Customer Reviews

Our Undiscovered Universe: Introducing Null Physics the Science of Uniform and Unconditional Reality

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Witt unsuccessfully attempts to describe an alternative theory the observed red shift in galaxies that cosmologist claim to be evidence of an expanding universe. Witt says that as light travels through intergalactic space, it stretches internally due to the fact that space is four dimensional space-time instead of simple three dimensional space. This sounds like general relativity theory, but in fact is a blurred misrepresentation of it. Witt says that the front of a photon would travel slightly farther than the back would. Witt envisions the photon as a wavelength, when in fact, it is a point source of electromagnetic phenomenon that cycles completely once every wave length it travels through space-time. Photons have no front or back.

Witt also does not explain why the front of the wave would go further than the back. Even if we were talking of a stick, the fact that space-time has four dimensions never infers that the front end of some thing goes further than the back. Internal dimensionality is conserved through passage through any form of space time. Stretching of dimensions only seems to occur relativistically to other viewers. At the end of a two billion years journey through space-time, a stick or a photon will be the same length as they started.

I personally would like another explanation for the red shift than some unexplained Big Bang or such, but Witt's explanation doesn't do it.

Likewise the rest of the book seemed to be circularly reasoned, where if you buy some original (i.e. nothing must create everything) premises, you can take yourself anywhere.

As a matter of fact, I am impressed with how much nothingness makes up the universe, and I do believe that eventually science will discover manners of circularity that create a self caused-causing universe, but I don't think that Witt's science is thorough or correct.

Before spending any hard earned money on this book, be aware that it contains a collection of proposals that run contrary to most current thinking in the scientific community. The author challenges the well accepted expansion of the universe; he proposes quantum interference in double slit experiments are due to a strange form of hysteresis; he dismissed the EPR experiments as round off errors.

The author would be advised to submit his ideas to peer review rather than promoting them in a pop science book. The reasoning behind his assertions is perhaps better left to psychologists than to physicists.

If you like this book, there's another you should read--The Final Theory: Rethinking Our Scientific Legacy. They both belong in the circular file. Take my advice-don't waste your time, money and effort on this. I would have rated it zero stars but that option wasn't available

What's amazing here is how a confabulation of crackpots can pump up junk science to a four-star Amazon review. And it doesn't help that on Amazon it's not possible to give a book zero stars. Heck, you should be able to give minus stars, for books that misinform or deceive.

This book belongs in the juvenile fiction section of the book store. There is almost no mathematical logic to his assumptions. His reasoning is terribly flawed and he backs up his outrageous statements with wildly inaccurate mathematical examples.

There is nothing scientific about this book, period.

"...You gotta have something, if you want to be with me!" (Billy Preston)

I always figured that if the Big Bang were true, there would have to be a corresponding 'negative' Big Bang in order for energy to be conserved. We observe only the 'positive' half, somehow. This fits in with the idea of vacuum energy with spontaneous pair-production and annhilation but on a very large scale. :) As a theory it accounts for most of the observations but the Big Bang still does not satisfy. Mr Witt's idea gets around the 'missing negative energy universe' by positing a zero-total-energy observable universe which is clever. From this starting point he derives a steady-state cosmos of infinite dimension and duration. For example if cosmic energy density must be zero, which is his axiom, we can attain that by simply dividing the total energy (vast but finite) by the infinite volume in which it is embedded. In such ways he avoids invoking an external unobservable balancing 'negative' BB.

I skipped the parts regarding quantum machanics. Even the physicists who created it hated it. I spent many hours diagonalizing matrices, caculating ionization potentials and finding eigen-solutions to the Schrodinger Equation while getting my 4-yr physics degree from Clarkson College, a first-line engineering school. Quant is full of enough holes already but it does work. One must swallow hard and close one's eyes to the implications, but it works. I have no wish to re-enter that world.

I enjoyed his exposition of a steady-state cosmology. Observations indicate galaxies are stable configurations. They are quite old; they contain very old stars. They aggregate in interesting ways on the largest scales. It may well be thay act as a kind of pump for protons. And remember, an electrical current can be described in terms of electrons in motion going one way, or 'holes' between the elctrons going the other way. By convention we track the electrons and not the protons. So there has to be a two-way street with electrons in and protons out, if there is to be a galactic current. The electrons are there -- we observe them -- but is that merely our convention at work? How do we falsify Mr Witt's conclusions?

One piece of evidence Mr Witt did not address. We estimate the current age of the universe as something less than 14-15 BY. But the largest sky surveys show galaxies clumping into long filaments -- 150 BLY long -- with correspondingly large voids between them. Locally the galaxies seem to be randomly distributed. They are present in every direction we look. So how did they cross those immense gulfs and link into those gigantic filaments in such a short period of time? This large-scale structure argues for a universe at least 10 times older than the current estimate.

In addition we have an horizon problem. Suppose the universe IS just 15BY old. That means light from an object more than 15BLY distant has not yet had time to arrive here at planet Earth. That is not the same as saying nothing exists out beyond that time horizon.

