quote:Physics now, however, is buried so deep in layers that are totally removed from our everyday experiences, that we can only really think about them in terms of the math, and only become familar with them by working the math over and over
IMO this is only because one ''lie'' (or misunderstanding/inaccuracy/false premise) compounds itself into a convoluted mess. In physics terms one only has to think of a time when everyone thought of the false premise that all the heavenly bodies rotated around the earth. A wrong initial premise which resulted in very complicated convoluted explainationes for the orbits of mars and mar''s moons around the earth. e.g. mar''s moon didn''t rotate around mars in a simple orbit, but rotated around the earth in a very complicated fashion.
IMO there is a fundamental false premise (somewhere between Newton and Einstein) that has meant that the resulting physics is over-complicated and essentially a red herring.
In everyday terms one only has to see an episode of Frasier to see how a small lie can compound into something far more complicated.
quote:Physics now, however, is buried so deep in layers that are totally removed from our everyday experiences, that we can only really think about them in terms of the math, and only become familar with them by working the math over and over
IMO this is only because one ''lie'' (or misunderstanding/inaccuracy/false premise) compounds itself into a convoluted mess. In physics terms one only has to think of a time when everyone thought of the false premise that all the heavenly bodies rotated around the earth. A wrong initial premise which resulted in very complicated convoluted explainationes for the orbits of mars and mar''s moons around the earth. e.g. mar''s moon didn''t rotate around mars in a simple orbit, but rotated around the earth in a very complicated fashion.
IMO there is a fundamental false premise (somewhere between Newton and Einstein) that has meant that the resulting physics is over-complicated and essentially a red herring.
In everyday terms one only has to see an episode of Frasier to see how a small lie can compound into something far more complicated.
classical theory, especially special relativity, is very elegant and flows very naturally from a few basic suppositions. if you study physics more, general relativity and even QM become quite elegant. just because it is not commonly known or understood does not make something false...ask an average person on the street to explain newtonian mechanics; they won''t be able to. its not a failing of the theory or the person...you just have to be interested enough to study it a bit.
making specious arguments using hypothetical specious theories does not make a good rebuttal to a rather rigorous branch of science.
"specious" OK, after referring to my dictionary I now know what the word 'specious' means ('plausible but wrong'). Thanks Justo, its always useful to learn a new word.
Whilst browsing the dictionary, I also looked up 'elegant' and read 'ingeniously simple'. Are Einstein's theories and string theories ingeniously simple? In the 1920's it was said that there were only three people who truly understood Einstein's theories, so I certainly wouldn't describe them as ingeniously simple. Granted there are a lot more people today who are familiar with the theory, personally I vaguely understand what he's getting at I just don't believe everything he says, and I don't believe that the experimental evidence completely proves the theories.
I think that the word 'elegant' is often misused in this field. In many cases when I hear people say 'elegant' I don't think 'ingeniously simple' but rather one of the following terms: 1. 'clever' maths that 'clever' mathematicians understand 2. elitist, i.e. if you can understand this complicated theory then you can join a special club, a bit like Mensa 3. complicated
I had to laugh when watching Brian Greene's Elegant Universe, I thought it ridiculous that the word elegant could be used to describe theories involving 10-20 dimensions, complex maths, and infinitely large branes!
"general relativity and even QM become quite elegant" In isolation perhaps, but if these theories were really elegant they would not contradict each other, there wouldn't be one rule for the large (relativity) and another rule for the small (QM Quantum Mechanics), and scientist wouldn't still be searching for a single theory of everything. I'm not really having a go at QM, if a good single theory is ever discovered I would put my money on it saying that QM was mostly right and relativity was mostly wrong.
"does not make a good rebuttal to a rather rigorous branch of science" Sorry. I'm not trying to preach, convert, or change the scientific establishment, I'm just expressing my humble opinion, giving my 2 cents worth.
[edited by - abstractworlds on June 4, 2004 7:02:58 AM]
Physics is removed from everyday experience because everyday experience is KNOWN. Relativity has to do with speed near light speed, something that''s not common. Quantum Mechanics has to do with things so small they could never be seen by the eye. It makes sense that these things are not the same as the little macroscopic and slow bubble that we live in.
The elegance part is when you look at equations for something like Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD, quarks and gluons and such) and changing them in anyway seems like it causes a clatycism (spelled wrong) to occur: the physics just doesn''t work anymore.
