The time of cowardice

The Time of Cowardice

Updated on February 3, 2009

Last updated, 8 years later, on May 2, 2017

Justice is served!

http://www2.iap.fr/users/riazuelo/cosmo/jpp/p2.html

Riazuelo

May 2, 2017:

Go see this, at 33 minutes 35. I wonder for how long, after its broadcast, Riazuelo's idiotic criticisms will remain on the website of the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris. For eleven years my requests for a legitimate right of reply have gone unanswered, and it is not only Mr. Riazuelo who must be held responsible, but the successive directors of the IAP and, beyond them, the entire community of cosmologists and astrophysicists.

That a researcher protests by publishing this on his site, big deal. Let him shout. However, videos make more noise and they will remain on the net without time limit, will be "called up" by the system of automatic links. Years will pass. Riazuelo's hair will turn gray, but he will continue, through his own words, to appear for what he is: an idiot. I had sent him a last message regarding this page on the IAP site. Either he had it erased, or he completed these criticisms.

A situation of Zugzwang, as they say in chess, where you put the opponent in the obligation to move. But, whatever move he chooses, it is bad. That being said, erasing the page would have been for Riazuelo the least bad of the two options. But the idea that I could force him to do that was unacceptable to him. He will own this choice.

The political world is completely rotten. But the scientific world is just as much so. Who would be surprised? Among those who would be able to react to a given situation, by virtue of their competence, when you have finished counting the dishonest people, there remain the cowards, those who "silence themselves courageously." This reminds me of a sentence by my friend Rémy Chauvin (deceased) - When you do something, you immediately have against you those who do the same thing, those who do the opposite, and ... those who do nothing.

I am going to continue these Janus videos. There is still quite a lot to say. As one of my friends used to say:

You are like a guy herding a flock of bison in a porcelain shop.

To be continued

http://www2.iap.fr/users/riazuelo/cosmo/jpp/p2.html

Two years have passed:

Mr. RIAZUELO, Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris 98bis boulevard Arago F-75014 Paris France Sir, following the reading of a hallucinatory discussion by the administrators of the French WIKIPEDIA regarding the article concerning a former research director at the CNRS, Jean-Pierre PETIT (hereinafter JPP), I ended up visiting the IAP site, where I was able to read, in particular, your article, in which you criticize a part of Mr. JPP's work.

Although this is secondary, I specify that I am Czech, having lived for many years in Prague, before having stayed in Toulouse in the 70s. At that time I had welcomed with a certain enthusiasm the activities of the CNES in the field of UFOs - not that I would have been a "fan" of extraterrestrials, but because I considered it courageous on the part of French scientists to take an interest in this phenomenon in order to subject it to the test of "the method," in order to definitively demonstrate that it belongs either to the objective (and study it accordingly) or to the subjective (and relegate it to the sociology of beliefs, mystifications, manipulations, and neuroses). It must be said that at the time I followed, among other things, studies in epistemology at the Paul Sabatier Faculty of Sciences and I was full of ideals regarding the scientific approach - therefore without prejudice - to the world. This is the reason why I became interested, rather from a distance, in the tribulations of Mr. JPP within the institutional scientific world.

I read, with unfortunately relative interest, the article that you published on the pages of the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris. Relative, because my knowledge of the relevant scientific field does not go beyond that of popular science magazines. I am therefore not in a position to understand its full scope.

Admittedly, I noted a certain ironic tone, even somewhat contemptuous, but I suppose that this can be the case in the clash of ideas, each acting with the ultimate conviction that the other party in the polemic is nothing but a sinister buffoon and a dilettante - somewhat like a civilian to military personnel. It is true that I have read many other polemical articles, from which this acerbic tone was absent and which confined themselves to a factual discussion of ideas, theses, and theories, without having to belittle the person, if only in context. Reading your lines, the idea comes to mind that respect for others is only proportional to the inner greatness of the author of the assertions (I often say that when one speaks of something, one always speaks of oneself).

However, there is one thing that shocked me terribly in the page that you do not sign, but of which you are apparently the author (this too has visibly disappeared from the intellectual habits of French scientists: in the past, at the bottom of each email there was not only the name and title of the author but also the name of his lab as well as the number of his office door. But never mind, the world is becoming more and more vulgar... in the sense of vulgum pecus). The thing that shocked me the most in your page is the total absence of a response from Jean-Pierre PETIT, in order to either defend his own ideas against your arguments (and to demonstrate, if necessary, that the ridiculous buffoon is you), or to abjectly acknowledge his error and ask, in a "dunce cap," for his place at the next burning at the stake. During my higher education I had several times the opportunity to attend, within the University, fierce debates between proponents of theories, or opposing schools, who bit into each other with beautiful bites where we, the student audience, could form our own opinion in complete freedom. Here, nothing, peanuts, in modernized language... the other is absent, as Lacan would say, and freedom with him.

Already, my first surprise was constituted by the fact that you did not invite him, at the conclusion of your text, to send you his response. A mark of superiority, or of smugness? Contempt? Fear? Hatred? We are free to imagine whatever comes to mind, but nothing that comes to mind is to your advantage. And since you represent, more or less (follow the gaze), a major institution, well, these qualifiers apply to this institution, or to the entire French scientific community, which should have slapped your wrist, regarding scientific ethics. For either JPP's arguments are a dark... jam, and as such not worth dedicating a line to, or they are worth a page (which you demonstrate), and then you have the obligation to give him the space to defend himself.

I could certainly imagine that Mr. JPP did not deem it necessary, or that he did not dare enter this expert debate, which would be relatively dishonorable for him. However, thanks to Google, I discovered pages that are part of his personal site, on which he reacts and demands with vehemence (or violence) this debate. According to Mr. JPP it would seem therefore that it is you who refuse him this debate, which I do not have to discuss and which I could still not reproach you for.

What is, on the other hand, properly scandalous, is the fact that since 2006 (so more than two years), you attack not only the ideas and conceptions of Mr. JPP, but also his person (using contempt and an acerbic tone), denying him the right of reply - a social and philosophical concept highly esteemed in France, which still wants to be a land of freedom of thought - and that you leave this attack still online!!!! This amounts to a medieval practice of pillorying!!!

If for any reason you do not wish to debate with him, then out of intellectual honesty and scientific integrity, you should have removed this text for two years, or at least indicated the references to the pages on which JPP expresses himself following this text and responds to it. With such an attitude, you dishonor not only your own academic titles (in such cases someone might even wonder if you acquired them honestly), the institution whose official space you use, the French scientific and intellectual community, but you tarnish all of French history and culture!

Excuse me, but whatever the scientific content and objective truth of your affirmations and arguments in the article, this scandalous fact inevitably brings to mind words like buffoon, Tartuffe, The Ridiculous Précieuses... but these words come to mind regarding you. I suppose you have heard of a certain Voltaire. I know he died more than ten years ago, which in the internet era constitutes an eternity that some contemporaries cannot bridge. Well, this gentleman, who made the glory of this country, once said:

I DISAGREE WITH YOUR IDEAS BUT I WILL DEFEND TO THE DEATH YOUR RIGHT TO EXPRESS THEM.

You should meditate on this quote and, following it, as I hope, remove the text without further delay, or propose to Mr. PETIT (who is still not an amateur autodidact with grocery store ideas) a space equal to yours, or add a link to a page on his site, in order to grant him the right of reply.

