CERN PHYSICIST AMIT GOSWAMI: WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT WE’RE ...
Now, this one was shared by a lot of you who, like me, have been following the developments at CERN's large hadron collider in Geneva with a bit of a jaundiced eye. First we had the sort-of announcement of the discovery of the so-called "god particle," the Higgs boson, allegedly the particle in the quantum pantheon for imparting mass to everything else. I say "pantheon" here because it strikes me as extremely odd and curious that physics seems somehow trapped in the old this-god-does-that-function paradigm: we have gods of "wisdom, fertility, and (pick a function)" and this particle-does-mass and that particle does that... and spin moments, and directionality, and quarks and "colors,"... I'm reminded a bit of the old nominalist-versus-realist debates of the late Middle Ages. But anyway, back to the Higgs. Then the discovery was sort-of retracted, then sort-of confirmed.Then we even heard, briefly, of some sort of "discovery" of something with "superluminal" velocities, but no, that's impossible because Pope Einstein said so. Then we had the stories coming out of how some physicists were actually toying with the idea of recasting their equations entirely without the notion of dimensionality, allegedly, so the story would seem, because of the High Weirdness they're finding when they crank up their alchemical machine at Geneva. When I heard that one I had to do a double-take, for the idea of modern mathematical physics without dimensionality in the equations would seem to throw the whole last 200 years of physics into a cocked hat. Maxwell, of course, had his quaternions with its scalar potentials, but even he had to get around to dimensionality at some point. Einstein's general relativity is a highly dimensional theory, as are the various early 20th century stabs at unified field theories from Kaluza-Klein to Vaclav Hlavaty and on down even to modern string and m-theory. It's as if they are suggesting that the whole of mathematical physics be recast as a theory of Nothing with lots and lots of scalars and zero-sum vectors (or are those the same thing? One can imagine David Bohm asking such a question).
Then along comes Indian theoretical physicist Amit Goswami, who, fed up with the underlying Cartesian-materialist-epiphenomenalism of it all, just bluntly proposes in Leibnizian fashion that consciousness - that's right, immaterial, incorporeal, metaphysical consciousness, Mind itself, as it were - is the underlying bedrock of physics, and not a bunch of particles emerging from an endless Dirac sea of ...well... nothing once again. Needless to say, his views are controversial.
Well, now Dr. Goswami has joined Stephen Hawking in warning about CERN's Large Hadron collider, fearing that at some point, something catastrophic might happen. In fact, he goes further, in this article, by saying "We (physicists) have no ******* idea what we're doing:"
“We Honestly Have No ******* Idea What We’re Doing”, Admits Leading Quantum Physicist
Now, in case you missed the salient points, here they are once again:
"The University of Oregon professor warned that the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, could potentially wipe out the entire planet if the project is not put to a halt.
“'Seriously, when myself, Higgs and Ben (Benjamin Lockspeiser CERN’s first president) first pitched the idea, we never thought it would get funding. It was gonna cost billions for Christs sake,' he recalled. “'Fuck knows what the thing does – no one does. Firing particles at each other at the speed of light can’t end well. I’m just worried now we took the joke too far'." (Emphasis added)
Now, obviously, Dr. Gotswami has no aversion to colorful language (and no, just because I'm quoting the article does not mean the rules on this website for commentary are suspended). One wonders, really, why he is using such language, and my speculation is that he is doing so in order to underscore the danger. Most disturbingly, he admits no one really knows what the Large Hadron Collider is really doing. But wiping out the entire planet?
Here's my problem (and my high octane speculation of the day). Back when the alchemical machine in Geneva was being prepared to be fired up for the first time, there were efforts being undertaken, largely in Germany, to head off the project and not turn it on at all. The reason? Well, again, because some feared catastrophic consequences of a planetary scale. They were, of course, ignored and scoffed at. But now, Gotswami has joined Hawking in uttering vague and dire apocalyptic warnings of planetary consequences if a stop is not put to it now. And that suggests these scientists know something that they're not saying. The question is, what?
