How to challenge a well established theory?

[abhijitp88]

Hi all, need some help here. If I wish to contradict a well established theory in physics (namely the Carnot theorem), then what would be a suitable platform? I've tried a few journals but most of those publish experimental papers & won't accept my paper because it’s theoretical. Pls suggest a suitable platform (journals, conferences etc.) where new theories can be forwarded for scientific criticism. Thanks in advance.

 

[Chi Meson]

If you have no experimental support, then you do NOT have a theory, and you have no basis for challenging an established theory. No reputable journal will even glance at a paper that is only conjecture. The Carnot Theorem is not a "theory" anyway, it is a formula that results from the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Violating this law is exactly the same as "perpetual motion," which immediately hits the "disregard" button at all scientific journals. It also will trigger the lock on a thread here.

In short, before this does lock, let me tell you that you will need to have a working, repeatable experiment that demonstrates the validity of your conjecture before anyone will pay attention.

 

[Tosh5457]

If you have no experimental support, then you do NOT have a theory, and you have no basis for challenging an established theory. No reputable journal will even glance at a paper that is only conjecture.

Do you mean you have to have experimental support for your assumptions, or experimental support of your theory's consequences?

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Have you tried googling journal theoretical physics? I have.

 

[Andre]

Maybe also take note of http://scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_12_4_martin.pdf

Abstract

Those who challenge conventional views or vested interests in science are likely to encounter difficulties. A scientific dissenter should first realize that science is a system of power as well as of knowledge, in which interest groups play a key role and insiders have an extra advantage. Dissenters are likely to be ignored or dismissed. If dissenters gain some recognition or outside support, they may be attacked. In the face of such obstacles, several strategies are available, which include mimicking science, aiming at lower status outlets, enlisting patrons, seeking a different audience, exposing suppression of dissent, and building a social movement.

which, of course, is completely in line with the observations of Thomas Kuhn.

 

[ZapperZ]

Maybe also take note of http://scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_12_4_martin.pdf



which, of course, is completely in line with the observations of Thomas Kuhn.

And this is baloney, because I can easily point out to Dan Koshland's terrific article "Crazy but correct" (D.E. Koshland, Jr., Nature v.432, p.447 (2004)):

"I realize now that a new theory is likely to meet resistance, but it should, if based on GOOD experiments, receive sceptical encouragement if science is to remain in balance. Non-confirmists are necessary for progress in science, just as mutations are necessary for progress in evolution. However, there must be constraints to select good mutations from bad mutations. Too many mutations block evolution, as error-prone straints of bacteria have proved. So non-conformist thinking in science must be encouraged to make progress, but restrained to prevent anarchy. In science, it is PEER-REVIEWED JOURNALS and granting agencies that provide such balance."
.
.
"The trouble is that journals can easily become too conservative, because editors find it easier to reject the unusual than to take a chance on the unthinkable... The existence of multiple journals provides the final safeguard against too much conservatism and is the ultimate reason that science is more receptive to non-conformity than any other segment of our society."

Zz.

 

[abhijitp88]

hi all, thank u for all the responses, this theory I am proposing is serious and in the system that is proposed, the entropy of the universe increases, so the system is totally possible. The only obstacle in the actual construction is the availability of suitable materials. If this theory is published, then research would lead us to an actual working system eventually. I have sent the abstracts to the popular journals. Most of them aren't commenting anything. If anyone is aware of theoretical journals that publish such papers, then pls help me out here.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Have you googled journal theoretical physics carnot? I have. Here are some journals that have published theoretical articles on the Carnot engine.

Proceedings of the Royal Society London A458, 1519-1526(2002)
Entropy and Temperature of a Quantum Carnot Engine

Journal of Physics A33, 4427-4436.(2000)
Quantum-mechanical Carnot engine

Journal of Modern Physics
Multiple-State Quantum Carnot Engine

Physical Review A, 15, 2086-2093, 1977
Thermodynamics in Finite Time I: The Step Carnot Cycle

As you can see, there are plenty of journals that publish theoretical articles on this subject. Try all of these and if none of them accept your article, google for more journals.

 

[abhijitp88]

Have you googled journal theoretical physics carnot? I have. Here are some journals that have published theoretical articles on the Carnot engine.

Proceedings of the Royal Society London A458, 1519-1526(2002)
Entropy and Temperature of a Quantum Carnot Engine

Journal of Physics A33, 4427-4436.(2000)
Quantum-mechanical Carnot engine

Journal of Modern Physics
Multiple-State Quantum Carnot Engine

Physical Review A, 15, 2086-2093, 1977
Thermodynamics in Finite Time I: The Step Carnot Cycle

As you can see, there are plenty of journals that publish theoretical articles on this subject. Try all of these and if none of them accept your article, google for more journals.

thank u so much jimmy, I'm working on it

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

thank u so much jimmy, I'm working on it

No you aren't. I am.

