David Burns' Helical Engine Won't Work

There was a little bit of a kerfuffle a week or so ago about an engineer from NASA (David Burns, reportedly the Manager of the Science and Technology Office of the Marshall Space Flight Center but I’ve not been able to independently verify that).  He put up a document on a NASA page talking about an engine that could reach large fractions of the speed of light (more than 90%) with pretty much no fuel.  That document has since been removed but it can still be viewed at the Wayback Machine.

I’m astounded that it got put up at NASA in the first place.  It simply won’t work, he’s got the physics wrong.  Looking at the “Thought Experiment” which has a weight on a spring in a box, one can see that the fundamental principle is incorrect.  Within the frame of the box (or the spaceship, or whatever), the mass inside would be slightly heavier at both ends of the cycle, within the frame of the container, so there won’t be an overall forward propulsion imparted to the container.  The best you could hope for is that the container (box, spaceship, whatever) would quiver (and even then that would contribute to the mass inside losing momentum).

It all comes down to the total energy.  I’m going to explain in terms that I introduced at On Time.

A spaceship with (stationary) mass M_o, when it's stationary, has energy M_oc² – we can think of this as the rest mass times it’s “speed through time”, or v_T = c.  When at a velocity through space, v_S, spaceship has energy M(v_T² + v_S²) where, v_T ≠ c but instead (due to time dilation) v_T = c.√(1 - v_S²/c²) = √( c² - v_S²), so energy is E(v_T)=Mc².

But M ≠ M_o, instead M = M_o/√(1 - v_S²/c²), which when you work it all through, observing that 1/√(1 - v_S²/c²) ≈  1 + v_S²/c² (accurate to within 10% to about 0.68c and within 2% to about 0.47c), gives you E(v_T)=M_oc² + ½M_ov_T ² (see On Time).

This means that you need to pump ½M_ov_T² into the system – which is the extra mass he’s talking about – or you aren’t going anywhere.

To get to from zero to 297 million metres per second (0.99c, one of the numbers being bounced around), assuming no losses, that’s 88 petajoules per kilo or 88000 million megajoules and noting that liquid hydrogen has an energy density of about 120 MJ/kg (according to a guy at Stanford) you are going to need a lot of fuel to get your spaceship up to that speed, even if you ignore the fuel burden and losses and assume some magical method by which the energy in liquid hydrogen is converted directly into kinetic energy.

To be fair to David Burns, his “paper” (it’s not a paper, it’s a few PowerPoint slides!) ends with these words:

• Basic concept is unproven
• Has not been reviewed by subject matter experts
• Maths errors may exist!

It's entirely possible that the document ended up where it was by mistake (as it clearly wasn't ready for publishing to the world).  The fact that so many organisations ran with this, so uncritically, as if it were something real is simply very sad.

On Climate for a Change

As hinted at the end of A Climate of Mistrust, I have been looking at the whole climate shebang.  I’m not a climate expert and I haven’t even been working in a related field, so I am limited to trying to assess the sorts of claims made by various people and the ways in which data is presented.

I have to admit to a level of bias, I don’t think that NASA, or NOAA, or the EU or UK or Canadian or Australian equivalents, are engaged in some wild conspiracy to trick the world into thinking that the climate is doing something that it isn’t.  I think that it’s possible that people whose job or hobby is related to lobbying either way will be biased, so there will be climate change alarmists who will bend data to look worse than it is and there will be climate change deniers who will bend the same data the other way.

It’s also vaguely possible that some people in reputable organisations will have their own biases and might be tempted to skew their representations and interpretations of data, maybe even in good faith, so as to support their preconceptions.  I don’t think that such people are likely to simply make up data because that can so easily be detected and lead to a world of hurt for a professional scientist/academic/researcher.

People on the fringes on the other hand may be less scrupulous.

There are basically two fringes, the denial/minimisation fringe and the activism/alarmism fringe.  It is possible that there are fine people on both sides, and it is possible that there are also ratbags on both sides.

The media generally divides on the issue along political lines.  A more conservative news organisation will lean towards denialism while a more liberal news organisation will lean towards alarmism – and in this case I use alarmism deliberately because in the media there is little room for calm consideration, each story needs to be built up into something that engages the viewership and if that means overhyping a not very good situation into a dire one, then the ratings machine is going to win over objectivity.  I am far from suggesting that the conservative wing of the media is without fault though, they take the worse transgressions of the left wing, crank them up to eleven, inject the histrionics and then go apoplectic.

As bad as the use and misuse of a young, outspoken girl on the autism spectrum by the left is, the bile and fury visited on her by the right is simply appalling.  They seem to have forgotten that they had the option of taking the high moral ground.

Anyway … the next few posts will be edited extracts from correspondence with a friend who is being tempted by the dark side.  It may become clear while reading but I want to make clear what I think my position is:

I think that it’s unlikely that we’ve been digging up coal and extracting oil, for about 200 years and cutting down forests since we worked out that we could use axes to kill trees as well as each other (and other animals) and there’ll be no consequences.  I don’t know what the extent of the consequences are, they might be minor, they might be beneficial, or they might not.

I find scientists working in the field (not the media on either side) to be convincing for the most part.