So far as the story has emerged, there are some clues, though precious few. Hawking, of course, has made his career largely in "the physics of the very large," black holes and singularities and such. Gotswami, conversely, has gone into the bewitching field of the very small, quantum mechanics and its pantheon of particles-as-functions. So we have two physicists at opposite ends of the metrology scale, saying essentially the same thing. The third clue is that in the wake of the weird CERN results, we heard those strange calls for doing away with dimensionality in the equations altogether, an idea that, at first glance, seems to be in the same metaphysical camp as Gotswami with his emphasis on consciousness, and not materialism, as the principia prima of physics(Plato and the Neoplatonists must be smiling down from the Elysian fields at that one).
Thus, what seems to be suggested from all of this is something that I suspected years ago when all this CERN talk first started, and that I first voiced on Ms. George Ann Hughes' The Byte Show, namely, that they had found something so unexpected in terms of their conventional models that it left them quietly, and perhaps secretly, scrambling at their blackboards or computer screens with their Mathcad programs. Perhaps, I suggested, they discovered something that confirmed that torsion was not the small dismissible micro-effect that always got tossed out in the equations, but a real macro-effect possibly capable of producing Hawking's dreaded black holes, or perhaps it was something else. Perhaps they discovered that linear mappings of individual observers went out the window when group observers were involved, and everything became non-linear... or perhaps they discovered that the difference between the two was itself a rotation group... and we're back to square one... But whatever it was they did discover - and in my opinion they did discover something - they're not coming (in my purely amateur opinion once again), entirely clean.
Ok... I';m done. And thank you for indulging my really crazy high octane speculation of the day...
See you on the flip side...
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Doc,
I continue to maintain that your credibility and that of your website is compromised when you post items like this from joke websites. Waterford Whispers is a satiric site with wholly invented stories, not a font of information on cutting edge physics or politics. Please do not be credulous and quote items from sites like this unless it is April 1, or, in this case, St. Patrick’s Day.
There is absolutely no chance of CERN doing any damage to Earth. The technology is very safe and interesting but there is nothing to worry about.
This is getting good. Goswanmi doesn’t know what to do next?
If I were Goswanmi or Cern I may also be wondering how this joke could be taken seriously. This is starting to look like classic irony. The audience in part understands and is laughing while the characters don’t have a clue.
But seriously, if I were Goswanmi I would embrace the satire and laugh along.
On the other hand if I were Waterford Whispers News I would start lampooning the heck out of CERN. (And why stop there? How about the astronomers, mathematicians and every other target who covet their own careers and legacies through sophistry and pendentry and impede the advance of true science. Sorry sir but your theories are incorrect, so step aside and stop diverting all the funding or we we all make fun and laugh at you until you shrink away in embarrassment. Is there a more effective weapon than to be laughed out of existence?)
If only satire could become a rhetorical weapon in scientific debate? Whole new industries would arise, jobs would be created. Organizations like CERN would be forced to take out a small fraction of the billions of funding to hire a PR agencies for damage control.
I just contacted Dr. Goswami via his website and he quickly sent me back an email stating it was a satire and that he has contacted the website in question and has received no replies.
He asked for suggestions as to what to do next. I replied to contact Joseph and he would get a fair minded hearing here.
So, Joseph, perhaps you will be receiving an email from Dr. Goswami. Keep an eye out. Maybe you could arrange an interview with him about CERN and such
mxlance
I have a couple of his books. He’s right.
I’ll say it again about Hawking.
He lives in his own mind.
Higgs and Ben.
Could they say it without the expletives?
Nick Begich in “Angels Don’t Play this HAARP,”
tells of a piece of fiction in which an instigated
explosion on the Sun ends life on the third planet from it.
They “know” what?
With Consciousness?
Highly unlikely.
Extremely small (?)
Extremely large (?)
Same thing.
Don’t forget, zero=infinity.
That spooky word again? God. Thia cat Goswami wrote a book named (God is not dead) i read it .heavy stuff! When i was i little kid i knew there was a contradiction between materialism and meaning.what is so hard to digest here ?.pathological materialism .why is it so hard to believe in believing?
