theory (and Adams' physics is just dumb).

And then there's the second bit of "evidence" you missed: Adam's rejection of subduction as a viable geologic process because of his insistence that less dense materials can't be pushed under more dense material. On the face of it, this seems to make some sense ...

The third bit of evidence is the various ages of the ocean floor and how the youngest parts are found progressively nearer to the mid ocean ridges where Adams claims the new matter is welling up from deeper in the earth causing planetary expansion.

I assume modern geologioc theory has little difficulty with the last two bits of evidence and I'd like to hear what a geologist would say about them (or what any of you on this site have to say about them, for that matter).

But I know this is a math site, not a geology site ...

lunk:

No, I'm not saying that if you draw a random shape on the side of a large ball that it will always fit perfectly on a small ball.

I'm saying if you take an approximately round shape on the side of a large ball, and you're allowed to make a small number of convenient cuts and perform elastic distortions on it, then you'll be able to make it fit very well (not perfectly!) on a small ball.

If you look at Adams' theory, the shapes do not fit perfectly. They need to be distorted to fit at all, and then the fit is good, but not perfect.
And you've already admitted that you do need to be able to distort, cut, and crinkle to make it fit.

As I keep saying: look at the shapes and the manipulations you're doing to fit them onto a smaller globe. Do those same kinds of manipulations of the pieces on a larger globe - and you'll find that they fit together at least as perfectly as Adams' claims they fit on the smaller globe. Then look at all of the other evidence: the sheer volume of scientific evidence that is completely inconsistent with anything remotely resembling Adams' theory is positively mind-boggling.

lunk: What I understand Mark and others are saying here about the continental fitting is not than any and all randomly shaped continents would be equally easily fitted onto smaller globes, but that the continental drift theory already allows for such fitting, based partly on the obvious obsevation that the continents do look like they fit together in places (an observation I also made in 4th grade before I knew about continental drift). In other words, some random shapes would require much more crinkling or cutting than others to fit thusly, sure, but continental drift theory accounts for the continent shapes we actually do have, not just any random shapes.

I should remember to always do a little research before posting on these science sites. I checked with Wikipedia, and convective downwelling easily explains subduction to my satisfaction.

And I found that "continental drift" is passe; it's been incorproated into and superceded by "plate tectonics."

I think the possibility that lunk might be my comics hero Neal Adams caused me to give as much consideration as possible to the growing planets theory in his presence.

(I've never used a pseudonym, myself, btw. Ever. It's a stupid point of pride for me.)

The only bit of evidence for a growing planet that still sticks with me is the giant lifeforms of past ages, but like I wrote, this amounts to a pinprick in mainstream theory.

Norm:

The three things you cite are all non-issues.

The "size of the dinosaurs" thing is frequently brought up by nutters, particularly the neo-catastrophists and Velikovskians. The thing is, it's not actually a problem. There's nothing inconsistent about the size of early animals - whether dinosaurs or insects. The "insects too large to fly" thing is based on the same line of argument as "physics doesn't explain how a housefly can fly" - that is, misapplication of math. Flys, and most other insects aren't really flying in the common sense aerodynamic way; they're not using shaped wings to generate lift via the Bernoulli principle. You can find details just by searching for stuff about how flies fly.

The "dinosaurs too large" comes from two different sources. One is sort-of legitimate; the other is nonsense.

The legit one is that if you put the animals in the postures that we used to think was correct (i.e., Tyrannosaurus with its body upright, head at a right angle to its spine, and tail down almost dragging on the ground), the skeleton and musculature just didn't work for an animal that size. But when you realize that that posture doesn't work, and you try shifting it, so that the animal runs with its spine essentially parallel to the ground, tail counterbalancing the head, jaw at a more oblique angle so that the head is looking straight ahead in running posture, then everything works - there is no problem with the size, skeletal structure, or musculature. Math and science figured out the error and solved it.

The other source of the "dinosaurs too large" myth is the neo-catastrophists like Ted Holden, and their error is just dreadfully silly. They essentially ignore skeletal structure. Their calculations of how the dinosaurs couldn't have lived in present gravity is based on linearly scaling up the size of present-day creatures, without making any structural changes as they get larger. If you took a human being, and scaled them up by ten times, you'd get a creature that couldn't walk. Because our skeleton and musculature aren't structured for that amount of weight. But look an a dinosaur skeleton in a museum sometime - take a look in particular at the joints, and the structures around them where muscles attached. Dinosaur bones have unbelievable moment arms on the muscular attachment points! Much larger than you would predict by linear scaling. And when you include that - that is, calculate the muscular strength needed to support and move a limb based on the standard strength of muscle and the moment arm provided by the skeletal structure, then you can see that the dinosaurs had absolutely no problem.

This is getting long, so I'll answer the other points in a separate comment.

With respect to Adams' claim about subduction not making sense... It's just silly, based on an oversimplification of the actual dynamics.

The "new material at ridges" is the silliest mistake of all. Those ridges are the place where we can directly observe the motion of the continental plates - there is new rock coming up there. But it's just melted rock from beneath the earths crust. When one plate slides over another, the plate that's forced down ends up becoming part of the mantle, and eventually could be recycled into part of the new material coming up at the ridges.

A good place to start to find out more about this is http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v442/n7100/full/442251a.html,
which has some truly amazing photos of a rift between the plates in Ethiopia. Really a spectacular image.

Thanks, Mark. I was only pointing out that, unlike you wrote in one of your above posts, Neal Adams refers to more than just continental fitting for his "evidence."

It is interesting that, for whatever reasons, we have no land roaming animals as large as the largest dinosaurs anywhere today (whether mammal or reptile), nor such large insects as in past ages.

Norm:

That's evolution for you. :-)

What worked once in the past in a particular environment - where that environment includes all of the other co-existant species - doesn't necessarily work in other environments.

Why is mega-size no longer advantageous? I don't think anyone knows for sure - but an animal like a Tyrannosaur needs a huge amount of food - and if there isn't enough prey for it, it dies out. Similarly, a huge herbivore like an apatosaurus requires a huge amount of vegitation to sustain itself. Perhaps the modern environment just has too many smaller and faster herbivores, which prevents the giant herbivores from being able to compete; and without the giant herbivores, the giant carnivores can't get enough food.

The question is quite a bit clearer with respect to insects: birds. A huge dragonfly is a wonderful meal for a bird - and birds are considerably faster in flight than large insects. Without birds as a predator, it's a lot easier for a giant insect to thrive; once you get birds on the scene, suddenly, it becomes a whole lot harder - and being smaller and thus faster, more manueverable, and harder to see - becomes a significant advantage. Just look around the world at where there are extremely large insects still around - nothing as large as the the early giant insects, but there are some very large ones - giant cockroaches for example - and you find that they tend to live in places where either birds have a very hard time surviving (e.g., giant scarabs in deserts) or where a large insect can be difficult to see (e.g., giant beatles in the Brazilian rainforests, living primarily in the dense brush.)

It's said that an ant can lift 50 times its own weight, I know I can lift my own weight, an elephant can lift a lot but only a fraction of its weight. I was told that King Kong could not exist because there was no structure known that could hold up that much giant gorrilla.
Could the teradactiles fly this day in age?
I heard that they would need 2.5 times as much atmosphere...or maybe, a smaller Earth, where they wouldn't weigh as much.

lunk:

You heard wrong.

It's true that king kong couldn't exist - the muscular and skeletal structure of primates doesn't scale up to that size. If a giant primate were to evolve, it wouldn't look much like an ape - because it would require a different bone structure, with different muscular attachment points. Sorta like the dinosaurs had.

Could pteranodons fly today? Yes - with a major caveat. Pteranodons were, from what we've been able to figure out,
gliders, not true fliers. They don't have the proper anatomy to be a true flier. Could a pteranodon glide in the present gravity and atmosphere? Absolutely, yes.

Neal Adams here
just a mention .
When I did the globe It was after I had globes in the past just as many other researchers had done in the past . It was a given.
Mine because it had to be the best (Lot of work) I used the marie Tharpe map for geologicaal marking Thre very best .
it exagerates for clarity , the under sea rift and sub rift lines ,
These show clearly Direction of moving spreading plates. like a map . A directional map . they show at least 60 percent of the directional movement , If upland or other fill opaqued the directional indicators I simply continued in the same direction , You can psee it clearly if you look at that ,..ot any map. Really.
Then the popular" Rainbow Map" presented by the USGS
amd others that shows the ages of the deep oceans, from today to 180 million years ago , the oldest age of any known ocean area. This map was compiled by hundreds of researchers and put together in the 80's
The ages of the oceans go backward in time exactly the same as the rift lines , They were a double check as to direction and alignment. I'd like to take credit for figuring out a difficult puzzle.
Truth is I merely followed the map. If I deviated in any way I ran into trouble. Yes it took some figuring.
In little areas. But there are other sources that helped .
Magnetic striping proved that Spain rotaded 35 degrees counter-clockwise opening the Bay of Biskay. Great britian , same-same.
For those who question my credentials , I quite agree.
However I can read. I always loved science and well, I can read . I've found that most areas of research are written about and are relatively easy to find. Finally , I have been working on this problem for 40 years. For 30 of those years I didn't present . I tend to speak only after I do my homework.
What don't I do / Higher math. Quantum Physics and stuff like that ,...but I never found the need . It was Dirac ,..or maybe Chico. who said without higher math science would be held back about a week.
Fact is most Physicists that I speak to have no trouble communicating with me on a reasonable level about complicated matters , colliders Beta decay and such.
You may not like or agree with me in this, but I know a number of reputable physicists who would disagree with you
in this.

Neal Adams

Norm:

One is the massive size of lifeforms millions of years in the past. Not only with the largest dinosours, but especially with the gigantic insects of earlier ages, we have the difficulty of explaining how they could have supported their own weight (dinosaurs) or breathed and flew, etc. (insects). As I understand it from other magazine article sources that I can't pinpoint from my memory off-hand, theorists today give what amounts to an ad hoc explanation of greater atmospheric pressures to explain the insects and no real explanations at all for the largest dinosaurs.

Mark had great answers at detail. I can fill in some of the breath/pressure thing.

I think it can be true that insects of today can't grow as large as earlier. (Where birds don't see them. :-) "There is a physical limit to the pressure that the walls of the tracheal tubes can withstand without collapsing, even though they are stiffened by bands of chitin, and this is one of the reasons why insects are relatively small." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insects#Internal_anatomy ) But if the partial pressure of oxygen was larger, they could be larger without enlarging tracheal tubes.

And atmospheres change, due to geology and life - our current type is called "the third atmosphere". ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_atmosphere ) But I don't think we have lost much atmospheric pressure since the larger insects. Nitrogen is a mainly inert gas, responsible for 80 % of the pressure.

In this modern atmosphere we loose mainly hydrogen by sputtering from the solar wind, but some should drift back through ionization and the magnetic fields to the polar region I think. Comets and ice asteroids replenish water faster than we loose it IIRC.

We also loose oxygen and carbon dioxide by chemical bindings into rocks. Life and geology replenish both. But a AFAIK continuing carbon dioxide loss is a hint. Earlier atmosphere had at times higher oxygen and carbon dioxide partial pressures, probably due to hotter climate and more biological activity.

That oxygen, and perhaps special adaptions, could permit larger insects. "200 - 250 million years ago, up to 35 percent of the atmosphere was oxygen (bubbles of ancient atmosphere were found in an amber)."

Somewhere above that figure, increasing wood fires is thought to self limit the oxygen production I think.

It is interesting that, for whatever reasons, we have no land roaming animals as large as the largest dinosaurs anywhere today (whether mammal or reptile), nor such large insects as in past ages.

As Mark says, the status of megafauna is unclear. Mammals and birds had similar periods with comparatively large megafauna, and the discussion why they also disappeared continues.

Maybe I should've used a pseudonym after all; I wish I could edit my posts on this site.

Ah, well, live and learn ... and these science blog sites are a pressure cooker environment for developing optimal lucidity.

Neal has chosen to question an area of science which is perhaps among the most open for questioning in certain respects. For instance, the depth of the Earth's geologic convection currents is currently unknown, conducting revealing experiments about the Earths interior is very difficult, and satisfactory certainty of the mechanisms of planetary formation remains elusive.

Neal, what bothered me immediately about your discussion of all this on your site (aside from your unnecessary and distracting hyperbolic language) was your assertion that questioning plate tectonics necessaril brings into question all other scientific theories in all other areas (it doesn't). And if you don't feel qualified to deal with the math of particle physics (I don't either), then why do you propose the prime matter particle at all? Even I know that dealing with particle physics in a scientific manner is impossible without a fine grasp of the math (which you admit is your weak point), and this is especially true if you're trying to re-write particle physics.

And in general, science without higher math - especially particle physics and cosmology, but also many other areas - would not be held back only a week; without higher math much or most modern science couldn't exist at all.

Norm
There are many ways to skin a cat . One can function though one may be blind.In my case Call it pertially blind.(lord I hate having to explain myself.) If I can visualize three-dimentionally and immediately see the continents coming together Should I criticize a technologist for not 'SEEING " as well.
No, I think. I should try to show HOW and what I see as best I can. I can't "teach" a lifetime of seeing three dimentionally.
I hold that Physics is not Math. Never was. It's fulcrums and levers and trajectories and time and limits an all the rest. Math is a method of description that can shorten the process of adding and subtracting and that is all. It's not a mystery and I have found it is not an impediment to discovery. In fact the love of math often gets in the way , because instead of talking principles , many talk math.
For a simple example ,..when calculating pressure going down into the earth a math person maths pressure down progressively . ...But it doesn't work like that . pressure for water or air is not the same as pressure in a solid .
Pressure is relieved by structure ,...and shape,... which is similar but not the same . Distribution of weight in an arch of a solid is a portion of the principle of pressure on a sphere . That is, pressure on an arch ...in gravity is downward and outward, It's also upward but that is NOT dealt with, because it has no important function on a practical basis , but outward pressure of a sphere in a self-contained sphere is a function of some great significance . Newton played with this theoretically , but couldn't on a practical basis . BUT if I say if the earth is hollow with a space the size of the moon and say additionally that in this space there is no pressure and no gravity.. all the math-tech gee- heh folks will rise up in righteous wrath .
They will be wrong , and I will be right. Math can prove but principle describes the reasons FOR the math.
I use deduction . (And other principles.) as we all must use, absent sure facts . You needn"t study much history to know that Deduction is the only thing that fills the unknown spaces. I have been doing it for a long time , so I can't give you all the steps , but let's try a few.
Carl David Anderson 'observes the spontanius creation as a "cosmic ray" strikes something and produces a positron.
Within a nano-second the positron attracts/encounters an electron and annhilates it!
CONCLUSION: (of the community) Dirac is validified.
There is an opposite particle to the Electron, and because it annihilates a particle of matter , well forget conservation and also we'll call it ,...let's say ...Antimatter! Cause it destroys matter!
Deduction? No . In my view , stupidity!
Harsh? Let's see.
Several years later other scientists, doing the same experiment discover tha when the positron is spontaniously created , an electron is created.
Consternation at first , then conservation is served , the sum is Electron created , electron destroyed with the created positron , Conservation is preserved . sigh of relief
I don't think so! An electron is created but another Electron is "Destroyed" . If the positron traveled a thousand light years before encountering an electron the universe would be out of balance for a thousand years. In space this happens all the time.
But it's far worse. The positron , it turn's out, does not Annhilate the electron ,...though what exactly happens is not exactly sure. this is what is "known" up to now. The positron approaches the Electron .and slows ....the two, for a very short time, circle each other and form the extremely short-lived Positronium, then two(sometimes three) chunks of energy Photons of gamma radiation fly out
and the "particle disappears" !
What has happened ? Ah.
Temporary Conclusion Energy became mass and went back to energy. .... To me Modern stupidity.
Harsh? ... I think not.
The electron and positron have energy , to be sure , and they likely got it from the high energy photon.
But they both have An electro-magnetic field. They don't get it from the Photon , cause the photon doesn't have one that we know of (And we've looked.)
Let's BEGIN to suspect a standing electro-magnetic field. It would be an unusual field , because we can't detect it .
When the "ANNIHLATION" event happens , ONLY energy leaves. not a field.
The particles fields are equal and opposite . I would deduce that they are two halves of a previous Whole.
Now fields have proximity restraints ,...like Ions repel each other til they get to a certain closeness then they attract. like lines or waves of force .
Let's deduce together .
Two opposite fields , equal in force exactly! are part of two particles AFTER struck by energy. Let's roll back the film. The two particles Positron and electron .
As they come together we watch the photon move away . the two fields are together and have disappeared ,..or ..canceled each other out , Their fields no longer reach out it's electro-magnetic lines . it's INVISIBLE!
So we have two halves of a standing field that are wrapped so tightly that the field does not extend outward like those EM lines of the sun carry promininces out and back into the sun. And those poor field lines of Mars that made scientists foolishly deduce that Mars HAD NO EM field.
We are left with a universe filled (filled? Yes, Anderson could do the experiment anywhere and get results.
mountain tops etc) with standing fields , wrapped tightly ,..that can be thrust appart if struck exactly right by a high energy photon (after having missed uncounted billions)
to thrust it appart to be now viewed, known, recognised as two of the only building blocks of the universe ,
they arent, AREN'T just balls of energy. That's my deduction.
I could be wrong , but I don't think so!
Regards
Neal Adams

I see two problems with your above post right away:

1) You're describing physics as being always necessarily in tune with your human intuition, but with areas as far removed from our scale as are cosmology and quantum mechanics, the pertinent truths are in fact often highly counterintuitive, and thus math is crucial to scientific understanding of such realities. Without it you essntially have nothing at all but inexplicabilities.

