Planck and the Fall of Science

There is a new sequence of posts on The World as Computation about Planck and his role as the father of modern physics, exposed in a larger context in Dr Faustus of Modern Physics.

Mathematical Secret of Flight 6: Wikipedia Cover Up

To see that our new theory of flight fills a need, it is instructive to study how Wikipedia covers up the lack of a convincing theory in the literature:

• There are several ways to explain how an airfoil generates lift.
• Some are more complicated or more mathematically rigorous than others; some have been shown to be incorrect.
• For example, there are explanations based directly on Newton’s laws of motion and explanations based on Bernoulli’s principle.
• Both principles can be used to explain lift, but each appeals to a different audience.
• This article will start with the simplest explanation; more complicated and alternative explanations will follow.
• Explaining lift while considering all of the principles involved is a complex task and is not easily simplified.
• In attempting to explain why the air flows the way it does (e.g. why the flow follows the upper surface of the airfoil and why the streamtubes change size), the situation gets considerably more complex.
• It is here that many simplifications are made in presenting lift to various audiences.

We see that one part of Wikipedia struggles to hide that there is no theory of flight, while another part tells the truth by citing John D. Anderson, Curator of Aerodynamics at the National Air and Space Museum:

• It is amazing that today, almost 100 years after the first flight of the Wright Flyer, groups of engineers, scientists, pilots, and others can gather together and have a spirited debate on how an airplane wing generates lift. Various explanations are put forth, and the debate centers on which explanation is the most fundamental.

As a last line of defense Wikipedia presents the classical theory by Kutta-Zhukovsky (which we have shown to be incorrect).

• The effects of viscosity are contained within a thin layer of fluid called the boundary layer, close to the body. As flow over the airfoil commences, the flow along the lower surface turns at the sharp trailing edge and flows along the upper surface towards the upper stagnation point. The flow in the vicinity of the sharp trailing edge is very fast and the resulting viscous forces cause the boundary layer to accumulate into a vortex on the upper side of the airfoil between the trailing edge and the upper stagnation point.[26] This is called the starting vortex. The starting vortex and the bound vortex around the surface of the wing are two halves of a closed loop. As the starting vortex increases in strength the bound vortex also strengthens, causing the flow over the upper surface of the airfoil to accelerate and drive the upper stagnation point towards the sharp trailing edge. As this happens, the starting vortex is shed into the wake, and is a necessary condition to produce lift on an airfoil. If the flow were stopped, there would be a corresponding "stopping vortex". Despite being an idealization of the real world, the “vortex system” set up around a wing is both real and observable; the trailing vortex sheet most noticeably rolls up into wing-tip vortices.

In both politics and science, cover up is a most essential part of the game, because admitting that there are no answers to questions which should have answers, destroys credibility and authority, the core values of both politics and science. But pretending to have answers when no answers are available has a high cost, as demonstrated in Dr Faustus of Modern Physics.

The above connects to my old controversy with Wikipedia about d'Alembert's paradox discussed in posts on d'Alembertgate and the 2009 knol Wikipedia Inquisition, leading to a banning of my voice on Wikipedia. This makes it impossible to give any form of link to the new theory of flight on Wikipedia, as if understanding what keeps an airplane in the air would be dangerous knowledge which must be kept hidden to the people.

Monstrosity of Quantum Mechanics

Schrödinger trying to slay the many-headed monster of the wave function (assisted by Einstein) however without success.

Basically, classical physics is Newtonian mechanics and modern physics is quantum mechanics.

Quantum mechanics is supposed to be described by Schrödinger's equation, worshipped by modern physicists. The equation was formulated by Erwin Schrödinger in 1925 seeking an equation with wave-like solutions called wave functions describing the dynamics of atoms and molecules resulting from an interplay of positive kernels and negative electrons under attractive and repulsive electric Coulomb forces. Nothing strange in principle, but what Schrödinger had created showed to be nothing but a Monster.

Monster? Why? Well, the wave function for the simplest case of the Hydrogen atom with one electron depends on 3 space coordinates and and time, but the wave function for an atom with N electrons depends on 3N space coordinates (and time), which makes it into a Many-Headed Monster beyond direct physical interpretation:

• Instead of describing an actuality in 3 space dimensions, the wave function describes all possibilities
• Instead of describing a specific actual sequence of 1000 coin flips, the wave function describes the 2^1000, much more than 10^100 = googol, possible sequences of coin flips.
• Instead of describing the life of one specific actual human being, it describes the lives of all possible human beings.

As soon as Schrödinger understood that he had created a scientific monster, he tried to kill it but failed and then he withdrew from physics, while the Monster captured the minds of all the modern physicists (except Einstein's) who quickly formed a whole army under the leadership of Niels Bohr and his Copenhagen Interpretation of the wave function as a probability distribution of all possibilites.

To get from possibility to actuality, the idea of collapse of the wave-function was invented,

a Monstrous Idea to handle a Monster. Before collapse the Schrödinger Cat in the box would be in a state of superposition of alive and dead with all possibilities still present, and only upon opening of the box and inspection, would the Cat collapse into an actuality as alive or dead.

