To quote the Doctor, “What. What? WHAT?!”

And here we see the infant crank, being kept down by The Man for the first time. In but a few years, he will have matured into a truly conceited beast, convinced that his theory of vortex energy makes him the one true successor of Einstein and Newton.

you should have posted his email. perhaps it was attached to a facebook account?

Perhaps he was confusing neutrons with neutrinos… though I don’t exactly see how you could have clouds of neutrinos either…. well perhaps held together by gravitational attraction.

Yeah, that’s the quality I have come to expect from “alternative theories”.

Wait… what was the point he was trying to make?

He probably got his PhD from Liberty University.

It is frustrating when you find = people you think are so smart are really … it happens !

Sean, you should have pointed him to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

So….Robert thinks that it never occurred to astrophysicist types to consider neutrons as a source of dark matter.

It’s like those creationist rants that revolve around how evolution violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Never thought of that, did you, biologists?

Somehow I got through four years of a minor in physics without learning (or not remembering) that neutrons decay that quickly, so at least I learned something interesting as a result of Robert being a jerk.

My first reaction was the same as RK’s, that I would have published his email address so that all civilized bloggers could have proactively banned it, but on reflection, your choice was classier.

“That’s DOCTOR Retard to you, young man.”

I feel your pain. I get these regularly, and it’s demoralizing.

@ Hephaestus

When you’re right, you’re right; especially when there are so many creative ways to insult someone without using that word even once. Would stupid, ignorant, backwards, uneducated, or addlepated be more acceptable, or is it a whole turn-the-other-cheek type thing?

100 movie insults
**As a word of warning, almost every other obscene word is used.**

FmsRse12 : “an[t]i-proton is not [stable]”

It’s pretty stable… otherwise you might have just solved the matter-antimatter asymmetry problem, and I would steal your idea and win a Nobel Prize. It’s harder to set limits on the antiproton lifetime than the proton lifetime, but Wikipedia directs us to astro-ph/0003485, which uses reasonable-sounding methodology to set limits of > millions of years.

The particle physicists on here could tell us if there are any predicted asymmetries here, but my guess is no. As I said, matter/antimatter asymmetries are super exciting.

See, I subscribe to the attitude that these kinds of things are invigorating. You really see that humanity comes in all kinds, including those that are not worth talking to. We know this and yet we need reminding from time to time.

Delete!

The problem with cranks is that they know more physics than about 99% of the population but know less physics than about 90% of all physicists. So, they sound convincing to those that don’t know better but are easy to spot by those who do.

Imagine this guy putting together some sort of youtube video where he explained the evidence for dark matter, patiently explained its properties, and then declared it to be neutrons without so much as a nod to big bang nucleosynthesis. Suddenly, you’ve got a bunch more people doing weird stuff like this: http://thunderbolts.info/npa/convergence.htm

repost failed

Wait. I thought everyone knew that the “missing matter” was packing peanuts:

“Scientists spent a huge amount of time and money looking for the missing matter, before realizing it was the white pellets that all their equipment used to search for missing matter was packed in.”

#1 Moshe — Why should “space=matter” be discounted (even though it’s not what the ignoramus was saying)? Matter is simply space that is rotating.

This is the best email I’ve ever read. It starts as an honest naive thought of a child (a pretty smart one too!) and then, like in “the Exorcist” turns to a nightmare of dumbness

Cheers ya’all!

Dogg

I hate to say this, actually I like saying it , but the reaction to Sean’s post is more illuminating than the post. I think the post and the way Sean framed it is hilarious. Sean struck exactly the right tone. But by far the majority of comments to it were stating the obvious – that the emailer was wrong. Duh!!!

There sure seems to be a cranky need in people to pile on when something is obviously wrong. Does it ever occur to anyone commenting here that it is equally depressing to see how many people following this blog need to find absolute safety before daring to venture an opinion. I find it amusing that the emailer was so sure of himself. But I also find it amusing that so many scientific types, both professional and amateur, are equally sure about the latest theories (last thirty years) that have a rabid following but no physical proof. What this man is saying is very similar to the evidence string theory has. But unfortunately the emailer does not have the blessings of the gurus of physics so it is very SAFE to criticize.

Are normal protons stable?

“Does it ever occur to anyone commenting here that it is equally depressing to see how many people following this blog need to find absolute safety before daring to venture an opinion.”

Does it ever occur to anyone like Eric Habegger that a person’s first encounter of a posting can happen over an appreciable span of time AND may perchance never in the slightest be influenced by previous respondants when “daring to venture” a perfectly legitimate and original opinion utterly unmotivated by any daft notion of “absolute safety” in numbers?

Does it ever occur to anyone like Eric Habegger how “depressing” it is to encounter yet another control-freak policeman on a blog thread, on which almost everyone else presumes a liberty [shudder] of venturing an opinion?

“What this man is saying is very similar to the evidence string theory has. But unfortunately the emailer does not have the blessings of the gurus of physics so it is very SAFE to criticize.”

Ah. Yes. Beware those boogyman “gurus of physics”. (Notice the clear implication that ALL such ‘guru physicists’ are necessarily String Theorists). It’s just not “SAFE” to disagree with them, is it? Even when you’re armed with an authentic understanding of the subject. (HAH). Just as long as folks like you and Robert can declare your outrage and your ‘Constitutional Right’ to harbor the Truth with God-like Certitude, that’s all that counts.

Pathetic.

In case that got muddled in some browsers, the figure is ‘more than’ 210,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.

Or over 700 billion times as long as the current 13.7 billion-year age of the universe.

Curious, isn’t it, that but for a single quark switch, a free neutron’s mean lifespan before decaying into a proton is a digestible span of only about 15 minutes.

If free neutrons only have a half life of 15 minutes, why is it that neutron stars don’t evaporate?
Is it because they’re really made of false neutrons (ie protons and electrons combined) or is it because they’re considered to be inside a giant nucleus?

Tevong says, “Is it any wonder the average person thinks science is just another belief system when it’s presented as such, or that people like the emailer aren’t aware of how much work goes into falsifying theories?”

I’m confused: are you appending the object of this concern to the glut of crackpots or to honest but oft timid scientists who refrain from engaging the public in a way that fights crackpottery? Maybe I’m completely missing the target.

BTW, that was an excellently crisp explanation answering Benjamin’s question. Bravo! Beautiful and succinct. Wish more of same to help thwart the tendency of the average person to think science is ‘just another belief system’.

What was the point of this posting? We routinely meet challenged people. Why elevate this to a blog posting? They deserve sorrow for their diminished cognitive state, not an orgy of self-congratulatory superiority.

@psmith: Announcing that Robert has a “diminished cognitive state” based on a single short email sure makes you a better, more modest person than those who are merely mocking his arrogance. You and Eric H. should combine your obvious interest in making condescending proclamations about what others are thinking while using plenty of imagery that involves people rubbing their bodies together. Hawt!

Let me add one more thing. I think it was ok for Sean to be offended by Robert’s rudeness. I would have been too. But in retrospect it seems there was no proportionality between Robert’s rudeness and Sean putting his email out on Cosmic Variance. It was the disproportionality and lynch mob response that it engendered in many comments that were pretty bad. In fact, that turned out being much more offensive and ugly than Robert’s original rudeness. Everyone is allowed to be human and get pissed once in a while but it usually is the disproportionality in response to the original insult that cause problems. In fact I would say that disproportionality of response in conflicts is the cause of much of the worlds problems. I think that should be common sense for everyone but it does not seem to be the case among much of the population.