2) Objects the size of planets are ALWAYS spheroidal precisely because at that scale and mass no materials can stand up to gravitationally induced collapse. A hollow spere the size of the Earth is therefore impossible.

I do want to complement you on your guts and spirit in engaging science areas beyond your expertise, but as I've seen that you've written before, "A man's got to know his limitations" (which is a maxim that's continuously brought home to me on these science blogs and why I love this environment as a corrective and educational influence).

I'm not defending Neal Adams here, as I don't understand what he's trying to say, and to the extent that I do, I doun't see how to reconcile it with experiment.

Hoever, just to play Devil's Advocate for a moment, I must widen the discussion slightly. There are others who believe that the universe is crammed with a (supersolid?) incredibly dense mass of electron-positron pairs, or at least polycrystalline bunches of them warped by gravity, at Planck-length sort of packing, so that lone particles and atoms move through it frrely. It is called the "epola" theory. I have discussed it at length with others, in a different venue, and suggested numerous experiments.

I consider it fabulously unlikely, but not strictly disproved. I'm guess that the cartoonist in question has taken the part of epola theory that he partly understands, and run with it off into the Twilight Zone.

A correction to my last post:

I wrote, "2) Objects the size of planets are ALWAYS spheroidal precisely because at that scale and mass no materials can stand up to gravitationally induced collapse. A hollow spere the size of the Earth is therefore impossible."

I should have written, "2) Objects the size of planets are ALWAYS spheroidal precisely because at that scale and mass no materials can stand up to gravitationally induced
collapse *into a solid spheroid.* A hollow sphere the size of the Earth is therefore impossible" (my edit inside asterisks.)

Norman,
Your 2 points.
1- You seem to be criticizing my ability to mentally perceive scale and proportion. I have been dealing with these questions for 40 years, I don't have a problem with scale and proportion. Nor do I depend on my intuition. I deal with science as science, physics as physics, and geology as geology with one small exception. Like an old style scientist, I studied them all at the same time, and integrate them all into my thinking.

2- One of the values of studying all sciences and principles is that you discover that a truism in one area, seems to be totally unknown in other areas. For example; Studying Buckminster Fuller gives tremendous insight into structure and how it works. Unless the individual atoms of an iron silicate structure collapses and pulverizes, and after any phase change each individual atom bears its share of the pressure, and at a given point the pressure is zero. It is relieved, it's why a pyramid can have a central chamber. Also, because structure pushes pressure outward 360 degrees if the structure is stable. Am I clear on this?

If iron silicate material does not pulverize or melt, and if it is shaped into a rapidly diminishing sphere, it will support its own weight. A sphere is the perfect shape to support weight. We know this not just because of Bucky Fuller, we know this because this is how physics works.

There are far more advantages to a hollow sphere than I just spoke about, but scientifically, that is more than enough.

Physics is not beyond my expertise. and if you felt that what you said was true, you would feel you have no right to criticize, wouldn't you? Or even, in fact, to enter any of these discussions.

Jonathan,
I would love to know the "experiments" of which you speak. My commentary and point of view is so drenched in physics that I honestly don't know how much more scientific I can get. I have seen no more scientific map creation than those that I present, and certainly not from the Pangeaists, whose every map looks different than the last. If you knew the massive volume that I know, my friend, you'd laugh like a jackass every time one of these speculative insanities appeared on television, or on paper.

Jonathan, when you bunch me as a cartoonist, you bunch me with DaVinci. If there is any Epola theory, as you say, then I complement those who deduced it, as I did many years ago. It's odd, I think, that those who apparently agree with my premise are not in the Twilight Zone with me, don't you think? The speculation is hardly idle, it is a logical conclusion from the science we have learned. (Funny, that when a gang of insulting internet guppies act as a mob to insult and demean, it sucks a reasonable person into insults, though his nature may not be to run with the mob.)

Positrons and Electrons are the only particles that we have seen created. We have no reason to believe, no proof, or evidence that any other kind, or sort of particle is created spontaneously, or otherwise. It's important that you understand this in any discussion of particles. Only the positron and electron are spontaneously created. Only!

Norman,
The sun is spheroid, and more educated people than I insist a plasma core in the sun is reasonable and possible. If Jupiter has a plasma core, what do we say to that?

If iron silicate rock pushes evenly in all directions, how then can it push inward more than any other direction? One of these assumptions must be wrong.

Neal

Neal,

Please, call me Norm.

Both you and I and anyone else have the right to criticze any theories; I didn't and don't question that. Nor did I even mention your ability to mentally perceive scale and proportion. I just pointed out that math is crucial to scientific understanding of particle physics and cosmology because the facts of those realms run counterintuitive to our everyday experience and expectations. Scientific understanding = predictability/accordance with experimental evidence, and the realms of the quantum and initial cosmological conditions provide extraordinarily strange, apparently paradoxical evidence which I'm convinced can only be *scientifically* understood (as opposed to a layman's understanding) with higher math (in contradiction to your claim that physics without higher math would only be set back a week). Mark CC and others, in their above posts, illustrate nicely how your PMP is a fanciful fabrication that adds nothing to physics in terms of experimental predictability.

Knowing my limitations, I wouldn't presume to re-write particle physics or cosmology unless or until I could challenge it mathematically with demonstrably superior predictability in terms of experimental results. I don't see you doing this to my satisfaction. I've read enough layman's interpretations of both quantum mechanics and cosmology to disillusion me to the theories you're promoting (and your emotional style of writing, frankly, doesn't help; you could use an editor).

As I understand it, a hollow sphere the size of the earth is as impossible as is a cube the size of the Earth because of well known gravitational/structural paramaters/limits, and a high pressure plasma core is not a "hollow" core in my book.

With my limited scientific understanding I've read through your writings on your website with as open a mind as I can muster. Your continental fitting argument appears easily debunked as no better an explanation than plate tectonics offers unless you can prove that the mechanism of subduction is erroneous, but plate tectonics' convective downwelling satisfies my best attempts at understanding subduction feasibility.

The particle physics you offer appears to lead nowhwere to me, and is contradicted by massive evidence supporting Newton and Einstein.

The only other bit of evidence I can see going for the growing planets theory you promote is the past large scale lifeforms, but this is also arguable in many ways, as has been illustrated in various posts above.

What's left of your arguments in my mind is an alternate theory which simply isn't very convincing to this layman. Of course, I'm no Da Vinci and I may be wrong.

Another edit. This:

"The particle physics you offer appears to lead nowhwere to me, and is contradicted by massive evidence supporting Newton and Einstein."

better reads read thusly:

"The particle physics and cosmology you offer appears to lead nowhwere to me, and is contradicted by massive evidence supporting *Newton, Einstein, and all the others who have carfully crafted modern theory in accordance with experimental evidence* (my edit inside asterisks).

Oops; "and cosmology" should also have been inside asterisks in my above edit.

Neal,

I'd like to offer a note to diffuse any possible hurt feelings. Although I've tried to make my posts here as objective in tone as possible, I think I was indeed swept up a little into the derogatory tone expressed on this thread toward your theorizing. For my part, I'd like to particuarly apologise for my mentioning your lack of a high school diploma. I thought I'd read this fact on your own site and thus figured it was open for public comment, but I can't find it on your site now (if it's incorrect I also apologise for my inaccuracy). I offered it as a point of human interest, not necessarily as a negative judgement but also as a compliment on your courage and undestanding in spite of a lack of formal education.

As for any other posters on this site constituting "a gang of insulting internet guppies," I'd say that at least some of those posting here rise far, far above that designation (although I'll cop to it myself where it applies and, again, I apologise).

Nevertheless, all ad hominem arguments aside, I do still find your arguments unconvincing compared to mainstream geological, quantum, and cosmological theories crafted by a host of brilliant experimental scientists over many decades.

Norman
I would have to say that at least a portion of your note is a clear example of how dis information is spread.
You again , for no real reason that I can imagine , have committed to the public record words that cement the opinion in some, that I didn't graduate high school , for heavens sake .
Nowhere has such an indication appeared , and if it did I would surely know it.
My school, The School of Industrial Arts (now The School of Art and Design ) was quite glad to graduate me and thinks of me as one of its most successful Alumni.
I did not go to college but went directly into the work/play force as a freelance illustrator and cartoonist.
Since I had to choose Art over science ,for ecnomic reasons , I was forced to study my second love privately .
Perhaps you misinterpreted my indicating that I did not attend college in some way,....but to repeat it must be considered questionable , at best.
I will tell you the harsher truth here. I think it is a sign of respect when faced with a clearly minority view , to ask questions in order to see if that view , minimum, follows known facts before it launches off into theory.
If it does , and I continue to be interested " I "
would ask about the theory and see again it doesn't waver outside of facts when it needs to be grounded. "I" would , long before I asked my questions TRY , at least to clarify in my own mind which of those things , that are part of my thinking are considered 'THEORY" and which are repeatable "FACTS" within experimental evidence . (Things like the big Bang and pangea are clearly presented as THEORY,..and have both been successfully attacked and modified in the last decade.)
I may , perhaps consider the character of the presenter , if I have such knowledge and ask that If he (Or she) has presented minority opinions in the past? Has his opinion been vindicated and has his view won out historically? If it has , I'd say he has a track record of not speaking until he is quite sure of uimself and for that reason alone deserves my respect.
Of course ,If I know nothing of the man , I can read up, and if I find nothing then I am left with ONLY asking questions.
Yes, that would be my minimum. Questions , BEFORE
I form opinion.
As to facts , and before I rendered my own opinion . I would be sure of my facts and , more likely defer to an expert. (THO everyone has a right to an opinion )
The question you (I) have to ask your self is ,...
Is he wrong because his theory disagrees with all and every view out there , Or is he wrong because HIS FACTS ARE WRONG?....
Why? Why must this be the condition?
Because , the nature of new thought and discovery , is , that BY DEFINITION, it MUST disagree with what has gone before! MUST,....or otherwise it is not "New" at all.
Best Regards
Neal Adams

Dear Neal Adams,

No offense meant. DaVinci is my favorite cartoonist! It is good that you bring him up. I have spent much time viewing his work, including original codices and paintings.

I taught Mathematics at Woodbury University for 5 semesters, and often showed Leonardo's drawings to students. I even developed and taught an entire course on Mathematrics through Painting and Sculpture. I'd show a Leonardo print or cartoon, and let the class decide how to build a sculpture of what size or material or decoration. They made beuatiful things, such as regular dodecahedra made from dried starfish wired together with gold and silver wire.

I have read almost everything I can on da Vinci. He is crucial to this discussion because he was the greatest person for whom Art and Science are inseprable, precisely because he believed (and said so) that to correctly SEE and correctly DRAW from nature is the essential way to UNDERSTAND Nature.

He used Math (geometry and what we would consider simple algebra) as an adjunct to his unsurpassed hand-eye clarity. His drawings of vortices in water were the best model we had before the equations of hydrodynamics.

I respect your work, visually, and am trying to explain that da Vinci's approach is now dismissed (often unfairly) by the Scientific Establishment.

Galileo and Kepler and Newton made geometric proofs, with geometric drawings and arguments. But these 3 geniuses also, with Descartes, made the transition to an Algebraic primacy, with the geometry retreated to mere illustration.

Newton invented calculus (what he called Fluxions) when he passed the limit of what he could prove geometrically.

Blind mathematicians have done amazing brilliant work (Euler, the Sphere inversion topology, ...) and I know that Einstein and my mentor Richard Feynman also used visual reasoning (in strange conjunction with kinaesthetic reasoning -- "Feel it in my bones", "feel it in my gut").

Wegener started the continental drift idea by doing what you discuss, cutting up maps and globes. He was laughed at, until magnetic stripes in mid-Atlantic broke the old paradigm.

I am sympathetic with some of what you say, but am saying that mainstream Science today cares more about what you consider abstract Math, and less about geometry. In fact. Euclid's solid geometry, taughjt in schools for centuries, seems NOT to be taught in most public elementary schools in the USA now, and only occasionally in High School.

If the universe is 4-Dimensional (Riemann, Einstein, Poincare, Minkowski), then people who can't visualize 3-D are dead in their tracks, at the starting line.

If the universe is 11-dimensional (String Theory), this is true in spades.

I also like the Twilight Zone, again not really attacking you.

This is probably not the right venue to discuss the Epola theory, or my proposed experiments.

I have also been attacked once in a while as a crackpot, despite almost 2400 (two thousand four hundred) publications, presentations, and broadcasts. I enjoy "far out" theories and, though in some sense a product of the Establishment (Caltech, journal publications, textbooks coauthored, chairing sessions at international science conferences), am also deeply educated in counter-Establishment and counterculture. I have recently sold a comic book story (at San Diego Comic-Con), and have had a column in a comic book series. If anything, Science needs MORE cartoonists.

Thank you for your attention and consideration to my comments.

-- Professor Jonathan Vos Post

I really do prefer "Norm," but what the hey; it's no biggie.

Thanks for accepting my apology.

Of course I agree with much of the spirit of your last post. And, as you indicate in it, such admonitions apply to all of us, including yourself.

I hold the opposite of an authoritarian mindset in many ways, but for the life of me I can't understand why you feel the need to publically refer to various mainstream scientific theories in derogatory emotional terms (as you do on your website over and over again). If geology or physics or cosmology is mistaken in some areas it's certainly not because the theories or the theorists are stupid. If I were to suggest only one thing to you, it would be that you edit out your hyperbolic language and attempt to change your tone, at least when discussing science. Failing this, I'd suggest an editor.

Such a critique of your presentation style is even more pertinent considering that you're not only questioning geology (which, as I offered in my posts above, is perhaps the most questionable of the hard sciences in some respects). In what amounts to a massive non sequitur, you also make the extraordinarily expansive (and, as far as I can tell, evidentially unsupportable) claim that almost all of the basic theoretical foundations of physics and cosmology are wrong. If you'd stick to only the most questionable parts of geology and remove the hyperbolism, I and many others might be less likely to call you a quack, or at least we might do so without the same level of vehemence.

My last post above was meant to be addressed to Neal.

I note, though, that Neal Adams' last post (accidentally signed anonymous) didn't address a single issue that Norm brought up. Instead, it focused on an excessively tangential point that has nothing to do with the theory at hand (and could have been dealt with in a single sentence), and combined that with an emotional appeal that also contained no mention of the theory.

Let's keep in mind that derailing is a tool of the enemy! ^_^

Dear Norm and Xanthir,

I'm going to tell you a story.