My own observations lead me to think that something is happening, but I am aware that there’s a huge egocentric bias involved in personal experience, perhaps I just remember youth fondly and am filtering out all those muggy warm nights during summer that I no longer experience (which might be because I now live in a far better insulated home and have access to air conditioning when necessary or might be because it was warmer during summer when I was a kid).

I don’t find hippy-type climate activists convincing.  I just find them annoying (much as I find vegan and animal cruelty activists annoying, without that meaning that I want to eat your pets or am actively in favour of torturing animals).  I don’t have a solution to their problem, if they are right in there being a problem – how to motivate a population into doing something … without being intensely annoying.

I find histrionic climate denialists far from convincing.  The more low-key climate denialists just strike me as disingenuous, and they are annoying because they take more effort to debunk.  If you drink the koolaid though, I guess they aren’t particularly annoying, it might even be soothing to rock yourself to sleep each night thinking that it’s all okay, the climate is fine, the future is rosy (and that rosiness is not due to the flames of an imminent climate apocalypse).

First off, my interlocutor made the error of referring to unnamed “top scientists” (always a bad sign):

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I think there needs to be some clarity, some delineation between “top scientists” (whoever they are), actual experts in the field, science educator types (some being scientists speaking outside their field, others being enthusiastic amateurs), climate activists (who are more likely to be the source of erroneous and/or misleading claims – in both directions), reporters (who could be divided into a number of categories, some of whom would be more reliable than others) and pundits (ie people more focused on opinion than data, who only use data [selectively] to support a pre-existing opinion).

I agree that hysteria about the climate isn’t good, but neither is complacence – particularly if there truly is a “tipping point”, if that term is more than just a buzzword.  What we do know is that systems do have equilibria, and it is possible for systems to lurch from one equilibrium to another, rapidly and at short notice.  We have examples of large-scale climate change in the past that are entirely natural that have had impact on human civilisations – for example Rome’s expansion was assisted by a warmer than normal period [the imaginatively named “Roman Warm Period].  But we aren’t in an entirely natural period, we do affect the climate – it’s rather ridiculous (and naïve) to think that all human activity has no significant impact on our environment.  What is in question is the extent and nature of the impact that we are having.

I’m not sure what political goals you think are being pursued via “irrational and unscientific discussion” on the part of “top scientists” and I don’t know how discussions by scientists are supposed to be curtailed (who is it you think are allowing these discussions to go on and, I presume, ought to step in to censor those discussions?)  I certainly agree that some news outlets will publish sensational stories because it helps either their bottom line or the political party they are aligned with (while others will publish different sensational stories about how the sensational stories from their competitors are no more than scaremongering, because it helps their own bottom line or their own allied political party).  I also understand that some people who are scientists will talk publicly in a more political capacity, but if they aren’t discussing the data or the models then they aren’t speaking in their capacity as a scientist.

In researching sea ice extent (see next post which should appear here), I found an interesting diagram (linked to the concept of an Overton window):

It appears with the following text, at the blog of Dr Michael Tobis (with a specialty in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, but seems to be more into the computer modelling side of things as a Systems/Computer Engineer):

“Let's revisit the graphic I came up with, illustrating some aspects of the state of debate in climate science, and see if we can spot the stigmata of malice. Here we are factoring out policy ("business as usual", meaning the only constraints on carbon use are supply and demand, and that therefore fossil fuels will remain in use for a long time) and simplifying impact to a qualitative measure of good, indifferent, and various stripes of bad.  //  The curve is a probability density; the population is "informed opinion", by which we mean something like "people with Ph.D.'s who have spent more than 6 months full time equivalent on the subject", so the vertical axis is reasonably well defined. I admit that the horizontal axis is mathematically problematic; you can't call it a linear scale but it's obviously not logarithmic either. So the graphic can only be qualitative in nature.”

Sometimes there are statements along the lines of “97% of scientists agree with the consensus on climate change” – a prime example is from Barack Obama on Twitter.  However, it should be noted that 98.23% of ridiculously precise statistics are made up.  It is possible to get that figure more reliably though, for example from NASA, who got their figure from Environmental Research Letters but it should be noted that this claim is specifically related to publishing climatologists.  If one includes non-publishing climatologists, the figures drop markedly – although there is a notable increase in certainty even on the part of non-publishing climatologists over time – 66% in 1991 (Gallup – AMS/AGU members) and 87% in 2015 (Pew – AAAS members).  There’s an interesting chart that relates:

The bottom line is that the more expertise a scientist has in the field, the greater likelihood that that scientist’s views will align with the consensus on human-caused global warming.

