Two steps back, one leap forward by Steven Oostdijk

Steven, please do let us know when Mr. Mathis has an experiment that predicts an outcome that would be unexplainable by current physics. I'm not talking about new explanations for well-known anomalies; anyone can do that. I mean an experiment that hasn't been done, where current physics clearly predicts one outcome and Mathis Physics predicts another. That would be the scientific way to advance his theories. Maybe you can help him out. Does he want to be vindicated, or does he want to keep yelling at the wall? Talk is cheap, because no matter what a person has written, they can always say to critics, "You just don't understand well enough" (as you have to me, twice). This is not how science moves forward.

Miles Mathis should perform, or at least suggest, an unambiguous and performable experiment that would falsify JUST ONE aspect of mainstream science, by way of prediction, or else he has no right to complain about being ignored.

Dear Karl,

It is your choice to ignore his results by prejudicing him to be a crank and not reading Miles' website in some more detail. He has tens of examples where current mainstream physics does not get an answer at all, or gives an incorrect or ad hoc answer while this theories provides that answer with the correct numbers. A simple overview of his claims can be found here:

The Central Discoveries of this Book

( Scroll to the bottom of that page if you just want a simple list )

For your convenience I'll give some examples where you can check his numbers.

An example is for instance the Saturn precession anomaly that does not match the numbers predicted by GR but exactly matches the numbers as predicted by Miles' gravitational theory. This is a recent measurement done by the Cassini spacecraft. This article can be found here:

The Saturn Anomaly

Another example of a fine experiment is where Miles explains why the proton hits a mass limit of 108 in accelerators. Through expansion theory one can show that this confirms an age of the proton of about 15 Billion years, in line with current estimates for the age of the visible universe. That can be found a.o. here:

New mass and energy transforms in Special Relativity

( Scroll down to part eight )

If that does'nt convince you (I assume it won't) finally an article that explains the exact orbital distance of Mercury through Miles' unified Gravity+E/M theory:

A Mathematical Explanation for the Orbital Distance of Mercury

I'm not getting through, so I'll repeat what I said before: *Anyone can come up with alternative theories explaining already-observed anomalies.* A theory without real-world experimental support is meaningless. Also, both you and Mr. Mathis can always say "you just don't understand well enough" and dismiss any criticism thus. This doesn't help anyone.

Since Mathis has completely reinvented physics, everything from acceleration to the mass of the photon, surely a new REAL WORLD experiment can be devised where: (1) current physics predicts one outcome, (2) Mathis physics predicts another, and (3) the result is unambiguously either (1) or (2). Don't you wonder why he hasn't done that? If you understand his theory so well, perhaps you can come up with something...No? Why not then?

It's like someone claiming to have the cure for cancer inside a box, and having 1,500 pages of theory explaining what cancer really is, but refusing to open the box and let the supposed cure be tested. ("Go back and read my theories and figure out the cure for yourself!") Anyone with half a scientific mind would find this behavior suspicious at best. Theory alone does not cut it, no matter how many anomalies it supposedly explains. The theory must hold up under EXPERIMENTAL TESTING. Do I really need to explain this?

"Experimental Testing", you mean as in 600 Million dollar gravitional wave detectors that don't detect anything or multi-billion dollar colliders that only "detect" circumstantial evidence of "virtual" particles? I would present both experiments as clear evidence that Miles' theories are correct. E.g. the absence of gravitational waves can be considered clear evidence for the expansion theory of gravity :)

So, I think you are just trying to loudmouth yourself out of the hole you got yourself into. The Saturn anomaly link I gave you for instance is a clear example where mainstream prediction (with GR) is incorrect, while Miles' theory gives the correct number. Would you now also say: GR does not hold up under experimental testing? Or is a theory exempt from falsification as soon as it has mainstream status? There are gaint holes in mainstream theories, you know that as well as I do, them not being able to give a mechanical cause for forces of attraction is just one of them.

According to Karl Popper theories are good until they are falsified. Unfortunately in mainstream physics a falsification leads to a patchup instead of a reconsideration of the basics. The simple correction of the basics instead of flights of fancy is what Miles' theories are all about.

Since you chose to call me a loudmouth rather than answer my simple question, I'll try again.

I challenge you or Mathis to come up with ONE experiment that meets all four of the following conditions:

1. It has not been performed before.

2. It can be performed in the real world.

3. Current physics predicts one outcome.

4. Mathis physics predicts another outcome.

That isn't too much to ask, is it?

Please, enlighten me why such an experiment is apparently not possible. Is it because all new experiments would produce results that agree with both standard physics and Mathis physics? Or is there some other reason, which neither you nor Mathis will tell me? I'd really like to know.

