Really? The ESA is going to be testing for changes in inertial mass now? Do you have a reference for this experiment, or are you just making things up? Again.

Yes, that's why general relativity is one of the most tested (and successful) theories of all time. I don't think anyone here is against testing anything. I'd love to see the ESA launch is probe to test gravity.

Furthermore, I believe everyone would agree that GR is incomplete. One day (hopefully), we'll have a new theory of gravity, or an improved version of GR. Experiments need to be performed to hunt this new theory down.

What you can't seem to separate is the concept of testing gravity versus the concept that your "hypothesis" may be correct. The two are not the same thing. We already know enough to know that your "hypothesis" is wrong. Just because you're wrong, doesn't mean anyone is arguing that we stop testing. Your flawed "hypothesis" does not somehow represent all continued research towards understanding gravity.

You've even acknowledged in other posts a list of (very basic) observations your "hypothesis" can't explain. The fact that it can't explain basic observations means your "hypothesis", in its current state, is wrong. The fact that you won't revise your "hypothesis" in response to observation and continue to present it as if it could be correct, is just one indicator that you are a pseudoscientist.

And I stand by my "editorial" comment:

"...pseudoscientists never revise"

"...pseudoscientists rarely revise"

And you won't revise your "hypothesis". You say "back to the drawing board", but you won't actually do it. Actions speak louder than words.

Where exactly did you see that in the conclusion? You obviously missed this quote from the conclusion of the paper:

From the above paper:
What I find interesting is the major part of the paper is how to reduce the effects of the possible systematic effects and nothing about the new physics possibilities.



Again from the conclusion of the above paper:
From the paper:

Ok, this possibly eliminates one of the proposed mechanisms.


Ahhhh, Jerry, you do realize that this paper is an almost exact copy of the first paper, by three of the same authors, submitted about 2 years after the first paper? And it’s conclusions are almost identical.

Gee Jerry, This isn’t an extremely good reference for you, if you’re trying to show GR to be wrong.

A couple of quotes from the conclusion of that paper:
Do you even read these papers before you bring them up for references to support your ideas?

And for Lunatik, who thinks the mainsteam continues to accept and use GR blindly without testing it another quote from that paper:

Yeah, that would be interesting.


I have no problem with your previous objections to the supernova light curves. There you were making some coherent objections. But, your foray into trying into attempting to show gravity wrong, using the Cassini probe, are extremely convoluted and are explained much more simply by unknowns within Titan’s atmosphere.

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Some try to tell me, thoughts they cannot defend,... - Moody Blues.

Is your fridge big enough to climb into, for an in situ test? Make sure you can get out again!

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Caveat Lector. Experimentum summus judex...

And what if it is NOT within the measured limits? What then? Worse, what if my hypothesis of inertial mass cum deltaG = ~1 G per AU proves right? What then? I called it bad science because I keep hearing reasons why we should hunker down with the knowledge, GR etc., we have and continue to work with that, though it does not explain lots of anomalies, as discussed in these past 75 pages. Good science should take an interest.

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Caveat Lector. Experimentum summus judex...

They will test for whatever they need to test to see if gravity behaves the same as we had assumed, a universal constant, or not. Inertial mass plays into that too, by testing for spin with an independent probe launched from the main probe. I do not believe all this had been finalized yet, so premature to jump to conclusions, again. Bad science.

My hypothesis is only that a "hypothesis", a novel way to look at gravity-radiant energy interactions, whether or not you agree with it or not. It is not yet a theory, as others have pointed out, so more a spec at this time. Whether or not it is "wrong" will be discovered in due time, with tests in situ, as mentioned. For you to insist that my hypothesis is already theory, untestable, or wrong up front to me is "pseudo-science".

Before I begin to revise my "hypothesis", how about if we get some data first? I used stock equations to come up with a planet orbit Energy curve, the consequent proton mass converted into Newton's G, which plots on a line. Do I have to worry? Not so much. I want data first before I start tampering with this idea. Tests will show whether or not it is good science. Not tests on Earth at 1 AU, but tests out there. Insistance that it is somehow "wrong" a priori because GR has the answers is "pseudo-science", and bad science.

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Caveat Lector. Experimentum summus judex...

So what are you saying? Professional scientists cannot be wrong? Amateurs are of necessity wrong? Were you there when they argued why the Earth has to be at the center of the universe, with the Sun going around, along with the rest of the heavenly host? On what premises were built their arguments? Ptolemeic epicycles? Were you there when Galileo had to retract his statments that he saw mountains on the Moon? Or when Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome for saying that the universe is infinite, with many worlds, and that there may be people on them? Has the dogma of the past hundred years become so strong that to challenge it means persecution, cut off funding, bypassed promotions or dismissals? But you may be there when they announce that there is an inherent flaw in Relativity's first postulate. Even professionals can make mistakes, if the basic premise on which the whole theory is base has an error in it. That's what testing is supposed to do, not confirm over and over again how Einstein was right, but test for why there is evidence that perhaps he was wrong. No, not my "theory" to be proven right, but any hypothesis to be tested in a non-circular-reasoning way. What are the double blind tests for gravity? What are they for distant locations on site? Nothing against professionals, mind you, but because they had achieved a lauded status does not absolve them from error. A title does not suspend reason.

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Caveat Lector. Experimentum summus judex...

No you didn't. This has been one of the criticisims of your hypothesis from your first post. You conflated the de'Broglie and Compton wavelengths and pasted together random bits of equations without seeming to understand them at all.

So now you claim our observations are wrong? Listen, none of the tests say the g can't be variable, just there is a limit on the variability...