Scientists who are sceptical about the more extreme claims made by actual climate alarmists are just being scientists.  The scientists that I worry about are those who are claiming that there’s nothing to worry about (who fall into the chasm between right wing think tanks and those with most informed opinion).  I was curious as to who these people are and what their area of expertise is and therefore where they would appear on the chart above.  Wikipedia (which has its own reliability issues) lists four:

Indur M. Goklany: an electrical engineer linked to the Cato Institute.  His main claim to fame re an anti-climate-change stance is that he wrote “Ironically, much of the hysteria over global warming is itself fueled by concerns that it may drive numerous species to extinction and increase hunger worldwide, especially in developing countries. Yet the biofuel solution would only make bad matters worse on both counts”.  From that comment he seems more anti-biofuels than anti-climate-change per se,

Craig D. Idso: a geographer linked to the Science and Public Policy Institute which is a climate change denial mouthpiece (which is only 1/3 funded by Exxon-Mobil) and Heartland, another climate change denial mouthpiece (which might no longer be funded by Mobil-Exxon, but no longer discloses its funding sources) – note that Heartland was previously involved in tobacco lobbying,

Sherwood B. Idso: a research physicist doing something with water (brother to the geographer above) linked to the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, yet another climate change denial mouthpiece (and which funded in a small way by Mobil-Exxon and also Peabody [coalmining]) and

Patrick Michaels: another Cato guy, who used to be an environmental science research professor and who is personally funded by fossil fuel companies.  The Cato Institute doesn’t seem terribly deeply involved in climate change denial (despite a stacked council), but they are against doing anything about climate change, because it’ll be too expensive and (they claim) ineffective.

There are more people who are claiming that climate change is primarily caused by natural processes.  Wikipedia lists 30.  I think the best thing to say here is that there is a significant, albeit small minority of scientists who contest the mainstream climate change consensus.  Just how small that is compared to the numbers that agree with the consensus is unclear, and there does seem to be a direct relationship between the likelihood of conforming with the consensus and expertise in the area.

Finally, models.  There is some fuss made in some quarters about how the models are inaccurate, with some climate change minimisers accepting that there is something happening but denying that it’s as bad as it’s being made out to be.

Well, yes.  There are always going to be doomsayers who take the worst-case scenarios and give the worst possible predictions.  And models are never going to be entirely accurate, particularly for a complex system for which the parameters not only not known but also their significance is not fully understood.  As I like to say, the only fully accurate model of the universe is the universe – to a lesser extent the same applies to the Earth and it’s biosphere (which conveniently includes all the water, the atmosphere, the outer skin of the crust and all the animals and plants, but I do acknowledge that the mantle also has an effect via volcanic activity).  We can add to that the weather, which can make some people think that the climate models are incorrect when they may well be bang on the money.  I don’t think that climate scientists are going to be confused by that, but the pundits are another story.

An interesting thing about claims that models are inaccurate is that the people in charge report on the accuracy of the models, for example here - IPCC AR5 Chapter 9 – in particular “Are Climate Change models getting better?” which starts on page 824.

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I’ll probably touch on some of these issues again in later posts as I try to extract meaningful chunks from my ongoing investigation and discussion about climate change, climate change alarmism and climate change denial.

It Did Not Happen, But If It Did ...

I’ve been looking at the climate recently, or rather the arguments about climate change, and I’ve noticed something.

This isn’t the first time that I’ve dipped my toe into the warm water of the climate debate.  I’ve done so before, if I recall correctly, over at Craig-Land.  I was in discussion with someone who was leaning towards a fundamentalist viewpoint and his position was along the lines of “there’s no such thing as detrimental, human-caused climate change (because my god is in charge and wouldn’t let that happen) and, even if it did, it would not be so bad, because you’d be able to go to Canada for beach holidays”.  I wrote this off as religiously inspired insanity, but I am wondering if I was too quick to do so.

This “deny and support” approach isn’t limited to religious people who think that their god is firmly in the driver’s seat.  I’ve also observed it from other high-profile deniers, like Holocaust denier (I was tempted to make a reference to Godwin in the title of this article but decided that it was too oblique).  Take David Irving as an example.

David Irving is a revisionist historian who writes favourably about Hitler. He’s also an antisemite.  Basically, he’s got a position along the lines of “the Nazis did not kill all those Jews, but if they did it would not have been such a bad thing”.  I know that he’s never come out quite as strongly against Jews as to say he wanted them all to be killed, but he has called them his “traditional enemy” and his work is certainly lapped up by people who are enamoured of the idea of a “race war”.  These particular followers of Irving hold very much to the “it didn’t happen, but if it did … it would have been totally okay” idea.

Another example has been in the news as much if not more than the climate recently, Donald Trump.  There have been quite a few denials of his which were immediately followed by “but it would have been totally okay”.  Take the non-sacking of Robert Mueller, the issue was that Trump (allegedly) tried to get Mueller removed as Special Counsel and denied it in a tweet:

As has been incorrectly reported by the Fake News Media, I never told then White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Robert Mueller, even though I had the legal right to do so. If I wanted to fire Mueller, I didn't need McGahn to do it, I could have done it myself

In other words: “I didn’t do it and even if I did do it, it was okay (because I had the legal right to do so)”.

I saw an example of this sort of thinking recently on the climate, from a darkly hilarious site put together by the Galileo Movement:

Burning fuels containing carbon produces CO2 and water vapour. A tax claimed to stop global warming by taxing carbon dioxide is a tax on rain.

The CO2 is beneficial to plants and the water vapour forms life-giving rain. The craziness of taxing life-giving CO2 is based on deception and erodes our economic security.

