One of the most paraded slogans invoked by the modern establishmentarians is that science is a self-correcting enterprise. Well, that may be so--I said to a friend of mine a few days ago--but the real issue about that is what kind of price does humanity have to pay for allowing them control to self-correct. The world has already suffered through 1600 years of darkness to finally self-correct the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic Solar System, which had the earth at the centre and the sun revolving around it, with the heliocentric idea of Aristarchus of Samos, whose only fault was that he had the misfortune to live at about the same time, in the same part of the world, along the same people, in the same kind of history.
1600 years!! To self-correct. To my mind that is far too big a price to pay for the services that have been rendered. Can you imagine where humanity should be today if it would have taken our scientists say, 160 years to make that correction, instead of 1600. Or, as I said to my friend, can you imagine that one day we may all be staring absolutely hopeless at the sight of an asteroid approaching an earth impotent of defending itself because its scientists have taken too damn long to self-correct.
Whatever you may think about that let me inform you that humanity is once again floating in darkness, since 1672. For 349 years, now. But the most distressing part is that our establishmentarians do not show even the tiniest hint that they are harbouring any desire to consider that it might be yet again another vital need for self-correcting. No, they're all so busy with inventing ever bigger and more flamboyant epicycles. Why is there not any hint of some imminent change in the science of physics? Bluntly, because of this gargantuan human flaw: No progress in anything is possible without periodic revolutions; at the same time, no establishment of any kind wants a revolution, at any point in time. This is the paradoxical nature of any evolutionary endeavour, and if you didn't know that you were surely born the other day.
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I said this before and I will say it again: There is nowhere more evident the declining state of the present physics than in the two premiere forums endorsed by the reigning conventional establishment. It is in those two places that one can find the most amazing array of pearls one could dream of. (That is if one knows how to find them, of course.)
Today I have prepared for you a few of the pearls that I found myself in the last few months in those good places. The first one is from a thread whose title was something like "I'm wondering why the coloured bands appear in the specific order of red, blue, green, orange, red, violet, green and violet". Below I will drop a screenshot of that thread.
Now, let's begin by reminding ourselves that everything The Pointer cited in his question comes from a textbook. Following that try to see on what bases the author has built his line of reasoning that ultimately led him to that particular array of colours. (Good luck with that, btw.) Then, finally, all should suddenly become as clear as daylight. This is a typical example of GIGO. Remember GIGO? Anyway, let me drop below the only answer The Pointer got from someone called Pieter.
In my journey as a human on this planet I was fortunate enough to learn a thing or two about the kind of beasts we are. I wonder if you came to a similar conclusion about this particular human trait that is, for all intents and purposes, pretty much a universal one. What I have come to realise is that the majority of humans (regardless of any specific particularities) when they truly run out of the knowledge, they have in any subject instinctively begin to speculate whatever aspect of the subject that they really do not know and proceed to add it to the rest of their story and expect it to raise no issues with anyone (for some rather crazy reason). Just listen to the tone the author of that textbook undertakes in order to eventually utter some completely idiotic nonsense. Then it is worth listening carefully at what Pieter had to say. He's just as wrong in his own analysis, but to his mind everything he says in his answer falls neatly into place, so it must be right.
What about you? Have you got any idea about what I am saying? In any event, for the time being it is worthier to read the final part of this thread.
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It absolutely astounds me that apparently no one can see how easy it is to explain refraction, diffraction and interference, in one go. All those beautiful manifestations of light are intimately connected, as they should be, and therefore when one sees one of those manifestations, one sees them all. Conversely, when one doesn't see one of them, one doesn't ever see any.
The other day, one of the things I said to my mate was that I don't need to conduct the rather difficult experiments needed to see either diffraction, or Newton's rings, or indeed interference at work. I can easily see all those things by simply looking through my prism at different sources of light from different distances. I have become aware of this fact many years ago, and I can tell you that I have seen with my own eyes pretty much any diffraction pattern ever observed. Moreover, I have learned how all those seemingly puzzling colours come into existence from mixing just the spectral RGB trio of colours. So, if you like to think that there are an infinite number of colours in the spectrum of light, you can rest assured that all that infinity of colours is created by those three, and only those three, primary hues.
The refraction, diffraction and interference of light in a nutshell
In order to see all three prismatic phenomena at work we shall conduct just one very simple subjective observation. Effectively, we shall look through a triangular prism at the diagram I will drop below in a moment from two different distances and take two snapshots of the emerging display with a camera for further analysis.
