h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sorry! I forgot to put the entry ID on my last posting.
I wish to recommend the above guide entry for the Edited Guide. It is the only theory I know of anywhere which attempts to explain the quantum evidence by relating it to other natural evidence, and justifying and representing details of a cause acting universally in addition to all the known forces.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A634457

I do not think this entry is suitable as ae Edited guide entry. Guide entries should be simple enough that the average reader can look through them, although they can certainly provide a lot of detail. This entry is impenetrable. I understand a reasonable amount of physics and a smattering of quantum mechanics, but this entry made no sense at all to me.

I suggest you write it on a much simpler level, so that even I can understand it!

I tend to agree, you obviously know your stuff, but we're not all up to the same level as you.

I don't consider myself completely stupid, yet I gave up reading before getting a third of the way through.

An "idiots guide" to the subject would be a little more appropriate.

- now I'm going to find some asprin

However, please don't get disheartened, we're not putting you or your work down, we're simply saying that there are very few quantum physicists on this site and the rest of us are pretty .

Give us a chance


whisky

The level is way too high. I have understood as much as from my academic textbooks. I know this kind of text very well: It's a review article in a scientific journal. (Even if it wasn't intended to be.)

Remember, this is a _guide_, not a scientific journal. Much of your article is (highly) speculative. A guide entry must present information in a concised form for a general audience. Either by focussing on one very special subject or by giving an overview.

However the general topic may contain enough for an interesting Edited Guide entry (maybe two?). So try to think down on a popular scientific level, shorten the text to one fifth or so, and add links for the masochistic.

I think the article only fails to reveal it's meaning by keeping to itself the assumtions it is built on. For instance in refering to gravity the word gravity is never used.... for that matter I don't see a definition or even a label for the three basic forces.... if all of these things are in the guide already (which I assume they are or why write this article first) then the begining of this article should be a bunch of links with desriptions of how they relate.

I don't believe that the subject of this article is beyond the scope of the guide, but it does need to be on the high rungs of a ladder of articles that allow a person a chance to build at least a vauge background into what you are trying to talk about.

The language seems overly repetitive without actually being descriptive. It reminds me of any recorded dialog of a schizophrenic rant.

Knowledge of a subject does not allways come with the ability to impart that knowledge onto other people. I know a good bit about quantum theory, but would be hard pressed to teach a class in it. I would be complete unable to do it (and would not attempt it) without first ensuring that my students have a solid foundation of basic physics and higher maths.

I would love to see an article on this subject entered into the guide. I heartily congratulate you on writing this article. I am sure it was difficult, and I hope you continue to try to boil it down into something that will be accepted into the guide.

I'm printing this - I'll take it home with me and think over it - it seems like there's very intelligent stuff in it - but I'm not that fast... I can't help it I'm a scientist. I'll read through it and get into some details tomorrow.

But before we start: There are some 1st person parts in there that must be adapted.

And of course it is very long... Mabe you could split this entry into more digestible chapters?

See you all tomorrow. Meanwhile look at the Nobel prize list up for PR.

Oh... And RP Feynman did not come up with his own 'quantum mechanics'. He just extended the common everyday QM to his QED, but QM stayed the same.

Anyways, I'l look at it. Bye,

HELL

I don't believe this is edited guide material. It's a personal interpretation instead of a definite explanation. There's a lot of very peculier ideas and radical notions. The science is poorly explained, links are made between unrelated theories. Conclusions are drawn which don't make sense.

I don't like to dismiss it as entirely as crackpot science, but I think this is best left as an unedited account.

Hiya!

Let me first welcome you to h2g2! I see that this is your first entry, and you are obviously quite knowledgeable on the subject; after all, one does not write a whole thesis (I assume that is what this summary is from ) on it without knowing a great deal about the subject - which undoubtably you do

What I did glean from it is that it is very detailed, which is good, however, I have to agree with my fellow peers; the detail, although good, somehow detracts from the writing. The content is quite obviously there; and I commend you for that, however, it demands much of a pre-requisite; that the reader should know a great deal about the subject before reading this.

