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EINSTEINIANA: SHOCK AND HORROR AGAIN



 
 
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  #1  
Old August 11th 11, 02:16 PM posted to sci.astro,sci.math
Pentcho Valev
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Default EINSTEINIANA: SHOCK AND HORROR AGAIN

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...html?full=true
NEW SCIENTIST: Beyond space-time: Welcome to phase space
"But did Einstein's revolution go far enough? Physicist Lee Smolin at
the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario,
Canada, doesn't think so. He and a trio of colleagues are aiming to
take relativity to a whole new level, and they have space-time in
their sights. They say we need to forget about the home Einstein
invented for us: we live instead in a place called phase space. (...)
One idea is to look at light arriving at the Earth from distant gamma-
ray bursts. If momentum space is curved in a particular way that
mathematicians refer to as "non-metric", then a high-energy photon in
the gamma-ray burst should arrive at our telescope a little later than
a lower-energy photon from the same burst, despite the two being
emitted at the same time. Just that phenomenon has already been seen,
starting with some unusual observations made by a telescope in the
Canary Islands in 2005 (New Scientist, 15 August 2009, p 29). The
effect has since been confirmed by NASA's Fermi gamma-ray space
telescope, which has been collecting light from cosmic explosions
since it launched in 2008. "The Fermi data show that it is an
undeniable experimental fact that there is a correlation between
arrival time and energy - high-energy photons arrive later than low-
energy photons," says Amelino-Camelia. Still, he is not popping the
champagne just yet. It is not clear whether the observed delays are
true signatures of curved momentum space, or whether they are down to
"unknown properties of the explosions themselves", as Amelino-Camelia
puts it. Calculations of gamma-ray bursts idealise the explosions as
instantaneous, but in reality they last for several seconds. While
there is no obvious reason to think so, it is possible that the bursts
occur in such a way that they emit lower-energy photons a second or
two before higher-energy photons, which would account for the observed
delays. In order to disentangle the properties of the explosions from
properties of relative locality, we need a large sample of gamma-ray
bursts taking place at various known distances (arxiv.org/abs/
1103.5626). If the delay is a property of the explosion, its length
will not depend on how far away the burst is from our telescope; if it
is a sign of relative locality, it will. Amelino-Camelia and the rest
of Smolin's team are now anxiously awaiting more data from Fermi."

Previous shocks and horrors:

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/a...ls.php?id=5538
Paul Davies: "Was Einstein wrong? Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 is
the only scientific formula known to just about everyone. The "c" here
stands for the speed of light. It is one of the most fundamental of
the basic constants of physics. Or is it? In recent years a few
maverick scientists have claimed that the speed of light might not be
constant at all. Shock, horror! Does this mean the next Great
Revolution in Science is just around the corner?"

http://discovermagazine.com/2003/apr/cover
"Was Einstein Wrong? What if Einstein was wrong? The day João Magueijo
began to doubt Albert Einstein started inauspiciously. It was a rainy
winter morning in 1995 at Cambridge University, where Magueijo was a
research fellow in theoretical physics. He was tramping across a
sodden soccer field, suffering from a hangover and mumbling to
himself, when out of the gray a heretical idea brought him to a full
stop: What if Einstein was wrong? What if, rather than being forever
constant, the speed of light could change? Magueijo stood there in the
downpour. What would that mean?"

http://www.rense.com/general13/ein.htm
Einstein's Theory Of Relativity Must Be Rewritten
By Jonathan Leake, Science Editor
The Sunday Times - London
"A group of astronomers and cosmologists has warned that the laws
thought to govern the universe, including Albert Einstein's theory of
relativity, must be rewritten. The group, which includes Professor
Stephen Hawking and Sir Martin Rees, the astronomer royal, say such
laws may only work for our universe but not in others that are now
also thought to exist. "It is becoming increasingly likely that the
rules we had thought were fundamental through time and space are
actually just bylaws for our bit of it," said Rees, whose new book,
Our Cosmic Habitat, is published next month. "Creation is emerging as
even stranger than we thought." Among the ideas facing revision is
Einstein's belief that the speed of light must always be the same -
186,000 miles a second in a vacuum. There is growing evidence that
light moved much faster during the early stages of our universe. Rees,
Hawking and others are so concerned at the impact of such ideas that
they recently organised a private conference in Cambridge for more
than 30 leading cosmologists."

