Sure enough, it had to happen. Ethan Siegel finally wrote a column for Forbes that isn’t just a thoughtless regurgitation of, and apologia for, the inanities of modern theoretical physics. In fact, it’s a column I can wholeheartedly endorse. It should be required reading for all physics students. A copy should be handed out with every science diploma. Here is the key takeaway:

Mathematics wasn’t at the root of the physical laws governing nature; it was a tool that described how the physical laws of nature manifested themselves. The key advance that happened is that science needed to be based in observables and measurables, and that any theory needed to confront itself with those notions. Without it, progress would be impossible.

Those are fine scientific sentiments, indeed! Unfortunately, there is no evidence of these noble precepts being applied in any of Siegel’s now numerous scientific writings for Forbes, or at least not in any I have read. There we find only the unthinking mathematicism that has turned modern theoretical physics into a caricature of bad science.

There is no more reliable purveyor of the modern scientific orthodoxy than Ethan Siegel. His Forbes column, Starts With A Bang, with the exception noted above, relentlessly flogs theoretical assertions that flagrantly violate the principles quoted above. Even in cases where he gets the orthodoxy completely wrong, he and his editors simply plow ahead, barely acknowledging an error.

So, you can still find this piece online despite the fact that the grandiose claims of the title (Scientists Discover Space’s Largest Intergalactic Bridge, Solving A Huge Dark Matter Puzzle), and of the concluding paragraphs are completely wrong. Here is the triumphal conclusion:

…If this same type of structure that exists between Abell 0399 and Abell 0401 also exists between other colliding clusters, it could solve this minor anomaly of the Bullet cluster, leaving dark matter as the sole unchallenged explanation for the displacement of gravitational effects from the presence of normal matter.

It’s always an enormous step forward when we can identify a new phenomenon. But by combining theory, simulations, and the observations of other colliding galaxy clusters, we can push the needle forward when it comes to understanding our Universe as a whole. It’s another spectacular victory for dark matter, and another mystery of the Universe that might finally be solved by modern astrophysics. What a time to be alive.

So what’s wrong? Well immediately following the last paragraph is this subsequently added correction:

Correction: after a Twitter exchange with one of the study’s scientists, the author regrets to inform the reader that the acceleration imparted by the magnetic fields to the electrons along this intergalactic bridge is likely unrelated to the velocity anomaly of the Bullet cluster. Although both may be explained by hydrodynamic effects, the effects that cause this radio emission and the acceleration of electrons are unrelated to the measured high velocity of the Bullet cluster’s collisional elements and X-ray gas. Ethan Siegel regrets the error.

Oh. So this correction completely negates the claim that the observations as described, of the colliding galaxy clusters Abell 399 and Abell 401, somehow clear up a known problem that the Dark Matter model has with another pair of colliding galaxies known as the Bullet Cluster.

The proponents of Dark Matter like to cite the Bullet Cluster as strong evidence for DM, but their model cannot account for the high collisional velocity of the Bullet Cluster’s component galaxies. It was this problem that Siegel incorrectly interpreted the Abell cluster observations to have solved. So this was just another strained attempt to justify the failed Dark Matter hypothesis (by inference only, of course) and even by the low-bar of the modern scientific academy, it was an abject failure.

Which brings us to a more recent piece featuring another central conceit of Big Bang Cosmology that, like Dark Matter, has no empirical evidence to support it. This is the belief that there exists a thing called “space” that physically interacts with the matter and energy in the cosmos. There is absolutely no empirical evidence to support this belief. Despite this absence of evidence, the belief in a substantival “space” is widely held among among modern cosmologists.

It is a characteristic of modern theoretical physics, that a lack of empirical evidence for its existence, does not and cannot, diminish the claim to existence for an entity necessary to reconcile either one of the standard models with observed reality. In the modern scientific paradigm, a theoretical model is the determinant of physical reality.

The entire premise of this article then is, that something which cannot be demonstrated to exist must, nonetheless, have a specific physical characteristic in order for the modern conception of theoretical physics to be consistent with itself. Non-existent space must be continuous not discrete because otherwise modern theoretical physics doesn’t make sense.

But this is nothing more than an old whine encoded in a new frequency. It is not news that the modern conception of Relativity Theory is inconsistent with Quantum Theory. Modern theoretical physics, generally speaking, is inconsistent, with both empirical reality, and with itself. Both standard models make assertions about physical reality that cannot be empirically demonstrated to be physically meaningful.

The only evidence on offer for all the empirically baseless assertions of the two standard models is that they are necessary to make the models work. Once the models have been ad hoc corrected for any discrepancies with observed reality, the “success” of the models is touted as proof of their description of physical reality.

There is much assertive hand-waving going on in this article, as is typical of Siegel’s work. There is one particular assertion I’d like to single out for close examination:

In Einstein’s relativity, an observer who’s moving with respect to another observer will appear to have their lengths compressed and will appear to have their clocks run slow.

At first glance this seems a reasonably accurate statement, but it is, in fact a false assertion. “Einstein’s relativity” encompasses both the Special and General theories. The statement as presented, in which a moving observer “appears to have their their lengths compressed and… their clocks run slower”, applies only to the Special Relativity case involving two inertial frames. It absolutely does not apply to those conditions where General Relativity applies, i.e. non-inertial frames (see this previous post).

In the SR case, two inertial frames are moving with a constant velocity with respect to each other and each observer sees the other’s lengths compressed, and their clocks slowed. Neither observer actually has lengths compressed or clocks slowed; they only appear that way to the remote observer.

Under GR conditions, where a change of reference frame has taken place (via acceleration), there are physical consequences for the observer in the frame that has accelerated. In the accelerated frame, lengths are contracted in the direction of the acceleration, and clocks do run slower. There are physical consequences to changing frames.

Modern theorists like Siegel are, however, inclined to believe that the SR and GR cases can be conflated, whenever it is convenient to do so, based only on an erroneous and logically unjustified over-extension of the Principle of Equivalence. On the basis of empirical observations and sound theoretical considerations, however, it is possible to say, unequivocally, that they are wrong, both theoretically and empirically. And you can’t be any more wrong than that.

There is only one way out of this theoretical mess and that is to apply the principles set forth in the No, The Universe Is Not Purely Mathematical In Nature column to the two standard models. On the evidence, unfortunately, Professor Siegel does not practice what he preaches, nor do most of his cohorts in the theoretical physics community. Thus, the “crisis in physics”.