I Get Email

Few things warm the heart of a scientist more readily than a query from a young, curious mind, eager to learn about our universe. Why, just now I received this inquiring email:

R xxxxxx xxxxxx@hotmail.com to me

Sean,

Neutrons have no chemical properties and reflect no light, but they do have mass and occupy space =matter, and clouds of them will never be visible in space!

I find it difficult to believe people who are supposed to be so smart are suck fucking retards!

Cheers Retard ,

Robert

For the curious:

Always happy to help a fellow seeker of knowledge.

Comments

60 responses to “I Get Email”

  1. Moshe Avatar
    Moshe

    You might want to invest in a spam filter, the space=matter bit should be a trigger all by itself.

  2. Randall Avatar
    Randall

    To quote the Doctor, “What. What? WHAT?!”

  3. Christian Ready Avatar
    Christian Ready

    How very thoughtful of Robert. Any idea what brought that on?

  4. AJ Avatar
    AJ

    And here we see the infant crank, being kept down by The Man for the first time. In but a few years, he will have matured into a truly conceited beast, convinced that his theory of vortex energy makes him the one true successor of Einstein and Newton.

  5. Dutch Railroader Avatar
    Dutch Railroader

    The reward for any scientist who has accomplished something noteworthy enough that it reaches beyond the confines of academia will be a slew of letters from crackpots, each one insisting that the recipient is a hide-bound drone too cowardly and unimaginative to understand the real truth of the Universe.

  6. Razib Khan Avatar

    you should have posted his email. perhaps it was attached to a facebook account?

  7. Bee Avatar

    Depressing.

  8. vakkanal Avatar
    vakkanal

    Perhaps he was confusing neutrons with neutrinos… though I don’t exactly see how you could have clouds of neutrinos either…. well perhaps held together by gravitational attraction.

  9. Charles Shopsin Avatar

    This reminds me of the last episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage (http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/timc). I swear I could hear Brian Cox grinding his teeth when Billy Bragg insisted that since you couldn’t taste it, touch it, see it or smell it then believing in dark energy/matter (he doesn’t realize they’re different) is just the same as believing in god.

  10. eric gisse Avatar
    eric gisse

    Yeah, that’s the quality I have come to expect from “alternative theories”.

  11. Steve Avatar
    Steve

    Brilliant!

  12. Mike Avatar
    Mike

    Wait… what was the point he was trying to make?

  13. NW Avatar
    NW

    At least he said “cheers”.

  14. NewEnglandBob Avatar
    NewEnglandBob

    He probably got his PhD from Liberty University.

  15. Clamski Avatar
    Clamski

    Judging from the language, odds are that the person was just a Troll trying to provoke a response. Best to ignore such people. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Troll

  16. sievemaria Avatar

    It is frustrating when you find = people you think are so smart are really … it happens !

  17. Robert McNees Avatar

    Sean, please reveal his email address so I can add him to my “Personal Idols” circle on Google+. Also, this “Clamski” person in comment 15 sounds like a troll.

  18. Bjoern Avatar
    Bjoern

    Sean, you should have pointed him to this:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

  19. Michael Pierce Avatar
    Michael Pierce

    Enjoy the human interaction.

  20. Naked Bunny with a Whip Avatar

    So….Robert thinks that it never occurred to astrophysicist types to consider neutrons as a source of dark matter.

    It’s like those creationist rants that revolve around how evolution violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Never thought of that, did you, biologists?

  21. Thomas Avatar
    Thomas

    That’s a real intellectual challenge, Sean. Can you possibly answer that question?

  22. JimV Avatar
    JimV

    Somehow I got through four years of a minor in physics without learning (or not remembering) that neutrons decay that quickly, so at least I learned something interesting as a result of Robert being a jerk.

    My first reaction was the same as RK’s, that I would have published his email address so that all civilized bloggers could have proactively banned it, but on reflection, your choice was classier.

  23. rtootattoo Avatar

    I think perhaps he misplaced a comma. His closing was meant to be:

    Cheers,
    Retard Robert

    There, all fixed.

  24. Ed Yong Avatar

    “That’s DOCTOR Retard to you, young man.”

  25. Hephaestus Avatar
    Hephaestus

    Ed (and others), the ‘R’ word is a derogatory slur on the order of the ‘N’ word:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T549VoLca_Q

    Do you really want to reduce yourself to that level?