I've been very keen on Physics all my life, but I still don't feel happy with my grasp of relativity. If I had to explain it to a 10 year old (always a good test of your understanding ) then , well, 'it's about mass and energy being interchangeable. it's about time not being constant, it slows down if you're moving. it's about the speed of light being the fastest you can go. it was quite revolutionary, it didn't make Newton obsolete , it fine tuned his laws for extreme conditions. And that's about it ... lets have a look at Wikipedia they're normally give a very good summary ....
CharlesChandler
Re: Relativity
This is a continuation of a discussion that started in another thread, but was off-topic for that thread. For book-keeping purposes, here are the posts that most directly pertain to the fundamental relativistic issues (and not including the stuff on stellar composition, which was more on-topic). The people who participated on the other thread have already read all of this, but for newcomers, and for my archives, this saves having to read through all of the other posts that were on-topic.
oz93666 wrote:
JeffreyW wrote:
oz93666 wrote: Gravitational redshift was invented by people obsessed with Einstein's relativity theory. (there is no gravity redshift).
I don't think you can dismiss it that easily, It's been experimentally demonstrated in the Pound–Rebka experiment which anyone who lives in a tall building can duplicate.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound-Rebka_experiment .. the theory presented in that link if not too intuitive, I look at it like this, if a photon is leaving a star it has to do work as it escapes the pull, it cant slow down, the only way is to change frequency, lower frequency photons have less energy. Also stars have been shown to bend light by other experimental observation.
CharlesChandler wrote:
oz93666 wrote: It's been experimentally demonstrated in the Pound–Rebka experiment which anyone who lives in a tall building can duplicate.
Pound & Rebka's conclusions are questionable. They fired photons downward at an absorber, and found that the electrons didn't like absorbing the photons unless they were slightly redshifted. To get better absorption, Pound & Rebka had to move the emitter away from the absorber, producing a Doppler redshift. They concluded that the photons were getting blueshifted by gravity on the way down, and perfect absorption could only occur if the photons began with a slight redshift. Thus the necessary degree of redshifting could be a measure of the degree of blueshifting that was occurring in flight. So far so good.
But Pound & Rebka did not rule out other well-known possibilities, such as effects on the absorbers themselves caused by external fields.
For example, in an electric field, what would otherwise be a single absorption/emission line in a spectrum gets split into two lines. This is known as the Stark effect, and it's one of the primary methods for detecting electric fields from a distance. The reason for the split is that electrons changing shells move faster if they are going with the field, and slower if they are going against it. When emitting photons, the faster electrons emit blueshifted photons, and the slower ones emit redshifted photons. Since these could be traveling in any direction, an observer at a distance will get both varieties — thus the single emission line has been split into two lines. The corollary to this rule for emission is that during absorption, an electron that has to fight against the electric field can only absorb a redshifted photon, and an electron being accelerated by the field can only absorb a blueshifted photon.
For precisely the same reasons, we should expect spectral lines to be split by a gravity field — electrons moving upward/downward in the field should absorb only redshifted/blueshifted photons. But Pound & Rebka didn't look for spectral splitting. They tested for absorption of the redshifted downward photons, and confirmed their preformed conclusions by testing the absorption of blueshifted upward photons. To rule out spectral splitting because of an external field operating on the absorber (as with the Stark effect), they should have looked for both effects in both configurations. They should have known this, since the Stark effect was discovered in 1913, and they did their experiment in 1959. But none of the write-ups on this experiment mention this double-check, so we can only assume that it was neglected. As such, this is still an open issue.
oz93666 wrote: Also stars have been shown to bend light by other experimental observation.
Here you're referring to work done by Eddington and others, which is highly contentious. The only known way to bend light is the pass it through a density gradient, producing a mirage effect, which is quite easy to see, in nature as well as in the laboratory. Since the light is bent toward the greater density, if light passes near the horizon of a planet or star with an atmosphere, and since the denser atmosphere is nearer the gravity source, the light is deflected in the direction of the gravity. But that doesn't mean that light in a vacuum would be deflected in a gravity field. Eddington didn't have the instrumentation to measure the density gradient in the atmosphere to a degree of accuracy greater than the deflection he observed. We still don't have such instrumentation. This means that the deflection of photons in gravity fields — just because of the gravity and not because of the mirage effect — is a premature conclusion.
My conclusion is that if somebody does an experiment that seems to prove general relativity, without further scrutiny it is accepted as fact. Anything that seems to disprove it will never be accepted, no matter how rigorous and methodical the work. Only poorly built foundations have to be defended like that, so this to me is tantamount to proof that general relativity is false.
oz93666 wrote:
CharlesChandler wrote: ....Pound & Rebka's conclusions are questionable......
This was first done over 50 years ago, and must have been repeated may times by others, surely this is reliable, nd any other causes have been ruled out; but lets look at things from another angle. It seems to me that a photon has to do some work in escaping the pull of a star, and the only way, is to shift its frequency down.
CharlesChandler wrote:
oz93666 wrote: This was first done over 50 years ago, and must have been repeated may times by others, surely this is reliable, and any other causes have been ruled out...
Your faith in the scientific community is so quaint — but it isn't exactly scientific. Perhaps we should call it the faith community... But I no longer take anything from the mainstream on faith.
oz93666 wrote: ...but lets look at things from another angle. It seems to me that a photon has to do some work in escaping the pull of a star, and the only way, is to shift its frequency down.
If a photon had mass, then you'd be right — the gravity field would exert a force on it, slowing it down. If the speed of light is constant, then (somehow) the force acts on the frequency instead of the transmission speed. (I never quite understood that. Anyway...) But if a photon does not have mass, none of that is true.
oz93666 wrote:
CharlesChandler wrote: .... so this to me is tantamount to proof that general relativity is false.