Clearly this snippet is not the full story.  There are other parts of the site that argue against human impact on CO2, for example:

Some politicians considers (sic) that the tiny amount of CO2 in air is a significant fact for the man in the street. Let’s explore that. Although Nature controls CO2 levels in air, the numbers themselves are entertaining:

Carbon is the fourth most abundant element in the universe;

It’s concentrated in and on Earth’s crust. Carbon enables life on Earth. It’s the key ingredient. It’s in all life forms. Even radical Greens understand that carbon is essential for life and that carbon dioxide is essential for life on Earth.  Every cell in our body contains carbon. It’s part of our DNA. It’s the second most abundant element in the human body;

Carbon dioxide is less than 0.04% of Earth’s air. It’s just 0.0385%;

In round figures, that’s one molecule of CO2 in every 2,600 molecules of air;

Annually, of all the CO2 produced on Earth, Nature produces 97%.   All human activity—farming, mining, manufacturing—produces just 3%. Nature produces 32 times more than all human activity;

CO2 only stays in the air a short time before removal by plants and oceans. It becomes part of animals, plants and soils and is dissolved in oceans. Most studies estimate 5-7 years in air. Recent studies estimate as little as 12 months.  Nature recycles all CO2 out of the air. That recycling is part of Earth’s carbon cycle, essential for all life on Earth;

There’s 50 times more CO2 dissolved in oceans than is in Earth’s entire atmosphere;

Combining these facts and numbers and using round figures produces this:

In every 86,000 molecules of air, a mere 33 are CO2;

Of those 32 are from Nature and at most 1 is from human activity;

How can 32 molecules be essential for all life on Earth yet one be catastrophically destroying life on Earth? It cannot. That’s absurd;

That’s irrelevant though and more absurd because Nature alone determines CO2 levels. It doesn’t matter how much CO2 humans produce, the level in air is determined by Nature. If we produce more O2, Nature simply releases a bit less from the oceans. If we cut all human CO2 production, Nature would simply release a little more from the oceans.

It’s illogical to think the human CO2 affects climate when we cannot even affect the level of CO2 in the air. It’s crazy. It’s ignorance or deceit.

So, we humans have not been affecting CO2 levels in the atmosphere, but even if we had, it’d be okay because CO2 (together with water vapour) is good.  Plus, Nature has our back.

Interestingly, this is not a new observation – that certain people tend to deny what has happened (or is going on) while also claiming that if it did happen (or was happening) is okay.  There was research done in the bad old days (the 1950s) on juvenile delinquency and they came up with the notion of “techniques of neutralisation”.  While not well supported by further research, it’s an interesting theory – by which I mean it’s an interesting way at looking at a phenomenon, but not so much explaining the phenomenon. 

Particularly salient are denying the injury and denying the victim, which we can think of as denying that a crime (injury) took place and asserting that what happened was okay (and thus there was no victim).

I’m not the first to note that climate change deniers, Holocaust deniers and Donald Trump act like criminals who are trying to neutralise their actions and/or positions.  What I do intend to do, however, is be alert in future to efforts at denial that come together with a justification or minimisation.

(Another example that came up recently, on Oh No Ross and Carrie, was that of the congregation of Tony Alamo.  Tony Alamo died in prison after being found guilty of sexual assault on minors [although the specific charges related to transporting minor across state lines for the purpose of sex, in order to make the charges Federal, rather than State of Arkansas].  His congregation simultaneously deny that he was guilty of the charges and assert that it's okay to have sex with a "woman" as soon as she reaches menarche, which in extreme cases can be very, very young but usually happens between 9 and 15.  According to Reuters, one of Alamo's alleged victims was 8 when she was first molested.  So, Tony's surviving ministry claims that Tony is innocent, but if he did it, it was okay.

By the way, it is purely coincidental that Tony Alamo Christian Ministries believe that environmentalism is Satanic.  I only recalled that when retrieving the link.  On the other hand, there's a strong link between political conservatism and climate change denial and between religious nut-jobbery and political conservatism, so perhaps it's not such a coincidence.  It'd be okay if it was.)

A Climate of Mistrust

Not too long ago, the Federal Circuit Court of Australia, in the person of Judge Salvatore Vasta (coincidentally thought by some to be Australia’s worst judge who has recently been benched [not in a good way]), found that the dismissal of Dr Peter Ridd by James Cook University (JCU) was unlawful.  The judge did highlight in his finding that his decision “was purely and simply about the proper construction of a clause in an Enterprise Agreement” and stressed that it was not about “freedom of speech and intellectual freedom”, “the use of non-offensive words when promulgating scientific ideas” or “silencing persons with controversial or unpopular views”.

JCU are now contesting the finding, at least according to Peter Ridd’s Go Fund Me page and a few of the usual suspects (Joanne Nova, Sky News and the Institute of Public Affairs – at least Joanne Nova does provide a source, but it’s Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian, hidden behind a paywall) and some less usual suspects (for example, The Morning Mail [with worrisome Crusader imagery but at least some useful information, indicating that a particular solicitor, Bret Walker, has been engaged by JCU]).

