From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Thu Jul 03 2003 - 21:03:12 MDT
Damien Broderick wrote:
> At 10:38 AM 7/3/03 -0700, Hal wrote:
>
>>> http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0306050
>
>> Is this the same Thomas Gold famous for his "deep earth gas"
>> hypothesis?
>
> Yes, but more relevantly this is the same Tommy Gold who with Bondi,
> Hoyle and others eludicated how the goddamn Sun burns in the first
> place, invented the Steady State theory (too bad, good try though), and
> was the first person to suggest in print that pulsars are spinning
> neutron stars...
From Slashdot:
>
> Re:I don't think so (Score:5, Informative) by RobertFisher (21116) on
> Thursday July 03, @09:54AM (#6357969) (http://astron.berkeley.edu/~bobf
> | Last Journal: Wednesday August 07, @12:09PM) I agree with your
> analysis.
>
> In the way of background, note that Gold is the same Gold of the
> Bondi-Holye-Gold steady state cosmological model, proposed in the 1940s
> and 1950s as an attempt to "fix problems" with the big bang model, and
> has long held non-conventional views on light. Gold and others invoked
> "tired light" -- photons which became redder from their point of
> emission, even though doing so contradicted momentum-energy
> conservation. It's a archetypical example of a theory trashing a
> fundamental principle in order to exaplain last week's cosmological
> observations. We should always be wary of our assumptions, but all too
> often, cosmological theorists will attempt to make a splash by
> abandoning them in favor of explaining very tenuous and often incorrect
> observations.
>
> Gold has always been an outsider in the astrophysics community, but has
> done some very good work over the years; including some seminal work on
> pulsars. He was Peter Goldreich's (major figure in theoretical
> astrophysics, for those not familiar) Ph.D. advisor.
>
> Those interested in the history of the steady-state model, including
> attempts to resurrect it, and the many errors it commits, can check out
> this page [ucla.edu].
This explains Gold's bizarre comments on the momentum of photons.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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