Whatever they do at CERN, there is something even bigger there is preparing right now by Europeans
http://horizon-magazine.eu/article/world-s-brightest-laser-pulses-will-create-matter-out-nothing-prof-wolfgang-sandner_en.html
“The world’s brightest pulses of light will reveal things that have never been seen before, according to Professor Wolfgang Sandner, director-general of the consortium building a facility known as the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI), which can produce lasers that are stronger than all the world’s power stations combined.
‘The ELI lasers produce up to 10 petawatts of power – this is a one with 17 zeros – more than a thousand times the power of all electrical power stations in the world. This power comes in extremely short time durations and the questions that we want to investigate are what are the unique and new phenomena in the interaction of such powerful light with matter.
So, the creation of X-ray secondary radiation is one of the main research areas and it is concentrated in the Hungarian and the Prague facilities, mostly. The Romanian facility, on the other hand, uses different laser-based methods to create even shorter wavelengths, so called Gamma rays, and will use them to study atomic nuclei in greater detail than ever before.
‘One other application that we are trying to push forward with these extremely powerful lasers are new methods of particle acceleration. At the moment particle accelerators, as we know them from CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) and many other laboratories worldwide, use radio frequency fields to accelerate particles. ELI together with quite a few other laboratories in the world will push forward the idea of laser plasma accelerators, using electrical fields for accelerating particles that are a thousand times stronger, or more, maybe much more, than in conventional particle acceleration. This is relevant as it overcomes a fundamental physical limitation that prevents conventional accelerators from moving to ever higher energies.’”
http://optics.org/news/3/9/26
“Romania is to host a facility designed to push the boundaries of laser-based nuclear physics by coupling a high-energy particle accelerator with a high-power laser.
The Extreme Light Infrastructure – Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) project will be based in the area of Magurele, south of the Romanian capital Bucharest, and is scheduled to become operational in 2015. The EC’s funding covers the first phase of the project, running 2011-2015, while the total cost of the project is expected to reach €356.2 million.
The light source for the Romanian facility is expected to comprise at least two “Apollon” type Ti: sapphire lasers, each capable of 10 PW power levels using the chirped-pulse amplification technique pioneered at the University of Rochester in the 1980s.
Output intensities of up to 1024 W/cm2 will be used in combination with an electron beam to generate high-energy photons capable of interrogating atomic nuclei.”
They throw a lot of money in this project, some 700 millions euro (around or more then 1 billion dollars), and started funding even when the economic crisis was at its peak.
And its intended to push things more then CERN can do, so maybe they found something there that they want to explore further.
Just hope they won’t blow up the planet or open some portal in space-time continuum so we won’t be invaded by someone from a nearby multivers.
Or who knows, these mega lasers are just a cover for weapon research, in case that the planet is attacked by aliens or is about to be hit by an asteroid or so
Pull up this website: http://www.webuka.com
Enter: http://waterfordwhispersnews.com
Now, see how much this particular satire site alone is hauling in. Not bad income for people who are hardly doing any work. Keep in mind that these numbers do not include income derived from short-term revenue bumps when a story goes viral.
So, as long as advertisers and malware writers continue using sensational headlines and filthy language as clickbait — or until humans suddenly become less gullible, and less prone to confirmation bias — these satire/hoax sites will continue metastasizing across the internet like a profoundly unfunny cancer.
You said it. Again my fault. I was taken in by Gotswami’s known displeasure with the materialist paradigm of modern physics, the Hawking announcement re CERN, etc. But it now seems that this is becoming the new method of regulating the internet by TPTB: obfuscation of everything on the net by psyops and data obfuscation, like CERN itself. It’s getting ridiculous.
Such an optimistic heart!
No question that a satirical paper could use it’s space to put out something that reaks of truth, although, I doubt they spoke to him and I can find no evidence that AMIT had anything to do with CERN and the two names mentioned aren’t listed as the initial brains behind CERN. This article has been circulating for a couple of weeks and came out about the same time they put up on article that the Pope had hired JK Rowlings, Harry Potter, to rewrite the bible. I still think some of the Christian forums and conspiracy forums are howling about it. That being said, there is nothing I disagree with that Dr. Farrell wrote. It’s just hard to take that site seriously when they state upfront that basically , none of it is true except when it might be.
