Preserving Tom's Work?

Hi Glen,

Mike Van Flandern (Tom's oldest son) and I are doing what we can to keep this site going. We can afford to keep it as it is, but it really needs an update. For that we need a talented web designer/builder with the time and inclination. (We have had a few people express some interest over the years, but so far no one has been willing to commit.)

And it really needs to be active again. Especailly the forum. For that we need a full time PhD astronomer that is not tied to the existing grant processes for his livelyhood. Probably a retired boy or girl that has a lot of curiosity, is at least a little skeptical of at least some of the things they and their peers have done, and has decided to tackle some big challenges. (We know a few people that are interested, but none with the personal wealth to be able to indulge themselves in this way.)

***

It is also time to see about turning some of our theories into hardware. I'm working on the design of an experiment to measure the propagation speed of changes in a gravitational force field. As you know, this is predicted by DRP to be strongly FTL. My experiment is based on the Walker-Dual experiment, with some adjustments to address the concerns of skeptics and detractors. I need a budget of perhaps a million dollars to do it right, and figure I can personally afford about a thousand or so. I've already spent about four hundred. I'm looking at my transmitter right now. It is about two thirds complete. The detector modules (the hard part) are still on the drawing board.

I also have a design for an experiment to measure the gravitational shielding effect predicted by DRP. It is based on Quirino Majorana'a experiment, with some adjustments to reduce cost and complexity. I figure I need about half a million to really do this one right. No hardware yet.

Of course, all of these problems would go away if we just had a big pile of money.

Regards,
LB

I have felt the same way as glittle for some time. I read about the latest astronomy/cosmology research and immediately wonder what Tom will have to say about it, and then remember.

His passing has left quite an intellectual void. At the least I would greatly appreciate a Van Flandern-inspired response to ongoing research and announcements. I don't mean thesis stuff, just a paragraph or two of how the metamodel would interpret such things, or gladly pointing out it predicted such things when appropriate.

Otherwise it seems the metamodel died with its creator, which would be a tragedy.

Respectfully,
Krag

Thanks, Krag. A lot of us still have that reflex ... 'wonder what's happening at MR?' And then we remember.

The Meta Model isn't dead, but it is obviously not very active. (By the way, it is called Deep Reality Physics now. DRP. Tom's idea. Brilliant marketing ploy, in my opinion. He, and I and a lot of others, were always puzzled by the Copenhagen Interpretation of QM. 'There is no deep reality'. It's one of those things that is not so much hard to understand (well, you do have to put in some effort ... as it is hard to believe. So one day a year or so before the end, he came up with the DRP name. Laughed his ass off. So did I. Sigh.)

I'm still working on certain aspects of the theory parts of DRP, but most of the time I have for MR related stuff these days (not enought of course) is devoted to the experiemnts I mentioned above.

LB

Would it be appropriate to create a Facebook Page for "Deep Reality Physics" and start using it as a place for discussions? If we wanted to do that now, it could be started as a "grass-roots" effort, and gradually build up more information and discussion points. We could copy in many of the articles Tom wrote and published here. If "Deep Reality Physics" should become the name to use, we could use that now. Or, leave it in reserve and use "Meta Research" or some other name for the grass-roots effort.

Or, would it be better to wait until a more professional and complete strategy can be developed and implemented?

I would love to have a place to post links to recent serious articles that raise questions related to Tom's work, and think a Facebook page would be a great start. This forum has worked for years, but doesn't have much reach, and I doubt that it will become widely used again, in its current format.

If you (whoever is reading this!) think that something in Facebook would be good, I'd be quite willing to volunteer to get it set up and going. However, I'm totally at the service of Mike and Larry, and will only proceed if they feel it is a good idea.

What are your thoughts?

If you set it up, I will come.

We still have a steady and surprsingly large amount of traffic here. But it is all lurkers, very few posters. Setting up a Facebook presence is on our ToDo list and I'm sure it would be successful. Most of those who lurk here would also go to the FB pages.

But we would have the same problem - no PhD astronomer to do the research and write the articles. I'd love to be able to go back to school and become that person. Maybe in my next 100 years?

LB