 

[russ_watters]

hi all, thank u for all the responses, this theory I am proposing is serious and in the system that is proposed, the entropy of the universe increases, so the system is totally possible. The only obstacle in the actual construction is the availability of suitable materials. If this theory is published, then research would lead us to an actual working system eventually.

Hmm...so it sounds to me like you have an idea for a perpetual motion machine, you recognize that it violates an existing law of physics, so you created a new one to allow for it to work. That about right?

 

[Andre]

And this is baloney,.

Maybe that Martin still has some useful hints:

Just as important is presenting one’ s ideas in the expected way. A paper, to be recognized as scientific, must conform to the standard mold. This mold varies from field to field, but usually means a restrained, impersonal style, suitable references to earlier work, and use of jargon appropriate to the topic, all in a concise package that is similar to other writings in the field. Anyone who writes about their own personal discovery, not mentioning prior work, and writes for a general audience, has little chance of being published in a scientific journal, even if the ideas are conventional and would be publishable if they
were in standard form...

Enlist Patrons
Is there, somewhere, an open-minded mainstream scientist who is willing to
examine one’ s ideas fairly and, if they appear to have promise, help in ensuring
that they obtain proper recognition?...

etc.

 

[surajt88]

This might be a bit off topic, but a venture labelled as "of no obvious relevance to physics" resulted in a 9 billion dollar venture.

 

[abhijitp88]

Hmm...so it sounds to me like you have an idea for a perpetual motion machine, you recognize that it violates an existing law of physics, so you created a new one to allow for it to work. That about right?

not exactly...none of the physics laws are violated, morever Carnot theorem, unlike perpetual machine, does quantify the loses...but all these details would be scrutinized later...the main point is that if u could suggest names of reputed journals publishing such theoretical work after sufficient scientific scrutiny, i could proceed further and find out how perfect is my theory.

 

[fluidistic]

not exactly...none of the physics laws are violated, morever Carnot theorem, unlike perpetual machine, does quantify the loses...but all these details would be scrutinized later...the main point is that if u could suggest names of reputed journals publishing such theoretical work after sufficient scientific scrutiny, i could proceed further and find out how perfect is my theory.

You did not understand well the second post of this thread I think. If you violate Carnot theorem, you also violate the second law of thermodynamics.
Personally before sending such a pretending "theory" to top journals, I'd be pleased to post it on this forum to hear critics/comments. When you're about to violate well established theories you should realize you're very likely wrong somewhere.

 

[ZapperZ]

Maybe that Martin still has some useful hints:
etc.

I have no idea why you think this is useful, certainly not after you posted the earlier garbage.

Zz.

 

[ZapperZ]

hi all, thank u for all the responses, this theory I am proposing is serious and in the system that is proposed, the entropy of the universe increases, so the system is totally possible. The only obstacle in the actual construction is the availability of suitable materials. If this theory is published, then research would lead us to an actual working system eventually. I have sent the abstracts to the popular journals. Most of them aren't commenting anything. If anyone is aware of theoretical journals that publish such papers, then pls help me out here.

Unfortunately, based on what you posted and the grandiose claims that you have made, you are exhibiting the same symptoms of a crackpot.

http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/~siegel/quack.html

Zz.

 

[jtbell]

Personally before sending such a pretending "theory" to top journals, I'd be pleased to post it on this forum to hear critics/comments. When you're about to violate well established theories you should realize you're very likely wrong somewhere.

Not here, please. According to our rules:

Physics Forums is not intended as an alternative to the usual professional venues for discussion and review of new ideas, e.g. personal contacts, conferences, and peer review before publication. If you have a new theory or idea, this is not the place to look for feedback on it or help in developing it.

 

[fluidistic]

Not here, please. According to our rules:

Oops sorry.
What about under the following form: "I cannot find my mistake in some thoughts that I have. More precisely according to ... so that ... which contradicts Carnot's theorem and thus the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Where is/are my errors?"

 

[NileQueen]

And this is baloney, because I can easily point out to Dan Koshland's terrific article "Crazy but correct" (D.E. Koshland, Jr., Nature v.432, p.447 (2004)):



Zz.

I have no idea why you think this is useful, certainly not after you posted the earlier garbage.

Zz.

ZapperZ, what planet did you just arrive from?

I shared the Martin link with Andre, and it is a valid one.
Being a PhD student in academia, I am aware of the pitfalls of challenging the consensus.

Do you think Walter Alvarez and his team had an easy time of it rolling out their K/T (now K/Pg) impact hypothesis? Of course not.

