Talk:J. Marvin Herndon

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The entries on this page are each a brief an abstract of one or more published scientific articles replete with citations as published in world class scientific journals; no one has refuted any of the cited articles in the scientific literature as is the responsibility of the scientific community if errors in fact occur.Marvin Herndon (talk) 19:55, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Most of the theories have not found the way into main stream science. This has to be stated in th begining of the article.--Stone (talk) 08:08, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

W. Seifritz Some comments on Herndon’s nuclear georeactorKerntechnik 2003 68 3 points out that the reactor in earths centre is not possible.--Stone (talk) 08:20, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Is there a Nuclear Reactor at the Center of the Earth? states: It is unlikely that nuclear georeactors (fast breeder reactors) are operating at the Earth’s center.--Stone (talk) 08:30, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

In response to Stone, there is some error in interpreting the published comments of Walter Seifritz. Seifritz confirmed the nuclear reactor calculations, but noted "...the decisive answer whether such a georeactor really exists needs further ... research work see, http://www.understandearth.com/KT100315.PDF which is a reasonable assessment; Seifritz does not state thet it "is not possible", as asserted by Stone. All this is good, though, because there should be discussion and debate in science. Stone might like to check out the references and discussion on http://NuclearPlanet.com.Marvin Herndon (talk) 01:46, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

In response to Stone's reference to a paper by R. D. Schuiling's paper"Is there a nuclear reactor at the center of the Earth?" I should point out that that paper was directly followed by a response from me, which I quote here in its entirety: "J. Marvin Herndon’s Comment on R. D. Schuiling’s Paper

To appreciate the essential scientific reasons for the possible existence of a nuclear reactor at Earth’s center, it is necessary to understand precisely the oxidation state of the deep interior of the Earth as well as the nature and probable circumstances of Earth’s origin, which led to that state of oxidation. For example, in referring to the quote from Wheeler et al. (2006), “the transfer of U from metal sulfide to silicate under our experimental conditions is so complete that insufficient U would remain so as to be of any importance to the core’s heat budget”, Schuiling neglected to note that the silicate used in the laboratory experiment contained 8% FeO. A more highly reduced silicate—devoid of FeO, such as MgSiO3, consistent with the enstatite-chondritic deep interior of the Earth—would have yielded a significantly different test result. Similarly, in referring to elemental behavior using Goldschmidt’s term “chalcophile”, Schuiling fails to mention that chalcophilicity is related to state of oxidation. Even making use of some condensation model, as Schuiling does, necessitates assuming a particular pressure, which leads to a particular range of oxygen fugacities. Schuiling adopts without reservation the standard model of solar system formation, evidently without realizing that the resulting state of oxidation in that contemporary formation model would lead inevitably lead to Earth having an insufficiently massive core. And, he accepts the model- idea that the inner core is partially crystallized iron metal which produces energy by growing. But that thought for inner core composition was developed before data from the 1960s led to a different possibility that is the consequence of the highly reduced state of oxidation of the endo-Earth."Marvin Herndon (talk) 04:07, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

With regard to Stone's remark: "Most of the theories have not found the way into main stream science. This has to be stated in the begining of the article.", in keeping with the NPOV it would seem appropriate to simultaneously reveal the principle reasons that is the case, which could be a lengthy discussion indeed and perhaps should be an article unto itself. I have revealed many of those reasons, some that are not flattering to the "main stream" community, but are nevertheless true, in my book "Maverick's Earth and Universe".Marvin Herndon (talk) 05:03, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

=Stone has the oppertunity to go to Amazon.com and purchase a copy of the book "Marerick's Earth and Universe". With out reading the book any comment on the science is POV.=RoddyYoung (talk) 05:42, 28 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Why should I buy a book most professors for geophysics would not buy, because they do not think that this nuclear reactor stuff is possible? And stating that this is far far from main stream science should be in, because students which have a look should know what they have to write in their excame papers.--Stone (talk) 21:33, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Request to maintain entry for J. Marvin Herndon
Other posters have recommended editorial revisions or re-writes, but only one poster has requested that the entry be deleted. This is extreme and punitive. Dr. Herndon's citations are accurate in challenging areas of scientific development. Regular users of Wikipedia understand that the most recent thinking in science is the most dynamic and subject to revision. Dr. Herndon has ventured into new proposals that are at conflict with conventional geophysical and cosmological thinking. I hope that appropriate statements describing the controversial nature of his theories will be acceptable for Wikipedia's purposes.

