4 May 2013

From intelligent design to unintelligent physicists

In Switzerland and in Europe we often shake our heads about the discussions of intelligent design, which seem a mostly American exaggeration from here. Wrong.

First, German physicists must believe the following idea:
Electromagnetic waves do not need vacuum as carrier medium. 
There is no way to make this sentence into a correct one, or to interpret it in a way that is correct. It is dead wrong. Ok, everybody is entitled to have opinions, even wrong ones. But now comes the German side of the story: the German Physical society wrote an official letter to all ministers responsible for public schools.
The German physical society wants all teachers to teach this false idea to all pupils in secondary school / high school. 
The German Physical Society has now come down to the level of the intelligent design people, who also want teachers to teach false statements to children.

29 April 2013

German Physical Society dismisses laws of physics and is candidate for Nobel Prize

This is more fun than I ever imagined. In February 2013, the German Physical Society published a committee report written by 9 physics professors and several senior physics teachers - all male - with the following statements:
Momentum flow is not the same as force. (page 2)
Reason, experiment, Newton with his definition F = dp/dt, relativity, and quantum field theory books say the opposite, but why care?
The attempt to put only temperature and entropy at the center of thermodynamics must be seen as misleading. (page 10)
Reason, experiment, Gibbs, and thermodynamics books disagree, but why care? There is much more nonsense that I leave out. And then there is the highlight:
Electromagnetic waves do not need vacuum as carrier medium. (page 12)
In contrast with quantum field theory and with all experiments performed so far, the committee is able to make experiments where light does not go through vacuum! Nobody has ever achieved this before! This groundbreaking result should be awarded with the Nobel Prize.

Update: Many physicists are appalled and many agree.