Warning: Gravity is "Only a Theory"

[MikeyDB]

But this is the way of things....

We couldn't fly didn't have wings and many more scoffed at the idea than entertained the possibility...

Bad science (pharmacology comes to mind) and science undertaken as business enterprise for the purpose of using and abusing knowledge for profit is part of the human mosaic.

"Religion" while producing some benefits has been a far greater evil in the world than science ever has....

 

[Tonington]

All scientific theories are tested. There is no such thing as a scientific theory that is untested. You can have an untested hypothesis, but not a theory. Here's the OP from a thread I started last week:

On this forum, and some others I visit, there has been some confusion over the hierarchy of the scientific terminology, and how they differ from common usage of the words.

Not all lay people are confused by this system, but some are. Things like "just a theory" are used in the common usage to mean a speculation. But when dealing with the scientific usage of the term, theory takes on a whole different meaning. So let's examine what a hypothesis, theory and law really are in the sciences.

Hypothesis

A hypothesis is like an educated guess. Based on observations, a statement is proposed that seeks to explain phenomena that have not yet been demonstrated. A hypothesis must be testable, it must be falsifiable. A hypothesis may be demonstrated to be true by experiments and observations from those experiments, but at a later date shown to be false through further examination and experimentation. As data and observations accumulate, a hypothesis may fall be the way side, or become a theory.

Theory

When a hypothesis has advanced into a theory, it is because there is considerable evidence supporting that explanation, by different researchers, multiple times. A theory is also characterized by related observations, which can come from many different disciplines. What this means is no one scientist can create a theory. They can create a hypothesis, and their hypothesis may become theory if many independent researchers can replicate those results. The ultimate test of a theory is predictive power.

Law

A law is similar to a theory in that both are generally accepted as being true in the scientific community. The differences are that a theory can be more complex, with multiple lines of data from different fields, while a law is a simple expression of a single action. A law is like a mathematical postulation in that respect. To be a law certain conditions need to be met: absolute, simple, true and universal. That is, it must be unaffected by anything in the universe, expressed as a simple mathematical equation, have never been contradicted by repeated observations, and applied everywhere across the universe.


So, in common usage, a theory is much more like a scientific hypothesis, more so than it is like a scientific theory. Theories in science are only developed by the scientific method. Simple musings don't make a theory. "Just a theory", well I guess a degree people hang on their office walls is "just a piece of paper."

Now, of course theories can be overturned. That's how one gains notoriety, and in all probability will get the scientist a Nobel and a host of other prizes. That said, it's incredibly rare. That's because theories have such a large body of evidence, from multiple streams.

 

[MikeyDB]

Einstein Podolsky Rosen... quantum mechanics....

Theory of Relativity ....speed of light as maximum...

If a proton can be simultaneously effected across space-time....isn't the Theory of Relativity flawed in terms of the speed of light as the maximum..?

For event to occur simultaneously at B when event occurs at A.....

Any thoughts?

 

[Niflmir]

I come here to waste time, so don't worry at all about my ego, I left it in my camera case. Or was it my gym bag?

To elucidate the distinction between incomplete and wrong, and to show that it is more than mere semantics, consider a simple question: Where does Niflmir live?

If you said Berlin, you would be correct but you wouldn't be able to find me. In that sense it is incomplete, but it is as correct as I want you to know the answer. Saying I am in Vancouver is simply wrong. If you said that Berlin is wrong, than the question is, well which city is it?

Technically (and somewhat loosely) the mathematics of calculus, more generally called analysis, is a tool by which you give me an epsilon (a desired precision) and I give you a delta-neighbourhood of parameter space about which we can get the answer to within that epsilon.

What epsilon do you want?

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Einstein Podolsky Rosen... quantum mechanics....

Theory of Relativity ....speed of light as maximum...

If a proton can be simultaneously effected across space-time....isn't the Theory of Relativity flawed in terms of the speed of light as the maximum..?

For event to occur simultaneously at B when event occurs at A.....

Any thoughts?