I specify that I am not - and far from it - a fan of JPP and that I see well that in some ways he can disturb, annoy, prevent going in circles... these attributes that have always been the attributes of poets but also of true scientists (it has been demonstrated that the intellectual and creative mechanisms of the two "races" are totally identical). Their role is not to collect prizes, or to reveal first truths, but to disturb, to trouble the established order, to agitate institutions and ideas. This is what he apparently does, as to whether he is right or not, it is not for us to judge and we must content ourselves with doing everything so that he can express himself, then history will take care of it. As to knowing who will pass through the sun of eternal posterity, or through the toilets (of history), well, it is for history to do so, and not for censors or Jesuits of all stripes. To just skim his situation from a distance, the idea comes to me of a certain Monsieur Curie, whom official institutions ostracized for as long as possible (despite his Nobel Prize), well, it would be a shame if that were the case again (although similar cases are plentiful in France).

I would therefore be grateful if you would kindly make the incendiary piece disappear without delay, which in the state of facts is nothing but virtual toilet paper, or make it a piece in the debate of ideas, or an act of revelation once and for all of an insignificant mental agitator.

And finally, and to return to the title, I would like to address my thanks to you: because thanks to your attitude I discovered JPP's enormous site, as well as the two others and I find them very interesting to read. For having led me to discover it, I must ultimately address my thanks to you. Acknowledged.

With my most sincere salutations Miroslav HERMAN PRAGUE, Czech Republic PS: I will not fail to draw the attention of my friends in the Czech scientific community to your institute and your practices, so that they may judge on the spot the degradation of the mentality of the elites in France.

PPS: I suppose that this text, which is not flattering to you, may contain a certain number of grammatical errors and stylistic mistakes. However, I dare hope that in essence it remains understandable and that these errors do not prevent you from grasping the substance. I ask you to excuse me for these errors, French is still only my second language and above all, for more than 20 years, I have only practiced it sporadically.

PPPS: As its content directly concerns the person of Mr. PETIT, I take the liberty of sending him a copy of this letter.

MH Mr. Alain Riazuelo's critical article, in place for two years on the website of the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris

Riazuelo

**Alain Riazuelo ** ---

****Received on January 19, 2007

http://www2.iap.fr/users/riazuelo/cosmo/jpp/p2.html

December 21, 2006

he text written by astrophysicist Alain Riazuelo, supposed to constitute an analysis of my scientific work, placed on the website of the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris is still online despite the letters sent to the director of the laboratory, Mr. Laurent Vigroux.

his text, which has been read by thousands of internet users, particularly after its placement on Wikipedia, harms me, is damaging to me insofar as I cannot respond to it as it should be done: in a seminar and not in obscure forums, populated by speakers hiding behind pseudonyms.

asked Mr. Vigroux to be able to speak before my scientific colleagues, in the seminar of this laboratory in order to publicly dismantle the criticisms of this young Polytechnicien. No response was given to my repeated requests.

I qualify this behavior as dishonest and cowardly.

December 21, 2006

I qualify this behavior as dishonest and cowardly.

December 8, 2006

On October 10 last, I had sent the following letter to the Director of the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris:

http://www2.iap.fr/users/riazuelo/cosmo/jpp/p2.html

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Pierre_Petit

Jean-Pierre Petit

Former research director at the CNRS

At the Marseille Observatory

Villa Jean-Christophe

206 Chemin de la Montagnère

84120 Pertuis

Pertuis, October 10, 2006

To the Director

of the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris

98 bis Boulevard Arago 75 014 Paris

Dear Director,

A retired astrophysicist, I had come to present my work in astrophysics and cosmology in a seminar, within your walls, at the time when Omont was the director, dedicated to a model consisting of two CPT-symmetric sheets of universe, initially proposed by Andrei Sakharov.

That must have been six or seven years ago.

No one, at the time, in the audience, reacted negatively to my presentation.

You have in your staff a young researcher, Polytechnicien, Alain Riazuelo, research associate at the CNRS, who engages in attacks by publishing criticisms of my scientific work, published in peer-reviewed journals, presented at international congresses (Marseille colloquium, 2001), and presented at the Collège de France in 2005, at the invitation of Jean-Claude Pecker, astrophysicist and academician, and Jyant Narlikar, secretary of the I.A.U, criticisms that I would qualify as defamatory.

Defamation (Larousse): harming the reputation of someone by words or writings.

He published these attacks for months on forums like Futura Sciences. But more recently he spread them in the Free Encyclopedia Wikipedia, presenting himself as an expert in cosmology and as the spokesperson for the scientific community. His articles were preceded by the header:

An astrophysicist, Alain Riazuelo, working at the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris judges Jean-Pierre Petit's twin universes theory

I quote one of his sentences:

Regarding Jean-Pierre Petit's scientific work, the scientific community has long since rendered its verdict.

Mr. Riazuelo posted his remarks on your laboratory's site, at the address

This text is permanently accessible from a link still present on Wikipedia and suggests that the IAP endorses his remarks.

I asked Mr. Riazuelo, who visibly understood nothing of my work, to be able to respond to him in a seminar at the IAP, but he replied that my request could not be granted, my work being of such a low level that it was not even worth discussing.

I therefore reiterate this request. I think that this young Polytechnicien, who has an unfortunate tendency to overestimate himself, dizzy from the number of citations and downloads of his articles, really understood nothing of my work. I would therefore very much like to be able to provide him with these explanations before his fellow researchers at the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris.

Furthermore, this text harming me, I would like you to ensure that it is removed from the IAP site, otherwise every reader will continue to think that the laboratory endorses his remarks, unless this state of affairs corresponds to your position?

If that is the case, please be so kind as to clarify this for me.

Hoping that my requests will be heard, please accept, Dear Director, the expression of my respectful sentiments.

Jean-Pierre Petit

Former research director at the CNRS

Jean-Pierre Petit

Former research director at the CNRS

At the Marseille Observatory

Villa Jean-Christophe

206 Chemin de la Montagnère

84120 Pertuis

Pertuis, October 10, 2006

To the Director

of the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris

98 bis Boulevard Arago 75 014 Paris

Dear Director,

That must have been six or seven years ago.

No one, at the time, in the audience, reacted negatively to my presentation.

Defamation (Larousse): harming the reputation of someone by words or writings.

An astrophysicist, Alain Riazuelo, working at the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris judges Jean-Pierre Petit's twin universes theory

I quote one of his sentences:

Regarding Jean-Pierre Petit's scientific work, the scientific community has long since rendered its verdict.

Mr. Riazuelo posted his remarks on your laboratory's site, at the address

This text is permanently accessible from a link still present on Wikipedia and suggests that the IAP endorses his remarks.

If that is the case, please be so kind as to clarify this for me.

Hoping that my requests will be heard, please accept, Dear Director, the expression of my respectful sentiments.

Jean-Pierre Petit

Former research director at the CNRS

The reader will be able to verify that the critical text composed by Mr. Alain Riazuelo is still in place on the website of the Institut d'Astrophysique. Its director paid no attention to the request, which was doubled by a seminar request formulated on November 2, 2006.

No response from Laurent Vigroux, director of the IAP, to this second letter.