Charles !! ....you're a total anarchist !! you don't believe in anything, I bet you don't believe in Baby Jesus either ...and you look such a clean cut, conservative gentleman in your photo. If we look at 'tests of general relativity' in Wikipedia we find everything from the Perihelion precession of Mercury, (now surly any university level astrophysicist can check that one using undisputed data), to a very accurate gravitational redshift experiment, performed in 1976, where a hydrogen maser clock on a rocket was launched to a height of 10,000 km, and its rate compared with an identical clock on the ground. It tested the gravitational redshift to 0.007%. Now to dismiss this experiment you must invoke willful falsification of data; I know this goes on in the area of global warming where the controllers make billions from their lies, but I didn't expect to find it in areas like relativity. It seems to me if you dump general relativity you have to embrace the general theory of conspiracy, which holds that such confusions don't just happen, but are a directed concerted effort by those in control to deliberately mislead. p.s do many in the EU community believe general relativity false?
CharlesChandler wrote:
oz93666 wrote: ...you're a total anarchist!!
No, I'm not an anarchist — I'm a rationalist — there's a difference.
oz93666 wrote: Now to dismiss this experiment you must invoke willful falsification of data...
I can go one better than that — I'm not even going to look at any more "proofs" of general relativity. All of the ones that I have examined so far turned out to be specious, and when I questioned such things on more conventional forums, I got flamed really bad for questioning. Clearly, the mainstream has locked down on their tenets, and isn't willing to acknowledge that there are problems. So why should I make a full-time job out of finding errors that aren't going to get fixed anyway? That would be irrational.
oz93666 wrote: It seems to me if you dump general relativity you have to embrace the general theory of conspiracy, which holds that such confusions don't just happen, but are a directed concerted effort by those in control to deliberately mislead.
Not necessarily. I actually think that GR was an honest mistake. IMO, it can only be understood in its historical context. By the mid-1800s, everybody was sold on Newtonian mechanics, and Victorian materialism could do no wrong. But scientists like Faraday, Volta, Oersted, etc., who were studying EM, knew for a fact that they were dealing with non-Newtonian forces. Still, anybody claiming to be a scientist in that era without explicitly standing on Newton's shoulders was considered to be a fraud or a wannabe. You can hear the frustration in Maxwell, and more so in Lorentz. They tried to explain EM in Newtonian terms, but it just didn't work. Finally, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, society became disillusioned with materialism, and embraced the new idealism. The implication for science, as worked out by Einstein, was that an abstract, non-physical, idealist framework could break the Newtonian mold, and thereby open up all kinds of new avenues of research. The whole scientific community jumped at the chance, and society went along with it. All of a sudden, great strides were being made in EM, and in atomic theory, including the eventual discovery of nuclear forces. This never could have happened in the Victorian era. So the non-physical strategy broke the mold, progress was made, and Einstein was promoted to prophet.
But now, scientific idealism isn't just a nonsensical abstraction that you use to think outside the box for a little while, so that you can make the next physical discovery. Rather, non-physical modeling has become The Paradigm, and anybody not explicitly standing on Einstein's shoulders is a fraud or a wannabe. It's ironic that scientists are now so committed to the Einsteinian method that they feel compelled to disagree with his physical work. For example, Einstein said that black holes were not possible, because the centrifugal force should prevent the collapse. He was thinking mechanically. But shortly after he died, scientists announced that black holes were a prediction of GR, and everybody bought it. Thinking mechanically is now taboo (even if you happen to be agreeing with Einstein), because Einstein's claim to fame was his mind-bending non-physical abstractions, not his rationality.
100 years passed, and now, we face a similar dilemma — the established paradigm is standing in the way of progress. Outside of the context of stretching the imagination so that new physical discoveries can be made, mind-bending abstractions are just science fiction, with zero intrinsic merit. It isn't even good science fiction. Star Wars re-runs get better ratings than Discovery Channel programs, and they do this without the benefit of public funding. So we should leave the science fiction to Hollywood. The opportunity in front of us now is in re-introducing the idea of physical physics, with tangible benefits.
Still, I don't see a conspiracy in all of this. Victorian scientists became credible, and then they became constrained by that credibility, and then they had to be discredited to make progress. In the 1900s, scientists broke the old mold, and built a new one. Now that mold needs to be broken. No BFD — this is just how science always worked, and always will.
oz93666 wrote: do many in the EU community believe general relativity false?
Some do — a lot more than on mainstream forums — but it isn't everybody.
JeffreyW wrote: Going into a science forum and saying how wrong Einstein was about gravity and other things would be like going to church and trying to convince people that Jesus was wrong. Its idolatry.
I totally agree. True science favors dissent, because by definition, progress always defies the consensus. So what type of endeavor is it, when maintaining the consensus has become the hard constraint? Scams work better if there is a consensus — the more people who are going along with it, the more credible it is, and a scam needs that credibility, because without that, it is nothing at all.
But to really understand this, just remember that there is a difference between a consensus and a conspiracy. A conspiracy is a small number of people acting secretively. A consensus is a large number of people acting out in the open. So it has a slightly different dynamic.
Lloyd wrote: Regarding Relativity (It's Real!)
The following is from Mathis' paper, Relativity Demystified, at http://milesmathis.com/rel4.html and it seems that he does a rather good job of demystifying it.
... Einstein, the high priest, understood Relativity in large part, but his explanations only confused the rest of the world. And even Einstein did not understand Relativity in full. That is why he was not able to simplify it. Relativity is much more transparent than we have been led to believe.
