Suppression of Inconvenient Facts in Physics - 3

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Suppression of Inconvenient Facts in Physics - 3

Is the Speed of Light in Interplanetary Space a Constant?

The late physicist Bryan G. Wallace discovered in 1961 that radar distance measurements of the surface of the planet Venus did not support the constancy of the speed of light. There were systematic variations in the radar data containing diurnal, lunar and synodic components. Attempting to get his results published in Physical Review Letters, he encountered great resistance from referees, and eventually settled for a lesser journal (41).

In a letter to Physics Today (42) Wallace summarizes his findings as follows:

The 1961 interplanetary radar contact with Venus presented the first opportunity to overcome technological limitations and perform direct experiments of Einstein's second postulate of a constant light speed of c in space. When the radar calculations were based on the postulate, the observed-computed residuals ranged to over 3 milliseconds of the expected error of 10 microseconds from the best [general relativity] fit the Lincoln Lab could generate, a variation range of over 30,000%. An analysis of the data showed a component that was relativistic in a c+v Galilean sense.

Let us do a reality check here. If the speed of light in interplanetary space is non constant, how could NASA not have noticed in its robotic exploration of the solar system? Wallace makes the scandalous claim that NASA has noticed, and has been using equations with non-relativistic components to calculate signal transit times in the solar system all along:

At the December 1974 AAS Dynamical Astronomy Meeting, E. M. Standish Jr of JPL reported that significant unexplained systematic variations existed in all the interplanetary data, and that they are forced to use empirical correction factors that have no theoretical foundation.(43)

In a 1973 paper (44), Wallace describes how the Lincoln Lab introduced averaging to suppress the anomalous radar results and refused to release the raw data to him, stonewalling his investigation.

The apparent improvement in the residuals for later years was due to the fact that the Lab interpolated the 1964 [Venus] data to 12:00 UT and the 1967 data to one observation a day from 2:12 UT to 2:21 UT. The observing time for the 1961 data ranged from 00:33 UT to 23:40 UT. The involved radar astronomers are publicly claiming nearly complete agreement between their recent radar analysis and general relativity, but my investigation reveals otherwise. At the Fourth Texas Symposium of Relativistic Astrophysics, I.I. Shapiro of the Lincoln Lab promised to send me any data I wanted. I read in an article published by the lab that they had data for the same observing dates covering a wide range of daily observing times from both the MIT and USSR radar stations. I wrote Shapiro requesting this data 2/13/69; his letters of 2/28/69 and 3/12/69 ignored my request. I made an issue of this in my letter to him of 3/20/69, and in his reply of 3/27/69 he stated, 'Unfortunately the data do not exist in the form in which you wanted them and hence, I cannot honor your request.'

Shapiro later sent me data that were completely worthless for making an objective test of the relative velocity of light in space. The data were from two MIT radar stations in Massachusetts. The separation between them was only 0.2' of longitude and 20.6" of latitude and the observations had been interpolated to 2:12 UT to 2:21 UT with only one observation per day. It seems obvious that the Lab eliminated the variations by interpolating the data for each day to the one observing time for that day that agreed with the general relativity prediction. One could use the same method to prove that a stopped clock keeps perfect time.

A subsequent letter submitted to Physics Today on July 9, 1984 was denied publication. Wallace reproduced this letter in the chapter Publication Politics of his self-published online book The Farce of Physics (45). In it, he wrote

“During a current literature search, I requested and received a reprint of a paper [T. D. Moyer, Celes. Mech., 23, 33(1981)] published by Theodore D. Moyer of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The paper reports the methods used to obtain accurate values of range observables for radio and radar signals in the solar system. The paper's (A6) equation and the accompanying information that calls for evaluating the position vectors at the signal reception time is nearly equivalent to the Galilean c+v equation (2) in my paper RADAR TESTING OF THE RELATIVE VELOCITY OF LIGHT IN SPACE. [B. G. Wallace, Spectros. Lett., 2, 361(1969)] The additional terms in the (A6) equation correct for the effects of the troposphere and charged particles, as well as the general relativity effects of gravity and velocity time dilation.
The fact that the radio astronomers have been reluctant to acknowledge the full theoretical implications of their work is probably related to the unfortunate things that tend to happen to physicists that are rash enough to challenge Einstein's sacred second postulate. Over twenty-three years have gone by since the original Venus radar experiments clearly showed that the speed of light in space was not constant, and still the average scientist is not aware of this fact! This demonstrates why it is important for the APS to bring true scientific freedom to the PR journal's editorial policy.