Now, what I want to go through, based on a discussion with an old friend, is the history of Peter Ridd.  Nothing here is new, it’s all available to anyone willing to dig, but I just hope to draw some strings together.  The contention I was responding to was this:

“I guess, like you, I am looking at things and thinking that if it was just one example of misleading information or slandering of scientists, purely because they have a different opinion, then I would not be so skeptical.  When it is so many examples, then my skepticism starts to increase.  The latest example of this treatment is the Queensland scientist Dr Peter Ridd.  He has come out against the narrative that the Great Barrier Reef is in trouble from climate change land uses etc.  What James Cook University did to him was simply appalling.  When I see groupthink being enforced in this way - it rings alarm bells.  I really think that this is a major problem.”

So, my question was … was the action by JCU appalling?  Where they enforcing groupthink?

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According to the Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC), JCU argued that he was not sacked for his views, but rather for his conduct:

JCU argues the sacking of Peter Ridd had nothing to do with his questioning of the science of climate change or the decline of the Great Barrier Reef, but rather the manner in which he made his arguments.

"Peter has always been allowed to conduct himself in relation to what our expectations of academic freedom are, it's the fact that he has broken the code of conduct on many occasions," said Professor Gordon.

Peter Ridd received an official warning in 2016 for critical comments he made about a colleague in an email he sent to a journalist.

Just looking at the wording of what he was apparentlycensured for and eventually dismissed, it sounds fair enough.  As I understand it, the finding against JCU came down to whether or not the Code of Conduct and the Enterprise Agreement were worded tightly enough to justify sacking him for denigrating his colleagues, his employer and some associated organisations.

Here are the key things that he said/wrote and was censured for:

• (email to journalist while acting as a sort of whistleblower) GBRMPA (Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority), and the ARC (Australian Research Council) Centre of Excellence should check their facts before they spin their story.  [- implication of dishonesty on the part of these organisations which are linked to JCU]

• (in same email to journalist) My guess is that they (implied - GBRMPA and the ARC) will both wiggle and squirm because they actually know that these pictures are likely to be telling a misleading story - and they will smell a trap.  [- disrespectful characterisation, even if might be true, and also another implication of dishonesty]

• (to Alan Jones on Sky’s Jones and Co.) “the basic problem is that we can no longer trust the scientific organisations like the Australian Institute of Marine Science even things like the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.  A lot of this stuff is coming out, the science is coming not properly checked, tested or replicated and this is a great shame because we really need to be able to trust our scientific institutions.  And the fact is, I do not think we can anymore.”  [- implication of a dishonesty or incompetence]

• (to Alan Jones) “He who pays the piper calls the tune, that’s possibly a bit harsh. I think that most of the scientists who are pushing out this stuff, they genuinely believe that there are problems with the reef. I just don’t think that they are very objective about the science they do. I think their emotionally attached to their subject // You know you can’t blame them, the reef is a beautiful thing”  [- implication of unprofessionalism]

• (to Alan Jones) “And I just wonder, this has been going on for close to 50 years, how many more years will it take for us to cotton-on to the fact that you can no longer trust this stuff, unfortunately”  [- implication of dishonesty or incompetence]

There are some other “strikes” detailed in the legal finding but I don’t think they are worth worrying about, Peter Ridd had antagonised the authorities, he was whining about them and he wrote and said some bitter and snarky things, but I don’t consider that they in themselves constitute a hanging offence.  Note that there is no “three strikes” provision, so the university didn’t seem to need to have waited for him to offend three times before dismissing him.

I don’t want to bother too much about whether the EA and CoC were written well or badly but instead to just think about the situation in terms of whether it’s acceptable to sack someone for denigrating an organisation when there is a formal agreement to not denigrate that organisation (Failure to comply with the Code may lead to disciplinary action, and in serious cases may lead to termination of employment and/or criminal prosecution).  I’d say, yes, it’s okay.  We might get a little hung up on what constitutes a serious case, but in principle he’d been warned that dismissal was a potential consequence of his actions.

After the first instance, he was censured and basically warned to not do it again, and that doing something similar could amount to “serious misconduct”.  But he did do it again (with Alan Jones – who hosts a show which regularly promotes climate change denial).  At that point, I believe that he did stray into serious misconduct, not only in the choice of language, but also purely by putting himself in that situation by getting into an interview with Alan Jones (and Peta Credlin – Jones’ colleague on a Sky News show, noting that Sky News belongs to Rupert Murdoch and has a number of hosts who are at least climate change denial friendly [or curious]).

A defence of Peter Ridd could be that he was acting as a noble whistle-blower.  Now my ethical position on whistle-blowers is somewhat nuanced, but basically it comes down to not being able to be a “whistle-blower” per se if there isn’t risk involved.  What he did was wrong, by denigrating his employer, even if (hypothetically) he were to have been doing the right thing by speaking out about systemic corruption of data regarding the Great Barrier Reef – he needed to weigh his options and decide whether he was willing to suffer the consequences of his actions, but being right about the latter would not have made him right about the former.  Plus, he didn’t go about his “whistle-blowing” (if that’s what it was) the right way, and his approach to the journalist didn’t really come across as whistle-blowing.  Talking to a well-known climate denial apologist like Alan Jones on a cable news channel that leans heavily towards climate denial certainly didn’t.