Professor Samuel Warren Carey, the father of the Expanding Earth Theory, a man who set the geological world on it's collective backside, was invited to speak in London to the Royal Geologic Society. It was a hallmark moment in his life.

He was about 2 sentences into his talk, when an English Professor of Geology called out from the middle of the lecture hall, at the top of his lungs, he yelled out, one word "BULLSHIT!"

Humiliated, Professor Carey spoke on.

As for myself, I do not intend to tailor my point of view to try to suit everybody. Stupid is stupid. Reasonable is reasonable. If I am approached in a reasonable way, I will respond in a reasonable way.

Examine your own letters, Norm, if you were sending a letter to a friend on a public forum, would you talk about his lack of graduating high school, without checking the facts? Would you use words like quack? Not to mention some of the other words. If you read my theory and explanations carefully, you'd notice, I insult no one personally, ever. Yet, I am insulted, personally. I speak disrespectfully of theories, and asumptions. And it's true that many people accept these theories and attach themselves to them. There's nothing I can do about that. If they attach their egos to these theories. The intelligencia of the world once thought that the Sun revolved around the Earth. It was a stupid assumption. But it's very easy to see why anybody would believe it.

To think that the outer crust of the Earth, which only covers one quarter of the Earth, which contains the lighter of the sillicates, granitic rock, did not once cover a differentiated whole planet, is tuely beyond my comprehension. That only 1/4 of this outer skin remains, that no portion of the deep ocean exists that is older than 180 million years old, that dinosaurs, in general were 4 times the size of animals, in general, today, are clues so profound that not to realize that the Earth is clearly growing, is incomprehensible to me. One day, people will laugh at the Pangea Theory, and this view, the same as they now laugh at other out-moded ideas. Wrongly perhaps.

There are those who present a growing earth, and do it in a gentlemanly fashion. They have done so for forty years. And they have been pushed around like chaff in the wind. I guess I'm just not that type of fellow. So rather than invite personalized chatter again, I invite you and Xanthir, and anyone to ask any question, and challenge any point of my theory that you/they like. I will answer in kind. For Xanthir, I invite you to read and view such portions of my theory that are on my site. And I also ask what are the actual questions that were asked that I did not answer, which of course I would be delighted to answer, as always.

Best Regards,

Neal Adams

Jonathan
Thank you for your kind thoughts
When I began to investigate the origin of the mass needed for Carey's theory (Though I didn't know it was an individual named Sam Carey , at the time, I THOUGHT I would have to reluctantly immerse myself finally in higher math,(shudder)
I hoped I could ask others to do the heavy lifting , math-wise, but as it turns out My knowledge of math was hardly tested. Why?
Mankind had, til now, gone back to the atom , and had simplified our understanding . Then dissatisfied we discovered more and more particles .
This seemed to me to be going backwards. Shouldn't we be trying to get SIMPLER? FIND simpler?
Ah, I realized , we are attracted by shiny stones . That is our nature . We like and are attracted to more complicated. You may not think so.
We also rarely use deduction to solve problems . because we believe in the Scientific method .
Deduction works differently. One Deduces and for support without pure proof one seeks supporting evidence and clues , and builds a case of overwhelming evidence ,if possible . To do this one has to study many diciplines equally and without prejudice .
And there's the rub! We live in an age of specialization . This is a profound change of the scientific world ,...that is unrealized still . Integrating sciences is a valid form , but not respected ,...and so each speciality has gaping losses in their thinking because of it, ...specilization. Verbal exchanges end with "I'm sorry that's not my area (of expertise)."
Where is math in all of this?
Last!
It's there to tie everything into neat bundles. Fact is exponential curves , percentages , Totals etc don't require higher math at all.
Regards
Neal Adams

Neal,

I've apologised for my misunderstanding re your education, which was an honest mistake on my part. I had no intention to degrade, but only to convey a factual human interest point.

I apologise again for that error.

Like Jonathan (though not at his league or level), I've also been called a quack at times, and I've even relished the designation, so please don't be offended by that part of my posts. It's an inevitable term which arises whenever one challenges any mainstream.

I stand by my negative judgement of your hyperbolic style, and I'm not surprised that you refuse to see the shortcomings of such a style; if you could recognize it you'd have corrected it a long time ago and would have assumed a more gentlemanly air yourself.

Current geological theory already accounts for the available evidence. The theory you espouse does, too, and I've already expressed my recognition that there may be some truth to the idea that the planet is growing, but to found such speculations largely on the denial of the foundations of all of modern physics and cosmology is akin to using a bomb to extinquish a match.

And, as I also already expressed, I'm no Da Vinci and I may be wrong.

I invite anyone to read Neal's website and judge for themselves.

Also, Neal, you wrote in your last post above that you'd answer any challenge to "your" theory in kind, but you haven't yet answered any of mine.

And, you haven't answered any from the other posters on this site, either, the most pertinent one being Mark CC's (the writer of this blog).

Btw, I'd like to point out that I was the first one on this blogsite to argue that the growing planets theory might have something to it.

You're welcome.

Mark,
you said,
"Could pteranodons fly today? Yes - with a major caveat. Pteranodons were, from what we've been able to figure out,
gliders, not true fliers."

They must have been good climbers too (like flying squirls) to get up high enough to glide.

BTW great blogsite!

lunk:

The pteranodons were not like flying squirrels; they were better fliers than that. They were what's called thermal gliders - they had enough power in their wings to make very long gliding leaps from the ground, and their wings were large enough to allow them to catch thermal updrafts. (The reason that we think they weren't true flyers isn't really a matter of weight, but of musculature. It doesn't look like they had sufficient musculature to be able to generate enough lift with their wings to fly like a modern bird; but they had enough to manuever and take advantage of thermals.

That's somewhat limiting on the places they could live. From my recollection, most lived near the seashore, and there are persistent thermal updrafts around the seashore which they could take advantage of. (The same thing that we use for kites - the seashore is a great place for flying big kites.)

Neal:

You ignore all of the criticisms of your theory with a snotty handwave, and then pretend to be a reasonable participant in an actual discussion.

Your theory is utterly inconsistent with huge quantities of evidence. As I keep repeating, your theory is inconsistent with basic physics, relativity, gravity, geology, orbital mechanics, and the fossil record. The only thing which your theory is not inconsistent with is the fit of the continents - but even in that case, you can explain the way that fit, but not much about the nature of the landscape on those continents.

And when that's pointed out, you wave your hands some more, and say that math doesn't really matter, and that since all of those other things that you're inconsistent with involve math that you don't understand, they don't matter.

Your argument comes down one line that I'll quote:

That only 1/4 of this outer skin remains, that no portion of the deep ocean exists that is older than 180 million years old, that dinosaurs, in general were 4 times the size of animals, in general, today, are clues so profound that not to realize that the Earth is clearly growing, is incomprehensible to me.

Your imagination does not define reality. Your inability to imagine something does not make it real. Your theory is a crock of nonsense, which cannot explain much of anything; it's clearly deficient in virtually every aspect - but the ways of detecting its deficiency are generally mathematical - and since you just hand-wave away
math, there's no way to present a counter-argument that you'll accept.

But since you say you'll gladly answer any questions presented to you, here's a few.

(1) If your PMP theory is true, Why do we only see stable particles at the specific weights that we observe? Why do we not see stable particles at every one of your cubic arrangements?

(2) In three dimensional space, if you try to pack spherical things together, the natural packing is tetrahedral, not cubic. Why do your PMPs cluster in cubic figures?

(3) How do you account for things like fossils of sea creatures at inland locations? I've seen fossils of ocean-beds at Banff in Canada - if the continents used to cover the earth, and the water only came later, then why are there so many landlocked inland places where you find extensive layers of seabed fossils?

If I recall my geography class correctly (this has been a while, but bear with me), the Atlantic Rift is where crust material comes up, but the Pacific Rift is where it is subducted and disappears. The Ring of Fire is caused by the open sore in the Earth where the crust is sucked down, melted, and eventually regurgitated in the Atlantic rift.

IIRC, that's the major source of crust renewal. There are, of course, other locations where either can happen all over the earth.

Chickens can run and fly, but they don't get far or very high.

As soon as you put a motor on a glider, it becomes an airplane. (flyer)

Are they gliders or flyers?

lunk:

In real world science, particularly evolutionary biology, things are rarely as clear-cut as we might like them to be. The definition of a thermal glider is an animal that does not have the ability of sustained flight without the use of thermal updrafts. A pteranodon could probably fly something like a domestic chicken - enough to get off the ground for a couple of seconds, but not real sustained flight. But with its broad wingspan and lightweight wings, it could stay aloft by catching thermals.

Try watching a good pilot in a sailplane someday. They need a motorized plane to drag them off the ground, but once aloft, in the right conditions, a good pilot can stay in the air for pretty much as long as they want. For human-built gliders, the best place to do that is along the edge of a mountain range, where there are very strong updrafts; second choice for humans is an area with a lot of flat open grasslands - the thermals aren't as strong or as easy to find, but they're generally around, and it's easy to find a place to land safely. Humans don't tend to do a lot of soaring at the beach - it's not a particularly good place for taking off or landing a sailplane. For an animal, the shoreline is the best - strong sustained winds and updrafts, abundant food; and they don't need flat hard landing strips.

I'm trying to think of a creature that's alive today, that lives on the beach, waits for the wind to pick up, and glides up in the air to soars like a kite (without a string) yet cannot fly. Extintion sure leaves a lot of unanswered questions.

Ah, questions. thank you.

MARK , i'll get down to you, please in a minute
Norm Citing that all that agrees with me is continental connections and Earth dominant life forms size , I would argue is no small thing, at all .
But that's not my argument , it's only two of the most prominant clues . I could as easily point to a thousand other things , Well twenty or thirty, (why do people do that ?)
I could point out to cosmologists that the only meteorites that we know of that are NEAR 4.5 billion years old are condrite meteorites , which are accumulations of tiny Chondrules (Pencil-point big, and dust of the same make-up, These condrite meteorites CANNOT assemble on a gravitational body, (NO Supernova or blown-up planet) So
what made our solar system? Condrite meteorites?
It wasn't made . It was BEGUN by the sun and in time Grew from inside the plasma cores of the individual bodies .
If I'm wrong there should be all kinds of silicate , silicate iron, iron meteorites to find that're near at least 4 billion years old.They're not there!
I could point out that if , somehow the mass of stuff that collected to create our solar system did this within the window of the first 10 billion years ,...from "Star Stuff " We're talking the second 5 billion years, right?,
Well, another 4.5 billion years has gone by. Where is THAT material? No more super novas?
Of course I can't do it all here , but theres a LOT,
That was two more.
Pteranodon...?6 feet long ..25 foot wingspan.
Were far too big to fly in this atmosphere and in this gravity .
We have flappers and gliders in the sky now . Our GLIDERS are Eagles and Vultures (And albatros) who float on the updrafts .
These birds also flap their wings ,...for many reasons .
They may loose an updraft , They must sieze prey . they have to land and take off. Tricky business, that .
Our BIG Birds have help avoiding disaster , they have feathers that can turn in their sockets , so that at once they catch nearly all the air , then they can let the air slide between their feathers. Even so a bird twice or 4 times the size of an eagle would break it's wings with the additional G-forces and denser atmosphere . People can argue with this but the only real argument is that the bones were denser to stand the strain and pressure .
I have investigated this , and it turns out there is no increase in bone density,
Theres a reason that there is an upper limit to size to animals and flying creatures . as well as insects .
Much lower gravity is the BEST answer.
As to the site owners questions, (Well..comments.)
I have answered them personally , in an E-mail to him.
Mark: Before I answer , may I quote 'Snotty handwave"
That paragraph says much that's not true , but it's general and very hard to answer , except to say "not true' We shall see.
Next you say I say math doesn't matter. Of course That is untrue . Much of my theory is based on MATH . Simple math.
I do not DO what is commonly called higher math , and I have not found it necessary. If I do , I can afford to pay someone to do it for me , it's that or live my life over.
Regular math , I'm quite good and fast at.
Next paragraph stands on it's own . You quote me And I'll accept your following criticism .
But I'll do it on behalf of myself and all the great visionary scientists who let their immaginations carry them to the limit of the ideas that they revealed to themselves and to us. Now let's "see" how deficient my imagination really is.
Q.1. Why don't we "SEE Positrons in the process of becoming Protons ?
That's actually a pretty funny question ,in context.
Carl david Anderson,.. first to "observe Dirac,s theorized particle , the positron, noted that it annihilated with an electron 'within a nano-second"
You see, of course we are chock full of electrons. They're everywhere , surrounding all our atoms. Hard to avoid, electrons ,
For a Positron to survive , it must not contact an electron , OR must be prevented from such contact, Hmmmm.
There are certain kinds of electro-magnetic lines
that travel north to south of a magnetic body . Like ,say the Earth . We call these lines , of the Earth Earth's Van Allen belts . They are Negative and positive lines and they can keep a positive particle on a negative line and a negative particle on a positive line .
So where else do these lines exist?
Inside the Earth the EM lines continue to flow , and inside (AND OUTSIDE)the sun , and inside all the planets ,...and moons .
They also errupt , the Positrons and Electrons, out of and within the black hole at the center of our galaxy .
Electrons and Positrons erupt in a massive stream out of the hub of these black holes .
In all these places positrons collect prime matter particles .
All , I'm afraid are pretty hard to see. or get to.
I think it could be set up experimentally.
There is nothing in this that steps outside of known science , except some of my assumptions as to the make-up of the core and such, The science is spot on.
Q2.Cube , not a tetrahedron. I think I have to question your assumption . The positron is not a central body , but a portion of the body itself. It picks up three sides , a matrix of force is created that attracts in a straight line , Not "TO FIT SPHERES" remember these spheres DON'T TOUCH " so they are not in force-fact spheres, at all , They sit in a cube of force space and are pulled In in straight lines , the shortest distance between two pionts . Make no mistake that though they "may" be spheres they act as cubes of packed force,
Q3. Actually one of my favorite questions . this is how i usually present it . If the world was always the same size , where do we find ancient fish fossils ?
A. In Utah,.... Italy ...China and like that ,..NEVER in the deep oceans!
There were NO DEEP OCEANS before 180 million years ago ,...anywhere on the earth. That's why scientists don't need to go to the oceans bottom to find Megladont teeth and bones .
Two thirds of the upper tectonic plate , the continental plate was covered with what we called Shallow seas ,...which were up to a half mile deep.
A bit of quick calculation indicates that SEA LEVEL had to be a half mile deeper than it is NOW in order to cover 2/3rds of the continental plates.
That water is gone now,....all around the world .
Where do you suppose it went to? It's all gone . Not one ounce of the shallow seas remain , on th continental plates.
I SAY , that as the deeper rifts spread and the NEW DEEPER oceans opened , those shallow seas drained off into the new deeper spreads , More water was added by a growing Earth , in proportion to it's other elements. The water increased but the shallow seas were gone, drained. and GENERALLY the same proportion of the upper plates show through ,
Those fossils ar proof of a growing Earth.
Heres a little Evolutionary factoid. There are more than twice as many fish families in the fresh water on the continental plates as in the shallow oceans over the continental shealf and the upper ocean , and far more than twice the number of fish families in the upper oceans than in the deep ocean.
Thank you

Xanther
Umm not exactly , There are about 60 to 70 thousand miles of rifting apart oceanic plate , The Subducting plate area is between 1.5 and 2 thousand miles if opmisticallymeasured . Three hundred abd sixty degrees around Antarctica there are no subduction zones and this Antarctic /Indian ocean area is fast spreading,
There are no subduction zones in the Atlantic at all.
Pretty hard for anything to go "under" the americas ,They are on average 70 kilometers thick while the oceanic plate is 4 to 5 miles thick.
Scientists are beginning to refer to these zones as compression zones.
The Ring of fire is , theoretically , where plate is sucked or pushed into the asthenosphere, How long has this been going on ?
Well most compressive mountains on Earth are 20.30. 40 59 million years old Rockies , Himaliayas Andes , etc.
How old are the "compression zones" .
Regards
Neal Adams

Neal, are most of the (big)valleys, in this picture, caused by tectonic spreading?

http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&tab=wl&q=

Too long of address. I was looking at South centeral BC, Canada, on google satalite.

lunk:

You're doing a great job of living up to your name.

