/sci/ - Science & Math

Oh, I like thread. This could be a good thread.

There's Doug Coulter; he seems like an actual scientist though. Just lives out in the middle of nowhere. Trying to build his own fusion reactor.
http://www.fusor.net/doug-coulters-solar-power-star-in-a-jar/
I really recommend this video.
https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/outsiders-doug-coulter/55afd234091d63551dfee805

As far as cranks, there's the infamous Gene Ray of the defunct timecube . com who claimed to be basically god and have a different knowledge of time.
https://www.theverge.com/2015/9/2/9247913/time-cube-is-gone

One of my recent favorites was found on /sci/, actually. Brilliant Light Power claims to make a shit ton of energy from somehow dropping the lowest electron orbital of Hydrogen down even more or something.
http://brilliantlightpower.com/electrical-power-from-water-to-oxygen-and-dark-matter-form-of-hydrogen/
The video is good fun.
https://youtu.be/jUBheBH9eio

>>9174779
I also forgot Marlin Pohlman. He's pretty interesting.
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2013/10/post_373.html
He filed a patent for essentially a time travel machine.
https://www.google.com/patents/US20060073976
I like to believe the theory and say his drug and rape charges are just so he got abducted by the government to build his device lol

>>9174719
Definitely Ken Wheeler. He's a shitty photographer who has a Youtube channel showing off his large collection of lenses. In his off time he goes on batshit insane rants about how all science is wrong and only he understands magnetism. He frequently posts on /sci/ pretending to be a follower.

>>9174779
Very nice!

What do you think of Andrea rossi? It's astonishing how long he's been stringing people along with his e-cat thing.
This thing looks amazing! Some truly streampunk crankery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9BV6nb79fA

>>9174719
>He even has a paper
link?

>>9174795
http://www.spacewarpdynamicsllc.com/the-artificial-inducement-of-a-loca

I have to admit, he's not acted at all like a scammer with this, he's not selling anything and as daffy as he is there is a small, irrational part of me that hopes he's actually on to something-can you imagine the uproar if a random astronomy professor invented the most important invention since the wheel in his garage?

DIE SONNE IST KALT

Is Mike McCulloch a crank? Or is his theory actually somewhat credible? he claims it might explain why the emdrive creates anomalous thrust and eliminate the need for dark matter

http://physicsfromtheedge.blogspot.com/

>>9174806
>http://www.spacewarpdynamicsllc.com/the-artificial-inducement-of-a-loca
this is hilarious

pretty much no math, and the few bits and pieces there are, are literal high school level

>>9174830
>why the emdrive creates anomalous thrust
but it doesn't

>>9174840
his claim not mine anon, i think the mdrive is almost certainly bunk

>>9174833
he claims warp bubbles form in thunderstorms in rare cases and that they've caused pilots to zoom hundreds of miles off course. it's truly bizzare shit but i love it.

>>9174830
Yes he's a crank and a bullshit artist. I challenged him on one of the claims he made, that he could explain the low power at large scales in the Cosmic Microwave Background with his model. What he fails to appreciate is that at small scales the fit to the CMB is incredibly accurate, but if you remove dark matter from standard cosmology (LCDM) you get a different result and it doesn't fit. He handwaved it all away claiming the powerspectrum will just magically revert to that of LCDM at small scales without even trying to explain why. The CMB is only anomalous at large scales in the context of standard cosmology, you can't try to explain it with a different cosmology. It's just crazy. If you want to use a different cosmology you need to start again and calculate the powerspectrum in that model.

Pretty much all of his cosmological claims are bullshit and he doesn't understand science as a process.

>>9174994
I figured.

>>9174846
So in other words, this guy hasn't created anything noteworthy, and he hasn't written anything noteworthy. He's either a mentally ill degenerate or a genuine conman, and the proper response in either case is to shun him.

