Talk:Acoustic Hawking radiation

How to Proceed With Fixing this Article

The article has now been edited (as of Oct 19) to make it NPOV. All further edits should follow suit, by including only statements that are traceable directly to published sources, and by refraining from interjecting personal opinions and musings about the subject. (Erk, this means YOU.) Anything added to the article that is not directly expressing content previosuly published in reputable sources will be deleted, in accord with Wikipedia policy.63.24.56.227 05:22, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Constructive criticisms of the article go here...

I thought I'd put in a "top section" for brief constructive comments, and votes, that follow Wiki guidelines (e.g. signed, no name-calling, no personal attacks, no Wiki-stalking, from identified signed Wiki accounts). Entries in this section that don’t meet these criteria will be subject to removal, editing or being moved to the bottom of the page. ErkDemon 22:16, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

First Sentence

After changing the title to Acoustic Hawking Radiation, we should revise each of the sentences in the article. To get started, here's the first sentence as it presently exists:

The famous Hawking radiation effect that quantum mechanics predicts for black holes has a counterpart in some branches of classical physics, but although the “classical” mechanism for indirect radiation through a horizon works in the context of Newtonian physics (see: the old Newtonian emission theory of light), it does not exist in models like Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which inherit the modified non-Newtonian relationships for mechanics derived in the special theory of relativity.

I suggest we delete all the obscurantist anti-relativity crap (i.e., everything after the first comma), so the sentence should be revised to read like this:

Hawking radiation, an effect that quantum mechanics predicts for black holes in the context of general relativity, has a counterpart in the acoustics of classical media.

All in agreement? If so, we can move on to the second sentence.63.24.53.204 01:14, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Too much like an essay?

This article needs at least some stylistic improvements. I reads more like an essay or magazine article than an encyclopedia entry. --Pjacobi 00:10, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

Okay. After rereading it, I agree at least that the opening section needs to be more disciplined. I'll have a go at improving it. Thanks for the feedback. ErkDemon 22:16, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Rename to "Acoustic Hawking radiation"?

This might be a good idea. Brief votes, please, from Wiki account-holders. Also, should all the headings be changed from "Classical…" to "Acoustic…" to match? ErkDemon 22:16, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

More references?

I could put in a lot more references, but most of them would say the same thing. I reckoned that that Visser article, plus the big 2005 "Analogue gravity" review piece should be sufficient, but would people prefer to see a wider spread of sources? ErkDemon 22:16, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Culling sections?

I'm considering taking out the section on Doppler blueshift and inescapability of gravitational horizons. I thought that it was nice explanation of why GR differs from older models as far as inescapability is concerned (See Thorne's book for diagrams), but perhaps it's taking the article off-topic. Comments? ErkDemon 22:16, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

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Crank POV of the Article

The POV of this article is clear from the statement: "Although the classical mechanism for Hawking radiation appears to offer a unified worldview in which quantum and classical effects are interchangeable, and where some of the “odder” quantum effects have fairly mundane explanations..." Need I say more?130.76.32.16 15:28, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

The rest of the quote ...

Well, yes, you really should have said more, since that was a horrendous example of selective quoting. The "Caveats" section of the article is a single paragraph that essentially says that, although this looks like an easy solution to the BHIP, its not really as easy as all that, because these sorts of descriptions don't work with Einstein's general theory of relativity, which is our current theory of gravitation.

"Although ... appears to offer ... explanations ... it should be emphasised that our current reference classical theory of gravity is general relativity, which does not support these mechanisms. According to current classical relativistic physics theory, these explanations, though seductive, are simply wrong. This is not how physics operates in an “SR+GR” universe."

Now, please tell me, why you think that the full quote is misleading? I've seen some pretty bad examples of dodgy quoting before, but I've never before seen anyone stoop so low as to quote selectively from a "caveats" section and omit the caveat! That's like taking a sign on a beach that says "Danger: The sea here seems calm and good for swimming, but the region has sharks and very dangerous concealed riptides that can easily kill you. Do not swim here!", and presenting it as saying "The sea here appears calm and good for swimming ...".

