Is Relativity Wrong?

[Unity+]

Oh look, newts is back calling science a religion again.

 

Hey, remember this post: http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/65943-science-is-all-about-religion/?p=677397

 

Back in May 2012 I asked you to provide evidence of science being treated as a religion.

 

Is there any chance that today, 15 months later, you actually can do it? You've certainly had enough time, and you certainly didn't provide evidence then. If not, please quit trolling our forums with your totally unsubstantiated and tired claims about science being a religion.

I saw that he downvoted your post, so I upvoted it.

 

EDIT: Since I thought this wasn't sufficient enough, I am adding on.

 

People who believe that Relativity is wrong are the people who deny the technologies that use them. If your going to prove something wrong that has for many years been proven right at least provide valid evidence of such and most likely the evidence being presented will be wrong.

Edited August 22, 2013 by Unity+

[ajb]

But don't the equations of Einstein break down in a Black hole? This isn't me challenging the idea, but just clarifying something I wanted to make sure of.

At a true singularity the equations break down. The smooth structure is lost and you get "infinity" as the value of the curvature. In mathematical relativity one usually cuts these regions out.

 

This is no different to classical electrodynamics and the electron self-energy problem. This was solved using quantum field theory and it is possible that quantum effects will regulate such singularities, but without a proper theory of quantum gravity it is hard to say exactly what happens.

 

Anyway, such singularities are no reason to throw away general relativity. It works very well, just not near singularities.

Please tell me what the hogwash parts of http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2006-3/ are? I would really, really like to know.

I second that request.

[Unity+]

At a true singularity the equations break down. The smooth structure is lost and you get "infinity" as the value of the curvature. In mathematical relativity one usually cuts these regions out.

 

This is no different to classical electrodynamics and the electron self-energy problem. This was solved using quantum field theory and it is possible that quantum effects will regulate such singularities, but without a proper theory of quantum gravity it is hard to say exactly what happens.

 

Anyway, such singularities are no reason to throw away general relativity. It works very well, just not near singularities.

 

I second that request.

Of course there isn't a reason to throw out relativity.

[swansont]

 

I understand that you believe SR devoutly, and that you find it very upsetting that there are infidels who do not share your faith, as you have said so many times, indeed I cannot recall you ever posting anything much else.

 

!

Moderator Note

 

newts, you have been warned before about hijacking threads to push your agenda that science is a religion. A discussion of objections to relativity does not change that.

 

To all: I would have preferred another mod point this out, but nobody seems to be around ATM, and we can see this has already pushed the thread in a different direction. Discussion of science as a religion, implication of science as a religion, etc. is not appropriate for this thread — discuss it elsewhere. newts, that includes pejorative descriptions like science believer, faith, worshippers, etc (this is not an exhaustive list), that are likely to cause the thread discussion to change. If you persist you are likely to be excommunicated. (whoops!)

 

[sheever]

More youtube nonsense.

 

Relativity is entirely self-consistent, and experimentally and operationally verified for over a 100 years.

 

The only ones who question relativity are those who simply don't know anything about it.

 

And of course, those cranks looking for some measure of fame for 'thinking outside the box', when they don't know what the box contains in the first place.

really?just because you believe in it it doesnt mean is not confict with other subjects.Hawking made his equation where the information destroyed and went against the first law of physics without He even consider what it cause.so you trying to convience whats legit and what doesnt? or would you call Hawking an idiot just because thinking outside of YOUR BOX?

not an open nor a closed universe doesnt reqire space and geometry.its nicely presented in this essay.

Besides her there are many who is into Quantum gravity and point on the same problem such as problem of the observer also the observation,time and space.this is fundamental question it shouldnt be even any conflict while Newton has tons of headeche because of this problem.he puted aside and since him no one ever went back to the problem in depth to solve.

to actually realize this problem not even PHD required.but as the example shows physicist yes pointing out what has been always problem since Newton

 

 

http://www.fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Markopoulou_SpaceDNE.pdf

Edited August 22, 2013 by sheever

[ajb]

really?just because you believe in it it doesnt mean is not confict with other subjects.Hawking made his equation where the information destroyed and went against the first law of physics without He even consider what it cause.so you trying to convience whats legit and what doesnt? or would you call Hawking an idiot just because thinking outside of YOUR BOX?

Let me just point out that Hawking did not pull his information paradox out of his ar*se. It came from a lot of calculations. I am sure the idea of violating the laws of thermodynamics was uncomfortable for him, but that was what the mathematics was suggesting. Anyway, this issue is far from resolved.

 

If someone can come up with a better theory than Einstein's relativity we are all ears. But it must be a proper theory, formulated in the right language and should be able to explain the phenomenology we see (within its domain of validity).

