July 2019 Archive for ed-lake.com

Archive for ed-lake.com
July 2019

Comments for Sunday July 28, 2019, thru Wednesday, July 31, 2019:

July 30, 2019 - This morning the vixra.org statistics say that 12 people have viewed my Pulsars and Special Relativity paper since I uploaded it two days ago. And in that same time there were 3 new readers of my Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories paper. I had hoped for larger numbers, but, for all I know, those could be terrific numbers.

Meanwhile, on academia.edu., in the past 24 hours there were three new readers of the Radar Guns paper and no new readers of the Pulsars paper. Nothing earth shattering in that.

The arguments on sci.physics.relativity intensified overnight, but it was nearly all just personal attacks. Even the comment that I thought yesterday was "positive" was stated to have been "negative." It demonstrates that we do not speak the same language.

The most interesting thing to happen in the past 24 hours that relates to my papers is the response on Facebook when I wrote about my Pulsar paper. I posted a comment about it yesterday afternoon, and this morning there were 40 reactions:

As you can see, 31 people "liked" what I wrote, 4 "loved" it, and 5 laughed at it. And, of course, the people who posted comments were mostly people who disagreed with what I wrote. If anyone who liked the paper had posted a positive comment, they would probably be viciously attacked just as they would on the sci.physic.relativity group.

That appears to be why the mathematicians are writing the textbooks. No one wants to argue with them. It is like arguing with True Believers. No amount of arguing is going to change their closed minds. They not only believe they are right, they are out to convert the world to their beliefs.

July 29, 2019 - I'm not sure what I was expecting to happen overnight, after I posted my newest paper Pulsars and Special Relativity to both vixra.org and academia.edu yesterday morning, and then mentioned it on sci.physics.relativity, but it wasn't what happened.

First, the number of views of the paper for the past 24 hours on vixra.org was zero. However, at the same time on that same site, there was a viewer comment about the paper. The viewer claimed that I failed to point out that Einstein's First Postulate states that the speed of light must be the same in all frames. That is pointed out in the paper, of course, but my point here is that that viewer must have read the paper, yet the site says there were zero viewers. There were no viewers for any of my other papers, either. Perhaps vixra.org doesn't always run their viewer count update program on Sundays. I'll have to wait to see what the numbers look like tomorrow. As of now, the total number of views for all versions of all of my papers on vixra.org is 2,280. They do not provide that total, and it's the first time I'm manually calculated it.

Secondly, there were only four responses to the comment I posted about the Pulsar paper on the sci.physics.relativity forum. Three were just the usual personal attacks. Example from the troll named "Dono":

Crackpot shit, as usual

I expected a lot more personal attacks and at least two or three mathematical challenges to the statements in the paper. Moreover, one post from Paul B. Anderson seemed positive instead of negative:

This statement in the paper says it all:
"This practice of measuring pulsar pulse rates from
the center of the solar system indirectly confirms
that light arrives at c+v and c-v rates at earth
observatories, since, if the speed of light was
the same for all observers, thus making the pulsar
pulse rate the same for all observers, there would
be no need to convert everything to barycenter counts.
You’d get the same rate regardless of where you were
in earth’s orbit around the sun."

'nuff said!

Lastly, the number of views of the Pulsar paper on academia.edu wasn't what I expected. There were 9 views in the past 24 hours, which isn't bad, but it's less than what I expected. At the same time, however, the number of views of my Radar Gun paper jumped from 254 to 271 overnight. That means there were 17 new readers - 6 of them at 8:57 a.m. this morning and 4 at 8:58 a.m., all from the same university, just as if some professor instructed his students to turn on their laptops and access my paper so they could discuss it. Most of the other views were from Finland. Here is what the overall statistics look like:

So, I am in the top 2% of authors on the site with 627 total views of all of my papers, and my Radar Guns paper is in the top 1%. I do consider that to be, by far, my most important paper. I just wish someone would borrow a "basic" radar gun, do the recommended experiments and show the results on YouTube! Or, better yet, I wish I could think of some way I could do that!

BTW, I just found this illustration of a pulsar:

July 28, 2019 - Yesterday afternoon, I submitted my new paper Pulsars and Special Relativity to vixra.org. I received an email this morning advising me it is now on-line at this link: http://vixra.org/pdf/1907.0548v1.pdf

This morning I also placed that same paper on academia.edu. The paper is now available there at this link: https://www.academia.edu/39951190/Pulsars_and_Special_Relativity

The new paper addresses some of the same issues as my paper Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories, but, unlike that paper, this paper is about how astronomers routinely confirm that light is emitted at c and will arrive at an observer at c+v if the observer is moving toward the emitter at v, and light will arrive at c-v if the observer is moving away from the emitter at v. To mathematicians, that is totally impossible because it requires a "preferred frame of reference," which they believe does not exist. But Einstein said it does exist. He said the speed of light is such a "preferred frame of reference." Since nothing can go faster than the speed of light, all motion can be measured relative to the speed of light.

I've argued endlessly with the mathematicians on the sci.physics.relativity UseNet group about this, but we never discussed the main topic of my new paper: pulsars. I'm curious to see how they will rationalize away the undeniable fact that light from a pulsar is measured to arrive at c+v if the earth is moving toward the pulsar as the earth orbits the sun, and light from that same pulsar is measured to arrive at c-v if the earth is moving away from the pulsar. There is no way to measure the one-way speed of light from the pulsar, of course, but a pulsar sends out pulses at regularly spaced intervals. And those intervals are shorter if the earth is moving toward the pulsar, and the intervals are longer if the earth is moving away from the pulsar. So, while we still cannot measure the one-way speed of light, we can measure differences in the one-way speed of light. And, according to mathematicians, there can be no differences.

I remembered writing about this before, and when I researched it I found that I'd mentioned the subject in my April 5, 2018 comment. Then, a couple days ago, I went searching through Google images for something that I could use or modify that would show a pulsar being viewed from Earth at different times of the year. This was the only image I could find:

It turned out to be from page 16 of the first version of my paper about Einstein's Second Postulate. For some reason I'd cut it out of later versions, probably because what I wrote about it didn't mention pulses arriving at c+v and c-v. Instead, I used estimated differences in pulse timings (+ 30 kps and - 30 kps). The image is now on page 5 of my Pulsar paper.

It will be interesting to see how many views the new paper gets on both sites, but particularly on academia.edu where I can see which countries the views are coming from. And the information is updated throughout the day. Here is what the site shows for the first 3 views during the first 30 minutes that it was on-line:

Pulsar
paper views in first 30 minutes

So, the first viewer was at some university in Seattle, the second was someone in Burnaby, British Columbia, which is next to Vancouver, and the third was in Nottingham, Maryland, which is 11 miles northeast of Donald Trump's favorite city: Baltimore. It will be interesting to see what the first day numbers are.

