Feb 16, 2012
These “outsider scientists” are not Luddites who reject the very idea of science. Instead, they care almost too much: they love science but feel it has strayed. And rather than just bellyache, outsiders often channel their discontent into creating their own, independent theories of physics, rewriting Newton and Einstein from top to bottom. These theories—hubristic, baroque, often incoherent—defy concise summary: every fringe theorist has his (they’re virtually all men) own obsessions and invents his own idiosyncratic reality.