The Time of Cowardice

Updated as of February 3, 2009

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

Justice is done!

May 2, 2017

Watch this

video

, at 33 minutes 35. I wonder for how long, after its release, the silly criticisms of Riazuelo will remain on the website of the Institute of Astrophysics of 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 seen as responsible, but also the successive directors of the IAP and, beyond that, the entire community of cosmologists and astrophysicists.

That a researcher protests by publishing this on his website, what a big deal. Let him scream. However, videos make more noise and will remain online indefinitely, will be "called" by the automatic link system. The years will pass. Riazuelo's hair will turn gray, but he will continue, through his own words, to appear as what he is: an idiot. I had sent him a final message about this page on the IAP website. Whether he had it removed or completed these criticisms.

A situation of Zugzwang, as they say in chess, where one forces the opponent to play. But, whatever move he chooses, it is bad. Nevertheless, removing the page would have been the least bad option for Riazuelo. But the idea that I could force him to do so was unacceptable to him. He will assume this choice.

The political world is completely rotten. But the scientific world is just as rotten. Who would be surprised? Among those who could react to a given situation, by their skills, when one has finished counting the dishonest people, there remain the cowards, those who "silence courageously". It reminds me of a phrase from 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 will continue these Janus videos. There is still a lot to say. As one of my friends said:

You are like a guy who is pasturing a herd of bison in a porcelain shop.

Stay tuned

Two years have passed

Mr. RIAZUELO,

Institute of Astrophysics of Paris

98bis boulevard Arago

F-75014 Paris

France

Sir,

after reading an amazing discussion by the administrators of the French Wikipedia on the article concerning an ex-research director of CNRS, Jean-Pierre PETIT (later JPP), I finally visited the IAP website, where I could read your article, in which you criticize part of Mr. JPP's work.

Although this is secondary, I would like to mention that I am Czech, living in Prague for many years, before I stayed in Toulouse in the 70s. At that time, I welcomed with enthusiasm the activities of CNES in the field of UFOs - not because I would have been a "fan" of aliens, but because I considered it courageous of French scientists to be interested in this phenomenon and subject it to the test of "the method", in order to definitively demonstrate that it is either objective (and to be studied accordingly), or subjective (and to be sent back to the sociology of beliefs, deceptions, manipulations, and neuroses). It must be said that at that time I studied epistemology at the Faculty of Sciences Paul Sabatier and I was full of ideals about the scientific approach - without prejudice - of the world. This is why I was, rather from afar, interested in the tribulations of Mr. JPP within the institutional scientific world.

I read with a somewhat limited interest the article you published on the pages of the Institute of Astrophysics of Paris. Limited, because my knowledge of the scientific field does not go beyond that of popular science magazines. I am therefore not in a position to understand its full scope.

Certainly, I noted an ironic, or somewhat contemptuous tone, but I suppose that this can be the case in the confrontation of ideas, each acting with the ultimate conviction that the other side of the debate is just a sinister clown and a dilettante - a bit like a civilian for soldiers. It is true that I have read many other polemical articles, where this acerbic tone was absent and the discussion was factual, without having to belittle the person, even in context. Reading your lines, the idea comes to mind that the respect for others is only as great as the inner greatness of the author of the statements (I often say that when you talk about something, you always talk about yourself).

However, there is one thing that greatly shocked me in the page you do not sign, but which you are apparently the author of (this also has obviously gone out of 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 and the number of his office door. But it's okay, the world is becoming more and more vulgar... in the sense of vulgar cattle). This thing that shocked me the most in your page is the complete absence of a response from Jean-Pierre PETIT, either to defend his own ideas against your arguments (and to demonstrate, if necessary, that the ridiculous clown is you), or to humbly admit his mistake and ask for a "fool's cap" to be present at the next session at the stake. During my higher studies, I had several opportunities to attend heated debates between proponents of theories, or even opposing schools, who bit each other's heads off, where we, the student listeners, could form our own opinion freely. Here, nothing, peanuts, in modernized language... the other is absent, as Lacan would say, and freedom with it.

My first surprise was the fact that you did not invite him, at the conclusion of your text, to send you his response. A sign of superiority, or of arrogance? Contempt? Fear? Hatred? We are free to imagine anything that comes to mind, but nothing that comes to mind is to your advantage. And since you represent, however poorly (follow the gaze), an institution of size, these adjectives go to this institution, or to the entire French scientific community, which should have tapped you on the fingers, in terms of scientific ethics. Because either JPP's arguments are a dark... jam, and therefore not worth a line, 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 consider it necessary, or that he did not dare to enter this expert debate, which would be relatively disgraceful for him. However, thanks to Google, I discovered pages that are part of his personal website, on which he reacts and demands with vehemence (or violence) this debate. According to Mr. JPP, it seems that it is you who refuse this debate, which I do not have to discuss and which I cannot reproach you for.

What is truly scandalous, however, is the fact that since 2006 (so more than two years), you attack not only Mr. JPP's ideas and conceptions, 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 is always supposed to be a land of free thought - and you leave this attack online!!!! This is a medieval practice of public shaming!!!

