http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/bib_query?arXiv:1204.0162
Dear List;
Just saw the above paper, which I'm convinced somewhere has a flaw, but
I don't have a peaceful moment to go through it;
Basically it says,
If you are a policeman in a traffic-trap observing a clever physicist
approaching a stop sign in his car who sneezes: because the car is
somewhat distant, your mind is really not interpreting its speed, but
rather its angular velocity. The conclusion is that any minor
distraction such as another car or bird, etc., can create a major
misinterpretation to the brain which is tricked into filling in details
to make sense of what you saw, but did not observe with absolute
perfection.
The author claims special recognition by the government of California
for his innovative analysis, which we expected to accept an official
reviewer of physics papers.
Now, if the paper is actually not in error (which I am not saying is
the case), it if you replace the policeman with an meteor observer, and
the stop sign with the sudden deceleration upon hitting the ablation
zone of the atmosphere ... and then disappearence into dark flight/fall,
... it would be fun to compare the results and see if his paper would
have been more interesting had he been in a shooting star going
incandescent and what the perception where it landed in relation to the
meteoric counterpart of the stop sign.
Although it was posted on what in many countries is called "The Day of
the Innocents", April 1, and titled "Proof of Innocence", in the USA
the day is known as "April Fool's", a quite disagreeable connotation,
there may actually be something to it? You can always think of the
illusion the brain interprets when looking up a train track, when two
rails in parallel instead look like they converge into a point ... the
same illusion that give us a meteor radiant. Now here's another
practical example to compare, if true.
Kindest wishes
Doug
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