Talk:Autodynamics

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Contents 1 Categorisation 2 the article is too one-sided and poorly sourced 3 Edits by dehilster

[edit] Categorisation

This article is currently categorised under "Obsolete scientific theories" and "Pseudophysics". Since these are mutually exclusive, which is it? Bob A 04:00, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

These aren't necessarily exclusive. As an example the study of n-rays during the period immediately following their discovery was arguably at least potentially good science, as they hadn't been ruled out by well-controlled observations yet. Study following this period would arguably be pseudoscience, as it required rejecting established scientific measurements (non-detection of n-rays). This would make the topic as a whole both.

Regarding autodynamics, I'd call it "pseudophysics" if I had to pick one. The initial derivation reportedly had pretty glaring math errors, and to the best of my knowledge it was never considered science by the scientific community as a whole.

--Christopher Thomas 05:44, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

You might want to read some of the older Talk discussions; we've been through this one before. To clear up this issue (again), see reference #9 of the article. If AD had glaring mathematical errors or were in some obvious way unscientific, it is rather hard to see why Physical Review didn't reject the paper; they're not exactly known for publishing articles on "pseudophysics" or the testing of "crackpot" theories that are full of conspicuous mathematical errors. There wouldn't have been much point in doing the experiment in the first place (trivial as it might be), if that were the case. The Physical Review article simply concludes that the SR predictions were orders of magnitude more accurate than AD ("as originally proposed"). Back in 1984, it was tested as an alternative and subsequently rejected, hence its categorization as an "Obsolete Scientific Theory". It's as simple as that.

Of course one could argue that AD is also "pseudophysics" since Carezani continued to develop the theory after it was rejected and since there are those of us that continue to support it after its apparent rejection.

Therefore, inclusion in both categories (as it was before your edit) is probably the most accurate categorization that we can agree on; as Christopher mentioned, the two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

--Tbainbri 04:29, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

BobA: I'd say autodynamics is a classical example of pseudoscience. It has never been taken seriously in physics, so I wouldn't call it an obsolete theory. But as Christopher Thomas notes, these categories are not mutually exclusive. ---CH 18:37, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Tbainbri: if you read the actual Phys. Rev. paper, the last few paragraphs of Section 1 are very clear: even before doing the SLAC test, the authors knew that a) the autodynamics charge-variation effect had already been ruled out experimentally, b) a smaller, higher-precision thermal experiment had also already confirmed relativity and refuted autodynamics, and c) since Carezani's proposed experiment was so simple, there was no reason not to carry it out and look for deviations from SR (as justified in the opening paragraph of the paper: scientists should not relax until they've tested everything.) In other words, Walz and Noyes did not test AD as a viable "alternative theory"---they discuss it as an already-discredited hypothesis. -bm18.4.2.3 18:42, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

BM: I'm sorry that you did not understand the purpose and context of the 1984 experiment. If you had read the Phys. Rev. paper more carefully, you would have noticed in the second paragraph where it is stated that AD is most appropriately applied to "phenomena without the contribution of energy from the external medium."

"charge variation": The article mentions that previous evidence shows that the amount of charge variation that AD predicts (for 'autodynamic' phenomena) does not occur in various reported phenomena. The only conclusion that could be drawn is that AD would then predict that those phenomena are not autodynamic. This is obviously not a refutation of AD; why do you even bring this up?

I didn't bring it up: the authors of the paper brought it up. Carezani was one of the authors. The paper says "Of course ... experiments say that charge cannot vary to the extent contemplated by autodynamics", with no suggestion whatsoever that the experiments are irrelevant somehow. If the statement was irrelevant to AD, why did AD's inventor sign off on it in his only refereed article?

It's not irrelevant: as stated before, it would suggest (under AD) that those phenomena are not autodynamic. You should already know this, but AD actually distinguishes between pushing and propelling. Kite versus rocket. Particle accelerator versus decay. It makes a difference in AD.

I repeat: the paper says, and I quote, "Of course, there are a number of direct and indirect experiments that show that charge cannot vary to the extent contemplated by autodynamics". You are somehow interpreting this as saying "charge cannot vary to an extent not at all contemplated by autodynamics in this non-autodynamic system". That's the opposite of what they said. This isn't Freud, its a Phys Rev A article; we don't have to search for subtexts. The authors of the paper clearly state that they believe "of course" experiments have already refuted AD.