If you are so fond of "current physics", you better start reading the selection of articles I gave you and answer the question why "current physics" is not able to provide the answers that Miles provides. The article about the Saturn precession anomaly listed earlier would be an excellent example of a verifiable real world outcome that you ask for, but apparently you have'nt bothered to read it. You seem to be very unfamiliar with Miles work. Probably it would be wise to at least study the list of his claimed discoveries, which I also posted earlier.

What Miles Mathis has attempted to do is redo the existing math over several subjects that is more direct, simple and elegant. This is an artistic achievement. He restates certain results that should be verifiable as he claims that the established results are false. If his restatements are closer to the observed results, then his math is superior to the established math and should supplant it.

Would anyone be interested in some further discussion on Miles Mathis's theories? Specifically concerning the photon and electron stacked spins.

Yes. Major league baseball pitchers would love to learn how to throw a ball with "stacked spins," including the "end-over-end" spins that are apparently possible in Mathis' imagination.

Karl thanks for responding. I would have gotten back to you sooner but I've been out of town. From reading the prior entries on this forum it seems you are the one that made the baseball analogy to the stacked spin theory mentioned in Mathis's paper: "ELEVEN BIG QUESTIONS YOU SHOULD HAVE FOR THE STANDARD MODEL". In his paper "SUPERPOSITION" I watched the animation of how a wave motion could be produced for a traveling electron and it made sense. The only thing that bothered me about the animation was how the electron (represented as a little spinning sphere inside of what resembles a transparent hollow globe) was able to stay in this tight little circle while traveling forward, since the globe was just defining an area and not a physically real containment. Why didn't the electron just fly off on some tangent? How is it able to travel forward within the tight little confines of that circle? If it was hit at a point on the external shell and started flipping end to end (I'm not convinced this is possible) why doesn't it just fly off on some tangent? Don't gyroscopes resist this type of behavior? Isn't a particle spinning axially essentially a gyroscope? On Youtube I've watched video of a Skylab astronaut and others in space doing presentations with spinning gyros and they resisted any kind of flipping. In fact they noted how the gyro tumbled before they spun it up and how it didn't after spin up. It resisted tumbling (flipping / spinning, whichever you prefer). Once a spinning gyro is positioned in a particular position it maintains that position. I'm not an expert on gyroscopes and from the net searches I've done couldn't find a great deal of info on them. I couldn't get any hits on the "rules of gyroscopic exclusion" except where mentioned in Mathis's papers. For that matter I don't know what Mathis's level of expertise is either. I seem to recall him making the comment that he'd like to perform some experiments with them. Such a comment doesn't bolster my confidence in the stacked spin theory to say the least.

Mathis responded to your baseball analogy by saying that the spins were constantly maintained by the emitted charge field. In your defense it wasn't really evident to me either from that paper alone that that was what enabled the electron to stack spins. There was no mention of the emitted charge field in that particular paper. Reading the right papers beforehand may give one enough pre-requisite knowledge to infer that the electron was emitting a charge field but the "SUPERPOSITION" paper as written doesn't make note of it. I think it should have been mentioned to make things as clear as possible. The answer of the emitted charge field being the cause did seem quite plausible at first without thinking too deeply about it but I still had doubts. I can't get past stacking the first spin. I also notice that he doesn't put an animation up modeling a higher spin. He may be trying to keep things simple but some additional animations would go a long way in making sure the movements of the particle with different spins were understood. I can imagine a spin stacking in the direction of travel which is depicted in the animation, but I can't see an even larger spin 90 degrees opposite to the last one being created and still (if I'm not terribly misunderstanding what he was saying) the particle keeps traveling in the same direction it originally was. Even if I accept that the electron's first spin (not axial) is even possible, if another particle clipped it in a 90 degree opposite direction wouldn't the electron be knocked in that direction of travel? Why would it maintain the current direction of travel and switch to a larger spin 90 degrees opposite? Does the electron cycle through all these spins? Just how does it do that? When the top spin is reached it just dive bombs back down to the smallest spin and repeats this sequence all over again? Or does it reach the highest spin and steps back down to the next lower spin and cycles through the sequence that way? One of those versions is what I'm gathering he's saying. I'm sorry but all this just seems too incredible for me. My gut is telling me this is not physically possible. Karl or anyone, are my concerns justified or is my understanding of the theory as twisted as Mathis's spins? I do have other concerns but will stop here for the time being.