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

Excuse me, but regardless of the scientific content and objective truth of your statements and arguments in the article, this scandalous fact inevitably brings to mind words like clown, Tartuffe, Ridiculous Ladies... but these words come to mind in your case. I suppose you have heard of a certain Voltaire. I know he has been dead for more than ten years, which in the era of the internet is an eternity that some contemporaries cannot fill. Well, this gentleman, who made the glory of this country, once said:

I DO NOT SHARE YOUR IDEAS BUT I WILL FIGHT TO THE DEATH FOR YOU TO BE ABLE TO EXPRESS THEM.

You should meditate on this quote and, I hope, remove the text without further delay, or offer Mr. PETIT (who is certainly not an amateur self-taught with grocery ideas) an equal space to yours, or add a link to a page on his site, in order to grant him the right of reply.

I would like to clarify that I am not - and by far - a fan of JPP, and I see that on certain sides he can be annoying, annoying, preventing from going around in circles... these attributes that have always been the attributes of poets but also of real scientists (it has been shown that the intellectual and creative mechanisms of both "races" are completely identical). Their role is not to collect prizes, or to reveal the first truths, but to disturb, to trouble the established order, to agitate institutions and ideas. This is apparently what he does, and whether he is right or not is not for us to judge, and we must do everything to allow him to express himself, after which history will take care of it. As for who will pass through the sun of eternal posterity, or through the toilets (of history), it is for history to do, and not for censors or Jesuits of all kinds. Just to touch on his situation, the idea comes to mind of a certain Mr. Curie, who was ostracized by official institutions as long as possible (despite his Nobel Prize), and it would be a pity if this were to happen again (although similar cases are numerous in France).

Therefore, I would ask you to kindly remove without delay the trash that, in the current facts, is only virtual toilet paper, or to make it a piece in the debate of ideas, or an act of revelation once and for all of an unimportant mental agitator.

And finally, and returning to the title, I would like to express my thanks to you: because of your attitude I discovered the enormous site of JPP, as well as the other two, and I find them very interesting to read. To have led me to discover it, I must finally thank you. Acknowledged.

With my most sincere greetings

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 can judge 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 to hope that in essence it remains understandable and that these errors do not prevent you from grasping the content. I ask you to forgive these errors, as French is only my second language and especially, since more than 20 years, I have only sporadically practiced it.

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

The critical article by Mr. Alain Riazuelo, in place for two years on the website of the Institute of Astrophysics of Paris

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

Alain Riazuelo

Received on January 19, 2007

December 21, 2006

The text written by the astrophysicist Alain Riazuelo, supposed to constitute an analysis of my scientific works, placed on the website of the Institute of Astrophysics of Paris is still online despite the letters sent to the laboratory director, Mr. Laurent Vigroux.

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

This text, read by thousands of internet users, especially after its placement on Wikipedia, harms me, is damaging to me because I cannot respond as I should: in a seminar and not in obscure forums, populated by people with pseudonyms.

I asked Mr. Vigroux to be able to express myself before my scientific colleagues, in the seminar of this laboratory, in order to publicly demonstrate the criticisms of this young polytechnician. No answer was given to my repeated requests.

I qualify this behavior as dishonest and cowardly.

December 8, 2006

On October 10th, I had sent the following letter to the Director of the Institute of Astrophysics of Paris:

Jean-Pierre Petit

Former research director at CNRS

At the Observatory of Marseille

Villa Jean-Christophe

206 Chemin de la Montagnère

84120 Pertuis

Pertuis, October 10, 2006

To Mr. the Director

of the Institute of Astrophysics of Paris 98 bis Boulevard Arago 75 014 Paris

Mr. the Director,

As a retired astrophysicist, I had come to present my astrophysical and cosmological works in a seminar, in your premises, at the time when Omont was the director, devoted to a model consisting of two pages of CPT-symmetric universes, initially proposed by Andrei Sakharov.

That must have been six or seven years ago.

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

You have in your staff a young researcher, a polytechnician, Alain Riazuelo, a CNRS researcher, who is attacking by publishing criticisms of my scientific works, published in peer-reviewed journals, presented at international conferences (Marseille conference, 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): to harm someone's reputation by words or writings

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

An astrophysicist, Alain Ruazuelo, based at the Institute of Astrophysics of Paris, judges the theory of the twin universes of Jean-Pierre Petit

I quote one of his sentences:

As for the scientific works of Jean-Pierre Petit, the scientific community has already rendered its verdict a long time ago.

Mr. Riazuelo has put his statements on the website of your laboratory, at the address

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

This text is permanently available through a link always present in Wikipedia and suggests that the IAP endorses his statements.

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

I asked Mr. Riazuelo, who obviously did not understand my work, to be able to answer him in a seminar at the IAP, but he replied that he could not respond to my request, my work being so low in level that it was not even worth discussing.