For the benefit of other readers: I'm open to constructive suggestions as to how the article could be improved, or as to any points that could do with clarification, or further explanation or references, or that might seem to be going slightly off-track. I'm in the middle of a minor rewrite, perhaps I might make the start of that queried sentence slightly less flowery, if it's causing folks like 130.76.32.16 to have a kneejerk reaction and not read all the way through to the end of the paragraph. ErkDemon 00:43, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

no, not cranky, just too recent for the usual textbooks

Well, if you read the very recent literature you'll find that Hawking radiation has now finally been accepted as a wholly mundane effect in fluid mechanics, acoustics, and (apparently) any other situation that involves acoustic metrics. As far as I can work out, the only obvious class of model in which the effect does not arise as a "mundane" effect is in general relativity and in other similar theories of gravitation that are designed to reduce to reduce in a similar way to special relativity - SR's idealised flat Minkowski metric seems to be "too smooth" for the effect to work.
This is a bit unfortunate, because that description pretty much defines the set of classical theories of gravitation that we consider credible.

• Steve Carlip, "Quantum gravity: A progress report" Rept. Prog. Phys., 64 (2001), 885. gr-qc/0108040

"Hawking radiation is a “semiclassical” prediction, originally discovered in the study of quantum field theory on a fixed curved background [321], and subsequently confirmed in a remarkable number of different computations, ranging from the saddle point approximation of the Euclidean path integral [53] to the investigation of symplectic structure of the space of solutions [197] to the calculation of amplitudes for black hole pair production [322,323]. Any theory that fails to reproduce this prediction is almost surely wrong. ... "

"Another indirect test may come from condensed matter analogs of black holes, which should emit “Hawking radiation” phonons from sonic horizons, regions at which the fluid flow reaches the speed of sound [345,346]. Tests may be possible in the not-too distant future in Bose-Einstein condensates [347], superfluid helium 3 [348], and “slow light” in dielectrics [349].

So, yes, HR does turn out to be really very general, and usually shows up in other contexts without our having to invoke any specially "spooky" QM effects to explain it, such as pair production ... it's just that most published books will still describe the effect as it was generally understood (pre-2000), before the wider generality of the effect was properly recognised , and before that new understanding had trickled down very far. Of course, this still leaves the thorny subject of how the heck we are going to "fix up" current gravitational theory to include the missing effect, without doing something "radical" like swapping out the underlying SR layer for an acoustic metric. Which, for obvious reasons, people are reluctant to do (that would require a full rewrite and rederivation of inertial physics, lots and lots of work). ErkDemon 02:50, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

More Proof of Baird's Violation of NPOV

Just read what Mr. Baird says (below above) in his defense of this article, which is on yet another topic that he just made up from a synthesis of misunderstandings:

"...this still leaves the thorny subject of how the heck we are going to "fix up" current gravitational theory to include the missing effect, without doing something "radical" like swapping out the underlying SR layer for an acoustic metric. Which, for obvious reasons, people are reluctant to do (that would require a full rewrite and rederivation of inertial physics, lots and lots of work..."

You see, every one of Mr. Baird's articles has, as it's motivation, his crackpot anti-relativity agenda. We need to "swap out" special relativity. And he has the gall to claim that this isn't crank POV.

anonymous critic again exagerrates, misrepresents

Please read more carefully. I did not say that we need to swap out SR from GR. My response above said that we still faced the thorny problem of how to fix up GR ==without== swapping out SR. We have still not found a satisfactory way to do this. The subject of classical Hawking radiation is under intense study by many mainstream theoreticians because it offers a way around the black hole information paradox in non-GR physics, and (mostly) because it is hoped that the study of these sorts of non-GR solutions may offer some insights as to how fix the problem in general relativity, without going as far as the "major rewrite" option. It has been suggested by John Preskill that the apparent insolubility of the BHIP might signify that a serious overhaul of current physics may be necessary, but there may be a few other unexplored avenues still to be checked out before we seriously consider that step. ErkDemon 01:27, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

You might want to read Wikipedia:Civility, Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks

Who said I wasn't a relativist? Silly person!