I also started a discussion about the paper on sci.physics.relativity.

And I've also been thinking about my Radar Guns paper. I'm hoping someone who read the paper has access to different kinds of radar guns, because it seems that even "complex" radar guns might give interesting readings if used inside a moving truck (or car or train). I'm really hoping that some individual who read the paper is a child or friend or relative of a police officer and can persuade the officer to demonstrate a radar gun under the conditions defined in my paper.

One radar gun manufacturer told me that the reason their radar gun didn't "work" while moving was because it would add together the target speed and the gun's speed. So, if the gun was moving at 50 mph toward a car approaching at 70 mph, the gun would display the target speed as 120 mph. But what would it show if it was pointed at the rear wall of a box truck going 50 mph? Would it show the speed of the gun: 50 mph? Would it show the speed of the target: 50 mph? Or would it show the combined speed of 100 mph? Any of those answers would be interesting, since mathematicians claim the gun must show a speed of zero.

Comments for Sunday July 21, 2019, thru Saturday, July 27, 2019:

July 25, 2019 - I haven't posted any comments here for a couple days because I've been extremely busy writing a new science paper about how mathematicians misread and misquote Einstein. It won't be as controversial as Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories, but it will fully support that paper. It will be about actual proof that light arrives at a moving observer's location at c+v and c-v, where v is the speed of the observer toward or away from the source of the light. I don't want to say too much about it right now, because I might want to change my mind about something. But, if all goes well, the paper should be on the academia.edu website on Sunday morning. And it may or may not also be on vixra.org. The difference is that when I put something on academia.edu, I put it there. It's there as soon as I upload it. With vixra.org, I have to submit the paper to them so they will put on the site (usually the next day).

Meanwhile, my papers are still getting quite a few readers on both sites. But something else seems to be going on, too. Yesterday and this morning, the daily statistics for this web site showed a slight increase, as seen on the graph below.

The yellow bars show 211 visits on July 23 and 209 visits on July 24. The previous high was 178 visits on July 3.

I would like to think that discussion of my scientific papers is causing the slightly higher number of visitors, but it seems more likely that something else is going on. Here are the July statistics for my anthraxinvestigation.com web site:

July
2019 visitors to anthraxinvestigation.com

I don't need the white arrow to point out the 1,864 visits the site got yesterday, or the 975 visits the day before. Prior to July 23, the average number of daily visitors to the site was 442. Yesterday, it got more than 4 times that number. And I have no solid reason why. I can only assume there is some very popular TV program going on that is causing people to look up the anthrax case on-line. And it seems that the program is being broadcast in Germany, since other statistics indicate the surge is almost entirely from German web sites. The slight surge in visits to ed-lake.com is probably from people who followed the link in the final December 31, 2014 comment on my anthraxinvestigation.com web site.

I wish I could spend more time investigating it, but I need to get back to work on my new paper.

July 22, 2019 - Hmm. It looks like each morning I'm going to be checking the locations of the readers of my papers on Academia.edu whenever there are new readers overnight. There were 7 new readers of my Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories paper in the past 24 hours. One was in Ontario, Canada, and the other six were in the Ukraine, two in Kiev and four in Kharkiv. The Ukrainians all evidently attend the same university, since the blurred name of the university takes 3 lines and the blurring is identical on all six names.

Meanwhile, I've had an idea for a new paper. It would be similar to Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories, only it would be about a different way to demonstrate that light arrives at c+v when the observer is moving toward the source of the light and at c-v when the observer is moving toward the source of the light. I thought I had already mentioned it in some paper, but I just did a search through all of them for a key word, and none of my papers contain that key word. It appears I only wrote about it on this web site, and the last time I wrote about it was last year.

I'm curious as to what the mathematicians on sci.physics.relativity would think about it. I wonder how they could possibly deny what it clearly demonstrates.

July 21, 2019 - I'm still getting a lot of new readers of my papers, particularly my radar guns paper, and particularly on Academia.edu. Here is what some of this morning's Academia.edu statistics look like:

The number I record on a spreadsheet each morning is the one that currently says "513 Total Views." It's the number of views for all the papers I have on Academia.edu. That number was 282 on July 1. I'm not sure what "top 2%" means, but I presume it means that my papers are getting a lot more readers than most others on Academia.edu. I held the cursor over the "34" in "34 Readers" when I did the screen capture in order to show how doing that causes a pop-up for an "Academia Premium Feature," which means I would have to pay money if I want to see who is bookmarking my papers.

According to Wikipedia, "Academia.edu is a commercial social networking website for academics. The platform can be used to share papers, monitor their impact, and follow the research in a particular field. It was launched in September 2008, with 39 million unique visitors per month as of January 2019 and over 21 million uploaded texts."

So, of the 21 million papers on Academia.edu, mine are in the top 2%?

You can put your papers on the site for free, but if you want to know more than what is shown on the screen-capture above (and on some other free pages), you have to become a "Premium Member," which involves paying a fee. That means someone would be making money off of showing my papers. That upsets a lot of academics, but if it helps get people to read my papers, it's okay with me. I've been putting my papers on Academia.edu since November 10, 2016.

Of course, it also means I constantly get emails from academia.edu with bits of information intended to persuade me to become a Premium Member in order to get more information. An email I received yesterday (July 20) informed me:

Dear Ed,

Someone in the department of Istituto di Nanotecnologia at Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) read your paper this week.

It's telling me that someone in the Institute of Nanotechnology at the Italian National Research Council read my paper about radar guns this week. If I become a Premium Member, I'll find out who it was.

I don't know if it is a coincidence or not, but on the 19th I received an email from a scientist in Italy who wrote that he had read my paper about Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories and:

It is matching my intuitive understanding of light velocity in a medium and so independent from excitation source but not from receiver.
I didn't know it was also the original idea of Einstein and now I think you are right in saying that his conception has been misunderstood and distorted.

He then asked if I had actually performed the experiment described in my paper. I replied that I hadn't, because a basic radar gun costs about $1,000 and, even if I did buy such a gun and performed the experiment, no one would believe it. So, I am looking for someone else to perform the experiment (while I continue to research radar guns to determine which gun would be best to use in experiments).

This morning I noticed that "top 2%" is a link. So, I clicked it and found that it shows me (for free) the locations of people who have been reading my papers. Here are the most recent:

Who's
been reading my papers on Academia.edu

Who's
been reading my papers on Academia.edu

I underlined in red two readers from Italy, one of whom is located at a university whose name takes 2 lines, and that reader has a "Role" at the university. (If I become a Premium Member, presumably the blurred out names will be made visible.) The other Italian reader is from a province in Sicily.

