The Quantum Luminiferous Aether. Videos. Publishing. Philosophy.

a reply to: Byrd

My submission to the various journals is 57 pages, double spaced, 12 point font. From past expeience I am guessing my paper in journals would be around 20 pages due to smaller font and single spacing. This should be an appropriate length I would think. Einstein's journal paper on general relativity is approximately 50 pages in length. Now, the fully detailed version of my work would be close to 100 journal pages, so yes that one would be too long, but it is not what I have been submitting. I made an effort to extract the most noteworthy derivations while only summarizing the results of the tedious and repetitive derivations. This makes things a better read, and if there is interest in more details I refer the reader to the longer work.

As for Twitter, sure, only a small number of people will have an interest or ability to understand the vector calculus derivations of fundamental physics equations. However, almost everyone has heard of Einstein, E = m-c-squared, and importantly, that Einstein was an agnostic (or they've heard he was an atheist). Twitter sees quite a bit of interest in moral issues, and some interest on ancient questions such as whether God exists. There is also interest in the issue of whether everyone has their own truth, or if there is only one truth. These discussions are rooted in the same philosophy that physics is, and that's what I'm posting about now.

a reply to: delbertlarson

The attempt to publish "The Quantum Luminiferous Aether" in a high impact journal is complete. After several attempts and a few months of effort, it was never even sent out for review.

Physical Review X appeared to be the best journal to publish in, as they call for papers that will be paradigmatic shifts. I was under no illusion that they really sought true paradigmatic shifts, since if so, they'd rarely publish anything. But, they did ask for such papers, so I sent it in, along with the additional materials requested for a publication. Their response was "We do not think that it is suitable for publication in Physical Review X (for more information, please see: journals.aps.org...). Therefore, in accordance with our policies and practices, we are not sending your paper out for external review."

After editorial rejection by Physical Review X, I pointed out that their criterion listed in journals.aps.org... was met exactly, since clearly my work was proposing a paradigmatic shift. I then asked the editors if they could recommend another high impact journal that might actually consider my work. After a bit over two weeks I got a response from the Editor of the "Physical Review Family of Journals". The response was: "Your manuscript has been considered. We regret to inform you that we have concluded that it is not suitable for publication in any APS journal." This was quite a time saver, since many of the top high impact journals were in that family, and I no longer had any need to submit there.

There were three other high impact journals that seemed to be possibilities. The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society rejected it with "I regret to inform you that your above submission is considered unsuitable for publication in MNRAS as it is out of scope." I sent an email to the Astrophysical Journal to the address given for such inquiries, and I received no response. I also submitted to the Journal of Classical and Quantum Gravity. Their response was "Any work published in Classical and Quantum Gravity must be of a high standard and of scientific interest. It is also necessary for your manuscript to make a contribution to the literature. On this occasion, we did not feel that this was the case." It was interesting that as I moved down the list they became more verbose in how great they themselves are.

The remaining journals of the top 25 had criteria (scope or length) that were not a match to my paper.

Each submission required time and effort. I included a cover letter with each one, indicating that I had proper credentials (Ph. D. physicist, a professorship, national lab scientist, designer of working accelerators, several previous publications in high-impact journals). None of this effort even enabled a review. It appears that a discarding of relativity is outside the scope of discussion at these journals. We build on the shoulders of giants, is the meme.

And so my work has now been submitted to Physics Essays, a journal that I've previously published my best work in. I understand that this time my work will be sent out to reviewers. We'll see what they have to say.

"The Quantum Luminiferous Aether" has passed peer-review and is planned for March 2024 publication in the journal Physics Essays.

I lost access to my delbertlarson account here on ATS, as apparently there was some issue. Click on the link in the signature of the OP if you wish to find a preprint of the upcoming publication.

I believe the paper is of rather significant importance. However, history teaches that even if it is, it may take considerable time for adoption.

a reply to: delbertlarson2

Congratulations. Look forward to reading the paper.

originally posted by: delbertlarson2
"The Quantum Luminiferous Aether" has passed peer-review and is planned for March 2024 publication in the journal Physics Essays.

Hi Delbert,that sounds like an interesting paper. Is a preprint available on arxiv or vixra?

I lost access to my delbertlarson account here on ATS, as apparently there was some issue. Click on the link in the signature of the OP if you wish to find a preprint of the upcoming publication.

Everybody on ATS lost their accounts, even staff. But you can get your old account back if you want, just PM DontTreadOnMe or Djarums for details.

I believe the paper is of rather significant importance. However, history teaches that even if it is, it may take considerable time for adoption.

It's too bad you didn't get published in the higher impact journals though not from lack of trying on your part. Apparently the mainstream loves relativity. But at least you're getting it published.

I think it's sad that Alfred Wegener, who noticed that the continents seem to roughly fit like separated pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and therefore proposed his theory that they move around, died in 1930, over 30 years before scientists came to accept his theory as they gathered evidence confirming the continents really do move around. That shows a couple of things:

1. Even correct ideas are sometimes rejected, or not readily accepted when the evidence supporting them is scarce.
2. Once the evidence becomes overwhelming, science has no choice but to accept the new idea it previously rejected.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur
Hi Delbert,that sounds like an interesting paper. Is a preprint available on arxiv or vixra?

I looked into arxiv some months ago. There was an instruction that papers must not make exorbitant claims, so I gave up right away. The paper is about as exorbitant as one can be. The editor at Physics Essays was quite open to my putting it on my own site provided I acknowledged the journal appropriately, and if you click on any of the signatures on my comments above or the OP it can be downloaded from there. I can ask the editor if arxiv is OK, and perhaps arxiv might consider it now that it is actually being published. I can ask.