Therefore, I restate this request. I think that this young polytechnician, who has a bad tendency to overestimate himself, dazzled by the number of citations and downloads of his articles, has really not understood my work. Therefore, I would very much like to be able to provide these explanations to his colleagues researchers at the Institute of Astrophysics of Paris.

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

If that is the case, be kind enough to let me know.

In the hope that my requests will be heard, please accept, Mr. the Director, the expression of my respectful regards.

Jean-Pierre Petit

Former research director at CNRS

The reader can verify that the critical text composed by Mr. Alain Riazuelo is still in place on the website of the Institute of Astrophysics. Its director has not taken any notice of the request, which was doubled

by a seminar request made 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 decide to "face" 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 that any date will suit you given your inactivity which reduces you to spending 10 hours a day on a rarely visited website and with articles that go in circles.

See you soon

Riazuelo Alain

After: total silence. I had immediately replied by providing my phone numbers, to set a date. This researcher could contact me directly without any intermediary using my personal email, which he did not do.

Anyway, my seminar request was not addressed to him, but to the Director of the Institute of Astrophysics, 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 consider it appropriate to answer my two previous letters, why would he do so with this one?

Jean-Pierre Petit

Former research director at CNRS

At the Observatory of Marseille

BP 55

84122 Pertuis Cedex

Pertuis, December 8, 2006

To Mr. Laurent Vigroux

Director of the Institute of Astrophysics of Paris 98 bis Boulevard Arago 75 014 Paris

Recommended with AR.

Copies to Mr. Alain Riazueolo and Jean Audouze

Registration on my website

http://www.jp-petit.com

in the form of an open letter

Email copies to:

vigroux@iap.fr

riazuelo@iap.fr

audouze@iap.fr

Mr. the Director,

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

I note that the text published by Mr. Alain Riazuelo on the website of your laboratory at the address:

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

is still in place.

This one harms me scientifically, by trying to create discredit on all my work. It is harmful to me socially and editorially (in the sense that I plan to publish new books, which causes me a financial loss) by challenging my credibility. I have not been given the opportunity, for more than two months, to publicly respond 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 I am.

I ask you for the last time:

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

Geometrization of the Andrei Sakharov model

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

This seminar would give me the opportunity to publicly respond, in front of his colleagues (and in front of Jean Audouze, who published my first cosmological works in 88-89 when he was editor of Modern Physics Letters A), to this researcher, Mr. Riazuelo, whose attitude, for two months, is not particularly brave.

Please accept, Mr. the Director, the expression of my respectful regards.

Jean-Pierre Petit

Former research director at CNRS

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

In October 2005 we had just completed, my friend Gilles d'Agostini and I, a work of geometry. I then decided to submit a seminar proposal to the Institute of Advanced Studies in Bures-sur-Yvette. I had sent a similar request six years earlier, which had been directed to Thibaud Damour, who had immediately rejected it, sending me a comment that showed he had not read what I had sent, since his criticisms were completely outside the subject I intended to address.

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

There were three submissions and two phone reminders in 12 months. I think the simplest thing is to reproduce the content of the last exchange:

I have your paper in front of me, but I don't see what it brings new in mathematics - The innovation is not at the level of the mathematical tool but at the use made of it in and which belongs to mathematical physics. What do you think of this work?
The approach, with the coadjoint action of a group on its moment space, is entirely classical. I don't see anything particular that shocks me. Personally, I am not at all disturbed that your moment space is not connected.
You, maybe. You mathematicians, nothing disturbs you, whether the space is composed of one, two or nineteen leaves, it is indifferent to you. But for astrophysicists and cosmologists it is another story. If you send it to Thibaud Damour, he will immediately reject this paper 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 maybe submit it to Madame Choquet-Bruhat. I know she is not very fond of string theory - Very well, do it.
OK, I will keep you informed.

The final response came twelve months after my first letter, very concise, in the form of a short email:

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

Brilliant result

after twelve months of waiting

. In this work, there is no bolt missing, Bourguignon knows it very well. Otherwise, if he had detected the slightest weakness, he would have jumped on it to get rid of this thorn that I was planting in his foot. If he had made the decision himself 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 protect his career.

December 15, 2006

. Open letter to Thibaud Damour.

damour_mail

His email:

Dear Colleague,

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

"Geometrization of the cosmological model of Andrei Sakharov."

Finally, this proposal ended up,

a year later,

on your desk and Bourguignon immediately transmitted to you the brief response message, which you did not delay in sending back:

Damour has not changed his opinion about you.

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

Sir,

you should not believe everything you read on the internet. I am open-minded, but only for hypotheses bringing something new (non-trivial) in science.

sincerely

Thibault DAMOUR

Would you have the courtesy to enlighten my lantern and explain to me in what way my work is trivial and brings no novelty. I would be interested in having, from the specialist that you are, a more detailed critique, which I could share with the readers of my website, who are numerous and have asked the same question.

This work, if I understand correctly what was said during our phone conversation, did not seem to shock Bourguignon, a 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 my approach briefly.

It seems quite legitimate to question the meaning of the word "time" when one considers going back in the history of the cosmos in its hottest phase.