Meanwhile, this is what part of this morning's statistics from vixra.org look like:

So, even though the vixra.org address is the one I've been using when posting to sci.physics.relativity and on this site, my radar guns paper has only received 160 unique-IP downloads there while getting 186 views on Academia.edu. AND, it appears that academia.edu has a lot of viewers at colleges and universities, while I have no idea where the vixra.org readers are located. Hmm. Live and learn.

Comments for Sunday July 14, 2019, thru Saturday, July 20, 2019:

July 19, 2019 - Since I'm mostly just sitting around trying to think of ways to get access to "basic" radar guns to test (or to get someone else to test them), I've also had time to do some reading. This morning, just before lunch, I finished reading the paperback version of Janet Evanovich's very funny Stephanie Plum novel "To The Nines."

It was another thoroughly enjoyable book in the series. (I'm reading them in order.) While Fugitive Apprehension Agent Stephanie Plum doesn't get any of her cars blown up in this book, she does get shot (but not seriously). I don't remember that ever happening before. The book might be called a "screwball comedy," except that Stephanie has a serial killer taunting her. And a lot of people get killed in the book. While Stephanie captures at least two regular bail bond jumpers in the book, the main story is about someone who appears to be about to jump an unusual kind of bail. Stephanie's brother, the owner of the bail bonding company, made national news by posted bond guaranteeing that a man from India who entered the country on a visa would leave before his visa expired. Then, a week before the man was due to leave, he disappeared. So Stephanie Plum has to find him. Most of the humor comes from Stephanie's interactions with her family, her cop boyfriend, her screwball New Jersey neighbors, and some hard as nails regular bounty hunters. I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

July 18, 2018 - I just did something I've been meaning to do for weeks: I created a new web page for this site titled Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories. And I added it to the "notes about scientific topics discussed on this web site" that I mention in a box near the top of this web page. So, to get to the new page, if you do not know the direct link, you first have to first go to the "notes" page and then click on the link there that takes you to the "Radar Guns" page.

July 17, 2019 - The mathematicians on the sci.physics.relativity discussion group are still arguing about something I wrote on July 13. I wrote:

A speed that is a PERCENTAGE OF THE SPEED OF LIGHT IS a speed that is RELATIVE TO THE SPEED OF LIGHT.

Last night, the mathematician named "Tom" wrote:

No, it isn't. This is physics, and the word "relative" has a very
specific meaning, which is not this.

Is 1/2 somehow "relative to 1" or "relative to 2" or "relative to 3" or
... -- your assertion simply does not make sense.

At best this is a PUN on "relative", which destroys your attempts to use it in place of "relative to the inertial frame in which the radar gun is at rest" -- that is a QUITE DIFFERENT meaning of "relative" than the wishy-washy one you made up (and which nobody else ever uses).

        If "relative to the speed of light" were correct, why do
        you suppose that no physicist ever uses it???? (I suppose
        that some idiots and crackpots might use it.)

So, this morning I decided to find out if physicists use the term "relative to the speed of light." I began by doing a Google search for that exact term. I was informed that the term is used over 5 million times on the Internet, but the vast majority are just the same material used in different places. Looking through the links, I found a Wikipedia web page that says,

β in special relativity is the velocity, v, of an object relative to the speed of light, c: β = v/c. ... β is dimensionless and equal to the velocity in natural units. Any expression which involves v, like the Lorentz factor, can be rewritten using β instead.

So, in physics, the Beta symbol (β) means "the velocity of an object relative to the speed of light"! It appears that physicists commonly use the term (and the Beta symbol) but mathematicians like Tom may not.

On the physicsclassroom.com web site I found this:

One indicator of the optical density of a material is the index of refraction value of the material. Index of refraction values (represented by the symbol n) are numerical index values that are expressed relative to the speed of light in a vacuum. The index of refraction value of a material is a number that indicates the number of times slower that a light wave would be in that material than it is in a vacuum.

So, there is another symbol (n) which also has the meaning "relative to the speed of light."

Searching further, I found a scientific paper titled "The Beta Ratio in Special Relativity." This is the first sentence in the Abstract:

The Beta ratio in special relativity [1] is commonly expressed as β = v/c where v is the velocity between two bodies, and c is the speed of light.

Reference [1], of course is Einstein's 1905 paper about Special Relativity.

There were a lot more mentions of the term, but I next did a search for "relative to the speed of light" using Google Scholar and got 1,620 results. One arxiv.org paper titled "Measurement of the Group Velocity of Light in Sea Water at the ANTARES Site" seems to have nearly a hundred authors and contains this sentence on page 4:

In this, β is the velocity of the particle relative to the speed of light in vacuum.

And, of course, there are 1,619 more documents using the term.

Could it be that mathematicians just use the symbols without any understanding of what the symbols actually mean? That's the only way Tom's statement makes sense.

July 16, 2019 - Yesterday's discovery of a bunch of jokes about mathematicians spurred me on to look for more. While an Internet search found a lot of mediocre jokes, I also found two quotations that are worth repeating:

Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them, they translate it into their own language, and forthwith it means something entirely different. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn’t there. - Charles R Darwin

The Goethe quote seems to be everywhere on the Internet, but no one provides a source for it, i.e., they do not name a document written by Goethe that contains the quote.

The Darwin quote also seems to be everywhere on the Internet with no one providing a source for it. One web page said it was quoted in a book titled "PI in the Sky: Counting, Thinking, and Being" by John D. Barrow, but the book just uses the Darwin quote to start a chapter and doesn't state where it came from. However, the book has another interesting quote right after the Darwin quote:

I knew a mathematician who said, "I do not know as much as God, but I know as much as God did at my age." - Milton Shulman

PI in the Sky looks like a very interesting book, but when will I ever find time to read it?

The quote I found yesterday which said, "physicists tell mathematician jokes" spurred me on to search for physicists vs mathematician references. I found a web page titled "Even physicists are 'afraid' of mathematics." It says,

Physicists avoid highly mathematical work despite being trained in advanced mathematics, new research suggests.

The study, published in the New Journal of Physics, shows that physicists pay less attention to theories that are crammed with mathematical details. This suggests there are real and widespread barriers to communicating mathematical work, and that this is not because of poor training in mathematical skills, or because there is a social stigma about doing well in mathematics.

One can see from all the jokes about mathematicians where the "social stigma" comes from. Those who do well in mathematics seem unable to discuss anything except in mathematical terms, and they view anyone who attempts to discuss physics without using mathematics as being of inferior intellect and in need of additional schooling in mathematics.

That is probably typified by a guy named "Tom" on the sci.physics.relativity UseNet group who yesterday responded to some comments of mine from days before:

Me: I have repeatedly stated that a radar gun measures speeds relative to the local speed of light.

Tom: But that is impossible. No radar gun, or anything else, does that.

Me: That is EXACTLY what DOPPLER radar guns do.

Tom: Only in your personal FANTASY world.

