Article - Is There A Revolution Coming In Space Science?

[PersianPaladin]

I am a freelance journalist based in the UK, with professional and freelance colleagues in both Iran and Turkey.

My article on Plasma Cosmology was published in Weekly Zaman newspaper on the 19th of May.

Weekly Zaman is the UK edition of the large-circulation newspaper Today's Zaman (a paper that has gotten global attention in recent years):-
http://www.todayszaman.com/constantHtml ... ctionId=75

Some notable people interviewed by Weekly Zaman (hopefully somebody from the Plasma or EU perspective in the future?):-
http://www.youtube.com/user/WeeklyZaman?ob=0


My article can be read here:-
http://hozturner.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05 ... oming.html

My previous article on Plasma Cosmology can be found here:-
http://en.zaman.com.tr/en/newsDetail_ge ... umnistId=0


I have attempted to get op-ed pieces published in other newspapers (such as The Guardian and New Scientist), but thus far - they have declined to publish it with the excuse that it is seen as too "fringe". Yes, it is a sad state of affairs in the world of science journalism at the moment.

[phyllotaxis]

Congrats on the publication- and please continue your efforts. I hope you can inspire some contributions from those currently working on this science-

Kind regards-

[jjohnson]

PP, you're doing the right thing by provoking discussion. This is the same process by which the Berlin Wall came down: first a few dissatisfied individuals, then a lot of them, and later the bulldozers and cranes.

This is the 50th anniversary of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Think about that time scale, and what has been happening in the world in the meanwhile. The EU, among other sources, are discussing the flaws in conventional sciences, more and more openly. Kuhn, a physicist and science historian, researched the clues and historical manifestations surrounding paradigm changes in scientific thought. His first book was The Copernican Revolution. In Structure, his description reads like a summary of recent events (the last, say, 2 decades) in astrophysics and astronomy. Read it and draw the parallels. Worth the small price to get this book for your e-reader - I happen to use a Kindle so got it delivered from Amazon. By the way, it has a useful and illustrative introduction by Ian Hacking. It starts with, "Great books are rare. This is one. Read it and you will see."

By the way, one can download a free Kindle app. When I download a book from Amazon, it appears simultaneously on the Kindle and on my iMac and my wife's laptop. I suppose PCs would have the same functionality. I know iPads do.

Jim

[phyllotaxis]

(jjohnson, the Kindle functionality is indeed the same on PC's. I have Don Scotts book on kindle BTW, and can't praise the format highly enough.)

[PersianPaladin]

Thanks for the encouraging feedback guys

Wal saw the article and thought it was good. It's just a matter now of getting the word out to more of the young people, as they tend to be more open-minded than the ones who have entered the institutions of mainstream astronomy.

[Attiyah Zahdeh]

No doubt, a revolution in space science had come since the time I published my articles relevant to what I called "Attiyah's Astronomy" in which you find many new theories such as "Attiyah's Blue Sky":
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1951&p=22385#p22385
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5765
As well, "Attiyah's Sun Theory" which I described as 'the most revolutionary theory in astronomy' belongs to"Attiyah's Astronomy":
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1412&p=16047#p16047

http://cs.astronomy.com/asy/general_dis ... 31701.aspx

[GaryN]

Hi Attiyah. Though I admit I have not looked at your posts in any detail, I must agree with you that what we accept about how light on Earth is produced is far from what is really happening. Both light and heat on the surface are produced within the Earths atmosphere, and not from the radiant effects of a hot, glowing gobe, IMO. So, in order that I might be prepared to examine your work in more detail (due to my time constraints), I would like to ask you, at the risk of these posts being moved to NIAMI, if you believe the Sun would appear anything like we see from Earth, if viewed from outside the Earths atmosphere, and also, would the planets of the Solar system be visible, either by eye, or through a standard telescope or binoculars, from a similar location?
Thanks.

[CharlesChandler]

I totally agree with Jim on the relevance of Kuhn's work in this context. Scientific revolutions have happened many times in the past, and Kuhn was the first to clearly recognize the pattern. Since then, the study of this pattern has grown into a discipline known as the "philosophy of science", and many are familiar with the concepts. But few understand the true reality of the matter.