... The reason the receding train looks shorter [length contraction] is that the length of the train is determined by a single image. Unlike the wave [lightwave], which is built of a series of images, the length is determined by one image only. In other words, we could take a picture with a real camera, and using that one image, we could determine the apparent length of the train. (And, yes, that one image would be distorted by Relativity. That real picture, taken by a real camera, would be distorted by Relativity.) Now, that one image is made up of all the light reaching us at the same instant, from all the points on the train. Since all the light is moving the same speed, the light from more distant points on the train must be earlier light. To say it another way, all the light is reaching US at the same time, to make the image, so it can't have left all points on the train at the same time. If we work backwards from our eye, and go the speed of light for x seconds, we can reach some points on the train, but not others. This means that our image is made up of older and newer light. For instance, if the light from the nearest parts of the train was emitted at t = .0002s, then the light from the farthest parts of the train might have been emitted at t = .0001s. The light has farther to go, so to reach us at the same time, it had to be emitted earlier. If it was emitted earlier, then it was emitted when the object was not quite as far away. Therefore, the far end of the object will appear closer than it is. Therefore, the object will appear smaller or shorter than it really is. - That was a bit difficult, I realize. It is probably the most difficult thing to understand about Relativity, and it has been misunderstood and misinterpreted millions of times. If you can make sense of that paragraph, you can make sense of any of the subtleties of Relativity. - As one more aid to understanding, I will point out that this length contraction is exactly the opposite of the contraction of sound....
CharlesChandler wrote:
Lloyd wrote: Regarding Relativity (It's Real!)
Well, some parts of it are. It's certainly true that everything is relative — we have Galileo to thank for the modern concept of relative frames of reference, disregarding Aristotle's notion of absolute position and motion. As concerns Lorentz contraction, there is actually nothing new there, and Galileo could have calculated it, if he had known that light has a velocity. But in relativity, Lorentz contraction isn't explained in Galilean terms. Rather, it uses this fancy new jargon in which space and time are getting warped to produce the observations. This is what the scientific community loved about Einstein's special relativity, which bloomed into general relativity due to the encouragement that he got. It's just a fancy way of talking about stuff that makes it sound more complicated. And for BS artists, that's a Good Thing. For example, in Newtonian mechanics, the Sun's gravity field exerts a force on the Earth, bending its linear momentum into angular momentum, establishing a stable orbit. In general relativity, the Sun's gravity field warps space, such that the Earth continues going straight, but space curves around to meet it. What's the difference? The calculations come out the same either way. But relativity is really hard to grasp. When it's just force vectors, and equal-but-opposite reactions, it's all very easy to conceptualize, and people can work out real-world problems with simple formulas. From the perspective of a BS artist, that's a Bad Thing. So why not warp space and time, so that only PhDs can calculate stuff? That would be a Good Thing.
What is my reason for maintaining this position?
To my knowledge, there is no real-world problem that can be solved with relativity, and which cannot be solved with Newtonian methods. There are certainly non-Newtonian forces, such as EM and nuclear forces. But the interactions among inertial, gravitational, EM, and nuclear forces can all be calculated with vector addition, or with vector calculus if there is a force gradient. In other words, Newton could have done it, if he had known about all of the forces. Furthermore, the Newtonian framework is simpler. Occam's Razor does the rest. If you know of an exception, please let me know. I certainly know of theoretical problems that relativity has created for itself, that only relativity can solve. But that isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about real-world problems that can be solved in you twist the frames of reference one way, and not in the other.
But that's just the beginning. Once scientists got away with obfuscating the terminology and the frames of reference, they started creating abstract entities, such as cold dark matter, dark energy, etc., and claiming that these are all predicted by general relativity. Aside from the fact that it would have been news to Einstein, the method employed in such work was deeply flawed. In good scientific method, if you detect an anomaly, you have to rule out all of the known factors before concluding that you have discovered something new. But when scientists found that the amount of mass in a dusty plasma is only 1/5 of the requirement for dusty plasma collapse, they didn't rule out the two other forces known to operate at the macroscopic level, namely, the electric and magnetic forces. Rather, they invented a strange new type of matter (i.e., CDM) to supply the missing force. But the application of Feynman's "like-likes-like" principle to Debye cells supplies the missing force, and Occam's Razor does the rest here too.
So my opinion of general relativity is that it is all somewhere between BS and Bad Science.
CharlesChandler wrote:
oz93666 wrote: But to return to the main subject, I'm totally willing to believe it's all corrupted, but surely some of relativity is good? E=MC2? a hydrogen bomb does go bang after all...
E=MC2 has never been proved to my satisfaction. The EM radiation released in a nuclear explosion comes from vibrating protons in the disrupted nucleus. This doesn't affect mass. Splitting an atom releases EM radiation. Fusing atoms releases EM radiation. If every time a nuclear reaction occurred, and energy was released, and thus the atoms lost mass, I don't see why there would still be any mass left in the Universe, since we have every reason to believe that every single atom in the Universe has been through this process many times. So something doesn't add up. I tend to think that EM waves are created simply by the movement of charged particles, with no effect on mass. For example, a wood stove doesn't lose mass just because the atoms in the crystal lattice are vibrating due to heat, and emitting infrared radiation. Analogously, a speaker cone doesn't lose mass because it is creating sound waves in the air. Energy and mass are two different things. IMO, the mass differences due to fission/fusion are evidence of some sort of particle other than protons and neutrons.
E=MC2 was blindly accepted by the scientific community as soon as Einstein published it. Had it been verified? It still hasn't. Why was it accepted? Because scientists were falling all over themselves to get on board with relativity, because it was a new paradigm that broke the Newtonian mold. Does anybody actually use this formula to solve real-world problems? No. How do you estimate the energy to be released in a nuclear reaction: by general relativity, or by experimentation? The answer is: experimentation. Both general relativity and quantum mechanics are notoriously poor at making accurate predictions. So if you really want to know what's going to happen, you just go ahead and do it, and find out that way. Then you adjust the formulas after the fact.
oz93666 wrote: ...and you haven't dealt with the Perihelion precession of Mercury can't we check that ourselves?