In the real world, the one in which such radar guns exist, they emit a radar wave [@] of frequency f1, and receive a reflected wave from the target with frequency f2. They determine the target's speed RELATIVE TO THE RADAR GUN by heterodyning the two signals to get f2-f1 and applying the formula for Doppler shift. The speed of light has nothing to do with it [#]. The ground also has nothing to do with it (unless something fixed to the ground is the target).

[@] Yes, WAVE. Your attempts to describe this in terms of "photons" are ludicrous.

[#] The Doppler-shift formula depends on c, the symmetry speed of relativity. This is different from, but numerically equal to, the (vacuum) speed of light.

If I quote a NASA source where a single photon is used to explain how a police radar gun works, Tom just says they are "dumbing down" what really happens, because ordinary people are just too dumb to comprehend reality. And since the "dumbing down" version says just the opposite of what is know to Tom to be true, NASA is actually LYING.

If I quote Richard Feynman, who said,

"I want to emphasize that light comes in this form - particles. It is very important to know that light behaves like particles, especially for those of you who have gone to school, where you were probably told something about light behaving like waves. I'm telling you the way it does behave - like particles."

Tom will just laugh and argue that Feynman wasn't talking about radar, or Feynman clearly knew nothing about radar, because radar emits waves, not photons. And it becomes another opinion versus opinion argument which only ends when the non-mathematician gets tired of arguing with the mathematician.

I really really need to find some way to get others to perform experiments with radar guns. Solid experiments may not change the minds of any mathematicians, but it should relegate their beliefs to be something to write jokes about.

July 15, 2019 - After I finished writing and posting yesterday's "Sunday comment," I felt like just relaxing and reading a book. But, at the same time, my mind was still looking for ways to get someone to use a "basic" radar gun to demonstrate that such a gun measures motion relative to the speed of light, which is interpreted to mean relative to the gun or to a target. I cannot read a book if my mind is on other things, but I could try listening to an audio book, since the audio book will continue to play whether I'm paying attention or not. So that is what I did. I listened to the 5-hour 58-minute unabridged audio book version of Dashiell Hammett's crime novel "The Thin Man."

The story takes place in 1933, during Prohibition. So, it begins in a "speakeasy." I have the 1934 William Powell-Myrna Loy movie on DVD, and I've probably watched it and TV showings of it at least 6 or 7 times, probably more. I recall the movie also begins in a drinking establishment, but since Prohibition ended in 1933, I remember it as being a very elegant night club, not a "speakeasy." The book also mentions the Lindbergh kidnapping, which happened in 1932. I'm certain that wasn't mentioned in the movie, but I'll watch it again in a day or two just to make certain. (My records show the last time I watched it was on May 6, 2017.)

I recalled reading a Dashiell Hammett novel some time ago and writing a comment about it. Checking on it, I found that it was "Red Harvest," which I finished on January 24, 2016.

Anyway, I finished listening to The Thin Man around 9:30 last night. The fact that my mind kept drifting to scientific problems wasn't helped by the fact that the book has a LOT of different characters. You really need to pay attention if you want to remember who all the characters are and how they inter-relate. It's easier when you see the names in print. Just hearing a name doesn't usually make it memorable, at least not for me.

So, while the book wasn't exactly fascinating and absorbing, it was occasionally funny and a good way to pass the time. This morning I put Return of the Thin Man into my MP3 player. (I'm third in line waiting to borrow the one audio book copy of The Maltese Falcon that my library has available.)

Hmm. Just now, as I was returning from my kitchen with a fresh cup of coffee, I happened to notice a paperback book in my own library and I wondered what it had to say about mathematicians. It has a lot to say. The first quote worth mentioning is on page 10 and says,

In any academic setting, the scientists get along like a great big happy family' — with lots of bickering. Engineers tell physicist jokes,
physicists tell mathematician jokes, mathematicians tell engineer jokes, and it all goes around and around.

That's interesting. The book turns out to have a lot of mathematician jokes. Another quote from page 15 and 16 says,

A mathematician became captain of the kind of ship that actually sinks on purpose — a submarine. His briefing speech to new sailors went as follows:
“ I have developed a simple method that you would do well to learn.
Every day, count the number of times the submarine has dived since
you boarded. Add to this the number of times it has surfaced. If
the sum you arrive at is not an even number— don’t open the
hatches!”

Here's one from page 50:

“I don’t think my directional signal is working,” a physicist complained to her friend the mathematician. “Would you mind getting out of the car to take a look?”
The mathematician walked over behind the car. “Okay, turn the
blinker on. Yes, it’s working; now it isn’t, now it is, now it isn’t . . .”

This one from page 87 is particularly relevant to the discussions I had with the mathematicians on UseNet:

“And the result follows here quite obviously,” the cyberneticist
Norbert Wiener (1894—1964) once told a class.
One student timidly raised his hand and said, Professor Wiener,
I’m afraid I don’t see it.”
“Very well,” said Wiener, “ Perhaps I can derive it by some other
method.” He gazed into space for a moment, then nodded. “Yes,” he
said, “by a completely different method precisely the same result.”
He beamed at the student.
“But, Professor Wiener, I still don’t understand.”
Wiener looked stern. “Young man, if you can’ t understand such
a simple matter as this, having seen it derived by two quite different
methods, I am afraid you will never be a mathematician!”

I could go on and on, but I'll just quote one more. It's from page 153:

According to Fields Medalist Enrico Bombieri, there are three kinds of mathematicians: those who can count, and those who can’t.

Finding those quotes was an interesting way to spend an hour, but it doesn't really help me solve the problem I have with mathematicians.

July 14, 2019 - Yesterday afternoon, I finally put an end to the arguments on the sci.physics.relativity discussion forum, even though the arguments were helping me to understand how the mathematicians there can believe the crazy things they believe. It became clear that they believe what they believe because in college they were told to memorize and accept what they were told or they would flunk the course. They were told to believe it even if it did not make sense. But that also means they do not understand it, they just believe it. To truly understand something, it must make sense to you.

I've been trying to make sense of what the mathematicians believe. The only way it makes sense is if they just believe it because it is what they were taught in school, and they weren't allowed to question it. (Their attitude is also like a bunch of high-school know-it-alls who feel they understand everything about everything and can laugh at anyone who does not "know" what they "know.")

The problem then becomes: How can you convince all these people that they believe nonsense? You probably can't. Most people seem to believe what they want to believe. I spent more than a decade arguing with people who had conspiracy theories or alternative theories about who committed the anthrax mail attacks in 2001. I don't think I ever changed anyone's mind. Facts mean nothing to someone who thinks he knows more than everyone else.

But, experiments are different. There were no experiments which could be performed to show conspiracy theorists they were wrong about the anthrax attacks, but there definitely are experiments which can be performed to verify Einstein's theories. And in the past 100 years a great many such experiments have been performed, mostly to confirm time dilation.