Upon conducting the prismatic observation of the image above from a distance of about two and a half feet we took the following picture.
Now, at this point I'm pretty sure that many will say that our experiment brings nothing new to the common table, for everything on display is very well known and fully accounted by the mainstream theory of light and colour. Moreover, those voices would continue, there is neither diffraction nor interference taking place there, only a number of subjectively recorded refractions that have been responsible for the entire spectral show that's on display.
The flat reality, however, is that all those incensed voices are catastrophically and demonstrably wrong. Moreover, not even one of them could account for any complete spectral set (meaning the spectral set that is generated by any individual object that is contained in the picture) by using the conventional theory. You will see that I am absolutely right about that by the end of this Australian day.
But first I want to show you that there is a process of diffraction displayed in our picture, but the truth is that none of you can see it simply because the image of the forest is wholesomely virtual by nature, while--sadly--your backyard trees are bloody real.
Have a good look at those four squares shown in the right half of the picture. The upper two are white and separated by a narrow black strip, while the lower two are black and separated by a white strip of exactly the same width as the black one above it. Now can you tell me, in detail, why in the prismatic picture the black strip is no longer visible, and that in its stead there is a magenta line that is flanked on each side by a cyan line (on its left) and a yellow one, on its right. Of course, you can tell me all that, for you're a physicist and the explanation needed is almost trivial. So, magenta because red and blue have mixed together to give it that colour. Good. Where did the red colour come from? From the left white square, where it used to be next to the yellow line. Good. Of course, the blue then came from the right white square, where it would normally sit next to the cyan. Good.
And now let me ask you this: What is diffraction? What do we call that process in which light bends around corners? Let me show you another beautiful display of diffraction, and then I'll rest my case on this issue.
There is still one very important question that is related to the current topic. The red and blue that came to form that magenta line were evidently coming from opposite directions, before they finally merged to form the magenta line right in front of where that black line was originally located. Couldn't that fact be used as definitive evidence that the colours red and blue bend in opposite directions in prismatic experiments, as I have long maintained to be the case? Don't answer that, just ponder for a little while.
Amicus Newton, amicus Goethe, magis amica veritas
The final message of this post is for the physicist who is convinced that this is not the time for any kind of reevaluation or correction.
The experiment we've been discussing is far from being novelty. It's been with us for more than 200 years, and it's one of the most notorious subjective experiments that bear the mark of Goethe's work in colour theory. It is one among a slew of subjective observations that have created a great amount of interest--and controversy--in the more recent past. After many years of being overwhelmingly shunned, ignored, or ridiculed by the scientific community, Goethe and his theory of colour have been pushed in the last few years to such a lofty position in the field that many consider them as being at least on a par with Newton and his Opticks.
Now, from a personal point of view I believe that both men have made great inroads into the nature of light and colours, and for that they have been already rewarded with a permanent place in the history of human evolution. On the other hand, however, I must also say that I have good reasons to believe that neither of them has managed to come even close to what the real crux of the light and colour phenomena is. So much so that 350 years after Newton we still have not a clear-cut understanding of even what refraction is--let alone the myriad of much more complex phenomena that lay within the universe of light. In fact, to be absolutely frank, I have long been stupefied by the abysmal gaps we have proliferated in 350 years of toiling in the field. To give you some concrete sense of what I'm talking about let me show you the legacy that the world has inherited as a consequence of Newton's very first gaping error he had made.
In the picture above there are two sources of light (one red, one blue) whose beams are cast in the direction of a triangular prism some distance away. The two are perfectly aligned, as you can see. On the other side of the prism we have placed the eye of an observer, who's recorded, subjectively, the image that is coming through the prism. On the basis of the conventional theory, what conclusion can we derive from this particular prismatic observation, and how certain can we be about its validity?
To make matters a little easier let me show you two more pictures on the same theme that are relevant to the topic.
The conventional conclusion of these subjective observations is uncompromising. Coloured lights are refracted in a prism by different amounts, which depend on their particular hues. In effect, when it comes to the colours in our case, blue is refracted (towards the apex of the prism) the most, red is refracted (towards the apex of the prism) the least, and green is refracted (towards the apex of the prism) by an amount in between those two. And, as we can see, the pictures above appear to conform to the conventional theory.
So, then, as a conventional physicist, how certain are you that your conclusion is correct? Put a figure on it. How certain are you? Would you bet your reputation on it? Your house? Your life? (Incidentally, I know someone just like you, who did not hesitate to put an exact figure on a similar conventional conclusion.)