Yes, we can check this ourselves. But just because some ad hoc formulas in general relativity "predict" this doesn't mean anything. Good scientific method involves the elimination of all known forces before concluding that something new has been discovered. A gravitational anomaly was detected. OK, so are there any other forces operative at the macroscopic level? Yes — the electric and magnetic forces. Were those checked? No. Those should be checked. If either of those can account for the anomaly, the problem is solved, and Occam's Razor will do the rest. How should we proceed? Precession takes two forces: angular momentum, and then a force applied along the axis. For example, when a spinning top starts to precess, the angular momentum comes from the spinning, and the precession comes from the force of gravity, which is trying to get the top to lay down on its side. So we should be looking for an electric or magnetic force applied parallel to the axis of rotation. Maybe there is a galactic magnetic field that is accelerating or decelerating the solar system. Different degrees of precession in different planets might match up with different strengths of planetary dynamos. Or different degrees of planetary charge. I haven't pursued this, but that's where I'd start. And until that work has been done, I'll accept no fancier solution.
Be that as it may, the question of the true status of general relativity within science should be assessed. Soon after the theory first appeared, it was credited with success for solving the old problem associated with the shift of the perihelion of Mercury. But why? A satisfactory explanation had already been provided in 1898 by a German schoolteacher, P. Gerber, who published his findings in Zeitscrift für Math u Phys. (vol. 43, p 93). For some reason this seems to have been ignored even though it concerned a well-known outstanding problem and Gerber had published in a highly prestigious journal. Of course, the dubious expeditions of 1919 which led to the claim that the theory correctly predicted the bending of light rays were possibly the clincher as far as popular acclaim was concerned. However, is general relativity required to explain these phenomena? The answer is an emphatic 'No!' Apart from other publications by such as Harold Aspden, Bernard Lavenda eventually succeeded in publishing an article in 2005 entitled Three Tests of General relativity as Short-wavelength Diffraction Phenomena (Journal of Applied Science, vol 5, no. 2, pp. 299-308). It might be noted that this article didn't claim general relativity incorrect, merely that there was an alternative method for obtaining various physical results.
oz93666 wrote:
CharlesChandler wrote:
oz93666 wrote: Splitting an atom releases EM radiation. Fusing atoms releases EM radiation.
That's not true, splitting a big atom releases energy, splitting a small atom requires input of energy. There is conservation of energy here, it's conserved in the form of mass. E=MC2 cannot be disputed, it's been confirmed by countless experiments, some of which I have done (my subject at university was nuclear engineering) if something fishy was going on I would have noticed it. You can split an atom and get energy out, but if you want to reverse that process and reconstruct that atom you have to feed back that same energy to do it, and that energy is stored in the form of mass which can be proved by measuring the atomic weights of the atoms. Also mass equivalence of energy is continually demonstrated in particle accelerators, at speeds near light, the increased energy input is stored in increased mass of the particles, this cannot be disputed. You really cannot throw fundamental physics like this in the trash. Because you've correctly spotted many flaws in astrophysics, I suggest you've become too headstrong, and assumed all physicists are idiots or corrupt too. It seems the way forward is to build up on the most solid ground we have which must be this type of bedrock physics, that can be tested with experiments.
CharlesChandler wrote:
oz93666 wrote: ...if something fishy was going on I would have noticed it.
And I'm supposed to take your word for that? And if I don't, I'm too headstrong? I don't even know your real name. Are you actually so full of yourself that you think that you can make statements anonymously, and then insist on the benefit of the doubt???
You're saying these things just to be funny, right?
Well, just on the outside chance that you're actually serious, and in the hopes that others would better understand such issues...
If an arrogant person makes an assertion, and another person does not give the benefit of the doubt, the arrogant person will generally conclude that only arrogance could preclude agreement. But that's just because the arrogant person sees the world through arrogant eyes, and therefore sees nothing but arrogance. Requiring that scientists do their due diligence, and correctly check all known forces before concluding that something new has been discovered, is not arrogance. Refusing to accept work that was not done properly is not arrogance. Especially when such a substantial percentage of the work clearly was not done properly.
I should like to point out that I didn't say that GR or QM was wrong. I just said that I refuse to accept it until/if/when it can be demonstrated to my satisfaction that all known perturbing factors have been ruled out. That isn't throwing anything in the trash. It's just insisting that it be run through quality control checks before being accepted. The only thing that is thrown in the trash is the benefit of the doubt. This was forfeited by the mainstream when they abandoned the scientific method, and started spewing out mostly trash. Now I insist that everything be inspected.
Of course, I don't have time to inspect everything, so I prioritize, like everybody does. If something figures significantly in a topic that I'm researching, I'll question the assumptions. If they stand up to scrutiny, with laboratory confirmation, I build my thesis on that foundation. If they do not check out, they go in the recycling bin. And if the people spewing the assertions resent the questioning, the assertions go in the recycling bin. The reason is that work that can stand up to scrutiny is proud to be scrutinized, while work that is flawed is scared of it — therefore, if somebody resents being questioned, the assertions are usually gibberish. This inference does not prove that the assertions are false. It merely demonstrates that the person making them doesn't know how to support them, and therefore resents being questioned. But like I said, we all have to prioritize, so I play the odds, the same way everybody else does. So I figure that the more educated somebody is, and the more consistent the assertions are with the opinions of other educated people, and the more the person demands the benefit of the doubt, the less truth value his assertions contain. If it's something important to me, I'll attempt a thorough review. If it isn't important, I'll set it aside, in the "to be reviewed" stack. The one thing that I will never do is accept it because somebody forcefully insisted that it be taken on faith.