Edited August 22, 2013 by ajb

[sheever]

exactly.Susskind and the other 3 fella tried to convience Hawking to give up on his equation and He wasnt really pleased as not Susskind nor others couldnt deny his equation is correct.

so how you explain whos right and whats correct.its relative and physics simply ignore quantum mechanics as it did already in Einstein time as the question is not natural anymore but moral.

quantum mechanics applicable on large scale as well and unlike classic physics count with probabilty as recognize a background porcess as a form of quantum competitions.

this is a joke,and there will not be any unified theory in the soon future what could cover everything because similar thinkers sitting behind the curtain like you are.because non of you working on the solution but trying to cover their ideal.

Edited August 22, 2013 by sheever

[ajb]

so how you explain whos right and whats correct.

Ultimatly nature decides this.

 

Whenever one is working on the forefront of modern physics it may not be clear if one is right or wrong. One has to follow the mathematics and later see if this agrees well with nature or not. The real point is that pushing what we do know to the limit can point to new physics.

 

Today we canot observe black holes in the kind of detail needed to really sort these issues out.

 

its relative and physics simply ignore quantum mechanics as it did already in Einstein time as the question is not natural anymore but moral.

What question?

 

this is a joke,and there will not be any unified theory in the soon future what could cover everything because similar thinkers sitting behind the curtain like you are.because non of you working on the solution but trying to cover their ideal.

What?

 

But it is true that most physicists and mathematicians are not working on unified field theories and quantum gravity. I don't directly work on that, for example.

[swansont]

really?just because you believe in it it doesnt mean is not confict with other subjects.

 

Within its domain of validity, it has been staggeringly successful in matching with experiment. This is not a "belief", it's a verifiable fact. Nobody is claiming that GR meshes with QM. This is a known limit of GR.

[sheever]

Ultimatly nature decides this.

 

Whenever one is working on the forefront of modern physics it may not be clear if one is right or wrong. One has to follow the mathematics and later see if this agrees well with nature or not. The real point is that pushing what we do know to the limit can point to new physics.

 

Today we canot observe black holes in the kind of detail needed to really sort these issues out.

 

 

What question?

 

 

What?

 

But it is true that most physicists and mathematicians are not working on unified field theories and quantum gravity. I don't directly work on that, for example.

thats why these conflicts appears i think.to me seems it would required a better relationship between that two represented by those scientist responsible for the results..it could lead to a unified theory of everything

 

Within its domain of validity, it has been staggeringly successful in matching with experiment. This is not a "belief", it's a verifiable fact. Nobody is claiming that GR meshes with QM. This is a known limit of GR.

simple is that there is no 2 nature of physics rules everything.the results or the impact ot the nature of physics is the 2 measurable differences.if ther is an issue even to decide space and time exist or not because its conflict then regardless of what is the momentary accepted version the other also appeared for a reason.

Edited August 22, 2013 by sheever

[newts]

He never implied that computers require Relativity to work.

 

In a GPS, relativity is required to get the specific location of your car or whatever vehicle to be able to direct you in the right direction. Without Relativity, your location would be far off from the destination because the GPS needs to calculate the specific routes at specific times(I don't know the specifics, however I can make a good guess o how it works).

Actually he did. Or as ACG52 himself might have put it, he did, he did, he did, he did, he did, he did, he did, he did, he did ……

The one thing I'll agree with newts on is the method for "confirming" SR is an assault on logic. Particularly the H&K "clocks on an airplane"garbage. Direct measurement came nowhere near matching the theory, so certain variables were artificially accounted for, ignoring other significant ones until the numbers of the prediction matched the result. Accounting for fractions of variables is voodoo science.

 

And even if the clocks were off by the predicted amount, there's no justification for us to believe that "time" changed more so than the clocks. Too many obvious variables are ignored to pretend the theory fit.

 

Hafele + Keating certainly manipulated the data so that they could achieve fame by pretending that they their experiment had verified relativity. But the basic principles of gravitational and speed time-dilation, which H+K falsely claimed to have verified, are well supported by the GPS and the fact that atomic clocks keep the same time at sea level.

That depends what you mean by ‘time’ and a ‘clock’. Relativity predicts that experiments will give the same results provided your spaceship is not accelerating. So if you oscillate a weight on a spring, and time it with an atomic clock, you will still record exactly the same number of oscillations per second whatever your speed through the aether. You could explain this by saying that the spring is also a clock, but since all processes slow by the same amount, saying that time slows down is not especially illogical.

 

Oh look, newts is back calling science a religion again.