Think about it slightly differently.  Take an extreme case, wherein Peter Ridd argues eloquently that the Earth is in fact flat and that organisations associated with JCU are misrepresenting the evidence in support of a round Earth, a geometry on which there is considerable consensus.

Imagine further that we are talking about America here, a couple of years down the track when Flearthers are as ubiquitous as the various forms of creationists.  At such a benighted time, Ridd’s flearthing isn’t immediately written off as the ravings of a lunatic even though, to us as rational beings, he’s clearly 100% wrong.  In terms of the world that he inhabits, in the eyes of the layman and in the eyes of certain groups who have a vested interest in a flat Earth, there’s this idea that the science isn’t completely in yet.  The people who actually study this stuff on the other hand are pretty much all saying that the world is roundish (let’s say 97% of them).

Flearther Ridd writes to a journalist, making the same sort of arguments, and makes the same sort of denigrating comments about his university.  This comes to light and he gets censured and told “don’t do this again please”.  Then he gets on TV with a Flearther equivalent of Alan Jones (Alex Jones, perhaps?) and says, out loud, similar sorts of derogatory things about his university.  Should the university be allowed to sack him?  Not because he’s a Flearther, but because he’s denigrated his employer in contravention of their code of conduct and doubled down following a warning to not do it again.

I agree that we probably need some sort of protection for legitimate whistle-blowers, including a provision for them to be supported when they are forced to act for the greater good at cost to their jobs, but that’s a separate issue.

I believe that it might be worth looking at Peter Ridd a little more deeply before mak him a poster boy for intellectual or academic freedom (from Desmog):

(Andrew Bolt to Ridd [October 2011]: “Peter, what also struck me is the use of the word 'pollution.' Carbon pollution. Can you tell us, are we talking 'carbon pollution', are we talking carbon dioxide? Is carbon dioxide a pollutant?”

Ridd: “Well, I mean, it's a natural gas and it's important, it's in fact essential, to plants. It's actually stretching it a little bit to say it's pollution […] Sometimes you maybe wonder if it's being used as a media thing more than using it as a fact.”

Bolt:  “I've just looked up the latest satellite data on my iPad of warming over the last 30 years, and it's about, as you can see, about one-third of a degree. Is that really a big warming? Can Julia Gillard say that's caused by our gases?”

Ridd: “No, I don't think there's any way we can do that. I mean, essentially all this boils down to looking at these big models that predict the climate, and when you look at the details, the uncertainties involved in those make it, in my view, that in fact they have no predictive value whatsoever in fact.”

Or, the fact that he was, in 2005, a director of the Australian Environment Foundation – which is sceptical on climate change and currently has, on its front page, a large photo of Peter Ridd and details of his upcoming lecture tour, followed by an article titled “The scare is settled? Have the climate catastrophists won?” by Alan Moran, a climate change sceptic from the Institute of Public Affairs, an organisation that rejects climate change.

Basically, Peter Ridd has been in the climate change denial game for a quite a while now.  JCU’s recent action, to dismiss him for the things he wrote and said in association with his climate change denial, has served only to make him a bit of a martyr.  They probably should have just given him more rope but then again, I don’t know the full story of why JCU finally took the action that they did, whether it was because they were embarrassed to have such a provocative climate denial in their midst, or because the people he was denigrating complained, or something else.

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So, were the actions of JCU appalling?  No, not really.  Misguided perhaps, due to the increased publicity around questionable scientific claims (by which I mean the ideologically sourced opinions on climate change from organisations like the Institute of Public Affairs and people like Joanne Nova as championed by people like Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt).

As to the truth or otherwise of climate change claims … well, we’d need to look at the facts, which I’ll put together for a future article.

Expanding Glome to Special Relativity

In Big Fat Coincidence and Problems that Don’t (Seem to) Exist, I laid out how the FUGE model works.  What I didn’t do, because I didn’t think about it at the time, was explain how one reaches an explanation of (Special) Relativity from an expanding glome.  So here goes …

The equation for a glome is:

Δx² + Δy² + Δx² + (cΔτ)² = r² = (cΔt)²

where x, y and z are spatial units, τ is a temporal unit and r is the radius, which is given by the change in time, t, times c, which is a constant required to mediate the units.

We can use this equation to consider a change in spatial location on the glome in the period Δt:

v² = Δx²/Δt² + Δy²/Δt² + Δz²/Δt²

so:

v².Δt² + (cΔτ)² = (cΔt)²

and then, rearranging:

c²Δτ² = c²Δt² - v².Δt²

Δτ² = Δt² - (v²/c²).Δt²

Δτ = √(1 - (v²/c²)).Δt

Which is the equation for temporal dilation where Δt is by convention expressed as t' and Δτ as t.  Note that “(a)fter compensating for varying signal delays due to the changing distance between an observer and a moving clock (i.e. Doppler effect), the observer will measure the moving clock as ticking slower than a clock that is at rest in the observer's own reference frame”.  If we are counting ticks, we are actually measuring a frequency (at a rate of one tick per second) and this is why the time dilation equation will usually appear as something like this:

t' = t / √(1 - (v²/c²))

To get length contraction, one simply multiplies through by c:

Δτ.c = √(1 - (v²/c²)).Δt.c

ΔL = √(1 - (v²/c²)).ΔL_o

Alternatively, given that the surface volume of the expanding glome is flat in the FUGE model, one could merely use the approach described in Galilean to Special in One Page.