Pteranodons didn't fly like kites; they flew like birds. They lacked the musculature to be able to stay in the air for extended flight without the aid of updrafts.

Think of what you said about chickens - they can get themselves of the ground, but they can't really fly. They can't generate the sustained lift necessary to stay in steady flight.

The pteranodon is, in some sense, like what you said about the chicken - it can get off the ground, but it can't keep itself there without using those huge winds to catch thermal updrafts. But it lived in a habitat where there were/are steady, persistent, reliable updrafts that are easy to exploit.

And for modern examples, you obviously didn't think very hard. Have you ever watched a seagull or an albatross at the shore? It's a beautiful sight, and it makes an important point. If you watch a gull, it actually spends a lot of time just soaring. It's big graceful wings are spread wide and unmoving except for tiny twitched for control - it's not flapping its wings, and it's not using its muscles to move the wings to generate lift. It's soaring on a wind. Gulls have actually developed this ability to the point where they can hover - they balance their airspeed against the windspeed so that they're staying in one place, looking down for food - and when they see something, they pull their wings in and drop into a dive to grab it.

Here's an interesting counter-question. Take a look at the wingspan and the wing surface area on a pteranodon. It's got
absolutely huge wings. If it were flying in a reduce gravity environment, why would it need such large wings?

Neal:

You didn't understand the question about the tetrahedrons.

Cubes seem quite natural to us - because we're taught geometry in terms of a rectangular axis system - and so we naturally think in terms of rectangular shapes; and in a 3d rectangular geometry, cubes are the primary shape. But in reality, cubes are actually a very strange figure in terms of packing things into a space. A cube is a figure with six immediate neighbors at one distance (that is, the neighbors at the faces); and another 8 at a different distance (the neighbors at the corners). Unless things are really cube-shaped, adopting a cubic packing is really quite strange. The tetrahedron is the simplest basic figure that gives you equal distance to all of your neighbors. The reason that this is important is because absent any force, things will naturally collapse into the densest packing - and that's the tetrahedral one. What force is it that is drawing some neighbors in tightly (the cubic faces) but preventing others (the corners?)

To give an example of what I mean, think about common salt - NaCl. It forms a cubic crystal. The reason for that is that the crystalline stricture alternates Na and Cl atoms. Every Na+ needs to be surrounded by Cl-, and every Cl- needs to be surrounded by Na+. The densest packing of alternating particles is cubic.

But you're claiming a packing of uniform particles. So why would it adopt a cubic shape? What prevents the cubes from collapsing into the more natural and denser tetrahedral packing?

Neal:

This is one of the most ridiculous argument I've ever seen:

Actually one of my favorite questions . this is how i usually present it . If the world was always the same size , where do we find ancient fish fossils ?
A. In Utah,.... Italy ...China and like that ,..NEVER in the deep oceans!

Do you mean to tell me that you actually believe that the reason we collect seabed fossils on land rather than the current ocean floor is because we know that there aren't any under the ocean?

It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that it's hard to get to the bottom of the ocean to collect fossils, could it?

It couldn't possibly be related to the fact that we live on land, and so most of the places where we'd naturally find fossils is on land?

Neal:

On to the most important topic - you're handwaving about how you don't need to do any real math.

Current theories of physics can make amazingly precise predictions. We can predict what molecules can form, what shapes they'll take, what they'll react with, how much energy will be consumed or produced by the reaction. We can predict where every planet and every moon of every planet will be years in advance - because the theory of gravity works with such precision. We can launch rockets and compute their orbits so that they end up landing on mars on a precise day; or place them into precise orbits close to the sun for making observations. We can calculate gravitational lensing effects of bodies billions of light years away. We can predict the precise amount of energy needed to make hydrogen atoms fuse into helium - and predict the precise amount of energy released by that fusion. We can explain why there are certain kinds of particles at certain masses, and why only those masses are possible. We can explain why certain atoms are stable, and why some are subject to radioactive decay. All of this and more are described with an amazing amount of precision by modern physics and its supporting math.

You want to say that all of modern physics is wrong - by coming up with a theory that can't match modern physics in any of those areas - because your theory doesn't have the math to support it; and if you tried to build the math around your theory to precisely describe any of those things, you'd fail - because it does not fit. The math does not work.

Mark
I don't disagree with you , and it's a problem that I have struggled with, rest assured .
I have examined micri -photographs of particles (fields really, of course.) and seen supportive evidence of many sortsof crystaline metals, Primitive orthorhombic unit cells seem to retain the cube formation.
My instinct is to set the layers in a kind of interlocking egg carton configuration with alternating rows. I'm not falling on a spear for this configuration though after going through many configurations, Heres where I am. and for the reasons I perhaps poorly describe .
The final point is that Body centered tetragonal
doesn't seem to work . However we get there we have a 5 layered 10 particle by 10 particle form who's abrubtly weakened field causes it to lose each corner 10 particle group on all 8 corners giving us an irregulat sphere.
I can no more get down there and take a picture than anyone can , but I think I'd know it when I saw it.

My "ridiculous argument"
Gosh, I wish you hadn't said that.
Um .... Yes , ...The reason that we collect seabed fossils on land rather than the current ocean floor is because we KNOW there aren't any under the ocean!
Look , it's not your area and . hell when I found this out I was stunned , too.
Of course finding fossils on the land is much easier than in the ocean , of that there is no doubt. That's what I'd rather do.
But scientists in the sixties found ways to dredge up the sediments in the deep oceans .It wasn't too hard after a while to get down to the bedrock after a while.
What did they find. Well, they couldn't find anything older than 60-70 million years old. Imagine the frustration ,...whereever they went , some areas even only 40, 30, 20, even only 10 million years old.Something wasn't kosher out there .
Bell telephone's "Long Lines " ship would lay cable and mid-ocean it would melt through.
So the USGS and the U.S. navy began taking core samples of the oceans floor. In the first 10 years they couldn't find an area that was older than 70 million years old. Of course they were stunned , as you and I would be .
Then they began finding areas a little older . Smaller areas just off of Japan and indoneisa . Two crescent
shapped areas off the U.S and Africa . The very oldest was....about one hundred and eighty million years old. Work began on a map . The "rainbow map of the ages of the deep oceans. Finished in the Eighties.
You can find it easily at the USGS site. I have it at my site , but I'm not sure you trust me enough yet to believe my offerings.
Yes , as we said ,"The reason we collect seabed fossils on land rather than the current ocean floor is because we know there aren't any under the oceans!
Mark, The deep oceans are rifts and spreads that
generally started on a growing Earth about 180 million years ago . Before that ,...well , they didn't EXIST.
In fact , not to put too fine a point on it , There is not ONE IOTA OF PROOF OF THE EXISTANCE OF THE DEEP OCEAN AREA ,...anywhere and in any way, Not one remaining square yard of ancient deep ocean , animal or plant, or microbe of any sort or kind.
We are talking over two thirds of the covering surface of the Earth.
Third note
Well it was a speech , I was hoping for an argument or some questions. I 'll try to dig an implied question out. It's not as much fun,gotta say.
O-kay , They , all of them HAVE TO BE RIGHT and I HAVE TO BE WRONG , cause ,..that's the way it is! Period!Bamp!
Hmmmm , You know Historically thats not ever how it's been. The status quo has always stood til one individual has kinda smashed it down.
Oh, I know , we're much smarter now, We're not gonna be easily fooled as thosse stupid greeks. Who otherwise were ,,,pretty smart.
We KNOW the universe was Created in a ..... Big EXPLOSION from a tightly massed bunch of stuff the size of a Basketball , or a barn , that came from ....um ....a collapsed previous .... but ....the universe is ....um accelerating....outward...but ...it came from ....
We KNOW the (our ) solar system assembled from ,..uh ...STAR STUFF,...of super novas that are always ...um...blowing up and making more stuff ....except in the last 4.5 BILLION YEARS.
We KNOW Earth" began" ("began"? BAMP?) Molten and differentiating with the lighter stuff on the outside , granitic rock.......'course ..../ two-thirds of that crust .....is kind of ...mmmissing now...but it was there...once.

IT DIFFERENTIATED and the heavier stuff went to the core like the iron and ,...um ....yes we can find quite a bit of iron here on the/IN the crust now ...hmmm.
We know that the crust , the oceanic plates break apart and float around , well not float ." MOVE",,,?...
about the planet willy-nilly bumping and crashing "like Bumper cars in a carnival!" And at ONE TIME they gathered together into one big giant island , that we called Pangea, and they stayed that way for .....uh ....about ....
ummmm well couldn't be more than 300 million , 400 or 500 million years because there is now proof that those same landmasses were gathered together as a ...um giant island ..on the other side of the Earth and we are calling THAT island Rodinia. ....but it .....must've been long before Pangea was.... I'm sorry.Proof of the time? well ...uh no theres no proof of time ...but it couldn't have been 2,3,4, 5, hundred million years ago because ,...BE-CAUSE Pangea and Rodinia couldn't have existed at the same time . don't you see. That that would mesn... ...the unthinkable happened.
Mark. The math of my theory , in all areas fits far better than the standard theory by 200 percent .
How could I possibly say such a thing.?
First my theory does not contadict known "FACTS" ever,..EVER! Only unproven theory. Hell I don't even need to mess with the math, But where the standard theory breaks down , my theory does not. I don't deny FACTS . I build on them , and put unproven and wrong theories aside. That's all.
200 percent.
The standard model will tell you that the negative -positive forces of the universe are perfectly and equally ballanced , BUT NOT THE MASS!
My theory proves that the MASS IS ALSO EQUAL AND PERFECT, (course you gotta read and understand it. )
i'd say that alone is 200 percent.
If you think any portion of my theory is wanting , please point it out.
Thank You
regards
Neal Adams

Neal:

You say "If you think any portion of my theory is wanting, please point it out".

I keep pointing out: your theory is inconsistent with gravity,
orbital mechanics, chemistry, geology... In fact, it's hard to think of a single field of science that it is not inconsistent with. It's wanting in virtually all areas.

You keep claiming that the math of it works - but it doesn't. Even at the simplest most primitive level of your theory: forces between regular uniform particles don't balance in a cube. It doesn't work.

How can your theory explain the precision of orbital mechanics? Current physics explains gravitational behaviors at the macro scale to an astonishing level of precision - to the point of being able to describe the relativistic effects in orbits. How can your theory match those predictions?

How can your theory explain the result of experiments in supercolliders? At the micro-scale of particles smashing together in a collider, up to very large energy levels, we can predict the results up to an astonishing degree of accuracy. Can your theory match those predictions?

Can your theory explain how a nuclear bomb works? Can it explain why the energy spectrum from a hydrogen bomb so closely matches the spectrum from the sun? Can you explain why fusion works, and show how your theory can calculate the
energy produced by it the way that standard theory can?

Can you theory explain radioactive decay? Can it explain why certain atoms are stable, and others aren't? Can it predict which ones will be stable?

Can your theory explain why space probes whose trajectories were computed using non-expanding planets and conventional gravity were able to do multiple-step gravitational slingshots to reach not just one, but multiple planets and moons in sequence, with near-perfect precision?

Neal,

As I understand, plate tectonics accounts for there being no fossils older than 160 million years or so on the ocean floor because of subduction. The continental plates are moving relative to each other at rates of multiple centimeters per year, which is fast enought to close ocean distances in the alloted time.

Subduction is caused by convective downwelling in plate tectonics, and looks entirely feasible to me.

And I have no idea what effect ocean submersion/corrosion has on fossils, anyway.

The Big Bang was not an explosion in time and space; it's an expansion of the time space continuum and as such didn't take place as a time/space "event" but is the very origin of time and space (the phrase "Big Bang" was coined colloquially and is considered a term carrying unscientific connotations). The expansion is real, but what is causing the acceleration is still an area for theorizing, and many are doing so. No need to postulate a PMP.

Here's the basic scientific question for you and your theory of choice, Neal: what does your theory of choice predict that current theory doesn't, and how can we form an experiment to prove your theory of choice right and current theory wrong?

It's fun and even kinda easy to come up with alternate theories which account for the evidence as well as does accepted theory, but the proof is in the experimental pudding and in the application of Occam's Razor.

I remain very skeptical but open-minded re the growing planets theory, though I can't see the advantage at all to your physics theories.

Neal: "Next you say I say math doesn't matter. Of course That is untrue. Much of my theory is based on MATH . Simple math.
I do not DO what is commonly called higher math , and I have not found it necessary. If I do , I can afford to pay someone to do it for me , it's that or live my life over.
Regular math , I'm quite good and fast at."

Mark: "you're handwaving about how you don't need to do any real math."

With all due respect, these two statements pass through each other without interacting. Why? Because no definition has been given for:

(1) "Simple math" [Neal];
(2) "what is commonly called higher math" [Neal;
(3) "Regular math" [Neal];
(4) "real math" [Mark].

As far as I can tell (please correct me if wrong, gentlemen), these might mean:

(1) "Simple math" = Arithmetic (at least addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, not clear if Neal includes Scientific Notation, exponentiation, roots);
(2) "what is commonly called higher math" = elementary algebra, intermediate algebra, linear algebra, Calculus, differential geometry, group theory, ... {which sequence starts in elementary school; I have taught 5 university semesters of remedial elementary algebra, and remedial intermediate algebra, and have a good grasp on what underprepared students do and don't know in these areas);
(3) "Regular math" arithmetic + plane geometry and some solid geometry;
(4) "real math" = "what is commonly called higher math" modulo some definition of "commonly" and "higher", plus basic Mathematical Physics, Crystallography, computer science.

Neal: "My instinct is to set the layers in a kind of interlocking egg carton configuration..."
Neal has, in my opinion, admitted to being an intuitive and visual thinker, about which I have no problem: most of my students those 5 university semesters were also, as the university has a famous Art, Architecture, and Animation component. Many of the readers of this blog are, to some extent, trained or self-trained in axiomatic mathematics and "experimental mathematics" through computer programming.

Great mathematicians seem to have a combination of axiomatic expertise AND intuitive/aesthetic insight.

It is not, in my experience as a teacher, likely that:

Neal: "I do not DO what is commonly called higher math , and I have not found it necessary. If I do , I can afford to pay someone to do it for me , it's that or live my life over."

I have successfully gotten students in their 50s to finally grasp whatv eluded them through bad teachers in their past, peer pressure, bad parenting, poor self-esteem. Neal does not suffer from poor self esteem, so far as I know. He is either claiming "Discalculia" = "Math Disability" or suffering from never having had a teacher who could work with his visual strengths (brilliant) and intuition (mixed bag). The educational literature on Discalculia is quite clear that roughly 2/3 of the clinically Math Disabled CAN -- with proper teaching my specialists -- finally "get it" and be able to do at least algebra. Only about 1/3 have their brains hardwired to make intervention ineffective.

The problem is NOT in teaching people what they don't know (and know that they don't know). The big problem is in teaching people who THINK that they know something, but have the wrong facts, axioms, methods in place through wrong ideas uncorrected by good teachers. My wife has published in the area of college students who fail Physics because their high school teachers were wrong, and their textbooks were wrong.

I encourage Neal to follow the lead of da Vinci and apply himself to learning this new field at his mature age. It can be done. It produces amazing feelings of power and liberation. It opens doors.

Can any agreement be reached on any of what I constructively put forth above, as my humble attempt to bridge a wide (oceanic?) gulf?

Dyscalculia.

By the way, my Yahoo is screwed up, probably server-side, as for some 48 hours I have not been able to receive any emails including those that I sent myself from Windows machines and from Linux machine with Yahoo, gmail, and others. I can see (on either PC) the emails I send via Yahoo in my "sent" file but my "inbox" has nothing new -- not even spam! -- in 2 days. Should I contact Yahoo customer service or what?

Jonathan,

What you're saying is that the math-disabled can likely learn math and overcome their disability. I concur.

