Big Autodynamics News

It seems that Pharyngula has noticed my favourite bunch of science cranks, the Autodynamicists. It appears that Dave de Hilster is looking for a little help with his anti-Einstein "masterpiece": Einstein Wrong - The Miracle Year. The subtitle is now a bit of a misnomer, it was originally called that because it was meant to be following the events celebrating the centenary of Einsteins miracle year of 1905 when he did much of his most important work. I think the plan was that the Autodynamics people would prove relativity wrong during the year celebrating his work, things didn't really turn out the way they were hoping. Here is Daves advert.

Feature Length Doc "Einstein Wrong" Looking for Executive Producer

Two Oscar Winning Distributors Wanting a Rough Cut

LONG BEACH, Calif, October 16, 2007 - Bootstrap Productions is currently looking for an executive producer for it's feature-length documentary "Einstein Wrong - The Miracle Year" due out in 2008. The documentary is about a suburban house wife who takes on the icon of 20th century physics to see if in fact relativity is wrong. Shot over the past 3 years, the film has two Oscar-winning distributors interested in the project. The film is directed by David de Hilster who has invested 13 years studying scientists and their efforts to show Einstein wrong. It is co-produced and edited by Andrea Tucker, and Nick Tamburri and is due out in 2008. For more info, go to http://investing.einsteinwrong.com.

Contact:
David de Hilster
Long Beach, California
http://www.einsteinwrong.com

I'm looking forward to seeing the film, even though I know it will be incredibly cringe worthy, the same old canards will undoubtedly be trotted out, that scientists don't challenge relativity because they'll lose funding, that its some sort of conspiracy to hide the truth and that Autodynamics is correct. All of which of course, are false, as numerous posts here and elsewhere have shown.

Watching The Watchers

DdH is back! This time over at sciencewatchdogs.org (aka physicspolice.org). He has returned to form, ranting about his favourite topic; the neutrino. You can read the post in its full glory here. At least this latest effort is a bit more civil and coherent than his last, the magnificently mad "Relativity's Incestual Child Must be Euthanized" or who can forget the amazing scientific rigor he brought to
"Santa Uses Relativity - It's All Magic Anyways!" where he attempted to tear apart a lighthearted Christmas story aimed at encouraging children's interest in science.

This latest story is basically his objections to a UK project (original story here) to try to detect neutrinos by listening for the sound generated as an ultra-high energy neutrino reacts with the atoms in sea water. This is unsurprisingly very difficult, if he stuck to pointing out how hard it is things would probably have been ok. However his main objection is simply his belief that the neutrino doesn't exist, his reasons for this are that his pet theory of Autodynamics (which can be seen to be false here) says it doesn't. If it ended there really his post wouldn't be that interesting, however he does make several foolish statements that reveal his lack of understanding of the theory he is desperately fighting to replace, Special Relativity. For example:

In our lesson for today, let us be reminded that neutrinos exist everywhere SR is applied to decay cases and that the extra energy that appears from nowhere needs to be explained.

This is clearly not the case, the neutrino is only ever involved in decays where lepton number (a quantity that must be conserved in particle physics, in the same way that energy must) would otherwise not be conserved, one example would be the simple beta decay of a neutron to a proton + electron + anti-electron neutrino, the neutron and proton have zero lepton number and the electron has lepton number +1, so for the reaction to conserve lepton number there must be a particle of lepton number -1 to balance things out, that would be the anti-electron neutrino then. Of course because the neutrino is so damn hard to detect when you look at this reaction in an experiment it appears at first glance that all there is being emitted are a proton and electron, this is just because the neutrinos react so rarely with matter. However the energetics of the detectable decay products, the proton and electron clearly demonstrate a third particle must at work, sharing some of the energy of the decay.

This can be seen clearly in the figure below which shows the measured kinetic energy of electrons emitted by the beta decay of a neutron to a proton. Now the input energy must always be the same, because it is always a stationary neutron of fixed mass decaying into a stationary proton of fixed mass. The energy of the electron (and neutrino) comes from the difference in rest mass of the neutron (the heaviest of the two) and the proton. If only one particle was emitted by this decay then it would always have the same amount of kinetic energy, which would be equal to the difference in rest mass of the neutron and proton minus the rest mass of the new particle. The masses can be converted to energy via good old E=mc^2. The fact that we always see a range of kinetic energy for the electron implies that another particle is present and sharing some of the energy, both for its small (or zero) rest mass and its own kinetic energy.



Contrary to DdH's assertion in any reaction where lepton number is unchanged then neutrinos are not required from a theoretical perspective and happily not needed to explain the energetics, an example of such a reaction would be alpha decay, where a large unstable nucleus spits out a helium nucleus. In this case special relativity correctly explains the energetics of the decay products without the need for a neutrino, which is fortunate because all of particle physics says that there shouldn't be one present in this reaction. If you look at the kinetic energy of the emitted alpha particles you will find that they always have the same energy, proving that no other particles are being emitted to share the energy.

The problem with DdHs theory, Autodynamics, is that it predicts exactly the same behaviour for both these cases, so to explain that one type of decay produces a range of kinetic energies but another type produces a single value is impossible. You would think that would be a major problem, well not for Autodynamics, having as it does the amazing ability to totally ignore evidence that disproves it.

So in summary DdH knows nothing about particle physics, but we already knew that.

Another interesting comment, in a, "he doesn't know what he's talking about" kind of way is this:

Yes, we know they don't exist but even so, we better watch out! I always contended that neutrinos if they exist, should have some detremental effect on health given that 5.44 billion solar neutrinos bombard every square centimeter of the earth per second. Something bad has to come out of it. Now they have a neutrino that is similar to the killer asteroids!

He is confusing the solar neutrinos (produced by fusion in the core of the sun) which are incredibly common, but have very low energies, with the exceedingly rare ultra-high energy neutrinos. The solar neutrinos are so low energy they can't do any damage to anything they hit, the ultra-energy ones could conceivably do some cellular damage, but they are so rare that the chance of being hit by one is essentially nil. You'll accumulate much more damage over the year by being hit by cosmic rays than you will from neutrinos.

Another quote:

This sounds very familiar: low-number statistics. Somehow, the neutrino community has convinced the world that low-number statistics is not only viable, but necessary for "scientific" research with neutrinos.

This is another of his favourite canards, he claims that essentially all neutrino detections are false positives from other things such as cosmic rays. The problem is that experiments have been done using neutrino beams produced by particle accelerators, detections of neutrinos are only found when the particle accelerator is on and producing neutrinos, turn off the beam, the signal disappears. You may think that these detections could be other particles produced by the beam, however the detectors are usually located hundreds of miles away, through solid rock, no other possible particle produced in the accelerator could get anywhere near that far without interacting with the intervening material.

It continues to amaze me just how DdH has managed to convince himself he is correct in the face of mountains of evidence that prove he is wrong.

They're Back - 10

In the latest broadside to the scientific community AK over at the autodynamics discussion board has this to say regarding the latest results from the Gravity Probe B:

Ah, why one has to prove (empirically) a theory which is deductively inconsistent is right or wrong? In either way it is a conspiracy to mislead the public and make them agree to spend huge sum of public money. GR is just an embarrassing nonsense. It was emperor's new cloth and the party is over. Sorry for spoiling the party.

Best,
A.K.

Not really much to say except that I wish I, and any in fact any physicist that has ever looked at General Relativity were as smart as A.K., look as I might, I just can't see the inconsistency in a the theory. The fact that it has been experimentally confirmed every time it has been tested also causes me to scratch my head in confusion, I just must not be smart enough for this game.

