A few days ago I somehow stumbled onto this page of the Physics Forum. Incredibly, it was my first encounter with it, which is quite a strange fact indeed. (Don't ask me why, though, for I have neither a desire nor any reason to go into that. Besides, if you've read all pages on this site you will put two and two together as soon as you will read the first post on the page I've linked above, without my having to utter a single word on that subject.) The event took me back a couple of years into the past, re-igniting old fires and memories, and eventually leading me to the decision that is encapsulated in the title of this page. In effect, what I've decided to do is to take two of the answers offered on the mentioned Physics Forum page, add them to the other conventional 'offerings' I had gathered in the past, subject them to a valid and relevant analysis, and then show why they are truly "badly flawed". Finally, having done all that, I have decided to open a new thread on the Physics Forum by posting the entire content of this page and inviting everyone to refute it.
From the linked page of the Physics Forum I will make use of the answer offered by Claude Bile, who has a Ph. D. in Optics, and of the diagram supplied by Uart, who is listed as a Science Adviser. But before getting into that I want to stress out that I shall totally ignore some peripheral and expendable things (like that marvellous free gift of wisdom offered so selflessly by Claude, regarding paragraphs, pictures, succinctness, or methods of exposing crackpots). I'll also ignore all other offerings on the page (including Uart's own explanation before siding with Claude's, as well as Torquil's--whose offering is nonetheless interesting and psychologically relevant), for reasons I shall only disclose if asked. Instead I will focus on Claude's main offering (in spite of its miserliness) and Uart's diagram (which I shall drop a copy of right after Claude Bile's answer, shown below in blue).
Torquil is right.
If you had an infinitesimally thin strip of light as a source, you would only ever see one colour. The colour you see depends on the position of your eye. Real sources however are not infinitesimally thin, they have a finite width. So, from a fixed position, you see "red" from one part of the source, while you see the "blue" from another part of the source. Since the blue light refracts more, it has a steeper "trajectory", and thus will appear to come from the top of the source, while the red comes from the bottom.
Claude.
Claude.
There is another thing I should mention in relation to Uart's diagram above, for it's quite interesting in itself. I'm referring to Uart's comments that accompanied the diagram, especially in the form of the last sentence (see below).
Originally Posted by Debstar 
My understanding is flawed. I am having trouble comprehending how this would not tie into ray tracing.
You mean like this (see attached image). Yes I think that is the easiest way to demonstrate this so called paradox. BTW the ray trace in the attachment was drawn to scale (as in angles measured and Snell's Law accurately applied) in a CAD drawing package. It clearly shows why the relative orientation of red and blue parts of the image are the way that they are when viewed directly.
Uart--science adviser
Now, if you have followed the evolution of this site since its beginnings then you are well aware that I have dealt with conventional 'explanations' for the inverted spectrum before on these pages. (See this page, and this one, as well as this one.) Moreover, I'm proud to say that some of those 'explanations' have been offered by people with much higher academic credentials than ordinary doctorates, like Prof. Steve Dutch (University of Wisconsin), or Prof. Kurt Gibble (Penn State University), or indeed Prof. Charles Schwartz ( Berkeley). In view of these facts (Debstar, the originator of the thread on the Physics Forum, had mentioned the facts I'm talking about in her first post) Claude Bile should have taken the time to read the relevant pages on this site, before hastening to post his 'explanation'. Had he done that he would have seen that another adviser like himself (called Optics C, at www.allexperts.com.) had attempted to explain the inverted spectrum by using an 'explanation' virtually identical to his (as well as by offering a graphic depiction practically identical to that of Uart) only to succeed in exposing even more clearly the fallacies of the conventional understanding on the subject.
One thing most obvious and most common to all 'explanations' given by the believers in the conventional theory of light and spectra is their ambiguity, in general, and their incoherence, in particular. This reality is not accidental in any way--it's consequential, as far as I'm concerned. After all one has to appeal no further for an exemplifying similarity than to one's experiential projection of examining a student with a limited grasp of a subject or a child trying to cover-up a misdeed. It is for this reason that I said in one of my early pages that when physicists are pushed into a corner to explain the inconvenient facts related to my current topic (for there are many more than just one such "inconvenient" fact) they suddenly begin to 'speak in tongues'. And that's not all. Each particular physicist, if pushed into a corner as I said, will speak in a tongue of his own--a tongue whose particular ambiguity, or incoherence, or both, will be directly and commensurately predetermined by factors such as smartness, imagination, wisdom, experience, etc. To see a perfect example of what I'm talking about let's listen to the particular tongues of two physicists who are engaged in providing an explanation for the same phenomenon.