This statement:
“Then along comes Indian theoretical physicist Amit Goswami, who, fed up with the underlying Cartesian-materialist-epiphenomenalism of it all, just bluntly proposes in Leibnizian fashion that consciousness – that’s right, immaterial, incorporeal, metaphysical consciousness, Mind itself, as it were – is the underlying bedrock of physics, and not a bunch of particles emerging from an endless Dirac sea of …well… nothing once again. Needless to say, his views are controversial.”
is the real answer to it all. Consciousness. That’s just you and me. We did it and we are doing it.
Philip K Dick’s novel:
Flow My Tears The Policeman Said
takes that novel concept to new heights.
It runs with the premise that
Reality Denied Comes Back To Haunt.
By the way JPF, I know you are a busy guy, and I would guess that I will not agree with your final view of modern physics, but I would buy your book devoted entirely to an analysis of modern physics (discussing YOUR views of what is really going on).
Even though entirely UNverifiable (as all psychic info is), one of the latest fads of “psychic” information, the British guy Simon Parkes (check out his interviews on youtube if you want to), claims that the LHC is not used for physics research at all (that is just the cover story), that its real use is as some sort of “gateway” that was going to be used to “transport” some “evil” alien folks to Earth. Don’t remember if this was a physical transport or just some alien “souls,” but Parkes says it would have been very bad if it had happened. Parkes says that the delays of getting it up and running were caused by sabotage.
If you want the specifics you’ll have to track down the Parkes interviews where he discusses this.
The reason I mention an UNverifiable (for most of us anyway) information source is because the Parkes info at least does not violate logic, common sense, the reality of the physical world, and the foundational ideas of science (that make science, “science”) the way the CERN scientists do, and so I give it more credibility that anything from the scientismists.
What was that quote by mr. E? Doing the same things and expecting a different result? No wonder they’re not moving forward, their theories have been confined .Even the economy is stuck. Meanwhile, the guys working in the black projects have their own disneyland of physics.. the real thing. Along with Plato “smiling”, so is Ingo Swann, Ben Rich, and Sagan? the contact movie was truly remarkable.
So what really connects everything in all scales? Space(ether)? Does the infinitely small and big really matter, or is it the pattern or dynamics that truly matter? if they wipe out the planet, how? is it similar to turning off a hologram projection?
and is the concept of the observer effect/intentionality relevant to the consciousness drive (thought interface)? Does it work through singularity? if numbers(math)= geometry is the universal language, could it also be interdimensional? in effect, can one control matter and energy through thoughts? according to the ancients..
also, torsion in macroscale, just look up. can’t literally count them.
sorry for the ramble..
Like your “ramble” as it resembles many of mine.
I’ve come to think/feel that mathematics is a bit of a deception. It rings true; it adds-up, so to speak; but is it just another, albeit extremely, elaborately eloquent layer in the proverbial onion?
In the language of mathematics “they” use the term: “given”, known or determined independently. Is “Given the mathematics” really such a given. The breakaways have let some “given” become “accepted”, that are bogus. Perhaps this deception is more prevalent than is “given” credit for.
That onion, is purposely deceptive; where the peeling away layers, may itself, be a deception most elaborate…
indeed[in deed, as in done deal]?
Thanks Robert, and yeah it wouldn’t really be a surprise if some of the current theories have been manipulated to a dEgrEe. But no doubt those in the inner circles know. I guess it’s just not meant for mainstream, and I’ve come realize that about most people. apathy+superficiality= the world today
So true…
Yet there is this
http://blacklistednews.com/
Some people’s comments at this site tickle the hell out of me
Fir Example:
Frankenstein Human Head Transplant In 2 Years?
Comment:
Is this the explanation for the FEMA guillotines?
[cont…
First attempt “disappeared, so I’m doing this in 2 steps.]
Man Gets Life For Selling
$20 Dollars Worth of Weed.
Comment:
You’d find more justice in the hands of Satan
Teachers Could Face 6 Months In Jail For “Offensive” Material.