NeWiki.org

Speaking of cranks, it appears that my favourite bunch of cranks has finally got sick of real scientists correcting their wikipedia page. Their response? To set their own wiki up, newiki.org, your one stop shop for crank science, enjoy.

Honestly I don't know how DdH manages it, at my last count he was running at least 5 websites and a yahoo discussion group, no wonder they never get updated and that he never has time to see just how wrong he is.

They're Back - 9 - The One In Which DdH Jumps To More Conclusions

Dave's latest diatribe is quite funny:

Mark has edited himself into the convoluted wikipedia article on
Autodynamics as a "critic".

Mark my man, you have guts! You are setting yourself up for a big
fall and you seem to be totally oblivious to the fact. Why you are
doing this to yourself must be deeply rooted in your emotional side.

Why people set themselves up for disaster is tough to understand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodynamics

The biggest lie besides the misinterpretation and representation of
the velocity sum in this article is Mark's moniker as a "contributor"
to the AD.

You are DEFINITELY not that. I am banning you today given that you
show no ability to understand AD or the basics of physics even though
you write reams on the subject.

Goodbye and good luck and hope that your new name or existing name
hides you well in this group. You will have to now change the wikipedia article
to say you were banned.

Any article that even alleges Carezani's PHD degree is more
of a vendetta from frustrated people than the reporting of the truth
- something there is little of in the wikipedia article on Autodynamics.

But don't worry everyone, we will be revealing our answer to wikipedia
this year. Stay tuned! The real article on Autodynamics will be very different
and Mark and no one else will be able to do anything about it. We will be
giving a paper on the subject at the NPA meeting.

And thanks to all the AD bashers out there! Without you, we would have
less traffic to our site. Your sacrifice of truth, common sense, ability to
listen, study and learn - ALL in front of the entire world to see - is quite
curious and kamikaze-like.

We thank you all - specially the ones that are creating entire new categories
for AD. Props to my favorite kamikazes Ron and Mark!

-David

I especially like the fact that he assumes that I edited the wikipedia link. A quick check of the change history reveals the real culprit, a jg1981, I wonder who that could possibly be? Not Mr (soon Dr) J Geach perhaps? To be found on my links at room311? Thanks Jim, I wondered why I was getting a hit or two a day from wikipedia, now we all know. I agree with Dave though, I've contributed nothing to the AD people except to point out the obvious flaws in their theory, I'm not too happy with the way its worded and have therefore just changed it.

As for setting myself up for a fall what does he actually mean? Is it some sort of threat? Even if the impossible happens and AD was to be proven correct, would that affect me in any way? No, not really, science is all about being wrong, I'm quite happy to change my mind when things turn out to not to be true. Would it affect my career? Again No, everyone else in science would be wrong so its hardly likely that I would suffer any special punishment. So I really am at a loss about what he thinks could happen to me.

It sounds to me like Dave is planning his own wacked out physics wikipedia, a la Conservapedia, can't wait for that. By the way, does anyone know what the NPA is? a Google search doesn't actually turn up anything physics related, could it be something to do with Nuclear Physics A? Or more likely for DdH's crew it could be the National Pigeon Association.

Another post hererants about a question someone has put to them about doing an experiment to show that their velocity sum is correct. He thinks that is me as well. Dave please listen very carefully, I shall say this again, if I am going to talk to you I do it without hiding behind false names or anonymously. I can't talk for others that you may associate with me, but I have no time for those games, I tell what I believe to be the truth, to your face (well as close as you can get online).

I can understand why DdH finds this idea of me being honest and open difficult, back in the day he was quite the terror of the discussion board world, dozens of different names and accounts, always pretending to be a newbie with a question about a theory they just stumbled across (Autodynamics), basically he was just trolling for recruits. So when he looks at me I believe he is simply seeing his own methods and dishonesty reflected.

Oh and Dave, you or any of your band are still more than welcome to discuss things over here, I won't silence a critic, especially on false premises. As long as you keep things polite mind you, so I guess that means asking Lucy to calm down a little.

They're Back - 8 - The One In Which Mark Totals Up The Scores So Far

The "debate" with the followers of Autodynamics has been going on for a while now, so I thought it would be time to reflect on the successes of the two contending theories, Relativity and Autodynamics. I think that the best way to do that is to simply list those phenomena that each theory can adequately describe. I'm not going to get into arguments about causative effects here, so gravity counts as a success for GR because GR can more than adequately describe the behaviour of gravity, even if it does not have an explanation for what causes it (i.e. what causes mass to bend space/time). So onto the lists, lets start with the accepted theory first.

Relativity
Maxwell's Equations - through these the behaviour of all electromagnetic phenomena, including everything happening in the computer you're reading this on is explained. I could write pages and pages about what this ability means, but I don't have the patience or the time, needless to say everything in the modern world depends on our understanding of electromagnetism and electromagnetism is a fully relativistic phenomena.

Gravity - General Relativity accurately predicts how mass will influence motion due to gravity to incredible levels of precision. From the motions of the planets to the behaviour of pulsars.

Motion Of Objects - Often overlooked relativity also deals with how moving objects behave, such as the observed appearance of mass increase in moving objects. An important point being that relativity describes correctly the behaviour of objects at low velocities as well as high, its just that this behaviour is exactly the same as predicted by Newtonian mechanics at low velocities.

Particle Physics - Almost anything to do with particle physics requires a deep understanding of relativity, the fact that objects moving near to the speed of light appear to increase in mass means that particle accelerators are set up differently than they would be if this didn't occur.

Nuclear Physics - The fact that the Sun shines, that atomic weapons and fission reactors work can all be traced back to the very relativistic equation of E=mc^2, an equation that drops out naturally any number of ways from special relativity.

There are many others, however most of them would tend to fall within the larger topics above so I'll leave them out, if anyone thinks that I have missed anything out feel free to let me know. Needless to say regardless of DdH's claims to the contrary relativity is essential to basically any piece of technology used in the world, save perhaps the windmill.

Autodynamics
(Think of tumbleweed bouncing down a desert road, with the slight sound of a breeze in your ears.)
No really there must be something it can be used for. Wait for it, wait for it, got it:

Time Dilation - Autodynamics has caused this student to lose a large amount of time over the previous several months.

And...Well that's it actually, there is nothing from the list of things that relativity adequately explains that AD can, and as far as I can tell nothing AD can describe that relativity cannot, save perhaps where all my time went, sigh.

They're Back - 7 - The One In Which DdH Fires Off A Few Ad Hominems

Check out DdH's latest post over at crank central. The most interesting bit is probably this:

What happens is that a person seems interested, polite, and really
concerned yet when you start arguing logic with them about their
inability to understand the basics of Carezani's work, you quickly
find that they are neither interested, polite, or concerned about
physics truth. This has happened over and over during the last 15
years and it will continue to happen.

It is usually by students of physics preparing themselves to enter the
mainstream. As someone in this fight from Seattle told me, most
people who go into physics are autistic. It is true. They get their
strenght by sitting isolated with themselves or their autistic friends
who consider themselves to be very very smart yet socially, they are
misfits. They find what they think are the weakest kid on the block,
sit at their computer far removed, and pick on this person from an
often anonymous, long-distance. It is very corwardess.