What may seem indeed trivial, indeed, is to cover the Poincaré group, as a "dynamic group", in the sense that the mathematician Jean-Marie Souriau gave it in 1972 (see his book "Structure of dynamical systems", now available on his website

http://www.jmsouriau.com

) to try to describe a real composed of "relativistic material points".

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

Nothing particularly new conceptually at this stage; since it is to take up an idea that is half a century old (Kaluza) according to which one can describe the movement of an electrically charged particle by considering extending this movement in 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 by considering that the groups:

Of Lorentz, from which the Poincaré group is constructed
Of Poincaré, from which the Kaluza dynamic group is constructed, which in fact inherits this property

have two subsets composed of components:

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

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

What meaning to give to movements that would occur "backwards in time"?

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

It is difficult to imagine the coexistence of particles with opposite energies, otherwise the universe would disappear completely, including photons!

The solution proposed by A. Sakharov (for other reasons, it is true) was to consider that the movements of the particles could be inscribed in two different sheets, T-symmetric. He then considered a PT-symmetry, then a CPT-symmetry (solution I chose by constructing my own dynamic group, 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 composed of two five-dimensional sheets, CPT-symmetric. The use of five dimensions instead of four leads to considering that the matter-antimatter duality is at work in the two sheets, which brings a new insight to Sakharov's model.

Finally, what is interesting is to examine the geometric structure of the universe-boundary, also known as 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, there are P-symmetric movements (example of movements of photons with inverse helicity)
It is not the Kaluza dimension since in the same sheet, there are dzeta-symmetric movements (calling dzeta this fifth Kaluza dimension and knowing, Souiau 1964, that this inversion of the fifth Kaluza dimension is synonymous with charge conjugation, i.e., matter-antimatter symmetry).

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

If one gives, as is classical, the Kaluza dimension the nature of a space 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, dzéta ) are considered as real numbers, then one is tempted to assimilate the length associated with the metric ( + - - - - ) to a proper time, itself if associated with the movements of bradyons.

Symmetrically, the signature ( - - - - ) of the boundary space evokes an ... imaginary pure length.

It seems to me that this question is neither trivial nor completely devoid of interest and deserves at least to be addressed, criticized, and debated in a seminar, just like the implications related to brane collisions.

Unless through your response, which I will reproduce on my site to enlighten my many readers, you provide me with arguments to prove the opposite.

Sincerely yours

Jean-Pierre Petit

Back to the text of December 8th, after this insert

It may have happened the same thing at the AP, after this impulsive response from Riazuelo. Because he is impulsive, a young upstart too sure of himself. Others, more informed, would have advised him to keep a prudent silence. Yes, as we are beginning to know him. In a seminar, forgetting all caution, this young polytechnician would have probably attacked head-on, breaking his teeth on a well-secured work, and would have received the first slap of his career, well deserved, him who pretended to be an expert, at the height of his thirty-three springs.

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

Scientists are often vindictive, reckless, "territorial", tend to underestimate their opponent in these kinds of confrontations. I have made more than one attacker bite the dust. The latest one was a sixty-year-old geometer, in a geometry lab in Marseille in 2005. My God, what a disaster, what a masterful blunder! After launching his attack like a boar, demanding "that these clowneries be put to an end", he sat down, red as a tomato, after I politely pointed out his errors.

Therefore, there will be no seminar, no debate. Far from any controversy, Riazuelo will continue to prate without risking criticism, to play the expert, to display his emotions in forums or in the discussion pages of an encyclopedia from which I am "permanently banned" for having published "this letter addressed to his employer" (in fact, the simple request for a seminar and response to his attacks), a letter "which harmed him". The administrators of Wikipedia, secure in their anonymity, immediately rushed to his aid by voting my "permanent ban". In an email constituting a response addressed to a student, he even states that the tone of my letter "bordered on defamation". The hospital is mocking the charity. These dogs who vent their rage on the web with impunity are quick to invoke the law tremblingly when the slightest response is provided. It is less elegant and less courageous than a good face-to-face, clear, in a seminar, in front of colleagues and the public (since the attacks have been spread over months in sites of large audience). Fools, a slap from the mediocre, carefully covered by pseudonyms, like the omnipresent and mediocre "84 K" will echo, mocking "the one who plays the misunderstood genius."

It is easy to see that the scientific game has become completely rigged. I could reiterate the phrase of the French mathematician Jean-Marie Souriau:

Theoretical physics and cosmology have become psychiatric hospitals, where the mad have taken power.

At the IHES, Thiabaud Damour has opened a permanent seminar entirely devoted to the theory of superstrings. At the Collège de France, Veneziano, recently appointed, teaches this "new discipline". It is neither mathematics nor physics. No one knows where and on what criteria to classify this schizophrenic delirium, these works that have never produced the least fruit, explained anything in three decades. You will read that according to Damour "the universe was born from a collision of Branes that folded back on themselves according to 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.

The blabbering is in full swing.

