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> The theory of Prof. Aguste Meessen published well before Wu's article Which journal was it published exactly, and what is "well before"? You're linking to a

• privong 10y ago
  > Which journal was it published exactly, and what is "well before"? You're linking to a generic PDF file served in his personal site, which answers none of those questions. I wasn't able to find a journal, but his website (and the pdf) have May 2013 for the dates. The same person appears to have given talk with a similar title at a conference in 2010[0]. But, if it wasn't published in a journal, it's tough to insist that someone else in the community should know about it. He does seem to have a few peer-reviewed publications[1], though they're all from the 1970's. > Edit: I'm ready to bet he's a crackpot http://www.meessen.net/AMeessen/ http://www.meessen.net/AMeessen/ > "Principle of an EM Cancer Detector" > "Apparitions and Miracles of the Sun" Yes, the titles seem crackpot-ish, but if you look at the abstracts, they seem a bit more reasonable. I don't know enough about human tissue to comment on the "EM Cancer Detection" paper but recall that MRI's use radio waves and CT scans use X-rays to detect cancers, both thus employ EM waves. So I'm not comfortable discarding it solely on the basis of its title. However, the abstract of the second one you mention seems to be a reasonable study of possible origin of phenomena reported by other people: This extensive study of “miracles of the sun” leads to the conclusion that they can be explained by means of natural physiological processes, while “apparitions” are related to altered states of conscience. [0] http://q-mag.org/abstracts-of-papers-on-ball-lightning-presented-at-ais-2010-atmosphere-ionosphere-safety-conference-in-kaliningrad.html http://q-mag.org/abstracts-of-papers-on-ball-lightning-prese... [1] https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/#search/fq=%7B!type%3Daqp%20v%3D%24fq_property%7D&fq_property=(property%3Arefereed)&q=author%3A%22%5EMeessen%2C%20a%22&sort=date%20desc%2C%20bibcode%20desc https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/#search/fq=%7B!type%3Daqp%20v%...
  • tagrun 10y ago
    > I wasn't able to find a journal, Why am I not surprised? > He does seem to have a few peer-reviewed publications... ...in no-name journals. > But, if it wasn't published in a journal, it's tough to insist that someone else in the community should know about it. In fact, if it wasn't published in a respectable journal, it's tough to take it seriously. Especially when it's coming from a guy who's talking about UFOs and miracles in "scientific" context. No, thanks. I'm not going to waste any of my time convincing people he is a crackpot in myriad ways. Edit: Since I can't reply to the reply below, I write it here: yes, that is the definition of a no-name journal. A physics journal with impact factor 1 is not a respectable journal. A non-respectable journal doesn't mean its contents are crack-pottery, where did you even get that? Crackpots with PhD have a few valid works, usually from old times, given that they got a PhD under some (presumably) normal scientist and maybe did a few postdocs here and there.
    • privong 10y ago
      > ...in no-name journals. Foundations of Physics isn't a high-prestige, cutting-edge journal, but it's also not a crackpot journal. It seems to be a respectable source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Physics Edit: > A non-respectable journal doesn't mean its contents are crack-pottery, where did you even get that? What? I never said that. I'm not saying the guy is not a crackpot. I'm just not willing to say he is, based only on paper titles and 2-sentence abstracts that can be interpreted multiple ways. > Especially when it's coming from a guy who's talking about UFOs and miracles in "scientific" context. I think you're drawing too sweeping conclusions from just titles and 2-sentence abstracts. It is possible to talk about UFOs and miracles in a scientific context in a reasonable way; e.g., by discussing whether reported phenomena are optical illusions or internal mental constructions. That's seeing to understand things other people report as reasonable processes. Of course, I agree that people can also purport to discuss these things scientifically while spewing bullshit. However, I can't tell from just the titles and abstracts which of those two things he is doing. I'd have to read the text of the papers to determine that. Absent less ambiguous information (and the time/willingness to read what he's written), I'm just not willing to condemn someone I know little to nothing about as a crackpot. If you've read the papers and have still come to the the conclusion that he's a crackpot, I'd certainly buy it. But, with the limited information I have, I have no real opinion about the guy or his work.