Relativity says only that no material object can get to light speed and no useful information can be transmitted at greater than light speed. The quantum entanglement effect you're talking about with the proton, or any other quantum particle, can't be used to send messages. Simultaneity is another of those relative things that depend on your state of motion with respect to the events you perceive to be simultaneous. In general, another observer in a different state of motion will not see them as simultaneous. Actually I think the idea you want in your question is instantaneous, not simultaneous.

Try this little thought experiment. There's a shed 8 feet long in front of you with a door at each end. Superman is running towards it carrying a pole horizontally that you measured to be 12 feet long before you handed it to him. He's running fast enough that the pole appears to be less than 8 feet long from your point of view. So does the pole fit in the shed or not?

 

[Niflmir]

The theory of gravity bothers me, not because it can't predict its attributes and influence, but since it provides no explanation of how or why.

The theory of general relativity changed the way that gravity is described. It answers the question of how: via the curvature of space, and the question of why: scalar curvature of spacetime is an energy that nature tries to extremize. For these reasons many mathematically inclined people love the theory. Anyways, to give you the sort of accuracy that any theory you provide will have to reproduce (not replace), I present the atomic clock gravitational redshift bias correction. Down in section 3.2.4., that is a 10^(-16) accuracy of timing.

As for the constancy of the speed of light, people seem to think that this guy Albert came along and said: the speed of light is constant, and behold special relativity; but that is not the way it happened. James Clerk Maxwell wrote down the equations that governed electricity and magnetism in the middle 1800's, in fact he just collected them and fixed one of them. People were able to rewrite these equations in such a way that it formed a wave equation with a constant speed. This puzzled people and so they posited the aether, through which the speed was constant, this was just to save what they intuitively believed nature should be. In 1901 I believe, Lorentz and Poincare showed that the universe as governed by electricity and magnetism is Lorentz invariant, the speed of light will always be the same to all observers. Then 4 years later Einstein said the same thing.

In order to argue that the speed of light is not constant, you need to find a better way to describe what goes on in your television. It just so happens that Electricity and Magnetism together with its quantum theory, is the theory we have with the most stringent accuracy bounds, and somehow any new theory has to reproduce all of the known results to an insane accuracy.

 

[MikeyDB]

Quantum teleportation technique improvedScientists at the Australian National University say they have successfully 'teleported' a laser beam encoded with data, breaking it up and reconstructing an exact replica about one metre away. Their work replicates a similar experiment in the US in 1998, but the Australian team believes their technique is more reliable and consistent.

The teleportation technique makes use of quantum entanglement. When particles are fundamentally linked in this way, performing an operation on one will have the same effect on the other, even if they are physically separated. At this stage, the technique can only teleport light by destroying the light beam and creating an exact copy at the receiving end from light particles known as photons.

The scientists said their technique's main use will be as a way to encrypt information and for a new generation of super-fast computers. But they believe it could soon be used for teleporting matter.Space.com / AP / New Scientist Jun 18, 2002


In fact, studies of this kind have been going on for years in Finland, California and several other places in the world.

"Simultaneous" was the word used by scientists in Finland years ago who used a proton in their experiment. By changing one dectctable and verifiable characteristic of a proton and then detecting the exact change some distance away at the same time....

I'm not interested in arguing, I'm simply pointing out that a theory is useful so long as it remains a reliable predictor of state or dynamic, after it can be demonstrated that this is not the case, the theory must be revised.

 

[Niflmir]

I actually think it is kind of amusing that Einstein was part of the people responsible for the EPR paradox, I wonder if Lorentz or Poincare would have made the same mistake. If two events are seperated by a timelike curve, than there is no faster than light travel in that situation and there is no EPR paradox. So the measurements must be seperated by a spacelike curve for their to be any paradox, but the reason this is a paradox is because people cling to the classical notion of simultaneity, or more generally chronological ordering: one is unable to state which event occured first if they are seperated by a spacelike curve.

In the quantum teleportation arrangement, classical information must be transmitted to the other particle after the first measurement is made. Because classical information travels along timelike curves, there is no EPR paradox in this experiment. When the information arrives, it is used to perform a unitary transformation on the particle, putting it into a known state without measuring it. The problem is to keep the second particle from decohering while you wait for the classical information to show up, which is why they talk about being more reliable. Just thought you might be interested.