I could not agree more, Prof. Narlikar. While patently wrong ideas or lines of research should be discarded, unfashionable ideas should not. JC Bose's work on the response of plants to stimuli, Alfred Wegener's idea of Pangea which was scoffed at by established geophysicists of his time, the initial scepticism towards a Bahcall for a particle physics resolution of the solar neutrino problem are similar examples.
I had a similar experience. My paper explaining relativity having spacetime diagrams with only time dimensions was recently rejected by a reputed journal for not being novel.
I wrote back to the editor, that my paper is novel, in that,
1) Everyone talks about time running slow (dilation) and very less about time running faster. My paper gives equal weightage to both.
2) Spacetime diagrams in the article have only time dimension and space is collapsed to a single point. The diagrams show time having 2 important properties that of moving uniformly in forward direction and it's rate of time dilation.
3) It resolves Time Travel Paradoxes about traveling back in time. Both relativity and quantum mechanics do not permit traveling back in time. In Quantum Mechanics a particle doesn't change state ahead of it's entangled particle, so there is no going back or forward in time even in Quantum Mechanics.
The journal still rejected my article without any comment on the novelty aspect. I believe most reputed journals do not accept controversial articles not supported by other researchers. I managed to publish a preprint on at https://zenodo.org/records/13625888
Everything said, I would admit my article was not well drafted. A physics professor, I met, said the article was not drafted well as a research paper, but it was ok in a education focused journal.
Further, I am from a commerce background, not affiliated with any research institutions. So I believe many conclusions in my article and previous articles were not rigorously examined, due to my limited knowledge. So I would not blame the journal, but a proper by reason for rejection would have helped.
These are some of the odd conclusions from my articles that I still believe in (or I do not fully understand the science behind it) :
1) If objects in Universe are traveuolling faster than light towards us, we will still see everything moving away us.
2) If an object is moving away from us and the same object is coming back towards us, eg. an object moving in circular orbit faster than light, we will see the same object multiple times. So some objects recorded as gravitational lensing could be objects moving faster than light in circular path.
3) Quantum entanglement in heavily time dilated system should break. Or a particle changes state instantly and reflected 100s of years later in time dilated space (it's present).
4) We should either know exact time dilation at Speed of light, or our measurement of speed of light is incorrect.
5) Using Speed of light in General and Special theory of relativity is like using time to understand time.
Prof. Halton C. (Chip) Arp research contradicted well established theory of Big Bang and expanding Universe.
Similarly, Einstein's theory of relativity is very much established. Contradicting theories make good on headlines but could not be prove Einstein wrong. I believe Einstein is right but his theory is mostly misunderstood.
Very interesting indeed ! Specially how similar it is is to the reasons for absence of progress in schience & technology in India over some centuries . This sticking to some religion dogmas & not accepting what is proved otherwise was not only in those centuries but present even today due to many ' influencial ' fanatics !
I could not agree more, Prof. Narlikar. While patently wrong ideas or lines of research should be discarded, unfashionable ideas should not. JC Bose's work on the response of plants to stimuli, Alfred Wegener's idea of Pangea which was scoffed at by established geophysicists of his time, the initial scepticism towards a Bahcall for a particle physics resolution of the solar neutrino problem are similar examples.
Cosmology mainly depend on Mathematics and Statistics. Presently largest dataset validate arp's idea that of intrinsic redshift / quantized redshift
Marvelous.
I had a similar experience. My paper explaining relativity having spacetime diagrams with only time dimensions was recently rejected by a reputed journal for not being novel.
I wrote back to the editor, that my paper is novel, in that,
1) Everyone talks about time running slow (dilation) and very less about time running faster. My paper gives equal weightage to both.
2) Spacetime diagrams in the article have only time dimension and space is collapsed to a single point. The diagrams show time having 2 important properties that of moving uniformly in forward direction and it's rate of time dilation.
3) It resolves Time Travel Paradoxes about traveling back in time. Both relativity and quantum mechanics do not permit traveling back in time. In Quantum Mechanics a particle doesn't change state ahead of it's entangled particle, so there is no going back or forward in time even in Quantum Mechanics.
The journal still rejected my article without any comment on the novelty aspect. I believe most reputed journals do not accept controversial articles not supported by other researchers. I managed to publish a preprint on at https://zenodo.org/records/13625888
Everything said, I would admit my article was not well drafted. A physics professor, I met, said the article was not drafted well as a research paper, but it was ok in a education focused journal.
Further, I am from a commerce background, not affiliated with any research institutions. So I believe many conclusions in my article and previous articles were not rigorously examined, due to my limited knowledge. So I would not blame the journal, but a proper by reason for rejection would have helped.
These are some of the odd conclusions from my articles that I still believe in (or I do not fully understand the science behind it) :
1) If objects in Universe are traveuolling faster than light towards us, we will still see everything moving away us.
2) If an object is moving away from us and the same object is coming back towards us, eg. an object moving in circular orbit faster than light, we will see the same object multiple times. So some objects recorded as gravitational lensing could be objects moving faster than light in circular path.
3) Quantum entanglement in heavily time dilated system should break. Or a particle changes state instantly and reflected 100s of years later in time dilated space (it's present).
4) We should either know exact time dilation at Speed of light, or our measurement of speed of light is incorrect.
5) Using Speed of light in General and Special theory of relativity is like using time to understand time.
Prof. Halton C. (Chip) Arp research contradicted well established theory of Big Bang and expanding Universe.
Similarly, Einstein's theory of relativity is very much established. Contradicting theories make good on headlines but could not be prove Einstein wrong. I believe Einstein is right but his theory is mostly misunderstood.
One minor correction needed in the comment below picture with Prof Arp. It says "the author with Prof Arp in 1910". I think that it should be 2010.
Very interesting indeed ! Specially how similar it is is to the reasons for absence of progress in schience & technology in India over some centuries . This sticking to some religion dogmas & not accepting what is proved otherwise was not only in those centuries but present even today due to many ' influencial ' fanatics !
Wonderful essay Dr. Narlikar.
Similar episodes of establishment bias also seen in deciphering ancient scripts - Mayan, Linear A, B, Cuneiform etc.
p.s. There is a typo in the date with your picture with Prof. Arp.
Superb information. Keep updating
Regards
Dr.Abhiram