Talk:Jean-Pierre Petit
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Message from Jean Pierre Petit, Phd. Mains fields : Fluid mechanics, kinetic theory of gases, MHD, astrophysics; cosmology, geometry.
This text is a very severe opinion, delivered without justifications. Can a 69 scientist be described through few lines ? It does not seem very serious to me. To be banned by the scientific community: what does it mean ? It's look like a rumor. Such things must be accompagnied by texts, signed by identified people. Where are the origins of such opinions ? On what are they based ?
There is a famous theorem, in science, due to Bayes. Science is a bayesian process. We have measures, pictures, results of analysis and also reports from witnesses. We can analyse text from unidentified origin.
We use analytical methods based on our today's knowledged. Me may consider several schema to try to provide an explanation to some data. A scientist must consider all kinds of explanations, interpretations. Then he looks on. Using his today's knowledge he "computes" a probability associated to any suggested origin, as a possible cause of the phenomenon. The result of his analysis is not "this is the truth" but " the most probable cause is that". A criterium of analysis is the physical possibility of something ( some object, process or phenomenon).
I give an example. Tycho Brahe was a famous Dannish astronomer. He thought about the possibility of the movement of the Earth. As a good scientist he thought that this movement should induce a relative movement of the close objects with respect to the distant ones. The planet could no be involved in such analysis, for they move. Then Tycho looked to the stars. He considered that the faint stars should be more distant than the brillant ones. This gave to him a subjective intuition of the distribution of stars in space ( we know that is often false. There is a lot of brillant stars that are more distant than their faint neighbours ). Next step : Tycho choose a value for the distance of stars. He thought they could be ten times more distant than the planets, whose distance had been roughly evaluated in his time. This seemed to him to be "a maximum". Then he calculated the parallax effect that should be due to the movement of the Earth around the sun. This seemed to him to contradict the fixity of stars in the sky, over a year. He concluded the Earth could not move.
The argument was correct, but not the data. In effect the movement of the Earth produces a parallax effect. But this is so small than it cannot be evidenced juste looking at the sky. Sharp meaésurement are necessary and were done by Bessel before 1900, using the photography tech,ique, recently introduced.
This examples shows that we must not conclude so fastly.
In a book I evoked the case of the plane "Aurora". I think I will put a text in the english version of Wikipedia, about that subject. I will show that an hypersonic flight is possible, using conventional propeller, adding MHD technique to slow down the air without excessive heating. I think that it is possible that this aiplane would exist, since many years. That would explain an available document : a picture with a stange dotted wake.
Of couyrse, this is not many, but who can that there is no son to the SR-71 Black bird ?
In my books I just try to analyze data, to think about the feasability of things. I don'express beliefs. I just ask people to reconsider some abrupt, a priori conclusions. I will try to show that, talking about Aurora. To do that I woul need to include schemas, drawings in the page. How could it be done ?
Then a real scientific discussion will be possible.
Wikipedia is not a place where beliefs must be produced, or rumors. We are scientists. Please, let us behave like true scientists, not ... pseudo-scientists
[edit] Category:Pseudoscientists
I removed this categorization, because it seems to me it's just a POV, without any explained justification. If, as I can guess, the reason for this categorization is "assertion of scientific claims that cannot be verified" (see Pseudoscience), I believe that this rule is too vague to be accurately used; for instance, the string theory fits to this rule. Croquant 13:46, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