Oh, and for your information, it would be very difficult for me to have a "crackpot anti-relativity agenda", because I am, in fact, a hardcore relativist.

Since you keep bringing up my (supposed, assumed) opinions, its a shame that you got this so badly wrong, too ... in fact, the way I ended up "listed" was by arguing that the principle of relativity ought to be implemented _more_widely_and_more_strictly_ than the mainstream considered to be reasonable (I agree with Einstein's position on SR outlined in Scientific American, April 1950, most phsyicists don't).

You completely misunderstand Einstein's position as outlined in that article - and of course on some level you conceed this, by noting that the "mainstream" does not consider your Point of View to be reasonable.

No, Anonymous, not all of Einstein's later views were agreed with by the wider mainstream community. ErkDemon 23:58, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

This is just another example of how the "references" you cite are bogus, because none of them actually supports the crackpot ideas that you imagine they do. I'm not suggesting that you can help it - you're a crackpot, and that's what crackpots DO - I'm just saying that rational Wikipedia editors need to strictly adhere to Wikipedia policies against physics cranks to avoid being over-run by people like you.63.24.61.86 06:52, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

This seems to be unnecessarily personal.

Objectifying people you don't like is not very nice. And if you truly believe in the importance of readers knowing the identities of of people on Wiki, then why are you posting anonymously? ErkDemon 23:58, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

As usual, you completely misunderstand. My comments do not indicate a belief in the importance of readers knowing the identities of people on Wiki, but rather a belief in the importance of readers knowing the sources of the material contained in Wiki articles. According to Wikipedia policy, these are supposed to be two different things, because the people who post articles are not supposed to be the original sources of the material. The problem here is that, in the case of your articles, the person posting the material (Eric Baird) and the original source of the material (Eric Baird) are one and the same. You are essentially posting your own POV essays, and trying to pass them off as NPOV encyclopedia articles (after having failed to get your ideas published by any reputable publisher). In this situation I think the appropriate action is simply to delete the POV essays, since they violate Wikipedia policy. However, the move to delete them failed, because there aren't enough interested Wikipedia editors who have the background in physics to be able to recognize physics crank work when they see it, and because not enough Wikipedia editors choose to adhere to the anti-physics-crank policies of Wikipedia. So... since the essays by Eric Baird are going to remain in Wikipedia, I think it is (at the very least) our obligation to identify them for what they are. Each of your articles should be prefaced with the statement that "The following is an essay on physics by Mr. Eric Baird, which Wikipedia has chosen to include." I don't think this reflects very well on Wikipedia, but it's better than just presenting the crackpot essays of Eric Baird as if they were some kind of NPOV writings.

How do you reconcile your assertion that I originated this material with the review paper of an "umbrella subject" that contains 400-odd references? Are you saying that I originated a subject that then became a major research topic? (Unruh probably gets that credit, IMO).

I reconcile it by pointing out that your essay is (at best) only tangentially related to the references you cite and to the subjects that those references address. Let me be specific. Here is the first sentence of your essay, with the (arguably) factual content in green and the completely made-up POV content in red:

The famous Hawking radiation effect that quantum mechanics predicts for black holes has a counterpart in some branches of classical physics, but although the “classical” mechanism for indirect radiation through a horizon works in the context of Newtonian physics (see: the old Newtonian emission theory of light), it does not exist in models like Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which inherit the modified non-Newtonian relationships for mechanics derived in the special theory of relativity.