Karl, yes I knew you were being flippant. I just took it as an invite to some further discussion on Mathis's theories. This spin business is very confusing indeed. I think a lot of confusion is generated by his terming the end over end movements of a particle a "spin" when they are actually closer to a tumbling, flipping or looping motion. When one speaks of spin the first thing that pops into my mind is classical axial spin. Anyway, my understanding of his theory is that an electron itself is merely the illusion of a particle that size. It's really comprised of a base photon which is cycling sequentially through many other spins (stacked spins as it were) at blinding speed. Each loop has a larger radius and the largest loop is what determines the "apparent" particle size with the inner smaller loops being burried. Basically all this is occurring so fast it gives the "appearance" of a larger particle. A particle of this "apparent" size can even have an an axial spin. I believe this final axial spin would be the spin we're dealing with in experiments like Stern-Gerlach. Also there's another strange aspect to the theory. When that initial base photon has "stacked" enough spins and has reached the "apparent" size just prior to becoming an electron, it takes on the ability to act like a scoop and sucks up a cargo of charge photons and then starts spewing/flinging them out when it does reach the size that defines it as an electron. So basically in my understanding we are mimicking a larger particle that is spinning and emitting (also even recycling) collected charge photons. From this point the electron can stack even more spins and morph into various other particles on its way to becoming a proton, anti-proton or neutron. That base photon is one super-particle if it can manage all of that. I just can't fathom it. I like a lot of Miles's ideas but I don't agree with all his theories. A lot of his papers I've yet to read as there are many. His ideas on the charge field being a real physical field that mediates all particle interaction were sounding pretty good but when he started theorizing about the actual compositon of the particles (a particle starting out as a base charge photon and stacking spins to morph into all others) is when he lost me. I just can't visualize it. I think he's reaching too far to simplify.

As confusing as some of Mathis's ideas are, to be fair, some of the currently accepted theories of Quantum Mechanics are just as confusing in my opinion. Like the term "intrinsic spin". Spin was originally conceived as the rotation of a particle around some axis and then ends up being this abstract property that a particle intrinsically possesses. Mathis has an interesting paper on his site titled "The Stern-Gerlach Experiment". He makes a pretty good case and states the experiment was and still is badly misinterpreted. It speaks to your concerns on the quantized nature of real measurements of particle spin and the electron spin exceeding the speed of light.

As far as Mathis performing some experiments, well, he's said that he'd love to do some but I suppose the best that could be hoped for would be to interest a practicing scientist in his ideas. I imagine putting together even a modest experiment would be prohibitably expensive for your average citizen. I certainly wish he could have done some with gyro's for evidence of a particle's spin stacking ability. I would have wanted some type of positive proof that a particle could rotate (spin/flip/loop) about a point on the external shell in the manner he's proposing before I would even venture such a proposition. Shouldn't this be demonstratable to some extent in the macro world? Seems like he said as much himself. But again, putting such an experiment together is more easier said than done. He needs to expound more on the sequencing of the spin loops. If he would just put up an animation modeling a particle movement with 2 spins it would go a long way in helping one visualize what he's trying to say. Currently on his "Superposition" page the animation only models the first spin (the simplest). I ran across an individual on another scientific forum (The Thuderbolts Forum) that had written his own program for modeling many of Mathis's stacked spins. He has screenshots of them peppered throughout his posts. Problem is I have my doubts as to if he really understands what's going on enough to model the spins. I seem to recall this individual proposing to contact Mathis and make him aware of his models but don't know how that panned out. There's no mention of them on Mathis's site. Looks like he would do his own animation of a particle with 2 spins. He obviously knows people who are capable of building animations since it was someone else who authored the first one. Why not go 1 further? I would think he would want to make this clear as possible. This troubles me. Proponents of the theory seem to easily accept the stacked spin theory without question. Didn't any of them doubt the feasibility of a particle being able to move like that? More later.

cdb -- I'll keep this short. Miles Mathis means well, and I absolutely agree with him that science should be more open-minded and should forever question its foundations. That's why I love FQXi. But what he's doing is not science. Nobody of any significance self-publishes dozens of "papers" on their own website in which they cite only their own earlier papers, frequently calling on the foolishness of Nobel Prize winners and other noted researchers, openly mocking those who challenge them (as he did with me), and showing little or no humility. Never collaborating, but always self-congratulating. Real scientists, even real amateur scientists, don't do this. His ideas should be considered in the appropriate light. KC

To follow up, check out Mathis's new rant (it is most certainly not a "paper") on Erik Verlinde's theory of thermodynamic gravity, covered elsewhere on FQXi. Rather than addressing the original papers and their calculations, he attacks the New York Times' attempt to explain the theory to lay people. His way to refute the theory is to mock the NYT's analogy of curly hair statistically having more ways to be curly than to be straight. Why? Because when your audience consists largely of non-trained non-physicists, it's easier to make newspaper-article analogies about hairstyles sound silly than it is to explain entropy and the holographic principle and guide your audience through the appropriate calculations.

Miles Mathis should at least *try* to sound like a proper scientist or even science writer. Maybe then someone might take him seriously.