First of all, you haven't addressed my point that it would just be plain silly to publish an article mentioning an "already refuted" theory. What's the point? Secondly, AD has a charge variation equation but it is stated many times in many articles that an equation itself does not justify a phenomenon. In other words, IF a charged particle decays into another charged particle, then AD would predict a change in the quantity of charge. By the way, you're sounding an awful lot like Jim Carr. I have to wonder if you're just reading his old newsgroup posts from 10 years ago and repeating his empty arguments...

Unfortunately, that's precisely what they did, and they said so explicitly in the paper. It's unfortunate that you find it "silly", but there are two paragraphs in the Phys Rev article which explicitly disagree with you. If you want to use the article as evidence, you're going to have to address what the article says. -bm 24.128.50.213 19:57, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

The question at hand, don't forget, is "Was AD at one time treated as an acceptable theory by mainstream physicists?" Here we have evidence that it was not; this is only mainstream document commenting on AD at all, and the authors believed that AD was demonstrably not a good theory of nature. Your argument, Tbainbri, is that they *might have* given it more credence if they had gotten charge-variation right. But that speaks to the same side of the "Is AD 'obsolete science'?" issue. If Noyes' understanding of AD charge was correct, then AD evolved from "unknown" straight to "refuted by charge" to "refuted by SLAC". If Noyes was wrong about charge, then AD's progression was "unknown" to "unstudied" to "refuted by SLAC", before its modiication and Internet revival. Neither of those paths support the 'obsolete science' categorization. -bm 18.4.2.3 18:21, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

No, my argument is that it's just doesn't happen that people like Noyes would publish an article in Phys Rev that introduces a theory that he thought from the begining was crackpot. (Actually, why don't you write him and find out what the whole story is, from his point of view?)

You say "the only conclusion that could be drawn" is that AD is not meant to apply; another possible conclusion is, of course, that AD does not correctly describe nature. If you want to claim that

It truly is the only definite conclusion that can be drawn. No doubt it is possible that AD does not correctly describe nature, but certainly the results of this experiment could not be used to make that determination.

charge variation *does* exist, but only in certain autodynamics phenomena---well, there's some danger of cherry picking, if you are willing to label any counterexample as 'non-autodynamic'. But I'll ask

No cherry-picking if the phenomenon is well-understood. Autodynamic phenomena are well-defined: they are those cases where all the energy for the phenomenon is derived from the particle's mass.

anyway: Shouldn't positrons (from beta decay) have different charges than electrons? (They don't: see pdg.lbl.gov, first page of the lepton listings) How about tritium beta-decay electrons, which are frequently measured both in electrostatic spectrometers (which measure charge alone) and magnetic spectrometers (which measure the charge-to-mass ratio), and are observed to have a fixed charge and a fixed charge-to-mass? How about post-beta-decay nuclei, like 99Tc (you can get large samples of 99Tc consisting purely of 99Mo decay daughters)? How about muons (from pion decay)How about helium---since almost all of Earth's helium supply is the daughter product of U and Th-chain alpha d

All of these questions show that you don't understand how decay is treated in AD. BM, I really wish that someday you'd actually spend some time studying AD before making your critiques. A good place to start might be Carezani's article on muon decay[1] or pion decay [2]

I know exactly how charge is treated in AD; it says clearly on the AD web page [3] that "If a charged particle decays, its charge gets smaller", and the charge variation equation is

Your quotation does not indicate that you understand how AD treats decay; it only demonstrates that you know about the existence of AD's charge variation equation.

intended to work out so that the daughter's magnetic rigidity is the same in AD and SR. This is explained clearly on the muon and pion pages, including the equation, and not mentioned in the rest of the AD literature---i.e., Carezani has never acknowledged the fact that there are many ways to measure charge, not just magnetic spectrometers. He treats "charge" like a meaningless fudge factor, rather than as a measureable physical quantity. There are many ways to measure charge, and exactly zero observations of non-integer (multiple of e) charges in the literature. Anyway, I gave a series of examples of charged particles which decay into other charged particles. Does AD predict