That's why I'm still looking to see radar gun experiments performed to demonstrate that many of the beliefs held by mathematicians are totally wrong.

But who is going to do it? The impression I'm getting is that no one wants to argue with the mathematicians. People will perform experiments, create web sites or write papers that confirm Einstein's theories, but they NEVER seem to mention that they are also showing that many college text books and the mathematicians who wrote them are wrong.

When you point to an experiment that shows the college textbooks are wrong, mathematicians will argue that the experimenters are incompetent or that they were "dumbing down" their findings for the lowly common people who cannot comprehend physics the way mathematicians do. That was the response I got when talking about the NIST time dilation experiment, about using atomic clocks to measure the height of a mountain, about the Hafele-Keating experiment, and about every other time dilation experiment. Those experimenters just performed their experiments and let the world ponder them. They said the experiments confirmed Einstein's theories, but they didn't say anything about who or what the experiments disproved.

If my understandings are correct, what radar gun experiments would disprove is the most cherished belief held by mathematicians, the belief that: All motion is relative, which means that if Frame-A is moving at velocity v relative to Frame-B, Frame-B is also moving at velocity v relative to Frame-A. Neither Frame-A nor Frame-B is a "preferred" frame of reference.

Prior to Einstein, physicist-mathematicians imagined that an invisible aether filled the entire universe, the aether was completely stationary, and thus all other movements in the universe could be measured relative to the stationary aether. And light traveled as waves through the aether, just like waves through water.

Mathematicians accept that Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity showed that there is no stationary aether filling the universe. They interpret that as meaning that there is no way to measure motion in our universe except as being relative to another object, and each object measures its motion relative to the other object. That means there is no preferred frame of reference for motion.

It is the basis for the #1 dumbest belief in physics.

I have been arguing that Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity says that the speed of light can be used as a "preferred" frame of reference. Einstein said it replaced the imaginary aether that mathematicians previously used as a "preferred" frame of reference from which all movements are measured. He even provided a mathematical formula for calculating speeds relative to the speed of light:

The speed of light is 299,792 kilometers per second (kps). Anyone who doesn't want to do the math in his head or on a sheet of paper can compute time dilation by using that formula on a web page HERE. While a person measuring dilated time (t') records the passing of one second as he travels at 99.498833956657% of the speed of light (i.e., 298,290 kilometers per second), a person (t) who is traveling 0% of the speed of light will record the passing of 10 seconds.

Instead of being relative to an object, speeds can be measured as a percentage of the speed of light. Such speeds are obviously also relative to the speed of light.

But the mathematicians cannot accept that. Here is what the troll named "Odd Bodkin" wrote overnight:

Ed Lake wants to think that “relative speed” as a physics term means the fraction of one speed compared to another speed.

Not knowing what any physics term means he feels free to just guess and then insist with high confidence that his blind guess is of course right. And he sees no point in learning what the physics term REALLY means.

And here is what another troll named "rotchm" wrote a few minutes later:

You are misusing, misunderstanding, the meaning of 'relative'. The word 'relative' has many different meanings (did you know that?). You Are totally mixing them up. Its like you are saying that 30 mph cant be relative because your relatives are humans (kin, people, family) and 30 is not a human but a number. You are using the word 'relative' as "my family". That is NOT the meaning of 'relative' as we are using it in physics. You have an EXTREMELY SEVERE reading & comprehension deficiency.

And even though the whole two-week-long discussion (currently consisting of 239 posts) was about using radar guns to measure velocities, this morning "Paparios" argued:

My car speedometer tells me my car is moving at 36 km/hr (10 meters/second) with respect to the ground. That 10 m/s speed is equal to 0.01 km/s and is equal to 3.3333x10^-8c.

Again you are saying that my car moving at 36 km/hr means its speed is being measured relative to the speed of light.

Do you not see the magnitude of your ignorance?

Responding to those three or any one of the others would be an opinion versus opinion argument, which are a total waste of time. It is Einstein, not me, who stated that speeds can be measured as relative to the speed of light. But, the mathematicians won't believe that unless I can provide a direct quote where Einstein wrote IN ENGLISH the exact words "speeds can be measured as relative to the speed of light."

And, even then, they would argue that it may be what Einstein wrote, but it isn't what Einstein meant.

I'm done arguing with those mathematicians. Instead, I'm going to focus on finding some way to demonstrate what a "basic" radar will show when it is used on a moving vehicle and is pointed at a parked car, and what the same gun will show when used inside a moving vehicle and the gun is pointed at the front and rear walls (or dashboard and back seats).

If it is truly a "basic" radar gun and it proves me wrong, then I'll admit it and say nothing more about the subject. If I'm proved right, however, I'll be mentioning every experiment which says I'm right and how those experiments also show that the mathematicians and their text books are wrong.

Comments for Sunday July 7, 2019, thru Saturday, July 13, 2019:

July 11, 2019 - While the arguments on the sci.physics.relativity forum are still unanimously against me, the pattern elsewhere is very positive. This morning the statistics on Academia.edu look like this:

views
of my radar gun paper on academia.edu

It says there have been "140 views" since I put it on academia.edu on July 2, but only "21 Readers." That means that 140 people have downloaded the paper, but only 21 have "bookmarked" it. I'm not sure what "bookmarked" means in this context, but I suspect it means 21 people did something to enable them to find my paper again quickly if they need to - possibly to use as a reference in papers they are writing.

This morning, I also got a nice comment from someone on Academia.edu that said,

Dear Ed,
Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories
What sparked my interest was the catchy title. Having opened the paper, I find much food for thought. Keep up the good work

On Facebook it is still nearly all "Likes" and no more personal attacks. And the number of new people reading my paper Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories each day on vixra.org continues to be above zero.

As of this morning, the total number of new readers who have viewed the paper since it went on-line on July 1 is 56. The new reads reported on each following morning were spaced as follows:

July 2 = 1
July 3 = 3
July 4 = 8
July 5 = 4
July 6 = 0
July 7 = 1
July 8 = 3
July 9 = 18
July 10 = 14
July 11 = 4

Unfortunately, I have no way of telling if any of these reads will lead to someone doing actual experiments with radar guns to verify what is said in my paper. So, I'll continue to look for other places where I can get people to read my paper and possibly become curious enough to perform experiments.

July 9, 2019 - My paper Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories on vixra.org got 18 unique IP views yesterday. I don't think I ever before got 18 views in one day for any paper of mine on vixra.org. I think they might be mostly from Neil deGrass Tyson's Facebook page. On that page my comment about my paper got 4 "Likes" and 2 "shares." In addition, there have been no negative comments so far. David Beames was the first to post a comment, and all he said was, "Seems you'd need at least two [photons] to tell distance traveled and thus speed." To which Scott Gordon correctly responded, "Even one photon will still experience a Doppler shift due to reflecting off a moving object. Photon energy is proportional to frequency hence changes." So, there was no need for me to respond. I just "Liked" Scott Gordon's comment.