I wonder to whom he may be referring? I think its a bit unfair to claim most physicists are autistic, certainly many may seem to be, especially the more blue-sky researchers, speaking for my own sub field though I find Astronomers to be amongst the most well rounded of scientists. This may well be because I am a socially awkward autistic misfit. I am very very smart though, so maybe it balances out. I could go on for a while pointing out what a well rounded person I am but I think the most interesting question is if I am autistic, what is Dave? Someone that spends all their spare time pushing an obviously flawed theory? The two options I have come up with are; extremely arrogant and self deluding, or, a lying snake oil salesman only interested in selling books or videos.

As for his other claims, well I'm not anonymous, my name is right of the top of the page (to the right if your having trouble locating it Dave), as to the fact that I live on the other side of the world, what am I to do about that? If Americans can't deal with their own nuts (and looking at all the Intelligent Design crowd, they can't) someone will have to speak up for real science. Does it make any difference to the validity of my points that I live on the other side of the world? Last time I checked the same laws of Physics apply in the UK as in California. I'm not picking on any kid, I'm presenting scientific arguments which disprove his theory, if he can't respond in a scientific manner, he shouldn't bother at all. His response so far has been to totally ignore every point put to him, preferring to respond by claiming that we don't understand what he is saying. It is almost impossible to comprehend something fully when it is plain wrong.

His choice of language reveals his lack of interest in debating the soundness of his theory, he is attempting to paint those of us that do argue for real science in a bad light, and himself as a plucky underdog so that he may play the victim and appeal to peoples less rational thinking. He is simply attempting to play to peoples predjudices about what a scientist is like, anyone that knows any professional scientist will tell you he is dead wrong. All this posturing, and that is all it is, is a meaningless distraction, to hide the fact that he has absolutely no evidence to back up what he is claiming. Come on Dave, if your theory is real, then publish some results, in a real peer reviewed journal.

As DdH has decided to get personal I think I can feel free to point out that a linguist such as himself really has no excuse for such appalling spelling, I mean honestly Dave a spell checker can't be beyond your capability can it? Honestly what the hell is "corwardess"? Sigh, even if you spelt it correctly the sentence doesn't make sense. Fool.

As a final thought, near the end he states:

Science is based on observation first, theory second.

I really wish he would take his own advice. We have pointed out many ways that AD just doesn't fit simple experiments, does that alter his thinking? Not one jot. His theoretical approach must be right, despite all the evidence to the contrary, see an upcoming post for more details on that.

They're Back - 6 - The One In Which DdH Links To More Obvious Errors In AD

Over at ADherent central a positive flurry of messages have been bouncing around, a mini thread has recently developed about the speed of electrons in electronics and related to that Maxwell's equations. For those not au fait with Physics, Maxwell's equations (click here for the wikipedia explanation) are a set of equations that describe the behaviour of electric and magnetic fields and currents. They are essential to our understanding of the behaviour of any electronic systems, or any electromagnetic (such as light) phenomena.

Dave de Hilster was asked in a post if AD could derive Maxwell's equations, the obvious answer is no, Maxwell's equations are clearly relativistic equations, it was problems understanding them that led Lorentz to come up with his transforms that Einstein subsequently used to postulate relativity in the first place. Dave however chose to link to this page on the Autodynamics site. Why is this interesting? Well because of two sets of equations and the legend at the bottom of the page which states:

These two equations (the SR and AD forms of a particular Maxwell equation) are conceptually equal with the exception that in the SR equation, the coefficient Z divides the equation and in AD, the coefficient multiplies the equation!

The italics added by me by way of explanation. What he is stating is crazy. He is saying that in one equation (the SR one) the terms are divided by the factor Z and in the other (the AD one) they are multiplied by it. He adds the explanation mark as an attempt to make you think this is great news, that the two equations are actually equivalent, which of course they cannot be for any value of Z other than 1 (Erratum: it originally said "or 0" as well here, but that's rubbish, the product of writing posts in the dead of night. Thanks Marc.). What this actually boils down to is that AD cannot describe the Maxwell's equations as we know and use them, so AD is entirely incapable of describing any electromagnetic phenomena. Chalk up another great success for AD!

They're Back - 5

DdH has posted a reply to the email I sent earlier, you can see my original post here. Here is his response in full, my comments which take the form of an open letter to DdH are at the end.

Mark:

I would take your statement of feeling better serious if you showed
that you can take the time to understand AD. But your civility is a
war tactic, not sincerity. Do you think for one minute I believe you
are here to learn about AD? That amazes me more than your
non-willingness to take the time you need to understand what Carezani
is saying. That is expected. But you can't fool anyone by saying you
are glad I'm better because we know you are not. So I will not accept
your false kindness. That is a simple tactic used over and over here for people
who say we don't listen and are not civil and use that as "proof" we are
inconvincible.

You call us ADiots and you care about my health???

Here is just a small part of what you don't understand:

The velocity sum problem as described by AD forces you to understand
that movement is not for free in the universe. Newton gave us
equations for movement but did not say where movement came from.
Einstein says inertial frames exist and they don't and therefore SR is
moot and what he says about movement and acceleration are therefore moot.

Mass increase is not treated as real by particle accelerator
scientists and yet you and others say SR is correct.

Space-time is vacuous as stated by Feynman himself yet we call
Einstein's theory of gravity a theory of gravity. It is not.

You and the establishment make one fatal mistake: you ignore the
crumbling and failings and flailing of theoretical physics and you
don't STUDY DEEPLY Carezani's work and try to find some simple
Hollywood movie ending where you can defeat a superior enemy as Will
Smith did by imagining one bullet in the right place will kill the enemy.

The truth is just the opposite. Many people around the world have
shown E=mc^2 to only work for very specific cases. Two people in the
world how have gotten the raw data for the atomic clock have shown it
wrong. Where is the proof?

One of the sponsors for my film is one of the brave GPS guys to have
the balls to say that relativity is not used in GPS. Where is the proof?

The experimental physicist in my film at SLAC says mass increase is not treated
as real. Where is the proof?

You, scientists, textbooks, and journalist, repeat statements over and
over and over again that "relativity is one of the most tested
theories in science".

WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE??? Search the internet. Where are the
practical applications? GPS and particle accelerators are not examples.

You try and fool everyone with the details of something you don't
understand trying to be the Will Smith of your physics fantasy world.
You are dragon slayer 23 in a long line of people who for some reason
or other feel superior by picking on tiny David (not me, but the
biblical one). That makes you Goliath. He loses in the end.

If Einstein is right, why have ALL the physicists we've talked to
declined to talk with us? What are the afraid of? They really just want to keep
status quo. They are intersted in their job security first, truth second.

As for publishing in reviewed magazines, that is a circular argument.
If you understand philosophy 101, you would understand that you can't assume
what you are trying to set out to prove. In order
to get published in peer-reviewed publications, you have to be
accepted by the establishment. To be accepted by the establishment,
you have been accepted in peer-reviewed publications. That is a circular
argument.

In conclusion, we will only answer questions from those who are
interested in learning about AD because trying to show where you are
wrong is a circular problem also: you have to understand AD before
you would "supposedly" be able to "bring it down".

You have shown, like the establishment, to not study AD deeply.

What can I say? You either take the time, or pretend to be the
Hollywood hero in a fantasy world and be reliaged to the masses in
history who swallow whole what is told to them.

