Nassim Haramein solves Einstein's dream of a unified field theory?

Originally posted by beebs
A wise man once said:

Nature doesn't really care what you're opposed to.

I would like it if it would behave one way or the other, but nature doesn't care what I want or expect any more than it cares what you think.

You're missing a key point here beebs. That referred to what the experimental evidence told us was true about nature. It didn't refer to the guess.

Be careful of ad hominem and argument from authority...

How about argument from lack of authority? As I said I'd seriously consider what he wrote regarding his PhD topic. But this paper is way outside his field of expertise.

Originally posted by beebs
I'm not sure what kind of evidence we could search for,....

It would be interesting to devise a specific experiment to try to figure out if we are inside of a black hole.

Get back to me when you have some evidence.

In the Feynman video, the first step was "guess", but I suspect the most successful scientists also have some of the best guesses so they don't spend too much time in their careers pursuing crank ideas that never agree with the observational evidence. So yes the first step is a guess, but I think even Feynman would agree that guessing we are inside a black hole isn't a very good guess.

Originally posted by Bobathon
Dr Kineman may be a qualified environmental scientist and systems theorist, but he's no cosmologist. If his intention was to present some basic cosmological systems ideas to a system science audience, it's irresponsible of him to cite fringe crap like Haramein.

I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt and think quoting fringe stuff like Haramein was an oversight, but I read his bio (which I suspect he wrote), and it reads fringy to me so I don't think it was an oversight.

Originally posted by beebs
reply to post by Bobathon

 

Be careful of ad hominem and argument from authority...

It wasn't an argument from authority, it was a response to Zules' question about peer review.

The paper itself takes a toy cosmology which can nicely reproduce the Hubble Law like our own universe, but he presents it as if it could be a real cosmology despite the fact that it can't account for the blatant signature of a big bang type event that we can observe (microwave background, baryon acoustic oscillations, distant galaxies having less structure).

It also contains some pretty basic errors, such as describing the Schwarzschild radius as the radius of photon orbits around a black hole (bottom of p.5. Compare: photon sphere) and even getting dark energy confused with dark matter (p.10).

It's not a good paper. Saying he's not a cosmologist isn't an ad hominem either, by the way, it's a plain fact based on the observation that he's an environmental scientist and has written a bad paper ostensibly about cosmology.

If it had been peer-reviewed, then yes, it would be irresponsible of the reviewers. The whole point of peer-review process is supposed to be to identify fundamental problems with the paper, so it really should be done by people who understand the subject and are able to spot them. I don't think it was, though.

As Arbitrageur says,

his selection of Haramein's paper as a reference shows a significant lack of knowledge in the field he chose to write about, apparently outside his area of expertise.

The question for this thread is: does Kineman's citation constitute any kind of validation of Haramein's ideas?
Hopefully that's a clear No.

reply to post by Bobathon


We see a lot of these types of threads on ATS. Haramein is selling a product that in his own words is a non dualistic interpretation. He plans on funding his promotion by offering certified Emissary positions and charging for admission to his talks when affordable. Participants are told they can connect to their own personal singularity.
Most of us critical thinkers on ATS would classify this as a pseudoscience art form designed to elicit, rather than absolute science. The ATS forum members still enjoy the experience, sometimes even assimilating the original authors views and expanding on them.

reply to post by Bordon81

The problem with Haramein is not that he does entertaining and personal seminars and presentations. The problem is that:
he insists on claiming his ideas to be the product of true scientific research, which they are not;
he insists on claiming that he is a physicist and that his papers are physics, which they are not;
and most importantly, he encourages prejudiced views of the actual scientific research and scientific institutions, views based on misinformation and ignorance of what the researchers are actually doing.

He also strongly discourages any kind of discussion of the science content of his papers, and anyone who asks deeper questions receives a barrage of accusations (along with waffle that generally doesn't do much to answer their questions). See for example his continual (and totally unnecessary) put-downs here: www.facebook.com...

If he would present what he was doing as an "art form" rather than claiming to have scientific theories of the universe that could supersede mainstream physics, that would be fine. As it is, he uses pretense and dishonesty and he turns people away from finding out things for themselves. And now he's abusing the peer review process and claiming that this paper is something that it's not.