The first explanation, shown in blue, is of course the one provided by Claude Bile. The second one, shown in red, belongs to Prof. Steve Dutch, and it came into my possession as a reply to an email I had sent Prof. Dutch in 2008.
If you had an infinitesimally thin strip of light as a source, you would only ever see one colour. The colour you see depends on the position of your eye. Real sources however are not infinitesimally thin, they have a finite width. So, from a fixed position, you see "red" from one part of the source, while you see the "blue" from another part of the source. Since the blue light refracts more, it has a steeper "trajectory", and thus will appear to come from the top of the source, while the red comes from the bottom.
So the only way to get really pure colors is to use a tiny source like a star. Since the spectrum of a prism is perpendicular to the length of the prism, a thin slit parallel to the length of the prism will also give a pure spectrum. Spectroscopes do this. Now there is a little overlap since the slit has finite width, but if the slit is very narrow it doesn't matter. So let's say we have a very narrow slit allowing sunlight to pass through a spectrum and project on a screen to give a fairly pure spectrum. Violet light bends more, red less, so we have a spectrum with red on top and violet below. If you put your eye in the beam of colors you'll see just one color (actually a narrow range of colors). Let's say you put your eye in the green part of the spectrum. You'll see only green. The red light is hitting above your eye and the violet below. To see red light, we'd need a second slit positioned so its red light hits your eye. Since the red light from the first slit is hitting too high on your face, we need the second slit positioned below the first slit. And to see violet light, we need a third slit above the first one. So to get all three colors, we need three slits, and you'll see violet on top, green in the middle, and red below, just the opposite of what you see when the spectrum is projected on the screen.
What could one extract, or conclude, from the two citations above? Quite a lot, I say--quite a lot! Leaving unmentioned a number of, say, secondary issues, to my mind it is clear that:
1. Claude Bile has no idea that you don't "an infinitesimally thin strip of light" to "ever" see one colour only (which is dependent "on the position of your eye").
2. Claude Bile is also ignorant of the fact that "from a fixed position" (not only as he called it, but also as he meant it--and I am saying this with good reasons!) you can never see two colours at the same time. Only one colour at a time, Claude, depending on the position of your eye!
3. Claude Bile has, more than likely, never conducted a proper prismatic 'subjective' experiment (for otherwise he should have been aware of the facts listed at 1 and 2).
4. Claude Bile has a limited understanding of Newton's theory of light and colours (for otherwise he should have figured-out the things mentioned at 1 and 2 even if he had never conducted a proper prismatic 'subjective' experiment--re Newton's observation that the spectrum is continuous, for instance).
But what about the explanation of Prof. Steve Dutch? With that explanation (which is actually an extract from a more elaborate reply, with a larger scope than that of this page) I have dealt here and here. Nonetheless, two things of relevance to the current topic I ought to mention. The first is that Prof. Dutch has also, more than likely, never conducted a proper 'subjective' experiment. This must be so because if it were otherwise he would have known that you don't need any more than a single slit to see the entire array of the spectral colours, as it is evidenced by the photo below.
The second thing I ought to mention here is that even if the many-slits 'explanation' of Prof. Dutch could be implemented to give the results described in his answer (which, I believe, cannot be done for reasons I shall only describe as "colour-alteration due to the overlapping of different hues at the peripheral level of vision") that would be totally irrelevant to the issue at stake. I am led to believe that on a theoretical level by my own conviction that the central tenet of Newton's theory of light and colours is correct, and on an empirical level by the observational facts of my own experiments. One such observational fact, for instance, is directly and comprehensively responsible for the majority of my conclusions above, and below I shall drop a visual proof of its reality.
