Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Faking APS email not a good way to be taken seriously

Many of us know the joy of getting email from, err, enthusiastic amateurs claiming to have solved all of the great problems of modern physics (often involving the invalidation of quantum mechanics, relativity, or both). This morning's allotment was particularly amusing, though. Subject line: Giant Revolution in the Physics Science. From: [allegedly] aps@aps.org. (Really from someone in Hungary.) It explicitly claims to be a message on behalf of about a dozen physicists (presumably not with their actual permission), including last year's Nobel Laureates. Even better, it asks us all to contact the Royal Swedish Academy (complete with contact information) and pressure them to award the Nobel in physics to a Hungarian physicist who "reinterprets the total known experimental results and uses solely the mathematical apparatus of dynamics and electrodynamics". Amateurishly spoofing email from people is no way to promote yourself....

3 comments:

Peter Armitage said...

Hi Doug. That was me.....

Douglas Natelson said...

Oh, come on, Peter. I know that you're better at forging email headers than that. Ohh - I've said too much!

Uncle Al said...

Contemporary physical theory is a whore. The only meaningful heterodoxy is novel experiment. For all advocates of proton decay there is Super-Kamiokande eager to call them out.

All compositions of matter validate the Equivalence Princple, even a pulsar/star binary. Do left and right shoes vacuum free fall identically? Somebody should look.