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THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER
the beginning of the end for postmodern physics
by Miles Mathis
Abstract: I show that the LHC, string theory, and everything connected to postmodern physics is fatally corrupt.
The Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva has had so many setbacks now that top physicists are claiming (seriously) that the project may be witnessing sabotage from the future. The LHC has sat in repair for over 13 months, with no successful tests, and may not be online any time soon. In an article in the London Sunday Times on October 18*, author Jonathan Leake reports that Holger Bech Nielsen and Masao Ninomiya, top theoretical physicists, are each offering “serious” theories, complete with “rigorous” math, to show that the Higgs Boson may be protecting itself from discovery, and doing so from the future via backward causality. Nielsen is one of the fathers of string theory and is one of the top dogs at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, so his theory is thought to merit a worldwide press release. His status has also protected him, so far, from ridicule. The communications director at CERN, James Gillies, has been forced to disagree with Nielsen and Ninomiya, as one would expect, but he has not disagreed very forcefully. While those who have expressed concern about the safety of the LHC have been ridiculed and attacked personally, Nielsen is countered quietly and modestly, as public relations require. Those who propose that the LHC might trigger some disaster by unleashing unknown forces are called crackpots in the article. But mainstream physicists who propose unknown forces visiting us from the future to sabotage our current experiments are taken seriously and given worldwide soapboxes. It would not surprise me, given the current climate in science, to see continued problems at CERN taken as proof of Nielsen's theory, or to see Nielsen and Ninomiya given a Nobel Prize for their successful prediction of the failure of the LHC. A welcome side-effect of this circus would be the permanent enshrinement of the Higgs Boson. Because the LHC could not invalidate it, physicists would be free to continue to use it indefinitely to prop up all their failed theories and maths.
Brian Cox, a leading researcher at CERN, is even less vehement than Gillies, saying that Nielsen's ideas are “theoretically valid.” Once again, we are witnessing the state of the art in physics. By that, I don't mean that the LHC is state of the art, as in “cutting edge technology.” I mean that this article and these theories and the public reaction to these theories is state of the art. It is state of the art fakery and propaganda and ignorance and hubris. As the smallest of many proofs of this, look again Brian Cox's quote, that Nielsen's ideas are “theoretically valid.” What does that mean, scientifically? Does it mean anything? No. Ideas cannot be “theoretically” valid, unless you mean by that, “ideas that may or may not be valid.” If that is what Cox means by his sloppy words, I agree with him. It is true that Nielsen's ideas may or may not be valid, but it is also true that my theory (just made up) that bosons are really little clown noses may or may not be valid. As a matter of logic, anything may or may not be valid. Defined this way, Cox's statement has no content.
On the other hand, if Cox means that Nielsen's ideas are valid as a theory, then he is just as muddleheaded. A new theory, as a theory, is neither valid nor invalid, by definition. A theory must be validated by experiment, and we have seen no experiment prepared to validate or invalidate Nielsen's theory. A new theory is not valid or invalid, it is simply theoretical. Cox doesn't even know what a theory is, what validation is, or how to talk about ideas.
The problem is that mainstream physics has degenerated to such a state that no one has the ground to refute anything or anyone. The ground itself has been swept away and we have nothing left but status. This is the real reason that Nielsen can theorize such things without serious rebuttal. The article says that physicists are shying away from Nielsen because his theory requires “some sort of science-based rebuttal.” But when science has reached this level of slop, how can there be such a rebuttal? How can you expect a “science-based” rebuttal to non-science or fantasy? What the author really means (if he just knew it) is that Nielsens's theory, being based on the math of string theory, requires a string-theory rebuttal. The only rebuttal top theorists would accept is a rebuttal couched in their own mathematical terms. But this is like young-earth creationists demanding that all rebuttals be couched in the terms of the Bible. It is a guarantee of a closed discussion and a continuance of a hermeneutic illogic.
Cox says that “because we don't have a quantum theory of gravity, we haven't proved that sending information into the past is impossible.” He considers that to be support for Nielsen. But, again, it is an unscientific statement. Science is not the task of “proving something is impossible.” In fact, you can't prove that something is impossible, except by logical contradiction. You can't prove that something is impossible via an experiment or via a theory. It would require an infinite number of experiments or a perfect theory, and both are impossible. The task of physics is the testing of testable theories.
Cox's statement is strictly analogous to me saying, “We don't have a theory of reptile aliens and haven't proved that they are impossible, therefore every theory of reptile aliens is valid.” If you don't see it, the problem is that unless there is very good evidence for believing in reptile aliens to begin with, every theory of reptile aliens is pretty much a waste of time. A good theory extrapolates from existing data; it does not seek out some data hole and set up a tent. Most new theories are bad theories, because they willfully seek out data holes. These data holes are like a physical no-man's land, a no-fire zone where they can dodge criticism. They exist on nothing but a mathematical model. Nielsen's theory is such a theory. All of string theory is another.
Physics is not the task of proving what is impossible, it it the task of suggesting the more and more probable. No experiment ever done has suggested that backward causality is at all probable. A bastardized reading of some experiments allows for the proposal of backward causality, but only by ignoring more probable and more logical explanations.