 

My post was really about SR and LET making the same predictions. Every sentence, other than the first, contains either SR or LET or both. Educated relativists say that SR makes the same predictions as LET, yet nobody here has acknowledged the fact. This is something SR ‘followers’ do not like to accept, so they ignore the substance and try to read something different into my post. People deliberately misrepresent my post because they cannot bring themselves to acknowledge the truth, and I get scapegoated. But at least Swansont has developed a conscience and a sense of humour. Lorentzian relativity is correct; SR is neither right nor wrong, taken literally it is just nonsense.

 

I saw that he downvoted your post, so I upvoted it.

 

I never vote down Bignose’s posts, he is my biggest fan. I could make an analogy with Galileo and Pope Urban Vll were I not forbidden.

[uncool]

The modern theory of relativity was created by Lorentz et al, based on the speed of light being constant relative to the aether. Lorentzs aether theory (LET) is simple and logical, and correctly predicts the result of experiments.

Logical, yes. Simple, not so much.

SR contains no original maths, Einstein just copied Lorentzs equations.

False. While the equations may be the same, that is not the same as not having any original math; Einstein's paper showed that SR is derivable from two simple, uncontroversial postulates.

SR is essentially LET except that all observers pretend that their reference frame is stationary in the aether, which is of course nonsensical.

Congratulations, you managed to knock down your own strawman. Don't you feel mighty, o great slayer of straw?

 

All inertial observers can assume that their reference frame is stationary, and it will make no difference in what the physics predicts. Which is precisely true in LET, too.

SR is unfalsifiable because the high priests merely ordain that it makes the same predictions as the correct theory of nature LET.

Apparently you don't know what "unfalsifiable" means; using the correct de finition, you are saying that any falsification of SR is also a falsification of LET.

More blather about SR being religious

Once again, please save it until you have some evidence of dogma.

If you want to find out about relativity, I suggest you research the history of LET, and pay little attention to either the Einstein-worshippers lies or the ignorant opinions of relativity critics who do not understand LET.

You have been shown to be both deceitful and ignorant on this topic before. Look to the beam in your eye before trying to remove the mote in others.

Actually he did. Or as ACG52 himself might have put it, he did, he did, he did, he did, he did, he did, he did, he did, he did ……

 

 

Hafele + Keating certainly manipulated the data so that they could achieve fame by pretending that they their experiment had verified relativity.

Evidence, please.

But the basic principles of gravitational and speed time-dilation, which H+K falsely claimed to have verified, are well supported by the GPS and the fact that atomic clocks keep the same time at sea level.

 

That depends what you mean by ‘time’ and a ‘clock’. Relativity predicts that experiments will give the same results provided your spaceship is not accelerating. So if you oscillate a weight on a spring, and time it with an atomic clock, you will still record exactly the same number of oscillations per second whatever your speed through the aether. You could explain this by saying that the spring is also a clock, but since all processes slow by the same amount, saying that time slows down is not especially illogical.

 

 

My post was really about SR and LET making the same predictions. Every sentence, other than the first, contains either SR or LET or both. Educated relativists say that SR makes the same predictions as LET, yet nobody here has acknowledged the fact.

False, and a blatant lie at that.

This is something SR ‘followers’ do not like to accept, so they ignore the substance and try to read something different into my post. People deliberately misrepresent my post because they cannot bring themselves to acknowledge the truth,

I find it funny when people make this claim. It couldn't be because you are a poor communicator?

 

Further fun comes from the repeated misrepresentations of others' posts you have done. Once again, beam, mote.

and I get scapegoated. But at least Swansont has developed a conscience and a sense of humour. Lorentzian relativity is correct; SR is neither right nor wrong, taken literally it is just nonsense.

You have mistaken your map for the territory. Your conception of SR is neither right nor wrong, but your conception of SR is not the same as SR.

 

I never vote down Bignose’s posts, he is my biggest fan. I could make an analogy with Galileo and Pope Urban Vll were I not forbidden.

You already did, and you continue to be wrong.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton-stm/

 

Do you have a point in posting these?

Edited August 23, 2013 by uncool

[sheever]

so does not relate to the topic?

addresses problems regarding the question.you dont need to watch but may someone interested.

Edited August 23, 2013 by sheever

[uncool]

so does not relate to the topic?

addresses problems regarding the question.you dont need to watch but may someone interested.

I don't see how it relates to the topic, no. What question are you referring to? (Possibly "Is Relativity Wrong?") And what problems are you referring to?

=Uncool-

[sheever]

if space and time is an issue then I have an issue with the whole equation as those two is fundamental element.

Time not observable.Space also.zero dimensional information strucure (bits) doesnt require any of this elements to create image of 3 dimension.

Edited August 23, 2013 by sheever

[uncool]

Again, what question are you referring to, and which problems are you referring to?

