In sci.physics.relativity, Sam Wormley
<swormley1@mchsi.com>
wrote
on Sun, 22 Jul 2007 00:01:51 GMT
<P7xoi.35260$Fc.16682@attbi_s21>:

Tom Potter wrote:

Here we are, 100 years after General Relativity
and it continues to generate more hype and heat
than light and advances.

General Relativity is a Tower of Babel
that wastes time, money and minds on such
pursuits as time travel, worm holes, gravity waves,
rubber rulers and clocks, and the
birth and death of the universe.

One would think that if the GTR Charlatans
possessed such powerful knowledge,
that they would enter the free market
like the guys from Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Intel,
Texas Instruments, Apple, etc. and make billions of dollars,
rather than sucking up billions of dollars.

Hey Potter--General Relativity is one of the most fruitful tools
ever created by humans for understanding how the universe works.
GTR has directly contributed to a $30B+ industry, creating a global
infrastructure benefiting people all over the world. Aviation,
shipping, asset management, survey, mining, agriculture, time
dissemination, communications networks, etc.

It has? The only thing I even remotely see GTR doing is
refining the accuracy of the GPS system, and that can be
done in a number of ways (most of them empirical).

Assuming one can discuss the notion of a theory "doing"
anything. It's a bit like program code in that respect.

As it is, Potter is probably referring to wasteful,
shameful episodes like the Superconducting Supercollider
in Texas. The damage to the economy and the ecology of
the area may be irreparable, though the site has at least
been deeded to an investment group by this time.

This after a couple of billion dollars was spent prepping the site.
That billion could have bought a lot of food stamps -- or improved the
lot of a fair number of shareholders or infrastructure.