I just think people deserve a hell of a lot better than this.

Originally posted by Bobathon

I just think people deserve a hell of a lot better than this.

Then try studying the work of serious academic researchers, not posers like Haramein who lead people up a cul-de-sac.

Spend the next six months getting to grips with the research of a true revolutionary and pioneering theoretical physicist
smphillips.8m.com...
who has discovered the mathematical interface between religion and science, provided overwhelming, irrefutable evidence for the existence of a form of remote-viewing of subatomic particles that will signal the next revolution in particle physics and who has shown how sacred geometries embody superstring theory, the codon pattern in mRNA, the mathematical structure of the seven Church musical modes, etc.

reply to post by Arbitrageur

But this paper is way outside his field of expertise

Thats what I mean, because it dismisses him based on authority. Its bypassing addressing and criticizing the ideas put forth, which is constructive discussion.

Like bobathon's response below yours:

The paper itself takes a toy cosmology which can nicely reproduce the Hubble Law like our own universe, but he presents it as if it could be a real cosmology despite the fact that it can't account for the blatant signature of a big bang type event that we can observe (microwave background, baryon acoustic oscillations, distant galaxies having less structure).

It also contains some pretty basic errors, such as describing the Schwarzschild radius as the radius of photon orbits around a black hole (bottom of p.5. Compare: photon sphere) and even getting dark energy confused with dark matter (p.10).

Which addresses specifically why its a bad paper. Instead of dismissing it because he isn't a cosmologist.

reply to post by Bobathon


The put-downs are uneccessary, however I've seen worse from accredited scholars.

I will say, that Haramein definitely knew the material better than the other folks in that discussion, but it was a good read nonetheless.

Its good for Haramein to discuss his own ideas with constructive criticism, as well as it is for us to do the same.

So, Haramein pops up on ATS with some periodicity, like some kind of revenant.

I've posted on this topic before. Just wanted to repeat one particular thing:

Strong interaction exists between particles that constitute a nucleon, such as quarks and gluons. Same applies to mesons which have 2 valent quarks. Haramein's writings do not address any of these facts and can't therefore be reconciled with the physical reality as we observe it. So... why bother?

reply to post by buddhasystem
Well the quarks would be inside the event horizon of the black hole and therefore not observable. So he doesn't need to address something that can't be observed...wait...we DO observe quarks. It's just one example of many that Haramein disregards empirical observation.

Originally posted by beebs
reply to post by Bobathon

 

I will say, that Haramein definitely knew the material better than the other folks in that discussion, but it was a good read nonetheless.

Hmm... well I will say that (a) they were very good questions, and very pertinent to his work, and (b) he didn't actually answer a single one of them

Originally posted by Bobathon
See for example his continual (and totally unnecessary) put-downs here: www.facebook.com...

Wow, what an eye-opener! To add to everybody's misery while reading Nassim's cr@p, he also behaves like an @sshole in his forum.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
reply to post by buddhasystem

 

Well the quarks would be inside the event horizon of the black hole and therefore not observable. So he doesn't need to address something that can't be observed...wait...we DO observe quarks. It's just one example of many that Haramein disregards empirical observation.

Interesting that he was asked that very question in his forum on facebook, and guess what, he never answered.

Interesting paper here, regarding structure in a black hole. Some similar parallels to Haramein's ideas, but less metaphysical/fringe:

Atomic Structure in Black Hole

Originally posted by beebs
Interesting paper here, regarding structure in a black hole. Some similar parallels to Haramein's ideas, but less metaphysical/fringe:

Atomic Structure in Black Hole

Heheh! Now that, my friend, is a physics paper.

No messing about, clarification of every point, and honesty about what it's attempting, what it's claiming to have achieved, and what can be done by others to investigate further.

Parallels? Well, he used some of the same words...
(You spotted any others?)

reply to post by buddhasystem


Haramein is in the wave camp so I'm pretty sure he would be more inclined to draw parallels from S matrix theory explored in Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics.
At this scale its all a multiverse style illusion anyways until we can develop better experiments.