On another matter, I saw your post concerning the bad news for MOND. My aether model predicts a specific dark matter distribution, so bad news for MOND is supportive news for my dark matter modeling. I saw some claims for MOND support through the baryonic Tully–Fisher relation, and while it was concerning, my thinking was that the claimed support for MOND was rather controversial and so it might not hold up. Also, there may be issues regarding standard candles and the distance ladder when analyzed under a model different from GRT. My model gives a lot of good results, some that were unexpected, so I believe it is on the right track.

Good to hear from you again.

a reply to: delbertlarson2
I see you responded to the arxiv question but not the vixra question (vixra is arxiv spelled backwards and has much less censorship than arxiv, only censoring papers which are "vulgar, libellous, plagiaristic or dangerously misleading"). Sometimes I search arxiv when looking for papers about a topic so having the paper in an archive like arxiv or possibly vixra is supposed to make the research more available. I can't really say I search vixra, but if anybody does, then that might make your paper more available than just putting it on your website alone. I'll leave it to you to decide if putting your paper on vixra might have any benefit to the community, if arxiv censors your paper.

According to vixra, the big deal with arxiv now is that they require an endorser, and endorsers tend to be conservative in who they will endorse, because endorsing the wrong material may cause the endorser to lose their ability to endorse or maybe even their ability to publish on arxiv at all. Apparently some scientists who previously published on arxiv were unable to do so when they couldn't find an endorser when that policy was implemented. At least they have the vixra option now.

Why viXra?

the best new ideas do not follow from conventional research and it may take several years before their importance can be appreciated. If such a discovery cannot be put in a permanent archive it will be overlooked to the detriment of both the author and the scientific community...

The visual design of viXra.org (but not its content) is a parody of arXiv.org to highlight Cornell University's unacceptable censorship policy. Vixra is also an experiment to see what kind of scientific work is being excluded by the arXiv. But most of all it is a serious and permanent e-print archive for scientific work. Unlike arXiv.org it is truly open to scientists from all walks of life. You can support this project by submitting your articles.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

I got permission from the editor and worked through the upload process at viXra. They wanted it in a different format than the journal format, but that was a fairly minor effort. I understand it should be available there in two days, provided they accept it.

Thanks for reminding me about the need for sponsorship at arXiv. I think my chances of getting this paper in there were small and don't want to waste time on a fruitless effort. I've been censored ever since I stepped out of line. I found ATS when Swanne wrote a thread about my ABC Preon Model being censored at Wikipedia. That time I had even gone through the process of working with an editor on the original submission. But still the censors came, and it was deleted. You may recall when you assisted me with helpful comments on an attempt to write an article for Wikipedia on absolute theory. It lasted a single day before the censors came. So viXra it is. I remain grateful to ATS for having a place open to conversation. Right now, X is open also, so I post there as well. But ATS was open, and stayed open, during cancel culture. Thanks, ATS!

There is no doubt a problem of cranks. But I think the harm they cause is small in comparison to the harm of censorship.

One issue I ran into at viXra was the category. I chose "relativity and cosmology" as the best fit. Better would be "quantum aetherial alternatives to general relativity" but of course there's only one of those. I thought about "quantum gravity and string theory" but while it is a quantum theory and it does do gravity, it has nothing to do with string theory. So I went with "relativity and cosmology".

a reply to: Arbitrageur

viXra published my paper, at least for now. It is here.

Shortly thereafter I got an email from some online journal asking me to publish with them.

Congrats on the publishing - i was very skeptical of the claims initially as the majority of quantum claims don't have any of the maths to back it up. After a very brief scan of the maths it all seems very solid and very impressive work.

I have a degree in Applied Maths and need to refresh my memory on some areas to do a thorough analysis - I find the maths of quantum stuff quite easy but my brain explodes if I try and interpret what the results actually mean.

Very impressive work and well worth a read.

originally posted by: delbertlarson2
a reply to: Arbitrageur

viXra published my paper, at least for now. It is here.

Shortly thereafter I got an email from some online journal asking me to publish with them.

That should help the availability of your paper, in fact I started reading it and hope to read more over the weekend.

Before your paper was on Vixra, I searched "aether" and got almost 1500 results.

After your paper was on Vixra, I searched "luminiferous aether" and got "about 295 results", but I didn't have to go past page 1 to find your name and paper. However I don't understand why all the other results show the title of the paper in a blue heading, but yours doesn't and instead shows

viXra.org e-Print archive, D. J. Larson

If it was like the other search results I would have expected it to show something like this in the blue heading.

The Quantum Luminiferous Aether.

However it does show that title under the blue heading, so it's there. I'm wondering if maybe the Google scanning hasn't caught up yet since it's new and maybe the search result will change after Google scans your pdf? Just guessing. Here's a screenshot:



So anyway I think it's pretty good it showed up on the first page of that search, since there are ~295 search results.

a reply to: bastion

Thanks. I am working on a quantum paper next.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

When I search "quantum luminiferous aether" I don't see the viXra entry on google. When I search for "quantum luminiferous aether viXra" the top result is D. J. Larson, which goes to the preprint. Not sure why google does that.

I look forward to any comments you may have on my work. As noted in the paper, a more thorough version is also on my website. Some of the derivations are quite tedious and not the type of thing usually included in a journal publication. I can also answer questions of course.