Shameless Request

[UncleAl]

Organic chemist Uncle Al is competing in a public physics essay contest, "What is Ultimately Possible in Physics?" FQXi Community His entry is exceptionally wicked! All of physics could be slightly wrong for a *testable* chemical footnote.

A lighthearted summary plus voting instructions are here, UNDER SATAN'S LEFT FOOT Feel free to vote for anybody and everybody, but please vote for Uncle Al! "10" is the highest public vote rating.

http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/bitrypt.png
A cute molecule as stereogram while we are waiting

[TheBigDog]

I get a network error on your link Al, how am I supposed to vote for you?

Bill

[InfiniteNow]

All three links work fine for me, Bill. Whatever you are experiencing seems local to your connection, and not related to the link or the sites.

[Pyrotex]

I done voted for Uncle Al.
I gave him a 9.

Uncle Al, how much would it cost to fabricate and run your experimental apparatus?????

[UncleAl]

All URLs are active on my end frrom clicking the links above. Try again tomorrow. Possibly have a talk with your firewall or anti-malware software.

Let's cost out the two benchtop experiments. rirst, a physics academic skilled in the art. Go for the world's best, The University of Washington Eot-Wash Group that unfortunately is strongly committed to zero risk, zero innovation, http://www.npl.washington.edu/eotwas...wfrontier2.pdf (pdf). An Eötvös balance costs about $2 million, plus its own isolation bunker. There might be five on the planet, all hard by 45 degrees latitiude for maximum differential signal. Two more in Washington State operate through UC/Irvine about 12 miles down the road from me, UCI Gravity Lab The Newman group is also zero risk, zero innovation. No Eötvös experiment has returned other than a perfect zero net output. The only risk is failing in a new way.

Required quartz chemical purity (ppm), dryness (Grade A), and order (low etch pit density) obtain by Sawyer Research's X-plate process (electronic quartz is Grade C, Z-plate). Quoted $20-30K and 12-18 months in a hydrothermal autoclave for single crystals of sufficent grown thickness of both hands. The rest of the parity Eötvös experiment costs like an SOP composition experiment.

Second, benzil two-stage solvent grows 2-cm diameter crystals in a silanized jelly jar over three days. Crystal chirality is confirmed by x-ray diffraction/Flack parameter. The parity calorimetry experiment partially ran in a volunteered commercial lab last Christmas. Heavily used equipment degrades - too much noise. The two DSCs ideally are identical and new, about $70K each. Or, do many runs plus statistics (e.g., undergrad project). Physics disdains chemistry.

The experiments may succeed or they may fail, but nothing happens until somebody looks. Science demands experiments challenging theory. "It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong," Richard Feynman. Vote Uncle Al a big smooch, compel the Old Guard to try a new trick.

[TheBigDog]

Working fine from home. Wow, Al. Wow.

Bill

[UncleAl]

"8^>) Supose it worked to spec! Now comes the big joke...

Human Resoruces, "Ah, Dr. Schwartz, we see you have a Nobel Prize in Physics, for gravitation,"
Uncle Al, "Only one."
HR, "and that you seek employment as synthetic organic chemist."
Uncle Al, "Yes, that is my profession."
HR, "We believe that a technical employee must be a clear and direct embodiment of his competence. We call joyrides taken outside productive hiring 'degraded professional development'."

Happened to a friend of mine who had patents "in the wrong field." Support evolution - shoot back. A "10" is a bullseye credited to the good guys. God save us from the congenitally inconsequential.

[TheBigDog]

It seems that you are currently in second place in the public voting with a score of 9.0 (47 votes) while some paper on the relationship between the observer has 9.4 (7 votes). I have not voted on that one yet, but will this week. I don't want to say I am going to vote to sway the results in your favor, but I guess it is OK to hint at it.

Bill

[DougF]

I gave a 10 UncleAl.

[UncleAl]

Thank you for the 10! Gravitation theory can be written parity-even or parity-odd. Parity-even is much easier, for negative inputs come out just like positive inputs. Alas, the universe is parity-odd in all examined weak interactions, right down to adding a parity-odd Chern-Simons term to parity-even Einstein-Hilbert action in quantized gravitations. Gravitation is the weakest interaction by 25 orders of magnitude.

If the vacuum is parity-odd in the massed sector - a left foot - then left and right shoes will vacuum free fall differently. ("Shoe" is a metaphore. Test bodies are explained.) Parity-even General Relativity will be demonstrated to be wrong, from a footnote. Somebody should look. Simple as that. Teleparallel gravitation (Einstein, 1931) takes over.

Surf the URL below, enjoy the YouTube (physics - gotta dance!), follow instructions for voting at the essay competition site. Read the comments posted while you are there. Uncle Al is a thoughtcriminal.

Vote for Uncle Al! Somebody should look.

--
Uncle Al
UNDER SATAN'S LEFT FOOT
Vote a 10 for the experiments!