http://roychristopher.com/joao-mague...tier-cosmology
"Likewise, Joao Magueijo has radical ideas, but his ideas intend to
turn that Einsteinian dogma on its head. Magueijo is trying to pick
apart one of Einstein's most impenetrable tenets, the constancy of the
speed of light. This idea of a constant speed (about 3×106 meters/
second) is familiar to anyone who is remotely acquainted with modern
physics. It is known as the universal speed limit. Nothing can, has,
or ever will travel faster than light. Magueijo doesn't buy it. His
VSL (Varying Speed of Light) presupposes a speed of light that can be
energy or time-space dependent. Before you declare that he's out of
his mind, understand that this man received his doctorate from
Cambridge, has been a faculty member at Princeton and Cambridge, and
is currently a professor at Imperial College, London."

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...pagewanted=all
"As propounded by Einstein as an audaciously confident young patent
clerk in 1905, relativity declares that the laws of physics, and in
particular the speed of light -- 186,000 miles per second -- are the
same no matter where you are or how fast you are moving. Generations
of students and philosophers have struggled with the paradoxical
consequences of Einstein's deceptively simple notion, which underlies
all of modern physics and technology, wrestling with clocks that speed
up and slow down, yardsticks that contract and expand and bad jokes
using the word ''relative.''......''Perhaps relativity is too
restrictive for what we need in quantum gravity,'' Dr. Magueijo said.
''We need to drop a postulate, perhaps the constancy of the speed of
light.''

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...erse-tick.html
"It is still not clear who is right, says John Norton, a philosopher
based at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Norton is
hesitant to express it, but his instinct - and the consensus in
physics - seems to be that space and time exist on their own. The
trouble with this idea, though, is that it doesn't sit well with
relativity, which describes space-time as a malleable fabric whose
geometry can be changed by the gravity of stars, planets and matter."

http://www.humanamente.eu/PDF/Issue13_Paper_Norton.pdf
John Norton: "It is common to dismiss the passage of time as illusory
since its passage has not been captured within modern physical
theories. I argue that this is a mistake. Other than the awkward fact
that it does not appear in our physics, there is no indication that
the passage of time is an illusion. (...) The passage of time is a
real, objective fact that obtains in the world independently of us.
How, you may wonder, could we think anything else? One possibility is
that we might think that the passage of time is some sort of illusion,
an artifact of the peculiar way that our brains interact with the
world. Indeed that is just what you might think if you have spent a
lot of time reading modern physics. Following from the work of
Einstein, Minkowski and many more, physics has given a wonderfully
powerful conception of space and time. Relativity theory, in its most
perspicacious form, melds space and time together to form a four-
dimensional spacetime. The study of motion in space and all other
processes that unfold in them merely reduce to the study of an odd
sort of geometry that prevails in spacetime. In many ways, time turns
out to be just like space. In this spacetime geometry, there are
differences between space and time. But a difference that somehow
captures the passage of time is not to be found. There is no passage
of time."

Pentcho Valev

  #2  
Old August 11th 11, 04:34 PM posted to sci.astro,sci.math
Pentcho Valev
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Posts: 8,078
Default EINSTEINIANA: SHOCK AND HORROR AGAIN

In fact, Lee Smolin's shock and horror is based on the secret
rejection of "one of the principles of Einstein's special theory of
relativity, the theory that says that the speed of light is a
universal constant":

http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.3/smolin.htm
Lee Smolin: "Special relativity was the result of 10 years of
intellectual struggle, yet Einstein had convinced himself it was wrong
within two years of publishing it."

http://www.fqxi.org/community/articles/display/148
"Many physicists argue that time is an illusion. Lee Smolin begs to
differ. (...) Smolin wishes to hold on to the reality of time. But to
do so, he must overcome a major hurdle: General and special relativity
seem to imply the opposite. In the classical Newtonian view, physics
operated according to the ticking of an invisible universal clock. But
Einstein threw out that master clock when, in his theory of special
relativity, he argued that no two events are truly simultaneous unless
they are causally related. If simultaneity - the notion of "now" - is
relative, the universal clock must be a fiction, and time itself a
proxy for the movement and change of objects in the universe. Time is
literally written out of the equation. Although he has spent much of
his career exploring the facets of a "timeless" universe, Smolin has
become convinced that this is "deeply wrong," he says. He now believes
that time is more than just a useful approximation, that it is as real
as our guts tell us it is - more real, in fact, than space itself. The
notion of a "real and global time" is the starting hypothesis for
Smolin's new work, which he will undertake this year with two graduate
students supported by a $47,500 grant from FQXi."

