Dear Editor:
Otto Hottendorf, in his December 17 letter, appears to suffer from paralogia, the inability to form coherent logic. An example of paralogia: A man loves pizza. He loves the tires on his car. He therefore concludes that tires are made of pizza. For Otto, reasoning means arranging words in a creative and whimsical way, and a lie has equal validity to a fact, so long as you get the last word in.
1. Cosmology and theology aren’t synonymous. This assertion of his is the premise from which he derives all his ludicrous statements. Science deals with empirical matters. Religion doesn’t. Science is the study of natural phenomena, and the conclusions regarding those observations using repeat experimentation, investigative analysis and rational deductive reasoning. Religion deals with the philosophical, moral and metaphysical. Conclusions reached in science are confirmed by reasoning and external validation. Religion can’t be externally validated. Its laws are set arbitrarily by its authorities, and aren’t subject to logic or scientific questioning. Thinking God created the Big Bang is irrelevant, and doesn’t change this. Otto thinks that because both concern themselves with convergent subjects, that they are the same. What separates them is the methodology by which each operates. The theories in science are derived from objectively interpreted proof. Those in religion are not. This inability to understand what science essentially is renders him unable to make coherent statements regarding it.
2. Neutrons don’t have antiparticles. Antiparticles’ opposite spin from normal matter particles is not what makes them antimatter, because they all spin in either direction. Neutrinos have only one spin state. Neutrons do not. Antimatter particles are such because they have opposite electrical and magnetic properties. Neutrons have no electrical charge. They’re neutral, hence their name, and don’t have an antiparticle counterpart. Doesn’t matter how many times you say otherwise, Otto, it doesn’t become true. Show me one physics book that refers to “anti-neutrons.”
3. “Zero” isn’t energy. “M” represents matter, not a numeral, and so M + -M isn’t a mathematical equation. A number plus its negative counterpart equals zero. Matter plus its negative counterpart does not, and your passage about “waves” is pure intellectual gibberish. M + -M=energy, period. Energy is not waves, but travels in waves, and even then not always. Sometimes it travels in particles, such as photons.
4. Space is warped by gravity. Space is not “nothingness.” It is a three-dimensional medium wherein solid objects exist. If it isn’t warped by gravity, how do you explain black holes?
5. Your reference to antispace was not a typo. It was a falsehood.
6. Time isn’t an action. It’s a non-spatial linear continuum wherein events occur in an apparently irreversible order. In response to your false assertion that time doesn’t pass at lightspeed, I stated that time is relative, but you never admitted your error in saying so. Calling energy “waves,” or space “nothingness,” or time an “action” is a layman’s attempt at definition, but not the correct one.
7. “God used relativity to measure the first two days (of creation).” I must be missing that page from my Bible. My original letter cited reference sources, noted physicists and religious authorities like St. Augustine and the Pope. Where did you derive your conclusions from, Otto? Where is your proof? What are you basing your assertions on? My assertions are the facts accepted by the scientific community. Yours are not, and are nothing more than pseudoscientific rubbish that you simply made up. Take your arguments to any physicist, and see how he reacts.
The intellectual level on which Otto operates reminds me of how children make up their own whimsical explanations for things. He thinks that he can just make up a fact by fiat, as if science is akin to freelance poetry, where people can simply interpret reality on a whim, and in which such fanciful interpretations are just as valid as accepted scientific fact.
Luigi Novi