Talk:John Renton

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The Nature of Earth

There are an astounding number of errors in the first two lectures (Creation of Universe, and Creation of Solar System). While admittedly a bit outside his area of expertise, the errors are imho egregious. And there is one glaring error that is dead center of geology: he claims that gravity is caused by the spin of matter! (here, spin is rotation about a central point, and not a quantum mechanical attribute). He makes that claim at least twice (I've only viewed lecture 1 & part of 2). If Bill Gates thinks this is an example of high quality electronic education, my regard for Mr. Gates must be reduced by at least an order of magnitude. Little that Renton says in the first lectures is correct. He claims that either the Big Bang was an explosion in space (wrong) or an expansion of space (right). He claims that the universe is finite and open (wrong - probably and may be right, but unknown.) He claims that Dark Matter is composed of the "cosmic dust" (hydrogen, other atoms, molecules, minerals, rocks) left over from gravitational collapse. He claims that there are "31+" moons. (There are 200+ and while "more than 31" is just as true with 32 as with 32 million, it's grossly mischaracterising what was known in 2006.) He claims that "the Big Crunch" may occur if the Universe is above "the Critical Density" (Wikipedia states: "The vast majority of evidence indicates that this theory is not correct." He claims that all elements except for hydrogen (and perhaps helium) are created in Red Giant (star) supernovae. (See Wikipedia "Nucleosynthesis", which shows that only 29 of the stable 92 elements derive wholly or partially from exploding massive stars). I could go on, but will stop here. So, here's the question: while it may be true that that course was praised at the time, many of the claims made in it are false and were KNOWN to be false before 2006. Should the praise of this course be removed? I did not find an authoritative critique of this material, and yet some of the claims are so far out, so inconsistent with what the consensus view is, that there should be serious consideration of downplaying or removing it. (There are 36 lectures in the DVD series, it is possible, maybe even probable that the quality is much better, but I will be unable to judge that without careful verification using alternative sources. I have no doubt that Renton was an excellent teacher and perhaps scientist, but highlighting this as the capstone of his career does him no service, upon closer examination.174.130.70.61 (talk) 01:06, 10 June 2020 (UTC)