Your references support only the green text, not the red text. This is approximately the same ratio of green to red for all the other sentences in your essays. The question to any Wikipedia editor is whether it's worth wading through so much crap to extract the few kernals of NPOV content. In general, it just isn't a good idea to have physics cranks originating Wikipedia articles.130.76.32.145 20:04, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

If you really care so deeply about Wiki then why do you either not have an account, or choose not to use it? This last post wasn't signed at all, which is against policy. What about the rule about not getting personal, Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks? Do you feel that you are exempt? You may feel that a personal characterisation of someone is justified in this case, but people wanting to make personal attacks are going to tend to believe that theirs is a special case, no matter how bad others feel their behaviour is. The Wiki official policy on this, states in large bold letters: "There is no excuse for personal attacks on other contributors. Do not make them."

There is also a Wiki guideline that says that posting another person's personal information (e.g. legal name) almost always counts as Wikipedia:Harassment, an intimidatory behaviour that encourages an unpleasant atmosphere, and may deter other from posting or contributing for fear that they might be treated similarly, damaging Wiki. You may feel that some people ought to be intimidated from authoring or editing here, but that is not your decision to make. What if someone considered that it was in Wiki's interests that you should be exposed and "named and shamed" in this way, as a persistent offender, and your name splashed over wikiland, as a repeat offender? Not good. Encouraging people to treat posts by a particular member differently based on their identity and supposed motivations, encourages Wikipedia:Stalking. You'll notice that so far I have been extremely tolerant of these anonymous posts, in the hope that by replying politely enough times, the message will get through that it is better to debate constructively and politely than to fling mud. So far this message does not seem to have gotten through. ErkDemon 22:03, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Anyhow ... if you think that you've read all my Wiki pages, and you've managed to come away thinking that I'm "anti-relativity", then perhaps I've done a rather better job of keeping my personal convictions out of those Wikipedia pages than I've been given credit for.

I don't think that your lack of courtesy and lack of basic accuracy in the above exchange (assuming that all the anonymous posters are you) inspires very much respect. I sincerely hope that you are not a professional scientist! ErkDemon 01:27, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, Cranky

Look, Mr. Baird, it's very simple. Please cite a reference from a reputable published source stating

"Hawking Radiation usually shows up in other contexts without our having to invoke any specially "spooky" QM effects to explain it, such as [[pair production]..."

Please do NOT provide quotes or citations of things that you (as an obvious crackpot) think IMPLY the above statement. It's clear from what you've written above that you are incapable of rationally interpreting what you read. You need to provide a quote from a reputable source (as defined in Wikipedia policies) that says very directly and unambiguously what you claim above. Notice that this must not refer to things being ANALOGOUS to Hawking Radiation, because you claim to be writing about Hawking Radiation itself.

You didn't notice the provided references?

I'd already provided a link to Visser's paper [http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/9712010 "Acoustic black holes: Horizons, ergospheres and Hawking radiation" gr-qc/9712010 ) Class.Quant.Grav. 15 (1998) 1767-1791 in the original article. That ought to be a sufficiently respectable journal, I think!

"In 1981 Unruh developed a way of mapping certain aspects of black hole physics

into problems in the theory of supersonic acoustic flows [1]. The connection between these two seemingly disparate systems is both surprising and powerful, and has been independently rediscovered several times over the ensuing decade and a half [2]. Over the last six years, a respectable body of work has been developed using this analogy to investigate micro-physical models that might underly the Hawking radiation process from black holes (or acoustic holes — “dumb holes”), and to investigate the extent to which the Hawking radiation process may be independent of the physics of extremely high-energy trans– Planckian modes [3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14]. ...

... As discussed by Unruh [1], (and subsequent papers [3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11,

12, 13, 14]) an acoustic event horizon will emit Hawking radiation in the form

of a thermal bath of phonons at a temperature

Here the relationship between acoustic HR and black hole HR is represented as an analogy, but the acoustic HR effect itself is described as being a genuine HR effect, within acoustics.

You also seem to have missed or overlooked the relevant "Carlip" quotes presented above.

Finally, if you look at the "in progress" rewrite, you'll see that I've already added a link to the massive review piece that appeared on LANL a few months ago, Carlos Barcelo', Stefano Liberati and Matt Visser "Analogue Gravity" (2005) gr-qc/0505065 (PDF, currently 152 pages)

, which has a similarly massive reference listing at the back, alphabetical, by author. The list illustates how far the field has advanced in the last few years. It has 435 references!