I will not attempt to comment on the content - but I will give pointers on style. I have been in this position before; not with quantum physics, but with medical entries. It is a challenge to write on complex subjects such as the action and mechanism of action of Aspirin (I'm sorry about the plug... but there are other examples; there is an excellent entry on Bells Palsy which is currently being edited, and another excellent one which was on Bussard Ramjets which was recently on the front page), but I think you must consider for whom you are writing for. Although I appreciate that your knowledge of the subject is vast, what I tend to do is imagine trying to explain the subject to a non-medic so that they understand, and hopefully, take a serious interest in it too. It might be worthwhile to consider taking such an approach. Or even trying to explain to person who may not be interested in the subject in an enticingly interesting fashion; I leave the style up to you, but in its current state, it may not 'read' too comfortably. However, as the previous peers have remarked, this definitely needs changing.

Edited guide entries cannot make references to the first person; this is because h2g2 is similar to the style of an encyclopedia, albeit an irreverant one - I think that the first thing that could be done is to remove all first person references (I, me, we, myself etc.) from the entry. From a totally personal point of view, it might be worthwhile to re-write the last paragraph, and remove your email address from the entry. The latter is not allowed in the edited guide; the final paragraph, seems to me, although I'm sure it was unintentional, a bit arrogant. I'm sure that we all take the entry seriously; the very fact that peers are commenting on it is a sign of their seriousness.

A final point. Here, in Peer Review, there may be some quite harsh commenting, or even deamnds to remove, cut, splice, re-write, add, and even some rather pedantic comments on grammar and punctuation. However, we as the peers are all well meaning, and please don't take offence! We are all here to help entries get into the guide, and would welcome many a knowledgeable researcher such as yourself

I readily anticipate your updated entry!

WD

I can see all sorts of problems with this entry.

for a start, it is not one entry, but multiple entries. and these entries cover everything from quantum mechanics to cosmology to thermonuclear physics (and thus by implication magnetohydrodynamics).

A lot of these subjects are currently in a state of flux, as they have little, or changing information as their basises.

Then the author tries to explain all of these problems away using "vortical forms", which if you replace the term with "god" is just the tired old "god of the gaps" arguament all over again.

He also tries to claim that feynmann said that we don't understand quantum mechanics, but if you read some of feynmann's work, you find that what he means by understand is that you can teach it to high school children in a clearly understandable form. What he meant is that quantum mechanics was at the time (and to a certain extent still is) at the level that computing was in the early 50's, where there were only a few people on the planet who thouroughly understood it.
now, it is more like computing was in the early 60's, where university graduates in phsics can understand it, but no-one else can.

He peostulates the use of 4th and 5th dimensions for the explanation of these "vortical forms", insisting that they must be spatial, but there are perfectly good dimensions that are already required for current explanations (11 dimensions at the moment). Even this isn't a problem though, as if you need more, then you can enter the mathematical world of phase space, and use as many dimensions as you have orthogonal variables, and only needing a small number of actual dimesions to hold it.

He also uses these forms in a way similar to that used for superstring theory, so that again they don't seem to be necessary.

he also uses the missing matter problem in passing, while failing to deal with it in a good enough manner. He doesn't mention that the missing matter is necessary because of the gravitational weighing of the galaxies, and due to the universe having approximately the critical density. he also dismissies the information we now know about the supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies, and the constraints that they place on theories dealing with galaxy formation. he also fails to deal with the fact that as yet, the theories of galaxy formation can't include detailed magnetohydrodynamics predictions which are known to be necessary, but that we currently have not got enough information to program.

Generally, this entire review needs a rethink, as it is at once both too speculative, and tries to be too all encompasing. This could make the whole thing look as silly as the phlogison theory of combustion if any of it's unspoken assumptions are breached, and it has meany of them.

Ufff... I read it (11 printed pages).

Here is the extract I found. First of all it was difficult to see what the entry is all about in the first place - the title is somewhat misleading...

The extract: There are many unsolved problems in physics (The Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox and all the Nonlocality stuff, Gravity and QM, Life as a struggle agaist chaos - 'form conservation'). And the author has a basic approach to solve the problems: More dimensions that are invisible to us, or Vortices (latter was written in a little confusing way, so maybe I didn't understand it completely.) - Some parts I thought were far fetched, some parts seemed good... But mainly it was confusing.