I then received the following message, signed Alain Riazuelo, dated Saturday, November 4, 2006, 2:15 PM:

Sent: Saturday, November 04, 2006 2:16 PM

Subject: Regarding your request

Mr. Petit,

I finally take the decision to "confront" you in a seminar at the IAP in the coming weeks. We will discuss shortly about a preferable date to organize the seminar, but I imagine however that any date will suit you given your inactivity which reduces you to spending 10 hours a day on a little-visited internet site and with articles that go in circles.

See you very soon

Riazuelo Alain

Sent: Saturday, November 04, 2006 2:16 PM

Subject: Regarding your request

Mr. Petit,

See you very soon

Riazuelo Alain

After that: total silence. I had however immediately replied by providing my phone number, so that a date could be set. This researcher could contact me without intermediary without any problem using my personal email, which he did not do.

In any case, my seminar request was not addressed to him, but to the Director of the Institut d'Astrophysique, to whom I am sending this third and final letter today. I think, I am even perfectly convinced that he will not answer me either. If he did not deem it appropriate to answer my two previous letters, why would he answer this one?

http://www2.iap.fr/users/riazuelo/cosmo/jpp/p2.html

Jean-Pierre Petit

Former research director at the CNRS

At the Marseille Observatory

BP 55

84122 Pertuis Cedex

Pertuis, December 8, 2006

To Mr. Laurent Vigroux

Director of the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris

98 bis Boulevard Arago 75 014 Paris

Registered mail with return receipt.

Copies to Mr. Alain Riazuelo and Jean Audouze

Posting on my internet site

http://www.jp-petit.com

in the form of an open letter

Email copies to:

vigroux@iap.fr

riazuelo@iap.fr

audouze@iap.fr

Dear Director,

Following my letters of October 10 and December 2 last, copies attached, I am sending you this final letter.

I note that the text posted online by Mr. Alain Riazuelo on the site of your laboratory at the address:

is still in place.

This harms me on the scientific level, tending to create discredit over all of my work. It is damaging to me on the social and editorial level (insofar as I plan to publish new books, which entails financial prejudice for me) by contesting my credibility. I have not been given the possibility, for more than two months, to respond publicly to these unfounded criticisms, a sign of simple incompetence, which have been read by thousands of internet users.

Your indifference to this situation shocks the scientist that I am.

I ask you for the last time:

To have this text removed
To give me the opportunity to give in your laboratory a seminar on the theme:

Geometrization of Andrei Sakharov's model

whose approach served as the basis for my work in cosmology and astrophysics.

This seminar would give me the opportunity to respond publicly, before his colleagues (and before Jean Audouze, who published my first work in cosmology in 88-89 when he was editor of Modern Physics Letters A), to this researcher, Mr. Riazuelo, whose attitude, for two months, does not shine with courage.

Please accept, Dear Director, the expression of my respectful sentiments.

Jean-Pierre Petit

Former research director at the CNRS

Jean-Pierre Petit

Former research director at the CNRS

At the Marseille Observatory

BP 55

84122 Pertuis Cedex

Pertuis, December 8, 2006

To Mr. Laurent Vigroux

Director of the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris

98 bis Boulevard Arago 75 014 Paris

Registered mail with return receipt.

Copies to Mr. Alain Riazuelo and Jean Audouze

Posting on my internet site

http://www.jp-petit.com

in the form of an open letter

Email copies to:

vigroux@iap.fr

riazuelo@iap.fr

audouze@iap.fr

Dear Director,

Following my letters of October 10 and December 2 last, copies attached, I am sending you this final letter.

I note that the text posted online by Mr. Alain Riazuelo on the site of your laboratory at the address:

is still in place.

Your indifference to this situation shocks the scientist that I am.

I ask you for the last time:

To have this text removed
To give me the opportunity to give in your laboratory a seminar on the theme:

Geometrization of Andrei Sakharov's model

whose approach served as the basis for my work in cosmology and astrophysics.

Please accept, Dear Director, the expression of my respectful sentiments.

Jean-Pierre Petit

Former research director at the CNRS

This situation will surprise many a reader. This attitude shows the state of degradation of morals in the scientific community, for whom the words ethics and sense of honor have become totally dead letters.

In October 2005 we had just finished, my friend Gilles d'Agostini and myself, a work on geometry. I then decided to submit a seminar proposal to the Institut des Hautes Études de Bures sur Yvette. I had sent a similar request six years earlier, which had been directed to Thibaud Damour, who had rejected it immediately by sending me a comment showing that he had not read what I had sent since his criticisms were completely outside the subject I proposed to address.

Since the work we had just finished was geometry, I asked Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, mathematician, geometer, and director of the IHES, to do me the kindness of examining the submitted work himself and making the decision.

There were three submissions and two phone follow-ups in 12 months. I believe the simplest thing is to reproduce the content of the last exchange:

*- I have your paper before my eyes, but I don't see how it brings anything new to mathematics - The innovation is not at the level of the mathematical tool but of the use made of it in and which falls under mathematical physics. What do you think of this work? - The approach, with the coadjoint action of a group on its moment space, is quite classical. I see nothing in particular that shocks me. Personally, it does not bother me at all that your moment space is non-connected. - You, perhaps. You other mathematicians, nothing bothers you, whether the space is composed of one, two, or nineteen sheets is indifferent to you. But among astrophysicists and cosmologists it's a different song. If you send this to Thibaud Damour, he will reject this paper immediately without even reading it, as he did six years ago. That is why I addressed myself to you, because you are a geometer and these questions are familiar to you.

Hmmm. I can perhaps submit it to Madame Choquet-Bruhat. I know she is not very partial to string theory - Very well, do it.
OK, I will keep you informed.*

The final answer arrived twelve months after my first letter, very laconic, in the form of a short email:

- I passed your paper to Damour. He has not changed his mind about you.

Brilliant result after twelve months of waiting. In this work, not a single bolt is missing; Bourguignon knows this well. Otherwise, if he had detected the slightest weakness, he would have jumped on it to remove as quickly as possible this thorn I was planting in his foot. If he had taken himself the decision to invite me to the IHES, the confrontation with Damour would have been inevitable and he knew that the latter would not have come out victorious. By choosing cowardice, Bourguignon preferred to spare his career.

** ** * * ****

http://www.jmsouriau.com

December 15, 2006. Open letter to Thibaud Damour.

His email:

Dear Colleague, I had transmitted 12 months ago to the IHES through its director, my friend Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, a seminar proposal entitled:

"Geometrization of Andrei Sakharov's cosmological model".

Finally, this proposal landed, a year later, on your desk and Bourguignon immediately transmitted to me the laconic response-message that you did not hesitate to send back to him:

Damour has not changed his mind about you.

I also see that you sent the following response to one of my readers:

Sir, > > one should not believe everything one reads on the internet. I am open-minded, but only for hypotheses bringing something new (non-trivial) to science.

sincerely > > Thibault DAMOUR Would you have the courtesy to enlighten me and explain to me in what way my work is trivial and brings no novelty. I would be interested in having, from you as a specialist, a more detailed criticism, which I could share with the readers of my site, who are numerous in asking themselves the same question.

This work, if I understood correctly what was said during our phone conversation, did not seem to shock Bourguignon, geometer, under its simple technical aspects (coadjoint action of a group on its moment space).

In case, we could discuss this question by phone, or in person, at the IHES where I could go if you consider it appropriate.