...and that variablity is smaller than the variability in g in your idea. So your idea can't be right. Other variable g theories may be.

Huh? Have you looked at any of the references given to you? None of them advocate not testing to smaller limits, many of them, in fact, advocate new tests. Not to mention we already know GR is not the end all be all. We know if fails when used at extremely small scales. That's why so much work is being done with Quantum Loop Gravity and Superstring Theory. You want us to use an idea that has yet to make any kind of prediction that matches our observations.

So your saying we should have thrown out QM in the 20s and 30s. After all, there were anomalies in the calculations due to missing energy. Oh, wait, the proposal for the missing energy was neutrinos. Not to mention, the people who wanted to get rid of Netownian gravity in the early 1800s because Uranus wasn't where it was supposed to be. Oh, wait, that dark matter was found too, it's called Neptune.

It does take an interest and is working on it. What good science is not is pushing an idea that has already been shown to be wrong.

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Some try to tell me, thoughts they cannot defend,... - Moody Blues.

The document is a very general overview of the system, not a detailed design specification. It does not surprise me that such details were left out of it.

Why should you get to assume that? I don't see any justification for it.

Are you willing to concede that you're wrong if the tilt sensor data does not match your descent theory?

No. They said surprisingly calm, not stopped altogether. (Which would be quite obvious on the tilt sensor. Just read a document which said it has 0.5 degree accuracy. With that level of accuracy it ought to be quite capable of discriminating flight from rest on the ground.)

Why should they have imagined crazy theories of gravity which match no known data? We've got a pretty long history of navigating successfully in space using Newtonian physics (which we KNOW is incorrect, but we also know it's correct enough for interplanetary flight purposes).

(For that matter (ahem), why bring in dark matter? AFAIK, dark matter theories still have gravity working the same way. They just posit matter which we haven't observed to account for the behavior of the known universe. So far as I know, no part of dark matter theory would predict an impact on the navigation of spacecraft like Cassini or Huygens.)

Aerich,

All your points are valid. But you're speaking to the deaf, it would appear.

Case in point: consider this post by R.A.F. from way back on December 12, 2004.

Now this is a prime example of how Jerry just bobs and weaves whenever objective evidence is presented to him. In his original post, he claimed

Contrast this with his statement in the above quote (ignoring the lack of knowledge of the difference between two basic physical units, of course).

Since the successful completion of the mission in January, all he's been doing is the same bobbing and weaving, only now around various misinterpreted details (significantly, inside Titan's atmosphere and having nothing to do with mass or gravity) of that same successful mission.

What a remarkable waste of 75 BABB pages and a lot of good, scientific posters' time!!

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If you were designing the system, wouldn't you make sure that the receiver was capable of receiving the signal within the expected bandwidth? Wouldn't you include in the program a command to turn the receiver on?

In a court of law, if the defense can present a scenario that is just as plausible as the government's case, but exhonerates the defendant, the judge must give the defenses reasoning equal weight, and throw the case out.

I think it is plausible that there were multiple oversights in the design of the electronics and soft logic in the Huygens system. Too many cooks.

Tough question. I cannot completely rule out a scene where the probe slowly drifted at low altitudes for more than an hour - although we have been told that the timer function would have jettisoned the 8 m parachute in twenty minutes, regardless of how confusing the accelerometer data is.

If Huygens landed on a rock and sat and wobbled, it would be obvious in the images. I don't see how the tilt sensor could indicate any activity after more than 25 minutes...

But let's look at all the sensors - I would hate to throw out a perfectly good theory, just because the tilt indicator wasn't screwed down properly - I've played pinball games that would tilt if you breathed too heavy.

The temperature sensors are on the 'top hat', (which is really on the bottom) of the probe. As soon as the heat shield is popped off, the probes are exposed directly to the Titan atmosphere- So there is no way on Titan that temperature readings more than ~15 minutes into the mission should have been reported at 25C. I think this is pretty darn good evidence that the heat shield was still in place, long after it should have fallen on a completely different trajectory.

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jwj

It's ok not to know. We should try harder to find out.

Good grief Maktosuv, this was a joke! I was making light of the fact that I often transpose numbers - this has already been explained by others.

...And scientist weigh things all the time: I have written a hundred procedures that say "Weigh 0.2 grams of..."

Lighten up!, this is an astronomy board! We're all up in the night!

Edit : wrong mass

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jwj

It's ok not to know. We should try harder to find out.

Cool down, Lunatik... You are reading way too much in papageno's statement.
Professional scientists aren't always right, but you treat them like they are always wrong. Some of your errors have been pointed out to you again and again with arguments, not purely on authority, but you keep on going on.
You have stated repeatedly that you feel that any hypothesis (I assume especially yours) should be tested. But we have tested yours already: we have checked if your hypothesis matches the observations, and while it can perhaps (ignoring the math problems for a moment) explain a few observations (Pioneer anomalies), it fails miserably to explain most other observations. So your hypothesis is wrong and doesn't need further testing, certainly not the expensive testing you're asking for.
What needs to be done is to either abandon your hypothesis (which would be the smartest thing), or to adjust it to reality.
If a hypothesis would contradict only a few observations, then you can consider if those observations may be wrong or so. If a hypothesis contradicts almost all observations, then it is wrong. This has nothing to do with professional or amateur being better or worse, this has only to do with reality and knowing ones limitations.
Scientists don't belief blinly in their theories, no matter how often they have been shown to be correct. That's way there are going to be tests of gravity in outer space. But they are going to test possibilities, not the impossible hypothesis you propose.

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Knowledge is a curse, but ignorance is worse