Bonn 2010 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 2: Experiment, Then and Now

AGPhil 2.2: Hauptvortrag

Dienstag, 16. März 2010, 14:40–15:20, JUR G

Gravity Waves and Neutrinos: The Later Work of Joseph Weber — •Allan Franklin — Department of Physics, UCB 390, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0390

How does the physics community deal with the subsequent work of a scientist whose earlier work has been regarded as incorrect? An interesting case of this involves Joseph Weber whose claim to have observed gravitational waves was rejected by virtually all of the physics community, although Weber himself continued to defend his work until his death in 2000. In the course of this defense Weber made a startling suggestion regarding the scattering of neutrinos. I will summarize the history of gravity waves including the rejection of Weber's claim around 1975, his later work on gravity waves, and examine the reaction of the physics community to his neutrino hypothesis.