As for mass-energy, the total energy of a mass is given by:

E_total = m.v_spacetime² = m.v² + m.c²Δτ² = mc² ≈ m_o.c² + ½m_o.v²

See On Time where I explain why m.v² + m.c²Δτ² ≈ m_o.c² + ½m_o.v².

Big Fat Coincidences and Problems that Don't (Seem to) Exist

If our universe were to be undergoing flat expansion (Flat Uniform Granular Expansion, or FUGE) then, I suggest, a lot of what I have recently identified as “Big Fat Coincidences” would not be coincidences at all but would rather be the natural consequences of the process of that FUGE.  In addition, in the past few posts, I have identified a couple of problems that, given FUGE, aren’t actually problems – namely the Flatness Problem and the Cosmological Constant Problem.  Please note carefully, I am not suggesting that I have solved the problem, I am merely saying that if FUGE is true, then these are not problems.

I am going to summarise how I envisage that FUGE works and try to hit as many big fat coincidences and problems that don’t (seem to) exist as I can on the way.  If I miss any, or it’s just too awkward to address them at the time as they come up, I’ll list them at the end.

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First and foremost, we know that the universe expands.  We can see evidence of that as we look at distant galaxies that are receding from us at a rate proportional to their distance from us.  This rate is what we all the Hubble parameter (H) or, more often, the Hubble constant (H₀) which merely is the value of the Hubble parameter today (meaning that it isn’t really a constant, since it changes with time).

Secondly, our measurements of the curvature of the universe imply that it is flat.  This flatness of the universe (which must be more extreme as we go back in time, per the Flatness Problem) tells us that the density of the universe is critical and that, per the Friedmann equations, is ρ_c = 3H²/8πG.

As can be seen above, curvature of the universe and the Hubble parameter are linked.  In the FUGE model, the universe is expanding and it remains flat throughout that expansion.

The final element of the FUGE model is its granularity.  This granularity is at the Planck scale, which is the scale “below which (or beyond which) the predictions of the Standard Model, quantum field theory and general relativity are no longer reconcilable”.  To be more precisely, in the FUGE model, the universe is granular at the Planck length and Planck time.

To expand, the radius of the universe must increase.  Note however that this is the radius of a 4D shape, specifically a glome.  The 3D universe does not have a radius in the same way that a sphere has a radius, but the volume of the 3D universe is linked to the radius of the glome (r) thus:

V_surface = 2π²r³

It is this radius that increases.  Clearly the universe, to expand, must expand at a rate.  In the FUGE model, the expansion is given by:

Δr/Δt=c

At the granular level, this is equivalent to the radius of the universe (as a glome) expanding by one Planck increment each Planck time.  I say one Planck increment because it could be said that the expansion is time, so the expansion rate is one Planck time per Planck time however given the interchangeability of space and time, this is equivalent to one Planck length per Planck time, which is the value of r that can be used to determine the surface volume of the universe – r = ct, where t is the age of the universe.

As the universe expands, it is filled with Plank atoms – where a Planck atom is the 4D equivalent of Planck volume, so l_pl³.t_pl.  The surface volume of the universe is the current layer of Planck atoms, which appear to us, at the macro level, as 3D space.

Note that as the surface volume of the glome expands, room will become available for more Planck atoms.  In other words, gaps will open up.  These gaps will open up everywhere with a random distribution at a rate proportional to ct.  The consequence of this is that, within the surface volume of the universal glome, for a sphere of r_LH = ct (that is a sphere defined by a radius equal to the light horizon, which is the distance that light could have travelled in the age of the universe, t, to reach an observer in the centre of that sphere), the rate of expansion would be c.  The recession of any object at distance D, as observed from the centre of that light horizon sphere, would be given by:

v = (c/r_LH).D = (1/t).D = H.D

This accounts for one big fat coincidence, namely that the value of the Hubble parameter today, H_o, is the inverse of the age of the universe.  In the FUGE model, the value of the Hubble parameter is always the inverse of the age of the universe.  It also accounts for the fact that the Hubble length (l_H = c/H) is the same as the light horizon.

Note that our observations are based on the light horizon in which we exist.  The volume of that light horizon is V_LH = 4πr³/3, where r=c.t.

As mentioned above, is the universe is flat, then ρ_c = 3H²/8πG.  Given that H = 1/t  and ρ_c = M/V and Δr/Δt = c and V_LH = 4πr³/3, consider the change in mass (ΔM) over a period of Δt:

ΔM/(4π(cΔt)³/3) = 3/8πGΔt²

ΔM/Δt = (c³/G)/2 = (M_pl / t_pl)/2

This is telling us that mass (and thus mass-energy) is increasing within the light horizon at a rate of one half Planck mass per Planck time.  This resolves the flatness problem since, if this is true, the universe will be maintained at precisely critical density forever – and will be flat forever.  Note that this applies to whichever light horizon we choose, from either here in our current spacetime location, or from any other event location.  This implies that the entire universe is increasing in mass at rate that is greater by a factor of 3π/2.