I try to summarize succinctly my approach.

It seems quite legitimate to question the meaning of the word "time" when considering tracing cosmic history back to its hottest phase.

What may seem indeed trivial, indeed, is to return to the Poincaré group, as a "dynamic group," in the sense given to it by the mathematician Jean-Marie Souriau in 1972 (see his book "Structure des systèmes dynamiques," now available on his site) to attempt to describe a reality constituted of "relativistic material points."

What is already less so, as Bourguignon noted, is to come to the central, non-trivial extension of the group, in five dimensions, the 5th dimension being that of Kaluza.

Nothing very new however at this stage, conceptually; since it involves taking up an idea half a century old (Kaluza) according to which one can describe the movement of an electrically charged particle by considering extending this movement into a five-dimensional space, the fifth dimension being that of Kaluza.

What is not trivial, it seems to me, is to take up this analysis considering that the groups:

Lorentz, from which the Poincaré group is constructed - Poincaré, from which the Kaluza dynamic group is constructed, which inherits de facto this property possess two subsets constituted by components:

Orthochronous, which do not reverse time - Antichronous (the word is Souriau's) which reverse time.

Unless one amputates (arbitrarily) these groups of their antichronous components, these immediately raise the question, non-trivial, you will agree:

What meaning to give to movements that would occur "against time"?

Souriau, 1972 gave his own answer by showing (coadjoint action of a group on its moment space) that a "retrochronous" movement was equivalent to the movement of a particle endowed with negative energy (and mass). The question of the possibility of cohabitation of elements of opposite energies (including photons) in the same movement space, in the same universe, then arises immediately. I do not personally find this question trivial, or "settled for a long time."

It is difficult to envisage the cohabitation of particles of opposite energies, under penalty of seeing the universe disappear completely, photons included!

The solution envisaged by A. Sakharov (for other reasons, it is true) was to consider that the movements of particles could be inscribed in two different sheets, T-symmetric. He later envisaged a PT-symmetry, then a CPT-symmetry (solution towards which I opted by constructing my own dynamic group, endowed with a non-connected movement space).

One then arrives, which is NEW and non-trivial, unless proven otherwise, at a model where the movement space is constituted by two five-dimensional sheets, CPT-symmetric. The fact of operating with 5 dimensions instead of four leads to considering that the matter-antimatter duality is at work in both sheets, which brings yet another new light to the Sakharov model.

Finally, what is interesting is to examine the geometric structure of the boundary-universe, alias the "Big Bang." One of the dimensions necessarily disappears. This boundary universe is four-dimensional.

It is not a space dimension since in the same sheet coexist P-symmetric movements (example of movements of photons endowed with inverse helicities) - It is not the Kaluza dimension since in the same sheet coexist dzeta-symmetric movements (calling dzeta this fifth Kaluza dimension and knowing, Souriau 1964, that this inversion of the fifth dimension, of Kaluza, is synonymous with charge conjugation, therefore matter-antimatter symmetry).

It is therefore, as conjectured as early as 1967 by Andrei Sakharov, the time dimension that disappears.

If one gives, as classically, to the Kaluza dimension the nature of a space-like variable, then the metric of the two sheets has signature ( + - - - - ) The suppression of the time variable gives the boundary universe the metric:

( - - - - ) The signs in these metrics correspond, of course, to an arbitrary choice. But if the quantities ( t , x , y , z , t, dzéta ) are considered as reals, then one is tempted to assimilate the length associated with the metric ( + - - - - ) to a proper time, itself associated with the movements of bradyons.

Symmetrically, the signature ( - - - - ) of the boundary space evokes a ... purely imaginary length.

It seems to me that this question is neither trivial, nor totally devoid of interest and would merit at the very least to be approached, criticized, and debated in a seminar just like the implications linked to brane collisions.

Unless through your response, which I will reproduce on my site so that it enlightens my numerous readers, you do not bring me, with arguments, the proof of the contrary.

Sincerely yours Jean-Pierre Petit

December 15, 2006. Open letter to Thibaud Damour.

His e-mail:

Dear Colleague, Twelve months ago I sent to IHES, through its director, my friend Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, a seminar proposal entitled:

"geometrization of Andrei Sakharov's cosmological model."

Eventually this proposal landed, a year later, on your desk, and Bourguignon immediately forwarded to me the laconic reply message that you lost no time in sending back to him:

Damour hasn't changed his mind about you.

I also see that you sent the following reply to one of my readers:

Sir, > > you shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet. I am open-minded, but only for hypotheses that bring something new (non-trivial) to science.

sincerely > > Thibault DAMOUR Would you have the courtesy to enlighten me and explain to me in what way my work is trivial and brings nothing new. I would be interested to have, from the specialist that you are, a more detailed critique, which I could share with the readers of my site, many of whom are asking themselves the same question.

This work, if I understood correctly what was said during our telephone conversation, did not seem to shock Bourguignon, a geometer, in its simple technical aspects (coadjoint action of a group on its moment space).

If need be, we could discuss this question by telephone, or in person, at IHES, where I could go if you consider that appropriate.

I will try to summarize my approach succinctly.

It seems to me quite legitimate to question the meaning of the word "time" when one considers tracing cosmic history back to its hottest phase.

What may indeed appear trivial, indeed, is to have recourse to the Poincaré group, as a "dynamical group," in the sense given to it by the mathematician Jean-Marie Souriau in 1972 (see his book "Structure des systèmes dynamiques," now available on his site) in an attempt to describe a reality constituted by "relativistic material points."

What is already less so, as Bourguignon noted, is to arrive at the non-trivial central extension of the group, in five dimensions, the 5th dimension being that of Kaluza.

Nothing very new at this stage, however, conceptually; since it is a matter of taking up an idea half a century old (Kaluza) according to which one can describe the motion of an electrically charged particle by considering extending this motion into a five-dimensional space, the fifth dimension being that of Kaluza.

What is not trivial, it seems to me, is to take up this analysis again by considering that the groups:

Of Lorentz, from which the Poincaré group is constructed - Of Poincaré, from which the Kaluza dynamical group is constructed, which de facto inherits this property possess two subsets constituted by components:
Orthochronous, which do not reverse time - Antichronous (the word is Souriau's) which reverse time.

Unless one (arbitrarily) amputates these groups of their antichronous components, these immediately raise the non-trivial question, you will agree:

What meaning should be given to motions that would take place "backwards in time"?

Souriau, 1972 gave his own answer by showing (coadjoint action of a group on its moment space) that a "retrochronous" motion was equivalent to the motion of a particle endowed with negative energy (and negative mass). The question then immediately arises of the possibility of a cohabitation of elements of opposite energies (including photons) in the same space of motions, in the same universe. I personally do not find this question trivial, or "settled long ago."

It is difficult to envisage the cohabitation of particles of opposite energies, on pain of seeing the universe disappear completely, photons included!

The solution envisaged by A. Sakharov (for other reasons, it is true) was to envisage that the motions of particles could be inscribed in two different, T-symmetric sheets. He subsequently envisaged a PT-symmetry, then a CPT-symmetry (the solution toward which I opted by constructing my own dynamical group, endowed with a non-connected space of motions).

