Here are some choice tidbits from a recent Tim Anderson article titled Zero-point energy may not exist. I’m always supportive of any effort to drag theoretical physics back into contact with empirical reality so the suggestion that ZPE may not exist is at least promising. It even suggests the possibility that modern theoretical physics might emerge from its self-imposed exile in Plato’s cave, the cave-of-choice in this case being mathematicism.

In reading the article any hope of a scientific restoration is dashed, as one is quickly immersed in sea of mathematicist illogic. Here for instance is the “reasoning” that underlies the ZPE concept:

…it means that nothing has non-zero energy and because there is an infinite amount of nothing there must be an infinite amount of energy.

While it is clear that the author is distancing himself from the ZPE concept, that account of the underlying “reasoning” gives rise to the simple question, how did such flamboyantly illogical nonsense gain any traction in the scientific community? The answer of course is mathematicism which is itself a flagrantly illogical proposition, just not recognized as such by the denizens of the mathematicist cave. Then there is this little gem (emphasis added):

Quantum field theory, which is the best theory of how matter works in the universe that we have, suggests that all matter particles are excitations of fields. The fields permeate the universe and matter interacts with those fields in various ways. That is all well and good of course. We are not questioning that these fields exist. The question is whether a field in a ground state has any measureable effect on matter.

So in their “best theory” the universe is permeated by many fields and matter is an excitation of those fields. Physical reality however only contains one observed field and that is the electromagnetic field which is the aggregate of all the electromagnetic radiation that permeates the Cosmos. That radiation is constantly being emitted by all the luminous matter that also permeate the Cosmos. There are no additional observed fields as described by QFT. 

Despite the fact that the QFT fields are not observed the author does not wish to question their existence. Why? Mathematicism, of course. If a math model says something is there and physical reality declines to offer any evidence in support of such a conjecture, the mathematicist position is that the math is correct and reality is perversely withholding the evidence.

Imagine we have a sensitive Hawking radiation detector orbiting a black hole. The detector is in a state of free fall, meaning that it experiences no gravitational forces on it.

This last bit invokes a wholly imaginary thought experiment involving imaginary radiation emitted by an imaginary black hole. Without any empirical basis or logical connection to known physics, it has no scientific significance even if the “experiment” somehow reflects badly on the ZPE concept. In that, it only amounts to an illogical argument refuting an illogical concept.

The second sentence also presents a widely promulgated claim that has no basis in physics. The idea that an observer or detector in free fall experiences no gravitational forces on it is purely unphysical nonsense. An observer or detector can only be in a state of free fall if they are experiencing a gravitational force. The typical basis for this claim is that the observer is prohibited from making observations that would clearly show the presence of a gravitating body and thus demonstrate the presence of a gravitational field.

Einstein is usually credited with this view but in fact his conception of the equivalence principle was highly constrained and did not extend to fundamentally illogical claims like the one made above. The version of the equivalence principle Einstein employed is now called the Weak Equivalence Principle.

The two extensions of the equivalence principle contrived and adopted after Einstein’s death, the disingenuously named Einstein EP (he had nothing to do with it) and the Strong EP have no logical, scientific or theoretical justification. They were merely conjectures of mathematical convenience proposed by the physicist Robert H. Dicke, who along with his colleague John A. Wheeler, concocted a distorted variant of Einstein’s Relativity Theory. That variant is presented today as Einstein’s RT but it is a separate theory and should have it’s own name — Dicke-Wheeler Relativity Theory. 

It is in DWRT that you will find the EEP and SEP as well as a reified version of spacetime which is said to causally interact with matter and energy causing the gravitational effect and facilitating the Expansion of the Universe. There is no empirical evidence supporting those ad hoc additions to ERT. They are simply mathematicist conjectures that have no scientific basis or logical connection to physical reality. In modern theoretical physics though, they are treated as axioms — true by definition. 

Mathematicism is the principle driver of the Crisis in Physics. The reason for this is simple: math is not physics. The controlling paradigm in modern theoretical physics, however, is that math is the basis of physics and mathematical models determine the nature of physical reality. That paradigm is a philosophical belief that has no scientific basis.

As a consequence of mathematicism theoretical physicists espouse two standard models that describe a physical reality containing a large number of entities and events that are not part of the physical reality we actually observe. Modern theoretical physics does not constitute a science so much as a cult of belief. 

You have to believe in the expanding universe, in dark matter and dark energy, in quarks and gluons. You have to believe that the speed of light in a vacuum is a universal constant even though it cannot be measured as such and is not constant in General Relativity — at least according to Einstein.* You have to believe in these things because they are not demonstrably part of physical reality. Scientists don’t traffic in beliefs but mathematicists do and so there is a Crisis in Physics

 * The speed of light is a universal constant according to Dicke-Wheeler Relativity Theory.

Simultaneously published at Medium.