Can the same can be said about bad writers? I'd say yes, at least in some cases, though the criterion is much more subjective and requires varied life experiences and paradigm shifts.

What about bad writers combined with feeble math skills and a lack of understanding of current science? These are the toughest "nuts" of all to crack.

All right
I thought I would have a reasonable discourse with you after I showed you that I have information you don't have and I can give you . Valid information , if you look it up.
Yet you prefer in spite of this you continue to act as if I were a kook,
So be it.
Para 1.
Para 2. Pointing out a theory is inconsistant , is NOTHING like POINTING OUT WHAT inconsistancies.One CAN't answer a General Question! That's a fact. "Virtually all areas " is hardly a question.

Para 3.It's NOT a cube, It's a SPHERE! Didn't you read it? You gotta READ.
Beyond that The Proton is not ballanced . There are 8 weak areas. At the corners.
By the way , that's why the shells of atoms have eight electrons in the outer shell.

Para 4.There is nothing inconsistant between the two, The math is the same. I'm a big fan of Newton and his math.
I use it to help explain the plasma core of planets.
As such, Newtonian math breaks down when the gravity inverts at what distance between Earth And the moon . Interesting problem that I don't know the answer to.
You can Google the problem ,and you'll know about it too.
What is NOT explained is the PROCESSION OF THE PLANETS. That part and others are MY theory.
In summary . My theory accepts the given math, and Newton. Then it adds EM to the rules .

Para 5.My theory can do far better. My theory gives the number of particles in Protons . And that number is far higher than the standard theory indicates, The latest experiments at Brookhaven colliding AU nucleii shows far more particles than expected. .
Particles POUR out like "A FLUID" with a massive abundance of tiny particles.No Quarks have been readily identified. I'm quite ahead here . We'll see what happens with the English collider is done in three years , though I think some important things will be resolved before then.
I'm being updated regularly.

Para 6. There is no difference here . Why would there be? I don't even understand the question.

Para 7.Same Same.

Para 8.NOT "Expanding"...Growing! Near-Perfect. Describes it perfectly. That's why trajectories are adjusted! The growth take place very slowly. It has little or no effect on the math.
Scientists KNOW that the moon proceeds away from the earth,....slowly of course . It barely figures into the math. The moon moves away because both the earth and the moon are growing .and the magnetic line is moving outward.

Para 9.Anything else?
Neal Adams

Neal:

First - perhaps you should try reading a bit. I said that your model is based a cubic packing; not that it's based on cubic particles. Do you even understand the distinction?

How does a spherical particle have "corners" where its field is weak? A sphere is by definition uniform. What you're doing with the "weak corners" is actually circular reasoning. Why are the corners weak? Because for a cubic packing, the corners have to be weak. Why is the packing cubic? Because the fields are the corners are weak. There's nothing there, unless you can explain how your fields behave differently in the six facial directions.

Further - you can say that your theory respects things like Newtonian motion and gravity. But it can't - it doesn't work. And you'll never really understand why unless you actually bother to do the math.

Try doing a newtonian calculation of gravity - only do it to take into account the fact that space is densely packed with particles. It doesn't work. Try to calculate accurate motions of particles while explaining how the densely packed PMPs are being pushed around the moving objects. Try to explain why nuclear fusion works, if the atoms hydrogen and helium are actually made of your PMPs. None of it works out. But you can't see that - because to test any of those - to see if your theory actually matches reality - you need to actually work out the math.

It's easy to wave your hands in the air and say "My theory explains X better than any other" when you've never actually worked out the details of your theory enough to be able to compare the predictions that your theory makes to what really happens.

Mercury's procession is explained pretty well by relativity. You want to say that that's wrong, you need to show that the orbital dynamics predicted by your theory are a better model for the actual observed orbit of mercury than for the relativistic gravity calculations. But you can't do that - because your model is not sufficiently developed to be able to do the kind of math that could be used to actually develop an orbital prediction.

Neal, I'd love to see a discussion between you and a modern experimental particle physicist (or any other physicist, for that matter). Now *that* would be worth reading for it's high humor potential. I mean, c-mon, I wonder why brilliant physicists and cosmologists haven't seen what you can see without your even using complex math? I guess you're more of a genius than Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Feynman, Hawking, et al, eh? Please.

Among my other questions which you haven't addressed is this: How do you account for the fact that on a geologic scale the dinosaurs existed far too recently to fit your model? On a model I used before, if the age of the earth was represented by a scale the size of one of the now destroyed twin towers with the present day at the top, the 108-story building would feature the dinosaurs on the 104th to 107th floors. That's right near the top, but you're claiming that the earth doubled or tripled or whatever in size just since then, so why this sudden very, very radical burst in growth? Did the Earth's rate of growth in your theory vary extremely radically over its 4.6 billion year span of existence? And what is your proposed mechanism to account for this varying rate?

Norm
Para 1, That is the theory . Doesn't exactly" math" out .
Likely the level of complication of this will be hard to become easily familiar with. Let's try one.
Subduction as theorized says that subducted plate only dives down from one side under the other.
Presumably . The opposite side , unsubducted must be OLDER ocean bottom, as you may realize. So along the asian continent for a hundred miles going out, there should be Ancient sea bottom .
There isn't.
That particular plated area is only 30 to 40 million years old .
Actually if I start this list it will be far too long .
please excuse me for not continuing. By the End of the week I will have posted the case against pangea on my site.

Para 2.No one knows what causes Subduction. Some think it's pushing out from the rift area, Some think the PLATE is being PULLED DOWN. Some say a combination.
On the earth there is about 1/8th the distance of subduction zones as the linear distance of the rift zones .
The word 'Convection' is being used far less today than years ago.

Para 3. Paleontologists have no problem finding fossils under the sediments under the oceans. The Shallow seas were 'oceans' too.

Para 4. There is no evidence for a big bang except for a general background radiation . A background radiation could be caused by any number of things . A Big Bang would be at the very bottom of my list.
Let's go the other way, If the universe is exponentially growing LIKE the earth , then we don't need a Big Bang.
We are now Used to this Big bang thing , To me ,a Big bang is nothing more than modern man's version of MAGIC.
Unexplainable and and impossible.
I realize this is not about my perceptions , but I don't believe in magic. I believe in science. There is nothing scientific about the Big Bang.
Try this ,...1..The universe is ACCELERATING!
2. In order to "Explode" and for matter to escape it had to travel faster than light speed. (A limit you can insist didn't exist.) How fast is it traveling now?
Presumably it's been accelerating for 14.5 billion years.

Para 5. We can measure the Earth . Hard one . you'd think it wouldn't be difficult. One group has established that the equator is growing. (Expanding.)
One could fire a Positron a distance in an accelerator astride a negative EM line in a vacuum.(to see how strong the line would have to be to allow the Positron to collect Prime Matter particles , which are everywhere.

Para 6.I've not heard too many such fun theories.
It's an interesting way to belittle another person's work.
perhaps you have such a theory?
I don't reccomend it as an avocation.

Para 7. A theory , as I understand it does not have "advantages" as much as it explains the way things work better than previously. There is no "advantage" to knowing the sun doesn't go around the Earth.
When I first heard the pangea theory , I was facinated , cause it did seem South America and Africa fit together ,
I became suspicious and I traced off the two continents
on tracing paper and slid them together. They didn't fit at all . there was a 25 degree empty wedge between the two.
Only when I placed the two continents on a much smaller ball did they come together,perfectly
I was shocked.
This "Theory" seemed far superior to Continents floating around on an ocean of magma, which was the theory at the time.
The scientific community reacted very badly, They seemed almost terrified . The physicists and others asked where this new mass came from . The geologists couldn't answer. They were Geologists after all .
Then a decending slab was discovered by Waddi and Benioff , and that was it.
No one equated decending slabs and uprising volcanic islands with the compression of mountain-building
No one wanted to do the Physics that explained the additional mass.
I thought I'd give it a try. Nail it , do a graphic novel, and Got hooked .
The Geology , heh , Tip of the iceberg. The physics ,....will rewrite the science books. I guess it all will.
NOT MY CHOICE!
Neal Adams

Neal:

You keep repeating the same mantras over and over again, but you don't actually answer any of the actual questions. You just keep ranting on and on...

The thing is, you need to do more than just shout. You need to show that you theory works better than its competition. You don't like the big bang, you don't like conventional gravity (you claim that you do - but newtonian gravity can't explain stable orbits with expanding planets), you don't like plate tectonics - just the list of things you think are wrong could fill pages.

And yet - you cannot do a single prediction that's within orders of magnitude of the predictions made by all the theories that you insist are wrong.

The thing is: I'm actually pretty easy to convince. I'm a computer scientist, not a physicist. I don't have any vested interest in the standard model or the standard theories. All it would take to convince me is a bit of math - show me one prediction - just one prediction - where the math can make anything produce more precise predictions than the conventional theory. Just one. But as I keep saying: in science, to show that one theory is better than another, you have to show that it does a better job than its competition. And for the stuff that you're talking about, that's a high bar: the standard theory produce absolutely astonishingly accurate predictions. Show that yours makes one precise prediction better than one of the established theories .

O-kay
Mark
P1. I thought I understood .

P2. Its a potential cube of 1000 particles with 10 particles off the corners ,....making an irregular sphere.
The corners are weak because they STICK out past the field .
(I've explained this to four physicists, They seemed to understand,) Field's end. Peter out when they've exhausted their , hmmm, field . I don't know how better to explain this .
Magnetic fields are short and layered , like when you put two protons CLOSE ENOUGH they stop repelling!?? Yes? !!!
P3 No I dont. I buy it . I did some of it in school and it was fine. Look, math is like a computer . you can depend on it if you do it right.
I'm not a computer operator but I can do more with a computer than you can ever hope to do. With other peoples hands . It's how I work. I'm sorry if you don't like it.
I like it and I understand it. I made my animations with it and I worked out the methodology.

P4 This is pure nonsense. I say PMP's are standing fields that have infacing fields unfelt until light speed.
A MATTER PARTICLE DOESN'T FEEL OR HAVE FRICTION AGAINST OTHER MATTER PARTICLES. ONLY FIELDS INTERACT.
ONLY FIELDS.
If a field is infacing it can't be felt except at great speed. or great distance , as on a galactic level .
(CALL IT DARK MATTER)
My hydrogen and helium work PERFECTLY and my fusion only takes heat not force. Nor are my Highercount atoms made in FAR-OFF SUPER NOVAS , BUT RIGHT HERE IN THE ELECTRO-MAGNETIC FIELD OF OUR OWN SOLAR SYSTEM. Super novas indeed . Did they stop working the last 4.5 billion years???

P5 oh , but I have. It's quite simple.

P6 No specific orbital . But I have worked out a correction to Bode's law that works better , Have You? Give it a try.

Norm
P1. Guess I am. What does it profit you to speak in such a demeaning fashion. Is it to counter my percieved EGO.
If I present a theory that took 35 years to develop, do you resent the theory , or the dedication that I give to it , or that after all this time that I present it?
I have spoken to, and debated with, in some detail, a total of 5 Physicists. The subject of math came up only once .and that physicist is a teacher and a comic book fan. He was pretty rough on me . The others ? A pleasure.
Well, I'm afraid you would not note much of the style of humor you might expect.
Tell you why they missed it,
Because it came through Geology, and a failed theory. If you DON'T go through the Geology , you never get to the physics.
If you know , as your starting position that Matter MUST BE created , there's no reason to let doubt creep in.
We sort of know matter must be "made" but here it is a need, an all prevailing need . Yet it can't be that it be false , so there must be support from all the sciences.
thuroughness is my contribution . " Measure twice , cut once" is the motto I got from my mother," In everything."

P 7. First , I observe , not decide .
Earth grew/grows EXPONENTIALLY Increasing with time. If you look at the rainbow map you will see the exponential nature of it . I did an edit of it to make it more clear. http://www.nealadams.com/EarthProject/fromthesky.html

180 million years ago the earth grew a thin fingers
breadth per year. Today Earth grows 12 to 20 inches a year.
In the last 10 MILLION YEARS Earth has Attained enough surface area to easily make the South American continent
In 300 million years Earth will be nearly as big as Saturn.
The mechanism ? The more energy the plasma core generates the more prime Matter it converts into Matter .The spin of a planet or moon generates the field . the bigger it grows the more energy it generates at it's core.
There is no end to the prime Matter , and no space it cannot penetrate. It's everywhere flowing through everything. The core space enlarges with growth ,and more matter is made in a more organized fashion.

regards

Neal Adams

Neal,

What's "Para 1", "Para 2", etc. refer to? You addressed it all to me, yet you give no indication which posts of mine to which you're referring. And I don't see how you're answering my points, except in a very partial manner, and some points you STILL haven't answered AT ALL. Are you in a hurry or something? Are you mixing up my posts with someone else's? This confusion in your writing is part of my complaint re your presentation style. I've got other things to do, and trying to figure out what you're intending to express by my decoding your non sequiturs is not something I'm highly motivated to do. Care to present your responses to me in a manner that's a little easier for me match up with my points?

Once again: why question all the foundations of particle physics and cosmology to solve some riddles of geology? What does your PMP theory predict that currently accepted theory doesn't or can't predict as well? How do you account for the radically varying rates of Earth growth made necessary by the dating of your "evidence" (the ages of the dinosaurs are, geologically, VERY RECENT)?

Neal,

Sorry; our posts are crossing here, and I think you addressed one of your posts to me that wasn't meant for me.

I'll home in on just one point, in the hopes of preventing you from repeating the same endless streams of nonsequiters. In response to a request to show something your theory does better than conventional theory, you claim to have demonstrated an improvement on Bode's law based on your theories.

So. The best you can do is to claim to have improved on a theory that was discredited in 1846. And even for that, you don't bother to actually show what you predict or how you predicted it - you just bluntly assert that your theory is better because it improves on something that was shown to be totally incorrect over 150 years ago.

How can one simultaneously insist that winged reptiles couldn't have flown in current gravity, and there was less gravity long ago because the earth had more mass, and at the same time claim that gravity doesn't exist?

At the same time, the claim that earth expands and this causes what we feel as "gravity":

At current gravity, earth would be expanding at 309257 kilometers a year. Earths current diameter is only 12756 km. We'd be doing a bit more than "doubling"...

Whoops!

I screwed up. The actual expansion would be twice that, or 618514km a year.

(I calculated the distance from the center, which give me the change in radius, not the diameter.)

Neal,

Which 5 physicists did you debate? Did you convince them? I'll bet you didn't.

The exponential growth which you indicate would make our planet as large as Saturn 300 million years from now sounds like more ad hoc reasoning. Can you make any predictions that won't take 300 million years for us to verify?

I don't really see the point of this anymore. I read your site thoroughly and with an open mind and I wasn't convinced, so I doubt you'll convince me here.

Sorry that my comment re actual physicists felt demeaning to you, but c'mon, try to be realistic. You don't really consider yourself in their league, do you? If you do, I think that goes a long way toward explaining all of this: bad writing + no math + incomplete grasp of the science + massive ego = being equal to the greatest scientific visionaries in history.

Don't blame me; you're the one claiming that experts in other fields can't see what you see in the fields in which they are experts. And you call their well-established and highly verified theories stupid. Who's really being demeaning here?

Me? I'm just expressing my doubts about your ideas and pointing out your lack of expertise compared to others who've made their life's work out of areas in which you're dabbling. If my comments make you feel demeaned, how do you think physicists and cosmologists and geologists feel when you call their theories stupid?

Actually, I'm sure they don't feel demeaned by you at all. =)

I do realise that after all the effort you've put into this, nothing is likely to sway you from your course.

Sorry Mark,
I'm not Neal.

It's the concept of zero that confounds me.

In binary 0 is just as important as 1. A bit can be a 0 or a 1. In a byte the place and position are just as important as its' value.

On a number line going from + infinity to - infinity, zero marks the center, it's spaced the same distance consecutively as 1 is to 2 or -5 is to -4, but in this case zero has position but no value.(you can't see it, or touch it, there is nothing there.) So the only way to prove zero exists is by adding the negative and positive infinities together. reduced down: +1 + -1 = 0

therefor nothing is real...