The king is naked. In Damour's seminar and at the Collège de France, the statements are just wind. Nothing comes of it, leads to nothing. These theories are nothing but institutionalized impostures. On the contrary, I say and claim that the twin conception of the universe represents an important advance, explains many things. I would be ready at any time to submit my work to the crossfire of criticism, publicly, to descend into any lion's den.

Faced with this challenge, repeatedly launched, 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 spiral galaxy model, while no other simulation has achieved this in twenty years of fruitless efforts (François Combes, Lia a Atyanassoula). This and much more.

Today's cosmology is played by adjusting parameters. It is a patchwork in a state of permanent repair where it is calmly announced to people, not only that 97% of the matter escapes observation, but that we have no idea what this more-than-phantom matter could be, a mix of dark energy and dark matter, with a "hint of monopoles".

What I propose is more structured, clearer, without shadows, without ad hoc adjustments. But I will not be given the opportunity to present this before a crowd of Tartuffes, whom one has the impression of hearing say:

-Hide this science that I cannot see.

If the possibility of presenting competing theories disappears, then the game of science is over, which is now nothing more than a lamentable mass, an assembly of cowards, but solidly united and carefully organized, on an international scale.

Of course, no laboratory is required to welcome anyone in its seminar. In the case of the IAP, what is shocking is to see its director, Laurent Vigroux, give a negative response through his silence, while maintaining on his laboratory's website a page of criticisms that tends to discredit me scientifically.

This attitude shows a total contempt for others and a complete dishonesty.

This is not new. Thirty years ago I began developing my ideas about the possible elimination of shock waves by magnetohydrodynamics. They annoyed more than one. One day Patrick Iglesias, a student of Souriau and a mathematician, said to me:

Would you be ready to come defend your ideas at the CPT, at the Centre de Physique Théorie in Marseille? (which he belonged to at that time).
No problem. You prepare your lion's den and I'm coming.

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

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

Useless. 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 don't think it's useful to multiply requests to seminars like that of the DARC of Meudon (Department of Relativistic Astrophysics and Cosmology), or the Institut Henri Poincaré, or the École Normale Supérieure, to end up with the most cowardly and contemptible behavior:

the non-response.

I will cite other anecdotes through which you can form your own opinion about the climate prevailing in the epistemosphere. In 1997 I had just published my book "On a perdu la moitié de l'univers" with the publisher Albin Michel. There was only one media echo: a journalist from France Culture braved the omertà, the ban, by recording three successive interviews in Paris. At the end of them, he let out 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 Hoyel and that together they had worked on the possibility that "anomalous redshifts" could be due to the fact that the constants of physics could take different values in certain regions of space (which I believe). I therefore asked, through Pecker, that I could spend two afternoons with the Indian before giving my presentation. I was hoping we could collaborate. Indeed, I had been one of the pioneers of "variable constants models" by publishing three papers in Modern Physics Letters A as early as 1988-1989, at a time when Jean Audouze (still at the IAP) was the editor of this journal. In particular, in 88 I was the first to propose a model where the speed of light varied throughout evolution (an idea later proposed by João Magueijo through an international bestseller titled "Faster than the Light" (Faster than Light, reprinted by Dunod).

You will find portraits of Moffat and Magueijo on Wikipedia at:

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

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

You will not find any mention 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 light velocity (the "VLS" or "Variable Light Velocity"). Since Moffat and Magueijo are linked to Lee Smolin, in Canada, I foresee poorly my future attempts to contact Smolin ("Nothing is Going Well in Physics"). People might try to restore the truth by intervening on this Wikipedia US.

But, very quickly, Narlkar interrupted me by saying:

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

(Unfortunately, dear colleague, I am also on the blacklist).

Through this you realize in an instant 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 have to be patched up with new ingredients, with ad hoc adjustments of numerous parameters, in fact with words devoid of any meaning, like dark matter, dark energy, monopoles. The discourse, as Souriau said, is nothing but an empty scholasticism. They want to present as progress what is only the death throes of a paradigm at its end. But in parallel, solidly organized and united groups have gradually taken possession of the journals, the teachings, the scientific media in the name of a single thought, devoid of any consistency and coherence. You can find Alain Riazuelo in every country, none of whom will leave even a memory in the history of science.

All of this is deplorable, 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 the popular science books worth mentioning had to come from authors "who had at least ten publications in peer-reviewed journals and had been cited at least ten times". A reader tried to include my comic book Big Bang in the list, which was promptly removed by Riazuelo himself thirty minutes later, even though this work is only a faithful adaptation, in comic, of the excellent book by the Nobel Prize winner Steven Weinberg "The First Three Minutes". Through this you see that these people are not at all trying to make sure that people can learn things in this encyclopedia. They take possession of it, show off, and fight among themselves.

There is a book in the libraries of observatories that is a classic. Its title "Atlas of Irregular Galaxies". Author: Halton Arp. Throughout his career, he worked to track down the most unusual objects in the cosmos: the most distorted galaxies. About these last ones, the famous astrophysicist Sir James Jeans said:

When you see such disarticulated galaxies, you cannot help but think that these structures are due to the action of colossal forces, of which we know nothing.

