Re: [ATM] Dobson

["matt" <mariusrf@bellsouth.net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Guy Brandenburg <gfbrandenburg@yahoo.com>
To: artbianconi@blast.net <artbianconi@blast.net>
Cc: atm@atmlist.net <atm@atmlist.net>
Date: Saturday, October 30, 2004 12:57 PM
Subject: Re: [ATM] Dobson


>Art,
>
>Again, I very very strongly doubt that Dobson had
>anything substantive to do with the Manhattan project
>at all. By his written account, he only worked in the
>scientific field for about a year: from college
>graduation time in 1943 to May of 1944. If he told a
>different story on the TV bio, then that undermines
>his credibility (with ME, at least) even further.
>
>I do give credit to him to blasting open a number of
>great innovations in amateur telescope making. But I
>don't really think that he has anything of substance
>to offer to the debates on cosmology and the like --
>and those are the areas that he really thinks he
>excels in. I also think that his treatment of anybody
>who offers to disagree with him is extremely abusive.
>And this abusive treatment comes from someone who
>complains of an establishment conspiracy to shut out
>his views. It seems to me that those who have
>disagreed with Fred Hoyle's (and Dobson's)
>steady-state theories have been at the very least
>courteous and have given reasoned explanations for why
>they disagree.

at the risk of piss*ng off a lot of Dobson's fans, I cringed when I saw his
name in the same sentence as FRed Hoyle's _and_ related to cosmology.
FRed Hoyle at the time (give or take, 4 decades ago) chose to support the
steady state theory for logical reasons. I have read during that era some of
his publishings and at least in the publications I recall (without
revisiting such old stuff ) he described the several possible universe
models of the time , from steady  state to pulsating and big bang . He did a
careful error analysis and at the time the measurements accuracy was not
good enough to determine which model was valid or which was wrong and
allowed the models to overlap. Anyway, he was an astrophysicist of stature
and not someone who taught people how to make simple telescopes . They do
not belong in the same sentence in my opinion.

best regards,
matt tudor

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