It''s elegant, because there''re no way the equation could be wrong. (roughly speaking, since there is technically a way any of the theories could be wrong. But it''s either ALL wrong or ALL right, and it describes too much of our world to be all wrong.)
The problem is, even these specific equations like QCD only apply to one specfic part of the way the world works. QCD doesn''t have magnetism in it. you need QED for that. and quantum gravity is a mystery. This is the "only" remainining inelegance, which string theory seeks to solve.
This doesn''t mean QCD is wrong, btw, it jsut means that it is a reduced form of a more complicated equation that describes all forces. Which is slightly scary because we can barely work with QCD as it is now it''s so complicated. (its so hard to do something simple like calculate the mass of a proton that nobody has done it yet, to my knowledge)
quote:Original post by abstractworlds I''m not really having a go at QM, if a good single theory is ever discovered I would put my money on it saying that QM was mostly right and relativity was mostly wrong.
Both will be right, for both explain way to much for either of them to be anything more than VERY slightly "wrong".
I put "wrong" in quotes because it very well may be that we do, in fact, have them completely right, except that nobody has managed to integrate ewach of them together, yet. String theory helps, but calculations are hard, the mathematics is brand new, and simple things like calculating the mass of a proton are impossible without knowing what calabi-yau manifold our universe curls those extra 6 dimensions into.
I''m surprised that you put QM as more trustworthy than relativity. Relativity is very well tested. It even makes sense conceptually, you jsut haven''t heard the right explanation, apparently.
Time is a human concept used to explain movement, aging, and the like. It''s mostly based on observation, and it''s completely and wholly arbitrary (and, in most cases, defined by itself, which is a logic error that even the most inept students understand halfway through elementary school!)
The universe has no beginning and no end (well, the "material" universe has a beginning and an end, as in the big bang--or cycles thereof), but existance in and of itself does not. Existance has always existed, and always will, no matter what the contents of it happen to be.
Because time is a human concept, it''s only as convoluted as a particular human chooses to explain it.
As far as "dimensions" go -- everything is a "dimension" (of existance). Position has 3 dimensions (height, width, depth). you''ve also got color, which has practically unlimited dimensions (due to the fact that it''s just a reflection of light waves, but only 3 real ranges are visible to the human eye (Red Green Blue, or RGBCYM if you want to get technical)). then we have time, of course, which i''ve already covered.
Generally, it makes more sense to talk about "dimensions" strictly in the position / spatial sense, but, again, it''s all arbitrary and relative to the way that human beings explain their surroundings.
The egyptians (and many other ancient cultures) believed heavily in the "3rd eye" which let humans see things in an ethereal dimension where different properties of objects could be "seen" (radiation, heat, etc.) There''s some scientific evidence suggesting that human beings may have evolved from a species that had these "3rd eyes" instead of the traditional eyes that we have (which would have come in very useful in a world such as what likely existed during the first few million years of this planet''s existance).
Just remember that theories are just that - theories. The only basis that human beings have to explain things that we observe is by referencing our past experiences. We could be completely and totally wrong about about everything we think we know right now.
Science isn''t an exact science ;-).
---------------------------Hello, and Welcome to some arbitrary temporal location in the space-time continuum.
It seems that people assume that things get infinitely more complex than our understanding, but maybe certain questions, such as "why does existence exist" aren't really even valid questions to be asking. We might not be able to come up with an answer to some of these types of questions no matter how much we know, not because the 'real, deeper meaning' is hidden from us, but because it is an invalid, unanswerable question.
I dunno I will shut up.
EDIT: I like pizza.
[edited by - shadow12345 on June 4, 2004 9:29:46 PM]
Why don't alcoholics make good calculus teachers?Because they don't know their limits!Oh come on, Newton wasn't THAT smart...
How do you propose to measure the round-trip latency of the phone signal used when synchronizing the clocks without already having a synchronized basis for time?
Since I''m sending the phone signal through a fibre optic channel in an approximately constant gravitational potential, then I can make some reasonable assumptions about the latency times for signals to reach the receiver... furthermore, I can actually build this into an automated synchronisation system that tells the receiver ahead of time to synchronise, so that synchronisation occurs ''together'', with some small error based on the previous assumptions and the expected latency variance.
Either that or I could just posit telepathy in a hypothetical universe and ask that the experiment be conducted there!
Cheers,
Timkin
(Sorry for dredging this up... I''ve been off sick and haven''t read this forum for a little while).