So, I have questioned Eddington's "gravitational lensing" conclusions, because I'm not satisfied that the mirage effect was properly ruled out, to anywhere near the degree of accuracy that Eddington claimed. I never get a response past that point. I have questioned the Pound-Rebka experiment, on the grounds that frequency splitting due to an external field was not ruled out. I never get a response past that point on that issue either. I have questioned the equivalence of mass and energy. The absorption of energy in breaking something up, and the release of energy in the formation of aggregates, is one of the fundamental principles of thermodynamics, and does not constitute proof of a conversion between mass and energy. And all that I ever get when I question GR or QM is insistence on the benefit of the doubt. IMO, the whole thing needs to be thoroughly reviewed, and nothing in it should be taken on faith.
oz93666 wrote:
JeffreyW wrote: So combining small atoms requires that we subtract the energy from the system?
no ....to get small atoms to combine, first you have to get them 'hot' then when they combine you will get a lot of energy released. It's very analogous to a piece if charcoal, when it burns it will give out a lot of heat energy, but first you have to put some in by lighting it with a match. So that carbon is just waiting to combine with oxygen, it just needs a push. In the same way all small atoms want to combine up to Iron, and all big atoms want to break down to Iron, Iron has the lowest binding energy of any atom it's the lowest energy state, so all matter has a tendency to want to become Iron. There is no known way for cold fusion to occur. It's about what is happening in the nucleus, two protons don't attract; at 'medium' distances they are both +ve so repel, ut when very close another type of force comes into play and is stronger and then they can stick together as in a nucleus, but to get them close enough for this stronger force to work you have to overcome their repulsion at medium distances and the only way to do this is to increase their speed(temperature). That's why an H bomb first has a fission bomb, o get the very high temperatures required to get the hydrogen to fuse.Wikipedia does a good job of explaining this type of stuff.
oz93666 wrote:
CharlesChandler wrote: So, I have questioned Eddington's "gravitational lensing" conclusions, because I'm not satisfied that the mirage effect was properly ruled out, to anywhere near the degree of accuracy that Eddington claimed. I never get a response past that point. I have questioned the Pound-Rebka experiment, on the grounds that frequency splitting due to an external field was not ruled out. I never get a response past that point on that issue either.
These points are not easily proved one way or the other, we could debate them for a week and not be in agreement, so I leave them for now and go for the easy one....
CharlesChandler wrote: I have questioned the equivalence of mass and energy.
I don't know how many particle accelerators there are in the world ? thousands? high school students have built them and cloud chambers. In these charged particles are accelerated faster and faster and when they approach the speed of light they cant get too much faster, but their energy, omentum, still goes up and up because their mass increases. Here you can see a direct conversion of energy to mass, provable by allowing the particle to collide with something and measuring the results in a cloud chamber. Such experiments have been performed and witnessed by millions. I can't imagine where the error could be.
CharlesChandler wrote:
oz93666 wrote: I can't imagine where the error could be.
That might just be the limits of your imagination, or the power of your assumptions. For example, the "proof" of GR, based on high energy collisions, actually isn't proof at all, because it merely assumes the conclusion. "If" a particle cannot exceed the speed of light (which is one of the axioms of GR), and if you continue to supply the energy to accelerate it, you go up against a mathematical barrier that your GR formulas can't cross. The only other variable in the equation is mass, so the energy must be getting converted to mass. You get the energy back out in the bubble chamber collision, and you conclude that GR is proved. But you haven't proved GR at all. You have merely confirmed the conservation of energy. Newton would have gotten the same results using F=m*a. If you assume that the particle never exceeded the speed of light, you have to accept that the mass is variable, or the conservation of energy is violated. But how did you proof that particles cannot exceed the speed of light?
oz93666 wrote:
CharlesChandler wrote:
oz93666 wrote: There is no assumption, we can measure the speed very accurately, we know the circumference of the accelerator and can register each time the particle goes round...
How? I'm not going to take your word for it.
We know the circumference of accelerator by measuring it with a tape measure. If we consider the Synchrotron type of accelerator, particles are injected in a bunch, and go around and around all the time emitting synchrotron radiation (EM radiation from IR to X ray) if a detector is placed on the outside of the tube it will register a pulse each time the 'bunch' passes
oz93666 wrote:
CharlesChandler wrote: So what is involved in the collision — a single particle, or the whole bunch, or something in-between?
The whole process is very satisfactory for doubting Thomas s such as us, we can see the whole thing, article by particle, real time, in a bubble chamber, r cloud chamber. Anyone can make a cloud chamber with a jam jar, some dry ice, and acetone (I think that's right, 'm sure its on the web somewhere). You get it so the gas in the jar is just on the point of forming 'clouds', then particles entering the gas form tiny trails in the gas as they 'seed the clouds'. You can 'see' cosmic rays as they streak through the gas in the jar. Professionals use bubble chambers(the size of a room), liquid hydrogen, the principal is similar but we get trails of tiny H bubbles in the liquid hydrogen as the particles shoot through. So the high energy particles are fired into the chamber, collide with one of the H atoms and send a shower of particles in all directions as things break up into muons and quarks and all sorts, and most of these form trails in the liquid hydrogen, n addition a magnetic field is passes through the chamber, hich makes all charged particles spiral, measuring the curvature of the spiral indicates the amount of charge. With accelerators and bubble chambers a great deal has been figured out, all testable, repeatable. But we're digressing, not only has Einstein s mass energy equivalence been proved, but also the idea that time slows down when moving, particles with a known half-life live longer when moving at speed in these accelerators.
CharlesChandler wrote:
oz93666 wrote:
CharlesChandler wrote: So what is involved in the collision — a single particle, or the whole bunch, or something in-between?
But we're digressing, not only has Einstein's mass energy equivalence been proved, but also the idea that time slows down when moving, particles with a known half-life live longer when moving at speed in these accelerators.
Ummm... you didn't answer my question.