Meanwhile, that same paper has gotten about 150 reads on Academia.edu in the past 5 days, but I think Academia.edu sent out emails to all members telling them about my paper.

And some of the vixra reads may be coming from the Science, Philosophy, and Psychology Discussion Facebook group where I also posted a comment. I got two "likes" there, with no negative attacks.

There are plenty of attacks on the sci.physics.relativity UseNet group, of course. Some are very interesting. I tried to get them to explain how they can agree that light can reach a moving observer at a "closing speed" of c+v, where v is the speed of the observer, but they still inexplicably claim the light will be observed by the observer to arrive at c. It's totally illogical. The light arrives at a closing speed of c+v but also at c???? Wikipedia's comment about "closing speed" says,

Closing speeds

The rate at which two objects in motion in a single frame of reference get closer together is called the mutual or closing speed. This may approach twice the speed of light, as in the case of two particles travelling at close to the speed of light in opposite directions with respect to the reference frame.

Imagine two fast-moving particles approaching each other from opposite sides of a particle accelerator of the collider type. The closing speed would be the rate at which the distance between the two particles is decreasing. From the point of view of an observer standing at rest relative to the accelerator, this rate will be slightly less than twice the speed of light.

Special relativity does not prohibit this. It tells us that it is wrong to use Galilean relativity to compute the velocity of one of the particles, as would be measured by an observer traveling alongside the other particle. That is, special relativity gives the correct velocity-addition formula for computing such relative velocity.

I think that says Einstein's Special Relativity says it is okay for light to arrive at c+v, but Galilean relativity says c becomes the speed at which the light arrives, so it may be c with a different value. I'm still trying to get someone to explain it to me. Paparios just posted a lengthy response which doesn't seem to address the issue at all. It's just about his other misconceptions. Sigh.

July 8, 2019 - Yesterday, while eating breakfast, I finished reading another book on my Kindle. It was "Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter" by Scott Adams.

Scott Adams is the cartoonist who draws the Dilbert cartoons. A couple samples are shown below.

I knew that Scott Adams drew the Dilbert cartoons, but I didn't know that he had a big following on Twitter and was making his political opinions known by many media interviews. Nor did I know that he was a professional hypnotist.

I'm not sure what I was expecting when I borrowed the Kindle book from my local library, but I was probably expecting something a lot more funny. The book is actually deadly serious, and it is written by a guy who endlessly brags about his own accomplishments, who admits to being a great admirer of Donald Trump, and who seems to think that manipulating people is one of the greatest and most important talents in the world. Here's the first passage I highlighted in the book:

When candidate Trump answered questions about policies, it was clear he didn’t have a detailed understanding of the more complicated issues. Most observers saw this as a fatal flaw that would keep him out of the White House. I didn’t see it that way. I saw it as Trump recognizing that people don’t use facts and reason to make decisions. A skilled persuader can blatantly ignore facts and policy details so long as the persuasion is skillful.

The author seems to truly believe that "people don't use facts and reason to make decisions." I think I do use facts and reason to make decisions, but probably not all the time. I think the world consists of people who mostly use emotions to make decisions and people who mostly use facts and reason to make decisions. I think the people in the first category may outnumber the people in the second category.

Here's another quote from the book where the author brags about how he manipulated people to support Trump:

So why did I say Trump had exactly a 98 percent chance of winning when I couldn’t possibly know the odds? That’s a persuasion technique. You saw Trump use the intentional wrongness persuasion play over and over, and almost always to good effect. The method goes like this: Make a claim that is directionally accurate but has a big exaggeration or factual error in it. Wait for people to notice the exaggeration or error and spend endless hours talking about how wrong it is. When you dedicate focus and energy to an idea, you remember it. And the things that have the most mental impact on you will irrationally seem as though they are high in priority, even if they are not. That’s persuasion. If I had boringly predicted that Trump would win the election, without any odds attached to it, the public would have easily shrugged it off as another minor celebrity’s irrelevant opinion. But if I make you pause to argue with me in your mind about the accuracy of the 98 percent estimate, it deepens my persuasion on the main point—that Trump has a surprisingly high likelihood of winning.

A related quote:

I picked 98 percent as my Trump prediction because Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com was saying 2 percent. I did that for branding and persuasion purposes.

Scott Adams' primary reason for supporting Trump is Adams' absolute hatred of the idea of estate taxes. (Estate taxes were created early in the 20 Century when it was clear that the Rockefellers, the Duponts, the Hersts and a half-dozen other families would eventually own the entire country if all the money and property they accumulated could be passed down from generation to generation.)

I already had a problem with Hillary Clinton trying to rob my estate after I died. Now I also wanted to destroy the entire Democratic Party and all of its “politically correct” Nazi-labeling bullies. I rarely use my persuasion skills at full strength. I only do so in the context of a fight, or for some greater good. This was both. You need not remind me that Trump supporters on the Internet were also terrible bullies in many cases. But this is my story, and they weren’t coming after me.

So, I certainly wouldn't recommend the book, and there were many times I thought about simply reading something else, but I did get through it. It gives me chills to see how some people think.

Meanwhile, yesterday I posted comments about Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories to some Facebook groups, including Neil deGrass Tyson's group. It got one "Like" there, but nothing else. I also received an email from someone at Decatur Electronics who explained that what they mean when they say their Scout radar gun does not "work" when it is moving is that, if it is moving at 50 miles per hour toward an oncoming car traveling at 60 mph, the gun will show the oncoming car's speed as 110 mph, not 60 mph. So, it appears that none of the three guns I mentioned in my paper on Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories actually does what I'd hoped. And I have no idea how to identify which other radar guns are "basic" radar guns.

July 7, 2019 - The arguments on the Facebook thread I started on July 2nd have come to an end. The forum seems to have a troll named Iain Hilton who sees the forum as his own personal troll space. In his last post to me on July 5th, all he did was call me a bunch of filthy names because I "can’t even derive Pythagoras from the law of cosines." That was the last post in the thread.

Meanwhile, in the sci.physics.relativity discussion forum, the discussions have been continuing, and while they occasionally still generate good ideas, it seems clear that the arguments have recently hit a wall. The mathematicians there clearly do not understand anything except mathematics, so they cannot discuss anything except in mathematical terms. I've been trying to get Paparios to explain how a radar gun determines which speed to put on which display, i.e., how does it determine that it is measuring a target's speed when it puts that speed in the digital display on the left, and how does it determine that it is measuring the patrol car's speed when it puts that speed in the digital display on the right?

radar gun
target and patrol display windows

It is easy to do if you are measuring the speed of the radar gun (and the patrol car) by using the Doppler Effect when bouncing photons off of the radar gun's radome, but the mathematicians believe that is "impossible."