For instance, the leaders in a field do not like to find out that their work of many years was incorrect. It is easier to squelch the new information especially when it is from an upcoming person in the field, who, btw is not likely to rise any further after challenging. An established professional is also going to have difficulties.

Just look at the stories of J. Harlan Brett (geologist, Channeled Scablands genesis) and Alfred Wegener (meteorologist, Continental Drift). Both had important ideas that took 50 years or so to finally become accepted. They were ridiculed and criticized.

A more recent challenger, Dave Griscom, is a retired physicist, who worked on electron spin resonance (ESR) spectroscopy, and was a PI for NASA on lunar research. He recently proposed that the upland gravels in the US Mid-Atlantic coastal region are impact ejecta from the 35.5 Mya Chesapeake Bay impact structure.
http://www.solid-earth-discuss.net/4/363/2012/sed-4-363-2012.html
He has not had an easy time getting published, but his interpretation seems
like a good one to me.

Also, abhijitp88 , it is not a theory until is has been vetted. It is a hypothesis or hypotheses, until it is accepted.

You need to find a mentor/advisor who can review your hypothesis and give feedback on the weaknesses. You need to be able to anticipate any objections to your hypothesis and be ready with answers. You also need to learn how to write in the scientifically acceptable style. A mentor/advisor could help you with this.

Good luck.

NileQueen

 

[abhijitp88]

Unfortunately, based on what you posted and the grandiose claims that you have made, you are exhibiting the same symptoms of a crackpot.


Zz.

everyone is entitled to have an opinion, so for u i might be a crackpot & for me that I've violated a law in physics, or both ;)...this is not a place to debate on that. It would be helpful if ppl stop pointless debates and suggest a well established international journal that publishes theoretical papers...that has been the point of this thread.

 

[ZapperZ]

ZapperZ, what planet did you just arrive from?

I shared the Martin link with Andre, and it is a valid one.
Being a PhD student in academia, I am aware of the pitfalls of challenging the consensus.

I'm sorry, but I come from a planet where not only have people gone through being a "PhD student", but also have WORKED as a professional in it!

Did you even READ the full Koshland article? Did you even realize the trial and tribulations he had to go through when he challenged the established ideas?

and for every example you show me, I can show you also all the new and unexpected discoveries that completely changed our knowledge that have been accepted. Example: CP-violation, Dark Energy, High-Tc superconductivity, Fractional Quantum Hall Effect, etc...etc.

So what is it that made what I said to "alien" to you?

Zz.

 

[NileQueen]

So what is it that made what I said to "alien" to you?

Zz.

Referring to an informational post as "garbage".
Not understanding the concept of paradigm shifts
Calling the original poster a crackpot, without even knowing
anything about his "theory". He is just asking for advice.
What kind of mentoring is that? It's NOT.

 

[russ_watters]

We just have a lot of experience dealing with crackpots. We can smell them from pretty far away. And while every single crackpot we ever deal with thinks they are different, they are all basically identical to each other.

 

[NileQueen]

We just have a lot of experience dealing with crackpots. We can smell them from pretty far away. And while every single crackpot we ever deal with thinks they are different, they are all basically identical to each other.

russ I guess I have a problem with you making that discrimination on insufficient information.

 

[Chi Meson]

Not locked yet? Amazing. I think the OP has saved his/her thread by being at least a little aware of the precariousness of the situation. I wanted only to add that the use of the word "paradigm" here is incorrect. Any challenge to a full-fledged, law-without-exception is not a "paradigm shift."

It would be a monumental breakthrough in human history.

Weekly, if not daily, someone without any thorough background in Physics takes their misunderstanding and runs directly to the nearest journal to cash in for the first-ever combined Nobel Physics and Peace Prize.

With much respect to the OP, and the good intentions therein, I repeat that to take your work any further, you will have to show some RESULTS. Either from direct experimentation on your part, or by way of careful calculation showing exactly how your idea can be supported AND how it might be proven false.

If you do not know how to do these calculations, then I'm going to insist that you probably are mistaken in your understanding.

Please do not stop your efforts. I would love to see a working PMM! Honestly, I would. A heat engine that surpasses Carnot efficiency is exactly that, by the way.

 

[Chi Meson]

Do you mean you have to have experimental support for your assumptions, or experimental support of your theory's consequences?

Preliminary assumptions, if they are not commonly accepted among the scientific community (or at least by those who know the difference between force and power), should have unequivocal experimental support before even proceeding.

Any other way would allow merely "thinking up something wild" to be a hypothesis, or at the very least "scientific speculation."

For example, I'm going to think up something right now. There might be some situations where the law of conservation of electric charge is violated. But I won't say it like that; instead, I'll say that "Kirchhoff's Junction Rule is invalid" (because I think no one has yet checked every circuit junction in the universe yet).