-David

First off David, my civility is not feigned or a tactic, Science should not be an arena of personal grudges and arguments, I genuinely do not wish you any harm, I don't know you and have no reason to dislike you, you have always seemed genuinely polite. As I have pointed out before I do not hate you, pity is the best word to describe my feelings towards you. There are many people in Astronomy I disagree with in a professional sense but have no personal animosity with. I would have to admit that I do actively dislike Lucy, she is rude, offensive and attempts to belittle those that disagree with here, she is most definitely an ADiot, I would hazard to guess that any PhD she may have is not in any science, as her attitude would not get her very far.

The velocity sum equation for AD does not force me to accept that motion is not "free", if you are admitting that AD cannot describe the motion of macroscopic objects in a way that we all can observe in our everyday lives, then you are admitting that AD is wrong. Like much of AD the claim that mass decreases as a particle moves is contradictory, the change in the mass clearly depends on the observer, because it depends on the relative velocity between the two, so how is this change any different from the change in mass predicted by relativity, except of course for the different sign of the change?

This of course is related to your misunderstanding of what people tell you about mass increase in special relativity. I'm not sure if you deliberately misunderstand or if you simply are incapable of seeing the subtleties, regardless lets see if we can try one more time. Yes SR says that moving objects appear to increase in mass, now is this increase real? No of course not, because the amount of mass increase depends on the relative motion of the observers, so different people will measure different masses for the same object if they have different relative motions. This is just another manifestation of the different observables appearing different in different reference frames, its exactly the same in AD as I have pointed out except you have got it the wrong way around, you then desperately try to explain it as the energy being used to move the object, if that is the case why do I have to impart energy to move a ball? So in SR while an object may not physically increase in mass it behaves exactly as if it has, so to make things simpler physicists treat it as a mass increase. Despite your claims particle physicists use this every day when calculating parameters for interactions, if you have a "particle physicist" who claims otherwise he is either no such thing or not involved in anything to do with actual experiments. Sorry to disabuse you of this but that just the way it is, even the electrons in a CRT have a measurable different mass to ones at rest.

Einsteins theory of gravity is not a theory of causation it is a phenomenological description, one that happens to work incredibly well in every circumstance it has ever been tested. GR is undoubtedly a excellent description and any full theory of gravity, such as quantum gravity must reproduce the predictions of GR. Your theory of gravity which is actually an ad hoc attachment to AD, which has no real connection to the main theory was disproven on thermodynamic (as well as many other) grounds more than a century ago.

I have absolutely no misconceptions that I can convince you that you are incorrect. I really don't care if I do, as long as people like you are around, there will be people like me explaining what the real science is. So no I will not give up, these pages will be here as long as possible, at the rate they are climbing up the Google searches they will soon be on the first page just below your site, ensuring that everyone gets to have a balanced read.

I am not aware of any evidence that E equals anything other than mc^2, and has already been pointed out, from a dimensional analysis point of view, it must. For you to claim that it can be anything other than that for the energy of motion shows just how ignorant of physics you really are.

I don't know who your GPS guy is, but I do know that GPS and the Galileo system have corrections for relativity built in. I have seen many explanations of what effects are included, here is one. There are plenty of people that seem to claim that GPS doesn't include relativistic effects, always people that would have no connection with the actual programming of the corrections.

I don't doubt physicists would want nothing to do with you, asking them to appear in a documentary that is clearly cranky, with no editorial control over how their words are used. It's a recipe for humiliation. Does it really surprise you that they want nothing to do with your project? Especially when a simple Google search brings up so many examples of you and your behaviour, I'm particularly thinking about your discussion board days. Add that to the fact that it is up to you to prove that your theory is correct not the other way round, and to date you have nothing to back up your claims. Physicists are generally very busy people, they don't have time to spend potentially ruining their credibility with any loon with a camera.

Your comment about peer reviewed shows that you don't know anything about the process. Your hate figure, Einstein, published his first papers without any qualifications other than a standard degree and without a position at an academic institution. You can submit papers to any journal you like, they will be treated fairly by an expert in the relevant field. If your theory has any potential the reviewer will be more than willing to help out, if you think you are being treated unfairly you can ask for another reviewer. You won't get any sympathy from professional scientists with your whining about not getting published, we all have to work through the same problems. We use the scientific method for a reason, because it works, if everyone that had an idea started their own mini cult with websites, documentaries and books we wouldn't progress at all.

Oh and as a response to your post here, I am doing a PhD, there are no majors, hell there aren't even majors in undergraduate degrees in the UK you spend all of your time studying the subject you signed up for, which in my case meant 4 years of Physics. My PhD is research based and I like what I do, so I think I'll stick with it.

They're Back - 4 Grandma Luce Strikes Back!

So Lucy Haye has decided to reply to my previous comments, here it is in its brilliant unedited glory. Watch out for razor sharp observations and stunning scientific insight, or not.

Dear Mark:

You confirm that you are really very ignorant, when you talk about the balls. From where the energy come from?

In AD it expend more energy when the velocity is bigger (20 m/sec) but with the same GIVEN energy the ball will travel at 14.14 m/sec. Tell NASA how to do your brilliant idea given by Newton and Einstein!!! to get energy from nothing.
(Of course I know that you don't understand the problem. Is needed to be a no fanatic ignorant to understand it. You don’t understood the problem in the referenced PAGE)

You NEVER will understand AD because you are an ignorant believer of Einstein mistakes and living in the ancient caves.

As always thanks for your commercial. The smart people will see the difference, THANKS

Regards.
Lucy Haye.

Lucy is confused, but lets see if the rest of us can learn something today.

Lets set the scene, we have a man on a train, the train travels at 10m/s in some direction, the man then throws a ball in the direction of motion of the train, the ball travels at 10m/s relative to the man. The question is at what speed does a stationary observer by the tracks see the ball move at?

The answer is simple, the ball appears to the stationary observer to be moving at 20m/s, simply the sum of the two velocities, now, however much Lucy bleats and whines this is a simple fact of nature, observed whenever objects move in relative motion at speeds a lot less than light speed, the fact that AD says this is not the case simply proves that AD is a crock.

Now why is Lucy whining about energy? You see AD has the strange idea that when an object moves it becomes less massive, this is in direct contradiction to both the predictions of Special Relativity and all experimental observations. ADherents claim that this loss in mass is used to push the object along. So when she asks "From where the energy come from?", she is confused about where the energy moving the ball comes from. Of course those of us in the sanity based world are not confused, the ball received kinetic energy from the train, and then even more from the man throwing it, of course the amount of kinetic energy depends on who is measuring it, the man on the train measures the ball having less kinetic energy than the man by the track. This is simply to say that the kinetic energy is not an invariant quantity, how much KE you measure an object to have depends on the relative motion between yourself and the object, it is surely easy to accept that this is the case, think of it this way, what does more damage a crash where one car is stationary and the other hits it at 30mph, or one where both cars drive at each other at 30mph?

This simple and obvious fact about the Universe, is a big problem for ADherents, they have so confused themselves about the nature of frames of reference that they have concocted a theory where kinetic energy has become so confused that it cannot be used in the real world. Hence the problem that they are unable to account for even the simplest relative motion experiments.

So what is the standard response to any criticism that points out ADs manifest failings? Either stony silence or a barrage of Ad-Hominems and claims of scientific bias. I really don't care personally whether Einsteins Relativity is correct, it doesn't really impact much on the work I do, I thoroughly believe that at some point a new theory will supplant it, its just that AD clearly isn't that theory. Any theory that wishes to replace relativity, must first be able to explain all the observations that relativity so successfully has, AD can't do that, it can't even reproduce the observations of the low energy regime that Galileo and Newton managed.