Scan through that listing and you'll find stacks of articles whose titles refer to "acoustic Hawking radiation", "sonic Hawking radiation", "Hawking radiation in Bose-Einstein condensates", Hawking radiation in sonic/acoustic black holes, and so on. Case closed, I think. ErkDemon 01:44, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Analogy versus Identity

Look Eric, if you want to originate an article on "Acoustic Hawking Radiation" you could do so.

The main reason for the current title was that my information for writing the article was based on ~1999 info ... back then, there seemed to be no agreed technical term for the "classical" effect, and it had only seemed to have recently been accepted by peer-review that the effect was a legitimate form of Hawking radiation, and not just something that "looked superficially similar". Nowadays there's still no single accepted name, but a scan of recent paper titles seems to indicate that "acoustic Hawking radiation" is now the dominant name for it, so I have no objection to calling it that instead. ErkDemon 10:01, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

The problem is that, instead of doing this, you have followed your usual practice of making up your own term ("classical Hawking radiation"), which implicitly conflates an analogy with an identity. The work being done in the field of "accoustic Hawking radiation" represents an attempt to study one theoretical phenomenon (Hawking radiation near the event horizons of black holes) by examining some analogous phenomena (the so-called "acoustic Hawking radiation" in various media).

Well, that's perhaps how the research on this subject started out, but the subject of Hawking radiation effects in acoustic metrics has ended up being recognised as a legitimate general field of study in its own right: as Visser says in the original cited article, it also allows us to study indirect radiation effects in conventional acoustics using some of the mathematical machinery developed for gravitational theory. It might also turn out to have physical applications in other branches of physics such as nonlinear optics. And it's now being increasingly accepted that acoustic metrics have some interesting and surprising properties that we didn't know about and didn't consider when most current gravitational theory was being developed, and that a proper study is/was overdue. ErkDemon 10:01, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

The obvious suggestion of your article on "Classical Hawking Radiation" is to insinuate that the former actually IS an instance of the latter, even though none of the sources you cite supports your insinuation.

What I said was that it's tempting on first sight to consider dissolving the BHIP by considering black hole radiation as being an example of the more general "non-spooky" classical HR effect ... but that since non-spooky HR isn't compatible with a GR description of black holes, this isn't quite the appealingly "low-cost" option it appears to be at first sight -- to do this we'd probably have to rewrite huge great swathes of current theory, and that might well throw up new problems. We are still looking for other, less drastic solutions.

I think that Hawking's current idea of a "less drastic" solution to the BHIP, and saving GR, is supposed to involve explaining the information imprinted in outgoing HR as coming from parallel universes. Not everybody is happy with that suggestion.

So rather than "insinuate", I think I tackled this issue head-on ... yes, acoustic Hawking radiation is very seductive as a way of thinking about QM black holes, but no, its not part of accepted textbook physics theory, and in fact it seems to be fundamentally incompatible with current gravitational theory. They can't be one and the same thing unless an awful lot of current theory is wrong. ErkDemon 10:01, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Barceló, Liberati and Visser, 2005:

" The primary reason that these analogies were developed ... [analogy argument]"

"Secondary reasons include the rather speculative suggestion that there may be more going on than just analogy — it is conceivable (though perhaps unlikely) that one or more of these analogue models could suggest a relatively simple and useful way of quantizing gravity that sidesteps much of the technical machinery currently employed in such efforts."

"A tertiary concern [at least as far as the general relativity community is concerned] is the use of relativity and differential geometric techniques to improve understanding of various aspects of condensed matter physics."