Due to the influence of science fiction, backward causality has long been sexy, and it is still sexy today, as is shown in this Sunday Times article. The article would never have made it to press, or been syndicated, but for the time-travel motif. In fact, a large part of the article is about the influence of science fiction upon physics. Beyond the multiple mentions of H.G. Wells, it is admitted that CERN has encouraged science fiction film makers to use the LHC as a backdrop, allowing them free entry.
This influence of science fiction upon physics, and the public relations it encourages, has led to the conscious or unconscious prioritizing of esoteric theories. Because they are sexy, they are given more attention. More attention is (thought to be) good for physics, since it sells books and increases funding. This floats sexy theories to the top, by a sort of market force. Time travel is the sexiest thing ever discovered in physics, so it has been used as an explanation of many entrenched problems, from the big bang to black holes to superposition to entanglement and so on. Many of the most difficult problems of QED and GR have been solved by time travel, and they are now often “solved” by applying multi-dimensional string math to them.
The problem with this is that string math is even less rigorous than the math of QED. In the article, we are told that the theories of Nielsen and Ninomiya are “backed with rigorous mathematics,” but that is just propaganda. What string math does is stack all the maths of QED and GR, piling one sloppy undefined space on top of another, in a tall stack. In the 19th and 20th centuries, mathematicians discovered a long list of ways to fudge equations, and string math just stirs all these fudges together, allowing them to do whatever they want. We have various gauge fields and tensor fields, some background dependent but most background independent, and with these non-Euclidean fields, stacked and definitionally adrift, nothing is beyond proof. With string math, you could prove that the universe is made from used golfballs and duct tape, if you wanted to. And you can't make a “science-based” rebuttal to all these stacked and twisted fields, except by going in and showing where all the math fails. The math itself is 500 pages, so it would take 1500 pages to rebut it. This is done on purpose. It is not an accident that QED requires book-length math, or that string theory requires supercomputers just to store the postulates. Every decade these posers hide behind more math while telling us that physics is judged by elegance. Every coffee table book they burp out mentions Occam's razor, but Occam's razor would cut them to shreds.
I have not and will not rebut Nielsen's “rigorous math”, since I have better things to do than shoo flies. But I have already critiqued the various maths of the 20th century in my papers on non-Euclidean math, complex math, gauge math, and string theory, and since I have shown that the parts are invalid, we may assume that the whole is invalid. String theory rests upon a series of false assumptions, and I have fully deconstructed all these assumptions. I am not required to apply my critiques to each new theory. I have already killed the general monster, and each new specific monster is, by the simplest syllogism, also defunct. String theory should check its pulse: it is already dead.
As a closer, let me gloss the various claims of the LHC once more, to show why Nielsen's theory is just a symptom of a greater malaise. The article tells us that the Higgs boson “is thought to give all other matter its mass.” Like Cox's various statements, that statement is strictly illogical. Matter is particles, and the Higgs boson is a particle, and particleness is defined by mass, so we are being told that one particle gives other particles their particleness. That is like saying that one apple gives another apple its redness, or that an orange gives an apple its essence. The statement has no sense to it, or any possible sense, even before we begin talking of proof.
Contemporary physics has been “forced” to accept the boson, due to the very simple fact that Newton provided mass with no fundamental quality. Mass in Newton's equations has no kinematic or dynamic quality, meaning it cannot be reduced to motion. Maxwell showed that mass could be written as length cubed over time squared, but neither Newton nor Maxwell ever assigned that length to any real motion. Neither did Einstein or anyone else. For this reason, mass has no dynamic “hook” in the field equations. Its inertia and other qualities exist only as postulates. In the current equations, mass is heuristic, not mechanical. Physicists had known this for a long time, but they had buried it for just as long. Finally, in the late 20th century, they decided to unbury it. The problem paralleled a couple of other problems, and they decided to unmask it. They thought they could dovetail the mass problem with their other foundational problems, and the Higgs boson solved both the mass problem and the broken symmetry problem of the weak field.
Problem is, not only is the weak model a complete and utter mess, as I have shown, the mass problem is also thrown into further disarray. The Higgs boson makes both problems worse. In weak theory, the big bosons require borrowing from the vacuum, in flagrant mathematical and mechanical fudges. In the mass problem, the Higgs boson just creates a reductio. If the Higgs boson gives mass to matter, what gives mass to the Higgs boson? If the Higgs boson has no mass, how does it give mass to matter? If it has mass, how does it avoid the mass problem of matter? Theorists have “answers” to these questions, it is true, but they are terrible answers that create further reductios or paradoxes or contradictions.
The simpler answer is the answer I give in my papers: the Higgs boson doesn't exist. Matter may be given mass simply by assigning the length in Maxwell's expression to a real motion. Once you do that, mass has a kinematic and dynamic presence in the field, without any other proposed sub-particles or sub-fields.
The article then tells us that the LHC “aims to detect dark matter, which is thought to compose about a quarter of the universe's mass, but [which is] made out of a kind of particle that has been so far impossible to detect.” Here we have another theory existing in a data hole. The particle has so far been impossible to detect, which means we have zero data. And yet we have a theory considered advanced enough to merit building a multi-billion dollar collider to test it. State of the art. I have shown the mass deficit can be explained without any new particles, but my simple math does not require billion dollar experiments: it is therefore useless to the careers of these engineers and theorists.