Even though it is interesting to see a different approach to these problems and it is interesting to see how things interconnect, I still don't think this Entry is suitable for the edited guide.

For some reasons:

1 - It is not describing a fact. It is inciting a discussion (This intention is clear if you read the last paragraph)

2 - Stylistically it is too confusing. One cannot go from Aristotle to Feynman to explain invisible 4th dimension nonlocal causes without tying some difficult knots in the way. This leads to point 3:

3 - Maybe the author chose a too wide topic to write about - that's a very typical beginner's mistake. For that reason the entire article fails to make a clear statement.

4 - Laymen don't understand this text.

Well,

that was me and my personal oppinion.

HELL

I want to stress that though this text in its current form is not suitible, the topics covered (I believe) can and should be represented in the guide. Now since I really don't want to be the person to write them, I hope we aren't discoraging the author too much.

BTW Xyroth, the sentance:
"He peostulates the use of 4th and 5th dimensions for the explanation of these 'vortical forms', insisting that they must be spatial, but there are perfectly good dimensions that are already required for current explanations (11 dimensions at the moment)."
is somewhat misleading as depending on not just which flavor of physicist, but even on which particular one in the field, you ask you will get all sorts of different answers to how many different dimensions there are. I can't remember who said it, but it went something like: Some physicists will tell you that there are all these dimensions, but anything more than 25 is just silly.

I have started on Bell's Nonlocality and on the EPR-Paradox some time ago - but it's resting now, since I am still looking for a general easy to understand form to present all that stuff...

There are also some bits about the structure of matter and sub-atomic particles out there.As well as some quantum mechanical beginner's stuff.

This particular article - from what I understood - equates "nonlocality" with the "will of matter to perpetuate itself" - I think this is indeed an interesting thought. But, it's speculation.

I surely don't want to demotivate the author... Some thoughts have good potential. This entry is just very complicated to read, and some interconnections are to wide...

Bye,

HELL

when I say that there is 11 dimensions currently, I mean that the theories that are generally believed need at least 11 to explain everything. The epr paradox makes things trickier, as it is actually true. you can make a dirac pair, seperate them, and get an instantanious response to sensing them.

I am not claiming that these current theories are complete (they are not, especially when you try and reconcile QM and relativity), and there is loads of work going on looking at how to make it more complete, but the scope of the author's postulates and their dependancies mean that with all of the areas where there is currently uncertainty, any of them can trip up the theory, and the whole thing will come crashing down.

I'm jumping in here to try to put some of the above in context. I'm not going to pretend enough knowledge of the content to offer opinions on that, but as someone who's managed to get entries into the Guide on several rather different subjects I've got some experience about the process, so...

Andrew: I'll address you as Andrew since "185122" seems a bit impersonal.

First: welcome to the vicissitudes of Peer Review. First and foremost it is important to stress that this is not "Peer Review" in the sense of a scientific journal's peer review. It would more accurately be called "any yahoo who can click on the title of your entry review". So, if you're intending getting a few entries in, expect random criticism from those completely unqualified.

On the other hand, don't assume that just because someone comes and comments here and his screen name is "Spangle the magnificent, Keeper of the pointy bit on top of policemans helmets" that he isn't Stephen Hawking's cleverer younger sister. Obvious, but worth saying. Also worth saying is: don't assume everyone here is English, or even has English as a first language. I made the mistake of thinking that because someone didn't spell "satellite" correctly, they mustn't know much about the subject. I was royally wrong on that - they knew as much if not more than I, but were operating in a second language for them, which made their erudition and command of technical English all the more impressive, if only very, very slightly flawed. You have already attracted the attention of at least three highly qualified and very articulate scientists, and a medico with a cute name (hi Witster!). Value their input.

Enough with potentially patronising welcomes (if you found the above patronising, then please, ignore it). On with actual constructive criticism. You have easily enough material here for three good, linked entries, possibly more. Trying to combine the lot into one is definitely biting off more than you or anyone else can chew. You must consider your target audience for this stuff. The target audience here (i.e. H2G2) would be, I like to think, the interested and informed layman. This means any concept which is not readily available to the average quality newspaper reader should be explained in full. If that means another entry to explain it, so be it. The beauty of this place is that you can put your explanation in a whole separate entry, the just use the tag.

