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wisp
United Kingdom
70 Posts |
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Larry Burford
USA
1355 Posts |
 Posted - 08 Mar 2005 : 11:34:35
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A corollary to the EP says -
If there is enough distance between the walls of your room for you to be able to tell the difference, then your experiment is invalid - you must move the walls closer. Once you have moved the walls close enough that your instruments can no longer detect a difference, the exiperiment becomes valid again.
LB
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Larry Burford
USA
1355 Posts |
Posted - 08 Mar 2005 : 11:36:03
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(I'm not kidding, but I have reworded it a bit)
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Jim
1607 Posts |
Posted - 08 Mar 2005 : 11:51:48
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| Wisp, Case 1 seems clear to me but I'm confused as to why Case 2 would be as you say? Why would the light fall more than the room if they are both falling at the same rate? |
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Larry Burford
USA
1355 Posts |
Posted - 08 Mar 2005 : 14:25:37
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Wisp,
This "corollary" to the EP may make all experimental refutations of the EP invalid, but that's not the whole story. The EP is about a special case that can be approximated but not achieved in reality.
In the real world there are a number of experiments (possibly yours as well) that can be used to measure the difference between a real gravitational force field and real rocket powered acceleration.
LB
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wisp
United Kingdom
70 Posts |
Posted - 09 Mar 2005 : 08:02:42
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Jim
In case 2 the rocket is stationary on the earth and so the bending of light is due to gravity pulling it down. The room is not in freefall.
Does light get bent by gravity's pull only, or does it bend doubly due to refraction?
wisp
- particles of nothingness |
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wisp
United Kingdom
70 Posts |
Posted - 09 Mar 2005 : 08:09:27
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quote:
Originally posted by Larry Burford
Wisp,
This "corollary" to the EP may make all experimental refutations of the EP invalid, but that's not the whole story. The EP is about a special case that can be approximated but not achieved in reality.
In the real world there are a number of experiments (possibly yours as well) that can be used to measure the difference between a real gravitational force field and real rocket powered acceleration.
LB
I know that the curvature of the earth causes falling objects to move closer as they fall, and so the gravity field is not ideal. But in this case if we modelled the earth as infinitely flat so its gravity field was uniformly straight, would light still bend doubly and violate the EP?
wisp
- particles of nothingness |
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Larry Burford
USA
1355 Posts |
Posted - 09 Mar 2005 : 16:17:25
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Wisp,
No.
This is where the "corollary" kicks in.
The "equivalence" in the EP occurrs in the limit as the volume of your experiment approaches zero. So it is a conceptual equivalence, not a real-world equivalence. If the volume of your experiment is large enough for your instruments to detect a difference then your experiment is in violation of the rules and you MUST reduce the volume of your experiment.
Makes you wonder what all the fuss is about, doesn't it?
LB |
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Larry Burford
USA
1355 Posts |
Posted - 09 Mar 2005 : 16:18:45
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SR has a similar conceptual vs real aspect. The speed of light is not measured to be constant (in SR). Rather, it is postulated to be constant. That means that SR's rules for syncing clocks, which might then be used in a speed-of-light measurement, guarantee that the speed you measure for light will be ... light speed.
Understanding things like this (and I mean really understanding them) is the first step to finding a way to knock them down. (IMO, you can't knock them down by proving they are wrong, because they aren't. Instead you might knock them down by showing that they don't matter. Or perhaps you just recognize that they don't matter and find something else to worry about. Something that does matter in the real world.)
LB |
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Larry Burford
USA
1355 Posts |
Posted - 09 Mar 2005 : 16:21:25
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Things like this are not really hard to understand, but they *are* hard to believe. We often connect the recognition that something can't be real with the belief that this means it must also be wrong.
Once you realize that you can understand something like SR and EP without believing they are real-world phenomena, understanding them becomes much easier. They have some utility in science, but they are also easily misued by those who don't understand them.
LB |
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DAVID
132 Posts |
Posted - 09 Mar 2005 : 21:52:34
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quote:
Originally posted by Larry Burford
Things like this are not really hard to understand, but they *are* hard to believe.
