More Voodoo Physics

In the preceding post I gave an example of inventing fictional physics by misinterpreting the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus to have a physical meaning as a Stefan-Boltzmann radiation law in the form

• $\int_{T_1}^{T_2}f(\nu )\, d\nu =F(T_2)-F(T_1)$   

where $F(T)=\sigma T^4$ is a primitive function of a Planck spectrum $f(\nu )>0$ depending on frequency $\nu$ satisfying $\frac{dF}{d\nu}=f$. Here 

• $Q=\int_{T_1}^{T_2}f(\nu )\, d\nu$

is the one-way physical radiative heat energy flux from a warm body at temperature $T_2$ to a colder body at temperature $T_2$ expressed as an integral of a spectral radiance, with integration limits scaling with temperature reflecting Wien's displacement law. The misinterpretation is to say that 

• $Q = \sigma T_2^4 - \sigma T_1^4$

thus expressing the one-way flux $Q$ from warm to cold, as the difference between two-way heat fluxes $\sigma T_2^4$ from warm to cold and $\sigma T_1^4$ from cold to warm, thus freely inventing two-way heat fluxes from one-way physical heat flux.

The arbitrariness of this invention is expressed by the fact the primitive function $F$ is only determined up to a constant (which cancels in the subtraction). Two-way back-and-forth heat fluxes of any size can thus be freely invented, which by itself is too good to be true physics.  

Another example is Einsteins misinterpretation of the Lorentz transformation of mathematical space-time coordinates to have direct physical meaning as distortions of physical space and time, in direct violation of the dictum by Lorentz when introducing his transformation as a mathematical formality without physical meaning. The consequences of this misinterpretation are far-reaching as the revolution (distortion) of our concepts of space and time being forced upon us by the modernity of Einstein's physics. The Nobel Prize in Physics this year to the LIGO recording over a fraction of second of "ripples in the fabric of space-time" of size a fraction of an atomic nucleus over
a distance of the diameter of the Earth from the supposed merger of two black holes 1.3 billion years ago, is a recent example of the grip of a model over reality overwhelming a whole physics community.

The idea of the quantum computer is similarly based on giving the multi-dimensional statistical non-physical Schrödinger equation a direct physical meaning, again in direct violation to the dictum of Schrödinger when introducing his equation. And the quantum computer is still fictional despite major efforts to make it into any from of reality...

All these examples can be viewed to represent Voodoo Physics in the sense of being based on misinterpreting operations on a a doll model to have real physical results.

Here are two quotes by Max Born (Nobel Prize in Physics 1954) expressing the non-physical aspects of Einstein's special theory of relativity expressed in the Lorentz transformation:

• Length contraction and time dilation are ways of regarding things and do not correspond to physical reality.
•  It is hardly possible to illustrate Einstein’s kinematics by means of models.

The counter argument is that Maxwell predicted the existence of electro-magnetic waves from the presence of waves in his model equations, and so Voodoo physics can be real physics. That is right, but it does not say that all Voodoo physics is real physics, as for example: