Is relativity science?

[FriendlyHacker]

I confess I haven't read the whole topic. But my reply to this sentence probably sums it up what I feel the issue is here:

 

"there is no experiment a person could conduct in a small volume of space that would distinguish between a gravitational field and an equivalent uniform acceleration'' Albert Einstein

 

Of course that is correct, if you can pick a feather from the ground that means your body is more powerful than the combined gravity of the entire planet. So obviously that is not what Einstein suggested as an experiment 100 years ago. What Einstein suggested to test his theory was that astronomers would take pictures of the stars behind the Sun during a total eclipse, since the light of the Sun would normally prevent the stars to be seen, then the theory predicts that the Sun's gravity would bend space and the light around it, making the stars seem to be located on a very precise different position. And he was right, the light did bend around the Sun.Now the reason I've explained this, is because the people who often try to disprove relativity, are actually the ones that have no idea what they are talking about. So make sure you understand what is it that you're criticizing so you don't make a fool of yourself by claiming to be smarter than Einstein.

[Frohicky1]

"there is no experiment a person could conduct in a small volume of space that would distinguish between a gravitational field and an equivalent uniform acceleration'' Albert Einstein

 

Further to FriendlyHacker (and apologies if I've got this wrong), but isn't that only for a constant gravitational field? If it is non-constant (aka tidal forces) then you can tell the difference between a gravitational field and uniform acceleration? Is this why the sentence stipulates small volume, so that the test object has no length and so has no variation in the gravitational force across it?

[FriendlyHacker]

Gravity happens all the time, I don't understand what you mean by tidal forces being non-constant. Maybe you are referring to tidal waves from the Moon, and the reason it's not constant is because the Moon is in an elliptical orbit and not a perfect circle, so sometimes it will be closer/stronger, we are in an elliptical orbit around the Sun too.

 

If both the Sun and the Moon are positioned in the same direction, tidal waves will be stronger as the gravity for both add up, this happens every full moon and new moon.

 

 

It's not that small objects don't have variation, it's just that we don't have engineering precise enough to measure it.

[RestoringGuy]

Gravity happens all the time, I don't understand what you mean by tidal forces being non-constant. Maybe you are referring to tidal waves from the Moon, and the reason it's not constant is because the Moon is in an elliptical orbit and not a perfect circle, so sometimes it will be closer/stronger, we are in an elliptical orbit around the Sun too.

 

If both the Sun and the Moon are positioned in the same direction, tidal waves will be stronger as the gravity for both add up, this happens every full moon and new moon.

 

 

It's not that small objects don't have variation, it's just that we don't have engineering precise enough to measure it.

Elliptical orbit is just another twist. If orbits were circular, forces are non-constant because force is normally taken as a vector which includes direction.  Force is different vector from one moment to the next even when circular orbits are carried out.

 

Also, I think what is implied in Einstein's quote is that once you have engineering precise enough to distinguish the two cases, you can always make the laboratory smaller to retain the principle.  It is a limiting case, like epsilon-delta in calculus.  If you give an engineering-inspired variation threshold (epsilon), then Einstein can designate a laboratory size (delta) that forces all experiments to stay constrained to variations smaller than the threshold you specified.  Delta is a function of epsilon, not some fixed size that holds for all epsilon.

[JeremySC]

 

For a couple years, every month or so, I would randomly think about this for a few hours, trying to prove that the concept was insane, and instead, I came up with a testable hypothesis.  The ether, as something that possibly exists, or the concept, that the sun could be expanding so fast, that it literally pushes us away from it as fast as it gets bigger, make this idea incredibly difficult to imagine testing... but I eventually settled on something fascinating.  The moon should be getting smaller.  The earth is not hot enough to propel the moon away from it, at a speed that would allow it to appear the same size.  Why?  The moon has far less particles of matter, than the earth, so... If matter is constantly expanding, the moon should appear to shrink.

 

If matter is expanding, what is it expanding relative to? If we're going to posit that mass is expanding, then we're implying a hypothetical measurement could exist of it's expansion. If we could thought-experiment our way to a hypothetical measurement, what would that measurement look like?

 

This discussion gets to the heart of probably the biggest unsolved question in physics, what is mass? We measure mass, we can manipulate it, and we can infer it's existence where we cannot see it. But we don't really know what it is. We can define mass as that which exists in the presence of matter, but this is wholly unsatisfying. This question is what prompts particle physicsts to look for "god" particles, and particles responsible for gravity, because we haven't really solved the problem of what mass is.

 

 

I've goofed off in physics forums before, but once I suggest that the fundamental flaw in relativity, is that it says perception is reality, the trolls just yell at me for being wrong... Then they proceed to explain, relativity, in numerous different ways, all of which, fundamentally suggest that perception is reality. "Well if the light stops moving, time stopped, because otherwise how can you measure time?".  To which I suggest, "Well, you could count in your head.  Time is an consequence of consciousness, it's just our way of measuring movement"... "No, that's nonsense, space time is a thing, it's curved, and it stops existing for other people when you move at light speed."... I mean, really, how do you respond to "scientists" who say that?

.

 

Ask yourself a very hard question. This is a very difficult question to mentally wrestle with.

 

At what speed does information travel? What is the maximum allowable speed of information? This would have to be limited by physics if it we are supposing it is limited, right? I mean, if you could hypothetically grab Jupiter and move it around the earth at whatever speed you wanted, how long would it take for any effect of Jupiter's close proximity and fast orbit of earths position to reach and affect Earth? That's the kind of maximum speed we're talking about. Try to imagine that the universe has a maximum speed at which things can affect each other, and then try and figure out what that speed is. If the universe does not have a maximum speed limit for information, then everywhere we point our telescopes, we should be looking at present-time. However, we know this is not the case, becuase the further we look into the universe, the stranger things look, the less planet/star/galaxy-like things are.

 

When you start playing with that question, you start to realize a lot of things.

[LifeIsBrief]

I've been trying to avoid this topic a bit, because as myself, and a few others mentioned in response... It's pub talk.  I've had a few interesting conversations about this subject while sharing a beer with someone who has a stronger background in physics than myself, so I thought it would make a good first post here.   Unfortunately my sarcastic, snarky writing style, made it seem like I think I'm some sort of brilliant genius who's overthrowing Einstein.  I assure you nothing could be further from the truth, I'm a goofball laborer, who occasionally says something interesting or funny.  I don't have the new formula to win a Nobel prize with, this theory just always irritated me, and reeked of trying to prove moral relativism, so I like to rant about it.  I think JeremySC has asked the questions that I'm most interesting in theorizing about from a bar stool though, so I'm gonna take one more crack at it.

 

"If matter is expanding, what is it expanding relative to?"... 

 

Well... either, nothing/everything... or space.  Again, I'm armchair quarterbacking this, not looking for a Nobel.  If everything is expanding, it would look like nothing was expanding.  However, it is theoretically possible, that while the original expectations of "the ether" have been mathematically proven false... space exists, and it's not empty.  Matter is energy, and energy moves in the form of a wave.  Waves move faster, when they move through dense materials.  Sound travels faster in water than air, so it is theoretically possible that we move through the vacuum of space, faster than we move through air, not because it's empty, but because it is more dense.  This was Tesla's theory, not my own, I just think we might have discarded it too quickly, but again armchair quarterbacking the infinite nature of reality, is not perfectly consistent with the scientific method.  I just like Tesla more than I like Einstein, and something about relativity emotionally irritates me, in a way no other science manages to.

 

"If we could thought-experiment our way to a hypothetical measurement, what would it look like?"

 

I thought, that because the moon has less matter than we do, and it's very close, we should see changes in its size.  If space was a material that we pushed away like a bubble, it would begin to look smaller.  If not it would look larger.  I placed my bet on smaller, but before generating any math on the subject, we discovered that the moon was getting smaller.  I got a bit narcissistic and said "Hey maybe I'm onto something here", but simultaneously lost the ability to prove it by working out the math of how much smaller it was going to get, which I was probably never going to do anyway.

 

In this thread, the idea of gravitational crunch was brought up, and this provided me with an alternative experiment which could theoretically be conducted.  In my theory, there would be no gravitational crunch, so if you sent a large object, towards the sun horizontal to its center, the structure would not experience stress fractures on either side, in any greater number than are experienced in the objects center.  If the sun is expanding to meet the object, rather than pulling the object towards the sun, there would be no reason for the object to compress, or "crunch".  This is insanely cost prohibitive, for proving the rants of someone engaged in pub talk, but since there are some theoretical physicists who agree with me, there may be another way to do this some time in the future.  Sensors could be attached to a large asteroid on a collision course with the sun, if we could find one.

 

"We can define mass as that which exists in the presence of matter, but this is wholly unsatisfying"

 

That's really the core of my mild irritation with modern physics.  We're using math to describe phenomena, with incredible accuracy... but, as a consequence, we let people who write the math, describe the phenomena.  I'm not sure that mathematicians make good physicists.  The explanations, just feel wrong... total emotional bs though.  I'm not saying that means they are wrong.  It's far more likely that physicists, are correct, than my friends at the pub.

 

"At what speed does information travel"

 

This is where we get into my strange, "Did Einstein prove that perception is reality?" issue.  Is the speed at which information moves, relevant to the speed at which things happen?  We seem to have mathematically proven that time is a dimension, because it effects the movement of light and radiation...  I've always viewed time as a conscious entities perception of movement. This leads to the only other experiment I can think of which might show evidence of my theory.  Rather than using a light clock, or mechanical device created by conscious entities... could we use a fast reproducing bacteria, or virus, as a clock?  If the ten or 15 minutes of time "lost", by moving quickly, would be equivalent to a generation or two of exponential growth... it might be possible to measure, if the time was lost, or we're just misperceiving something.  You could conduct this experiment on a rover heading towards mars in theory.  Again, this could be a complete waste of time however, and I could just be a Tesla fanboy, and pub conversationalist who's completely missing obvious information.  In my mind however, the speed of light, is the speed of perception, not the speed of reality, if that makes any sense at all.

 

Edit:  I almost forgot to mention... The idea that black holes are big bangs, is actually becoming very acceptable in theoretical physics circles.  Michio Kaku for example has written about it.  Einstein talked about "white holes".  I don't think there are white holes, I think there is one white hole in our universe, still eating stars from the previous one and spitting them out into ours.  Our black holes are creating new, likely smaller universes... but if mass is a constantly expanding, or reproducing form of energy, they'll get bigger.  If we find one "white hole", likely at the "center" of our universe, I will experience a feeling very similar to when we found out that the moon was getting smaller here.  I'll still just be a purveyor of interesting bar room rants, but I will once again think "Hey, maybe I was on to something there".

[FriendlyHacker]

Elliptical orbit is just another twist. If orbits were circular, forces are non-constant because force is normally taken as a vector which includes direction.  Force is different vector from one moment to the next even when circular orbits are carried out.

 

Also, I think what is implied in Einstein's quote is that once you have engineering precise enough to distinguish the two cases, you can always make the laboratory smaller to retain the principle.  It is a limiting case, like epsilon-delta in calculus.  If you give an engineering-inspired variation threshold (epsilon), then Einstein can designate a laboratory size (delta) that forces all experiments to stay constrained to variations smaller than the threshold you specified.  Delta is a function of epsilon, not some fixed size that holds for all epsilon.

 

I like your reply, elliptical orbits are really just a twist, everything is pulling into everything so it makes no sense to claim about things being steady, not because it's a failure of the math in it, but because we don't live in a steady state Universe, or a steady enough solar system to begin with, when you consider there used to be more planets but they ended up falling into the Sun, being slingshot out of the solar system or crashing into other planets.

 

Einstein didn't believe in such precision ever being possible, so he totally dismissed the idea, he's probably wrong about that though, nobody knows how engineering will be in 50 years from now, let alone 1000 years from now.

If matter is expanding, what is it expanding relative to? If we're going to posit that mass is expanding, then we're implying a hypothetical measurement could exist of it's expansion. If we could thought-experiment our way to a hypothetical measurement, what would that measurement look like?

 

This discussion gets to the heart of probably the biggest unsolved question in physics, what is mass? We measure mass, we can manipulate it, and we can infer it's existence where we cannot see it. But we don't really know what it is. We can define mass as that which exists in the presence of matter, but this is wholly unsatisfying. This question is what prompts particle physicsts to look for "god" particles, and particles responsible for gravity, because we haven't really solved the problem of what mass is.

 

 

 

Ask yourself a very hard question. This is a very difficult question to mentally wrestle with.

 

At what speed does information travel? What is the maximum allowable speed of information? This would have to be limited by physics if it we are supposing it is limited, right? I mean, if you could hypothetically grab Jupiter and move it around the earth at whatever speed you wanted, how long would it take for any effect of Jupiter's close proximity and fast orbit of earths position to reach and affect Earth? That's the kind of maximum speed we're talking about. Try to imagine that the universe has a maximum speed at which things can affect each other, and then try and figure out what that speed is. If the universe does not have a maximum speed limit for information, then everywhere we point our telescopes, we should be looking at present-time. However, we know this is not the case, becuase the further we look into the universe, the stranger things look, the less planet/star/galaxy-like things are.

 

When you start playing with that question, you start to realize a lot of things.

 

"If matter is expanding, what is it expanding relative to?"

Space is expanding, yourself is expanding.

 

"This discussion gets to the heart of probably the biggest unsolved question in physics, what is mass?"

Mass is the property of not traveling in the speed of light, anything that has mass is bouncing on and off the Higgs field so we have the luxury of not moving, or at least it seems that way.

 

"At what speed does information travel?"

Technically, it can travel at any speed, it can go faster than light, back in time, forward in time or it can go in the full fledged speed of a dial up modem. You would need to read about quantum cryptography to understand how that can be possible.

 

"The idea that black holes are big bangs, is actually becoming very acceptable in theoretical physics circles."

You might want to watch this amazing movie:

http://www.videoneat.com/movies/2695/hawking-2004-watch-online

 

I also recommend Hawking's book on baby Universes.

[RestoringGuy]

 

"At what speed does information travel?"

Technically, it can travel at any speed, it can go faster than light, back in time, forward in time or it can go in the full fledged speed of a dial up modem. You would need to read about quantum cryptography to understand how that can be possible.

It's an interesting question though.  I think what is intended is "at what speed does information travel while preserving causality?".  Say I have a red and green marble in can, and draw one without looking, carry it to Mars and then inspect it.  If it's green, I discover instantaneous information about what's back on Earth (a red marble).  Of course this was decided before I left -- but it did not need to be, they could have been entangled and decided while I am on Mars by shielding the marble wavefunctions just so.  Then the collapse happens faster than light, yet it is worthless for communication because there is no causality one can leverage.  That is why I think wormholes, warp drive, and that crap can never work, because (intuitively) being on the initiating side of the transit point seems to imply causality stays intact.

[ribuck]

I think what is intended is "at what speed does information travel while preserving causality?"

 

Indeed, that's the only useful way of looking at this.

 

Put another way, we don't know any way to convey information faster than the speed of light, nor do we have any reason to think that quantum physics provides a way for us to convey information faster than the speed of light.

[FriendlyHacker]

Then the collapse happens faster than light, yet it is worthless for communication because there is no causality one can leverage.  That is why I think wormholes, warp drive, and that crap can never work, because (intuitively) being on the initiating side of the transit point seems to imply causality stays intact.

 

Interesting ideas.Only worthless for communication if you don't know how to do it, give me a few million dollars and I will show you.

 

Indeed, that's the only useful way of looking at this.

 

Put another way, we don't know any way to convey information faster than the speed of light, nor do we have any reason to think that quantum physics provides a way for us to convey information faster than the speed of light.

 

You might not know a way yet but It's called non locality, has been done repeatedly on labs for over 40 years.

[ribuck]

... non locality, has been done repeatedly on labs for over 40 years.

 

We (i.e. all humans, including physicists working on non-locality) can't use non-locality to convey information faster than the speed of light. We can only "observe" non-locality after it happens and after we have communicated the results from one observer to the other at the speed of light.

 

If non-locality provided a way to convey information faster than the speed of light, the High Speed Trading guys would be all over it. They spend millions just to shave a few milliseconds off their communication speeds.

[RestoringGuy]

We (i.e. all humans, including physicists working on non-locality) can't use non-locality to convey information faster than the speed of light. We can only "observe" non-locality after it happens and after we have communicated the results from one observer to the other at the speed of light.

You're right, although I like to dive into what it means to convey information.  I think one could say information is conveyed faster than light, if one gives up on the option to control or choose exactly what the information contains.  Once I filter all possible bits information into a message of my choosing, forcing it to be a specific message (maybe that is what you say information is, something the sender is selecting), now all the carriers of that message are lightspeed or slower.  But there is a loose sense that information is conveyed, not always when the sender selects it, but when the receiver discovers what it is.

 

Suppose you send a math puzzle that takes minimum 2 weeks to solve (to suspend the "human brain" reasons why this is implausible, let it be a mechanically-solved puzzle), and it is started on by two people 1 lightyear apart.  At completion, we probably would not say the correct solution was instantly conveyed 1 lightyear at the moment it's solved, despite both people in sync to the same information at nearly the same moment.  But that is only because the solution was, in a sense, selected at the time the puzzle was sent.  Now if the puzzle is not pre-selected, but built by entanglement and worked on after it's received by both people, there are now two transit times: the time for the puzzle to be sent (1 year) and collapsed into a specific puzzle, and the time for the solution to be derived (2 weeks).  I am wondering at what point is the information, in this case the puzzle's solution, considered conveyed?

 

FriendlyHacker, as for having a million bucks, if there is non-locality there is time travel and you can get the money playing the lotto.

[FriendlyHacker]

Let's say I have blue socks in one foot and red socks on the other, I never use same color socks and you are 1 light year away, the moment you hear me say I have blue socks on my left foot the information about red socks being on my right foot is acquired faster than light.

 

Can you see how that is binary and actually useful for computing?

[ribuck]

That's a great analogy!

 

When I hear you say that you have blue socks on your left foot, I know that you had a blue sock on your left foot one year ago, when you sent the message. If I know that you never wear the same color on both feet, I can deduce that you had a red sock on your right foot one year ago, even though I'm making that deduction today.

 

There's no information being conveyed faster than the speed of light. There's no way for me to discover what socks you were wearing any time more recently than one year ago.

[RestoringGuy]

When I hear you say that you have blue socks on your left foot, I know that you had a blue sock on your left foot one year ago, when you sent the message. If I know that you never wear the same color on both feet, I can deduce that you had a red sock on your right foot one year ago, even though I'm making that deduction today.

 

There's no information being conveyed faster than the speed of light. There's no way for me to discover what socks you were wearing any time more recently than one year ago.

That's true for socks, because socks are big and heavy enough that there is no uncertainty (other than mental uncertainty).  What I'm talking about is if both sender and receiver are unaware of the ultimate message and physically it is uncertain.  If FriendlyHacker could put on socks with eyes closed, all while totally isolating the socks and the message being sent from the surrounding environment (a practical impossibility), then suppose both sender and receiver could discover the sock information one year later.  At that point you do not know what color the socks were one year ago.  In a sense, that information did not exist one year ago.  The socks themselves may indeed be year-old, but the resulting information about them is only generated in the present day.  For practical purposes, this does not work with socks, but subatomic particles.

 

FriendlyHacker, of course it's useful for computing, just as random numbers are useful.  But I would argue it's not useful for boosting communication speeds in a physical sense because the sender has no control over the message.  Once the sender exerts control over the message, it cannot be conveyed faster than light.  I say this because once the selected message is sent faster than light, the carrier wavefunctions are totally free to deviate from the sender's selection process.  Sender and receiver can sync up faster than light, relaying information in a sense.  That is useful for certain computations (such as quantum computing), but it seems that practical communication is not one of those actions.

[jacbot]

"there is no experiment a person could conduct in a small volume of space that would distinguish between a gravitational field and an equivalent uniform acceleration'' Albert Einstein

 

What is meant here is that inertial mass is the same as the gravitational mass. The classical view mass is just a constant relating force and acceleration.

 

Empricly this has been known since...,, newton?  but people didnt know "why/how" untill Eistein basicly prove showed it.