Physics, Schmysics
Math is pretty nearly unbogus, but in spite of its reputation as a hard science, physics occasionally falls into fairly severe bogosity. This happens most often when physicists follow their theories beyond the data, or try to build models by analogy with some other branch of physics. Once in a while the problem is observational error. Deliberate faking of data is extremely rare in physics, much rarer than in the softer sciences. Occasionally the Grand Old Man of the day denounces some new idea, particularly if it comes out of his own work.
To be fair, we should note that physicists understand these kinds of bogosity fairly well, and generally have a good idea of what to do about it, as a result of sometimes bitter experience. A lot of what you have to do is to wait patiently for the next theory, and get on with your own work in the meantime.
There are many historical examples. We won't discuss the nonsense in Aristotle's Physics. His theories come from the Because
I Though of It school of philosophy, and do not involve checking theory by experiment.
- Galileo got really angry with Kepler for saying that the Sun and Moon affected the tides on the Earth. He thought that Action at a Distance was invoking occult forces, or what we might now call voodoo.
- For a time, heat was imagined to be a substance, named "caloric", that flowed from hot objects to cold objects. Then experiment showed that you could generate any amount of heat from friction. Heat came to be understood more than a century later in terms of atomic motion.
- The study of water waves and sound waves gave a mechanical model that was extended to light waves, considered as vibrations in a motionless substance filling space but allowing free movement of material objects. This hypothetical substance, called the "Luminiferous Ether" would have to be stiffer than steel witthout hindering the motion of material objects. When it turned out that the speed of light is the same for observers in motion in any direction, this mechanical theory had to be abandoned, but a decade passed before Special Relativity did away with motionless absolute space, and decades more to create a quantum mechanical theory of light.
- Ernest Rutherford created the planetary model of the atom, in which electronis orbit around the nucleus, like planets around the sun. You still see this model sometimes in popular accounts of physics. However, orbiting electrons would radiate all their energy away immediately, so orbits were inherently impossible. Now we suppose that electrons don't have precise locations. The most we can say in this version is that there is some probability of finding an electron at a particular point, and each electron in an atom has a different set of probabilities for where it can be found.
- Einstein thought this development of quantum mechanics was completely bogus because of the Uncertainty Principle, but neither he nor anybody else has ever found a hole in the theory. It was rather hard on him since his Nobel prize was for proving the quantum nature of light.
- After the success of X-rays, some scientists started to observe what they called N-rays, which were quite difficult to see, mainly because' as it turned out, they weren't there.
- Schiaparelli said he saw water channels (canali) on Mars through his telescope. They were also hard to see, and they also turned out not to be there. There is a huge canyon, the Valles Marinaris, but you can't see it through a telescope from the Earth.
- We don't know the size of an electron. We do know that its radius is smaller than anything we can measure, and physicists have therefore assumed that its radius is 0, making the electron a point mass with a point charge. This makes the density of mass and charge at that point infinite, and results in various infinite effects that would be visible if they existed. Thay aren't, so they don't. Feynmen and others found a mathematical technique to work around this problem, but the problem doesn't arise if we don't make the bogus assumption.
A more recent example is the idea that there is a singularity, a point of infinite mass, at the center of a black hole. This notion arises from a naive solution to the Einstein equations for General Relativity, without any consideration of the requirements of quantum mechanics, such as the fact that no object can be made smaller than its wavelength. So whatever is going on in there, it isn't a point mass. On the other hand, Quantum Mechanics breaks down at the high energies and short distances involved in black hole physics, and can't be reconciled with General Relativity.
None of this would be so bad without the completely bo-o-o-o-ogus statement that the laws of nature break down at the core of a black hole. Well, they don't. Our understanding breaks down, but the universe doesn't need our permission to run in whatever way it actually does, and naturally it does go right on running while we argue in circles.
So you get so-called Science Fiction adventures on TV and in the movies (which the Science Fiction writing and reading community disclaims as utterly bogus and not their fault) where you can work magic at the core of a black hole, maintaining a stable environment by sheer willpower. Or you go to another Universe through a black hole. Or you go to Heaven by falling into a black hole.
Bah!
Humbug!
Oh, you can't get to Heaven (repeat)
In a big Black Hole (repeat)
'cause a big Black Hole (repeat)
Can't grab your soul. (repeat)
Oh, you can't get to Heaven in a Big Black Hole,
'cause a big Black Hole can't grab your soul.
I ain't a-gonna grieve my Lord no more.
I ain't a-gonna grieve my Lord no more.
I ain't a-gonna grieve my Lord no more.
I ain't a-gonna grieve---my Lord no mo-o-ore.
I ain't a-gonna grieve my Lord no more.
I ain't a-gonna grieve my Lord no more.
I ain't a-gonna grieve---my Lord no more.