One then arrives, which is NEW and non-trivial, unless proven otherwise, at a model where the space of motions is constituted by two five-dimensional, CPT-symmetric sheets. The fact of operating with 5 dimensions instead of four leads one to consider that the matter-antimatter duality is at work in both sheets, which brings yet another new light to Sakharov's model.

Finally, what is interesting is to examine the geometric structure of the boundary-universe, alias the "Big Bang." One of the dimensions necessarily disappears. This boundary universe is four-dimensional.

It is not a dimension of space since within the same sheet coexist P-symmetric motions (example of the motions of photons endowed with opposite helicities) - It is not the Kaluza dimension since within the same sheet coexist dzeta-symmetric motions (calling dzeta this fifth dimension of Kaluza and knowing, Souriau 1964, that this inversion of the fifth dimension, of Kaluza, is synonymous with charge conjugation, hence with matter-antimatter symmetry).

It is therefore, as conjectured as early as 1967 by Andrei Sakharov, the time dimension that disappears.

If one gives, as classically, to the Kaluza dimension the nature of a space-like variable, then the metric of the two sheets has the signature ( + - - - - ) The suppression of the time variable gives the boundary-universe the metric:

( - - - - ) The signs in these metrics correspond, of course, to an arbitrary choice. But if the quantities ( t , x , y , z , t, dzeta ) are considered as reals, then one is tempted to assimilate the length associated with the metric ( + - - - - ) to a proper time, itself associated with the motions of bradyons.

Symmetrically, the signature ( - - - - ) of the boundary space evokes a ... purely imaginary length.

It seems to me that this question is neither trivial, nor totally devoid of interest, and would deserve at the very least to be addressed, criticized and debated in a seminar, just as much as the implications linked to brane collisions.

Unless, through your reply, which I will reproduce on my site so that it may enlighten my many readers, you bring me, arguments in support, proof to the contrary.

Sincerely yours, Jean-Pierre Petit

Perhaps the same thing happened at the IAP, after that impulsive reply from Riazuelo. Because he is an impulsive type, a young whippersnapper too sure of himself. Others, better informed, will have recommended prudent silence to him. Yes indeed, as we are beginning to know him. In a seminar, forgetting all prudence, this young polytechnic graduate would very probably have attacked head-on, breaking his teeth on a well-bolted piece of work, and would have taken the first slap of his career, well deserved, he who was cocky enough to put on the airs of an expert, at the height of his thirty-three springs.

Some remark would have sealed his incompetence in matters of geometry. Our courageous cosmologist did not want to take the risk. Those who know me know that in this kind of face-to-face I have never been put in difficulty, in 35 years of career, in the many fields I have tackled.

Scientists are often vindictive, imprudent, "territorial," tend to underestimate their adversary in this kind of joust. I have made more than one attacker bite the dust. The last to date was a sixty-something geometer, in a geometry lab in Marseille in 2005. My God, what a rout, what a masterly crash! After launching his attack like a boar, demanding "that an end be put to these clownish antics," he went and sat down again, red as a tomato, after I courteously pointed out his errors to him.

So there will be no seminar, no debate. Far from any contestation, Riazuelo will continue to pontificate without risking criticism, to play the expert, to spread his states of mind in forums or in the discussion pages of an encyclopedia from which I am "banned for life" for having published "this letter addressed to his employer" (in fact the simple seminar request and reply to his attacks), a missive "that did him harm." The administrators of Wikipedia, emboldened by their anonymity, immediately flew to his rescue by voting my "lifetime banishment." In an e-mail constituting a reply addressed to a student, he even specifies that the tone of my letter "bordered on defamation." That's the pot calling the kettle black. These yapping curs who let off steam with complete impunity on the web are quick to invoke, trembling, the help of the law when the slightest reply is provided to them. It is less elegant and less courageous than a good face-to-face, quite clear, in a seminar, before colleagues and the public (since the attacks were spread over months on high-traffic sites). Idiots, a pack of mediocrities, prudently covered by pseudonyms, like the omnipresent and mediocre "84 K," will echo him by mocking "the one who plays the misunderstood genius."

It is easy to see that the scientific game has become totally rigged. I could take up the sentence of the French mathematician Jean-Marie Souriau:

*- Theoretical physics and cosmology have become psychiatric hospitals, where it is the mad who have seized power. *

At IHES Thibaud Damour has opened a permanent seminar entirely devoted to superstring theory. At the Collège de France, Veneziano, recently appointed, professes this "new discipline." It is neither mathematics nor physics. No one knows where or on what criteria to classify this schizophrenic delirium, these works that have never borne the slightest fruit, explained anything at all in three decades. You will read that according to Damour "the universe was born from a collision of Branes that folded back on themselves along cosmic strings, cracking like whips (...)." Elsewhere Veneziano expresses his conviction that "the universe, at the very beginning, was empty and almost without interaction." It's ... nonsense, and no voice rises in public to tell them so.

The blablatron is running at full speed.

The king is naked. In Damour's seminar and at the Collège de France the talk is nothing but wind. All this produces nothing, leads to nothing. These theories are nothing but institutionalized impostures. Conversely I say and I claim that the twin conception of the universe represents an important advance, explains quite a few things. I would be ready at any moment to submit my work to the crossfire of criticism, publicly, to descend into any lions' den.

Faced with this challenge, issued many times, the response is ... a non-response, cowardly and contemptuous.

This twin theory is much more than an "alternative cosmology." For example, this model is the only one that leads to a stable model of a spiral galaxy, whereas no other simulation has achieved it in twenty years of fruitless efforts (François Combes, Lia Atyanassoula). That and many other things besides.

Today's cosmology is played out through parameter fitting. It is a makeshift job in a state of permanent patching-up, where people are calmly told, not only that 97% of matter escapes observation, but that we haven't the slightest idea what that more-than-ghostly matter could be, a mixture of dark energy and dark matter, with a "suspicion of monopoles."

What I propose is more constructed, clearer, without shadowy areas, without ad hoc adjustment. But I will not be given the opportunity to present this before areopagi of Tartuffes whom one has the impression of hearing say:

- Hide this science that I cannot bear to see.

If the possibility of being able to present competing theories disappears, then the game of science is over, reduced to a lamentable mass, an assembly of cowardly people, but solidly united and carefully organized, on an international scale.

No laboratory is obviously obliged to welcome anyone into its seminar. In the case of the IAP what is shocking is to see its director, Laurent Vigroux, signify a negative response by his silence, while maintaining on his laboratory's site a page of criticisms tending to cast scientific discredit on me. This attitude testifies to a total contempt for others and a total dishonesty.

This is nothing new. Thirty years ago I was beginning to develop my ideas on the possible suppression of shock waves by magnetohydrodynamics. They annoyed more than one person. One day Patrick Iglesias, a student of Souriau and a mathematician, said to me:

*- Would you be ready to come and defend your ideas at the CPT, at the Centre de Physique Théorique in Marseille? (to which he belonged at that time). - No problem. You prepare your lions' den and I'll be there. *

A few weeks later I met him in a street in Aix:

*- My colleagues told me that if we invited you to speak in a seminar, it would be a cause of discredit for the laboratory. I protested. I told them "but if you think Petit's theories are a tissue of nonsense, invite him and take him down, for heaven's sake!" *

To no avail. The Wall of Silence was already being built. Shocked, he testified in writing and his letter appears in one of my books.

The game is lost. I give up.

