Something About Tom Bridgman

W. T. "Tom" Bridgman claims to be an astronomer, who owns and maintains a website where he, as a Defender of the Realm, with its black holes, big bangs, Einstein gravitational waves, dark matter, dark energy, and dark forces, disparages and ridicules people he sees as enemies of proponents of the current dogmas in astronomy and astrophysics. He has clearly revealed that he is not at all interested in true scientific discourse. For this reason it is doubtful that Bridgman will ever contribute anything original to science. Perhaps that is why he instead regurgitates the usual dogmas and attacks people who think for themselves.

Here is Bridgman's brief description of himself:

W.T."Tom" Bridgman
Maryland, United States
I obtained my doctorate in physics and astronomy in 1994. I currently work in scientific data visualization for the media and public outreach.

Now Bridgman has demonstrated a proclivity to censor from his webpages arguments and comments which he does not like. Even though he owns and maintains the said website, he invites scientific discussion, and so gives all and sundry the real expectation that scientific arguments will not be suppressed in any way by him. But it seems he frequently withholds that which he finds embarassing for himself and the Standard Modellers.

Bridgman has taken it upon himself to attack me and my work, and with that aim he has posted to his website a rather pathetic set of comments, which can be found here:

I prepared a reply to Bridgman and posted a link to it on his webpage. Here is my response to Bridgman:

Bridgman subsequently decided to open a blog dedicated solely to vilification of me and my work. He then posted a number of my replies, the contents of which he and one J. Sharples ignored. Bridgman did not like what I had to say and soon stated that he would not post anything further from me unless it complied with his restrictive dictatorial terms. I quote him: "Since this is my blog and not your forum, your next comment here better include a demonstration (preferably a link) of the experimental implications of your claims, including why it works so well in precision timing applications, or I will reject it.". He did not however impose any restrictions upon the posts by Sharples. Before receiving his ignoble censorial note I had prepared this reply to Sharples and Bridgman, a reply that would be withheld, by Bridgman's own admission. In it I provided Bridgman and Sharples with a simple recipe to prove me a mug and themselves smarter than the average bear. Here is the simple recipe:

Sharples posted to Bridgman's site an attempt to fulfil the recipe above. Even a cursory reading of Sharples' attempt reveals that he does not actually address the recipe. Despite his plaintive cries the fact remains that it is impossible for matter to be present in a spacetime that by construction contains no matter; and Ric = 0 is a spacetime that by construction contains no matter. Sharples also evades the issue of the invalidity of Einstein's pseudo-tensor. This is not surprising either, because it is easily proven that the pseudo-tensor is indeed a meaningless concoction of mathematical symbols. By contracting the pseudo-tensor one obtains a first-order intrinsic differential invariant, i.e. an invariant that depends solely upon the components of the metric tensor and their first derivatives. But the pure mathematicians, G. Ricci-Curbastro and T. Levi-Civita, inventors of the tensor calculus, proved, in 1900, that such invariants do not exist! Thus, by reductio ad absurdum, Einstein's pseudo-tensor is a meaningless concoction of mathematical symbols. It is noteworthy that Einstein's pseudo-tensor is involved in the theory of Einstein gravitational waves, and other things besides. Since the pseudo-tensor is invalid so is all that depends upon it. It does not matter what Sharples and Bridgman plead because these facts cannot be circumvented. There is another upshot to this, which is developed in a number of my papers; namely, that Einstein's field equations violate the usual conservation of energy and so are in conflict with experiment at a deep level. So much so for Bridgman's demand that I adduce physical evidence.

Bridgman, who claims a PhD in physics and astronomy, has admitted that until he read my papers he was entirely ignorant of the fact that the so-called "Schwarzschild solution" is not even Schwarzschild's solution. I remark that Schwarzschild's actual solution forbids black holes!

Although Bridgman did eventually post a link to a paper I wrote in reply to Sharples' initial criticisms of my work, neither he nor Sharples paid any heed to its contents. I remark that in his published criticism of my work Sharples misrepresents me in places by constructing the proverbial straw men, and thereby claims that I am wrong. That is of course unscientific method. But is has become apparent from the literature that this unscientific method is a common one amongst the defenders of the black hole, Einstein gravitational waves, and Big Bang nonsense.

It is also clear from the comments of Sharples and Bridgman they are entirely ignorant of what r in the so-called "Schwarzschild solution" actually denotes: but this they have in common with all black holers and big bangers. The irrefutable geometric fact is that the said r is not even a distance, let alone a radial one, in the manifold described by the so-called "Schwarzschild solution", and thereby completely invalidates all claims that General Relativity 'predicts' black holes.

A Russian specialist in General Relativity has acknowledged the validity of my proof that General Relativity does not predict black holes. His published paper is here.

Concerning the observational aspects of the Big Bang fantasy I refer the reader to this paper which was published in the technology magazine, Electronics World. The magazine's online copy of my paper is here. This paper shows conclusively that the cosmologists have deliberately cooked the books, and so the Big Bang cosmology is also a dead duck. The WMAP, COBE and Planck satellites are nothing but very expensive space junk. The relativists no longer have any legs to stand on. Theirs is an exercise in futility which has cost the public purse astronomical sums of money, all down the drain.

In 2012 Bridgman was at it again here. I sent him this response. Of course, he did not post any of it to his webpage.

It turns out that Bridgman is a specialist in making cartoons. Here is his profile.

Stephen J. Crothers

thenarmis@gmail.com

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Page established: 15^th June 2009

Latest update: 29^th December 2014