Marshall Barnes Scoffs At Stephen Hawking Higgs Boson Comments

Marshall Barnes, research and development engineer who won the 2008 bet with Stephen Hawking over the Higgs Boson particle, reveals why Hawking's excuse for why he wanted the Higgs Boson to not be found, is an example of his intellectual weakness.
 
 
Marshall Barnes,R&D Eng - Outspoken Stephen Hawking critic.
Marshall Barnes,R&D Eng - Outspoken Stephen Hawking critic.
Dec. 1, 2013 - PRLog -- Marshall Barnes, R&D Eng has proven Stephen Hawking wrong more times than anyone else. One of Marshall's greatest victories was when, on July 4th, 2012, it was announced that evidence for the Higgs Boson particle had been found at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, four years after Hawking had declared that he'd bet $100 that it wouldn't be found. Marshall had issued a press release that he would accept that bet from Hawking, and while Hawking never responded, the fact that the bet and Marshall's acceptance were both online, made it a public record which made Marshall's subsequent victory, public as well. Since then, Marshall has become the prime critic of Hawking, challenging his perceived staus as the "greatest mind on the planet" given to him by the Discovery Channel.

Now Marshall is replying to Hawking's latest comment on why he wanted the Higgs Boson to remain undiscovered, which the scientist stated at the London Science Museum's celebration of its Large Hadron Collider exhibit. Hawking said that he had hoped that the Higgs wouldn't be discovered so that scientists could move on to other theories, like M-theory, that explain the universe. Marshall outright scoffs at such statements (see http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/stephen-hawking-higgs-boso... ).


"First of all, the reason that I took a public position against Hawking's bet is because I had been studying his work and knew that he has a psychological issue with wanting to be right, or appearing to be right, when he hasn't really thought through the problem to begin with. I am not a particle physicist but I am a damn good conceptual theorist and so I applied my skills of conceptual theory to the issue of the Higgs Boson. What I saw was overwhelming evidence that the Higgs should be real, that there wasn't really anything hindering the possibility of its existence (see http://www.prlog.org/11914207-higgs-boson-announcement-sh... ). That's what led me to recognize that once again, Hawking was acting on impulse and the psychological thrill of the idea of taking a long shot and coming up right. There's only one problem with that - when he does it he's usually wrong, just like he's usually wrong when he makes his smart alec pronouncements."

"Secondly," Marshall continued, Hawking's reason that he gives for not wanting the Higgs found is bogus on its face. He acts like a Higgs discovery would prevent further investigation into M-theory when nothing could be farther from the truth. If there's no serious attempt to test for M-theory at the LHC then it's because there's not enough support to do it because of the flaws of M-theory. The Higgs only explains how other particles have mass, it's not a TOE or GUT. It sounds like to me that Hawking, knowing how people just pick up his pronouncements without even thinking of what he's saying, was justing tossing that out there. It's not a valid reason at all, and unfortunately adds more evidence to the notion that Stephen Hawking has become the most overrated physicist in the history of physics."

Hawking isn't the only one that didn't want the Higgs found however, and there are a few that think the Higgs discovery is boring, like Gordon Aubrecht, physics professor at the Ohio State University, Marion. Aubrecht, who has spoken on the Higgs before (see http://osumarion.osu.edu/events/search-higgs-boson ) said that the discovery was "boring" during a presentation at the 2013 MarCon science fiction conference in Columbus, OH, because it doesn't make physicists have to rethink anything or consider something weird or unexpected. However, during his presentation he mentioned that scientists have calculated that billions of years in the future, the Higgs boson particles will destroy the universe in a cataclysm that will happen at the speed of light. Marshall contemplated that for a moment and then responded.

"I thought you said that scientists like to see things that they didn't expect and are weird."

"That's right," Aubrecht responded.

"You don't think destroying the universe is unexpected and weird?"

Aubrecht paused, and then said, "Yeah, I guess you're right".

Aubrecht, though is not the only one that had found the Higgs discovery boring. Hawking himself said so to the media at the same opening, which again begs the question - What's so boring about the end of the universe?

"It just proves that Hawking, like many physicists, suffer from what I call the 'Oppenheimemer Strain' where they have lost the ability, the modes of sensory perception, as Oppenheimer called it, to see things which are many times right in front of them. That's why so few of them have caught the blantant errors and mistakes that Hawking has made, but I see them all the time... "

Marshall Barnes will be releasing a book, before the end of December on Stephen Hawking called, Spacewarps and Time Tunnels: Hawking's Infamous Legacy.

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