So yes, the idea that you refer to as an "insinuation", that the correspondence between acoustic HR and QM's predictions for gravitational horizons might conceivably be literal, arises all by itelf once one relaises that the "toy" model appears to be working rather better in some respects than the "proper theory" that it is supposed to be a quick approximation of, and doesn't (yet) seem to have any obvious inconsistencies: consequently the idea that it might conceivably be a correct description has been suggested, at least as a theoretical possibility that hasn't yet been totally ruled out, although it's a suggestion that people are understandably treating with extreme caution. Even if one is convinced that this can't possibly be correct, the desire to prove that it can't be correct can be a legitimate motivation for further research. Thus far, the validity or invalidity of this idea still seems to be an open question (unless things have changed since ~June 2005).

I'm not "pushing" the idea that the two things are equivalent, I'm describing the phenomenology and saying that they look equivalent (quite correct and NPOV), but warning, emphatically, that equivalence is =NOT= compatible with current accepted classical gravitational theory, seemingly on principle. If someone really likes current gravitational theory, then they can look at the arguments provided and conclude that equivalence must be rubbish. I'm giving people the arguments, after that they can decide for themselves what they want to do with them. I think that's a reasonable approach to neutrality. ErkDemon 10:01, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

This is the problem with all of your articles, Eric (and with crackpot thought processes in general). You gather up mis-understood quotes and weave them into an obsurantist essay on a self-named topic whose thrust is a conclusion that none of the references supports. Now, you are certainly free to write essays of this kind, but they are not suitable for Wikipedia, because they represent your own personal Point of View.

I thought that the closest thing to a "conclusion" in the article was the final two sentences: "According to current classical relativistic physics thory, these explanations, though seductive, are simply wrong. This is not how physics operates in an “SR+GR” universe." I really don't think that's that's NPOV. It gives both sides of the argument, underlines the answer that would be considered correct in a school homework essay, and explains why. ErkDemon 10:01, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

That whole sentence is inappropriate. First of all, you just made up "those explanations", and then you declare them to be "seductive", and then in a transparent attempt to evade the crackpot detector you artfully state that these "seductive" explanations are wrong ACCORDING to CURRENT relativistic physics theory, which you can't resist further characterizing as "an SR+GR universe". Please. Eric, you admit further down in this discussion that you have spent years of your life devising a "single stage" relativity theory, that goes straight to GR without SR, and here you are inserting this anti-relativity crackpot POV into what should be an article on accoustic Hawking radiation.

Ask yourself this: Would the authors of the papers on Accoustic Hawking radiation that you've cited concur with all the statements in your article? Of course not. They would unanimously declare you to be a misguided crackpot.

Sigh. So we've progressed from you calling me names to you coming up with fantasy scenarios in which other people call me names. I can't work out whether that counts as progress or not. Most people here seem to respect the Wikipedia rule against making personal attacks.

Would you be inclined to respect someone's opinion on an objective scientific matter if they were continually calling you names? ErkDemon 10:01, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

The fact is that this article (like all your other articles) is pushing your own personal Point of View, one that is not shared by any of the sources you cite. I repeat, you are obviously entitled to your Point of View, and to write essays about it, but those essays are not appropriate for Wikipedia articles. If you just want to summarize recent papers on "accoustic Hawking radiation", then do so in an article on that topic, but be warned that any insinuations that differ from what is in those sources constitutes your own POV, and should be excluded. Of course, once your anti-relativity POV is excluded, you will probably have no interest in creating these articles.

Dear Unsigned, I've already stated quite clearly, on this page, that your characterisation of me as promoting an "antirelativity POV" is wrong. My personal POV on relativity theory, whether I choose to promote it or not, is rather that the current multilayered structure presents a weaker implementation of the principle of relativity than is desirable. I have spent several years working on this subject, narrowing down the possiblities for the properties and characteristics of a more ambitious single-stage theory of relativity. For many years, that's What I Did.

The first time you declared here that I was "antirelativity", I informed you that you were wrong, and explained my actual personal position. I have chosen to tolerate a lot of loutish behaviour from you that is specifically forbidden according to the Wiki rules that you claim to set such store by. This extreme misrepresentation of my opinions is my "hard limit".

