Re: threat to one's worldview
- From: Gerry Quinn <gerryq@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 13:20:33 -0000
In article <MSGID_2=3A240=2F2199.13=40fidonet_4df080a0@xxxxxxxxxxx>,
Tina_Hall@xxxxxxxxxxx says...
Gerry Quinn <gerryq@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I don't quite understand what you mean; what sort of 'backing up' are
you looking for?
More than just people saying it is so.
Okay... I've pointed you towards a key experiment which has been
carried out, with variations, by numerous researchers, and told you
what happens when its done. I've suggested that your local public
library will have some books describing it. I've pointed out that the
experimental protocols and the peer-reviewed status of the primary
publications on which this scientific consensus is based, along with
the fact that the scientific theories incorporating special relativity
are used all the time in day-to-day technology, give reasonable grounds
for accepting that while the consensus might not be correct, it is not
a result of self-deception or inadequate testing (which many here think
belief in dowsing might be).
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.
So you claim. But all that arrives here is 'people say this is so
because it says it is so'. That's nothing but hot air.
What should I do, come to visit you with a a large weighing scales, and
run around the pan at half the speed of light carrying a clock?
The contrast with dowsing is extreme.
It shows how I see the whole matter. (Part of is similar to playing the
devil's advocate, except I really don't have _any_ reason to take these
claims for true. It's just fancy ideas that a group of people pat each
other on the back for, without anything concrete to offer to those
outside that group. Preaching to the converted of course gives you
applause, but I'm not converted.)
It's not fancy or special at all. Special relativity is incorporated
in everyday physics (and fundamentally, in chemistry, because the
theory of the electronic structure depends on it). Special relativity
did not produce the nuclear power station or bomb, but it did predict
the amount of energy they would release, based on the atomic weights of
various elements.
Most of all it's not fancy because experiments like that of Michelson
and Morley are *reality* - the results astonished some at the time, but
are now well enough tested that we know the speed of light as measured
does not depend on the relative velocity of its source, almost as well
as we know that apples fall to the ground. Special relativity is not
the only way of building a physics that is compatible with this
reality, but it's one of only two that is compatible with most other
observations. (The other one makes essentially the same predictions
and could conceivably make a comeback in some form, but you wouldn't
like it either!)
Not you specifically. I'm just asking for evidence.
Tim wrote: "The crucial thing that has changed is the relative amount of
evidence on each side."
And I'm giving a science example where something seems to be widely
accepted without any apparent evidence. I wrote: "What evidence is there
- to get back to sci-fi - about the effects of FTL travel?"
This is a different issue. We have never observed FTL travel. We have
observed massive objects travelling at almost the speed of light, and
special relativity works for them. It also predicts that we could NOT
by normal means accelerate any massive object to faster than light
speeds.
And this is the point I made at the start. Special relativity
*doesn't* say that you can make a time machine. It says you can make a
time machine IF you can go faster than light. But it doesn't say
anything about whether you can go faster than light. (Except that in
the sphere in which it operates, that of dynamics, it says that it
would take infinite energy to accelerate a massive object even to light
speed. So insofar as special relativity says anything about whether
you can go faster than light, it says: "probably not, if I've got
anything to do with it".)
If you accept it, you should know why, have the necessary amount of
evidence to back it up. Else you literally "don't know what you're
talking about". (In quotes because it's a hostile phrase but meant as
neutral condition here.)
I told you where the evidence is. I've read widely about experiments
conducted that support the theory.
No, I'm saying it says that, and that it is a theory that fits
experiments that have been carried out such,
So you claim. But scientists also made up dark matter to have their
formulas add up. I want something concrete.
Concrete is actually dark matter, like all planetary material. Of
course theorists have come up with more exotic kinds of dark matter
than dust or planets, and quite likely some or all of these will be
discarded, either because a better theory is found, or because the
observational results are re-interpreted. Exotic dark matter is not
established physics like special relativity is. Special relativity in
some form is as well established as the atomic theory of matter.
The whole presentation lacks substance. You talk of teories and
experiments, without offering any details. Without that I can't even
tell you which part of it is dubious, only that the claim looks like hot
air.
So gto to the library and look it up. The Michelson Morley experiment
is famous and any good encyclopaedia will describe it.
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.
So far you just claim it does. As mentioned, I don't know the
experiment, and what part was invented to make the formulas add up.
I've told you where you can find as many details as you want.
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...)
I have no idea what you're talking about. That's not the way to convince
me, either, rather the opposite. It looks like you insert some
unexplained terms to obscure the subject even more. If you want to use
these terms to say something, you'd need to explain them first,
otherwise it naturally doesn't tell me anything.
Then put it this way: another very well-established and accepted
physics theory called quantum mechanics predicts that the sort of
mechanism you are looking for (i.e. something that tells light rays how
fast they ought to be going) doesn't exist.
Like special relativity, quantum mechanics fits the results of
observations very well indeed, and much of our technology nowadays is
developed using its insights.
There are those who say "don't interpret, just look at the equations".
It is an attitude I despise. It leads to pathological science, often
involving relativity. However, if you choose to interpret, you will
have to accept that your preconceived views of how nature operates may
have to be discarded. I can't give you an explanation/interpretation
of special relativity in terms of clockwork or bouncing balls, because
these models were/are sufficient for most of the physics developed
between 1600 and 1900 (what is called classical physics, and is still
the greater part of the physics taught in schools), but are inadequate
for much of the physics developed since then.
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).
A hint of details still without telling me anything.
And in fact, it leaves a lot of questions open:
How did they know the star was still in the same point at both times? (I
thought they were all moving.)
Where's the stationary observer both times, to compare?
What makes them think they were hit by the same light, rather than
earlier or later light?
Those are good questions, and if you go down to your public library you
will find details of the apparatus they built, what they did with it,
and how they and others interprete the results.
And indeed, what does that have to do with other things travelling at
light speed? From what turned up in another thread, light doesn't behave
like other things. I don't mind photons doing funny things, that's
interesting. But just because photons do something funny doesn't mean
everything else does, too.
We know of very few things that travel at light speed; as far as we can
tell, thought, special relativity applies to them just as it does to
photons. What's special about light is that we can easily manipulate
and measure it.
And I'd rather not digress, just stick to the claimed side effects of
travelling with light speed, or faster, and why that shouldn't be
possible. That's what actually matters here in rasfc.
Well, special relativity tells you that however big a rocket engine you
have, you will never reach the speed of light. It tells you that IF
you were doing this probably impossible thing, then either you have a
time machine or something is wrong with special relativity. But if you
can travel faster than light, something is probably wrong with special
relativity anyway.
I'm done here.
- Gerry Quinn
.
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