The mathematicians endlessly argue that the radome at the front of the gun and the emitter/receiver at the rear are always stationary relative to one another, so it is impossible to measure any speeds without measuring a change in distance. "Speed" is defined as distance divided by time.

That shows a total lack of understanding of the Doppler Effect as it applies to electromagnetic energy in the form of photons. When the gun is moving, photons emitted by the emitter at the rear of the gun have to travel farther to get to the radome because the radome is moving away from the point where the photons were emitted. I think Einstein described this in one of his books or papers by writing about a man on a moving train who walks toward the front of the train while the train is moving. By doing that, the man will enter the station earlier than if he had stayed in the back of the train. The distance between the rear of the train and the front of the train never changed, yet someone on the train can move forward and arrive earlier than someone remaining at the back.

In the arguments I see on sci.physics.relativity this morning, Paparios is still arguing that the gun always assumes that the slower speed of two different speeds is the patrol speed. He evidently just cannot understand any situation where there is only ONE speed. Yet, that is the situation when the patrol car is moving at 31 mph and there are no targets, and that is the situation when the patrol car is parked and the only target is traveling at 67 mph. How does the gun know that in the first situation the measured speed goes in the right-side display and in the second situation the measured speed goes in the left-side display? If zero is considered to be the slowest speed, then both situations should result in the only measured speed being displayed as the target's speed. I'll try to explain that to Paparios one more time, but I seriously doubt he'll have any answer that doesn't involve a mathematical formula that somehow determines which display to use by figuring out which is the slowest speed.

These arguments also make me more and more certain that my paper "Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories" is rock solid science that needs to be made more widely known. The most important aspect of all this is that the way radar guns work is really very simple. You just have to ignore all the complications that are added by mathematicians to justify their belief that radar guns emit waves instead of photons.

It's a situation where experiments can show everyone that the mathematicians are wrong. All you need to do is create video after video where radar guns are used to demonstrate that you can tell the speed of a truck from INSIDE the truck by pointing a radar gun at the front wall and pulling the trigger. A "basic" radar gun should show the truck's speed. A "complex" radar gun like the Kustom Signals Golden Eagle K-band Police Radar System used in the video I've been discussing for weeks should show the truck's speed in both the "target" display window and the patrol display window. There are some "complex" radar guns which may not work in a situation like that, such as the Bushnell Speedster which has only one display window and it is for the target, but that just makes things more interesting, since it means you need to explain the physics behind the fact that some guns show the speed of the truck from inside and some do not.

I just need to find someone to do the experiments and show them on YouTube. Mathematicians will argue that videos cannot disprove their beliefs, but it would still be interesting to see. And, if ALL the videos disprove what I've been saying, I'd definitely want to see that, too. Until then, I'll be trying to find someone to do the experiments and create videos of the experiments.

Comments for Monday July 1, 2019, thru Saturday, July 6, 2019:

July 5, 2019 - When I turned on my computer this morning, there was an email in my inbox from a European division of an American radar gun manufacturing company. They sent me the user's manual I had asked for on May 27. The email included a return email address, so I asked them a question. Hopefully, they will respond.

Also this morning, when I checked the statistics to find out how many people were reading my radar gun paper, I found just 4 new readers of the version on Vixra.org, but 42 new readers of the copy I put on Academia.edu. I think that is a one-day record of some kind.

Meanwhile, I found CONFIRMATION of about 90% of my paper on "Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories" in a video I've been mentioning on this site for months. The video is HERE. Somehow, I failed to realize everything that the video demonstrates. Yesterday, I wrote a 7 page description of what is shown in the video and put it on-line in pdf format HERE.

The argument was originally just about whether the hand-held radar gun in the screen capture below (from the 5 minute mark in the video) was pointed at the highway or at the white car that was just passing by on the outside lane.

When I discovered that the hand-held gun is a Bushnell Speedster SPORTS radar gun, I realized it must be pointed at the highway if it reads 62 mph. And what the video really shows is that the "Mis-aligned Antenna" on the dashboard indicates that gun is moving at 55 mph while the Bushnell gun is moving at 62 mph. So, clearly the guns do not show the speed of the vehicle, they show the speed of the gun. The mis-aligned gun is pointed off to one side, which means that, due to the "cosine effect," the displays show that mis-aligned gun is moving slower than the hand-held gun.

Going through the video again, I found that it clearly demonstrates how a "basic" radar gun works, in addition to demonstrating how a "complex" radar gun works. I created the pdf file with my explanation of what the video confirms. The only reaction I got from one of the trolls on sci.physics.relativity was:

Videos do not verify theories, old deluded fart

Ah, but they do. Experiments verify theories, and an experiment can be done intentionally or unintentionally. The people who made the video just didn't intend to demonstrate what they demonstrated.

Once you realize that a "complex" radar gun emitter at the back of the gun sends out photons that bounce off the target AND off of the radome on the front of the gun, what the video shows is very educational. This is the illustration I used in the pdf file to show the two different measurements the gun makes.

The image below, from the 2 minute 33 second mark in the video, shows what is displayed when the gun and its radome are not moving but the gun has a moving target within range. The photons that travel to the target are picking up a target that is moving at 67 mph, and that speed shows on the target speed display on the left side of the display box. The gun's speed would be shown in a display on the right, which is dark because the speed is less than 10 mph.

stationary radar gun with moving target

This is the same thing a "basic" radar gun would display, only it wouldn't have a separate display for the gun's speed. It would show only the target speed.

The image below, from the 2 minute 54 second mark in the video, shows what happens when the only reading the gun can give is for the speed of the gun.

The gun shows only its own speed of 31 mph, which is assumed to also be the patrol car's speed. The 31 mph speed shows in the display on the right side. There is no moving target ahead of the gun, so the fact that the gun and car are moving at 31 mph does not change the speed of the photons the gun emits, in full agreement with Einstein's Second Postulate. That means the photons from the gun hit the pavement and the trees at the same speed they would if the gun was stationary. Only a "complex" radar gun has the ability to show its own speed by measuring how fast the radome is traveling.

A "basic" radar gun has no ability to show its own speed, so in the situation above, it would give no reading.

This confirms about 90% of what is in my paper on Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories. I assume that the mathematicians on the sci.physics.relativity forum will see things differently, but I'd like to see them argue something other than that videos verify nothing. How would I be able to demonstrate my theory to them if I couldn't do it with a video?

July 4, 2019 - I hope everyone has a great July 4 holiday!

July 3, 2019 - Wow! They have as many obnoxious jerks on the Facebook Astrophysics and Physics forum as they do on UseNet's sci.physics.relativity. The only difference is that the jerks on Facebook seem to respond faster. When they do, of course, they hurl insults, sarcasm and personal attacks instead of discussing the subject of my post, just like the jerks on UseNet.