Note that this rate of mass increase is not time constrained, so it would apply even for very small values of t.  This means that there is no singularity problem.  For sure, the universe would have been significantly denser at the beginning, when Hubble parameter values would have been very high, but that density would not have been infinite.

In the FUGE model, the universe does have a size because, while it’s not bounded (in 3D), it’s not infinite.  The volume of the universe is given by 2π²(ct)³ = 4.39x10⁷⁹ m³.  It should be noted that the volume inside a sphere defined by a radius equal to the “comoving distance to the edge of the observable universe” is greater than this.

The radiation that is received by us today as cosmic microwave background radiation has travelled across an expanse of space that now has a comoving distance of 46 billion light years despite the fact that the radiation has travelled at precisely the speed of light for only 13.8 billion years.  Comprehending this difference is a little mind-bending but, in short, it is incorrect to think of a sphere painted with something like the image below receding from us at H_o.cd (where H_o is the current value of the Hubble parameter and cd is the comoving distance to the origin of the cosmic microwave background radiation (not to the “the edge” of the observable universe)).

Instead, think of an expanding sphere, on which there is a “flat” (unbounded but not infinite) 2D surface area and imagine that 2D information travels along the surface in a straight line (or rather a geodesic or a “straight arc”).  Imagine further that the sphere is expanding in such a way that information can’t quite circumnavigate the sphere:

The value r_p is what could be called the “pseudo-radius” in that is the apparent radius of the large circle that the observer (denoted by the star) perceives herself to be the centre of.  Note that there is overlap, in that the observer can spin around to face the other direction and “see” the same expanse again so, to express the area of the apparent surface, we must use only half of the pseudo-radius, r_p/2 – even if the observer would think she is looking at r_p.

As said above, the surface volume of a glome of radius ct is given by 2π²(ct)³.  This can be equated to a sphere with a radius of half the pseudo-radius, or:

    (4π/3).(r_p/2)³ = 2π²(ct)³

    r_p³ = 12π.(ct)³

    r_p = ³√(12π).ct

When ct=13.8Gly, this gives a value of r_p = 46.3Gly, which is (give or take a little) equal to the comoving distance to the “edge” of the observable universe.  Another big fat coincidence.

As discussed above, mass-energy enters the universe at a rate of one half Planck mass per Planck time within the light horizon (where the light horizon can be taken from any location within the surface volume of the universe.  Given that M = ((c³/G)/2).t, and V = (4π/3).(ct) ³, this gives us a mass-energy density of:

      E/V = M.c²/V = ((c⁵/G)/2).t / ((4π/3).(ct) ³) = 3c²/(8πG.t ²)

At the current age of the universe at 13.8 Gy or 4.35x10¹⁷s, that gives us a mass-energy density of 8.48x10^-10 J/m³.  Noting that baryonic and dark matter make up 32% of the mass-energy of the universe, that means 68% is dark energy.  Specifically, that is 68% of 8.48x10^-10 J/m³ which is 5.76x10^-10 J/m³.  According the WMAP Survey the “positive energy density (is) about 6 × 10^-10 joules per cubic meter”.  Another big fat coincidence.

Above I arrived at ΔM/Δt = (c³/G)/2 = (M_pl / t_pl)/2.  It can be seen that his represents the lower bound of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, because:

      (ΔE/Δt) = (ΔM/Δt).c² = (c⁵/G)/2 = (ℏ/2)/t_pl²

Noting that the Planck time is the smallest division of time (equated with the lower limit of Δt), we can multiply through by t_pl² to find:

       ΔE.t_pl = ℏ/2

Given that Δt ≥ t_pl, then we have ΔE.Δt ≥ ℏ/2, which is the Energy-Time variant of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle equation.  Another big fat coincidence.

Finally, there are some aspects to the fine-tuned universe argument that are addressed by the FUGE model.  I only want to go into two here, as an example; the value of Ω and the value of Λ as argued by Martin Rees.

Omega (Ω) is the density parameter and, he argued, its value is very close to 1.  If the value of Ω deviated from 1 by any significant margin then gravity would be either too strong or too weak – too strong and the universe would collapse, too weak and stars would not have been able to form.  In the FUGE model, the value of Ω in not “close to 1”, it is precisely 1 as argued above in regard to flatness.

Lambda (Λ) is the cosmological constant and, Rees argued, its value is very, very small.  Making some assumptions, including that the dark energy density is constant, he arrived at 10^-122 as its approximate value which as a very small, but not zero value is curious.  In the FUGE model, however, one of the assumptions made by Rees does not hold.  Dark energy density is not a constant.  Overall mass-density is inversely proportional to time, so density of dark energy is must be decreasing albeit at a slower rate than the density of baryonic and dark matter.

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I’ve not progressed much further than this.  I don’t have anything to say, at this time, about how mass-energy coalesces into baryonic or dark matter.  I have some inkling about how the probability of a Planck atom appearing at any location is inversely proportional to the concentration of mass-energy in that location and the increased likeliness of space to appear where there is already space leads to localised curvature which manifests as gravity.  For the moment, these can remain as projects for the future.