Finally, the article tells us,
However, perhaps the weirdest of all CERN’s aspirations for the LHC is to investigate extra dimensions of space. This idea, known as string theory, suggests there are many more dimensions to space than the four we can perceive.
At present these other dimensions are hidden, but smashing protons together in the LHC could produce gravitational anomalies, effectively tiny black holes, that would reveal their existence.
Again, we have the theory existing in the data hole, feeding on nothing but math. We have never had any experiment suggest to us that “there are many more dimensions to space that the four we can perceive.” In fact, we have never had any experiment suggest more than three, since time is not a dimension we “perceive” like the others. What we have is a gauge math that suggests—because the way it is gauged—that we have more dimensions. But this math wasn't gauged based on experiment or perception or even theory. It was gauged based on desire. First, it was gauged based on matrix symmetry, a symmetry that has nothing to do with Nature or experiment. Then, it was applied based on the desire to fit Nature to this matrix symmetry. In modern physics, the math has come first and Nature a distant second. Quantum physicists don't even believe in Nature, and haven't since the time of Heisenberg and Pauli. The important thing is the matrix, and Nature can be forced to fit the equations later. That is what string theory is. String theory is a very large matrix math, with lots of attached side maths, and we are now using experiment to try to force Nature into this matrix. It is not that Nature is thought to have extra dimensions, it is that our math has these extra dimensions we need to fill. The math is used as a sort of starting data. The math is used as proof of the the theory. But a mathematical model cannot act as data or proof. To say that it can is to be unscientific.
Physics is now extravagantly unscientific. Notice that these physicists at the LHC are telling us what they are going to find before they find it. They are preparing us for the “discovery.” They have very strong needs going in, and these needs are bound to affect the outcomes. They will push all data to fit their needs, by interpreting it the way they want to. They have been doing this for years. If you think they cannot just interpret a particle into existence, think again. They have already done it with the quark and the neutrino and the gluon and the W and Z bosons and the messenger photon and all the virtual particles. All these particles are no more than inferences, and often they are inferred more from theory than from experiment. Neither the quark nor the neutrino nor the gluon nor the messenger photon have ever been detected singly and unambiguously. And of course virtual particles cannot be detected, which is convenient.
The modern experiment in general is no longer scientific, since it is no longer objective. The modern experiment is designed with a certain outcome in mind, and the funding for the experiment demands a positive answer. The experiments are so expensive that the physicists cannot countenance a negative outcome: failure would be a career disaster. So every experiment is pushed via its interpretation. The math of physics is so soft that any interpretation can be backed up with “rigorous math.” Rigorous math now just means “long, difficult, and complex math.” But, in truth, the math isn't rigorous at all, because it is based on sloppy foundations like background independent tensor fields and the like.
The string theorists have already postulated (and provided math and models for) hundreds of shapes and objects that have never been detected. All of string theory is a vast data hole, with nothing but slippery math to back it up. So when we find that the LHC is being used to seek confirmation of string theory, we have to ask why. As a matter of science and logic, the LHC could just as easily be used to confirm alien infestation or proper canine shakra alignment. The only thing string theory has that these other theories do not is prestige.
The success of string theory has nothing to do with science or logic and everything to do with careerism, public relations, and propaganda.
For all these reasons and more, it is clear that the LHC is little more than a money hole built over a data hole. I never had much fear that the LHC would produce a major catastrophe, of the sort reported tongue-in-cheek in the papers. Just as I am sure that it will never produce baby black holes, I am sure that it will not create a large black hole that will swallow the earth. At the worst, the giant machine might trigger an explosion powerful enough to destroy itself and its surroundings, but that is neither here nor there. If all these people are engulfed in the flames of their own hubris, there might be some justice in that. But it was already of no consequence, as a matter of science, since none of these theories of the past half-century bears proving or disproving. I have shown that they are all fatally flawed at the axiomatic level, and no amount of data either for or against can reverse those flaws. You can't build a machine large or expensive enough to fix logical flaws. It is not the Higgs boson that is coming from the future to doom the Large Hadron Collider. It is my papers that have done that. In the coming decades it will be understood that all the esoteric physical theories of the 20th century, like all the esoteric artistic theories of the 20th century, were castles in the air, straw castles and stick castles and plastic castles built upon the gas of a misguided milieu. The spectacular failure that the LHC is guaranteed to produce—either as a total failure to get up to speed or as a giant fireball or as an ultimate crescendo of the current lie—will be a turning point in the history of physics. Physics has long been unable to support its own weight, but this machine is like the tower of Babel, an overreach that will precipitate the necessary fall.
Addendum, 8/11/10: Particle physicists are already downplaying the LHC, saying they need an even bigger and more expensive machine. They want a linear accelerator that will cost around 15 billion dollars. I suppose this is as a reward for all the important things they have done with their 10 billion dollar LHC, such as predict that it will be useless within months of going online.
*http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/biology_evolution/article6879293.ece
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