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I like where this is going, but I’d cut out some of the subjectivity and inject more of your thoughts on universe models (and resultant theories) including supporting evidence. With all of the media and opinion out there things get sort of convoluted. For example, relating QM with plasma cosmology and the Standard Model to explain gravity and the events of the colossal and the minute. Of course, Phil’s Dad, why should we suppose a bound upon the size of matter in the infinitesimal direction when we have not demonstrated the existence of a building-block (think lego – nothing exists in the lego world that is smaller than the smallest lego) like environment? Rather, the evidence has shown more of a relativistic environment; one with time, matter, and subsequent relationships and therefore organization (and let’s stay away from thinking about ideas in terms of their originators, or anything subtly ad hominem).

Anyway, can anyone attest to the assumption that dash is proposing to be a weakest link?

I would love to hear Lerner’s thoughts on QM, particle physics, gravity, and the Standard Model in relation to his experiences in research since TBBNH – and please include other favorite theories you’ve come across (variable speed of light, etc).

I guess a lot of people like to dream up science fiction-like realities (I don’t know, to keep them interested in science? Shouldn’t scientists be the most interested in evidence?), but I don’t see how these aren’t completely subjective. We have the evidence that is our experience, and then we have hip “physicists” telling us about the “true” nature of things: that QM shows that things are actually just weird (who would have thought). After reading The Dancing WuLi Masters, I don’t see QM as weird at all – where is the evidence that it is weird? Science now works at the quantum level verifying QM theories and at the macro level verifying our older theories – so? That doesn’t mean the evidence is telling us to be confused, it means the evidence is saying what is has always said: matter from little to big inherently requires a hierarchy of structures. “Reality” at the quantum level behaves like the double slit experiment, and “reality” at our level behaves, well, you know… This means that matter bunches up in a way (scales) so that layers exist with respect to one another – who is to say which one is the way things really are (they both are – not to say there is two, or one, or zero, or however many). I always hear the proposition that relates quantum weirdness to the experimenter and that it is sentient like us (read Jaques Monod to realize that either: neither are sentient or both are sentient; sentience is a term loosely meaning “like me”, “no, you know, can think the way I think”). The scientists thoughts are not collapsing the wave function, they are “collapsing” the concept of the wave function by bring philosophy into the equation. QM started working and they thought “oh man, how does this apply to me and my existence.” I could go on for a while, but I would like to hear from other scientists instead.

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I finally tracked that book down, actually. It is not out of copyright or in the public domain (however, there are some less popular avenues for distributing information on the web :)… In this case, Oxford University Press holds the copyright, and I doubt they will give you permission (you could always ask, though).

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I can’t say that I’ve read any textbooks that include plasma physics – just articles and papers. I will go and get Alfven and Falthammer’s Cosmic Electrodynamics immediately, though.

I really appreciate your reply Mr. Lerner, and more importantly your ability to think critically even when the mainstream does not. I feel as if I am in the same boat sometimes with other sciences – but I find it very important to remain unreasonable man: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” – George Bernard Shaw, 1903.

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Yes I have, actually.

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Yes, I understand that, and I do read the journals. I’m looking for what you guys think are the best background texts.

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