To accelerate the discussion, the next question is: assuming that the particles are traveling in clumps, and that the velocity of the clump is accurately measured (because that sounded reasonable), how is the total energy in the collision measured?
The reason for the question is that I can easily think of a way that energy could get stored in something other than momentum, and other than mass, giving the illusion that GR had been proved, when really, it hadn't. The energy could get converted to electrostatic potential by a z-pinch.
To explain the question, I'll start with a metaphor. Let's consider a supersonic aircraft, that has adjustable wings, which are perpendicular to the aircraft in subsonic flight, but which get tucked parallel to the aircraft for supersonic flight (such as the US F-14). Now let's suppose that this is accomplished just by making the wings spring-loaded, such that with increased drag on the wings, they tuck themselves in when approaching the speed of sound. This would mean than in tucked position, some of the thrust has been converted to elastic potential. If the drag is reduced, that potential can get released, getting the wings to spread out again. So if the plane is instantaneously decelerated (because it hit something), there is of course all of the momentum of its forward motion, but there is also the release of that elastic potential. This would make it look like the plane was releasing more potential than just its resting mass times its forward velocity.
Similarly, charged particles at relativistic velocities undergo a z-pinch, in which despite their electrostatic repulsion, the magnetic pressure forces them together. If they could ever achieve the speed of light, the magnetic force would become equal to the electric force, and the particles would fuse (even without any spins that create relative motions in a charge stream, encouraging fusion). Of course, actually accelerating particles to the speed of light is tough, because the accelerator is EM fields, which travel at the speed of light. So while energy is still building up in momentum, or being lost in particle spins, the forward velocity is less than the speed of light. But there is another force that needs to be overcome to achieve the speed of light, other than the particle clump's resting inertial force, and any Lorentz forces due to conflicting magnetic fields, and that's the Coulomb force between the particles. So as you pump energy into those particles, and they get going faster and faster, as you approach the speed of light, you start seeing energy absorption beyond what shows up in forward motion, or in particle spins. Where did the energy go? And then, on collision, all of the input energy is released, beyond just what you'd get from the forward motion. So where did that energy come from? A portion of the energy release on collision will be electrostatic potential re-converted to kinetic energy, because as soon as the particles are decelerated on collision, the z-pinch goes away, and the electrostatic repulsion takes over, accelerating the particles away from each other. In other words, there will be a Coulomb explosion. This might look a whole lot like the conversion of forward motion to radial motion in an explosion. But the energy will exceed that of the forward motion. So you do the F=m*a thing, where you know the force of the explosion, and you know the incoming velocity, and you adjust the mass accordingly, and you think that you have proved GR. Oops, you didn't take the Coulomb explosion into account.
So, in order for me to be convinced that energy is being converted to mass, I need to see where they're explicitly acknowledging electrostatic potential as an energy store. Otherwise, I'll conclude that they (once again) forgot to take a known force into account, which created a discrepancy, which they then called proof of GR, but which actually is just proof of their sloppy method.
oz93666 wrote:
CharlesChandler wrote: Ummm... you didn't answer my question..
it's going to take a while to analyses your whole post, but quickly, bunches of high energy particles enter the room sized chamber filled with liquid hydrogen, each particle leaves its own separate discernible track, and there is a magnetic field in this cloud chamber so by the curve of the particle(if any) we have an idea of any charge it carries ...finally it will collide with a hydrogen nucleus and cause the main 'explosion'.
CharlesChandler wrote:
oz93666 wrote:
CharlesChandler wrote: Ummm... you didn't answer my question..
...it's going to take a while to analyze your whole post...
That's fine. Frankly, I thought that by now, you would have broken into one of the standard responses, such as, "If you had a PhD, you'd know better than to question such things." My compliments to you for being head-n-shoulders above the mainstream, understanding that a put-down isn't an answer.
To clarify the questions:
1) Is the mass-energy equivalence apparent in the excess energy of a single particle, or is it only apparent in the total energy of a clump?
2) If the excess energy can be observed in individual particle collisions, how is that energy measured?
3) If the excess energy is only apparent in a clump, has a Coulomb explosion been ruled out?
4) If so, where can I find literature on how it was ruled out?
I might be wrong here, but I'd rather be thought a fool for asking one stupid question after another, than to BE a fool for feigning acceptance of something that I don't even understand.
PS: if there is a more appropriate thread for this, just post a link to the other thread here, and we'll continue the GR discussion on that thread.
Lloyd wrote:
CharlesChandler wrote:
Lloyd wrote: Regarding Relativity (It's Real!)
Well, some parts of it are. It's certainly true that everything is relative --... So my opinion of general relativity is that it is all somewhere between BS and Bad Science.
Length Contraction & Extension From Mathis' explanation of relativity that I quoted, it seems to me that real relativity is relevant in the real world, since it seems to indicate that lengths of objects moving at high velocity are a bit longer than measured if the object is moving away and a bit shorter if it's moving toward. It wasn't Einstein's fault that scientists didn't understand it and made up nonsense instead. Give credit where due.
If a series of objects in space are moving at the same high speed toward or away from the observer (at a bit of an angle, so the front object doesn't obscure the others), the entire length of the series of objects is distorted and can be corrected by relativity.
oz93666
Re: Realativity
Here's my second post in this category, I was thinking it might be better to start again ,as were into too many areas with these old posts ....this is not easy. The difficulty comes from concepts such as gravitational time dilation ,length contraction, and space time ,that conflict with our everyday understanding of the world. This has caused some to turn their back on the whole thing, still others think it's all nonsense and don't believe it. Perhaps the best approach is to deal with the predictions this theory makes and examine the experiments which, we are told we, verify these predictions. E= M C2.... this is the famous equation that shows that energy and mass are interchangeable. That one kg equals exactly one joule..... but multiplied by the speed of light !......twice!!! that's a lot of joules ... 9 x 10*16.....now why the constant of equivalence should be the speed of light squared is a great mystery to me. Why the speed of light determines this relationship between energy and mater I can't imagine. when we consider the the other important constants ,gravitational constant G 6.67384×10−11 ,Plancks constant 6.62606957(29)×10−34 or phi 3.1414..... they appear to be just a jumble of numbers picked out of a hat , why is the E/M constant C2 ? there is a great mystery there I think. But to get back to this thread it might be interesting if I take the position of defending Einstein, and say this formula has been proved in the bubble chamber, and invite others to attack this position....