I do not think it useful to multiply requests toward seminars like that of the DARC at Meudon (Department of Relativistic Astrophysics and Cosmology), or the Henri Poincaré Institute, or the École Normale Supérieure, for this to end with the most cowardly and most contemptible behavior: the non-response.

I will cite other anecdotes through which you can form your own opinion concerning the climate prevailing in the epistosphere. In 1997 I had just published with the publisher Albin Michel my book entitled "On a perdu la moitié de l'univers." There was a single media echo: a journalist from France Culture braved the omertà, the ban, by recording three successive interviews in Paris. At the end of these he let slip this sentence, on which I ask you to reflect:

- I know that this will be held against me...

In 2005 I was invited by the academician Jean-Claude Pecker and the Indian astrophysicist Narlikar (president of the IAU, International Astronomical Union) to give a presentation of my work at the Collège de France. I knew that Narlikar had been a student of Fred Hoyle and that together they had worked on the possibility that "anomalous redshifts" might be due to the fact that the constants of physics might take different values in certain regions of space (which I believe). I had therefore asked, through Pecker, that I be able to spend two afternoons with the Indian before giving my presentation. I cherished the hope that we might have been able to collaborate. I had indeed been one of the pioneers of "variable-constant models" by publishing as early as 1988-1989 three papers in Modern Physics Letters A, at the time when Jean Audouze (still at the IAP) was an editor at that journal. I had in particular in '88 been the first to propose a model where the speed of light varied over the course of evolution (an idea that was subsequently taken up by João Magueijo, through an international bestseller entitled "faster than the light," taken up by Dunod editions).

Portraits of Moffat and Magueijo can be found in Wikipedia at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Moffat_%28physicist%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo%C3%A3o_Magueijo

Nowhere will mention be found of my 1988-1989 work, three papers published in Modern Physics Letters A, introducing for the first time this concept of cosmology and physics with variable speed of light (the "VLS" or "Variable Light Velocity"). As Moffat and Magueijo are linked to Lee Smolin, in Canada, I augur ill of my future attempts at contact with Smolin ("Rien ne va plus en physique"). People could perhaps try to reestablish the truth by intervening on this US Wikipedia.

But very quickly, Narlikar interrupted me by saying:

- Unfortunately, my dear colleague, I am also on the black list.

Through this you realize at a stroke how things have evolved over more than twenty years. Astrophysics and cosmology are sinking into dead ends. The more time passes the less the models fit the observations, the more they must be patched up with new ingredients, ad hoc adjustments of numerous parameters, in fact words devoid of the slightest meaning, like dark matter, dark energy, monopoles. The discourse, dixit Souriau, is nothing but hollow scholasticism. People want to present as progress what is merely the agony of a breathless paradigm. But in parallel, solidly organized and united clans have gradually taken possession of journals, teaching, scientific media in the name of a single thought, devoid of the slightest consistency and coherence. There are Alain Riazuelos in every country, not one of whom will leave even a memory in the history of science.

All this is appalling, boring to death. In Wikipedia a gang holds "the cosmology portal." They create selection rules that suit them. In the BIG BANG page they imagined that popularization works worthy of mention had to emanate from authors "who had at least ten publications in peer-reviewed journals and had been cited at least ten times." A reader tried to get my comic book Big Bang onto the list, which was promptly removed by Riazuelo himself thirty minutes later, although this work is nothing but the faithful adaptation, in comic-book form, of the excellent work by Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg "the first three minutes." Through this you see that these people are by no means seeking to ensure that people can learn things in this encyclopedia. They take possession of it, spread themselves out, cite each other.

There exists in observatory libraries a work that is a great classic. Its title "atlas of irregular galaxies." Author: Halton Arp. Throughout his career the latter strove to track down the most unusual objects in the cosmos: the most distorted galaxies. On the subject of the latter the famous astrophysicist Sir James Jeans said:

- When one sees such dislocated galaxies one cannot help thinking that these structures are due to the action of colossal forces, of which we know nothing

Exactly, I personally think that all this is due to the action of the twin on our universe. The irregular galaxy is the counterpart of the quasar, the heart of an "active galaxy," called "Seyfert." When the "corset" of twin matter ensuring the confinement of the galaxy "stiffens," a density wave is born within the interstellar gas, which converges toward its geometric center. Along the way it gives birth to new stars which, emitting in the UV, heat the interstellar matter which, thus illuminated, becomes visible. In such a configuration this ring of ionized gas carries with it the field lines of the (weak) magnetic field of the galaxy, like a farmer gathering ears of corn into a sheaf. In doing so, this field strengthens. When the gaseous mass gathers at the geometric center of the galaxy, the Lawson conditions are suddenly met. One obtains a super-star, whose diameter is that of the ... solar system, which then emits as much as the entire galaxy and which is nothing other than a quasar, which emits ionized gas channeled by the magnetic field lines, which gives birth to two darts of plasma, two "lobes." As the field decreases the further one moves from the galaxy, these magnetic structures behave like giant particle accelerators, 100,000 light-years long, which produce ... cosmic rays.

Conversely, when the "corset" loosens, the galaxy comes undone. I had evoked this idea ten years ago in my book "On a perdu la moitié de l'univers." But all this tires me. I leave the field to the Riazuelos of every stripe since it is impossible to debate with such "experts" who take to their heels as soon as they are invited into the closed field.

Whatever his fine speeches, Mr. Alain Riazuelo is nothing but a coward who refuses the public, filmed face-to-face with his adversary

Arp had also detected sets of galaxies that contradicted the sacrosanct Hubble law. The nearest had a higher recession velocity, whereas it should have been the opposite. Eventually the American Riazuelos gathered together. The conspiracy proved effective. The old fighter received his shard of ostracism. He was banned from access to telescopes, to large instruments, and deported to New York University, despite the numerous letters of protest that poured into Pasadena. In the United States as in France the idiots and the mediocrities are alas numerous and powerfully organized. And alas one can do little about it.

In conclusion, the gang gravitating around Alain Riazuelo will be able to continue installing on Wikipedia a new, self-proclaimed orthodoxy, without any real tangible results, without any real model, where people will discuss endlessly the respective percentages of dark energy, dark matter and visible matter. As many observers have noted, the freedom of such encyclopedias is totally illusory. It suffices that a sufficient number of individuals decide to impose such and such a vision of things for it to acquire the force of law, for lack of opponents in sufficient number.