I've faced this dilemma myself. You have two options. First, you could split the current entry into manageable chunks, send them out into the world of Peer Review separately and manage the nightmare of comments coming in from all directions on all of them at once, updating each entry in response to each comment where necessary. You need to cross your fingers that they all get recommended at once, more or less, in order to retain the links between them. This approach worked for me, and I got six entries into the guide (including the above mentioned one on Bussard ramjets) which were written almost at once and posted over the space of a week.

Alternatively, propose this entry as the basis for a University project - a linked set of entries. This has several advantages. First, you get a shiny badge on your personal space saying "Official Field Researcher". I put that first because I'm an inveterate collector of crap, including virtual crap like badges. Second, your entries skip the Peer Review process. Third, they're on the front page for a week, maybe even two, rather than the one day each that normal entries get. Finally, you get to collaborate with those best qualified to help you, while remaining in control. This is definitely recommended. Have a poke about on the Peer Review page for details, and talk to xyroth, who's taken on the most controversial project in recent H2G2 history (kudos, xyroth, rather you than me... ).

One other thing: drop that final paragraph. The Peer Review forum was very specifically set up for people here to comment, here. If you open up a new thread in your email inbox, it just makes things more confusing, for us if not for you. Also, some of us here value our anonymity to the point of not using email with other Researchers. There's a forum here, and you put it up here, so why not use it?

Finally, welcome in. You are clearly knowledgeable. I hope that conversations here will inspire further entries from you. I turned up here and simply didn't know what to write. A few days poking about were enough to inspire a few things, and I'm still at it. I hope inspiration is as kind to you as it has been to me. Go to it!

H.

one downside to the university project aproach is that no-one comes allong to criticise the stuff, even those who are signed up for it.

any chance that I can have someone come along to the intelligence project at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A584525 and pick at it for a while and see if they can spot any problems that i've missed?

This entry has attracted a lot of attention, but I'm not sure that everyone fully understands what this article is.

This is not an attempt to explain any area of modern science, but a personal theory that Andrew has thought up and is trying to publicise. While this sort of thing is quite welcome on h2g2, it is however, fictional, even if Andrew does not view it as such, and therefore no more suited to the edited guide than Scott Bennett's diary.

The entry starts with a somewhat muddled outline of many areas of science, it then gives a personal philosophical interpretation of this. The later sections then explain an imaginative theory which claims to explain dark matter, the solar neutrino problem, and a lot else besides.

Andrew does not appear to be subscribed to this conversation, or to have returned since posting it. But if you are reading this, here is my advice:

If you enjoy thinking up these theories, by all means continue, but remember that it is just a personal activity. I'm afraid you will not find anyone with the appropriate science qualifications to take you seriously. Science progresses by testing new ideas with theoretical calculations, computer models, and experimental tests. And even small ideas will not receive any attention unless they are justified by these. You really can't expect to solve all the problems in modern physics on your own.

Please stay with us on h2g2, leave this as an unedited guide entry, write a summary of it on your personal space so we can talk to you there. Then write some entries on established scientific topics - you clearly know a fair bit about them - and put them in peer review.

One reason why I wrote my entries on dark matter and antimatter, is that I noticed people were thinking up and discussing their own ideas about them; and I felt the guide should have a definite explanation of what they actually were. Readers can then read both accounts, and they know which is the accepted scientific view, and which is someones personal ramblings. These entries have become forums for people to post their ideas to, some crazy, some humurous, some totally wrong.

You could write an account of some area of quantum physics, and then explain your personal ideas in a conversation below it.

*sigh* I have a feeling this one may be Flea Market bound....

Andrew, if you're out there, *please* stop by and respond to some of the comments here. Otherwise this will be tagged as a "lost thread" and moved over to the Flea Market, where I fear no one will be willing to take it on, as they might feel the material's a bit over their heads....


Mikey

Well, I checked Researcher 185122's personal space, and it remains un-intro'd. This looks more and more flea market bound..

*sigh*

I think its time to first a move to the FM. I don't think its currently edited guide material and would need quite a bit of work to get it there.

If the author's still out there, could he/she/it please pop by?

:x - Wearing a scout _/\_