I don't know about favourite but the most worrying cult in my field is the nutjobs at the Electric Universe. They claim that all of astronomy, cosmology and modern physics is wrong and the universe is powered by giant electrical currents and plasma. It mostly grew out of a concept of a plasma cosmology started by Hannes Alfven (which died for many reasons), velikovskian catastrophism and new age woo, it was started by some electrical engineers a couple decades ago and now they have fucking conferences.
They don't do anything quantitative, many of them reject "mathematical physics" entirely. No simulations, no calculations. It survives on the basis that it isn't written down and so it can't be debunked but any observation they don't like is probably fake anyway. It now has a huge following of utter retards sucked in by this pseudoscientific crap, you used to see it posted here and on /pol/ now and again. It's as if /x/ tried to do science. It is fucking mind cancer but they have hours and hours of mental diarrhoea on youtube. I refuse to link to it as they make money on ads.

https://briankoberlein.com/2014/02/25/testing-electric-universe/

Ron Maimon

This guy writes long winded articles on vaccines, chemtrails, god, wireless being dangerous, and a whole bunch of other quackery.
https://thefullertoninformer.com/

The rest of my current favorite quacks are vgcc guy, geometric unity, the guy on /his/ who claims to be god, and Frank Slauenwhite.

>>9175113
Jonathan Tooker. He spams all kind of physics forums and faculty email lists and /sci/ with some kind of numerology of physical constants. He has extreme delusions of grandeur, from thinking that physicists are stealing his work, to thinking that religious imagery refers to him and that he is God. This indicates he is schizophrenic or bipolar. You can read his nonsense here, such as his "proof" that evolution is false:

http://vixra.org/author/jonathan_tooker

>>9175194
Geometric unity is this guy >>9175332

>>9174833
that and poor writing skills O_o

>>9174806
He seems super ernest but the methodology I think wouldn't detect what I think he's trying to detect after seeing some of the eagleworks stuff on how they are trying to detect warp fields.

John St. Clair and his numerous inventions are good for a laugh.
https://www.google.com/patents/US20040102810?dq=ininventor:%22John+St.+Clair%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjNttHAz7jVAhUDQSYKHTvMD98Q6AEIUjAG

Bump

>>9174719
Bill Gaede

He believes the mediator of gravity and the electromagnetic force are one and the same. Ropes

https://youtu.be/pE-ZunMoGpY

>>9175652
Yeah. i still follow him, he's a great source of entertainment and i've even spoken to the people in his team a few times,they strike me as determined amateurs,remind me of all the people noodling around with emdrives and whatnot. Power to them. They're not hurting anyone and hey, every now and then.amateurs can discover interesting things.

>>9174806
>>9174833
but honestly this type scenario where good old america invented in the garage type story would be the absolute greatest story/history for future generations. similar to PCs only exponentially more important

>>9178360
it has a near zero percent chance of happening, all the cool shit is very hard to discover now, takes billions of dollars and swarms of researchers.

I want ot be wrong, but i'm not.

Nevertheless, good luck to the professor pares types of the world. hope is a very addictive drug.

>>9175060
I love Electric Universe. The adherents are adorably retarded.

>>9178363
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0vu-jQWCZo

WEW LAD you weren't kidding

Smolin and Woit

gregory hensley. he took his website down but while it was up it was glorious. hand-made html with frames. offered services as an inventor for hire with expertise in every field under the sun and thousands of hours of training and inventions in every discipline

https://web.archive.org/web/20160215184843/http://www.gregoryhensley.com/

Francis E Dec. His writings and revelations about the gangster computer god are inspiring.

bentoandstarchky.com/

>>9175332

Oh yeah I love that guy. He was mentioning that he's entering a math PHD program this autumn.

Joseph Newman, built
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newman%27s_energy_machine..
They made a documentary about him not long ago, even though I think the machine is nonsense the movie does give a view about the lack of professionalism of USA's patent office at that time (of course the movie shows only one side while further reading may show otherwise).

>>9178865
What a goof. How was the copper supposed to be breaking down, and why wasnt his home powerex by these things?

>>9177339
Also has very catchy tunes

http://www.vmpcfunction.com/pnp.php
claims to have solved p vs np

>>9174719
Now say it with me class:
CIA
>CIA
Niggers
>Niggers
Glow
>Glow
In the
>In the
Dark!
>Dark

Good, good. Now here's 2 shekels for your obedience. Also I don't care if Terry A. Davis but he's still insane and I'll throw him in this thread anyway

>inb4 go back to pol

that michozuki dude

>>9177339
I'm 30 minutes into an hour and a half explanation.