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

On the contrary, when the "corset" relaxes, the galaxy falls apart. I had mentioned this idea ten years ago in my book "On a perdu la moitié de l'univers". But all of this tires me. I leave the field to all these Riazuelos since it is impossible to debate with such "experts" who run away as soon as they are invited into the closed arena.

No matter how eloquent his speeches, Mr. Alain Riazuelo is nothing more than a coward who refuses a public, filmed face-to-face confrontation with his opponent.

Arp had also detected galaxy clusters that contradicted the sacred Hubble law. The closest one had a higher recession speed, whereas it should have been the opposite. Finally, the American Riazuelos met. The conspiracy proved effective. The old fighter received his ostracism token. He was banned from telescopes, from large instruments and sent to New York University, despite the numerous protest letters that flowed in from Pasadena. In the United States as in France, the fools and the mediocre are unfortunately numerous and well organized. And unfortunately, one can do little about it.

In conclusion, the group around Alain Riazuelo can continue to install a new orthodoxy on Wikipedia, self-proclaimed, without tangible results, without a real model, where they 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 completely illusory. It is enough that a sufficient number of individuals decide to impose a certain vision of things for it to become law, due to the lack of enough opponents.

Laurent Vigroux, director of the Institute of Astrophysics of Paris, will not take the trouble to answer my request for a seminar-right of reply. I take the bet at 100 to 1. In the world of research as a dominant character trait, integrity yields to cowardice.

As for the criticism published on this laboratory's website, written by Alain Riazuelo, which casts a serious discredit on me, without giving me the opportunity to respond according to the laws of our scientific milieu, in a seminar, it will continue without time limit.

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

Candide cultivated his garden. I will return to the comic strip. In the project "The carnival of science", among others.

Post Scriptum:

Many readers write to me to inform me of what has been the subject of several articles in the international press, the increasing deviation of Wikipedia "controlled by its thousand administrators". As I have already said, the problem that this "free encyclopedia" suffers from comes from the systematic use of anonymity. In fact, this has allowed a legion of mediocre idle people to easily take over this wonderful tool. Initially, the designers assigned some users the status of "administrators", giving them full power to block the accounts of certain people, under the pretext of "vandalism". The problem is that, gradually, "vandalism" has been confused with not agreeing with the "Wikipedia majority". What is this active majority made of? Simply those who have the time to spend five, and sometimes ten or twelve hours a day on these pages. It is therefore not surprising to learn that many administrators are unemployed, "good-for-nothings, bad at everything", as Pagnol wrote in "César", who have found here a substitute for professional activity, a diversion, a hobby like any other. Sectors, simple pages, portals are thus run by bands. An example is the "Cosmology" portal, run by the group that Alain Riazuelo is part of and which includes astrophysicists Alain Blanchard and Jean-Pierre Luminet. The goal is not at all to provide readers of this "free encyclopedia" with a range of different theories, but to impose, according to criteria that favor them, the views of a scientific oligarchy. These scientists are actively supported by administrators in their pay who censor, prohibit, erase, like the one called "manchot", who boasts of it but threatens to sue anyone who would dare to bring, by publishing their "private email", proof of his dishonest manipulation of the discussion archives under the pretext of "reorganizing". A ... poor guy, a nobody, a mediocre invested by fools of the same kind with an exorbitant power of censor, who shows him at the head: him, the obscure, the incompetent, without the slightest service record, censoring the writings of a man of talent! What a kick!

manchot_impitoyable

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 aspects of the observational data considered by others as problematic (for example, a certain cosmic anisotropy). His statements were not criticized, refuted, but simply ... erased, a few minutes after.

Wikipedia wanted to be a democratic structure. It has become the closed arena of expression of people who have the availability, in time, either their own or that of those who relay their conformist sect, to be the majority. Very quickly their opponents give up, leaving them the field free.

Recently, an American journalist, on the radio, wanting to show the limits of the formula, suggested to his listeners to spread the rumor in this encyclopedia that, for an unknown reason, the number of elephants had tripled in the last ten years. The effect was devastating, at the price of only 300 interventions. The thing having been reported by the press, the volunteer administrators of the encyclopedia had a lot to do to block the accounts of the 300 "vandals". Wikipedia has a few thousand "administrators", endowed with all powers, that of blocking, prohibiting, like, in my own case, of "permanently banning" by a simple vote of a dozen anonymous passers-by (...). These people are recruited by co-option; no competence is required. So don't look for "who are the responsible of Wikipedia". There are none, there are no more. The new arrivals have even "democratically" voted the definitive exclusion of the tool's founders. With time this group has been invaded by a crowd of the most mediocre. If this encyclopedia, due to the services it provides, has become a real institution, it now suffers from this invasion, this takeover. The "vandal" is simply the one who does not adhere to the positions of the dominant group. Watchdogs, serving the ideologues of the subject at hand, are there to harass the dissenters until they become tired or provoke an annoyed reaction that, pushing them to make a mistake, will allow them to ... be permanently banned (...). That is the goal: to gain power, to display "dominant" views, to create a vacuum around them; to create an "autoproclaimed orthodoxy" that will be tried to pass off as the sign of a "progress" and a "truth in motion", "brilliant advances". The status of these anonymous watchdogs allows them to make aggressive, contemptuous, defamatory statements, which will later be ... erased by the administrator managers, under the pretext of "reorganizing the archives of the debates". Such are the roles assigned to beings from the nebula of the virtual like "84K", "manchot" and many others.