I am glad Mr Witt has written this book. For one thing it represents a lot of work on his part and it is good to know there are people out there like him that feel strongly enough to make the attempt to solve the problem. My own efforts have been mere thought experiments and thus useless to anybody but me. :)

Criticise him at will but we need him and others like him if we are to make any progress. Without doubt he has gone wrong somewhere but he has presented interesting ideas in a coherent consistent manner. As an an engineer he ought to figure out some way to exploit his cosmology and write a good science fiction novel exploring the consequences. (That's what I said about Von Daniken, too, at the time.) Hey, Vernor Vinge could do it for him!

Because uncertainty surrounds his hypothesis how can we grade him? My three stars thank him for his long hard slog. If he is wrong -- and surely he is if only in some particulars -- he has still made a contribution to the correct solution. If he is right -- a non-zero probability -- then he'll get his stars in heaven I guess!

[...]

There was a reason why I never bothered reading beyond a few pages of this book -- because there wasn't much in here that was of any scientific value. The author is someone who is well-versed in engineering and knowledgeable in science; but to call him an expert in astrophysics would be an insult to true astrophysicists and cosmologists around the world. This work smells "Intelligent Design" all over it. First of all, he spends an inordinate amount of glossy pages and extremely flawed (and often hard to comprehend) logic to say why all the other major theories are wrong (a typical ultra-conservative tactic). He goes on to explain the "why" the universe was designed... For God's sake, if you'll write a philosophy book, then be done with it. But don't pass it off as science. Not before going through the gauntlet of peer review (and they work far better than due process). That's how true sciences are born.

The deal-breaker for me was when the author could not explain his science in *SIMPLE ENGLISH*. All the best science writers, from Richard Feynman to Brian Green, know how to simplify even the most technical field in layman's terms. That is a mark of a true genius. By contrast, one who uses heavy mathematical terminology and proofs to hide flaws in his proof, is pretty much a crackpot.

I'm glad I only checked this out from the library. Of course, I will just have to leave a note in the book saying that this is all a big fraud attempting to pass for science.

It is indeed a shame when focused, logical objections to an idea become lost in the fog of intense expressions. Those who have watched any of the interchange between 'Creations Scientists' and 'Evolutionists' have seen far too much of that. Now we see something of a similar nature coming about in the normally staid world of physics.

Witt does make some remarkable assertions, and he uses (abuses?) math to present what he passes as logical transformations of concepts in support of his 'discoveries'. But the math is less than compelling. An interesting counterpoint to his position, which may be read without any hint of vitriol, as it was written before Witt's book was published, is Lee Smolin's "The Problem With Physics".

Smolin in effect begs for radical new ideas, perhaps even as off the wall as Witt's. But, here's the key distinction: Smolin sees problems with the 'conventional physics' of the past 30 years, as being that it has not led to 'testable' predictions. While Witt includes an appendix of 'predictions', he draws little or no parallel from his claims in the main text to the predictions. And he outlines not even one 'experiment' or 'test' that demonstrates the superiority of his far out ideas over the conventional view.

If Witt really is on to something, let him outline the basic demonstrations that support his ideas.

I'm glad I waited a couple years, and got a used copy on Amazon. My $4.95 was about all I would pay.

This is not an easy read, but a very satisfying one. The new theory of Null Physics is presented dispassionately, logically, and yet one cannot but respond with an emotional elation once one grasps the material. This cannot be said of the Standard Model or its proponents, who universally display a deep defensiveness which betrays their perception of the flaws and inadequacies they champion. Witt deftly defines why we live in the only possible universe and why it has always been so, what magnificent machines of self-sustinence the galaxies are, and why the "particle zoo" of the academics is just fictitious nonsense. Anyone with a love of physics and the suspicion that something's just not right in the accepted academic cosmological models will find this book an invaluable and uplifting guide.

I had the pleasure of reading some of the negative reviews about Null Physics. What Terence Witt says about other cosmological theories is that they are not even capable of answering a child's simple query.

Question #1: If you have a Big Bang, then where did all the material come from for our Universe? Another Universe? And where did that one come from? One before it? And how far back does this go? Isn't there some kind of law in physics that matter/energy can neither be created or destroyed? I thought I read that in a "real" physics book. But when I get to courses on cosmology I can throw the laws of physics away. What kind of "science" is that?

Question #2: If you have an expanding/contracting universe, what does the universe contract from/expand into? A void? If a void is nothing, then how can something get into it? If the edge of the universe is a fixed barrier, then that barrier serves as a connection to that void. So in essence, somethingness connects nothingness. If that is true (and it has to be if you follow this line of reasoning), then there has to be some kind of structure or dimensionality that allows for something to expand into nothing. What the heck is that?

I used to ask these questions in my astrophysics classes, and was told that that Big Bang "theories" matched our observations. The Big Bang theories can't co-exist with our known laws of physics if they can't even respond to the simple questions posed above. And that is all the author is saying. Instead of dressing Witt and his theory in unflattering adjectives, why don't you folks take a crack at explaining away the Law of Energy Conservation co-existing with the Big Bang Theory.