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/smol...n03_print.html
Lee Smolin: "Now, here is the really interesting part: Some of the
effects predicted by the theory appear to be in conflict with one of
the principles of Einstein's special theory of relativity, the theory
that says that the speed of light is a universal constant. It's the
same for all photons, and it is independent of the motion of the
sender or observer. How is this possible, if that theory is itself
based on the principles of relativity? The principle of the constancy
of the speed of light is part of special relativity, but we quantized
Einstein's general theory of relativity. Because Einstein's special
theory is only a kind of approximation to his general theory, we can
implement the principles of the latter but find modifications to the
former. And this is what seems to be happening!"

Pentcho Valev

  #3  
Old August 11th 11, 04:37 PM posted to sci.astro,sci.math
Androcles[_52_]
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Default EINSTEINIANA: SHOCK AND HORROR AGAIN


"Pentcho Valev" wrote in message
...
| In fact, Lee Smolin's shock and horror is based on the secret
| rejection of "one of the principles of Einstein's special theory of
| relativity, the theory that says that the speed of light is a
| universal constant":
|
| http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.3/smolin.htm
| Lee Smolin: "Special relativity was the result of 10 years of
| intellectual struggle, yet Einstein had convinced himself it was wrong
| within two years of publishing it."

Einstein had no intellect to struggle with, and neither does Smolin.



  #4  
Old August 12th 11, 02:18 PM posted to sci.astro,sci.math
Pentcho Valev
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Posts: 8,078
Default EINSTEINIANA: SHOCK AND HORROR AGAIN

http://www.amazon.com/Faster-Than-Sp.../dp/0738205257
Faster Than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation
Joao Magueijo
p. 250: "Lee [Smolin] and I discussed these paradoxes at great length
for many months, starting in January 2001. We would meet in cafés in
South Kensington or Holland Park to mull over the problem. THE ROOT OF
ALL THE EVIL WAS CLEARLY SPECIAL RELATIVITY. All these paradoxes
resulted from well known effects such as length contraction, time
dilation, or E=mc^2, all basic predictions of special relativity. And
all denied the possibility of establishing a well-defined border,
common to all observers, capable of containing new quantum
gravitational effects. Quantum gravity seemed to lack a dam - its
effects wanted to spill out all over the place; and the underlying
reason was none other than special relativity."

Were they asked if special relativity should be taught at
universities, Joao Magueijo and Lee Smolin would answer: "Of course!
We have always taught it and money comes regularly!"

Pentcho Valev

  #5  
Old August 13th 11, 05:39 PM posted to sci.astro,sci.math
Pentcho Valev
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Posts: 8,078
Default EINSTEINIANA: SHOCK AND HORROR AGAIN

http://www.amazon.com/Trouble-Physic.../dp/0618551050
The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a
Science, and What Comes Next
Lee Smolin
pp. 226-228: "Einstein's special theory of relativity is based on two
postulates: One is the relativity of motion, and the second is the
constancy and universality of the speed of light. Could the first
postulate be true and the other false? If that was not possible,
Einstein would not have had to make two postulates. But I don't think
many people realized until recently that you could have a consistent
theory in which you changed only the second postulate. It turns out
that you can, and working this out has been one of the most exciting
things I've had the good fortune to participate in during my career.
(...) The second postulate of special relativity, which says that the
speed of light is universal, appears to be almost contradictory in
itself. Why? Consider a single photon, tracked by two observers.
Assume that the two observers move with respect to each other. If they
measure the speed of that single photon, we would normally expect them
to get different answers, because this is the way normal objects
behave. If I see a bus pull ahead of me at what looks to me like a
speed of 10 kilometers an hour because I am in a car screaming down
the highway at 140 kilometers per hour, an observer standing on the
side of the road will see the bus moving at 150 km/hour. But if I
observe a photon under the same circumstances, special relativity says
that the roadside observer will measure the photon to have the same
speed that I think it has. So why is this not a contradiction? The key
is that we do not measure speed directly. Speed is a ratio: it is a
certain distance per a certain time. The central realization of
Einstein is that different observers measure a photon to have the same
speed, even if they are moving with respect to each other, because
they measure space and time differently. Their measurements of time
and distance vary from each other in such a way that one speed, that
of light, is universal. But if we can do this for one constant, why
not for another? Could we play the trick for distance as well? That
is, we understand that, generally, observers measure a moving meter
stick to be less than a meter long. This will be true for most
lengths, but can we arrange things so that when we finally get all the
way down to the Planck length, the effect goes away? This means that
if a stick is exactly a Planck-length long, all observers will agree
on its length, even if it is moving. Could we then have two universal
quantities, a speed and a length?"