Source on papers, math, etc?

My favorite crank

http://www.eoht.info/page/Libb+Thims

Libb Thims (whole website is his)
>writes about geniuses
>writes about self in third person
>gives himself an IQ of "200+"
>thinks reductionism is a revolutionary concept

also lacks a lot of mathematical and conceptual skills, reads textbooks on an "as-is" basis without making any intuitive leaps or constructive output

>>9175060
>get introduced to electric universe through one of the less batshit videos
>guy talks about how magnetic fields and electric currents can account for some of the astronomical phenomena we see
>look more into the theory
>tosses everything conventional out and goes full batshit.
Why do these people have to throw everything away and go full crazy? Why can't they just use their theory to provide an explanation for previously poorly explained phenomena?

>>9174719
The Institute of Noetic Sciences. Founded by Apollo astronaut Ed Mitchell, it basically grows out of the idea that his experience in going to the moon really blew his mind, and THIS MUST MEAN SOMETHING.

Now the Mitchell is gone, I would expect their limited claim to be taken seriously at all (and funded) ill likely fail, and that'll be the end of them.

>>9175332
That was "flat earth tier" shit there.

>>9178375
16:35

Fuck, if I'd known that earlier, I could have tested it during the recent eclipse.

>>9178375
>All the videos that have 5,000 ads
Nope, not giving these hacks views.

This guy has thousands of videos, averaging like 20 minutes each, where he is obsessed with 3 and 8. He just rambles on and on about things he did during his day and how it relates to the divine trinity, by means of modular arithmetic on the value of the letters of some words he heard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIgNFVp_bb8

>>9181518
fug if this guy rolls an epic get he might commit suicide

>>9175060
>velikovskian catastrophism
Is that the one where planets bounced around like billiards in the (geographically) recent past? I love that one.

>>9181494
>not using adblock
Viruses bruh.

>>9181555
>geographically
Fuuugg how did I make this mistake.

>>9178387
Lmao, nice try Luboš.

>>9174719
Tom Paladino and scalar energy. The man claims that putting a pic of the disease in a box with his picture cures him of said disease.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83Y5qZFGEuc

>>9180170
Hes actually on vixra if you care to go the extra mile. I personally really like his theory, I always wondered if math that described his model would work even a little bit.

>>9178360
Honestly, it'd be incredibly romantic having some random small town clerk or mechanic inventing a warp drive in his garage.

I'm personally partial to some small dictatorship inventing the warp drive and him and his inner circle and some colonists fly off into space only for humanity to encounter their prospering space empire centuries later.

>>9182121
I can see it now.
>Small town inventor accidentally warps his house to a distant system and inadvertently starts an interstellar war.

>>9181565
I'm not trying anything, just contributing to the thread.

>>9182210
Sounds like a bill and ted spin off

>>9181031
still shouldnt the fact that every apollo astronaut came back waaay different then the way we sent him up give them some credibility?

>>9174719
>george lucas looking
that's old mark whalberg

>>9179295
Forgive us, Uncle Terry.

>>9181518
His ketchup video is fantastic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6SW3mdmW-Y

>>9182712
how

>>9180474
Because the original motivation of their entire paradigm was to become a visionary thinker--not to pursue the truth.

>>9182778
The general absurdity of it and the buildup from 7:18

"... for the mathematical glory of god"

>>9181518
>posted this at 3 views, now has 27
good feel

>>9182406
Enormous experiences tend to change people, and I can't think of one quite as amazing as being a moonaneer.

>>9174719
>cute and earnest
sigh

>>9183195
27 is a multiple of 3. 3 times 3 times 3 is 27. Add 2 and 7 from 27 you get 9 which divides by 3 to get three. 27 has two digits, the word two has three letters, again giving us three.
I think this dude might be on to something.

>>9184004
jeebus...

this guy. (Nothing to do with religion)
http://www.bigbangneverhappened.org/

I want to believe..

>>9181518
Is this the guy with the dodge neon covered in 8s?

I kinda like that Miles guy that everyone dismisses and adhoms because muh pi=4 he's written like a huge book on his crazy theories and you gotta give him some props for trying so hard.

>>9184069
>still doing cutting edge fusion research