Re: Einstein's Mistakes



Joe Fischer wrote:

On Tue, RP <no_mail_no_spam@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Joe Fischer wrote:

On Sun, RP <no_mail_no_spam@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

shuba wrote:

A recent (November) article by Steven Weinberg:
http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-58/iss-11/p31.html


RP wrote:

There is a huge fumble within this article. 

        I don't think so, in my opinion he is one of the
better relativists, many other very talented people
have wrong opinions about space and inertia,
similar to yours.

What about that pail of spinning water? 


         That is Mach's line.


Set a disk rotating in an otherwise empty universe. What would it be rotating wrt to? 


         Itself.     Rotation is an acceleration, and the
acceleration of atoms changes the orbit of electrons,
resulting in a change in energy.



Unless its particles extend fields individually, that don't rotate wrt each other,


"Fields" are not needed, Mach was wrong.


then other particles would have nothing to reference their own motions to within the disk, 


           Except the other particles, and themselves
being accelerated.


and even with these in place the disk could not spin until some of its particles escaped to form an external reference frame.


A reference frame is not needed, just the change
in the "shape" of the electron orbitals being constantly
accelerated provides the index of rotation.


The extension of all of the particles is the medium in which motion takes place, and to which all motion is referenced. 


         Since electrons have mass, that means they have
inertia, a well defined quantity, and a given acceleration
results in a specific amount of energy for interactions.


External objects aren't required for the disk to exist, but to say that they aren't involved in a real situation is ridiculous. 


           To think they can be involved is what is
rediculous, there is no mechanism for them to
be involved.
           If you mean that the presence of matter
alters the spacetime geometry, that doesn't matter,
an object can alter geometry without a field or
particle interaction.


In his hypothetical case of a handful of particles, the other particles are the universe. 


           Physics is far too complicated if forces from
afar are needed, for gravity, or for inertia.


Why would they not behave the same as in the real universe.


They would, but not because of an interaction,
unless it is a contact interaction.
I can argue this because I use a model that does not use long range forces for gravity, or inertia.


They would in fact form a real universe. Yet each and every one of those other particles is interacting with any one of the others, and thus determining the space-time metric that guides their motions. 


          Nothing "governs" their motions, consider it
like governments, your concept is like a dictatorship
or socialism, mine is like freedom of the individual.
          The quantum nature of matter determines how
it will react to accleration, and without contact interaction,
there is no acceleration.


We are at this moment in motion wrt distant Galaxies, and in order to accomplish this motion it is prerequisite that those distant galaxies are extending fields through which we are moving, i.e. that we can move wrt.


Nonsense, there is nothing in physics that says
that except the inertia of Mach, which Einstein discarded
after considerable reflection.


If not, then conservation laws would be out the window. 


          Not really, at least not rational laws, determined
by nature, not by words.


There is an order, and local effects are inseparable in that context from distant events, taking into consideration Minkowski's time offsets.
Richard Perry 


          All that is needed is for matter to be doing
something not recognized as yet, and that could
affect the local geometry without "fields".

          I can't quote the exact words by Einstein,
but I think by 1930 at least, he had discarded Mach.

Joe Fischer

I don't recall issuing support for Mach, at least not for his ideas in general--that was you putting words into my mouth. It was Weinberg's fallacious argument that I was dismissing, not his objections to Mach per se. IOW, his conclusion doesn't follow from his premises -- it was a bad argument.

Neither Weinberg nor Mach are correct in this article. Mach assumed that inertia depended upon the fixed stars, in the sense that not only the effect of inertia itself, but also the magnitude of that inertia, would depend upon the mass and density of the universe in general. But the negation of Mach's argument doesn't automatically equate to the motions of particles being independent of the fixed stars. It isn't the particular magnitude of the inertia of a given mass that is determined by the fixed stars, it is rather the very existence of that inertia itself that depends upon them, and is provided by them. Since it is this point, and this point alone that Weiberg protested, then he was wrong. Though it may have been a premise of Mach's, it was not the entirety of Mach's theory, and it was also a premise of Einstein's that endured post GR. IOW, that premise can be correct and Mach incorrect. This may seem like a subtle difference in interpretations, but it is however quite different than what Mach envisioned, and it is likewise quite different than what Weinberg suggests in the article.

Now let's look at what Weinberg says:

[...] Einstein was also at first confused by an idea he had taken from the philosopher Ernst Mach: that the phenomenon of inertia is caused by distant masses. To keep inertia finite, Einstein in 1917 supposed that the universe must be finite, and so he assumed that its spatial geometry is that of a three-dimensional spherical surface. It was therefore a surprise to him that when test particles are introduced into the empty universe of de Sitter's model, they exhibit all the usual properties of inertia. In general relativity the masses of distant bodies are not the cause of inertia, though they do affect the choice of inertial frames. [...]"

Note how the last sentence doesn't logically follow, as the premise speaks of the magnitude of inertia, whereas the latter speaks only of the existence of inertia itself. The syllogism is broken.

Richard Perry


.

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