Neal,

Okay, I see now that you were responding to only one my recent posts. Sorry, I had no way of knowing that except by going through all of my posts on this thread to find with which one I could match up your responses to my questions.

The microwave background radiation wasn't the reason for the deduction of the "Big Bang," it was only a confirmation. The main evidence for the "Big Bang" is the observed expansion of the universe. In other words, the "Big Bang" does what a scientific theory is mean to attempt to do: account for the evidence in the simplest manner possible. And the discovery of the actual existence of black holes adds great weight to cosmological theory, which predicted their existence beforehand. Your rewriting of physics, cosmology, and quantum mechanics doesn't very well follow the spirit embodied in Occam's Razor unless you can prove it mathematically and experimentally. Until then it's all ad hoc.

Neal:
Mark

You keep repeating the same mantras over and over again,

HOLD IT! What the heck are you saying? I have answered each and every question put to me and given extra material. You are responding irrationally , what question have I missed ?
I checked every response,

but you don't actually answer any of the actual questions. You just keep ranting on and on...

Unbelievable ! MAKE YOUR QUESTIONS MORE TO THE POINT,
EVERY QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED, NAME ONE THAT I MISSED!

The thing is, you need to do more than just shout. You need to show that you theory works better than its competition.
Oy.
Is this how you make your questions more clear? Show my theory works better than it's competition? Which PART? You give me nothing to compare my portion to. Speak up. Give me a question to answer, if you don't like the answers given.
It's my experience that people reject answers until they get an answer they can argue with, I have no such answers.

You don't like the big bang,
Listen to that , "You don't LIKE the Big Bang .???
Is the Big Bang a mathematical question . a scientific theory? what is it , That I should argue with it?
It's a stupid concept that is dying of it's own weight,
How can the universe be accelerating outward ?

you don't like conventional gravity (you claim that you do - but Newtonian gravity can't explain stable orbits with expanding planets),

That's right ! But electro -magnetic lines DO when you add it on! What then is there to say??? What do I add to this answer that you need?
It's done. Same is true with the Van Allen belts . The protective EM field of earth . That separates the layers of atmosphere . that holds up the clouds in the sky, (Hey, That was a surprise , wasn't it.)

you don't like plate tectonics - just the list of things you think are wrong could fill pages.
Is this a question??? It doesn't sound like a question.
Am I wrong, here???

And yet - you cannot do a single prediction that's within orders of magnitude of the predictions made by all the theories that you insist are wrong.

This is not a question ,at all. What single prediction do you think will satisfy this imprication that you lay on me? NAME IT!

The thing is: I'm actually pretty easy to convince. I'm a computer scientist, not a physicist.

Little could be more clear. A physicist deals with concepts and uses math as a tool. not as a creator of concepts.

I don't have any vested interest in the standard model or the standard theories. All it would take to convince me is a bit of math - show me one prediction - just one prediction - where the math can make anything produce more precise predictions than the conventional theory.

It doesn't work like that. The Earth circles the sun .
That's the concept. Natural selection . Electrons, protons and neutrons , Atoms , steam locomotion .red shift ,atomic energy ,..all of it is concepts ,...some of which use math to describe them . Some . Dirac said If we didn't have higher math science would be held back for about a week.

Just one. But as I keep saying: in science, to show that one theory is better than another, you have to show that it does a better job than its competition. And for the stuff that you're talking about, that's a high bar: the standard theory produce absolutely astonishingly accurate predictions. Show that yours makes one precise prediction better than one of the established theories .
Fine ,...This theory shows that since the earth was one third the size it is today animals can be then ,on average 4 times bigger than they are today,

Here , Newtons gravity is not enough to hold planets on precise mathematically structured lines but if you add EM lines the orbits will settle into a predictable demonstrable structured orbits.
Sincerely
Neal Adams

Posted by: Mark C. Chu-Carroll | February 11, 2007 06:34 PM

All right, if you guys are havieng private emailled convos about this stuff, I'm bowing out.

Norm:

There's no emailed private conversations going on. Neal sent me a copy of his initial response, which I've completely ignored; I don't believe in taking a public conversation private without good reason, and I have no clue of why Neal thought it was more appropriate to send me email than to discuss it here.

Neal:

More evasive babble. I keep asking questions, giving you as much freedom as possible for your answers, and you keep avoiding them.

Pick any prediction of the theories that disagree with your theory. Any one - I don't care which. And show how you can make a better prediction than the conventional theory.

You just waved your hands about orbital mechanics. What are the alleged errors in orbital mechanics, and precisely what are the predictions of your theory?

If you can't do that for orbital mechanics, do it for any area of your theory, anything where your theory can produce a more precise prediction than the conventional theory.

Mark CC,

Sorry; I misunderstood about Neal's private email.

More thoughts about nothing

The concept of zero is a rather modern discovery.
To explain the idea to someone who doesn't yet know about zero, one could say,"If you have one apple, and I take it away, how many apples do you have left?" None. This could be expressed mathematically as +1 + -1 = 0 Or zero is equal to the sum of its' parts but by definition contains no substance.

PMPs?

How can one simultaneously insist that winged reptiles couldn't have flown in current gravity, and there was less gravity long ago because the earth had more mass, and at the same time claim that gravity doesn't exist?

I don't say gravity doesn't exist! I say it's part of the Electro-magnetic spectrum.

Neal,

Which 5 physicists did you debate? Did you convince them? I'll bet you didn't.

No , I didn't convince them . but I don't think my evaluation of the conversations would be accepted, do you.
My favorite comment was that the theory was elegant and the math worked.
You know I can't mention them. When i get a TV thing one or more will step foreward. Their choice.

The exponential growth which you indicate would make our planet as large as Saturn 300 million years from now sounds like more ad hoc reasoning. Can you make any predictions that won't take 300 million years for us to verify?

I don't really see the point of this anymore. I read your site thoroughly and with an open mind and I wasn't convinced, so I doubt you'll convince me here.
Ha , First thing you've said that I agree with.
Small question ,....when The USGS announces that "After a ten year experimental program the USGS is officially announcing that the planet Earth grows in circumferance approximately 22 inches per yrar." What will you have to say?

Sorry that my comment re actual physicists felt demeaning to you, but c'mon, try to be realistic. You don't really consider yourself in their league, do you? If you do, I think that goes a long way toward explaining all of this: bad writing + no math + incomplete grasp of the science + massive ego = being equal to the greatest scientific visionaries in history.
Why is the "Bad Writing" in there? Have you got something personal you want to get off your chest?
we're writing and reading quickly written E-mails.

incidentally , Ive studied Physics for 35 years on and off . If I chose to pick up a PHD in physics
for a few of those years , would this be another conversation?
In fact , in those areas I've chosen I have done quite well , Nothing breakthrough,of course.

Don't blame me; you're the one claiming that experts in other fields can't see what you see in the fields in which they are experts. And you call their well-established and highly verified theories stupid. Who's really being demeaning here?
I'm not calling individuals stupid . I am calling "theories" pretty darn stupid. Actually "Massively Stupid"
Flat Earth stupid , Faces on mars stupid.
No, hey, since each action has an equal and opposite reaction , then the opposite of GRAVITY is
EXPLOSION.
And The 2.5 mile thick Granitic rock continents only cover 1/4 of the Earth and they broke apart and joined up and slid all over the earth joining in the Pacific and breaking apart and joining in the Atlantic , staying together for 400 million years and breaking in half and the halves riding over the poles , breaking up into pieces and SOME of those pieces chugging to the equator to exactly the same place they broke from to the mile only to crash together.
Then , the biggie ...Theorized by Philosopher-scientists 150 years ago , and
accepted even now.
All this stuff...presumably the kind of meteorites we have NOW (Left overs) That couldn;t have existed , from supernovas which throw out, basically, HYDROGEN collected in this magical area ,....somehow unaffected by Gravity, until one day when enough stuff (what stuff?)accumulates , and almost instantly ,gathers into a solar system .
So quickly does this happen that the planets remain molten for hundreds of millions of years. Those planets because they are molten ,differentiate into layers of silicates and elements. Yet no new material shows up.
after that first assembly.
Who on Earth would call this stuff stupid?

Me? I'm just expressing my doubts about your ideas and pointing out your lack of expertise compared to others who've made their life's work out of areas in which you're dabbling.
Dabbling? , Norm , how dare you, really. Who, in the scientific community has spent this kind of time and energy on this subject?
I have no tenure to endanger. I have no job to lose.
I don't have lab friends to snitch on me . People in the EE community have lost their jobs over this persuit.
I ,in fact have the exact freedom to study as much or as little as I WISH. who could possibly provide more attention and work to such a project?
Dabbling ? Those animations represent hundreds of thousands of dollars of work invested in searching for the truth. dabbling? I don't dabble. Although sometimes I do tap-dance.

If my comments make you feel demeaned, how do you think physicists and cosmologists and geologists feel when you call their theories stupid?
I hope they THINK.

Actually, I'm sure they don't feel demeaned by you at all.

=) Norman ,....make up your mind. They're offended or not.
You were writing directly TO ME.

I do realise that after all the effort you've put into this, nothing is likely to sway you from your course.
Only the truth.
Regards
Neal Adams

Posted by: Norm Breyfogle | February 11, 2007 08:07 PM

Neal,

Okay, I see now that you were responding to only one my recent posts. Sorry, I had no way of knowing that except by going through all of my posts on this thread to find with which one I could match up your responses to my questions.

The microwave background radiation wasn't the reason for the deduction of the "Big Bang," it was only a confirmation. The main evidence for the "Big Bang" is the observed expansion of the universe. In other words, the "Big Bang" does what a scientific theory is mean to attempt to do: account for the evidence in the simplest manner possible.

Ah, yes, we see the universe expanding outward ,,so we come up with the simpliest explaination,
IT EXPLODED!
And now ....it accelerates. Just like all explosions. BRILLIANT!!!

And the discovery of the actual existence of black holes adds great weight to cosmological theory,

Which portion of cosmological theory did black holes add great weight to? The Big Bang ? What? I can't imagine what this adds to? It's a black hole .
Since you brought it up , perhaps you'd like to tell me what those gigantic Jets of material are that fires out of each side of the hub of those black holes? Black Holes are supposed to be Gravity wells that LIGHT can't escape from. Aren't they?

which predicted their existence beforehand.

Yet they are still a mystery.

Your rewriting of physics, cosmology, and quantum mechanics

Hold it , Not Quantum Mechanics, which like math DESCRIBES , and is not part of the creative process,

When you change Physics , Quantum Mechanics and physics changes with it,

doesn't very well follow the spirit embodied in Occam's Razor
Hold it again . Let's not confuse concepts.
The razor is well served by my theory, which simplifies/ This is the last criticisn you should attempt to level here. I have sinplified all basic processes in one
swell foop.
ONE PARTICLE and ONE FIELD.
unless you can prove it mathematically and experimentally. Until then it's all ad hoc.
Theres a flag down on the field ,.. overuse of the term ad hoc,

Posted by: norm Breyfogle | February 11, 2007 08:39 PM

I concede that I'm not equipped to debate you on this subject at your level, to which you've devoted so very many years.

I'm not a physicist or geologist. I do my best to keep up on latest theory from a layman's perspctive, but ultimately I more or less accept whichever theories the scientific peer review process ends up accepting as the most viable, as long as they don't sound like pure baloney to my intuition.

I have my own doubts and ideas about what the universe's expansion might really mean. I'm ultimately a mystic and thus very skeptical of reason, logic, rationality, man's ability to consciously understand infinity, etc. I'm primarily a philosopher with a healthy respect for science but no real abilty to expand its framwork.

Neal, if the scientific community comes around to your pov on these matters I'll give your pov more weight. Until then, I'll stick to what I know best, and I'll try not to be so judgemental. Obviously, my studies of the prevailing scientific worldview have left me with pride in whatever scientific comprehension I have and I balk at such sweeping changes to it as is implicit in your challenges. I admit they sound like poppycock to me. Demeaning? Sorry, that's my honest reaction to your theories. I've repeatedly written on this thread that I may be wrong.

If your pov turns out to be superior to the edifice of highly effective theory mankind has painstakingly worked out, I'll cheer your genius. Until then, forgive me, but there have been many like you who've challenged major portions of science and just about all of them (not all) have turned out to be quacks. I hope you're not just another one of them.

How's all that for humble honesty that doesn't add anything of scientific value to the discussion at hand?

Off the top of my head, I recall that the jets of particles shooting from Black Holes are called "Hawking Radiation," named after the astrophysicist who predicted them based on his understanding of CURRENT THEORY (no PMPs or massive rewriting of physics required). I'd suggest you read up on what Stephen Hawking himself says about that rather than debate it with me. As I recall, the radiation isn't coming directly out of the black hole proper but is coming from very near the event horizon and is being forced away by the high energies resulting from gravitational compression.

When I compare my experience of reading "A Brief History of Time" (and many other similar books from other mainstream scientists) to my experience of reading your explanations of your theories, I sense no contest; you seem to lose unequivocally. Now, this may be due in part to your writing style which I've already excoriated a number of times on this blogsite, but it may also be because your theories are so very profoundly unfounded.

I get the sense that because the mysteries of singularities and quantum mechanics and higher math and multiple dimensions bother you so emotionally, you've spent a lifetime attempting to craft your rejection of them, but I don't feel that way at all. You may dislike the "magic" (as you put it), but I intutively understand and accept it.

And, of course, I may be wrong.

Norm
If you live on a world that believes the sun goes around the Earth , YOU also believe this. You really have no choice .
Ask anyone and they will tell you that that is how it works. You are part of the machine of the world . If you doubt the premise for a moment , a bearded man will take you to a hillside and camp out with you for a month and the two of you will watch the progression of the heavens, sun moon and stars. It works exactly the way they say it does.
How could one person convince you otherwise? You may even want it so, and even be titalated by the possibility,...but tomorrow you will wake up into the world where people think a way. You have nothing invested in making waves. It becomes one more topic of interest , but that is all.
You may even have been invited to look through the telescope for a short time . You saw the moon , yes. You couldn't look at the sun , and you heard some talk. But to convince you that the Earth circled the sun? Hardly.
What WOULD convince you . Well, if the POPE bought into it, and the scientific community. In time after such approval , your "thinking " would change.
If I showed you the videos? Hardly.
Gentlemen, it's been lovely. I had a very pleasant time, I'll see you around the block.

Sincerely
Neal Adams

P.S. That stuff is Positrons and Electrons. The black hole is making matter to circle around the galaxy to come back in and join up as Hydrogen at the equatorial plane,to help build more hydrogen suns.

Back down to Earth,
At one part of the edge of the "ring of fire" is the coast of North America, which is claimed to be a subduction zone, pushing up the coastal ranges to the Rockies. The area known as B.C. is wrinkled with mountains and valleys generally running North - South. The reason, at present, for the valleys, is that they were scoured out by the glaciers, creating the "U" shaped valleys.
If the mountains were at one time a flat plateau, (they must have started from something) with a different topography than today, the glaciers would have taken most of land, in between them, away and the mountain would show very little of that original picture and could not fit together.
A satalite picture of B.C., taken in the spring or fall gives natural, topographical lines of altitude; snow line; tree line; civilization line and some times a water level, if there is a lake.
Using these natural lines with a picture editing program, one could cut a "chunk" from one side of a valley and paste it on the most likeliest corresponding points of the other side of the same valley to see if they match up. They shouldn't, with the current theory, but I tried this and they do.
This is supposed to be a subduction zone where mountains are being pushed up and together by the pacific plate.
Are all these valleys rifts? Is B.C. spreading not compressing?

lunk,

I would love to see how "-1" is more "real" (even in your "parody") than "0".

Neal,

I have a question: Given your theory and the current rate of expansion of the Earth's surface, would we expect to see that flights between two cities are now longer than they used to be? This could easily be checked, provided something like speed X time = distance is valid math under your paradigm.

Mark,

I'm not sure if you want this discussion to go on, but I welcome someone other than PZ having a spot in the most discussed posts.

Norm, Mark and Jonathan are doing great with the resident kook. As most often, it is an attempt to describe known facts (or invented facts to fit the ideas), instead of an understanding that theories must make predictions. Science is about rejecting the false.

Instead I will comment on sensible comments. I hope that isn't discouraging these commenters.

lunk:

therefor nothing is real...

You are mistaking the map for the terrain.

One more specific view is exactly so, math are models that help us understand reality.

If the mountains were at one time a flat plateau, (they must have started from something) with a different topography than today, the glaciers would have taken most of land, in between them, away and the mountain would show very little of that original picture and could not fit together.

I'm not really sure what you are saying. Plate movements happens over geological long times, because magma heat movements are slow. Ice movements in glaciers are usually more rapid.

Wikipedia puts down the lateral movement of the plates at typically mean speeds of 0.66 to 8.50 centimeters per year. Glaciers are more varied:
"Mean speeds vary; some have speeds so slow that trees can establish themselves among the deposited scourings. In other cases they can move as fast as many meters per day, as is the case of Byrd Glacier, an outlet glacier in Antarctica which moves 750-800 meters per year (some 2 meters or 6 ft per day), according to studies using satellites.

Many glaciers have periods of very rapid advancement called surges.[3] These glaciers exhibit normal movement until suddenly they accelerate, then return to their previous state. During these surges, the glacier may reach velocities up to 100 times greater than normal."

So under surge conditions, you can theoretically exceed mean plate tectonic speeds with 10^5 - 10^7 times.

When ice glaciers press down a valley, from earlier plate movements for example, they gouge out the typical V-shape to a U-shape. If the rock is evenly hard the original side shapes still fit reasonably well. I have walked in many such valley systems in our mountains.

Norm:

As I recall, the radiation isn't coming directly out of the black hole proper but is coming from very near the event horizon and is being forced away by the high energies resulting from gravitational compression.

To really nitpick, I believe it is more precise to say that the intense gravitational field steals photons from vacuum pair production away into the event horizon before they have time to recombine again. Which leaves their hapless mates to radiate away. Essentially, AFAIK the field tricks Heisenberg's uncertainty principle which in turn tricks energy conservation and allows for virtual particle pairs briefly popping in and out of existence. A little bit away this makes it appear like the black hole isn't totally black, as you say.

Btw, it was the genius of Hawking to combine quantum mechanics with general relativity in a small manner, which is hard to do.

Neal,

Most people don't think you're a nut-job just because your theories contradict established scientific ideas. That's probably why the scientists think that, but normal folk like me think you're a nut-job because you present yourself as one.

Your web site is presented tabloid-style with sensational "Everything you thought you knew is wrong!" style headlines. Even you're conversational discussion of your theories, as in this blog, are short on cogent arguments and long on emotional appeals to sympathy for how hard you've worked and how much money you've spent on these theories.

If you really believe you're theories are superior to the conventional theories that they contradict then surely you realize how important it is that you get your word out. The only way to do that is to address the prevailing theories in their own terms. You can't just make superficial complaints about apparent contradictions in those theories. You have to understand them well enough to anticipate the answers to your complaints and be prepare to rebut them. You've got to take the dialog beyond a single exchange of "nuh-uh" and "yuh-huh" If you've got the resources to spend "hundreds of thousands" on animations, perhaps you might consider hiring a couple geology and physics undergrads to examine your theories and help you prepare criticisms that have more depth.

Until you demonstrate that you're willing to do the work to really understand the theories that you claim to be incorrect, you're going to be considered a crack-pot and your theories will eventually be forgotten.

Matt

Neal,

My private opinions toward certain fundamentals in cosmology and my overall mystical attitude place me well outside the mainstream in some major ways and I'd likely be so even if, as in your hypothetical, I'd lived in ancient times as well. However, if I were to directly and publically challenge the science theories of my day with what I presented as a competing scientific theory, I'd scrupulously stick to the scientific method, and as a layman when it comes to science, it's reasonable for me to defer to the experts in their respective fields. Also, modern science is a far cry from ancient thinking, and much more expertise is required today to rationally challenge prevailing theory than was required to do so in the ancient past.

All of which is my defense against your attempt to compare me analogically to a geocentrist.

Regarding your writing style: no, it's nothing personal, Neal. I simply find your too-frequent use of dramatic pauses, capitalizations, emotional expressions, exclamation marks, personal asides, coloquialisms, etc., to be a major distraction when reading your theorizing on your website. It's like reading Stan Lee, but without his saving self-deprecations. You could express your points more succinctly and thus more professionally and it might go a long way toward gaining even greater respect for your theorizing. Just a friendly suggestion.

Torbjörn,

Thanks for the nitpick. Again I should have checked with Hawking's writings or Wikipedia before I posted, but like I explained, my explanation of Hawking radiation was just off the top of my head.

Matt,

Seems we're saying the same thing about Neal's presentation style.

(1) The intense beams of radiation from back holes are NOT Hawking radiation. Rather, they are from a currently ill-understood interaction between the black hole and an accretion disk. Recent theories [hotlink omitted] suggest that magnetic fields carry most of the energy out to a considerable distance from the black hole, which then pumps energy into electron-positron pair production. The same mechnism is believe to be at work regardless of the size of the black hole, from several times greater than one solar mass, to billions of solar masses in quasars. The black hole in the center of the Milky Way is currently starving, i.e. without an appreciable accretion disk. I was the first to describe for popular audience the hypothesis that most galaxies have a central black hole:
"Star Power for Supersocieties" [Omni, ed. Ben Bova and Robert Sheckley, Apr 1980] ISSN-0149-8711, $2.00; 1st popular article to predict giant black hole in the center of Milky Way galaxy; 1st popular discussion of J. Post invention "gravity wave telegraph" for SETI

(2) Earth Mantle 'Ocean': 3-D Seismic Model Of Vast Water Reservoir Revealed.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070210171556.htm
"A seismologist at Washington University in St. Louis has made the first 3-D model of seismic wave damping -- diminishing -- deep in the Earth's mantle and has revealed the existence of an underground water reservoir at least the volume of the Arctic Ocean...."

(3) I've spoken with Stan Lee, and even approached (some years ago) his company (co-run by what turned out to be a criminal) about implementing a global network of animation websites, given that animation compresses better (and differently) than live video. I'd absolutely love Stan Lee to develop a sudden interest in Science and Math. I see it as "Spider-Man meets NUMB3RS, with special effects like The Hulk meets "A Beautiful Mind."

(4) In "The Little Prince" I was struck by how the astronomer was ignored at conferences when he wore a Fez and pantaloons, but taken seriously when he took of the hat and wore a business suit. Neal might take a lead from that beautifully drawn and told narrative. There is some interaction here between a critique of style, and a critique of content, and a critique of methodology. I present many wacky papwers, but always in a good suit and tie. It helps.

(5) Animation is increasingly important to presenting Math to experts, not just to popular audiences. Neal has a chance to use his strengths in this area with, as mentioned, hiring people to review his geology, so that he addresses the mainstream in a different way.

Maria,
I was trying to make an analogy not a parody.
The -1 represents the electron, the +1 represents the positron, the 0 represents the PMP.

Thanks Mark, Neal and others for your valuable time.

There is something very alluring about living in a universe where everything maybe growing.

lunk

Lunk
I don't understand your Question. But I like your curiousity.
Mark
12 to 22 inches a year? I seriously doubt it.
Torbjorn
If we were having coffee, would you call me Kook?
Actually , science IS about rejecting the false.
In fact it always is about rejecting the false. How else can one find the truth. One follows the other .
Your next to the last paragraph.
I'm surprised that someone knows as much about one of the most incredible mysteries of our universe,as you seem to.
There are TWO streams of particles , you know.
One they KNOW is Positrons because of all the gamma radiation , sssso the other is...?
That paragraph was a bit confusing
Matt
You know what ,Matt. "most" people don't tink I'm a nut job at all . When I go on Coast to Coast I get about 100 or so E-mails from quite inteligent people , or so it seems to me. who listen , go to the videos and are stunned , some are totally convinced,some cautious but friendly. some angry at being fed this ,obviously wrong "pangea" theory, without being given the ,obvious, now , option.
A few said I was nuts. Others asked if I believed it all started six thousand years ago.
I'm not arguing in defense of an abrasive attitude,or a show-bizzy attitude. No one has left a roadmap as to how to do this.
Take this group. The leader/host spoke reasonably about my theory , if, that is . I were reccomending fly-casting for flying saucers. No one here began courteously , except Lunk.
Thanks Lunk.
Folks calmed down when it seemed I actually wasn't the town fool and I really had put in the time and effort and I could take a body blow. But , you gotta admit ,as soon as I show a bit of flesh , somebody takes a bite. Guys on these groups look upon me as food to mangle . I get it.
This is about the fifth group I've stepped into . I call it training.
The last one I went into I was cool and only answered seriously posed questions , but it got boring.
What is happening if you give a hydro-electric dam ,is , a group of Geologists ,Engineers. only a few physicists . and others are getting together on an Ee group, to share ideas and info. Some are writing books .(and Have written) James Maxlow. Stavros Tassos , Dan Bridges
and others . No one's theoretical ravings agrees with the rest in specific , but we all know that the Pangea theory is bull , and the Earth is clearly growing . The case is being made. Started 40 years ago with professor of Geology Sammuel Warren Carey from Australia . The ball got dropped along the way. Only Geologists. I picked up the ball . Bunch of us did.

In Germany the show "Arte" did an hour special on Growing Earth theory. The spark plug for it ? A computer guy swiped the tech of my growing globe and they centered the show around it. Pricks , yeah , but so what/! It's getting play .
What will "turn" it all. I don't know . but it's gonna change the face of science forever.
A group of geologists will be speaking at a much liberalized Geological convention in Athens this summer .
My videos will be shown there.
Truth is , for me the geology is 40 years old . The Physics' the thing.
My methods?
Hey , Lighten up . Science is for the people . I haven't much patience for elitism and language that most folks don't understand . I could teach anyone all the Physics they'd need to know in a lifetime of practical communication , in a semester. I know two Physicists who agree . Course one of them wrote a book on this subject.
No , Matt. THEY are going to have to deal with me on my terms. No offence intended. They've HAD the floor.
Perhaps you'd like to write privately to some of the Physicists and geologists in the EE Group and inquire as to my qualifications and knowledge. I invite your couriousity.
Ego?
Confidence, is all.
Regards
Neal Adams

Here is my favorite part of this exchange:

Neal: Why is the "Bad Writing" in there? Have you got something personal you want to get off your chest?
we're writing and reading quickly written E-mails.

Yes Neal, but everyone else's quickly written e-mails are easy to read and not. Broken up with unusual... breaks, that interrupt the train of thought. Your writing borders on incomprehensible, and I've waded through a lot of writing in my day.

On a more important note, it is true that Einstein was not a traditional scientist and overturned/improved upon well-established ideas. However, he was treated seriously precisely because he did what you are unwilling, and I suspect incapable, of doing: describing specific experiments, technically impossible in his time, in which his theories made different predictions than did those established theories. And he was proved right, over and over again.

This you must do. Claiming you have no need for math is the same as saying you have no need for reality. Math is where the rubber of theory meets the road of reality. Anyone can hypothesize with colorful rhetoric and rationalize post hoc. Making accurate predictions is the arena of science. Until you do so, you are rightly discarded as a crank.

Mark
Writing style . Sorry ,..I think faster than you guys and so I move on.
Nobody smiling? Tsk-tsk.

Is anyone here capable of asking a SPECIFIC question...math or otherwise? I challenge you , Put up or shut up. One question technical or no of how my theory does or does not reconcile itself in a superior way in comparison to the standard model.
I say you haven't done such a thing , and I challenge you to do it now! The now of now. Not later. If what you say is the case . there must be a multitude of valid questions . Do it.
While we pause in thought , I thought you'd like to
see a short segment of the German "Discovery " type show ,
broadcast last week . I'm hoping to do a translation later this week of the full show, but heres a few minutes. (in German. Sorry.)
http:www.continuitystudios.net/pangea/pangea.mpg
Regards
Neal Adams

Mark
Writing style . Sorry ,..I think faster than you guys and so I move on.
Nobody smiling? Tsk-tsk.

It has nothing to do with speed my friend, and your presumptuousness in that regard is just one more sign of crankery. Were you and I to race doing "simple" math, you would likely be surprised at the result, since I am faster than most people on a calculator. But sadly, your analysis of us is no more robust than your analysis of the earth, which you would know already if you ever bothered to learn all that "higher" math with which you can't be bothered. Your entire "theory" is nothing but a long list of similarly-arrived-at guesses.

You want a math question? Fine. Tell me what is wrong with the following:

A = B
A^2 = AB
A^2 - B^2 = AB - B^2
(A-B)(A+B) = B(A-B)
A+B = B
A+A = A
2A = A
2 = 1

or is that too "high" a math? By the way, I'm a mere math major, and have spent most of my life around postgraduate math students and have never heard the term "higher math" before. It sounds like a word someone who has no understanding of math would invent.

Sure they laughed at Galileo. They also laughed at Bozo the clown.

I'm smiling, Neal. Maaaaan, am I smiling.

See, guys? WE ... have to put up or shut up ... NOT Neal. HE'S the one challenging much or most of modern cosmology and physics, but the onus is on ... US!!! Tsk, tsk; we're all such lousy question-askers. Waaahh.

Ssssoooo ... where's Stan Lee when you need him?

Yeah, I'm smiling.

Neal:

First - could you at least make a minimum effort to attribute things to the correct people? I agree that your writing style is horrible, but I'm not the one who criticized it, so replying to me is kind of pointless.

But since you bring it up addressed to me: thinking fast is no excuse for doing a crappy job. People who give a damn about what they're doing take the time necessary to do it right. Only an asshole expects to be taken seriously when he can't even be bothered to write comprehensible sentences. It's got nothing to do with how fast you think; it's got everything to do with how lazy your are.

I've repeatedly asked you, over and over, to show any observations that are more consistent with your theory than with the accepted conventional theories. I've been giving you the benefit of choosing anything where your theory can be shown to make a precise prediction that's better than the conventional theory. But you keep avoiding it, and pretending that I never asked. But it's there, in the history of this discussion, for everyone to see.

I've given you your choice. I've also suggested that you show how your theory can precisely predict the procession of mercury better than relativity; how you can predict orbital mechanics better than conventional gravity; how you can show the stability of the solar system with growing particles, how you can precisely predict the results of an experiment in a particle collider better than the conventional theory.

Pick any one of those, or anything else where your theory is better than the conventional theory, and show us how your theory makes the prediction.

Neal,

You claim that your writing style is due to your quickly writing these "emails," but your entire website is written in the exact same hyperbolic style. Is your entire website a rush job, too?

Norm
You got it!
Regards
Neal Adams

Mark, Norm
Tsk ,Tsk, Tsk. Blood pressure...ah-ah.
you're not getting any younger,you know.
Mark , you're a math type and you're playing math games with me? Questions , questions, questions my kingdom for a ques.... wait mark ..Questions?
1.My theory can't predict the procession of Mercury except that it assures that Mercury will make its way to it's designated Electro-magnetic line. So I guess in the Long run it's better , if you like predictability.EM lines add controling predictiblty. 5 planets and an asteroid belt out of eight is significant.EM is the fifth wheel. The steering wheel.
2.The stability of the SolaR System is assured, because as the matter increases , the Magnetic fields of the bodies increase . Magnetic fields are both negative and positive . The lines attract. the space between repels. This is why planets don't collide and Solar systems don't collide, and the universe grows!
Ballance, negative to positive. The standard model cannot explain it. Only the explosion of a Big Bang excuses the universe not IN-CRUNCHING!
And unfortunately,...the universe is accelerating outward.
These things are mutually exclusive.
Only EM creates this perfect exponentially growing universe.

3. I can predict the shattering and particle amounts in a PERFECT COLLISION in a particle collider, because I can tell you exactly how many particles there are, and so far , the standard model can't!
Next Question.

