Tuesday, October 22, 2013

#766: David de Hilster


David de Hilster is an internet crank who tries to promote the theory of autodynamics. Autodynamics was a miserable failure of a theory designed to replace the Theory of Relativity in the 1940s by claiming that the Lorentz transformation equations used in mainstream science are formulated incorrectly, so that special and general relativity equations are invalid, that the neutrino does not exist (which it demonstrably does), that there are particles not observed by mainstream physics (the “picograviton” and the “electromuon”), and that there are alternative models of decay for muons. The theory is, to emphasize, utterly debunked. It is as falsified as theories can be. But that doesn’t prevent crackpots from trying to revive it, especially crackpots like de Hilster, who has the perfect qualifications for spearheading the revival: no physics background and poor critical thinking skills.

He founded NeWiki (“An Encyclopedia For a New World”) in 2007 after his original research had repeatedly been removed from Wikipedia. He also makes, and tries to make, films, such as “Einstein Wrong – The Miracle Year” (it is a bit unclear whether that was actually ever made).

A severe victim of crank magnetism, de Hilster has subsequently gone on to advocate the even more ridiculous Expanding Earth hypothesis. His evidence: “It is quite obvious to most casual observers that South America and Africa were at one time joined. But it is quite unknown to almost all that Asia, Australia and the Americas also were at one time joined. This evidence leads to only one conclusion: 200 million years ago, the earth’s continents were all together on a much smaller orb and since then, the earth has been growing significantly.” 

Diagnosis: A hopeless case of crank magnetism. Probably rather harmless.

No comments:

Post a Comment