Re: threat to one's worldview
- From: Gerry Quinn <gerryq@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 19:05:40 -0000
In article <MSGID_2=3A240=2F2199.13=40fidonet_4df07df8@xxxxxxxxxxx>,
Tina_Hall@xxxxxxxxxxx says...
Gerry Quinn <gerryq@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Tina_Hall@xxxxxxxxxxx says...
Gerry Quinn <gerryq@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Tina_Hall@xxxxxxxxxxx says...
What evidence is there - to get back to sci-fi - about the effects
of FTL travel?
(I don't believe that because I think people don't know enough to
say, yet everyone else seems to be sure.)
What people are mostly saying can be understood as IF we can freely
travel faster than light, and IF special relativity is still valid,
then we have time travel. This is only logical,
I don't see anything logical in it. It's just a claim. No basis, no
explanation, it looks pretty much random to me.
It is a logical prediction of special relativity.
So you say. But in a way that's similar to the dowser stuff; some people
believe it but don't feel like backing up that claim.
I don't quite understand what you mean; what sort of 'backing up' are
you looking for? There are plenty of texts explaining special
relativity, and plenty of peer-reviewed reports of experiments whose
results agree with its predictions, thus backing it up. You can read
all the details and in principle you could perform them yourself.
The contrast with dowsing is extreme.
The basis to special relativity is observation. Special relativity
matches observations very well, and in it space and time are mixed
together, so to speak.
More claims. But you're not _telling_ me anything.
What are you asking me for - a dissertation? Your local library will
have physics books or even encyclopaedias that will give you chapter
and verse on most branches of science including special relativity
I can only guess that your special relativity (note that you're just
throwing that out as if it were explained, when in fact it's not) says
that, and you're using 'it says so' as proof. That's circular.
No, I'm saying it says that, and that it is a theory that fits
experiments that have been carried out such, and no other theory that
satisfactorily fits the results of these experiments makes different
predictions.
I want something solid. In other words, have the dowsers reliably (and
in this case you need 100%) find water where you know it is, and find
out how they do it, the actual way they do find it. Without a link of
act and effect it could still be coincidence.
It can't be coincidence if it happens repeatedly and can be replicated
reliably.
If what you want is a picture of how it works at a fundamental level
using classical physics concepts, you are out of luck: there is no such
picture. The closest you can come is an aether theory such as that of
Lorentz and Poincare, which makes the same predictions; it's probably
not entirely wrong to think of special relativity as the result of
summing over histories involving all possible aethers. (But of course
summing over histories is very much a mathematical model of how quantum
physics works, so this may not really help...)
That doesn't mean it's right, just that it is in some senses at least,
the simplest model that works.
If it's a model, you'd have to describe what it looks like, first.
It looks like a set of equations; it's a mathematical model, not a
physical model. Sorry if I misled you by using that word. You can
make physical models of a sort for aether theories because they are
classical theories. Special relativity is often considered a classical
theory, but it isn't really.
And then we're back to, for example, the solar system model for atoms
which is just a model and not accurate either. That's the least
convincing way to approach this.
What would convince you?
How do you explain the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment?
More words without telling me anything.
You could have looked it up. However, I did explain briefly what those
results were in the following paragraph:
Special relativity is one way to do it, although there are others.
If you want to know what the basis and explanation are for special
relativity, you need to familiarise yourself with that experiment and
its interesting results, and their implications. (Summary of the
results: light always seems to be coming at exactly the same speed
from a light source, whether you are moving towards it, moving away
from it, or are stationary with respect to it.)
That would be interesting if there were more than one 'you' getting that
effect, in different places, different states of moving and stationary.
Otherwise the simplest explanation is that the 'you' in this was drunk
and seeing things.
Well, the guys made a machine to test it, and operated it at different
times (in fact, they took advantage of the Earth's movement around the
sun so that they could be going towards a particular star at 19 miles
per second, and six months later going away from it at the same speed).
Plenty more experiments by other people confirmed the predictions of
special relativity too. And plenty of technologies use these
predictions on a daily basis.
And you have to come with more than just 'it is so because it says so'.
I have done: it or another theory that makes the same predictions is so
because those predictions are demonstrably correct.
If the dowsers could reliably demonstrate that they could find water,
I'd believe them just as much.
- Gerry Quinn
.
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