Comment:
I fear for the math teachers
if any problem equals 69.
So, there are some who are awake and:
on the flip side; on the dark/humor side;
on any side, but the mainstream pushed agendas…
What can I say, that kind of thinking (commenters’) is a result of people’s inability to think critically and the education system is clearly not effective and msm is not helping. I can only sympathize for them.
On the other hand, supposed prestiged institutions of “knowledge” dismiss and ridicule unconventional ideas that might be legit.. so it’s really up to one’s discernment.
Well said moxie.
Just Finished Jakarta Pandemic by Steven Konkoly. A novel that realistically depicts a world that is no longer functioning: food shortages, power black-outs, riots, neighbor against neighbor, and the struggle to survive as civilization crumbles. It requires a different sort of education that is definitely not K thru K12.
As you have stated, the confusion in the science community must be evident enough that people are frustrated with the ambiguity and have started making articles like this. What you may, or may not know, is that this was satire. I’m providing a link to a tool that might be helpful in cutting through the BS: http://realorsatire.com/ If you type in the URL of the suspect article, it will clarify the indention.
Like Noam the Foam Chomsky or Amy Goodman left-gatekeepers; it looks as if “we” might have some gatekeepers in other arenas.
News Flash!
Latest from:
http://williamengdahl.com/
Ukraine’s Electricity Emergency Courtesy of Guess Who?
In this article are: “Assistant Secty of State Victoria “F**K the EU’ Nuland, Republican war hawk; The Jesuit trained Brzezinki[The Joker]; Putin[Batman}
There are times that the only way to tell the truth is through comedy and satire. And with our priesthoods of power lack of sense of humor the only way to keep you job and more importantly your life. They’re playing with fire and don’t give a damn anyway but idea that these idiots have let their fantasies replace rational thinking is on the mark. Dogma of any kind is fatal to thinking and reason and our oligarchs have lack either for millennia.
And before I forget add outright lying to this deadly mix. Nothing the say can be believe but must be taken with a huge grain of salt.
Satire and comedy are many times the kindest and best way to deal with a grievance. Both Galileo and Bruno used satire to grease the wheels of an equally counter-intuitive idea- that it was more of the earth that was moving than the cosmos around it. Mathematics has gained the perhaps undeserved status of a deity for our modern culture – that all reality whatever can be explained by a mathematical formula. The fictionalist (nominalist) vs realist debate in mathematics has been suppressed but still alive and kicking-somewhere. Just because an idea is a presented as satire doesn’t mean it is anything less true. Perhaps at the core of everything we see as real is a fiction.
Patricia,
Okay, the website publishes satire, however Goswami has been saying there are big problems in physics for years now.
I believe a quote from the first A bomb test was:””Now we are all sons of bitches.” – Kenneth Bainbridge, director of the Trinity test of the Manhattan Project. Said to Robert Oppenheimer directly after the first successful detonation of the bomb.”” Dr. Goswami’s colorful language may have been akin to Bainbridge’s remarks. When the reality of what they had wrought became apparent. Something to cogitate.
Yes. It was my understanding that this was just a piece of satire. I can’t see Goswami dropping the F bomb in an interview. That said, he is certainly in the consciousness first camp
Disclaimer
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Yes it is a satirical site but as one poster stated on that site – Onion (also a satirical site) did a satirical story about American intelligence agencies using facebook as a means of spying on people; a claim that was supported by Edward Snowden a couple of year or so later. I distinctly remember reading that very article on the Onion website.
Perhaps this story is presenting a similar meme. Perhaps this was Goswami’s way of letting the proverbial cat out of the bag? We’ll see.
Are you suggesting that these are actual Goswami quotes?
I don’t know, Patricia, to be honest. Perhaps it was this person or perhaps it was another using a different name.
It may just be all BS and a bit of fun, but I think I will file this story away for future reference.
Patricia, on a lighter note, I enjoyed the article about the husband who got only 60% of the shopping list correctly. Just yesterday, I got the wrong chili mix and the wrong lettuce mixture. LOL. The absolute encyclopedia on satire, in my opinion, is ‘Foucault’s Pendulum’.
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