bascule

It would seem that Polaris will reach this totally arbitary "starting point" somewhere around 2012 AD. (By fudging the figures, you could probably go 100 years or so either side of this date.)

The starting point is not arbitrary, and you can't fudge it 100 years. On December 21st, 2012, the day of the Winter Solstice, the sun will be aligned with the "Great Rift" of the Milky Way Galaxy

Simply stating that its ''clearly utter nonsense'' or "i was a bit too scathing" doesnt quite cut it as an informative opinion.

I might remind you that we're not the ones claiming Planck, Schrodinger, Einstein, Hawking, and Witten are "wrong", and that all the experimental confirmation of both quantum and relativity is "wrong". He claims no big bang but can't explain the cosmic microwave background. He claims quantum entanglement is nonsense but can't explain the delayed choice quantum eraser. He claims relativity is nonsense but can't explain why the velocity of light appears constant.

No, I haven't read his book, but after reading his "science flaws" section I have no inclination to shell out $30 for his obvious scam.

Sorry to drag this thread out of the muck, but I certainly have a bone to pick with this Mark McCutcheon character. As an aspiring author myself, I really hate to see him bilking money out of people with what is clearly utter nonsense.

My favorite from his "science flaws" section was this:

Q: But don't we know all about the gravity of Black

Holes and how even light can't escape?

 

A: No. This often-repeated error is based on a simple oversight.

Black Holes are said to form when a star expends its nuclear

energy and collapses. But starlight only shines from intact,

functioning stars, of course. There is no more reason to

expect light to shine from Black Holes than from a burnt-out,

smashed light bulb. This is a commonly repeated error in

plain view that is intended to showcase and dramatize our

scientists' deep understanding of Black Holes and gravity, but

which actually exposes how little they truly understand about

either.

When clearly the "simple oversight" he is making is having never seen a photograph of a black hole, showing a dark swirl-like region surrounded by light from nearby stars or other celestial features...

As for all the positive reviews he's received on Amazon, one can note that the majority of these reviews were from reviewers who reviewed only his book and gave it five stars. My guess would be that these are fake reviews designed to increase his book's ratings. As for the others, such as the Top 500 Reviewers, my guess would be their reviews were commissioned for a fee, or perhaps they're so genuinely disillusioned as to buy into his "theory".

Personally I think some people with a clue about science need to hop on there and thoroughly discredit his book in the reviews, so a gullible individual isn't tricked into believing there's actually something there.

This question makes no sense. Even gravity waves travel c.

In my understanding there is no absolute reference frame in the theory of relativity, which makes me wonder how we can actually tell who is moving faster than somebody else at all ?

Spacetime is still absolute. The cosmic microwave background is also uniform throughout the universe, so your motion relative to absolute spacetime will generate a doppler shift in your measurements of the cosmic microwave background, which is the closest thing you'll ever get to measuring your "absolute velocity". For example, measuring the doppler shift from NASA's WMAP probe we've determined that the entire Milky Way Galaxy is moving towards the Hydra constellation.

This is not to be confused with the fact that all galaxies appear to be moving away from us due to the expansion of space itself. Observing a doppler shifted cosmic microwave background indicates motion in space, not with space.