[DimaMazin]

Let me just point out that Hawking did not pull his information paradox out of his ar*se. It came from a lot of calculations. I am sure the idea of violating the laws of thermodynamics was uncomfortable for him, but that was what the mathematics was suggesting. Anyway, this issue is far from resolved.

 

If someone can come up with a better theory than Einstein's relativity we are all ears. But it must be a proper theory, formulated in the right language and should be able to explain the phenomenology we see (within its domain of validity).

We don't need make theory for everything.When relativity doesn't make prediction for some thing then relativity is wrong for this thing.When I do make prediction for the some thing then my idea is right for this thing.

[Unity+]

We don't need make theory for everything.When relativity doesn't make prediction for some thing then relativity is wrong for this thing.When I do make prediction for the some thing then my idea is right for this thing.

Before I go on telling you what is the problem with your argument, provide something that Relativity predicts incorrectly.

Edited August 23, 2013 by Unity+

[ACG52]

I have never seen a relativity denier who actually knew anything at all about relativity. Nor have I ever seen one who could actually articulate any problem with relativity. They don't even argue it, they just make pronouncements out of ignorance and an total inability to understand. After all, if they can't get it, it MUST be wrong.

[DimaMazin]

Before I go on telling you what is the problem with your argument, provide something that Relativity predicts incorrectly.

I don't discuss the problem here.I just have corrected ajb .

I have never seen a relativity denier who actually knew anything at all about relativity. Nor have I ever seen one who could actually articulate any problem with relativity. They don't even argue it, they just make pronouncements out of ignorance and an total inability to understand. After all, if they can't get it, it MUST be wrong.

Sometimes a consumer is right.

[Unity+]

I don't discuss the problem here.I just have corrected ajb .

Sometimes a consumer is right.

And most of the time they are crackpots.

 

Now, answer the questions I had for you or declare this speculation faulty.

[DimaMazin]

And most of the time they are crackpots.

 

Now, answer the questions I had for you or declare this speculation faulty.

You should have moderator warning.Because here the problem is forbidden by moderator.

[swansont]

Hafele + Keating certainly manipulated the data so that they could achieve fame by pretending that they their experiment had verified relativity. But the basic principles of gravitational and speed time-dilation, which H+K falsely claimed to have verified, are well supported by the GPS and the fact that atomic clocks keep the same time at sea level.

In a word, Bullshit. You don't get to make that claim without backing it up with some really good evidence. You need to show that (1) they fraudulently manipulated the data (the implication here is that this is not the kind of manipulation scientists normally do, like subtracting a known offset, or averaging, etc. or that isn't/wasn't normal operating procedure for timekeeping) and (2) that they did so so that they could achieve fame. (How "famous" are they, really?) Do you have access to a diary or something?

 

 

simple is that there is no 2 nature of physics rules everything.the results or the impact ot the nature of physics is the 2 measurable differences.if ther is an issue even to decide space and time exist or not because its conflict then regardless of what is the momentary accepted version the other also appeared for a reason.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say here. There is no physical law that has unlimited application over all situations, so if your objection is that GR doesn't hold at the quantum level, then it's just like all other laws we have: they are approximations, albeit very good ones, that are useful. If you demand universality then there is no science at all, so what good is that?

[ajb]

We don't need make theory for everything.

Maybe so, but it would be nice to understand how the forces of nature really relate to each other. The question must be "what has U(1)xSU(2)xSU(3) got to do with the diffeomorphism group of a 4 dimensional manifold?"

 

When relativity doesn't make prediction for some thing then relativity is wrong for this thing.

Right, there are things that GR will not make predictions about, thus there are questions outside its domain of validity.

 

When I do make prediction for the some thing then my idea is right for this thing.

If it is right, of course.

[imatfaal]

!

Moderator Note

 

Sheever

I split of your video of Julian Barbour. A thread claiming that relativity is wrong is not open season for posting all alternative ideas. Let us stick to finding one tiny piece of experimental evidence that within their realms of operability that SR or GR fail.

 

Dima Mazin

Same applies - you cannot use Windevoid's thread to push your own agenda (I recognise you backed off from expanding further - Thanks)

 

The Nay-sayers

If you are claiming that relativity either special, general or both are flawed - then due to the fact that we use these theories on a daily basis without problems and they have been checked thoroughly for the last hundred years or so - the onus is on the nay-sayers to provide evidence of failure. This might seem to be a reversal of the burden - but these theories are very well developed and tested and this forum is not the place to rehearse endlessly the multitude of experimental data that backs them up.

 

All

I will seriously consider hiding any posts that use the terms dogmatic, religious, word-salad, etc. This can be a civilised discussion and I will not let it lapse into parody and characterisation of the personality of one's opponents. Attack the arguments not the member making them - and do not use the ad hom argument of "you are a somthing-ist and therefore your argument is wrong"