I was only imitating your style, Neal, so if seems to indicate high blood pressure, you must be ready to hemorrhage. After all, it's not just an imitation to you.

We're still waiting to see you make an experimental prediction that delivers something new to knowledge. What you're offering is a mere hindsight illusion of greater simplicity.

The point is that anyone can look at past experimental evidence and come up with any theory whatsoever to account for it. But nothing objectively new is gained in scientific knowledge if your alternate theory doesn't predict FUTURE experimental evidence. This is the essence of Mark CC's blog above.

What's a "perfect collision"?

Neal: Mark , you're a math type and you're playing math games with me?

Not a game, just a question, and one you are apparently, embarrasingly, unable to answer. It shows a great lack of knowledge on your end for someone who thinks he understands what Einstein didn't.

"If a man knows not, and knows not that he knows not, he is a fool. Shun him." - Goethe

Addendum: any new alternate theory must not only predict future experimental evidence, but it must predict it better than does current theory.

If the Earth is undeniably proven to increase in size to some degree over time, that would be some such evidence. But even that would only prove the Earth is growing for some reason, and not necessarily because your PMP theory is the only possible explanation. If you're going to re-write so very much of physics and cosmology, the level of convincing evidence will in fact be quite high. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary levels of evidence, and all you've got - from what I can see - is a grandiose theory with only a little, very equivocable evidence.

Guys(sigh)
You've got to be able to do better than this,
You challenged me to answer questions , (Which , in fact I was doing,wholy, every time,
So to assist you in your frustrated inability to vent your respective spleens, I challenged you to ask questions that you would want answered , fully answer any particular question or give you fuel for your fire.
Getting even more personal , Norm, you could not FIND a question . Incredible , yet , you vented, childlike.

Mark , you also vented , played a childish game , then barely spewed out three questions that you believed I had no answers to.
I answered them fully and within a new standard WITH NEW information and principles which follow the known principles. No magic, no Aliens or fringe concepts , which aparently you, Norm, embrace, if I am to believe you.
Then , Properly answered , I welcomed more questions.
The truth is you guys know very little about Geology or Physics. You don't know the questions to ask, and you are acting like petulant delinquents that can't control their frustration.
And YOU propose to CORRECT ME? I suggest you lighten up. If you have questions ask them . otherwise just back off, you are out of control.
Sincerely
Neal Adams
A perfect collision , is a collision where all the particles are scattered.

Today's word is "projection".

Neal:

Pay attention to whose writing. You keep attributing things to me that were written by other people! I'm not the one who gave you the silly math problem.

And you did not actually answer any of the questions I put to you. You claimed that you have answers to them, but you didn't how what they were.

Earlier, you claimed that your theory predicts the procession of mercury better than the conventional theory. Now you wave your hands and say essentially "It does, but I can't show you how". You claim to be able to explain stable orbits, but when asked to show how, you wave your hands around and say "It does", but refuse to show how. You claim to be able to explain particle physics - but when asked to show it, you wave your hands and say "I can", but refuse to show how.

For one example, the current theory of gravity (newton adjusted by relativity) give us remarkable precision in describing how things behave. A couple of years ago, we launched a probe to explore the outer planets, and to give it the velocity to get there, we launched it from earth, had it slingshot around venus, back to earth, slingshot around earth, and then out. In the slingshot maneuvers, errors of 1/10th of 1 percent would have led to fatal navigational errors. It worked perfectly, without a hitch.

To be credible, your theory needs to be able to demonstrate precision at least as good as the standard theory.

And that takes more than just words and handwaving.

Some of the name confusion is being caused by the fact that there are actually 2 "Mark"s commenting in this discussion, but that Neal isn't distinguishing between them in his responses.

Neal wrote,
"My theory can't predict the procession of Mercury except that it assures that Mercury will make its way to it's designated Electro-magnetic line."

Okay. Suppose, for a minute, that I'm a physicist and I find your ideas intriguing, and I want to go convince some of my colleagues on this particular point. They're going to want to hear something more than, "Mercury makes its way to a line." Probably there first question will be, "How do I know where this line is, and how can I check that Mercury really follows it?" How should I answer them, Neal?

Also, Neal, I'm curious: can you give me an example of what you might expect to happen in a particle accelerator? I don't really know what particle accelerators are best at, and I don't know what kinds of atoms are typically used, so let's just say that we smash a proton into some atom (if you would pick a specific example, especially one on which actual data has been collected, that would be great). What would happen as a result?

The intense beams of radiation from back holes are NOT Hawking radiation.

D'oh! I saw the keyword Hawking radiation and responded to that. But in fact Norm wrote about the particle jets, which I somehow missed. Sorry all about the confusion.

has revealed the existence of an underground water reservoir at least the volume of the Arctic Ocean.

Fascinating! Also ""Water is like a lubricant, constantly oiling the machine of mantle convection which then drives plate tectonics and causes the continents to move about Earth's surface," Wysession said. "Look at our sister planet, Venus. It is very hot and dry inside Venus, and Venus has no plate tectonics. All the water probably boiled off, and without water, there are no plates. The system is locked up, like a rusty Tin Man with no oil.""

I'm reminded of the Gaia theory, where one hypothesis was that oxygen liberated by life eventually changed mineral composition and so magma fluidity, making the plate tectonic possible. (And plate tectonics helps drive diversity of both climate and life.)

So it is the water that lubricate. Of course, the main difference to Venus could be that our second athmosphere (after the primary hydrogen/helium one) got scrubbed by water and life to make our current one. Perhaps Gaia lives on...

Rgearding thinking speed, while Einstein and Darwin were no slouches, they both worked with deliberation, precision and care when presenting their theories.

I can't see them spewing forth on blogs...

Neal:

If we were having coffee, would you call me Kook?

I pride myself with being honest to a persons face.

If you can predict any new observations from your ideas, it would be different. You can't, so it is just verbiage.

There are TWO streams of particles , you know.

As I explained above, I misinterpreted Norm's description.

One they KNOW is Positrons because of all the gamma radiation , sssso the other is...?

Pair production (see Jonathan's comment) would result in mostly electrons and positrons. I doubt you would see charge separation, the particles would just follow the magnetic lines with opposite synchrotron spin. Do we see charge separation in for example Earth's van Allen belts? What we would see from this mechanism is polarized synchrotron radiation.

Neal,

Again, my "venting" was my imitating of your own adolescent style of writing in the hopes that if you were on the receiving end of it you might more readily recognize it as a problem. You obviously don't, just as I predicted you wouldn't many posts above.

I have no further questions for you. The pertinent ones have already been asked on this thread, and your answers have failed to meet any scientific standard of experimental predictivity that would convince us that modern theory should be chucked in favor of yours.

Also: the "magic"(your term) that my mind privately enjoys runs toward the non-dual, Zen type, philosophical. As for fringe concepts, aliens/UFOs, etc., those are merely speculative areas of conspiracy theory that I find entertaining; I'm no believer.

Your PMP theory, as Mark CC clearly illustrates, is big on hindsight confabualtion but very weak on predictivity.

I've been following this discussion with interest, and regular chuckles, since it began. MarkCC has posed some good questions which Neal doesn't seem to be able to answer, but it seems to me that questions would require a fairly long answer.
Since Neal's theory handles Orbital Mechanics so well (in his view) why don't we pose a more specific problem? Let's pick a specific location on the surface of the earth, and a specific time in the near future, say a couple of days away, and see if Neal can, using the results of his theory, predict the exact position, and phase, of the Moon. Astronomers would already have this based on conventional theory, and it could be easily verified by observation.

William Shakespeare had a good theory for answering that question. He even had a variable in it:

Romeo: Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear,

That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops--

Juliet: O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,

That monthly changes in her circled orb,

Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

[Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene ii, line 12]

Cf. Larry Niven, 1972; "The Outer Limits", Inconstant Moon, 1996.

By the way, Shakespeare could write very fast. His plays were seen as low entertainment by an unqualified outsider with no reputable credentials. He was arguably the first "professional author" in the English language. Critics urged him to get back to the long poems, which were serious literature, and stop messing with a genre as low as, well, as comic books.

Wikipedia: "In addition to his sonnets, Shakespeare also wrote three known longer poems: Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece and A Lover's Complaint. These poems appear to have been written either in an attempt to win the patronage of a rich benefactor (as was common at the time) or as the result of such patronage."

Hypothesis on the Origins of the Nasonex animations:

Where the bee sucks, there suck I;

In a cowslip's bell I lie;

There I couch when owls do cry.

On the bat's back I do fly

After summer merrily.

Merrily, merrily shall I live now

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

[William Shakespeare]

Writing is either good or bad entirely regardless of its genre. What's your point?

Norm, my point is somthing of this nature. Shakespeare, other poets and other literary figures were grappling in their own ways with the Big Questions. Science has developed into an alternative approach. Neal Adams, being apparently unable to use "higher math," has depended upon idiosyncratic writing which may be considered Prose Poetry, and illuminated by computer graphics the way that William Blake made his own etchings, by his own invented technology, to illustrate his own quirky take on cosmology and other weighty issues. Blake considered himself radically opposed to Isaac Newton, even though both Blake and Newton were influenced by a common metaphysical thinker, Jakob Boehm.

I'm saying that we should be polite to Neal Adam. Without having acquired "higher Math" -- which I believe he might be able to do, if he applies himself assiduously -- he should not be judged as a scientist, but appreciated as an artist. There is room within the "Two Cultures" for descendants of Leonardo da Vinci.

For example, I see that Robert Frost critiquing Creationism and its later bastard child Intelligent Design in this poem:

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but DESIGN of darkness to appall? --
If DESIGN govern in a thing so small.

[Robert Frost, emphasis JVP]

Well, when you put it like that ...

=)

I have tried to remain deferential and objective here, but I could very well have been more polite, it's true.

I agree with you, Jonathan, and I have apologized for my honest error re Neal's education, and I have bent over backwards to give his thoughts a chance, but I also consider honesty very important. The one time that I really broke my typically gracious mold was when I imitated Neal's writing style in order to see how he'd react to it if it were directed back at him.

Peace.

p.s. Norm,

I'd like to point out that, I think, I was the first one, on this blogsite, to post prose:

"Chickens can run and fly, but they don't get far or very high."

Sorry everyone,
I'm not Shakespeare.

cheers,

lunk

lunk wrote, "I was trying to make an analogy not a parody.
The -1 represents the electron, the +1 represents the positron, the 0 represents the PMP."

Maybe your intention was to suport Adams' PMP theory, but you're comparing the PMP to nothingness, to zero. Although I didn't mention it the time that I first read it in its original appearance in one of your posts, and although I'm not a mathematician, I thought that was a cogent analogy which in some way mirrors (perhaps unintentionally) Mark CC's above thread-initiating blog in which he shows how the PMP is a fabrication that may work mathematically but adds *nothing* ("zero") new to the predictive power of science.

And btw, Neal never addressed some of Mark CC's points. One example: how can a photon (which presumably isn't a PMP, btw,) travel large distances before striking a PMP if the PMPs completely fill all space in the universe?

My zero and one analogy was an attempt to describe the physical characteristics of PMPs because they are (virtually?) undetectable in our world. In other words, we see them as nothing.
Has there been any particle discovered or even theorized that is smaller or lighter than the electron? A photon perhaps?
As temperature has an absolute lowest point-could this be the same for matter?
If I place very powerful(Niobium?) magnets next to a plasma (florescent light?) Will there be a spectrum change as hydrogen atoms are created or can this only take place in negative gravity?
How does one build a negative gravity machine?
There are a lot of questions that need answering.
Except, I think I just figured out how to build a negative gravity machine.

lunk:

You might want to try learning a bit about the conventional, well-supported models of the universe before concluding that they're wrong, and something like Neal's gibberish is correct.

Photons are massless - which is clearly lower mass than an electron. Neutrinos have mass, but are much smaller than an electron.

Why would you expect a magnet near a plasma to create atoms?

Negative gravity is pretty much a meaningless concept so "or can this only take place in negative gravity" is a pointless question. You can argue pretty much anything you want about what could happen in "negative gravity", because it all gibberish anyway.

What does a "lowest point" mean for matter? Lowest energy level? That's the same as lowest temperature. Lowest mass? There's plenty of very elegant math in string theory and related fields that can describe what the minimum non-zero mass of a particle can be.

If you want to be able to ask questions like this, the thing to do is spend some time learning real physics and math, and then studying the current theories. At that point, if you can find gaps that can be filled by something like Neal's stuff, you'll be able to argue it competently without just looking like an idiot.

Norm,
You're absolutely right. I don't fully understand particle physics or for that matter, PMP theory. It seems to me though, from what little I do understand, that there are flaws or should I say, unexplained phenomena, in both.
One should only work from what they fully know, based on provable facts.
However, I am still not convinced that the Earth isn't growing. Perhaps conventional physics will explain this.

PMP theory.

A concept that has no connection with older theory and at the same time no predictivity, can't be called a theory. A theory must give predictions.

Now, Neal supposedly says that the Earth is growing, but does he explain how that follows from his PMP concept in a satisfactorily way, and how much it grows? (You know, with math. :-)

If it does, so much the worse, ordinary physics and observations contradict it within the sensitivity of the measurements.

I am still not convinced that the Earth isn't growing. Perhaps conventional physics will explain this.

There are a number of observations (moon data, satellite data, laser measurements, GPS data) that sees no growing or change in mass. And standard physics predict that it won't happen. So your hope seems futile.

I've done some simple work with GIS. If the Earth was growing, someone would notice, especially with all those sensitive satellites up there: If the Earth was growing, there'd be many more errors cropping up with the people putting them together.

Just an observation,
I was looking at the bark of a tree and noticed that the new bark was smooth and the old bark was rough, the growth of the tree was causing last years bark to split apart and rise up into patterns and patches on top of the new growth. They looked remarkably like geological formations on the Earth, mountain ranges, continents, islands.

lunk

OMG! Neal Adams! I loved your work on Batman and Deadman, not to mention the Spectre. I consider your entry into comics to be a real turning point that vastly improved the quality of the art, so thanks for that.

Hey Mark, can I add some of Adams' stuff to the banner? (Just kidding.)

Neal, I gotta say that your artwork is fantastic, but you really need a new letterer when you're commenting in blogs. It looks like Sienkiewicz with vertigo!

Neal: We can measure the Earth . Hard one . you'd think it wouldn't be difficult. One group has established that the equator is growing. (Expanding.)

Me: Have you read the rest of the study? Because it clearly states that the growth of the equator comes from material originating at the poles. In other words gravity is redistributing the weight.

Adem B: Is it gravity redistributing the material? Or the earth's spinning? Or both?

This thread was a great read, thanks to all. (Yeah, that's a late entry).

Few things: Neal in #84: "More water was added by a growing Earth , in proportion to it's other elements" -- water is a molecule, not an element.

Also: Compare writing and punctuation style in #71 and #72. Either those were two different authors (MichaelNetzer from the skepticsguide forum, perhaps?), or that's some strange case of schizophrenia.

The jets emerging from black holes and neutron stars are indeed the result of the extreme conditions which matter in accretion discs is exposed to near these strong tidal and EM forces. Hawking radiation is too weak to be measured compared to that.

Answer to #132: Implicit division by zero due to 0 not being excluded in the definition set of A and B.

Finally: You guys should read very careful whenever Neal uses magnetic or EM "lines" for explanations. He thinks that those lines themselves attract particles or even whole planets, that those lines rest around stellar bodies in a circular manner. In physics, EM lines are just thought lines along the fields which they are ascribed to; they emerge from and end in magnetic dipoles and can be thought to continue inside the magnet, parallel to the dipole's axis. With huge magnets like the sun having differential rotation, those fields get quite warped and deformed (see image "heliospheric current sheet" on in the "Magnetic Field" section of the Wikipedia page to "Sun").

We know pretty well about the EM field in the solar system because of satellite data from Helios 1 and Ulysses. This fields have nothing to do with gravitation, general relativity or the Mercury's precession (not "procession").

A little late in the game, I know, but thanks again for two days of an amusing read.