NEWSLETTER FEBRUARY 2026

Confederacy of Dunces?

For a typical debate on quantum mechanics listen to the podcast by the Closer to the Truth channel where Robert Lawrence Kuhn interviews Wojciech Zurek, Nima ArkaniHamed, Lee Smolin, and Seth Lloyd on the question: Why is the quantum so strange?

Also New Scientist ran an article in 19th January entitled Embracing Quantum Spookiness: Best Ideas of the Century by Karmela PadavicCallaghan which repeats all the fallacies relating to so-called ‘entanglement’ and Bell’s Inequalities etc and misleadingly attributes the origin of the notion to Einstein. Please check out my alternative analysis in my podcast and essay on Magic Particles.

Examples of Recent Scientific Gobbledygook

I believe millions have been allocated in the USA to build a detector for ‘gravitons’. The reasoning being, broadly, if physicists can quantise electromagnetic waves and matter why not quantise gravity too.

I suppose this is all part of the attempt to unify the four so-called ‘forces’. But as Newton pointed out centuries ago, gravity is not a force, but an acceleration which is simply a way of describing certain types of motion.

If you remember Newton’s qualification in Principia (1687): ‘The words attraction, ‘impulse’ or any propensity to a centre, however I employ indifferently and interchangeably considering these forces not physically but merely mathematically. The reader should hence be aware lest he think that by words of this sort I anywhere define a species of mode of action, or a physical cause or reason.’

So Newton is stating very plainly that his ‘force of gravity’ is to be considered as a mathematical construct to explain masses in motion accurately. This caution has been ignored and expressions such as ‘force of Nature’ taken root and millions being spent chasing chimeras.

Please check out my podcast and essay Farewell to Primitive Concepts which covers inter-alia the concepts of force, mass and charge.

Nuclear Fusion

Why is this taking so long? Or is it? It was first mooted in the early twentieth century as a method of producing almost limitless clean energy but seems to have ground to a halt. One of the problems was the amount of energy required to achieve fusion was greater than the energy produced but I believe this imbalance has been reduced. The other problem may be obtaining sufficient quantities of the hydrogen isotope, tritium which is not naturally abundant but can be produced in nuclear reactors and, I believe, particle accelerators. The Kleinman Centre for Energy Policy state on their website that 55kg would be required to run a fusion reactor for a year and that the largest global non-military supply is a mere 25kg. This is mostly owned by Canada and used in research at ITER ( International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor).

However Eric Lerner who disputed the Big Bang theory and approached nuclear fusion from a different angle states his company has produced a small nuclear fusion reactor. He has of course been ostracised from the physics community:
About LPP Fusion

Podcasts 2026

A newsletter and podcast will be published each month in 2026. These podcasts will be subscription based.

January
Fantasy Physics: The Non-existent Neutrino available now

February
The Vacuum Energy Catastrophe and the Big Bang available now

March
Why Intelligence is Non-Computable