D_Archer
Re: Realativity
I think reading some Miles Mathis would help you a lot, go to http://www.milesmathis.com and then on the front you can scroll to SECTION 1: RELATIVITY.
The finite speed of light does require us to use transforms. There is no doubt of it. These transforms will give us time dilation and length contraction. Einstein was absolutely correct in that. But his theory, as he presented it, was still flawed and incomplete. Even Einstein knew this. He told his followers explicitly that no theory was ever finished, and especially not his. That is why he continued to work on it until his death. He wasn't just working on General Relativity, either. He was working until the end trying to understand all the implications of his first postulates. He did not succeed. He left Relativity with many basic errors embedded in it, errors that have not been corrected to this day
I think Miles clears things up a lot.
Regards, Daniel
CharlesChandler
Re: Realativity
oz93666 wrote: But to get back to this thread it might be interesting if I take the position of defending Einstein, and say this formula has been proved in the bubble chamber, and invite others to attack this position....
OK, what's the proof?
CharlesChandler
Re: Realativity
D_Archer wrote: I think Miles clears things up a lot.
In Relativity Demystified, his explanation of Special Relativity is excellent. But I don't understand his explanation of General Relativity.
Mathis wrote: As Maxwell showed, we can use Newton's equations to write mass in terms of length and time.
He just states this — he doesn't explain it, and then everything past that point is based on it, so that's where I get lost.
JeffreyW
Re: Realativity
oz93666 wrote: Here's my second post in this category, I was thinking it might be better to start again ,as were into too many areas with these old posts ....this is not easy. The difficulty comes from concepts such as gravitational time dilation ,length contraction, and space time ,that conflict with our everyday understanding of the world. This has caused some to turn their back on the whole thing, still others think it's all nonsense and don't believe it. Perhaps the best approach is to deal with the predictions this theory makes and examine the experiments which, we are told we, verify these predictions. E= M C2.... this is the famous equation that shows that energy and mass are interchangeable. That one kg equals exactly one joule..... but multiplied by the speed of light !......twice!!! that's a lot of joules ... 9 x 10*16.....now why the constant of equivalence should be the speed of light squared is a great mystery to me. Why the speed of light determines this relationship between energy and mater I can't imagine. when we consider the the other important constants ,gravitational constant G 6.67384×10−11 ,Plancks constant 6.62606957(29)×10−34 or phi 3.1414..... they appear to be just a jumble of numbers picked out of a hat , why is the E/M constant C2 ? there is a great mystery there I think. But to get back to this thread it might be interesting if I take the position of defending Einstein, and say this formula has been proved in the bubble chamber, and invite others to attack this position....
From my experience it was not the relativity theory of Einstein that bothers me, its the thinking that since you went to school and studied "relativity theory" and that you somehow understand it, that does. I think the human thinking mind functions solely on what makes sense, and that this is natural. If something does not make sense its either one of two things:
1. It is nonsense. 2. You have not completely understood the concepts being referred to for various reasons. (usually ideas that you consider to be true but are actually bogus that are getting in the way).
I have found quite shockingly that establishment physicists use #2 ONLY in science forums when arguing against others. Their ideas could NEVER be nonsense! I think nature is more like a multiple choice question, either you know the answer or you don't. There's no amount of school that's going to force the answer upon you, so what happens is that we have these individuals going to school to "learn" relativity when they have no business at all studying that subject matter. Ironically, its the physicists themselves that don't understand relativity, because as far as I can tell it has absolutely NOTHING to do with gravitation or mass-energy equivalence.
All relativity states is that when light travels, it appears to take time to get to its destination. Thus if you are riding the light beam, distances that appear very far away such as 4 light years of distance, collapse into 0 light years of distance, and zero light years of distance means exactly that, no distance! That's it! Einstein wondered what it would be like riding a beam of light! Here's a quick multiple choice to show what I mean:
1. How much faster is 99.9% the speed of light versus 99% the speed of light?
a. .9% faster b. 9% faster c. 1000% faster (10 times as fast) d. twice as fast e. none of the above
2. How much faster is 99.99999% the speed of light versus 99% the speed of light?
a. 200 times faster b. 100 times faster c. 10,000 times faster d. 100,000 times faster e. none of the above
Everything else was tacked on by those obsessed with making a simple thing too complicated! It was such a simple insight, that everybody wanted their say in what it meant and wanted fame and to be the next Einstein. So they started making crap up all over the place, with space bending, worm holes, black matter, etc. To boot they claim that relativity supports all of it! NOT TRUE.
If you know the answer to the question then you will realize super-luminal velocities are unnecessary! As you approach light speed the velocity increases exponentially based on your frame of reference, thus things getting shorter/longer or time slowing/stopping is an appearance, not reality! The stars in front will blueshift like a mofo, and the stars behind you will disappear into the radio frequencies. Thus in future navigation systems it will be necessary to adjust the coordinates in reference to the velocity you are travelling, because solid rock like worlds will appear to be gamma ray sources as you travel towards them!
D_Archer
Re: Realativity
CharlesChandler wrote:
Mathis wrote: As Maxwell showed, we can use Newton's equations to write mass in terms of length and time.
