The Society for the Advancement of Autodynamics

The Society for the Advancement of Autodynamics  (http://www.autodynamics.org/)

    A site dedicated to the theories of Dr. Ricardo Carezani, who used up his scientific credibility trying to disprove (you guessed it) Einstein’s relativity — yet another example of the Einstein complex.  He appears to have gotten a modicum of respect from physicists, even getting his theories published in mainstream physics publications and having them tested at the Stanford Linear Accelerator against conventional physics theories.  Needless to say, the experiments came out in favor of mainstream physics, and seemed to disprove his ideas.  (Must have been a moth inside the accelerator that day…)  The website we linked to here is a “scientific society” founded for the advancement of his theories — you can purchase his books, discuss how great he is, etc.

I note from the website’s timeline of Carezani’s life that in 1996 he was presented with a “Lifetime Achievement Award” from the society.  Smells like a fix to me — a society, dedicated to advancing the cause of his theories, gives him a lifetime achievement award?  Just goes to show, those big awards are really more about who you know, not about the quality of your attacks on Einstein.  On the other hand, the society was founded in 1994, and he didn’t win the big award until ’96.  Who won it the first two years?

The driving force behind the society is David de Hilster, who appears to be carrying the torch for Dr. Carezani, to the point of producing a documentary on his family’s efforts to take Einstein down.  Judging from the trailer for the documentary (released in 2007), the theory depends inherently on white afro wigs and peppy folk-pop music.  I’m not really qualified to judge the underlying theories, but the “corrections” to relativity seem to be inconsistent with experiment, and that’s really the final deathblow.  To me, it looks like another reshuffling of the mathematical terms, much like the Yun-Qi Kingdom and others.  As with the Yun-Qi modified relativity, he seems to be moving the term (1 – v2 / c2) around from where Einstein put it.  This little scrap of math pops up all over the place in standard (i.e. correct) relativity, and is how many of the familiar effects such as the speed of light limit manifest themselves in the equations.  As crackpot theories go, this is pretty sophisticated (after all, Carezani appears to have been trained as a legitimate honest-to-goodness physicist), but if it doesn’t agree with outcomes of experiments, it’s gots to go.

Our scores are:

1.  Terrible English:   Nah.  Carezani and de Hilster’s writing and explanations appear to me to be about the closest to mainstream science writing as I’ve seen among the crackpots.  He did get articles published in actual physics journals.  Zero out of Ten.

Space, Time, and Grandma Jeans

2.  All Science Is WRONG:  Einstein is the target again, like so many others.  I won’t penalize him for lack of imagination, since he may have been one of the first — he was publishing his criticisms of relativity back when it wasn’t fashionable.  Nevertheless, here we see sweeping claims about how most of standard physics is wrong.  Also includes a surprising tirade against the neutrino.  What did the neutrino ever do to anyone?  Nothing, that’s what!  Literally!  (Ha Hah Ha, physics humor.)  Seven out of ten for his contrarian theories, one out of ten for my humor.

3.  Irritated, emotional language:  Carezani seems to keep his cool pretty well, and leaves the emotional pleas and grandstanding to de Hilster.  Quite a lot of talk at the Society’s website on “taking on the icons of 20th century physics”, particularly in the documentary.  But the tone never takes on the piercing, wounded feel of other crackpots who start throwing around violent threats (for example, TimeCube) — the crew here looks like they’re enjoying their quixotic mission against mainstream physics.  Five out of ten.

4.  One extremely long and ugly webpage:   Pretty sharp looking site — somebody paid a professional at this crackpot society.  At first glance, it would pass as a regular scientific society, until you start reading the words.  A zero out of 10, mainly because it looks better than our own timeblimp.com.

5.  Completely new definitions:   Not quite the treasure trove of new terms and notation that you see in more amateurish theories.  So far all I can find is the title of the theory, “Autodynamics”.  At first I thought “klystron” might be another, but no, it’s a real scientific term.  I remain on the hunt for the elusive “additional made-up BS definitions” that will complete my theory about Autodynamics.  One out of  ten.

All in all, I have to admit, a pretty professional-looking crackpot site, with impressively understated claims for his theories.  His grand total?  A rather paltry 13 out of 50.  And so much potential, too…  If the folks at Autodynamics don’t want to become the Bode Miller of pseudo-scientific physical theory, they’ve got some serious obfuscation to roll out…

>>>  Next up:  The Einstein Conspiracy

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