I'll repeat my challenge, to Dave, Ricardo or Lucy, if AD is a scientific theory, then publish something in a real peer reviewed journal, if you would like a list of reputable ones feel free to email me and I'll try to let you know which would be most appropriate. Now if you don't mind I'm off to do some real science.

Note: To those not familiar with the topic, AD has been published in a journal once, it was a paper, co-written with the creator of AD Ricardo Carezani, which described the results of an experiment carried out at the Stanford Linear Accelerator which completely disproved the theory, finding that all the results were perfectly in line with the predictions of Special Relativity. You can find the paper here if you like.

They're Back - 3

So its all kicked off over at the SAA. DdH started with this post:

Well put.

Here is an example of those you speak of. We have found that the ones
who attack AD and it's proponents know very little about basic physics
and almost nothing about AD. Most of them are full of themselves
opinion and are positioning themselves for jobs in the acedemic world
where truth is less and less important than simply finding am a place
to eek out a living in the university system.

http://theobservershunch.blogspot.com/2007/04/theyre-back.html

It is truly amazing how they cannot and do not understand the basics
and like children, shout back that we don't understand the basics.
It's truly sad.

Amazing. And we're in the 21st century. I'm not sure if we can say
physics is though. Physics in my opinion is over 100 years behind and
stopped at and made a u-turn at the turn of the 20th century.

-David

Which elicited a response that chills the blood of anyone that values real education.

As a homeschooler, David, how can I teach my children the real "basics"? Is
there a "basics" textbook that parents can use with confidence for teaching
real physics to their children when they aren't scientists themselves?

Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Aderet

I honestly feel terribly sorry for the poor child that is educated by someone that thinks the SAA is a reliable source of scientific knowledge, to be honest if I understand the home schooling done in the states its fairly likely this kid is being told the Earth is 6000 years old or that Evolutionary theory says Humans evolved from monkeys. Sigh.

DdHs response is to be found here, its very long so I won't post it. Its full of the usual rubbish, but some claims do bear reprinting.

It's funny that the high school teacher of advanced physics at the school where I filmed did not teach relativity. He said he didn't teach it because it simply didn't motivate or interest students. To me, that shows that it is a dead end. After 100 years, there is nothing that has come of it.

That's funny a high school teacher doesn't teach relativity, what a surprise, to appreciate relativity fully you have to understand maths at a higher level than is taught in school. I wonder what other scientific theories aren't taught in school? You know I never really was taught quantum mechanics in school, that must be a dead end too. Or nuclear physics, the lessons we had were very cursory, probably nothing to be gained from understanding how atoms work, or how to generate power from fission. Or what about genetics, we learned that there are 4 base pairs and that they can be arranged to form the DNA code, but not really that much else, I guess genetics is a dead end beyond that.

DdHs next post was aimed squarely at me, enjoy, I know I did.

The effort this guy goes through is quite amazing. Too bad he like
most others stop in the middle before they really understand AD and
pretend to slay the dragon.

http://theobservershunch.blogspot.com/search/label/Autodynamics

A lot of stuff! Misguided, but C+ for the effort!

One example of how these people run right over the truth at the speed of light
and skip the most important point:

"It was observed that the energy contained in the observed decay
products (electron and proton) did not add up to the amount of energy
contained in the neutron, so Pauli postulated that an unobserved
particle (the neutrino) must be carrying away some of the energy."

Problem here is, the energy DID add up without the neutrino. It is exactly as
predicted without the neutrino. Pauli
applied the relativistic KE equation to the eletron and that created the extra
energy. Looks like our basher skipped that important part. First mistake is
that you can't apply KE to decay.
Second, there isn't missing energy if you don't apply relativistic
equations to decay. in the first place.

Two mistakes skipped over by future PHD in the UK and then he goes off into more
and more stuff with just as many conceptual errors.

There is case after case of this guy getting things wrong. One thing we have
learned through the years: it is useless to point out their mistakes to them.
They are incapable of learning because they are convinced AD is wrong no matter
what you say. The only time we spend time to explain where these sad-sacks go
wrong is for those who truly are interested in learning about AD and it serves
as an example for others to see where the shallow logic AD bashers use goes
wrong.

Just think if this guy actually shut up and studied AD more, he might just get
it!

;-)

-David

Only a C+?, for all this work?, damn he is tight marker. I thought at least a B. Needless to say its all posturing bullshit. It wouldn't matter how long I studied AD, I couldn't get it because its a pile of contradictory nonsense. I posted a reply to their board but I don't doubt it won't get posted, so here it is in all its unedited glory.

Hi David

Glad to hear you're feeling better. It's nice to see that you have taken the time to read my post at last. I wonder however what your response to the most problematic points I raised are, namely that there is absolutely no way that E can equalmc^3, and that this shows the lack of scholarship involved in your entire theory. People in glass houses should not throw stones especially when you make a mistake no competent high school student would.

The other being that the Autodynamics equations do not form a group and therefore cannot be used as transforms as you so happily do throughout. This I'll be more forgiving with, a slightly competent first year University physicist would probably pick this one up.

I'll ignore the bit about you being unable to reproduce anything sensible without having to fudge results.

As I don't doubt that this message will get blocked I'll ensure it appears on my blog, thanks to your linking to my blog on your message board at least other members of theSAA will get to see it now.

You keep feigning confusion as to the motives of people like myself, well your last few posts adequately show why people like myself take the time to point out your mistakes. To think that someone schooling their child would think that you are a reputable source of scientific information is beyond me. Then I realise I'm fortunate, I work surrounded by people that use relativity every single day in their work, something I'm sure your deluded parent doesn't have the benefit of, so no wonder it seems odd to them. I know its a fact, I see the results of it everyday, the version you peddle is a cartoon version of relativity, in the same way that creationists caricature evolution and bears little relation to the real theory.

I am here because when scientists don't share their knowledge to people, charlatans and cranks like yourselves start peddling nonsense like AD, or intelligent design or the healing power of crystals, to the benefit of no one but themselves.

If AD is really a scientific theory then publish some papers, in a real peer reviewed paper (and don't try to count Physics Essays, peer reviewed means checked for factual accuracy, not spelled checked). If as you claim your maths is right it must be incontrovertible (that's the way maths is), the fact that you have never published anything that has been properly been reviewed shows the vacuity of the theory. I don't doubt you will claim scientific bias here, but the fact is if your maths is right, it can't be argued with, the fact that even I can show where it goes wrong doesn't really bode well.

Thanks

Mark

They're Back - 2

More from the lovely Grandma Luce:

Dear Mark:

You are very very ignorant.

The equation that I sent to you is exactly the same as PAGE reference. What really happen, is that you don't know Elemental Algebra, neither the order on how the operations are made.

Ignorant like you cannot study Physics. Change your career. You are making the ridiculous-man

As always, thanks for your Propaganda

Regards.

Lucy Haye.

Ah Grandma Luce, it appears that it is your goodself that is somewhat lacking in mathematical technique, shall we have a look why?

You say that the Autodynamics Velocity sum equation is:

Bn = (1 - ( (1- B1^2) ...... (1- (Bn-1)^2)))^1/2

Which indeed it is, as the page I linked to clearly demonstrates, however in my large post I was asking the question what happens to the AD velocity sum equation at low velocities, where C >> V? (In this case as long as v is less than about 10% of C this approximation holds very well)

Well what happens is that your equation above reduces to:

(I believe from a technical standpoint that you use a Taylor expansion to get to this from the AD equation.)