Who set up the managers of a portal or another, who gave them the right to make the law? But... themselves, simply! They create selection rules that favor them, invent others as they go, according to their needs.

On the scientific level, the confrontation remains in the "RL" (code name given by these internet users to the "Real Life", to the "Real Life", which they flee like the plague. These are beings whose life is folded in the virtual, a phenomenon of time. Even the truth has become ... virtual! ). But in the field of reality, suddenly, no one. If there were not, in my case, the columns of my site to denounce the incredible cowardice of participants like Alain Riazuelo, a researcher at the CNRS, and that of his colleague-director, Laurent Vigroux, in what framework could this be denounced? None.

The Academy of Sciences does not receive complaints about scientific infractions.

We have reached this point, and at this stage one can speak of a real

virtual dictatorship

, a de facto situation, a serious and harmful deviation. You have seen how the supporters of this virtual dictatorship manage to avoid cowardly any face-to-face confrontation.

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

On the scientific level, this situation prolongs the invasion of the publication journals by pressure groups, which is known to all. There is no need to wonder why the field of fundamental science has been deserted by truly innovative ideas. It is not me who says this, it is the mathematician Jean-Marie Souriau: after the Second World War, a system of anonymous referee expertise was generalized in the journals, on an international scale. The alleged idea was to guarantee the independence of judgment of the experts solicited. In fact, this allowed "self-proclaimed expert networks" to publish as they wished and to follow their students. A terrible clientelism was thus established, without any recourse, which eventually led to self-censorship, the author or authors saying "no, it's useless to send this work, it will never pass". The fundamental has become the kingdom of an incredible mediocrity, the "theory of superstrings", totally sterile, being the spearhead of this "non-science".

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

One hundred three

I once kept a journal of these publication attempts which generally provoked standard, hastily written, without reading, responses, like:

Sorry, we don't publish speculative works

That is, "Sorry, we don't publish speculative works". By miracle, sometimes, one manages to pass through the mesh of this net, which is getting tighter and tighter. In fact, the referee does not read the work submitted to his expertise. He just checks if the or the signatories are "on the list of club members", to which he himself belongs. The second criterion is "does he cite all the members of his family?" citation which, through the benefit of an automatic referencing, will lead to the rise of the rating of the colleagues cited. If these signatories are "in", they can publish in abundance.

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

That's how simple it is. There would remain "the old science", through seminars, the "frank and honest" explanation between individuals whose opinions differ. The closed arena, mano a mano. But there, you have seen how things turn. Because you can be sure that on the subject proposed, the "geometrization of the Sakharov model", if I had found myself facing the "gray eminences" of the Institute of Astrophysics, either I would have spoken in front of closed faces (as happened six years ago), or in case of contestation I would have quickly made my opponents into cat food (and it's because they know this well that they have carefully avoided this face-to-face confrontation).

theoreme_qui_tue

Moreover, since this performance would have been a right of reply against attacks widely spread among a large public, the seminar would have been filmed and then broadcast on the net.

I return to my correspondent, informing me of yet another malfunction of the "Wikipedia machinery", even passing the simple erasure, by authority, of the intervention, in the archive page. I suggest these people to create something like:

http://www.dictaturevirtuelle.com

a site where they could record the evidence of such ethical violations. And, why not, a forum, with people who, for a change, would express themselves under their real identity?

If you don't move. If you don't gather, my brave friends, nothing will happen.

I will mention such a site on mine. If a sufficient number of internet users expressed their discomfort, this could spread like oil. How? I don't know. How to imagine that a recourse is possible when you read, for example, that Alain Riazuelo ... is on Wikipedia within a group having the function of arbitration!

Arbiters who designate themselves!

13 December 2006:

I took a look at the "Jean-Pierre Petit" page on Wikipedia. The debates continue between "pro-Petit" and "anti-Petit" (these latter, like 84 K, remaining cautiously covered by pseudonyms, ensuring their anonymity and carefully masking the narrow limits of their skills). My cosmology works are still qualified as "a draft model". One then wonders what qualification would be appropriate to qualify edifices like inflation, the analysis of the CBR, the determination of the respective percentages of dark energy, dark matter and visible matter (without forgetting a hint of monopoles, of course). This science has become certainly completely absurd.

