[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Dragar

Wild? Like, this is a theory that goes to Ibiza takes its bra off and dances naked while drinking vodka surrounded by adoring theories of the opposite gender, sort of wild?

What the heck?

I'm glad you think of me this way, but I'm not a god, nor are most people who talk about it.

I'm sure I do. That's what famous means.

How does this answer the question I posed, peacegirl? You lied because the theory is 'wild' (wey-hey!) and, charitably interpreted, because famous physicists are regarded highly and are the ones telling people it's true? How is this possibly a good answer for your blatant dishonesty?

There are many wild theories floating around. It is no surprise that these theories --- theories that have little observational evidence to back them up --- begin to take hold and are treated as if they were facts. To me, much of these theories are equivalent to science fiction but because they are endorsed by well known physicists such as Stephen Hawking or Michio Kaku, they are less likely to be refuted.

A Call to Arms

What Is So Wrong With Time Travel Speculations?

Time travel is a symptom of a deeper malady. It is part of a chronic malformation of our collective scientific understanding of the fundamental underpinnings of nature. It is the end result of an incestuous intellectual orgy that has been going on for over a century. It is also the culmination of a scientific coup d'état that took place in the early part of the twentieth century. A group of revolutionaries, fresh from the resounding empirical victories of Einstein's theory of relativity, established themselves as the sole interpreters and oracles of the new science. They fended off all public scrutiny by encircling themselves within an unassailable wall of scientific jargon and mathematical formalism. Any criticism of their world view is met with the usual sneering retort that relativity is one of the most corroborated theories in the history of physics. Dissenting views are given little exposure.

Nasty Little Truth About Spacetime Physics

Stop Acting Like Drones

The whole time dimension and time travel nonsense that is being fed to us by the aforementioned individuals (and their followers all over the world) is part of a world view that has clouded and is clouding our thinking. Having an erroneous understanding of such fundamental concepts as motion and time is like having a monkey wrench in the works. Generations of bright young researchers have wasted valuable time chasing after wild geese when they should have been looking for real causal explanations of gravity and motion. And if they got time wrong, one is left to wonder how many other things they got just as wrong or worse. We need to discard our primitive and sterile notions of space and time and embrace a new clear-headed physical science, a science worthy of the twenty-first century. We need to break away from the hive and stop acting like mindless drones.

Entrenched Orthodoxy

Can we expect the spacetime physics orthodoxy to just accept that its understanding of time is flawed? Does anybody really believe that Dr. Kip Thorne, Sir Stephen Hawking, Dr. John A. Wheeler and the others are suddenly going to announce to the world that they were wrong about time? Do not hold your breath. You can catch a science fiction writer in an error and that is no big deal. But a scientist is betting his or her career. Still, should humanity suffer through hundreds of years of ignorance just because a few careers are at stake? The current scientific belief in the existence of a time dimension has been around for over a hundred years. Even though many people realized from its inception that spacetime was motionless, it has not stopped generations of physicists from believing in a time dimension on a par with the other three spatial dimensions. It is now a religious institution and its practitioners are entrenched more than ever. They will not accept defeat easily. It is a matter of prestige, authority, credibility and the fear of being displaced. They will fight teeth and nails all the way to the end.