AD predicts intermediates (such as the electromuon). Again, it seems you don't know how to handle decay in AD. It is completely different from SR.

that the parent and daughter particles have different charges? Different forever, or different until they slow down? If so, please give some numerical predictions, and I'll be happy to cite non-magnetic experiments which are sensitive to the charges of beta-decay daughters, both before and after the daughters slow down or interact again. Does AD predict that the parent and daughter have the same charges? If so, a) your web page is wrong and b) your theory disagrees with magnetic-spectrometer/TOF experiments. -bm 18.4.2.3 18:21, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

ecays? (By the way, I'm still waiting for *someone* in the AD community to acknowledge the mere existence of alpha decays, which show perfect agreement between E=mc^2, magnetic spectrometry, and calorimetry; this has been known since the 1930s, and apparently refutes AD yet again, yet the usual advocates ignore it entirely.) I don't expect an answer, but that lack of answers is exactly why we

Why don't you show exactly why alpha decay "refutes" AD, instead of just making the claim?-tbainbri 64.238.160.22 03:57, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

We hashed through this at great length on your talk page, Tbainbri. AD invents a mechanism to explain a width of the beta spectrum; this same mechanism, if it worked at all, it would also predict a large width in any alpha spectrum. The alpha spectrum is observed to be monoenergetic, contradicting this prediction. If you'd like to revise your nuclear model to predict a monoenergetic alpha spectrum, you'll have a very hard time making your theory describe beta decays. My criticism of AD, again, is not that it tried to solve this and failed; my criticism is that it never addresses it at all, as if it expects the benefit of the doubt on all unanswered questions. -bm Bm gub 18:15, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

First, we NEVER went through an alpha decay case on the talk page. Second, WHY SHOULDN'T we give the benefit of the doubt to AD. For god's sake, there's been essentially one man working on the theory for 50-something or more years. You can't possibly expect him to be able to develop a mechanism or explanation for every single piece of literature that's ever been published in the last 50 years. He's shown at the most fundamental level, why SR fails and has developed a begining and given SUGGESTIONS for things like beta decay, yet you expect the holy grail. Third, you find it perfectly reasonable for neutrinos to be involved in some decays and not in others for SR, but it's just too ludicrous for you to conceive that AD might also consider alpha and beta decays to have different mechanisms. Really, if you can't get past Carezani's frame reduction, there's no point in arguing anything beyond it...--Tbainbri 03:37, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

A) The whole point of discussing the mono-energetic vs. broad spectra was to figure out why AD doesn't predict a broad alpha spectrum. B) The fact that there's only been one person working on the theory for 50 years again speaks against the "obsolete science" classification. C) No one is asking Carezani to address every physics paper of the 20th century one-by-one. I'm asking him whether he can explain the basic phenomenon he set out to explain: what are the energies, momenta, and velocities involved in particle decays. I don't care how he derives his solutions---I care what the velocity/energy/momentum predictions are. D) Physicists have a very good reason for including neutrinos in some decays and not others; it's called the Standard Model. In fact, the SM can predict exactly which decays will have neutrinos and which will not; we do not, e.g., look at an observed decay spectrum, check whether there's missing energy, and throw in neutrinos to fill it out. I'd be happy to see AD propose a new mechanism for alpha decay. If it has, please point to the paper. If it has not ... well, once again, you're assuming that if Carezani gets around to considering alpha decay, he'll find a way to make AD agree with it. -bm 24.128.50.213 21:05, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

But, on second thought, this talk page has suffered enough. Tbainbri, again, if you want more examples of experimental data that AD disagrees with, let's move it over to your talk page. -bm 24.128.50.213 21:05, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

should count AD as "pseudoscience" rather than "obsolete science". It would be "obsolete science" if AD had been worked out carefully, then compared to an experiment in 1982, and rejected. AD was never worked out carefully at all; it leapt straight from "clever proposal for neutrinoless beta decay equation" to "newsgroup, documentary, and Pioneer Anomaly solution" without any working-out at all. -bm 18.4.2.3 20:30, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