One positive difference is that people on Facebook can indicate they "Like" something without actually writing a comment which the jerks would then eviscerate. So far, eight people "liked" the comment I put on Facebook. Strangely, all of them seem to have Indian or Middle Eastern names, and none of the jerks do. That tells me the next physics Facebook group I should post to is one created by people in the Middle East. I'm a member of a couple.

The site also says three people "shared" my post. Unfortunately, I do not know if there is any way to determine where they "shared" it.

Interestingly, one guy on the Astrophysics and Physics forum argued "Light is a lot faster that radio waves, dude." That's the first time I've encountered anyone who believes that. The guy has a radar detector in his car, and he claimed that two links he provided about radar detectors somehow confirm his belief that light travels faster than radio waves. But, of course, he doesn't give any quotes, and I don't have the time to hunt through the sites at the links to find out what he's talking about.

Later, that same guy (Mike Shelton) argued,

Radio waves are electrons, travelling through the air. You basically said radio waves are photons.

and

Radio waves do not travel at the speed of light!!! WTF is wrong with you?!!! I give up!!! You need to take electronics theory.

When I tried to respond, I found that I was blocked by an "owner" from doing so. I thought for a moment that my discussions there had come to an end. When I reloaded the page, however, I found that the entire discussion I had with Mike Shelton was removed. I did an experiment to see if I could still post, and I was able to do so. So, someone evidently only deleted the discussion with Mike Shelton because Mike Shelton's claims and beliefs were just too preposterous for the forum. That's another first.

My blog comment about Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories received just one response overnight. The guy didn't provide any name, but Paparios on the sci.physics.relativity forum stated there that he had posted to my blog. It was the same old arguments, so I responded the same old way.

There were only 2 readers of my revised paper on Academia.edu overnight, and only 3 on vixra.org. I expected a lot more, but 8 of my 9 papers on vixra.org got new first-time readers overnight. That's something that hasn't happened in a long time.

July 2, 2019 - As expected, the people on the sci.physics.relativity forum just hurled insults and sarcasm when I advised them of the new version of my paper about Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories. Strangely, Paparios hasn't yet made any comments. Also, there now seems to be at least one person on my side on that forum. Unfortunately, he posts like a troll. When JanPB posted the same question he has asked me at least a dozen times before:

Why do you waste your time on this?

Brzké Potrebu posted this response:

You didn't read beyond the first sentence in that paper.

And I posted this response to JanPB's question:

How is resolving a one hundred year old argument a "waste of time"?

Then I moved to the next step to publicize the paper: I posted it to academia.edu. Academia.edu doesn't have any easy way to show different versions of the same paper, so I posted the new version and changed the name of old version to include "old version" as part of the name. Whether or not it will get a lot of viewers depends upon whether or not academia.edu decides to send out emails to advise its members about the new version.

After putting the paper on academia.edu, I wrote a comment for the Facebook group Astrophysics and Physics. It's a moderated group, so the comment is currently pending review by a moderator. I didn't just post the paper and ask people's opinions of it, I somewhat disguised it by writing a comment about NASA's web site which says that a single photon from a police radar gun can theoretically measure the speed of an oncoming car. I explained how that seemed to contradict what is written in a lot of college text books, according to the paper "at the following link" (which is the link to my paper). If they allow my comment to appear on that Facebook group, it could result in a lot of readers for my paper. And it might generate some new and different discussions, which is what I'm hoping for. Either way, I might try posting to the other Facebook groups where I am a member - including, of course, my own group Time and Time Dilation, even though it would be somewhat off-topic there.

As my final task this morning, I created a new discussion thread on my interactive blog and titled the thread "Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories," of course. It's the first time I've started a new thread on that blog since February 26, 2018. I have no idea how people will learn about the new blog thread, but it was something else on my to-do list that I have now done.

July 1, 2019 - When I turned on my computer this morning, there was an email from Vixra.org in my inbox advising me that version #4 of my paper on Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories was now available on-line at this link:
http://vixra.org/pdf/1806.0027v4.pdf

As soon as it was available, someone named "Mikko" immediately posted a comment on Vixra stating that I didn't correctly describe how the LO (Local Oscillator) works inside the radar gun. He might be right, but the paper correctly describes the purpose and function of the LO. And I'm not sure that having a lengthy description of how the LO actually works would improve the paper. The LO's purpose is to give the gun something to compare returned photons against. Besides, according to at least one source:

In any electric circuit, the smallest particle of electrical energy is NOT the electron. The smallest particle of energy is the "unit quantum" of electromagnetic energy: it is the photon. Electrons are not particles of EM energy, neither do they individually carry the energy as they travel in the circuit. (Electricity is the medium. The energy flows rapidly through the wave-medium.) Electricity is 'made' of electrons and protons, while electrical energy is electromagnetism and is 'made' of photons.

That same person also complained that "In some places the fourth version correctly says that a radar gun compares frequencies, but in other places it still incorrectly says that a radar gun compare wavelengths." I told him that may be so, but I'm not going to create a fifth version just to correct that kind of error.

Sigh. You can't please everybody. But, it's also certainly possible that he is just trying to be helpful.

Meanwhile, this afternoon I finished listening to the 8-hour 29-minute audio book version of "Sleeping Giants" by Sylvain Neuvel.

Yesterday, after finishing writing my Sunday comment and after submitting version #4 of Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories to vixra.org, I had planned to sit down on my couch by the window and read a Stephanie Plum paperback novel. But, first I had to do some grocery shopping. And while shopping, an ominous shelf cloud was coming at me from the west. I got home before the rain started, but it was almost as dark as night outside. So, instead of reading a paperback novel by artificial light, I listened to the first 7½ hours of Sleeping Giants, not turning off my MP3 player until it was bed time.

Sleeping Giants is book #1 in a science-fiction series that begins with the discovery of a gigantic metal hand in a pit in a forest near Deadwood, South Dakota. The discovery is made a young girl named Rose, who accidentally falls into the pit. Rose grows up to be a physicist who tries to figure out where the metal hand and other artifacts in the pit came from. And when other parts of what seems to be a giant metal robot are found in other parts of the world, Rose helps put the robot together. It is a virtually indestructible robot with a female figure and it stands about 200 feet tall. The story is about who buried the robot parts 3,000 years ago, and why.

The story is told as a series of official reports and transcripts, which is very unusual but also kind of interesting. It was a very enjoyable audio book, read by about a dozen different actors, each reading a different role.

I have the second book in the series, Waking Gods, on reserve at my library. I'm #18 in line waiting to read one of the 3 audio book copies they have, so it could be months before I can borrow a copy.

Right now, my next task is to mention version #4 of Radar Guns and Einstein's Theories on sci.physics.relativity.

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