Laurent Vigroux, director of the Institute of Astrophysics of Paris, will not take the trouble to reply to my seminar request-right of reply. I hold the bet at a hundred to one. In the world of research, as a dominant character trait, integrity gives way before cowardice. As for the criticism installed on this laboratory's site, written by Alain Riazuelo, which casts grave discredit on me, without my being given the possibility of replying to it according to the laws of our scientific milieu, in a seminar, it will endure without limitation of time.

http://www2.iap.fr/users/riazuelo/cosmo/jpp/p2.html

Candide cultivated his garden. I am going to go back to comic books. In the pipeline "le carnaval de la science," among others

Post Scriptum:

Quite a few readers write to me to point out, which has been the subject of several articles in the international press, the growing drift of Wikipedia "controlled by its thousand administrators." As I have already said, the evil from which this "free encyclopedia" suffers comes from the systematic recourse to anonymity. In fact this has allowed a legion of idle mediocrities to easily seize this marvelous tool. At the outset the designers granted certain users the status of "administrators," giving them full power to block the accounts of certain people, on the pretext of "vandalism." The problem is that, gradually, "vandalism" has been confused with the fact of not agreeing with the "Wikipedian majority." Now what is this active majority composed of? Simply of those who have the time to spend five and sometimes ten or twelve hours a day intervening in these pages. One will thus not be surprised to learn that many administrators are unemployed people, "good-for-nothings, bad at everything," as Pagnol once wrote in "César," who have found there a substitute for professional activity, a diversion, a pastime like any other. Sectors, simple pages, portals are thus held by gangs. One example is the "Cosmology" portal, held by the gang of which Alain Riazuelo is a part and which counts in its ranks the astrophysicists Alain Blanchard and Jean-Pierre Luminet. The goal in this "free encyclopedia" is by no means to make available to readers the range of different theories but to impose, according to criteria that favor them, the views of a scientific oligarchy. These scientists are actively seconded by administrators in their pay who censor, forbid, erase, like the one named "manchot," who boasts of it but threatens to sue anyone who would venture to provide, by publishing his "private mail," proof of his dishonest manipulations of the discussion archives under the pretext of "putting things in order." A ... poor guy, a nobody, a mediocrity invested by idiots of the same stripe with an exorbitant power of censor, which goes to his head: he, the obscure one, the incompetent one, without the slightest track record, censoring the writings of a man of talent! What a kick!

One of my readers, a scientist, wrote to me that he had vainly tried to mention on the discussion pages of the "Big Bang" page simple alternative interpretations or to draw attention to different slices of observational data considered by others as troublesome (for example a certain cosmic anisotropy). His remarks were not criticized, contradicted, but outright ... erased, a few minutes later.

Wikipedia wanted to be a democratic structure. It has become the closed field of expression of people whose availability, in time, whether their own or that of those who relay their sectarian conformism, allows them to be in the majority. Very quickly their contradictors give up, leave them the field free.

Recently an American journalist, on the radio, wishing to show the limits of the formula, suggested to his listeners to spread, in this encyclopedia, the rumor that, for an unknown reason, the number of elephants had tripled over the last ten years. The effect proved lightning-fast, at the cost of only 300 interventions. The thing having been reported in the press, the volunteer administrators of the encyclopedia had their work cut out to immediately block the accounts of the 300 "vandals." Wikipedia counts in all some thousand "administrators," endowed with all powers, that of blocking, of forbidding as, in my own case, of "banning for life" by simple vote of a dozen anonymous passers-by (...). These people are recruited by co-optation; no competence is required. So do not look for "who is responsible at Wikipedia." There are none, there are no more. The newcomers have even "democratically" voted the definitive exclusion of the designers-founders of the tool. Over time this group has been invaded by a cohort of the most mediocre. If this encyclopedia, owing to the services it renders, has become a veritable institution, it now suffers from this invasion, from this takeover. The "vandal" is simply the one who does not adhere to the positions of the dominant group. Watchdogs, in the service of ideologues of the subject at hand, are there to harass the contesters until they bring about their weariness or provoke a reaction of irritation which, pushing them into a mistake, will allow ... them to be banned for life (...). That is the sought-after goal: to acquire power, to spread "dominant" views, to create a void around themselves; to create a "self-proclaimed orthodoxy" that they will try to pass off as the sign of "progress" and of a "truth in motion," of "brilliant advances." The status of these anonymous attack dogs allows them to utter aggressive, contemptuous, defamatory remarks, which will subsequently be ... erased by the managing administrators, under the pretext of "putting the debate archives in order." Such are the roles assigned to beings sprung from the virtual nebula like "84K," "manchot" and many others.

Who put in place the managers of one portal or another, who gave them the right to lay down the law there? But ... themselves, quite simply! They therefore create selection rules that favor them, invent others as they go along, according to their needs.

On the scientific level there would remain the confrontation in "RL" (code name given by these netizens to "Real Life," to "Real Life," which they flee like the plague. These are beings whose life folds back into the virtual, a phenomenon of the times. Even truth has become ... virtual!). But in the field of the real, suddenly, no one. If there were not, in my case, the columns of my site to denounce the unbelievable cowardice of participants like Alain Riazuelo, research fellow at the Cnrs, and that of his comrade-director, Laurent Vigroux, in what framework could this be denounced? None.

The Academy of Sciences does not receive complaints for scientific offenses.

That is where we are, and at this stage one can speak of a veritable virtual dictatorship, a state of affairs, a total drift, grave and damaging. You have been able to see how the upholders of this virtual dictatorship manage to cowardly dodge any face-to-face.

Even my science of our time has become ... virtual:

On the scientific level this state of affairs prolongs the invasion of publication journals by pressure groups, which is known to all. There is no need to wonder why the universe of fundamental science has been deserted by genuinely innovative ideas. It is not I who say this, it is the mathematician Jean-Marie Souriau: after the Second World War a system of expertise by anonymous referees was generalized in journals, on an international scale. The alleged idea was to guarantee the solicited experts their independence of judgment. In fact this allowed "self-proclaimed networks of experts" to publish as they pleased and to drag their students along in their wake. A fearsome clientelism was thus established, without the slightest recourse, which ended up bringing about self-censorship, the author or authors saying to themselves "no, no point sending this work, it will never get through." The fundamental has become the kingdom of a hallucinating mediocracy, the "superstring theory," totally sterile, being the spearhead of this "non-science."

I will give an example. I published two articles of a certain length in two journals: Nuevo Cimento (1994) and Astrophysics and Space Science (1995). Do you know how many attempts I had to make to obtain such a score?

One hundred and three

For a time I kept the log of these publication attempts which generally provoked standard replies, hastily written, without reading, of the kind:

Sorry, we don't publish speculative works

By miracle, sometimes, one manages to slip through the mesh of this net, ever tighter. In fact the referee does not read the work submitted to his expertise. He simply looks whether the signatory or signatories figure "in the list of members of the club," to which he himself belongs. The second criterion is "does he cite all the members of his brotherhood properly?", a citation which, by virtue of automatic referencing, will bring about the rise in the rating of the colleagues cited. If these signatories are "in" they will be able to publish to their heart's content.

I publish you... you publish me... I cite you.... you cite me....

It is as simple as that. There would remain "old-fashioned science," through seminars, the "frank and loyal" explanation between individuals whose views differ. The closed field, mano a mano. But there, you have seen how things turn out. Because I guarantee you that on the proposed subject, the geometrization of Sakharov's model, if I had found myself facing the "éminences grises" of the Institute of Astrophysics, either I would have spoken before closed faces (as six years ago), or in case of contestation I would have quickly made cat food of my contradictors (and it is because they know it perfectly well that they carefully dodged this face-to-face).

All the more so since, as this presentation would have figured as a right of reply with respect to attacks widely spread before a large public, the seminar would have been filmed, then broadcast in full on the net.

I return to my correspondent, pointing out to me an umpteenth malfunction of the "Wikipedia machinery," not even getting past the pure and simple, authoritative erasure of the intervention, in the archive page. I suggest to these people to create something like:

http://www.dictaturevirtuelle.com

a site in which they could record the proofs of such breaches of ethics. And, why not, a forum, with people who, for a change, would express themselves under their real identity?