You have now done it again. In the interests of Wiki civility, and in deference to the rule that one should always try to attribute misbehaviour to honest mistakes rather than malice, I will assume that you forgot, or that for some strange unexplained reason you did not take my first correction seriously.

I would suggest, very seriously, that you do not make this mistake a third time. ErkDemon 10:01, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

For the third time, Eric, you are an anti-relativity crackpot. Every time you give one of your explanations for why you are not, you just demonstrate once again that you are. Last time you explained that what you mean by relativity is what (you think) Einstein indicated in a popular science article in 1950, even though you acknowledge that your interpretation of what he said in that article disagrees with what the "mainstream" thinks he said. This time (in your reply above) you explain that your

...personal POV on relativity theory... is ... that the current multilayered structure presents a weaker implementation of the principle of relativity than is desirable. I have spent several years working on this subject, narrowing down the possiblities for the properties and characteristics of a more ambitious single-stage theory of relativity. For many years, that's What I Did.

I'm sorry, Eric, but that paragraph would make an excellent entry in a Wikipedia article on anti-relativity crackpots. It is CLASSIC. I honestly could not have composed a better representation of the anti-relativity crackpot mentality if I tried.

This just illustrates that, in the bizarre double-speak that life-long cranks invariably develop, you can claim to be a proponent of "relativity" because, in your own mind, you have decided that what everyone else calls relativity is not really relativity, and what they call anti-relativity is what you call relativity. It wouldn't surprise me if you could pass a lie-detector test that you believe in "relativity". It's just that your definition of that word is contrary to everyone else's definition.

Example of Baird's Misrepresentations

As a case in point, consider Mr. Baird's assertion in this article

Initially the classical effect tended to be described as the sonic “analogue” of Hawking radiation, but in 1998 Matt Visser published a study (gr-qc/9712010) that concluded that this classical leakage effect was technically a “true” form of Hawking radiation, although, the range of theories in which it arose in a gravitational context did not include general relativity.

and compare this with Visser's actual summary of the contents of that paper

This rather simple physical system is the basis underlying a deep and fruitful ANALOGY between the black holes of Einstein gravity and supersonic fluid flows.

So the citation that Eric uses to justify his (characteristically obscurantist) claim about accoustic Hawking radiation being "true" Hawking radiation (whatever "true" is supposed to mean) is not at all supported by his reference. Eric goes on to admit (obscurely) that this "true" Hawking radiation does not fit within the context of general relativity, so of course it isn't true Hawking radiation at all, which presumably is why he placed the word "true" in quotes. (The very definition of Hawking radiation is from the context of general relativity.) These are all just Eric's contortions to try to insinuate his crackpot ideas into the article while staying "under the radar" of the crackpot detectors. This is just a note to Wikipedia editors - If you check the references that Mr. Baird provides, you will invariably find that they do NOT support the crackpot Point of View expressed in his articles. You will also find that he attempts to disguise his crank POV statements with pseudo-jargon and made-up terms. 63.24.57.138 06:11, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Latest Revision from Erk is Crackpot POV in the Extreme

This article is ostensibly about acoustic Hawking radiation, but virtually the entire article consists of Eric Baird's crackpot musings on his misunderstandings of gravitational theories. This article is not supposed to be about "dark stars" or alternate theories of gravity, or attributes of current theories of gravity. The only relevance of gravity to this article is that the phenomena that is the subject of this article is analogous to a phenomenon in general relativity.

The entire thing is off-topic, unsubstantiated, crackpot POV essay, so I've edited it to re-focus it on the actual subject. This required deleting virtually all of what Erk had written, and replacing it with words that actually reflect the things that are discussed in the references, rather than just using those references as a jumping off point for launching into a crackpot anti-relativity rant.

I suggest that any further edits follow suit, by including only statements that are traceable directly to published sources, and refraining from interjecting personal opinions and musings about the subject.130.76.32.16 22:24, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

The article was in the middle of a major edit, and explicitly tagged:

This article is actively undergoing a major edit. As a courtesy, please do not edit this article while this message is displayed.