52.129.8.49 (talk) 19:29, 28 May 2008 (UTC) Richard F. Cronin, P.E.
 * The guy is notable so looks like the article stays. I have cut it down to size and rewrote parts so this doesn't sound like an autobiography, CV or journal review and to conform to not a soapbox. Cquan (after the beep...) 19:31, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. Having had a quick look, as far as I can tell his substantial achievement is the earths core structure (though its hard to judge). All the nuclear-fission stuff looks to be subsequent wackiness William M. Connolley (talk) 21:06, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

There is a conflict of interest when somebody creates its own autobiography article as is the case here. Moreover, Dr Herndon claims are extraordinary (unfortunately lacking the corresponding extraordinary evidence) and that by itself does not constitute notability. I vote for the entry to be deleted.(Repepo (talk) 20:10, 12 May 2010 (UTC))

Possible RS to start using?
Is this a reliable source? The reasoning seems sound to me but I'm not in the field. I haven't looked at the .gov and .org sources linked to from here, but they look like reliable sources that (weakly and strongly, respectively) support Herndon's theories. --Elvey (talk) 03:06, 20 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Follow-up: DGG is right - "the article can be rewritten to eliminate the spam--he's quite important"; this threw out the baby with the bathwater, for the most part, in '08, and little has been put back. If the Indian Institute of Science is, as the article says, "India's finest institution in its field", and the source of most of the editors and much of the board of the journal that published this article of Herndon's, and others since then, its clear to me that we have strong evidence that the bulk of his work is not obviously wrong or incomplete, and that the work is notable.  I see no evidence to support 's disparaging claim, above.  And yet, his work is rarely cited. --Elvey (talk) 18:39, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Validity of georeactor hypothesis
I added an important reference to recent experimental and accurate measurements of geoneutrinos detected by KamLAND and Borexino experiments which gives more balance to this entry. --Cmnit (talk) 15:19, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The text of this section underwent an interesting change after you were finished with it. Since the edit wasn't sourced, I have assumed it to be WP:OR and reverted it. You might want to keep an eye on it... 2.99.200.210 (talk) 05:23, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

I've removed


 * Recent measuments of "geoneutrino" fluxes in the KamLAND and Borexino experiments have been unable to refute, thus confirm Herndon's "georeactor" hypothesis on the presence of an active nuclear fission reactor in the Earth's inner core setting upper fission power limits at 5TW and 3TW, respectively, or 25% and 15% of the energy estimated exiting earth. See http://nuclearplanet.com/0528.pdf . 

since I don't think it is reliable. It was added by MJH. Firstly, "have been unable to refute, thus confirm Herndon's..." is obvious nonsense and can't be allowed. http://nuclearplanet.com/0528.pdf is MJH's own stuff, and I don't think counts as an RS for anything other than his opinions. That leaves the para not saying very much William M. Connolley (talk) 12:18, 30 May 2016 (UTC)


 * You don't think what it did say was important? That is, the version without the obvious nonsense as edited by, erm, William M. Connolley? (And restored by me, the IP user, when I happened to stumble across the article a few months ago, only to be reverted by the man himself within a few hours, as I've now discovered on returning to the page to check up on it.) But I'm not going to restore it again, since I'm not actually interested in the subject, and I'd probably never come back to the page to check if the nonsense had crept back in... 79.73.146.244 (talk) 00:23, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

I have reinserted the original geoneutrino measurement paragraph with reference. --Cmnit (talk) 12:29, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I think that further edits by MJH himself are unacceptable and worth at least a temporary ban --Cmnit (talk) 12:31, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I can see no reason why the reference to the Borexino paper should be removed. If MJH can point to a independent reliable source which disputes the findings, he can add it as well. Removing the entire reference smells like WP:COI, so deletion reverted --Digidietze (talk) 08:09, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Chemtrail publications
This guy has also published a number of very flawed papers on chemtrails, such as this one: http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2016.00139. At least one was retracted by the journal that published it. kmarple1 (talk) 05:27, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I added a section on this.Aszilagyi (talk) 22:49, 19 February 2017 (UTC)


 * See-also the discussion at User_talk:Meters. I think that, despite that, there's no reason not to use http://www.nuclearplanet.com/explainretractions.pdf: his own words are an RS for what he says. So I added it (note: my last edit summary is minor but not the one before that...) William M. Connolley (talk) 20:06, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't see a problem using the primary source to document his reaction to the retractions (as long as we are confident the page is actually his). Does anyone object to using it? The upper level page http://www.nuclearplanet.com/ certainly seems to to legitimately be Herndon's page. Meters (talk) 23:46, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I've had some email correspondence with MH. Unsurprisingly, he isn't happy with the "chemtrails" section. I'm not sure of his exact reasons; he isn't happy about the paper retractions but I can't see how we can do anything about that. There's also "a proponent of the chemtrail conspiracy theory", which is arguably negatively phrased, but also arguably true, so I'm not sure there's much scope for changing it William M. Connolley (talk) 09:31, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

More on chemtrails publications
An IP added that MH published "several peer-reviewed papers" here citing a retracted paper: http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/12/8/9375 I don't find this acceptable and it should not be added as such. i.e. wp:WIKILAWYERING Jim1138 (talk) 09:39, 3 September 2017 (UTC)