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Thread: Was Einstein wrong about the equivalence principle? |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 20
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Sgt.Joe
Ace Cruncher USA Joined: Jul 4, 2006 Post Count: 7662 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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See this article also:
----------------------------------------http://www.science.tamu.edu/files/pdf/1112_PHYS_SciAmerArticle_Feb2012.pdf Cheers
Sgt. Joe
*Minnesota Crunchers* |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Personally I think it is safer to say that particle physics is better understood than are supernovae. See for example this dissertation and search for SN1987 -- you will see how few times certain aspects have been observed. Therefore I regard the original article as highly speculative and based on supposition rather than theory.
Of course, such an article is good for profile-raising and, if it did turn out to be true, life-changing for the author of the idea. And if it's not true the chances are that little damage will have been done to personal reputation. Having said all that, I think that neutrino flavour-oscillation is fascinating ... |
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KLiK
Master Cruncher Croatia Joined: Nov 13, 2006 Post Count: 3108 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that photons don't travel in a straight line but as far as neutrinos not being affected by gravity, that's simply wrong. Photons wouldn't be affected by gravity - at least not directly. According to general relativity they are affected by the warping of space-time which happens in the presence of massive objects. But neutrinos do have mass. Photons don't. Their mass is incredibly tiny but since they oscillate between flavors we know for a fact that they have at least some amount of mass. you forget about the "dark mater" which would also influence the photons from their way from SN1987A, some 168.000ly away... and if you calculate that that the photons didn't slow down from speed of light & only swirl - the difference in the way is about 0,03% - which is as much as a turn of 0,5° on a whole 168.000 ly or full 1° on a half way... |
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keithhenry
Ace Cruncher Senile old farts of the world ....uh.....uh..... nevermind Joined: Nov 18, 2004 Post Count: 18665 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I'm just an ordinary yahoo who just happens to enjoy watching the shows on the testosterone channels about cosmology, theoretical physics. biology, geology and the like so the blind men/elephant analogy comes to mind a bit quickly. With both the GR and QM camps having empirical evidence supporting each, rather than one being fundamentally wrong, I suspect in time the next Newton/Einstein will prove them both right with a change in perspective. The blind men will learn that they were all describing and arguing over different parts of the same elephant.
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I'm not sure if this wasn't clear but this isn't an indictment of relativity per se, just the equivalence principle. GR obviously works, at least in the cases where it has been tested. And even the tests of the equivalence principle haven't shown any discrepancy between the two different kinds of mass.
----------------------------------------So any differences that do exist are going to be incredibly small. Bear in mind that for a long time, people believed that neutrinos were massless. It was only once they found that they changed flavor on the fly that they realized that they had to have mass since this would be prohibited for a massless particle. Measuring the rate at which something travels over many light years is a perfect way to test the idea that there really is a difference in the kinds of masses since the effect of the difference is in essence amplified.   |
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KWSN - A Shrubbery
Master Cruncher Joined: Jan 8, 2006 Post Count: 1585 Status: Offline |
As you've probably heard, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
----------------------------------------Peer reviewed journal or not, headlines of this nature are misleading at best and entirely devised to be sensational. Of course Einstein is wrong on the most basic technically correct level. For all intents and purposes, he has never been proven what most people would consider wrong. Theories are refined over time as measurements improve. Was Newton wrong because it's not 2.0, it's 2.000000183?  Distributed computing volunteer since September 27, 2000 |
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Actually yes. It's the "equivalence" principle not the "almost the same" principle. I know very little about GR. I'm much more interested in QM. But I think the possibility that there are differences between inertial and gravitational mass could have have some significant implications for the theory of relativity.
----------------------------------------Plus, if there is in fact a difference, it needs to be explained. That's what happened with the precession of Mercury's perihelion until Einstein's explanation of curved space came along. People spent a couple hundred years looking for other explanations for the discrepancy. They didn't just blow it off. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
what equivalency? Some being concerned over quantum mechanics not jiving with the general theory of relativity, the fermi lab at chicago is now testing if we're living in an holographic illusion, the universe just a hollow sphere where everything is projected off it's inner wall, lol. http://phys.org/news/2014-08-d-hologram-fermilab-nature-universe.html
If so, we just might be a grand experiment ourselves, afterall. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
A follow on article to above, from nothing to nothing, we just might be be nothing http://phys.org/news/2014-08-what-is-nothing.html#nRlv
Is this slipping into the existentialism question? |
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KWSN - A Shrubbery
Master Cruncher Joined: Jan 8, 2006 Post Count: 1585 Status: Offline |
Seems Plato had it right all along. We're simply watching shadows on a cave wall.
----------------------------------------Distributed computing volunteer since September 27, 2000 |
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