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From: doug-merritt@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.misc,sci.research
Subject: Re: atomic simulation software ...
Message-ID: <5043@cup.portal.com>
Date: 2 May 88 23:25:59 GMT
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Doug Gwyn comments that unless Kantor's methods for calculating the
mass of an electron are generalized to all leptons, then it discredits
itself.

It was in fact just a small part of a very generic methodology; there
was nothing magic about "electron mass". The last time I read it
was many years ago, so I'm vague on the details. And I didn't know much
particle physics at the time (not that I'm an expert now, either).

But the basic idea was one of examining the number of bits per
state and fiddling around with information transfer rates. Don't flame
it on the basis of what I say, though; it's been a long time. It
strikes me as being a reasonable idea in general, if you're a believer
in conserving causality by preserving locality, etc.

On the other hand, not being familiar with the literature, and never
having seen a review of his work, he could be considered to be a crank,
for all I know. And he hasn't won any Nobel prizes. Towards the end
of the book he has some rather interesting speculations about neutrinos
that sounded rather testable.

I will say that if he *is* a crank, he's an unusual one, in that he
demonstrates an intimate familiarity with the standard literature,
and critiques sloppiness in a number of published experiments.

      Doug Merritt        ucbvax!sun.com!cup.portal.com!doug-merritt
                      or  ucbvax!eris!doug (doug@eris.berkeley.edu)
                      or  ucbvax!unisoft!certes!doug