I had, in the discussion page, at the time when I still had access, not having been "permanently banned". Read here the discussions that led to this decision of "permanent blocking":

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

indicating, providing elements, how I would have liked this biography to be composed, in a purely factual way ("just facts"). I had a sentence like "Jean-Pierre Petit complains of the lack of opportunity given to him to present his theories in seminars, despite the numerous requests he has made in this regard". This sentence currently has the most obvious echo when considering the wall of silence opposed since October 10, 2006, by the Institute of Astrophysics of Paris to my request for a seminar, all the more legitimate since the site of this laboratory has, since this date, a criticism written by Alain Riazuelo, to which, in fact, I have not been able to respond in the forms used in the profession, that is, in a seminar, in public. I am surprised that in these discussions no voice rises to question the name Riazuelo, saying:

Do you find it normal that your criticism of Jean-Pierre Petit's work, which tends to discredit him scientifically and socially, remains on the website of your laboratory, while the latter ignores his legitimate request for a public explanation between you, in a seminar (since the criticism, via the net, has been accessible to thousands of internet users). Do you find this situation legitimate, normal? Do you find it ethically acceptable that the direction of the IAP, the laboratory to which you belong:
Does not respond to Jean-Pierre Petit's seminar request
Maintains, at the same time, on its website, this text, written by you, 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 standards of the profession? Does your current behavior seem to you in line with what could be called a certain sense of honor?

When I reread these "discussions," I really get the feeling that it's ... nonsense. It gives a disastrous impression of the level of these "debates." Just refer to the exchanges between administrators that preceded my "lifetime ban" to get an idea of the level and psychological profile of these people (young, inexperienced, idle white boys eager to attack an elder with complete impunity, plus a faded '68er anarchist playing the role of a virtual guru). Go check all this on their "personal pages." It's simply ... shocking.

Received on January 19, 2007:

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

Hello,

Mr. Petit has never really been part of the French astrophysics community. His belief in having revolutionary ideas is matched only by his ignorance of the field he claims to revolutionize. Modern science is not made in heated debates or aggressive attitudes like Mr. Petit's. It is made through publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals, something Mr. Petit is quite incapable of. Giving him a chance to speak here or there, thus giving him the illusion of legitimacy, will not change this fact, and it is not necessary to have him in front of you to realize the extreme weakness of his work. In my opinion, by shouting about censorship, Mr. Petit is mainly looking for an easy way out to give the illusion to his fans that he is unfairly silenced, while in reality his work receives the echo it deserves among specialists.

Alain Riazuelo

My comment:

When facing a character as arrogant as I am, one decides to settle the matter once and for all, in public. This is feasible at any time. The best thing would be to keep a video record of this correction and widely distribute it, to show as many people as possible the defeat of this pretentious liar.

I have proposed to Mr. Riazuelo, and through him to the entire "community" of French astrophysicists and cosmologists, a proper seminar on the topic "Geometrization of the Sakharov model." If I conform to the image he has of me, then such a seminar should mark my complete failure. Either eminent members of this community will show me errors in the field of mathematical physics, or they will illustrate the sterility of such an approach. I am fully ready to take this risk.

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

By the way, I just suffered another rejection regarding a seminar request. The field was egyptology. The egyptologist Jean-Pierre Adam, research director at CNRS, based at the department of egyptology at the Louvre, attended the conference I gave on January 17 at the Palais de la Découverte, which ended with a memorable exit of his, entirely filmed. Following this outburst, where the only argument he could find was to mention my excessive interest in extraterrestrial visits, which took us far from the subject, I asked him if I could present my theory in a seminar at the Louvre's department of egyptology. Here is his response:

No. We don't want irrational people in our seminars.
But why am I irrational?
You are applying modern uses of the lever to ancient Egypt (...)

Simple remark: Today is January 21, 2007. Thibaud Damour has not replied to my letter, in which I asked him to clarify the contemptuous criticism he sent about my work. Like Riazuelo, he prefers to answer readers' emails, but carefully avoids answering mine. Like this one and like Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, director of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Bures-sur-Yvette, this "specialist in brane collisions" chooses the path of cowardice. With time, I will send our latest work "Geometrization of the Sakharov model" to the responsible people of the different specialized laboratories, and you will see that the response will be the same: a ... non-response. I raise my voice.

There is something rotten in the kingdom of theoretical physics

For decades, the discipline has been in a serious decline. The theory of superstrings is at the center of these people's pathetic efforts to achieve a result that is not only new but simply tangible. Champion of the superstring, Damour praises the merits of a method that has never produced anything, will never produce anything, and is nothing but an incredible intellectual and scientific fraud. In contrast, I have something fruitful to say, to propose for criticism, and you can see over the months that I am unable to present this work in a seminar. Is it because the work is too inconsistent or, according to Damour's term, "trivial"? No. I think I would have no trouble imposing it before an audience of theoretical physicists, cosmology specialists, mathematicians, or all three combined. But the brilliance of this work would highlight, by contrast, the emptiness or poverty of theirs. If they reacted aggressively, I would have the right to defeat them without raising my voice, and they know it.

Some readers are annoyed by what they confuse with personal vendettas and would prefer "me to tell them nice stories, to make them dream, or to present them with new scientific comics." It's because they don't understand the stakes. I'm not fighting for myself but for everyone. I'm fighting against fraud, but also for ethics, for intellectual and scientific integrity, against a serious deviation in thought.

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