My honest advice is not to bet a single paisa on the validity of the conventional conclusion, for I can assure you that it is utterly false. This was the first grave error that Newton made, and--alas--it has perpetuated until today. Moreover, that error practically compounded its effect many times over in its 350 years of absolute reign. This is a very complex subject, however, and it should therefore be discussed at some other time and under different circumstances. So, I'll leave it at that, for now.
As far as I'm concerned, the most disconcerting thing about this first Newtonian error is that somehow it has managed to remain undetected for so long, and in spite of being conspicuously evident. Let me give you one most eloquent example about that.
There is one physicist who has arguably done more than most to promote the validity of Goethe's work on colour. His name is Pehr Sallstrom, and I will be referring quite often either to his website, or to his videos, or indeed to his papers on Goethe. If you decide to visit one particular page from his website (http://pscolour.eu/texts.htm) which is called The interplay of Newton and Goethe spectra (http://pscolour.eu/adhoc/gn-spect.htm) you will read about a certain experiment he had conducted and studied. In that particular experiment Sallstrom had subjectively observed, and photographed, the spectra produced by a vertical slit. The experiment was in principle identical to the slit observation we had discussed a little earlier above, which means that both of them should produce the same results, and for the same reasons, naturally. Now, for our wants and purposes, I will not get into all the details here, restricting my commentary thus strictly to the parts that are relevant to our current topic of discussion. In fact, for our wants and purposes, we only need to cite two explanatory lines, and show you the resultant picture of the observation.
1. In this case the slit in the screen is partly covered with Red, Green and Blue Violet transparencies.
2. As before, when illuminated from behind and looked at through a glass prism, it shows you a Newtonian spectrum, where the three colours find their respective appropriate positions.
Now, have a good look at images 1 and 2, read their respective explanatory notes, remember everything we've talked so far on the subject, and then tell me what your thoughts are. (Btw, the Italics are mine.)
To my mind it is inconceivable that anyone familiar with the Newtonian theory of light and colours (and Pehr Sallstrom is a professional physicist) can miss the absolutely obvious discrepancy between the factual evidence produced by a real experiment (as in the case here) and the verbal assurance provided by a theoretical declaration (as in the case of Newton's theory). For, after all, if you harbour any kind of doubts about the reality of the experiment in question, you can always replicate it and thus verify the result yourself. In fact, in our particular case you don't even have to try to replicate Sallstrom's entire experiment to the letter, for effectively it suffices to look through a prism at image number 1 and thus verify for yourself if the image you see is the same as that shown at number 2. (If you decide to do that, I can tell you that you have to hold the prism with the apex pointing to your left.)
So, Pehr, can you tell us how those three colours in image number 1 have found their appropriate positions? Don't worry, that was a rhetorical question. The plain truth is that in subjective prismatic experiments Blue is refracted by the prism toward its apex, Red is refracted in the opposite direction (towards the prism's base) and Green is not refracted at all. That is the truth, and I've become aware of it so long ago that I don't even care anymore to remember when it happened.
Now, I can tell you that there have been many opportunities over the years for others to become aware of Newton's mistake too. Yet, to the best of my knowledge, no one else seems to have noticed it in three and a half centuries. Let me tell you about one such opportunity, which makes me giddy every time I think about it.
We have all seen subjective prismatic images, like the ones shown below, in the conventional literature.
In fact, Goethe himself had drawn and used both kinds in his Zur Farbenlehre. The two images are renditions of what a white circle and a white rectangle look like when they are observed through a prism. The Newtonian explanation for their existence is widely known and held as definitive. Thus, when we look at a white rectangle with a naked eye, we perceive it as white because the spectral colours that form white light are in a state of superposition (they are superposed onto each other). When we look at the white rectangle through a prism, however, each spectral colour is refracted by a different, specific amount. In the case of the primary colours Blue is refracted the most, Red the least, and Green somewhere in between them. The Yellow and Cyan bands that are seen in our picture are created by the overlaps that occur in the process. Specifically, Yellow is created by the overlapping and mixing of Red and Green, while Cyan is formed by the overlapping and mixing of Blue and Green.
That's the official explanation for the spectra observed, and by all accounts that explanation has never been disputed or challenged in any shape or form. Not even Goethe has officially challenged the conventional explanation, although in his view the observed spectra arise because of completely different reasons.