In the modern scientific community, truth is that which can be bastardized to suit the current political agenda, and Kuhn's work is no different in that respect. The establishment knows that it's the establishment, and it knows that it's the one to beat, and it doesn't want to be on the wrong side of a revolution. So it preempts revolutions by showing that it is so open-minded, it is willing to consider anything, no matter how wild & crazy. Somebody says that black holes are consuming matter, and transporting the matter through wormholes to some other place in the universe where it spontaneously erupts in supernovae? Sure, we'll go along with that. Somebody wants funding to pursue string theory, where all of the riddles of the universe are solved by adding new dimensions to reality, and the inexplicable behaviors that we observe are due to interactions among these dimensions that defy the laws of the one universe that we can see? No problem. We're open-minded, and we'll believe anything, and nobody will ever be able to say that we're suppressing new ideas. How can we be accused of that when we're willing to accept things like general relativity and string theory?

But those are not revolutionary ideas that are paving the way for progress in the sciences. They're gibberish, concocted by people who have read Kuhn, and who know how to come up with ideas that sound bizarre so that they can pose as revolutionaries. Yet there is an essential ingredient that they're missing. You have to do more than just come up with wild & crazy ideas to be a revolutionary. It isn't a scientific revolution unless the new model is more accurate than the old one. The new idea might sound strange, but strange is not the active ingredient. Truth is. That's what they don't get. And it's ironic that their familiarity with Kuhn is actually going to make them even more vulnerable to a revolution. The reason is that they "think" that they have it all covered, so they don't have to listen to people like us. We're not doing wild & crazy ideas, just because they're wild & crazy, so we don't know how to play the game, and we're not competitors.

The best way to detect that it's actually a revolution, and that it's real, and that it's unstoppable, is when you see amateurs solving problems that professionals cannot. This is how you know for sure that the professionals are stuck and can't get out, and that they're getting left behind.

So how does it come to pass that amateurs can accomplish more than professionals?

In the history of science, it's always just a matter of time before great new ideas eventually get accepted by society. Then they become credible. Then professionals come along and figure out how to milk that credibility for all that it's worth. They canonize the ideas, and get their presentations polished. When problems are found, they alter the framework in whatever way makes the fewest possible number of changes, to retain the credibility associated with the framework. That's when they get stuck. Once they start rationalizing away new problems, progress stops. As the problems continue to surface, the professionals get embattled, and they dig in on their existing positions, guaranteeing that they'll never move forward again. Then it's just a matter of time before people who have not dug in leave them behind.

And this isn't just a college debate, where people lock down on their assertions because they don't want the embarrassment of having to admit that they're wrong. It's about money. It's like a used car salesman who has been exaggerating the truth, and is now being caught in a lie. If he admits that he lied, he loses the sale. So even if he knows that he lied, and the truth is coming out, he'll stick to his story, because if it weren't for the opportunity to make some money, he wouldn't have even been in the conversation. At that point, as long as there is a chance of making the sale, he'll continue lying. When that chance goes away, he smirks, shrugs, and walks away. He doesn't concede that you're right, because for him, it wasn't an opportunity to win an argument. He was trying to make some money! Such is the case with today's scientific community. They're not going to admit that we're right. They'll oppose us until all of their funding is cut. Then they'll smirk, shrug, and walk away.

And remember this: the kind of scientific community that can get left behind by amateurs is precisely the type of community that will never listen to amateurs. A healthy, growing community comfortably accepts ideas from all sources. That's how you know that they're actually open-minded, and truly confident in their abilities. It isn't any skin off of their chins to give credit to somebody who doesn't have the same credentials. But an embattled, entrenched community, that isn't going anywhere, and who sees everything as a matter of credibility, cannot possibly acknowledge that a great idea came from somebody who doesn't do things the same way they do, reinforcing their paradigm. Such would be professional suicide for them. They "do" acknowledge the work of amateurs, but only if it's an exact match to what they're doing. This way, they can say that it isn't about credentials. But if the amateur disagrees, forget it. So it's all about the credibility. And in the history of science, that's the beginning of the end for the establishment.

By definition, science is discovery, and great new ideas are always incredulous until they have been thoroughly proved. Any community that gets into a credibility battle is always going to lose in the end, because they'll constrain themselves to what people are willing to believe, which has nothing to do with the truth. People who pursue the truth will always surpass people like that in the end.

And that's what we're doing, so yes, this is a scientific revolution, similar in kind to the many that have happened in the past. This will result in the catastrophic failure of the credibility of the establishment, which is a bummer, but it will also provide immense value to society, which is what it's all about anyway.