19 July 2011

Entropic gravity and its critics

The paper by Kobakhidze, http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.5414, discusses an apparent contradiction between entropic gravity and neutron bounce experiments. It contains the wonderful statement (towards the end):

"Thus, if E. Verlinde’s idea is correct, the neutrons would have to travel through the slit without substantial losses even if λ < h <<< z1."

The author arrives at this conclusion using the obvious method: he did not understand entropic gravity, assumes that entropic gravity is something different from what the proponents say it is, and then shows that his assumed wrong idea is indeed wrong.

The fun thing is that he managed to publish this complete nonsense in Physical Review D. In the comment section of an earlier post, somebody wants me to stop calling it nonsense because it is "in PRD", and "peer-reviewed". In the next email, he will probably ask me to believe that the world was made in 7 days, because this nonsense is written in a "famous" (and also peer-reviewed) book.

Some people still live in the middle ages, when authority counted more than facts.

4 comments:

  1. Well, I looked through the earlier papers of that author. He got a lot of other nonsense into PRD already. I guess the journal quality is rapidly degrading.

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  2. Clara, it looks like there is no good article on the strand model in Wikipedia, and the one that currently exists is proposed for deletion due to 'lack of notability'.
    Would you be interested?
    If so, you are welcome to edit. Might be fun.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strand_model

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  3. Clara, thank you, and well done!

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  4. I've read a bit of Kobakhidze.. he really goes overboard with name calling and what I can only describe as a real "hate" for Verlinde. I don't know what his deal is.

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