If the category didn't exist at the time, the example shouldn't have been volunteered as an example that fits our present day understanding of perpetual motion as understood by the U.S. patent office in the 20th century.
The patent office doesn't serve the patenting of physical theories (which would be a horrible thing), but if it did, its easy to imagine Einsteins theories regarding relativity to have been summarily rejected: surely charged particles at rest in a gravitational field don't radiate energy, yet by the Equivalence principle it seems that radiation is nonetheless predicted by relativity:
I believe that which is often referred to as the stagnation of physics is in a large part due to this instant-rejection in the modern physics community. There's plenty of "single point mutation" theories (think hypothesize particles with negative masses, hypothesize underlying elements below the standard model so that reactions once again obey the chemical conservation numbers,...) which individually are easy to lampoon, and are henceforth ignored (i.e. for negative masses simulations show they can pair up and accelerate indefinitely, or for a beyond-the-standard-model atomistic theory one can easily refer to the spectrum of hydrogen or positronium, and highlight that a single photon can excite it to a higher state, and then emit 2 lower energy photons).
What if our current interpretations form a very successful local optimum? I.e. suppose we can provably rule out each crooked idea if its the only modification in a theory, then we might be collectively conclude to rule them out in general, as they fail so embarassingly, but perhaps simultaneous consideration of 2 crooked ideas can make the inconsistencies disappear.
Imagine voting as a group of physicists on the most interesting crooked ideas, gathering the top 10, and then exhaustively going through the 2^10=1024 combinations, where bit K decides if crooked idea K is "enabled" a specific one of the 1024 candidates.
But there wasn’t a difference in categories at the time — yet, at the time, perpetual motion was still treated as impossible.
If the category didn't exist at the time, the example shouldn't have been volunteered as an example that fits our present day understanding of perpetual motion as understood by the U.S. patent office in the 20th century.
The patent office doesn't serve the patenting of physical theories (which would be a horrible thing), but if it did, its easy to imagine Einsteins theories regarding relativity to have been summarily rejected: surely charged particles at rest in a gravitational field don't radiate energy, yet by the Equivalence principle it seems that radiation is nonetheless predicted by relativity:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_radiation_of_charge...
I believe that which is often referred to as the stagnation of physics is in a large part due to this instant-rejection in the modern physics community. There's plenty of "single point mutation" theories (think hypothesize particles with negative masses, hypothesize underlying elements below the standard model so that reactions once again obey the chemical conservation numbers,...) which individually are easy to lampoon, and are henceforth ignored (i.e. for negative masses simulations show they can pair up and accelerate indefinitely, or for a beyond-the-standard-model atomistic theory one can easily refer to the spectrum of hydrogen or positronium, and highlight that a single photon can excite it to a higher state, and then emit 2 lower energy photons).
What if our current interpretations form a very successful local optimum? I.e. suppose we can provably rule out each crooked idea if its the only modification in a theory, then we might be collectively conclude to rule them out in general, as they fail so embarassingly, but perhaps simultaneous consideration of 2 crooked ideas can make the inconsistencies disappear.
Imagine voting as a group of physicists on the most interesting crooked ideas, gathering the top 10, and then exhaustively going through the 2^10=1024 combinations, where bit K decides if crooked idea K is "enabled" a specific one of the 1024 candidates.
1 reply →
It was volunteered as an example of a legitimate invention in a category that is viewed as wholly illegitimate.
1 reply →