Larry, who do you think invented the flat two-dimensional beings on the curved surface of a sphere that turn up in Chapter 31 of Einstein’s 1916 book?
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Larry Burford
USA
1355 Posts |
Posted - 10 Mar 2005 : 10:50:35
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| It's possible to imagine that he started all of this as a practical joke. But when everyone began taking him seriously he was too embarrassed (for us , not for himself) to say anything ... |
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DAVID
132 Posts |
Posted - 10 Mar 2005 : 13:45:36
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quote:
Originally posted by Larry Burford
It's possible to imagine that he started all of this as a practical joke. But when everyone began taking him seriously he was too embarrassed (for us , not for himself) to say anything ...
Hi Larry, I’ve been researching his early papers for some time, and there is quite an element of fantasy in them. He seems to have woven fantasy ideas in with some reality to come up with a surreal world of make-believe that a lot of people took seriously back then, mainly (it seems) because of the new advent of rather amazing breakthroughs in physics, such as with X-Rays (light that could travel through human skin to reveal a person’s bones) and radio waves (that could send the human voice around the world and penetrate solid walls of stone).
It was clearly H.G. Wells, the si-fi writer, who first published the information about time being the “fourth dimension,” in his 1895 book “The Time Machine”. In 1914 Wells also published a book about how the Germans used modern atomic physics to invent “atomic bombs” which they used against London and Paris in a big world war. Entire cities were destroyed by single bombs, and readers of the book were ready to believe anything any scientist said about new discoveries, no matter how fantastic it might be.
Some people think Einstein got the idea for the “flat beings on the surface of a sphere” (as mentioned in his 1916 book) from the “Flatland” fairy tale, written by Edwin Abbot in 1884, but I’ve finally tracked down the original source of the flat beings, and it was a theoretical mathematician named Arthur Cayley who first spoke about four dimensions of space with little flat 2-dimensional beings living on the curved surface of a sphere. His speech was published in 1883 as a popular magazine article. That was 33 years before Einstein used the idea for his 1916 book. This article was what prompted Abbott to write the satire about “Flatland”.
It amazes me how naive people are to have ever believed the SR theory or the 1916 book, with its flat 2-D creatures. In the GR theory Einstein was trying to claim that the universe was spherical in shape but did not expand or contract, and that light beams traveling from a star would travel throughout the entire universe and curve around and return to their original source. This nonsense was believed by hundreds of physicists until Lemaitre invented the big bang theory in 1927 and Hubble confirmed the expansion of the universe in 1929.
I’ve also learned that it was actually H.A. Lorentz who invented some of the main principles that are now attributed to Einstein, such as length contraction, mass increase, and time dilation. The prediction about light bending as it passed the sun is contained in the 1704 edition of Newton’s Opticks. In fact, Newton suggested in some letters that the universe might be either contracting or expanding, which it would have to be if it was not “infinite” in scope, since the gravity fields would not allow a static universe, unless the universe were rotating or revolving about a center. This information was known in the early 19th Century since his letters were published in book form, and in fact Edgar Allen Poe wrote an essay about the possible expansion or contraction of the universe in 1848. See:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/poe/eureka.html
What Einstein did in his early years, from high school on, was read a lot of 19th Century information and theories about the overall universe and atomic theory and this was where he got many of the ideas that are attributed to him today. There are NO investigative reporters in science today, so there is no one out there trying to find the origin of some of his goofy ideas. I’m retired and I do it as a hobby.
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bdw000
USA
12 Posts |
Posted - 08 Mar 2007 : 14:39:52
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[/quote]
Hi Larry, I’ve been researching his early papers for some time, and there is quite an element of fantasy in them. He seems to have woven fantasy ideas in with some reality to come up with a surreal world of make-believe that a lot of people took seriously back then, mainly (it seems) because of the new advent of rather amazing breakthroughs in physics, such as with X-Rays (light that could travel through human skin to reveal a person’s bones) and radio waves (that could send the human voice around the world and penetrate solid walls of stone) . . . . . .