• chmike 10y ago
  This theory was presented at the International Symposium on Ball Lightning in 2010 [1]. The proceedings were published in 2012. This is not a simple pdf document on a random web site. Prof stands for Professor as Auguste Meessen was physics professor at the Université Catholic de Louvain in Belgium. He is now retired. This is a title one associate to the name like Dr for doctor. Your ignorence of these conventions tells a lot. Obviously you are also not competent to judge the scientific pertinence and validity of the content because none of your arguments address the content. Your arguments to consider him a crackpot boils down to the diversity of his research topics and the number of papers in respectable physics journal. According to the latter argument you would consider Higgs as a crackpot. I don't see a correlation between the diversity of research topic and the scientific invalidity of the work. You write that you don't bother reading such publications. Who cares what you read ? My point is that if a scientist elaborates a new theory on a subject, it is expected, at least in the scientific community, to do a research of prior art. What I pointed out is that this was not properly done and the referees did not do their job too. It is very likely that the referee were not well aware of the Ball Lightning research domain. Looking at the publications of the International Symposium on Ball Lightning sounds to me like an obvious source. It's not a random pdf text on a random web site. Even then, a google search should have located it. Your arguments have nothing to do with true science and you completely missed the point I made. Prof. auguste Meessen is not following Hacker News. He is too busy with his research. He currently finalize the elaboration of a theory explaining dark matter. It is a follow-up of his theory on space time quantization. I hope it can be published soon. Prof Meessen is 87 years old. My relation to him or the color of my hair have absolutely nothing to do with the scientific validity and pertinence of his work. [1] International Symposium on Ball Lightning (ISBL-10), June 21-27, 2010, Kaliningrad, Russia. Proceedings: Journal of Unconventional Electromagnetics and Plasmas (UEP, India), Vol. 4, 163-179, 2012.
  • chmike 10y ago
    Regarding the number of publications in high ranked scientific journals, I would like to add that the main professional activities of Prof. A. Meessen were pedagogic. 1. He gave lessons to the Physics students; 2. He created and managed a pedagogic lab for school students where he developed and exposed many educative and entertaining physics experiments; 3. He regularly performed what is called "school teacher recycling education" where physics school teachers could refresh their pedagogic methods with new, simple and entertaining experiments; 4. He wrote multiple school books on physics and this started before the time we had home computers, text editors and laser printers (it's a huge work he did all alone); and many other activities and responsibilities I'm not aware of. In addition to that he also had an intense research activity on many topics related to physics and his domain of competence. As can be seen on his web site, ufology is one of the domain he worked on, and as you can easily imagine it's nearly impossible to publish in a scientific journal on this subject. It is a remarkable opportunity that was given to him to present the results of his research on UFO propulsion at the Progress In Electromagnetic Research Symposium (PIERS) in 2012. The link between Electromagnetic UFO propulsion and Ball Lightning is obvious. But the most important research topic, in duration and result, is his space time quantization theory. He worked on it totally alone for 50 years. He focused on working on the theory instead of showing up and shaking hands at conferences to build up a network. This has later proven to be a huge handicap he is paying a high price today. As I said, he is currently finalizing a big article on his most recent results which is an explanation of dark matter and other things. As a true scientist he always expected that his work would be judged on its scientific value, not the strength of his network or the number of publication in high ranked journals. The reality is apparently sadly different and in my opinion shows a poor state of science. But this is not news. People might have various opinions on the validity of his theories. The last word should now go to experimentalists that will give a shot at it. These theories are not pies in the skies. They can be tested and I'm sure Prof. Meessen would be happy to give advise and help the audacious as long as he is still alive.