Alexander Unzicker

Alexander Unzicker
Born	(1965-03-13) March 13, 1965 Munich, Germany
Residence	Munich, Germany
Nationality	German
Alma mater	Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Known for	Mach's principle; variable speed of light; critiques of modern theoretical physics; Bankrupting Physics; The Higgs Fake
Scientific career
Fields	Physics, Cosmology, neuroscience
Institutions	Pestalozzi-Gymnasium, Munich

Alexander Unzicker (born 13 March 1965) is a German physicist, teacher, and science author. He is best known for a series of popular books that critique modern theoretical physics — including Bankrupting Physics, The Higgs Fake and Einstein's Lost Key — and for his YouTube channel "Unzicker's Real Physics" (also known as The Machian). His own research is devoted to Mach's principle and to variable speed of light formulations of gravitation, and he argues that fundamental physics lost its way when it abandoned the questions posed by Mach, Einstein, Dirac, Sciama and Dicke.

Biography

Unzicker was born in Munich, Germany. From 1985 he studied physics and law at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, receiving a diploma in physics and a state examination in law in 1993. In 2000 he passed the state examination qualifying him to teach mathematics and physics at the secondary (high school) level, and in 2001 he was awarded a doctorate in the neurosciences at the university's Institute for Medical Psychology.

Alongside his writing, Unzicker has taught mathematics and physics at the Pestalozzi-Gymnasium in Munich. He is a son of the German chess grandmaster Wolfgang Unzicker, and himself played competitive club chess in Munich in the 1980s. Between 2013 and 2022 he published science-critical articles in the German magazine Telepolis, and he writes essays on Medium and runs a question-and-answer format, "Frag Unzicker".

He has stated that his combined background in law, neuroscience and classroom teaching informs a broad, historically minded approach to physics, and he has repeatedly urged younger physicists to read the primary literature of earlier decades, remarking that "the greatest pearls of physics are in articles from 50 years ago."

Scientific contributions

Mach's principle and a variable speed of light

Unzicker's technical work centres on Mach's principle — Ernst Mach's proposal that local inertia is not an intrinsic property of a body but is determined by the large-scale distribution of matter in the universe. Building on Dennis Sciama's 1953 inertial-induction hypothesis and Robert Dicke's 1957 flat-space, variable-refractive-index representation of gravitation, Unzicker argues that general relativity can be re-expressed as a theory in which the speed of light varies with the gravitational potential rather than as a theory of curved spacetime. In Mach's Principle and a Variable Speed of Light (arXiv:gr-qc/0511038) he shows that such a variable-speed-of-light (VSL) description reproduces the four classical tests of general relativity, while opening the possibility that the gravitational constant itself is a derived, cosmologically determined quantity rather than a fundamental constant.

In A Machian Version of Einstein's Variable Speed of Light Theory (arXiv:1503.06763, with Jan Preuss) he returns to Einstein's own 1911 papers, in which Einstein treated gravitation as a spatially varying c before adopting the metric formalism. Using Green's functions, the authors put Einstein's 1911 idea into closed analytic form and derive a relation between curvature and the local speed of light, yielding a Machian reading of general relativity. This programme is the subject of his popular book Einstein's Lost Key, whose thesis is that the 1911 variable-speed-of-light approach was the more physical of Einstein's two routes and was abandoned prematurely.

He has also examined the historical alternatives directly, in A Look at the Abandoned Contributions to Cosmology of Dirac, Sciama and Dicke (arXiv:0708.3518), which revisits Dirac's large-number hypothesis and the Sciama and Dicke proposals, and in The VSL Discussion: What Does Variable Speed of Light Mean (arXiv:0708.2927), which clarifies what is and is not empirically meaningful in VSL claims.

Critique of gravitation and observational tests

Unzicker has questioned how thoroughly Newtonian gravity has actually been tested, in Why do we Still Believe in Newton's Law? Facts, Myths and Methods in Gravitational Physics (arXiv:gr-qc/0702009), and has proposed and carried out simple empirical checks: a solar-system test of Mach's principle using gravimetric data (arXiv:gr-qc/0610028), an approach to verifying the Pioneer anomaly (arXiv:gr-qc/0702151), and angular-size and galaxy-distribution tests using Sloan Digital Sky Survey data (arXiv:1011.4956, arXiv:0806.1506). Earlier work applied continuum mechanics and teleparallel geometry to field theory, including Teleparallel Space-Time with Defects yields Geometrization of Electrodynamics (arXiv:gr-qc/9612061) and a translation of Einstein's teleparallel unified-field-theory attempt (arXiv:physics/0503046).