For anyone to give that statement any credibility, I will have to show the data for the circuit I created where the current flow into the junction is not equal to the current flow out.

Or, if I find that I am the only one who truly understands electro-magnetism, and I can produce a theoretical condition that will create more electric current out of a junction (or even make some disappear), I will need to be very specific what conditions a laboratory must produce to either validate or disprove the conjecture.

 

[Andre]

Excellent posts Chi, it certainly beats the Chinese rejection letter

Should we print it, His Majesty the Emperor would order us to take it as a criterion, and never against to print anything which was not equal to it. As that would not be possible before Ten Thousand Years, all trembling we return thy Manuscript, and beg of thee Ten Thousand Pardons. See! My hand is at my feet, and I am thy Slave.

Anyway, I'm unhappy with the crackpot witchhunt, maybe we are just dealing with a 12 year old eager genius, who just needs more guidance.

 

[Chi Meson]

Excellent posts Chi, it certainly beats the Chinese rejection letter

Anyway, I'm unhappy with the crackpot witchhunt, maybe we are just dealing with a 12 year old eager genius, who just needs more guidance.

I still have some tact left, although even as only a high school teacher of physics, my patience is already strained by these claims.

I can only add that for anyone who wants guidance in these matters:
Listen to ZapperZ

just don't begin the conversation with PMM.

 

[AlephZero]

Anyway, I'm unhappy with the crackpot witchhunt, maybe we are just dealing with a 12 year old eager genius, who just needs more guidance.

Well, you might get lucky, or you might not.

But I've lost count of the number of times that apparently intelligent PhD students (and even post grads) tried to convince me they just found a schoolboy error in industry-standard software that have been used by thousands of engineers for decades, without anybody else noticing the mistake...

... and so far, the "genius count" is still stuck on zero.

 

[ZapperZ]

Referring to an informational post as "garbage".

I refer to the reference as "garbage" because it really has nothing to do with the OP! And not only that, I've countered it sufficiently with Dan Koshland's article.

Not understanding the concept of paradigm shifts

I understand paradigm shift very well! I've seen it first hand. If you don't think the discovery of High-Tc superconductivity was a paradigm shift, then you don't know physics.

Calling the original poster a crackpot, without even knowing
anything about his "theory". He is just asking for advice.
What kind of mentoring is that? It's NOT.

You need to pay attention to what you read. This is EXACTLY what I said:

you are exhibiting the same symptoms of a crackpot

I called no one a crackpot. I pointed out similar characteristics of a crackpot. I even gave a link where others have also encountered similar traits.

It is my personal experience, having been on the 'net since 1987, that people who can't even figure out what journals are what, and suddenly claim to have discovered the next best thing since sliced cheese, 100% of the time have such characteristics. The number of years I've been on this forum only reinforced such a view, because I haven't seen anything to the contrary to change my mind.

Zz.

 

[OmCheeto]

hi all, thank u for all the responses, this theory I am proposing is serious and in the system that is proposed, the entropy of the universe increases, so the system is totally possible. The only obstacle in the actual construction is the availability of suitable materials. If this theory is published, then research would lead us to an actual working system eventually. I have sent the abstracts to the popular journals. Most of them aren't commenting anything. If anyone is aware of theoretical journals that publish such papers, then pls help me out here.

So this is a system you can build, but you don't have the suitable materials.

Perhaps what I'm working on is something similar. It's an energy storage device which almost completely circumvents the second law of thermodynamics. Though I wouldn't characterize it as contradicting anything. Carnot still comes into play, but just barely. Kind of like a spring, only with a much better energy/kg ratio. (no magnets involved!)

I've not submitted a paper as it is much too simple a device, and I'll simply just patent it.

What kind of suitable materials does you system require? Or would letting us know that divulge too much of your secret?

 

[micromass]

Hi all, need some help here. If I wish to contradict a well established theory in physics (namely the Carnot theorem), then what would be a suitable platform? I've tried a few journals but most of those publish experimental papers & won't accept my paper because it’s theoretical. Pls suggest a suitable platform (journals, conferences etc.) where new theories can be forwarded for scientific criticism. Thanks in advance.

Why does the Carnot theorem need to be changed?? Why do you think it does not accurately describe reality?? Remember, that question needs to be answered with experimental data. Some philosophical explanation is not sufficient.

 

[Topher925]

I don't mean to derail this thread more than it already has, but why is it everyone immediately jumped to the idea of a perpetual motion machine? The OP never made such a claim and divulged no information about the details of his hypothesis. For all we know, his idea mandates an even lower limit to the amount of energy a thermal engine may be allowed to convert. Has the scientific community really become that aporetic to new ideas?

 

[rootX]

This thread should have been put to rest long before. OP got his answer in 8th posts or so.