Let me now lay down for you a synoptical picture of everything that is wrong with the conventional understanding of the VBGYOR. The first and foremost reason responsible for the conventional flawed understanding of all the issues (and implications) related to the VBGYOR is this: The conventional physicists, without exception, have all failed to understand how VBGYOR, the inverted spectrum, is related to its conventional sibling (ROYGBV). Indeed it is precisely because of the same reason that they have been unable to see why they couldn't explain the origin of VBGYOR by using Newton's theory and the conventional ray tracing method. Blinded by their faith in the conventional understanding and by their self-assumed arrogance, they have bullied any opposition into submission by throwing in their faces all sorts of perverse and ad-hoc 'explanations' whose sole scope was to preserve the reigning view. And as hard to believe this might one day seem to be, they have hitherto managed to preserve their hegemony for almost four centuries by doing just that.
Take another look at the four pictures above. I can tell you that they are closely related to the photo above them, and that they are a visual evidence of the fact that you can only see one colour at a time, if your eye is positioned in the beam of colours that emerge from a prism. Needless to say, if you do that--therefore--you will never be able to see a full spectrum as the one shown in the photo previous to the four pics above. Nonetheless, in spite of this fact being readily evident, physicists are continuing to try to force that stupid belief onto us by pushing into our faces 'explanations' like that of Claude Bile, for example, and graphic depictions like that of Uarte, or like these shown below.
Now, all these 'explanations' that require the observer's eye to be in the beam of colours are demonstrably 'pies in the sky', yet people like Claude Bile, Optics C, Steve Dutch, Charles Schwartz, etc. etc. still use them as 'evidence' against "crackpots" like me! Does it bother me? Not one bit. On the contrary, to some degree it amuses me, while to another it reminds me about what kind of line separates a prophet from a buffoon. (I remember with so much pleasure at this time the words of Leon Lederman--Nobel Prize winner, superb experimentalist, for many years Director of Fermilab, and man with a most delightful ability to express the propense shortcomings of conventionality in a comedic language that is thoroughly after my own heart and brain. "A Ph. D.", the great man said,"carries an even less measure of credibility than a Nobel Prize".)
The subject of the inverted spectrum is deceivingly and subtly complex, with manifold and deep implications. In the first pages of this site I discussed the most important aspects of VBGYOR and some of its implicated relationships, but that is only a small part of its whole picture. That is what I believe, and I have good reasons supporting that belief. I have written this page with a limited scope in mind, and those who would like to take a stand with me on VBGYOR issues should read all the relevant pages of this site. There is one more thing I want to say before concluding this page. It is poignantly evident, at least to my mind, that the conventional physicists have either not fully grasped Newton's theory of light and colours, or that they've probably 'tweaked' a little some parts of it (which were perhaps sounding 'dissonant' in the conventional ears). Now, I do not know whether they're guilty of the former or the latter, but I am quite sure that of at least one they categorically are. Why I am sure of this I will not say for now, but (in a closely related matter) I will instead make the following confession.
This page had a completely different look when I wrote it for the first time, a couple of weeks ago. I must tell you that at the time my plans for this page were completely different, but that those plans fell through due to the following non-event. You see, when I discovered the page on the Physics Forum I mentioned at the beginning I signed as a member and then I sent Claude Bile a private message, inviting him to show why the two pictures below (which I had presented on the first 'edition' of this page) could not be validly sufficient on their own to prove that his answer to the question of the thread (which is basically equivalent to Uart's diagram) is wrong.
Needless to say, Claude Bile chose to ignore me, and that altered my original plan.
P. S. I must tell you that the plan I had discussed at the beginning of this page (you know, the Physics Forum and all that) has not materialised, and it never will. The reason for that is simple, straightforward, irrevocable, and I became aware of it when I read the guidelines (or conditions, or whatever else they might have been called or termed) for posting a thread. People like me, I was informed, should not even attempt to post a thread, for my views are not concordant with the reigning scientific dogma. Relieved, in some respects, I tried for quite some time to find out how to delete my username and cancel my subscription, and after failing to find any guidelines toward that endeavour I deleted my password and my email address and left with a big smile on my lips and without even a hint of frustration, anger, disappointment, or regret, troubling the serenity of my mind. As for the "transient" subject of this page, I have decided to expand on it and use it--as it indeed is perfect for--a most relevant cue for what I was about to discuss on the next few pages.
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