Supporting evidence comes from Ronald Hatch who finds that the NASA equations for interplanetary navigation follow his MLET theory rather than special relativity: (27)

The experimental evidence is almost overwhelming in support of the MLET view. There is a large disjoint between the SRT theorists and the experimentalists. The SRT theorists continue to claim that the speed of light is automatically the velocity c and isotropic with respect to the moving observer or experiment. But the SRT experimentalists do what is necessary to explain and make sense of the measurements. The equations for tracking and navigating the interplanetary probes developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for NASA clearly follow the MLET template."

Mr. Wallace died on April 19, 1997, his findings ignored and thus neither confirmed nor refuted by the physics establishment. The question remains: Is the speed of light in interplanetary space subject to systematic variations in time?

Big Bang Cosmology - Beyond Empirical Falsification

Big Bang Cosmology, which is built on general relativity theory, is forced to use a number of adjustable parameters and ad-hoc assumptions to agree with observation, such as inflation, the assumption that most of the mass of the universe must consist of 'dark matter', a kind of matter that cannot be detected, but nevertheless must exist, for the sole reason that big bang theory requires it, and now the latest fad, "dark energy", another unobservable quantity that is nevertheless accepted by cosmologist as real because it is needed to save big bang cosmology from empirical falsification.

Two of the three vaunted "predictions" of big bang theory - the light element abundances and the temperature of the microwave background are actually retrodictions meaning that big bang theory failed to predict them quantitatively correctly and was then adjusted after the data came in to fit the observational evidence (46).

The third, the Hubble expansion, is entirely a figment of the imagination, as veteran astronomer Halton Arp has pointed out for decades. There are ample examples of high-redshift quasars that are physically connected to low-redshift galaxies, and there is evidence that red shift is quantized. But astronomy has failed to self-correct, and the only acknowledgement Arp received from the scientific establishment was to be largely (though not completely (47)) banned from publication in scientific journals or from speaking at conferences, and to be denied telescope time. (48)] After being told at Caltech that his research “was judged to be without value”, he found scientific asylum at the Max Planck Institut für Astrophysik in Munich, Germany, where he was allowed to continue his work. But suppression continued. In Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science, Arp relates the following story (49):

'Just another isolated case'. Your eye slid over that phrase because you wanted to see whether the referee was going to recommend publication. The answer was: not for the Astrophysical Journal Letters. The message behind the smooth, assured phrase was clear: 'No matter how conclusive the evidence, we have the power to minimize and suppress it.' What was the observation this time? Just two X-ray sources unmistakably paired across a galaxy well known for its eruptive activity. The paper reported that these compact sources of high-energy emission were both quasars, stellar-appearing objects of much higher redshift than the central galaxy, NGC4258. Obviously, they had originated from the galaxy, in contradiction to all official rules. Slyly, the referee remarked that 'because there was no known cause for such intrinsic, excessive redshifts the author should include a brief outline of a theory to explain them.'

My mind flashed back through 30 years of evidence, ignored by people who were sure of their theoretical assumptions. Anger was my only honest option- but stronger than that provoked by worse 'peer reviews' because this was not even my paper. I did not have to stop and worry that my response was ruled by wounded personal ego. How did this latest skirmish begin? Several years earlier an X-ray astronomer had come into my office with a map of the field around NGC4258. There were two conspicuous X-ray sources paired across the nucleus of the galaxy. He asked if I knew where he could get a good photograph of the field, so he could check whether there were any optical objects that could be identified with the X-ray sources. I was very pleased to be able to swivel my chair around to the bookshelves in back of me and pull out one of the best prints in existence of that particular field. I had taken it with the Kitt Peak National Observatory, 4-meter telescope about a dozen years previously. (..)

Wolfgang Pietsch quickly found a small pointing correction to the satellite positions and established that his X-ray pair coincided with blue stellar objects at about 20th apparent magnitude. At that instant I knew that the objects were almost certainly quasars, and once again experienced that euphoria that comes at the moment when you see a long way into a different future. In view of the obvious nature of these objects I felt Pietsch showed courage and scientific integrity in publishing the comment: 'If the connection of these sources with the galaxy is real, they may be bipolar ejecta from the nucleus.'