Lee Smolin, your construal of the theory of relativity as a series of
tricks is quite correct but some additional information is needed. You
have "changed only the second postulate" but do not give the new
formulation. Here is the original one:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/www/ "...light is
always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c which is
independent of the state of motion of the emitting body."

Please formulate your new version just as succinctly as Einstein did.
Needless to say, it would be quite grotesque if your new version does
not change a single word in Einstein's original formulation.

Pentcho Valev

  #6  
Old August 26th 11, 10:49 PM posted to sci.astro,sci.math
Pentcho Valev
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Default EINSTEINIANA: SHOCK AND HORROR AGAIN

Einsteiniana's priests know no limits:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_...an_barbour.pdf
Aspects of Time, Julian Barbour, Warwick, August 24th 2011
Alternative Title: Was Spacetime Glorious Historical Accident?
"Time will not be fused with space but emerge from the timeless shape
dynamics of space. Absolute simultaneity restored!"

Poor believers are deadly tired. They don't sing "Divine Einstein" and
"Yes we all believe in relativity, relativity, relativity" anymore. An
army of desperate Gollums gradually realizing that the Precious is
gone forever:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIYfoeBOhTU
Where once was light
Now darkness falls
Where once was love
Love is no more
..................................
These tears you cry
Have come too late
Take back the lies
The hurt, the blame
And you will weep
When you face the end alone
You are lost
You can never go home
You are lost
You can never go home.

Pentcho Valev

  #7  
Old August 27th 11, 09:44 AM posted to sci.astro,sci.math
Pentcho Valev
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Posts: 8,078
Default EINSTEINIANA: SHOCK AND HORROR AGAIN

Einsteiniana's priests really know no limits:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...ase-space.html
"But did Einstein's revolution go far enough? Physicist Lee Smolin at
the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario,
Canada, doesn't think so. He and a trio of colleagues are aiming to
take relativity to a whole new level, and they have space-time in
their sights. They say we need to forget about the home Einstein
invented for us: we live instead in a place called phase space. (...)
What they discovered is shocking: observers living in a curved
momentum space will no longer agree on measurements made in a unified
space-time. That goes entirely against the grain of Einstein's
relativity. He had shown that while space and time were relative,
space-time was the same for everyone. For observers in a curved
momentum space, however, even space-time is relative. (...) According
to Smolin, relative locality saves the day. Let's say you were patient
enough to wait around while a black hole evaporated, a process that
could take billions of years. Once it had vanished, you could ask what
happened to, say, an elephant that once succumbed to its gravitational
grip. But as you look back to the time at which you thought the
elephant had fallen in, you would find that locations in space-time
had grown so fuzzy and uncertain that there would be no way to tell
whether the elephant actually fell into the black hole or narrowly
missed it. The information-loss paradox dissolves. (...) Smolin and
colleagues' model does not yet include gravity, but once it does,
Majid says, observers will not agree on measurements in momentum space
either. So if both space-time and momentum space are relative, where
does objective reality lie? What is the true fabric of reality?
Smolin's hunch is that we will find ourselves in a place where space-
time and momentum space meet: an eight-dimensional phase space that
represents all possible values of position, time, energy and momentum.
In relativity, what one observer views as space, another views as time
and vice versa, because ultimately they are two sides of a single coin
- a unified space-time. Likewise, in Smolin's picture of quantum
gravity, what one observer sees as space-time another sees as momentum
space..."

Smolin & Company, is there any rationality left in Einsteiniana's
schizophrenic world? If yes, you are right to try to destroy the
remnants but I don't think the answer is "yes". Perhaps, by
superimposing a smaller number of idiocies, you would get the same
prestige and money.

Pentcho Valev

 




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