HAWKING WRONG AGAIN, RESEARCHER TELLS MARS CONFERENCE



 

Released on = August 27, 2004, 8:05 am

Press Release Author = Belinda Rozdale/World.Net.News

Press Release Summary = At the 7th Annual International Mars Society Conference
Another mistake by famed cosmologist Stephen Hawking was revealed along with others
by Michio Kaku, Kip Thorne and more.

Press Release Body = For Immediate Release:

HAWKING WRONG AGAIN, RESEARCHER TELLS MARS CONFERENCE

by Belinda Rozdale

(cleared for redistribution with World.Net.News credit )

Dateline August 21 2004 Chicago, Illinois, USA: Research and development engineer
Marshall Barnes stood before a packed audience in PDR 9 in the luxurious Palmer
House Hilton in Chicago and explained to members of the International Mars
Conference (see http://www.marssociety.org/docs/sched_04.pdf bottom of Saturday's
schedule, 4:30 ) how Stephen Hawking and others have made as yet undetected errors
in their published works. These mistakes form a pattern of hidden assumptions which
may extend elsewhere in the science and technology community, resulting in holding
back progress which NASA now recognizes needs more imaginative solutions. Before it
was over no one disagreed with Marshall. Debate did rage for a while over the ways
in which Hawking's betting partner, Kip Thorne was wrong about a wormhole time machine model.

The Mars Society is a non-profit U.S. organization which promotes the expansion of
the space program and efforts to send human beings to establish bases on Mars. This
year's 7th convention was held August 18th to 22nd in Chicago, Illinois (
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-mars19.html ). Marshall submitted his
paper's abstract, which asserts that "if Man is to go vigorously beyond his
immediate cosmic neighborhood, the shackles that constrict the ability and the
willingness, of free form thought, must be broken once and for all; while
simultaneously not ignoring the need for rigorous analysis and application of the
scientific method to insure that those ideas that appear to be revolutionary
breakthroughs do indeed become revolutionary realities". The presentation "Avoiding
Hidden Assumptions While Thinking Outside The Box" drew considerable attention
because of the inclusion of Hawking's comments on Thorne's wormhole time machine
suggestion, due to the fact that Ha
wking, who is seen by many as the successor to Einstein, recently admitted to being
wrong about the nature of black holes (
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3897989.stm ). This mistake has cost Hawking a
bet with a fellow physicist at Cal Tech. According to Marshall, before that
admission, he attempted to bet Hawking through his collegue Kip Thorne, whose time
travel model Hawking said wouldn't work. Thorne has yet to respond, perhaps because
Marshall does agree that Thorne's wormhole time travel idea wouldn't work either,
but for an entirely different reason.

"I found mistakes in it that were more than significant," Barnes said before the
talk as he waited outside PDR 9 to go on. Many talks that day were going over the 30
minute limit. Barnes and his audience were kept waiting more than 20 minutes before
he could take the podium and face the expectant crowd of engineers, scientists,
teachers and space enthusiasts.

"I just want to hear what he has to say," one school teacher from Cleveland
commented. "It seems like it should be interesting at least."

"This young man is very good, he has very complex ideas", a man who identified
himself as Dr. Senu-oke, commented with his female companion. The doctor claimed
that he had flown to Chicago in his private jet to catch that day's conference and
to see Marshall. He was concerned that he wouldn't be able to stay for the whole
presentation since everything was running behind schedule. He left just before
things got heated, but when asked for his opinion he gave the thumbs up sign.

Marshall began his talk with a bit of levity, reading the bet he had sent to Kip
Thorne, offering to take Thorne's place in betting against Hawking and his
chronology protection conjecture theory. Though Thorne hasn't responded yet,
Marshall chose to read the bet anyway since its subject would be covered in the
presentation. After delivering the opening statement from the abstract he quickly
and effectively revealed errors in interpreting dimensional relationships in
geometry made by Rudy Rucker and Michio Kaku, then scored again with an attempt by
Kaku to illustrate a closed timelike loop from an example from the sci-fi story All
You Zombies, before plunging headlong into what he's described as the
Thorne/Geroch/Wald/Hawking train wreck. Based on Thorne's idea that two mutually
connected wormhole mouth's could become a time machine once one was placed aboard a
spaceship traveling near the speed of light, Marshall pointed out numerous
miscalculations made by Thorne which kept
the audience on its toes. Laughter broke out though when Marshall introduced the
Geroch/Wald factor, where the two professor at the University of Chicago ( see
Robert P. Geroch http://physics.uchicago.edu/t_rel.html#Geroch and Robert Wald
http://physics.uchicago.edu/t_rel.html#Wald ) had told Thorne that his wormhole
idea wouldn't work because when the ship was within 10 light years of Earth that
electromagnetic radiation traveling through the wormhole could make it collapse.
Marshall pointed out that this would be impossible because the ship is supposed to
fly out and back to Earth within a total elapsed time of 10 years, flying at a
sub-light speed. The ship could never reach a 10 light year distance from Earth
because it would never make it back in time. The audience broke out in laughter.
Things got a little rowdy when the Hawking part of the equation was introduced.

Marshall described Hawking's chronology protection conjecture, a theoretical
physical feature in spacetime physics that Hawking believes would prevent time
travel from ever occuring. He then pointed out how Hawking made the same mistake as
Geroch and Wald, pointing to a 10 light year distance from Earth as the point where
the wormhole connection would collapse. The crowd was at first surprised that it was
such simple mistake that Hawking made, but then one audience member pointed out that
it wasn't the first time, remarking about the admission of the black hole theory
error in Ireland. That's when another man suggested that the wormhole still might
provide travel to the past because wormholes are from general relativity. Marshall
was not moved.

"The wormhole isn't providing the time travel aspect, only the connection between
two different positions in spacetime. Outside those wormhole mouths, it's still the
same story as the twin's paradox, even Thorne says so, but then goes on to get
things completely confused. He didn't even catch that Geroch and Wald were wrong and
it's his own thought model. "

Another audience member sided with Marshall and within moments the full audience was
either calculating the problem outloud to their neighbors or arguing with the man in
the back. "It appears that Thorne's train wreck has caused a train wreck here",
Marshall smiled wryly from the podium as a woman appealed for quiet near the back.
Marshall continued once the audience settled down. He deconstructed Hawking's
chronology protection conjecture, relating how Hawking fails to explain why quantum
gravity
fluctuations or electromagnetic radiation would build up through any
arbitrary opening to the past without doppler effects, further emphasing that
connections to the past are not direct connections via linear pathways.

"Deutsch and Wolf use the Everett/Wheeler many-worlds theory to argue for time
travel without paradox, but I'll go one further", he commented. "I'll use the
Copenhagen interpretation which shows that you only get one outcome from a
superposition, whether you want to surmise that the alternate outcome exists in a
parallel universe or not. So if you go back in time, or open a door to the past,
it's a parallel past, not a direct linear one with a casual relationship to the
future you came from. So nothing is going through and then coming back before it
left anymore than it does when you open a door to the next room."

Marshall mentioned how Hawking had also been wrong about time reversing, if the
universe were to begin to contract instead of expand, something that Hawking
admitted to in his movie, A Brief History of Time.


Web Site = http://

Contact Details = world.net.news@post.com




  • Printer Friendly Format
  • Back to previous page...
  • Back to home page...
  • Submit your press releases...
  •