Arp then describes how establishment obstruction delayed the necessary confirmatory observation for two years.

Then the dance of evasion began. It was necessary to obtain optical spectra of the blue stellar candidates to confirm that they were quasars and ascertain their redshifts. A small amount of time was requested on the appropriate European telescope. It was turned down. (..) The Director of the world's largest telescope in the US requested a brief observation to get the redshifts. It was not done. The Director of the X-ray Institute requested confirmation. It was not done. Finally, after nearly two years, E. Margaret Burbidge with the relatively small 3-meter reflector on Mount Hamilton, on a winter night, against the night sky glow from San Jose, recorded the spectra of both quasars. It was fortunate that mandatory retirement had been abolished in the US, because by this time, Margaret had over 50 years of observing experience. Of course, the referee report from which I quoted was directed against her paper, which reported this important new observation".

Arp concludes and generalizes,

What was particularly appalling about this series of events was that Margaret Burbidge was someone who had given long and distinguished service to the scientific community. Professor at the University of California, Director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory and President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science among other contributions. It seems it was permissible to let her fly anywhere in the world doing onerous administrative tasks, but her scientific accomplishments were not to be accorded elementary scientific respect and fair treatment.

Some would argue that this is a special case, owing to the climate of opinion where the offices of the Astrophysical Journal Letters are located. But, as events in the following chapters make clear, the problem is pervasive throughout astronomy, and, contrary to its projected image, endemic throughout most of current science. Scientists, particularly at the most prestigious institutions, regularly suppress and ridicule findings which contradict their current theories and assumptions.

G. Burbidge gives the following devastating summary of the anti-scientific conduct of the astrophysical establishment:(50)

The existence of a class of objects which have redshifts not largely due to the cosmic expansion was not predicted either in the hot big bang cosmology or in QSSC. How is this phenomenon dealt with in each hypothesis? As far as that big bang model is concerned its supporters are in complete denial. They never mention the observational evidence, do not allow observers who would like to report such evidence any opportunity to do this in cosmology conferences, argue against its publication, and if forced to comment on the data, simply argue that they are wrong.

Astronomer Thomas Van Flandern has essentially argued that Big Bang cosmology does not qualify as science anymore: (46)

The Big Bang (..) no longer makes testable predictions wherein proponents agree that a failure would falsify the hypothesis. Instead, the theory is continually amended to account for all new, unexpected discoveries. (..) Perhaps never in the history of science has so much quality evidence accumulated against a model so widely accepted within a field (..) One must wonder why, in this circumstance, four good alternative models are not even being comparatively discussed by most astronomers.

One of these models is Quasi-Steady State Cosmology (QSSC) proposed in 1993 by Hoyle, Burbidge and Narlikar. Another one is Plasma Cosmology, developed by Hannes Alfvén.

In An Open Letter to the Scientific Community, Eric Lerner has charged that

(..) Virtually all financial and experimental resources in cosmology are devoted to big bang studies. Funding comes from only a few sources, and all the peer-review committees that control them are dominated by supporters of the big bang. As a result, the dominance of the big bang within the field has become self-sustaining, irrespective of the scientific validity of the theory. (51)

Anti-Gravity

In 1992, Russian scientist Eugene Podkletnov published claims to have observed partial gravitational shielding above a rotating superconductor (51). The scientific establishment reacted with scorn and dismissed the claims on a-priori grounds (52):

Most physicists laughed at Podkletnov's report. Riley Newman, a professor of physics at UC Irvine who has been involved in gravity research for 20 years, typified the reaction when he commented, 'I think it's safe to say gravity shielding is not conceivable.' Like many scientists, he felt that Podkletnov must have made a mistake, measuring magnetic fields or air currents instead of genuine weight reduction.

And yet, few of Podkletnov's critics actually bothered to read his description of his work. Their reaction was so dismissive, it almost sounded like prejudice. From their perspective he was an outsider, a nonmember of the 'gravity establishment.' They couldn't believe that a major discovery in physics had been made by such a no-status dilettante fooling around at some obscure lab in Finland.

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