I hadn't finished, you or another anonymous user edited out my "in use" tag. FYI, my next step, tonight, was to take out the "dark star" info and move it to the dark star page. You'll notice that I'd already suggested taking this section out, and in the "culling sections?" category had asked people specifically if they agreed? Nobody, including you, replied. I decided to do it anyway. You were asked what changes you'd like to see, and didn't respond, and instead started deleting things in mid-edit. And top-posted another "crackpot" rant. Why not just reply: "yes take that part out"? If it was you that removed that tag, I do not believe that you were acting in good faith. OTOH, if another anonymous user removed the tag, and you reedited what you sincerely thought was supposed to be a finished revision, then your rant at me was based on a misunderstanding caused by a third party.

BTW, if you could try to sign in using a Wiki account, this makes it easier for the rest of us to tell which user is which, please consider this a mark of respect not just to me but to anyone reading these posts. Without account ID's, for all we know, all these rants might be coming from one person. If you can't log on with a wiki account for technical reasons (e.g. you don;t know how to enable cookies, or are using someone else's machine and do not have permission), then please consider signing your initials or some other identifying mark at the end of your posts and/or edits. In a dispute, I do not see any legitimate reason for not doing this. Article reverted, the major edit will continue. Polite non-ranting, non-name-calling comments in that top section will, as always, be taken seriously. ErkDemon 00:01, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Wow! Proponents of analog models of gravity have it hard!

Proponents of analog models of gravity often come under heavy fire attack from relativists and high energy physicists who often completely misunderstand the theory. Not too long ago, another proponent George Chapline was savaged by mainstream physicists. Phys 23:10, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Erk is not a "proponent of analog models of gravity" (whatever that is), he is a proponent of the idea that gravity IS a classical fluidic phenomenon. His agenda is to try to smuggle this crackpot belief into a host of Wikipedia articles under the guise of articles on other subjects. If Erk was to write an article on baseball, I have no doubt he would argue that, since baseballs are round and out-fielders wear gloves, it follows that special relativity is wrong and black holes are really dark stars. (And then include a disclaimer like: but current physical theories doesn't support this conclusion, mainly becasuse they rely on special relativity.) Then he would point to a stack of references saying that baseballs are indeed round, and he would claim that his article is therefore based on legitimate sources.63.24.53.246 23:57, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

No, I am not a proponent of the idea of gravity considered as a classical particulate fluid. Some of the mainstream "graviton"/"quantum foam" guys might fit that description, but not me. I tend to think of the gravitational field as being a smooth featureless thing (until we start contaminating it with objects, observers and test particles and their associated gravitoelectomagnetic distortions). Sorry to disappoint. ErkDemon 16:36, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

The title is inappropriate

Hawking radiation in analog models is still a quantum effect. Because of this, I will rename this article acoustic Hawking radiation. Phys 00:39, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Let me try to clarify myself. Classically, it's possible to move faster than "light" (i.e. sound) as thus escape from the "event horizon" but the actual acoustic Hawking radiation itself requires quantum mechanics. Phys 00:42, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Version 2.0

Okay, here's the promised (overdue) total rewrite of the "Classical Hawking radiation" article. Almost everything from the original article has gone.

I retained the recently-added Visser quote by another editor in the "Analogy vs. identity" section and supplemented it with a more recent quote saying that the idea that the analogies might be argued to be more than just analogies is a (secondary) reason for study. I'm hoping that this section, with the two quotes (without further commentary) will be considered as striking a NPOV balance. The two statements don’t necessarily conflict, one is about general relativity, the other, quantum gravity. The attempt to eventually obtain a theory that obeys QG principles seems to be is a recurring motivation in a lot of this research.

I've added a substantial reference section, partly because (without it) some people didn’t seem to believe that this was an actual subject, and partly because I think this reading list should be a useful research resource. I think that its range is reasonably comprehensive. There does not (yet) seem to be any published reference book on this subject. ErkDemon 09:00, 25 October 2005 (UTC)