Re: New challenge to Einstein from experiment?

From: Creighton Hogg (wchogg_at_hep.wisc.edu)
Date: 02/01/05 

Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 08:41:26 -0600

On 1 Feb 2005, Mike wrote:

>
> Creighton Hogg wrote:
> > On 1 Feb 2005, Mike wrote:
> >
> > > Jack Sarfatti wrote:
> > >
> > > > "A beautiful theory is oft slayed by an ugly fact." T.H.Huxley
> > > >
> > > [snip]
> > >
> > > There can be no motion without reference to some absolute space.
> >
> > This is what you believe. You view it as a philosophic requirement.
> Why
> > is it necessarily true?
>
> I could ask the same about the epistemological principle used by
> Einstein that the laws of physics must have the same form in all
> inertially moving reference frames. Epistemology is a branch of
> philosophy. The issue here is that from an epistemic perspective
> Einstein never showed why that belief of his was justified. I will tell
> you how my belief is justified to seperate myself from the crackpot
> Einstein.
>
> I justify my belief above based on the fact that a uniform speed moving
> body that suddenly strikes a wall produces a given damage that is
> invariant of FoR although its kinetic energy is frame dependent.
> Actually, the fact that KE is frame dependent was what led Leibniz to
> abandon his search for relational dynamics and drove him in a
> metaphysical spiral. Einstein never understood the significance of
> Leibniz's work, only cared to confirm Newton at the weak limit.

That doesn't seem to hold much water. The relative kinetic energy of the
two bodies, the projectile and the wall, is the same in all reference
frames. It's the kinetic energy with respect to *you* that varies
according to your reference frame. I don't see how that invalidates
anything related to relativity.
 
> >
> > > Einstein was a crank of major proportions and it was only media
> hype
> > > that brought him status and subsequent forced belief in his
> crackpot
> > > theories.
> >
> > Are you sure it wasn't stuff like the photoelectric effect that got
> him
> > status?
>
> Wrong statement. Ask any person in the street, not even 1% of them
> knows he got the Nobel for the photoelectric effect, most think he got
> it for relativity. Einstein would be remembered like anyone else
> (Dirac, Planck, etc.) if it was not for the greate media hype purpoting
> him as the new mesiah of physics.

You're back-projecting. What the average person on the street thinks
today has nothing to do with what scientists thought in the early 1900's.
Your argument can't explain why Einstein's work was accepted *back
then*.

> >
> > > The assertions about experiments, accelerators, GPS etc. are for
> > > laughs. There is an infinite number of compensatory theories all
> > > producing the same predictions as SR and GR.
> >
> > The same could be said of any theory ever; however, SR does predict
> > correctly for accelerators and such, and so we'll keep using it until
>
> > something better comes along.
> > Your argument only works if one were to claim that SR and GR are the
> last
> > word in physics, that they represent Reality. No one in physics
> claims
> > this.
>
> Straw man argument. Whether they do or don't, that's not what counts.
> If you claim they are corraborated by experimentation, there is at
> least an indirect mapping with reality.
>
> Why should anyone use real experiments to corraborate a theory she
> believes does not correspond to reality? What's the purpose of such
> activity?

We are attempting to model the real world as best we can, but every
working physicist knows that our theories are not the last word and that
there's no way to prove that they exactly correspond to reality.
You can argue that there are an infinite number of theories that can
reproduce the results of SR. That's nice, but all that really matters is
that SR works.

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