. . . .What Einstein did in his early years, from high school on, was read a lot of 19th Century information and theories about the overall universe and atomic theory and this was where he got many of the ideas that are attributed to him today. There are NO investigative reporters in science today, so there is no one out there trying to find the origin of some of his goofy ideas. I’m retired and I do it as a hobby.
[/quote]
There is another novel, from 1872, Lumen by Camille Flammarion, a French astronomer, which discusses travel at and beyond the speed of light, the relativity of simultaneity, time, and space, and the use of light speed as a measure of relative space and time.
That paragraph is a paraphrase from the book Albert Einstein the Incorrigible Plagiarist by Bjerknes. Anyone here familiar with the book know of any mistakes in it?
Science knows much, but ignores practically everything. |
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nonneta
38 Posts |
Posted - 10 Mar 2007 : 02:06:42
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bdw000 wrote: "That paragraph is a paraphrase from the book Albert Einstein the Incorrigible Plagiarist by Bjerknes. Anyone here familiar with the book know of any mistakes in it?"
I'm familiar with it (and may I say that I continue to be impressed by your selection of sources in your ernest and unbiased search for truth and knowledge). Mr Bjerknes has produced his Magnum Opus now, and it is accessible at his web site, called jewishracism dot com. Here's a sampling of the chapter titles, just to give you the flavor of his work:
THE MANUFACTURE AND SALE OF SAINT EINSTEIN By Christopher Jon Bjerknes, a 2,825 page treatise on Einstein's plagiarism, Einstein's Zionism, history of Zionism, racism, Judaism, and more.
4.4.1 Einstein Desires a "Race" War Which Will Exterminate the European Esau
4.4.4 The Gentiles Must be Exterminated Lest God Cut Off the Jews
4.4.5 Jewish Dualism and Human Sacrifice — Evil is Good
4.4.6 Gentiles are Destined to Slave for the Jews, Then the Slaves Will be Exterminated
4.5 Einstein the Genocidal Racist
4.7.1.2 Cowardly Einstein Caught in a Lie
5.3.1 Human Sacrifice and the Plan to Discredit Gentile Government—Fulfilled
5.5.6 President Woodrow Wilson Becomes a Zionist Dictator
5.6.2 The Zionists Set the Stage for the Second World War. . . and the Third
5.10 The Holocaust as a Zionist Eugenics Program for the Jewish "Remnant": Zionist Nazis Use Natural and Artificial Selection to Strengthen the Genetic Stock of Jews Destined for Forced Deportation to Palestine
6.5.2 Hypocritical and Cowardly Einstein Plays the "Race Card" and Cripples Scientific Progress
6.5.3 What is Good for Goose is not Good for the Goyim
7.5.3 Zionists and Communists Delight in Massive Human Sacrifices to the Jewish Messianic Cause
7.5.4.2 Einstein a Subtle Hitler Apologist
7.5.6 The Final Solution of the Jewish Question is Zionism, but the Final Solution of the German Question is Extermination
8.7.3.3 Zionists Develop a Strategy Which Culminates in the Nazis and the Holocaust as Means to Attain the "Jewish State"
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bdw000
USA
12 Posts |
Posted - 10 Mar 2007 : 10:42:02
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nonneta:
Thanks for the (very unfortunate) info about Bjerknes. What a sad world we live in.
That does not change the fact that an earlier novel has some of the same topics that showed up in Einstein's writings.
I'm not even claiming that proves anything, or that it is relevant. Just that it might be relevant. I posted that because whoever made the previous post seemed like they might be interested.
Since you are familiar with Bjerknes book, can you point to anything he says that is flat-out wrong? I really do want to know if what this guy, or anyone else, says, is definitely wrong. I would love a "qualified opinion."
Also, please do not confuse me with a serious physicist who is searching for the truth. Sensational headlines are what tend to grab the attention of the general public, of which I am a member. I have seen a sensational headline, and find it interesting. I am looking into it because it is sensational. That does not mean I know, or claim that I know, that it is correct. Or, that I am searching for the truth, the way professional scientists do.
I am not here to push an agenda, since I am not qualified to do so, but to to get people like you to show me how specific ideas are correct or not. |
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Does light bending doubly violate the equivalence