The fact that quarks and more and more dimensions have to be postulated has led some physicists to concentrate on another type of explanation. The answer may lie in the universe’s own inter-relatedness. Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics reviews one alternative to quark theory which, although a minority view among physicists, points even more strongly toward a view of the universe as a wholeness. The theory is built on Heisenberg’s S-matrix theory. To express all the probabilities of all the potential outcomes of particle interactions takes a number of large interrelated lists of values, called a matrix. One may think of a matrix as a series of related checker-boards, with a different value in each square. The value on a square of one checker-board relates to the value in the corresponding position of another board. The S of Heisenberg’s S-matrix theory refers to the scattering of particles after an interaction. The values in the matrix are the values for the probability of a particular interaction. For a particular reaction, we are dealing with a small zone of the matrix. From the web of possible interactions, one finds that a particular particle can be made of interactions between other particles; that new particle can in turn participate in the formation of the types of particles from which it was itself made. The theory which is an alternative to quark theory is called the “bootstrap” theory. It holds that the basic or elemental state of the universe is not found in still-smaller particles, but in the complex web of particle interactions “across the matrix”, so to speak. In this theory, the impression of quarks results from the pulsations in the web of energy transfers as particles form one another. Perhaps one way to say it is that “bootstrappers” see quarks as waves, not as particles. They see the universe as composed, not of building blocks, but of a continuous flow of energy moving in well-defined pathways. The universe acts as if it is continuously pulling itself up by its own bootstraps, which is how the slang term got started.


From "the material Cosmos"

futurepositive.synearth.net...

edit on 7-12-2010 by Bordon81 because: (no reason given)

reply to post by Bordon81

Where's that text from?

Regge theory (bootstrapping) seemed like a good idea in the 60s and 70s (when Tao of Physics was written). A few experiments have been done since then. Regge theory quickly proved to be pretty disastrous in comparison with QCD (quarks & gluons).

But there are few types of particle reactions where it still works, even in modern colliders. It's a big topic of research to figure out exactly how and why QCD reproduces the much simpler results of Regge theory in certain conditions. It's an area I've done a bit of work in (some time ago). I didn't like it much.

Originally posted by Bordon81
reply to post by buddhasystem

 

Haramein is in the wave camp so I'm pretty sure he would be more inclined to draw parallels from S matrix theory explored in Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics.
At this scale its all a multiverse style illusion anyways until we can develop better experiments.

In physics research aeons have passed since bootstrap theories were considered. The only consistent model of hadrons seems to be the QCD, and there is just plethora of data that is consistent with the picture of quarks and gluons as constituents of hadrons. This comes in the form of symmetries and conservation laws observed in reactions, in classical spectra of heavy mesons (like charmonia), and it also ties into other parts of the Standrard Model via weak decays. If you are talking about "better experiments", imho these have been done.

What was not clear in 1960s is a lot clearer now, and we know that the proton has complex structure that we can probe in scattering experiments, which results expose Haramein's "theories" as bull.

reply to post by buddhasystem

In physics research aeons have passed since bootstrap theories were considered.

Absolutely true but we are talking about Harameins "product" which is designed to appeal to an uneducated audience. I'm speculating that Haramein is using a rhetorical style similar to Fritjof Capra to attract an audience. The Tao of Physics was very popular back in the 70's and sold millions of copies, it's also still a good introductory work into the problems of modern physics.

Since Haramein is charging for his talks he may be planning to evolve through watered down discussions of string theory up through M theory as he gets people on board. Questions and comments like yours from an educated source work as a natural foil to keep the discussion evolving toward the goal of discovering the elusive "truth" concerning quantum physics.

Originally posted by Bordon81
Questions and comments like yours from an educated source work as a natural foil to keep the discussion evolving toward the goal of discovering the elusive "truth" concerning quantum physics.

I submit that Haramein is not equipped for that.

Originally posted by Bordon81
Since Haramein is charging for his talks he may be planning to evolve through watered down discussions of string theory up through M theory as he gets people on board.

That has to be one of the least likely propositions I can imagine. The guy denies quantum mechanics! In fact he hasn't even cottoned on to the 17th Century paradigm shift of Galilean relativity. It really is as bad as that.

He has 380 years of progress to catch up on before he's likely to present any science that's not undigested superficial froth.