If you don't get moving. If you don't regroup, my good friends, nothing will happen. *

I will mention such a site in mine. If a sufficient number of netizens expressed their malaise, this could spread. How? I have no idea. How to imagine that a recourse is possible when one reads for example that Alain Riazuelo .. figures in Wikipedia within a group with an arbitration function!

Arbitrators who appoint themselves.....

December 13, 2006: I took a look at the "Jean-Pierre Petit" page on Wikipedia. The debates continue between "pro-Petit" and "anti-Petit" (the latter, like 84 K, prudently covered by a pseudonym ensuring their anonymity and carefully masking the narrow limits of their competences). My cosmology work is still described as a "draft model." One then wonders what qualifier should be used to describe edifices like inflation, the analysis of the CBR, the determination of the respective percentages of dark energy, dark matter and visible matter (not forgetting a suspicion of monopoles, of course). This science has decidedly become totally ubuesque.

I had, in the discussion page, at the time when I still had access to it, not having been "banned for life." Read here the discussions that presided over this decision of "lifetime blocking":

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Bulletin_des_administrateurs/2006/Semaine_41#Blocage_de_Jean-Pierre_Petit

indicated, by providing elements, how I would have wished to see this biography composed, in a purely factual mode ("just facts"). I had put a sentence of the style "Jean-Pierre Petit complains of the absence of opportunity given to him to be able to present his theories in seminars, despite the numerous requests he has made to that effect." This sentence currently finds a most obvious echo when one considers the wall of silence opposed since October 10, 2006 by the Institute of Astrophysics of Paris to my seminar request, all the more legitimate since the site of this laboratory has hosted since that date a criticism written by Alain Riazuelo to which, de facto, it has not been possible for me to reply in the forms in use in the profession, that is to say in a seminar, in public. I am surprised that in these discussions no voice rises to challenge the one named Riazuelo by saying to him:

*- Do you find it normal that your criticism of Jean-Pierre Petit's work, which tends to discredit him scientifically and socially, is still in place on your laboratory's site, that the latter turns a deaf ear to his legitimate request for a public explanation between you, in a seminar (since the criticism, via the net, has been accessible to thousands of netizens). Do you find this situation legitimate, normal? Do you find it deontologically acceptable that the management of the IAP, of the laboratory to which you belong: *

*- Does not follow up on J.P. Petit's seminar request - Maintains at the same time, on its site, this text, from your hand, which tends to discredit him scientifically, making you the accomplice of such a discredit? *

*Do you find your behavior as a researcher compatible with the ethical norms of the profession. Does your current behavior seem to you in accordance with what one might call a certain sense of honor? *

When I reread these "discussion" pages I really have the impression that it is ... nonsense. It gives a disastrous impression of the level of these "debates." One need only refer to the exchanges between administrators that preceded my "lifetime banishment" to get an idea of the level and the psychological profile of these people (idle young whippersnappers without experience, delighted to be able to stone an elder with complete impunity, plus a returning anarcho-sixty-eighter, complacently playing the role of virtual guru. Go and check all that on their "personal pages"). It is simply ... appalling.

Received January 19, 2007:

Like Mr. Thibaud Damour, Mr. Alain Riazuelo prefers to reply to readers. I received in copy the reply he sent on January 16, 2007 to Damien Dijon, from Belgium:

Hello,

Mr. Petit has never really been part of the community of French astrophysicists. His conviction of having revolutionary ideas has alas no equal but his ignorance of the field he claims to revolutionize. Modern science is not done in stormy debates or aggressive attitudes like that of Mr. Petit. It is done through publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals, something of which Mr. Petit proves rather little capable. That he be given a speaking time here or there, and therefore the illusion of a legitimacy, will change nothing in this state of affairs, and there is no need to have him in flesh and blood before one to realize the extreme weakness of his work. It is my opinion that in crying censorship, Mr. Petit is above all looking for a convenient exit door to give his fans the illusion that he is unjustly gagged whereas in reality his work has among specialists the echo it deserves.

Alain Riazuelo

Hello,

Alain Riazuelo

My comment:

When one is faced with a character as arrogant as I am, one decides to settle his account once and for all, in public. It is a feasible thing, at any moment. The best thing would be to keep a video record of this correction, then to broadcast it widely, to show to as many people as possible the defeat of the pretentious mythomaniac.

I proposed to Mr. Riazuelo, and through him to this whole "community" of French astrophysicists and cosmologists, a proper seminar on the theme "geometrization of Sakharov's model." If I conform to the idea he means to give of me, then such a seminar should consecrate my complete rout. Either eminent members of this community would show me errors, in the field of mathematical physics, or they would illustrate the sterility of such an approach. I am quite ready to take this risk.

Contrary to what Mr. Riazuelo says I am not looking for an exit, but rather an ... entrance to manage to make myself heard in a community as closed as an oyster.

Incidentally, I have just met with a new refusal, with respect to a seminar request. The field this time is Egyptology. The Egyptologist Jean-Pierre Adam, research director at the Cnrs, posted at the Egyptology department of the Louvre, had come to attend the lecture I gave on January 17 at the Palais de la Découverte, which ended with a memorable outburst on his part, entirely filmed. Following this flare-up where, by way of arguments, the only thing he found was to evoke my immoderate interest in extraterrestrial visits, which took us quite far from the subject, I asked him whether it would be possible for me to present my theory in a seminar, at the Egyptology department of the Louvre. Here is his reply:

- No. We do not listen in seminar to irrational people. - But in what am I irrational? - You transpose into ancient Egypt modern uses of the lever (...)

Simple remark: today is January 21, 2007. Thibaud Damour has not replied to my letter, in which I asked him to make explicit the contempt-filled criticism he sent about my work. Like Riazuelo, he is keen to reply to readers' e-mails, but carefully refrains from replying to my sendings. Like the latter and like Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, director of the Institute of Advanced Studies of Bures sur Yvette, this "specialist in brane collisions" opts for the path of cowardice. In time I will send our latest work "geometrization of Sakharov's model" to the heads of seminars of the various specialized laboratories and you will see that the reply will be the same: a ... non-reply. I am raising my voice.

There is something rotten in the kingdom of theoretical physics

For decades, the discipline has been in full drift. Superstring theory is at the heart of these people's pathetic efforts to obtain a result not only new, but simply tangible. A champion of the superstring, Damour vaunts the merits of an approach that has never produced anything, will never produce anything and is nothing but an incredible intellectual and scientific swindle. Conversely, I have something fruitful to say, to propose, to submit to criticism, and you observe over the months that pass that it is impossible for me to present this work in a seminar. Is it because the work is far too insubstantial or, in Damour's qualification, "trivial"? Not at all. I think I would have no trouble imposing it before an audience of theoretical physicists, of cosmology specialists, of mathematicians, or the three together. But the brilliance of this work would bring out, by contrast, the vacuity or the poverty of theirs. If they reacted aggressively I would get the better of them, without having to raise my voice, and they know it.

Some readers are annoyed by what they confuse with settling of scores and would prefer "that I tell them beautiful stories, that I make them dream or that I present them with new scientific comic books." It is that they do not understand the stakes. I am not fighting for myself but for all. I am fighting against imposture, but also for ethics, for intellectual and scientific integrity, against a grave drift of thought.

En résumé (grâce à un LLM libre auto-hébergé)

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