He just states this — he doesn't explain it, and then everything past that point is based on it, so that's where I get lost.
mass is not a physical entity but a derivation, Miles simply uses length (space) and time for better accuracy in the math, because both can be measured. We could even build a ST (space time) approach to build standard calculating methods to replace the current SI system > see Xavier Borg > http://blazelabs.com/f-u-suconv.asp
Mass from the table > Mass m = T3 S-3 ( it did not copy the exponents, 3 and -3 are.)
Regards, Daniel
CharlesChandler
Re: Realativity
JeffreyW wrote: All relativity states is that when light travels, it appears to take time to get to its destination. [...] Everything else was tacked on by those obsessed with making a simple thing too complicated!
I totally agree. It's deliberate obfuscation. Study Zeno. Study Zen Buddhism. Go out on the streets and watch a confidence man at work. It's all the same — it's BS (i.e., Bad Science).
Now, it is certainly true that things in the microscopic world don't necessarily have to obey the same laws as the macroscopic world, in which case they wouldn't be intuitively accessible. So just because something doesn't make sense doesn't mean that it isn't true. But Good Science requires that all known factors be ruled out, before concluding that some strange new thing has been discovered. And so far, I haven't seen any proof of GR that does this. As a matter of fact, it seems that scientists have made a paradigm out of jumping to the conclusion that something strange is going on, and it will take some very strange ideas to describe it. I find scientists like that to be simply strange. And in no sense is the preference for strange to be considered Good Science. So I'm of the opinion that strange scientists are really nothing but professional BS artists.
D_Archer wrote: mass is not a physical entity but a derivation, Miles simply uses length (space) and time for better accuracy in the math, because both can be measured.
I know of large objects with small masses, and small objects with large masses. So mass being dependent on volume isn't true. And I have yet to see any disproof of the conservation of mass, no matter how much time passes. The masses are directly measurable, by their inertial and gravitational forces. So Mathis has a construct that makes anomalies out of all of the observations. No worries — he can fix what he broke by redefining G. But if his construct is less intuitive, and more complicated, and doesn't predict anything that could not be predicted by a simpler construct, he has nothing. So this too is Bad Science (BS).
Michael V
Re: Realativity
JeffreyW,
JeffreyW wrote: If you know the answer to the question then you will realize super-luminal velocities are unnecessary! As you approach light speed the velocity increases exponentially based on your frame of reference, thus things getting shorter/longer or time slowing/stopping is an appearance, not reality! The stars in front will blueshift like a mofo, and the stars behind you will disappear into the radio frequencies. Thus in future navigation systems it will be necessary to adjust the coordinates in reference to the velocity you are travelling, because solid rock like worlds will appear to be gamma ray sources as you travel towards them!
I am curious, what would you say is the fastest atoms have been observed to travel?. Not electrons, not protons, not nuclei, atoms!!. What is the fastest that an atom has ever been observed to travel at?. Perhaps you can also say, what is the fastest that a molecular structure has been observed to travel at?.
I'd like to open those questions to anyone and everyone who might have an opinion.
Michael
oz93666
Re: Realativity
Michael V wrote: what is the fastest that a molecular structure has been observed to travel at?.
I think we have to go to space for this, comets fly in ,since their tail contains molecules which come from the comet ,you could say the comet is a molecular structure.
How much faster is 99.9% the speed of light versus 99% the speed of light?
well.....99.9x 3= 2997 99x3=2970 therefore 2997- 2970= 2,7 Mm/sec so the answer is........99.9%c is two point seven million meters per second faster than 99%c
Michael V
Re: Relativity
oz93666,
oz93666 wrote: I think we have to go to space for this...
Yes, I think that might be a good place to look
Solar comets? Well google says ISON would have reached 845,000mph = 1,352,000km/h = 375.6km/s = 0.13%c
I found mention of a star orbiting a "black hole" at 2million km/h = 555.6km/s = 0.19%c
Anyone care to beat that?. How about supernova ejections, galactic jets and whatnot?
Where are the fastest atoms in the universe?, and how fast are they travelling?
Michael
CharlesChandler
Re: Relativity
Michael V wrote: How about supernova ejections, galactic jets and whatnot?
SS 433, which is classified as a microquasar, has a well-observed jet with a velocity of 0.23 c, according to Wikipedia.
oz93666
Re: Relativity
CharlesChandler wrote: How about supernova ejections... galactic jets ... microquasar,....
not sure if these are atoms,rather than plasmas....probably not molecules, that's why I went with a comet....but why was this question asked?
Anyway, my defense of relativity lies on the tracks left in bubble chambers . For example high speed protons from an accelerator, known to be traveling at less than light speed ,enter the chamber one by one ,can be tracked one at a time , when they collide with a hydrogen nucleus the momentum of the incoming particle can be calculated from the tracks left by the debris after the collision , and this shows that the mass of the proton was many times it's rest mass, showing the energy pumped in to the proton by the accelerator increased its mass.
CharlesChandler
Re: Relativity
oz93666 wrote: Anyway, my defense of relativity lies on the tracks left in bubble chambers . For example high speed protons from an accelerator, known to be traveling at less than light speed ,enter the chamber one by one ,can be tracked one at a time , when they collide with a hydrogen nucleus the momentum of the incoming particle can be calculated from the tracks left by the debris after the collision , and this shows that the mass of the proton was many times it's rest mass, showing the energy pumped in to the proton by the accelerator increased its mass.
I'm questioning this. Specifically, how is the energy released on collision measured?
Perhaps we should call it the faith community...
But I no longer take anything from the mainstream on faith.
oz93666 wrote:If a photon had mass, then you'd be right — the gravity field would exert a force on it, slowing it down. If the speed of light is constant, then (somehow) the force acts on the frequency instead of the transmission speed. (I never quite understood that. Anyway...) But if a photon does not have mass, none of that is true.