Critique of particle physics and string theory

Unzicker is a sharp critic of the standard model of particle physics, of string theory, of supersymmetry and of cosmic inflation, which he regards as untestable, over-parameterised and insufficiently constrained by observation. He satirised the supersymmetry programme in Immanuel Kant on Supersymmetry: A Practical Evaluation (arXiv:1003.2967) and analysed the statistical basis of Higgs detection claims in How to Determine the Probability of the Higgs Boson Detection (arXiv:0912.0443). These arguments are developed at book length in The Higgs Fake: How Particle Physicists Fooled the Nobel Committee, a critique of the Large Hadron Collider programme at CERN and of the theoretical model underpinning it.

His broader position, set out in The Mathematical Reality, is that a fundamental theory should ultimately explain — and thereby eliminate — the dimensionless constants of nature, rather than accumulate free parameters. He is accordingly a critic of what he sees as an over-mathematised physics detached from measurement, and an advocate for physics as a natural science in the empirical tradition.

CNPS talks

He has presented in the CNPS online seminar series:

• "Author Dr. Alexander Unzicker: Conversations on Fundamental Physics" (23 January 2021) — a wide-ranging discussion of science journalism in the internet era, critical thinking, the state of particle physics, and the challenges facing the dissident science community.

Books

• 2020 - The Mathematical Reality: Why Space and Time Are an Illusion
• 2015 - "Einstein's Lost Key" (Read in full) — published as Einstein's Lost Key: How We Overlooked the Best Idea of the 20th Century (first edition 2015; revised edition 2022)
• 2013 - "Bankrupting Physics" (Read in full) — Bankrupting Physics: How Today's Top Scientists are Gambling Away Their Credibility, Palgrave Macmillan
• 2013 - "The Higgs Fake" (Read in full) — The Higgs Fake: How Particle Physicists Fooled the Nobel Committee
• 2012 - Auf dem Holzweg durchs Universum (German)
• 2010 - Vom Urknall zum Durchknall (German; English edition: Bankrupting Physics)

He is also the author of Make Physics Great Again, a historical account of the differing scientific traditions of Europe and America.

His German-language book Vom Urknall zum Durchknall (2010), published in English as Bankrupting Physics: How Today's Top Scientists are Gambling Away Their Credibility (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), was named "most controversial science book of the year" by the German science magazine Bild der Wissenschaft.

Selected papers

• A Machian Version of Einstein's Variable Speed of Light Theory (with J. Preuss), arXiv:1503.06763 (2015)
• Do Galaxies Change in Size? An Angular Size Test at Low Redshift with SDSS Data, arXiv:1011.4956 (2010)
• Immanuel Kant on Supersymmetry: A Practical Evaluation, arXiv:1003.2967 (2010)
• How to Determine the Probability of the Higgs Boson Detection, arXiv:0912.0443 (2009)
• A Quick Verification of the 2-D Galaxy Distribution with SDSS Data, arXiv:0806.1506 (2008)
• A Look at the Abandoned Contributions to Cosmology of Dirac, Sciama and Dicke, arXiv:0708.3518 (2007)
• The VSL Discussion: What Does Variable Speed of Light Mean, arXiv:0708.2927 (2007)
• A Quick and Dirty Approach to Verify the Pioneer Anomaly, arXiv:gr-qc/0702151 (2007)
• Why do we Still Believe in Newton's Law? Facts, Myths and Methods in Gravitational Physics, arXiv:gr-qc/0702009 (2007)
• A Solar System Test of Mach's Principle with Gravimetric Data, arXiv:gr-qc/0610028 (2006)
• Mach's Principle and a Variable Speed of Light, arXiv:gr-qc/0511038 (2005)
• Translation of Einstein's Attempt of a Unified Field Theory with Teleparallelism, arXiv:physics/0503046 (2005)
• Galaxies as Rotating Buckets, arXiv:gr-qc/0308087 (2003)
• What can Physics learn from Continuum Mechanics?, arXiv:gr-qc/0011064 (2000)
• Teleparallel Space-Time with Defects yields Geometrization of Electrodynamics, arXiv:gr-qc/9612061 (1996)

Honors

• "Science book of the year" recognition from the German science magazine Bild der Wissenschaft for Vom Urknall zum Durchknall (English edition: Bankrupting Physics).

External links

• Official website
• alexander-unzicker.de — personal site, including his page on Mach's principle
• Unzicker's Real Physics on YouTube
• Alexander Unzicker on arXiv
• Alexander Unzicker on the German Wikipedia