This Monstrous Idea has led modern physics into an endless desert of Multiverses and Many-Worlds of all possibilities. A recent contribution to this monstrosity is the

The Multiverse Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics by Raphael Bousso and Leonard Susskind:

• We argue that the many-worlds of quantum mechanics and the many worlds of the multiverse are the same thing, and that the multiverse is necessary to give exact operational meaning to probabilistic predictions from quantum mechanics. Decoherence - the modern version of wave-function collapse - is subjective in that it depends on the choice of a set of unmonitored degrees of freedom, the "environment".

Read and try to understand where physics is today...

For a new approach without monsters, see Many-Minds Quantum Mechanics based on a different non-linear version of the Schrödinger equation as a coupled system of one-particle three-dimensional equations.

The thesis of Hugh Everett III behind the many-worlds interpretation exhibits the difficulties or rather monstrosities of the usual scalar linear multidimensional version of Schrödinger's equation. We will return to Everett's thesis in search of a connection between many-minds and many-worlds physics. Since we all have different conceptions of the world, maybe we in fact live in a many-worlds universe, one for each mind. Of course, the following questions then comes up: What is a mind and how many are there?

Another monstrosity perturbing the minds of many modern physicists is the Greenhouse Gas Effect, but there are some physicists fighting this monster, as e g William Happer: The Truth about Greenhouse Gases referring to Charles Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds first published in 1841.

The development of modern physics into monstrosity is described in Dr Faustus of Modern Physics.

Dr Faustus of Modern Physics

Front page of a play by Christopher Marlowe, stabbed to death in 1593 at the age of 29.

I have now completed (more or less) the new book

• Dr Faustus of Modern Physics

The theme is the birth of modern physics in the late 19th and 20th century in the work of

• Boltzmann: statistical mechanics
• Planck: blackbody radiation
• Einstein: relativity
• Bohr: quantum mechanics

with the conception being forced by the following problems which seemed unsolvable within classical deterministic continuum physics:

• 2nd law of thermodynamics and irreverisbility
• ultraviolet catastrophy of radiation
• Michelson-Morley experiment indicating constancy of speed of light independent of observer motion
• interpretation of the wave function of the Schr\"odinger equation.

These problems had to be solved to save the science of physics from collapse, but solutions could only be obtained by abandoning the most holy of principles of classical science:

• reality of space and time
• determinism
• cause-effect.

This confronted the scientists taking on the challenge with a Faustian dilemma: To succeed it was was necessary to sell their classical scientific souls and make a deal with the Devil. The book describes this drama in the form of a trial with the reader as jury. Confessions, witnessing and background materials is presented to allow the reader to make a verdict.

The effect of the deal with the Devil is a despair today of ``end of physics" or more generally as a crisis in science, in particular climate science, and science education.

At the end a door is opened to resolutions without nya deal with the Devil.

Who Is Dr Faustus of Science Today?

Dr Faustus gives his soul to the Devil to satisfy his quest for knowledge (and power, fame, money,...). I take up this theme in the upcoming book Dr Faustus of Modern Physics focussing on the following pioneers of modern physics:

• Boltzmann: statistical physics
• Planck: blackbody radiation
• Einstein: relativity theory
• Bohr: quantum mechanics.

I present confessions and witnesses and set up a little tribunal to seek answers to the following questions:

• Did X sell his scientific soul?
• If so, why did X do it?
• What was the deal? What was gained? What was lost?

I argue that a scientist may have to to sell his soul to resolve a paradox threatening the credibility of an area of science.

The following paradoxes were resolved by the scientists listed above:

• Boltzmann: Irreversibility of reversible Hamiltonian mechanics
• Planck: Ultraviolet catastrophe
• Einstein: Michelson-Morley experiment: same speed of light independent of observer speed
• Bohr: Schrödinger's cat alive and dead in superposition until observation,

by introducing

• Boltzmann: molecular chaos or microscopic games of roulette
• Planck: smallest unit of energy = quanta
• Einstein: Lorentz transformation
• Bohr: collapse of the wave function, complementarity.

The following question presents itself: Who is the most Dr Faustus of Science today?

Nominations are accepted.

I ague that the Faust theme has been central to science all the way from its beginning in Greece 2500 years ago:

An early paradox which had to be solved one way or the other, is Zeno's Arrow Paradox:

• If everything when it occupies an equal space is at rest, and if that which is in locomotion is always occupying such a space at any moment, the flying arrow is therefore motionless.

Zeno was a member of the school of Parmenides, which offered a radical solution to the paradox: There is no motion. All motion is apparent, and thus there is no paradox.

But this solution was not accepted by Heraclitus who coined the phrase: Panta Rei: Everything is always in motion. But then the paradox struck Heraclitus, also called the "Weeping Philosopher".

So there we have the essence of the Faustian drama or conflict:

• Parmenides sold his soul: The paradox was resolved at the price of an absurd science without motion.
• Heraclitus did not sell his soul: The paradox was unresolved at the price of weeping.

In both cases it appears that the philosopher lost (to whom?).

The book shows how Zeno's Arrow Paradox carries all the way into modern physics, as a central paradox concerning the essence of space, time and matter, a paradox which had (has) to be resolved one way or the other...into our time:

• Karl Popper remarked to Einstein: "You are Parmenides".
• Similarly he could have said to Bohr: "You are Heraclitus".