Exactly as I had stated. For fun, and because I do this kind of thing everyday I decided using IDL to check that this is the case (hey nothing better to do), If I use the equation given by Grandma Luce and values of v1=10000., v2=20000. and v3=30000. we get a velocity total of 374165.67, if we use the equation above we get 374165.74. Proving again that it is an excellent low velocity limit for the equation given by Grandma Luce.

Oh and also that AD is a crock. Its nice to see one of the ADiots admit that the velocity sum does apply in cases of relative motion though, and hence the world can now see that it is clearly contradicted by the real world, I mean if you throw a ball in the direction of motion at 10m/s from a train travelling at 10m/s, what does someone stationary on the ground see? The ball travelling at 20m/s (as in the real world) or 14.14m/s as in the AD fantasy land? You decide.

On a final note to Grandma Luce, if you don't mind would you enlighten us as to what your PhD is in? Oh and thanks for playing! Try again soon!

They're Back!

That's right every ones favourite crank science troupe the ADiots/ADherents have returned. See IbaDaiRons posts here and here for more details. I think something he said must have stirred them into action because I received the following email from Grandma Luce, regarding my long post on why Autodynamics is bogus (see here, its also a good place for people not familiar with Autodynamics to start).

Dear Mark:

Thanks you very much for you commercial on AD, event though it is absolutely false all what you said about AD. You didn't understand a word about it.

Your AD Sun Velocity Equation is absolutely wrong:
The AD's equation is:

Bn = (1 - ( (1- B1^2) ...... (1- (Bn-1)^2)))^1/2

Regarding the Kinetic Energy is needed to be very ignorant or a big liar to say that AD say that the energy is invariant.

Regarding System in Relative motion you didn't understand a word on what AD say and never you will understand it because you are not a scientist: You are a person poisoned by poison and hate.
It is your problem, no the AD's problem.

It is painful to see an English Gentleman plying so bad role.

My best regards, and thanks again for your propaganda.

Lucy Haye Ph. D.
SAA's member
Books's Manager.

I'm not sure why she didn't just post the reply to comments section of my post, my guess is that she didn't want anyone else to see it. Oops. As you can see she has not bothered to try to make any comments that actually refute my points, apart form claiming that I have got the wrong velocity sum equation, all I can say to that is that I put up the equation from the AD website, the AD website has a page with questions on where the velocity sum equation is given in the form I provide, the answer agrees that this is the correct form of the velocity sum equation. So which is it? right or wrong? To be honest it doesn't really matter the equation Luce gives doesn't reduce to the Galilean one anyway so its still wrong.

To say I'm disappointed is an understatement, I had expected better from them, they claim that their theory is an improvement on GR and after over a month this is the best they can come up with to refute my objections? I at least thought they might try to explain away the fact that they claim Energy might be equal to mass times the speed of light cubed, which isn't even dimensionally allowed!

Come on ADiots, you really have to make a better show for yourselves. This is frankly just embarrassing.

Why Autodynamics Is Wrong, Totally, Utterly And Most Importantly Demonstrably

WARNING: Long Post
WARNING: Some Maths (not essential to understanding)

I think its about time I wrote a semi-complete critique of the whole Autodynamics theory. My reasons for doing this are that I think it provides an excellent opportunity to discuss the successes of the Special Theory of Relativity whilst also illuminating many of the common mistakes made by people attempting to present their own "alternative" theories. For explanations and examples of the theory I have mostly used the two main autodynamics websites, autodynamics.org and autodynamicsuk.org.

If anyone has any points to add feel free to email me, the address is in my profile. I should point out that most, if not all of the points I raise were not originally raised by me, hey, the theory has been around for sixty years, people have had plenty of time to point out the obvious (and less obvious) problems. If anyone recognises anything they think they may have originally come up with feel free to claim some glory in the comments. I especially credit Tom Roberts whose "A Physicists Refutation of Autodynamics" I came across while almost ready to post this entry, for certain mathematical explanations I have decided to use his methods, they were essentially identical to the ones I had, but were much simpler to follow. Hey I'm an Astronomer not a Mathmagician dammit.


History of Autodynamics
Lets start at the beginning. What is Autodynamics? AD is the result of an error made over sixty years ago by a young Argentine Physicist studying special relativity. The physicist, Ricardo Carezani believed that he had spotted an error in the derivation of Einstein's Special Relativity (SR). This perceived "error" became a life long obsession for Carezani, who set out to formulate his own theory, with which to supplant SR. Personally I would have been slightly worried if I thought I had spotted something that had eluded many of the greatest minds of twentieth century science, clearly Carezani had a pretty good opinion of his own abilities.

Now I personally feel some sympathy for Carezani, he was making his "discovery" at a time before most of the experiments that proved SR had been undertaken, for example the experiments that measured the energy spread in certain decays proving the neutrino existed had not been done yet. By the time these experiments had been done, it was probably too late, he wasn't going to be able to accept that he was wrong. He is after all not the first scientist to have sacrificed his career and credibility because of arrogance (I won't name names here, you probably know of a few). He has continued to work on his theory and with the help of a small band of cheerleaders led by a David de Hilster has attempted to publicise it. More recently day to day work on the theory appears to have been ceded to DdH, in fact it appears that Carezani has essentially been sidelined (he is getting on yuo know) in favour of promoting DdHs take on the theory.


AD In Brief
The main conclusion of Autodynamics, is that the derivation of Special Relativity is incorrect, that there is a superfluous reference frame (don't worry we'll look at what these are later) in the derivation and that removal of this frame leads to a simpler theory. This simpler theory predicts very different behaviour for objects travelling near the speed of light, for examples see this page. In particular while SR predicts that objects travelling near the speed of light appear to increase in mass (observed in particle accelerators), AD predicts the exact opposite, that moving objects physically decrease in mass leading to equations for the kinetic energy and momentum of moving objects which similarly display behaviour in the exact reverse of those predicted by SR (and observed in experiment). This change in mass is supposedly what supplies the energy for motion. AD also apparently predicts that electric charge is not conserved, and that "if a charged object decays its charge gets smaller" leading to obvious problems dealing with any particle physics phenomena. From this set of equations AD attempts to explain a wide range of phenomena, from particle interactions, gravity, motion of bodies etc.

It hardly needs stating at this point that SR as been proven time and again to be an accurate description of certain phenomena, therefore if AD is to have any usefulness it must reproduce the predictions of SR for those situations where both apply. In much the same way as SR simplifies to Newtonian Physics at low velocities, AD must predict the same behaviour as SR where SR has already been shown to be correct. As we shall see this is simply not the case.


Autodynamics Treatment Of Frames And Moving Bodies
The central claim of AD is that SR includes a superfluous reference frame and that while the mathematics are correct this frame is physically meaningless. This reverse of this can be shown to be true trivially, taking the equations of SR and AD side by side we can begin to see why this is. The equations on the left are the standard Lorentz transforms used in SR, the ones on the right the simplified Lorentz equations (the so called Carezani equations) used in Autodynamics.

Figure 1. The Lorentz and Carezani equations.

To get anywhere explaining the problems with AD it will be necessary to give a very brief description of the use of coordinate systems in Physics and in particular what the different symbols in the above equations mean.

Imagine that we have two people, Joe and Moe, who are observing some phenomena at a point P some distance away from them, further imagining that Moe is moving in the x direction (in the line between Joe and P) with uniform velocity u (see Fig. 2). Moe sees the distance between himself and the point P as distance x', Joe is at rest relative to the point P and measures the distance between himself and P as being x. The transformation equations above are simply some clever mathematics that allow Moe and Joe to agree on what they are measuring. In the example given if the two coordinate systems (Joe and Moe) were originally at the same point, then the relation between x and x' can be trivially seen to be x' = x - ut, y'=y, z'=z and t'=t (for simple Galilean Relativity), in other words it is possible for both Joe and Moe to reconcile what they have measured.

Figure 2. Two coordinate systems in uniform relative motion along the x-axis.

The description above deals with the results for classical Galilean mechanics, it can be shown that Newton's laws when transformed between the two systems are exactly the same, that is they are invariant, in other words there is no way to use a mechanical experiment to determine who is moving and who is at rest. This is the principle of relativity, that physical laws should be the same in all inertial reference frames (those frames where there is uniform motion), note it does not apply if there is an acceleration acting on one of the frames, this is the root of the infamous twins "paradox".

This was the situation until the mid 1800's when Maxwell formulated his equations describing the behaviour of electromagnetic fields. It was soon noted that Maxwell's equations did not appear to obey the principle of relativity, they were not the same in Moes frame as in Joes, this of course was a major problem. It was H. A Lorentz who first worked out that the transformations on the left side of Figure 1. would allow one to transform Maxwell's equations whilst preserving relativity, an interesting consequence of which was the observation that light appears to travel at exactly c (3x10^8 m/s) no matter how fast the observer or emitter is travelling. This leads to the first problem with AD, the Lorentz transforms are the only mathematically allowed transforms that preserve relativity for Maxwells equations. We know Maxwells equations are observed to be true in any reference frame they have been measured, therefore AD must be wrong. This would be a pretty short critique of AD if we ended there however, plus there is plenty of bad (and good) science/history left to be described.

Einstein took the observations of Lorentz and postulated that it wasn't just electrodynamics that these transforms applied to, but mechanics also, and that by replacing the m in Newtons standard equations with m = m0 / SQRT(1 - u^2/c^2) then the new theory of Special Relativity could be reconciled with the older laws of mechanics. An important point regarding the implications of special relativity is that differences between SR and classical mechanics only appear when objects move very close to the speed of light. In other words at the low speeds (v lt c) we are used to in everyday life then the SR equations reduce to the simpler Galilean ones we expect. SQRT(1-u^2/c^2) only becomes measurably different from 1 when u approaches c.

So now for another glaring problem with Autodynamics, it is the one that essentially kills of the theory at the start. It can be shown that the standard Lorentz transforms form what is known as a group, if you successively perform the transformations you produce another transformation. What this means physically is that there is some mathematics that different observers can apply so that they can bring their observations into agreement. This is essential, relativity means that no two observers will ever measure exactly the same event exactly the same way, but there is at least mathematically some way that both observers can agree that the same physical laws have applied to the phenomena. Without this property Physics and its ability to explain the Universe is impossible, different laws of physics apply to different observers and there is no way that they can ever be reconciled. We can show here that the AD equations do not form a group, that different observers of a phenomenon if they use AD can never agree on what they have observed, not even in principle.

Starting with AD equations 1 and 4 which we will renumber 1 and 2. x and t are measurements in reference frame F (i.e Joe), x' and t' are in reference frame F' (Moe), u1 is the velocity of F measured from F'.

To have any real physical significance it must be possible to introduce a third observer, after all the Universe wouldn't limit us to only two possible frames from which to observe any event right? Well of course not, think of any real life situation and you can see that there are essentially an infinite number of possible reference frames to choose from. So we can introduce a third observer to the system, this observer (Bo?) has reference frame F'', their reference frame must have some relation to the two others, in fact it can be shown that it is simply related in the following way:


where u2 is the velocity that F'' (Bo) measures for F' (Moe). This equation must hold true for any arbitrary choice of u2. There must also of course be some way to convert between reference frame F (Joe) and F'' (Bo) directly, it can simply seen that this situation is described by the following equations, where u3 is the velocity that F'' (Bo) measures for F (Joe).

This also should hold for any choice of u3. Now substitute 1 and 2 into 3 and 4. Giving us:

For the transformations to form a group equations 7 and 8 must be the same as equations 5 and 6, due to repeated transformations leading to transforms that are also group members. So we simply equate the two sets of equations to get:


Substituting 9 into 10 leads to:

Now Substituting this back into 10 gives us:
Which can be rearranged to solve for u1 to get:
Oops. We started out with an arbitrary choice of velocities u1 and u2, but have still ended up with u1=0, this is mathematically a contradiction and shows that the AD equations do not satisfy the conditions of being a group. The composition of any two AD equations does not produce another transformation, falsifying the theory as a practical theory describing real world events. Its is impossible for two observers to agree on anything they see or do using Autodynamics except in the rather boring case of u1=0, i.e both at rest. Needless to say this is not a problem that afflicts SR, I leave it as an exercise for the reader to attempt a similar procedure using the SR equations.

Now how do the ADherents deal with this pretty damning problem? In one of two ways, the first was simply to ignore it, looking at the discussion forums where this type of problem was pointed out to DdH is quite illuminating. After first being made aware of this problem he produced a new newsgroups policy for the SAA (Society for the Advancement of Autodynamics) which prohibited discussion of AD in forums by members, he or one of his sock puppets would then occasionally post some message extolling the virtues of AD whilst refusing to discuss the problems (in an attempt to attract new converts). I have only seen one argument from the ADherents disputing this type of analysis which is simply to claim that the Carezani equations are not transformation equations and that they never claimed that they were, this however spectacularly fails the credibility test when they use them exactly as transformation equations when deriving their equations for kinetic energy (and others) you can see some examples here (specifically where they go from equations 19 to 21). I could essentially end the discussion here, theory disproved end of story, but there are plenty of other examples of poor science to find in AD, some of which are quite amusing and instructive on how not to formulate a theory.



Figure 3. Illustration of the velocity sum.

Velocity Sum
A simple example of where AD predicts something obviously incorrect in real world situations can be seen by how AD relates the summation of velocities. We will use a simple example here to demonstrate the problem. Imagine we have a situation similar to the one described above, where we have someone on a moving body, say a train, the train moves with velocity V1, the person then throws a ball in the direction the train is moving, with as he sees it velocity V2. The question is, what velocity does a second observer, one stationary on the side of the tracks see? What velocity do they measure for the ball? Well in simple Galilean physics the answer is simple, the velocity observed by the person at rest is the sum of the velocity of the train and the ball. In SR the answer is similar, the derivation is trivial but I'll omit it in the interests of brevity, the SR equation for the velocity sum is:


As we can see an extra factor has appeared V1*V2 / c^2, this factor means that it is impossible for anything to appear to travel faster than the speed of light. Try it, if you pick a velocity for the train of 0.55c and one for the ball of 0.55c, the velocity of the ball observed by someone at rest is only 0.845c not 1.1c. The important point however is the behaviour of this formula at small values of V1 and V2 like we see during our normal lives, in this regime where V1,V2 lt c, the equation above reduces to the simple case V = V1+ V2 exactly as is seen in everyday life. Things are not so rosy in AD land however, their equivalent to the equation above for V1,V2...Vn lt c is:




So in our simple example above, the ball appears to anyone at rest to be travelling at SQRT(10^2 + 10^2) = 14.14 m/s. Oops. Clearly this is nonsense, it contradicts simple experiments you could do yourself at home.

The people at the SAA have many reasons for this problem, none of which is actually true, the real reason seems to be that they derive this relation using the assumption that kinetic energy (the energy due to the motion of an object) is invariant. Of course kinetic energy is not an invariant quantity, how much energy you measure an object to have depends on the relative motion between you and the object. This is another major contradiction in AD, it claims that only the motion between an object and an observer matters then ignores the fact that other observers will have a different relative motion and therefore measure a different kinetic energy for the object. Clearly we can again see that the supposed greatest strength of AD (its single reference frame) is actually its greatest weakness.


E=mc²
Perhaps the most egregious and obvious contradiction in all of the AD literature (read website) is the way they treat Einstein's most famous equation E=mc^2, which relates the amount of energy contained in mass to the speed of light squared. Throughout much of the website they consistently denigrate E=mc^2, for example check out the poster for DdH's much delayed documentary about AD:


Notice that it says that E does not equal mc^2. Which is good because in AD, E does not equal mc^2. Unfortunately for AD, in the real Universe E does equal mc^2.

Now E=mc^2 is not something that was chosen by Einstein to fit observations, it falls out naturally of SR, the fact that the relation has been measured to be correct time and again is pretty good, because it again provides yet more evidence that SR is right. The problem AD has is that we know E=mc^2 (or something so close we can't tell the difference) is true. For AD to be correct it has to be able to derive E=mc^2 from its own principles. It seems it can't do this, the changes they have made to the Lorentz transforms make this impossible as far as I can tell. To try to hide this fatal problem the ADherents try several tricks such as saying things like:

Carezani is working with some ideas (slowly and sporadically) with energy equal to E = moc^3. (See here.)

and

So, does the famous equation "E=mc^2" survive in Autodynamics? The answer is, currently, yes. Carezani discovered the Autodynamic equations using the same steps as Einstein, simply with a correction. He assumes this equation to be true for now. It may be that the equation for energy and mass equivalence is something different where E = m K where "K" is some constant other than c^2. But for now, it is assumed to be correct. (Here.)

You can't do this! It so obvious its crazy but they still try and get away with it. E=mc^2 is a natural result of SR, AD cannot reproduce it so if AD is correct then E=mc^2 must be wrong, but its not, we know from any number of experiments that it is true. You cannot say you have a theory that replaces and improves on SR and then say that your theory cannot predict how mass and energy are related so you'll just use the result from the theory you have supposedly disproven because you don't have anything better!

But it gets worse, they actually do just this, using E=mc^2 whenever they need to relate mass to energy, they then claim that AD manages to match observations! Its not AD, its SR that's doing any matching!

You may wonder as I have done why after 60 years no one has managed to come up with an AD relation for mass and energy, its certainly one of the most obvious things to do, the answer I suspect, is that they ran into the same result I did, I have had a very brief try at deriving an AD mass energy relation and ended up with a result that appears to be physically meaningless, which could be down to either my maths (hey, astronomer) or the fact that AD is physically meaningless. I will let the reader decide which is more likely. I suggest a challenge to those of mathematical abilities beyond mine (i.e. 12 year olds), can you produce a derivation for the relation between mass and energy in AD? I tend to think that if one existed that wasn't meaningless Carezani would have it by now, without having to resort to laughable guesses like E=mc^3.

NOTE: Thanks to CMB for pointing out a blindingly obvious problem with E having any dependence other then mc^2 is shown by dimensional analysis. The SI unit of energy is the Joule, which happens to have dimensions of kg m^2 s^(-2) which of course is exactly the same dimensions of mc^2. Carezani's guess of E=mc^3 is of course dimensionally impossible proving yet again how ignorant of basic physics the people at AD are.

This I think is where AD is most easily seen to fall into the crank theory bracket, making one of the most fundamental mistakes you can make in a theory, contradicting yourself. Stating that something is not true (or knowing that it cannot be true according to your theory), then using the fact that it is true elsewhere because you don't have anything better or even worse because you know it is in fact true from experiment. If AD wants to be taken seriously it has to be able to derive E =mc^2 or something like it itself, if as Carezani claims, AD is formulated similarly to SR then it should be simple to show that E=mc^2 is either true or false in AD, why hasn't any of the ADherents done this?

The Neutrino
Ah the poor neutrino, most innocuous of all the ADherents figures of hate. Yes that's right the ADiots really have it in for the poor neutrino, why? you may ask. Well because the neutrino was first postulated by Pauli to explain beta decay, where a neutron decays into a proton and an electron (and neutrino). It was observed that the energy contained in the observed decay products (electron and proton) did not add up to the amount of energy contained in the neutron, so Pauli postulated that an unobserved particle (the neutrino) must be carrying away some of the energy.

It seems that the irrational hatred of the neutrino shown by the SAA is a historical hangover of the formulation of AD. AD was originally claimed to have been formulated to explain beta decay without the need to postulate a neutrino. Unfortunately for Carezani the neutrino was first observed in 1956 about ten years after he came up with AD, the neutrino is now convincingly detected everyday in dozens of different experiments leaving the ADiots with one of two routes, to accept that the neutrino exists and try to salvage their theory or the route that they have (after much deliberation I'm sure) chosen, to stick their fingers in their ears and go "la, la, la I'm not listening to you". They ignore all of the vast quantities of data that clearly and convincingly show that neutrinos exist, instead claiming that the detections of neutrinos are either mistaken or fraud. This is of course laughable and ludicrous, some of the experiments done with neutrinos are incredible, they have been detected from the Sun (if you're wondering what that shows, its a picture of neutrinos from the Sun that have passed through the Earth), from nuclear power plants, particle accellarators and even supernovae in other galaxies for Jebus' sake.

Explain this to the ADiots and they simply claim that all detected neutrinos are other misidentified particles, this just doesn't hold water. Especially since experiments such as MINOS, in this experiment neutrinos produced in a particle accelerator are detected at two locations, one very close to the source of the neutrinos, the other 735km away and 716m underground. Guess what, if you turn off the particle accelarator beam, the signal stops, at both detectors, so what could travel 735km through solid rock without interacting with anything? Hmm, also very fast, near the speed of light, hmm, oh yeah and has the correct properties of spin (as in particle physics spin), charge and lepton number, predicted by looking at the reactions that create the particles? Oh yes thats right the Neutrino.

In simple laymans terms, evidence for the neutrino is now incontrovertable, the fact that AD can apparently explain the energy of one particle reaction, beta decay, without the neutrino must therefore be seen as yet another nail in ADs coffin. This is without even needing to go on and point out that without the neutrino most of the conservation laws of particle physics (spin, lepton number) would not be valid and the entire of particle physics would come crashing down, damn looks like I did point it out.


Conclusion
So there you have it, only a few of the myriad of ways that Autodynamics fails to reproduce anything that even remotely matches observation. We haven't even touched on the rank hypocrisy of its ADherents yet, accusing SR of inventing particles that don't exist (the neutrino which does), then inventing two of its own (pico-graviton and electro-muon which don't). Any visitor to the AD literature will see many examples of fuzzy logic, misunderstanding of SR, downright contradiction (repeated statements that AD only applies to decay cases, then an entire page on how everything can be thought of as a decay case). To me the theory stands out as the most complete of crank theories, but crank theory it is.

AD probably made some sense back in the 1940s, if you ignored the fact that it is physically meaningless in the real Universe, its unfortunately a theory that has far outlived any possibility of it being of any use, existing now as far as I can tell only to sell more copies of books on the subject or memberships to the SAA.