"so simple, so why not just look for SR deviations?": First you state that the authors believed from the begining that AD had already been ruled out as a viable theory by previous experiments, then you would have us believe that the only reason they are doing the experiment is to look for deviations in SR. If so, the million dollar question is: why even mention AD? OK, so say you're Noyes et al... all you want to do is one little extra experiment to test one more tiny little facet of SR, just to be sure there's no anomaly there. Then you come across this other theory that's been ruled-out, numerous times over by previous data. You say, "Hey, our article is kind of boring; let's just throw in this 'already-discredited hypothesis'! That'll be fun!". Give me a break. If that were their intentions, they wouldn't need an alternative theory, just anomolous data.--Tbainbri 23:01, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

There is no suggestion that AD was viable up to the minute the new data came in (notice that the refutations of AD are each prefixed with "Of course ...". ) If you can find such a statement in the paper, please quote it. As to why AD is mentioned at all: I wasn't there, but I have a guess as to what happened---something of a just-so story, but I suspect it has the sequence of events right: Carezani shows up at SLAC. He tracks down Noyes and Walz and tells them excitedly about his new theory. They begin talking: about four equations in to Carezani's description of AD, Noyes realizes how easy a calorimetric test would be. He pokes around his textbooks and papers, but can't find any evidence that such a measurement test has ever been done; he invites Carezani to meet him at the accelerator after lunch. They ask the beam operator if he minds throttling down the beam-dump coolant pump and letting them measure some temperatures. (NB: that's the sum and total effort expended on the experiment: letting the dump heat up during normal accelerator operations, and writing down thermocouple readings.) They have a few hours to sit around the control room, during which Carezani describes his theory in more detail: Noyes comes up with the charge-equality objection. The machine operator overhears, and remembers a more-precise (but little-known) experiment that was done with a copper beamdump years ago. By now, the beam dump temperatures have stabilized, and are providing yet another objection. Noyes says "no suprise there, but data is data after all", and writes up a paper on everything they've learned: they learned what AD says; they learned at least two ways to refute it with existing data; they provided a new piece of data which is generally relevant to any theory of high-velocity particle kinematics, including AD. -bm 18.4.2.3 18:42, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] the article is too one-sided and poorly sourced

It's a good start, but from memory (a few years ago I informed myself about this subject) I can see that it's poorly sourced and as a result, also poorly balanced.

In particular, the SAA is in fact an amateur group of people (mostly non-scientists) lead by a photographer who sympathises with Carezani. They hardly understand the stuff that they put on internet. Thus the SAA is a very poor source of scientific information, what must be relied upon (the article isn't about the SAA!) are publications about Autodynamics in science journals, or in sofar lacking, at least articles by Carezani himself.

Moreover, a reported failure is mentioned but the pertinent admission of Carezani that his corrected theory makes the same predictions as SR is not mentioned, nor the fact that his approach can be applied to non-decay processes as well. Claimed successes of the alternative "decay" approach (see Carezani) are not mentioned at all. In particular no mention is made of the alleged improved Compton equation that was published in a peer reviewed journal together with experimental data, if I remember well.

In short, a lot needs to be improved before this article is up to quality standards. For now, I would lable both Autodynamics as well as this article Junk science.

Harald88 22:35, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edits by dehilster

Mr. De Hilster, your recent edit was difficult to understand. I have undone it for now---perhaps you can explain here what you meant, and we'll try to come up with better wording.

1. "The autodynamics velocity addition equation is significantly different in concept from the classical one in that it treats movement as part of the entire system so movement must be gotten from the mass itself." Does this mean "Autodynamics only works for cases where the energy comes from mass loss, i.e. radioactive decay, and does not apply to motion due to anything other than mass loss"? "Autodynamics differs from classical mechanics in that its only works for closed systems, in which all moving parts got their energy from the same source"?
2. "Autodynamic proponents argue that reduction of SR's equations to Newton is not an advantage given that Autodynamic equations do not violate conservation of energy and are all Newtonian." I can't make heads nor tails of this. Are you saying "Autodynamics, like SR, gives the same answers as Newtonian physics in the low-velocity limit?" "SR violates conservation of energy?" "SR may reduce to Newton, but Autodynamics is better anyway"? Bm gub 21:40, 29 January 2007 (UTC)