Karl thank you for your take on Mathis. It's good to here other's point of view and your opinions are noted. Yes, I seen the latest "paper" from Mathis's site. All the papers on his site are not strictly concerned with theory, some are only commentaries and can at times be quite critical. I speculate the reason he's so quick to condemn the new gravity theory is due to confidence in his own theory. He's spelled out his theory in detail. I really can't see him spelling out what's involved in another theory when he's promoting his own. I don't think he's aiming to be a "proper" scientist or science writer. He is what he is. As he said in his writings: "This is as much as to admit that I know that my book must seem an anomaly as well as an anachronism. Both its form and its content must seem strange to a modern reader".

Hi cdb & Karl,

To assist your imagination check one of the multi-precessing gyroscope video's, like this one:

Three dimensional precessing gyroscope

Now replace the man with the photon and the frames with the trajectory of the photon, that is Miles' imagination.

"His way to refute the theory is to mock the NYT's analogy of curly hair statistically having more ways to be curly than to be straight. Why? Because when your audience consists largely of non-trained non-physicists, it's easier to make newspaper-article analogies about hairstyles sound silly than it is to explain entropy and the holographic principle and guide your audience through the appropriate calculations."

Karl, I must disagree with you there. The NYT's claim is completely ludicrous and unscientific. When you drop an object, does it go down because it's more likely to, or because there's a perfectly rational mechanical reason for it?

I can see why a lot of people have beef with Miles. They don't want scientific knowledge to be easily expressed in logical, layman's terms. It's political. Surely you must see that. (By the way, I'm not saying he's always right)

Karl, you seem to be the only one here that is not either one of Mathis's alter egos, or just plain uninformed, so I thought I'd help you out. First of all, if nobody else can see it, mathis is oosterdijk. I spent a couple minutes looking of some of his 'research' and saw where we acknowledges having many aliases. Their respective writing styles and vocabularies are identical. It seems mathis makes of aliases and runs around posting things on the internet that congratulate himself or claim to back him up in the hope of gaining some perverted sense of peer review.

Above it is mentioned that via mathis's methods one can predict the age of the proton to app. 15 billion years and then goes on to say that this agrees vell with current accepted age of the universe. How can comparing to the current accepted age of the universe be a useful yardstick to measure accuracy when the author himself claims to have discredited the maths and physics that were used to calculate the current accepted age? I believe the oosterdijk also claims that GPS does not take into account a relativistic correction, well he needs to do some reading because the GPS system DOES make make such a correction.

I'm with you, I second the challenge to create just one experiment where the result agrees with anything mathis came up with and does not agree with the current standard model. That was a major requirement before relativity was accepted, anyone recall measuring the 'bend' of starlight during an eclipse?

Has anyone ever seen his pi=4 nonsense? At one point he goes on to talk about how elliptic geometry (elliptic curves?) are based upon the ellipse, elliptic curves are actually a type of cubic equation and not a conic quadratic. His 'paper' where he finds fault with the differentiation of the natural logarithm, and then goes on to 'fix' the problem using some perverted form of difference equation, should be enough to discredit him to anyone that has ever taken even an introductory calculus course.

I put forth that from here on out nobody reply to, argue with, or otherwise indulge the megalomania of oosterdijk/mathis. The more time we waste with this guy the bigger the soapbox we are building him him to preach his nonsense from. The more forums this guy has the argue for his 'research' the greater the possibility that a young impressionable mind might become perverted by it and actually believe it, and that would be a regrettable. If even one mind is turned away from the real scientific method and instead accepts the mathis method of research and paper writing (non experimenting, self congratulatory, only self referencing, drivel spewing) that would be an actual loss to humanity!

D

I forgot to mention, has anyone ever notice that his 'math papers' are very lite on the 'math'? They are just paragraph after paragraph, monotonous page after monotonous page, of handwaving and verbal diahrea. For someone that claims to understand QED it's strange that the most 'math' he ever does is manipulate a linear equation, square a few things here and there, and once in a while completely bastardize the notion of a limit. In his paper on the natural logarithm he claims a limit cannot be taken as a variable approches zero because the number 1 is the smallest 'unit' of measurement and zero is a meaningless concept. Then on his 'pi is 4: short version' he is clearly trying to take a limit as a length goes to zero (and still fucks it up). The best part of the pi rant is that he correctly identifies the right way to do it, but then argues against it on favPour of his nonsense.

D, practitioner of the Sherlock Holmes method, defender of the scientific method, and self-appointed head of the Mathis Lynch mob sneered: "Karl, you seem to be the only one here that is not either one of Mathis's alter egos, or just plain uninformed, so I thought I'd help you out." So, you begin with an insult to everyone that made a comment. This statement tells me all I need to know about you. You're a real class act. If I wasn't sure about the correctness of Mathis theory before I certainly am now and I have you to thank for it. Arthur Schopenhauer said: All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self evident. I see now we're at stage 2 with you leading the charge. Oppose away, your big-mouthed bullying will do no good.