Why Do Some People Still Disagree With Special Relativity?

by DT 6 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  DT

  I have to admit that I feel poorly equipped to address this subject. I'm more interested in the feedback of others than in trying to persuade others of my opinions. I should also point out that although this topic is specifically about Special Relativity, much of what is said could also apply to General Relativity.

  Special Relativity has had a profound effect on both science and modern culture. I was a young witness when I first started to learn about relativity. This wasn't exactly encouraged by other witnesses. However, I looked up relativity in the Watchtower index and found a few short articles discussing the basic concepts.

  Most witnesses seemed uninterested in what I was learning and were reluctant to talk about it. Then I ran across my first official skeptic of Special Relativity.

  We made an appointment to discuss it. I prepared my arguments for why I thought it was a valid theory. I considered the possibility that he would make the claim that it somehow contradicted the Bible. In that event, I was prepared to show him the Awake articles that presented relativity in a favorable light.

  Our actual discussion turned out to be a big disappointment. He just said that he didn't think men could figure out and understand things like that. I tried to explain some of the evidence for Special Relativity, but he just didn't have any interest in hearing about it.

  I got the impression that it was a little bit beyond what he could easily understand, so he was happy to discount it as silliness.

  Later, I learned there was an entire subculture of people who disagree with Special Relativity. I became intrigued by the psychology of those who would put a lot of effort into trying to undermine a theory that appears to have strong experimental confirmation.

  I assumed that the critics generally lacked either the imagination or education to properly understand relativity. My own reading of some of their writings confirmed that was sometimes the case. Many of the arguments are hopelessly flawed.

  I could also begin to sympathise with some of their frustration. The scientific community is reluctant to address criticisms of Relativity. Critical papers have a hard time getting reviewed and letters to scientists often don't get a reply. Part of the problem is that scientists don't have the time to respond to sheer number of criticisms, especially since many of them have already been addressed when Relativity was young.

  It still has to be frustrating. It's understandable how some would get the impression that the scientific community is overly defensive or hiding something.

  There is also the factor that physicists have not been able to unify Quantum Mechanics with Relativity. This is a major stumbling block to further progress. It may be necessary to drastically alter our understanding of one or both theories in order to get past this hurdle.

  It seems ironic that the scientific community is trying to avoid debates about Relativity when it might be necessary to question past assumptions in order to keep making progress.

  Advocates of Relativity have also been guilty of overstating the evidence, explaining the theory improperly and making the same kinds of logical errors as their critics.

  You will often hear it said that Special Relativity has been proven experimentally beyond a reasonable doubt. There has indeed been considerable experimental evidence to support certain aspects of Special Relativity. Although the interpretation of the experimental evidence is sometimes disputed, much of it does seem to be consistent with the concepts of time dilation and the constancy of the speed of light.

  The concepts of length contraction and relativity of simultaneity have not yet been verified experimentally. Yet advocates of Relativity will often point to confirmation of one aspect of Relativity as confirming the entire theory, even though there are other theories that are also consistent with the available experimental evidence (such as Edwards' Theory and Lorentz Ether Theory).

  I'm curious to see if others here have thought about or researched these issues. I have seen discussions on these topics turn nasty in other places, so I hope we can keep this discussion civil (but not so civil that this topic gets ignored completely).
• 

  Syme

  "Why do people still disagree with Special Relativity"?

  Why do people still disagree with the theory of Evolution? You see, the average person is not hardwired to have critical (even more, scientific) way of thinking. Relativity puts you in front of facts and gives a theory that contradicts the average person's ''common sense''.

  Similarly, even though evolution stands on a much simpler idea, it is rejected by many due to prejudice. In the Reativity's case, common sense plays the role of prejudice.

  For example: People for years saw the sun go up and down every day. They concluded that the Sun revolves around the earth. That became part of the collective ''common sense'' of most people for millennia.

  People for certuries saw species of animals producing offspring according to their own species. They concluded that species are fixed. Again, that became part of the collective ''common sense'' of (practically every) people for millennia.

  So, now Einstein comes and tells us something which contradicts our inherited common sense. He proves it, thus it is evident that our ''common sense'' is invalid after all. Since it is obsolete, common sense in that case now is as good as prejudice.

  Same principle applies for evolution. It became documented with loads, with TONS, of evidence, but our faulty 'common sense', in addition to religious centuries-old indoctrination, stood again as an obstacle to scientific, accurate learing of the world around us.

  So, as I like to say, ignorance is an option. When you see that your ''common sense'' is contradicted by facts, and yet you continue to hold your position, then you prove that you choose to remain ignorant.
• 

  RottenRiley

  Why is the Black-Shoales and Binomial valautions of derivative pricing obsolete? Few Options trade even close to the two pricing models taught in Finance, my complaints go beyond Fischer Black and Myron Shoals methods, even the advanced "Heath-Jarrow-Morton" blows when it come to capturing a Arb, why are these models worthless now? Whether it was the Black-Shoales method that almost blew up the World Economy is a debate, my argument is that none of these pricing models come near the Assets were are trying to profit by. Can you educated me how to create a better pricing model than HJM for profit when Market Centers are too slow to capture the gains we can make once the High Frequency Manipulators of Price begin to dump these assets, none of them still go near Black-Shoales consistently, a smart guy like you can help me better sharpen my game.

  Using my own method, I bought 27@ 2.07 9:32 est and 73 @ 2.08 Est(100 Contracts of FB FEB 22, 65.50 CALLs, total investment $20800 after commissions. Sell price was $31,900 after commissions), the NYSE Specialist opened up Facebook at $67.05 on the Consolidated Opening Print of 204,779 and the Options began trading unfairly at $1.83 only to zoom to $3.60 Offer per contract. As we speak, Facebook is down to $66.08 because another 185,000,000 shares are going to be offered on to the Market after their aquistion. When I used the Black-Shoales and Binomial theory to put out sell orders, 2 got filled at $3.60 (Binomial said they were worth $4.10, Black Shoales revealed $4.30 as their true value), I sold most of those contracts at around $3.10 average price out because I used a antiquated valuation of synthetic assets, I am happy I dumped them from my Gutt Feelings) because only Thursday and Friday remain of "t-value" and "volitilty" dumps down hard after a giant move, New Life time High" so to be safe, I dumped them when Facebook was flirting with $68.70. Perhaps it might head to $70 after I picked up some June $65 Contracts tomorrow, I don't like paying up heavily but what can I do? I made $1.10 on 100 contracts, if I had followed those time-tested scientific models of valuation, I would have waited forever to get my fills. I discounted heavily the price the CBOE, AMEX and NYSE Market Makers must make and still the price was no place near where pricing models said they should be.

  Why do Finance Schools teach the Black Shoales and Binomial Theories when everyday price action proves they are worthless?
• 

  done4good

  From what I can tell, the physics community does not "disagree" with special, (or general), relativity. Any controvesy within the mainstream community deals more the "fundamental" nature of relativity, (or even quantum mechanics), for that manner. This is what leads to things like string theory. String theory, however, has no falsifiable basis, and therefore does not really costitute a theory in scientific terms, and is likely nullified anyway with the discovery of the Higgs boson. Other ideas have been postulated, (and are all the time), but the idea at least since Heisenburg, has been the standard model of quantum mechanics, alongside general relativity when dealing with very large spacetime components. The infinities that result of combining the two in formulae are simply cancelled out to get them to agree. It is the fact this needs to be done that suggests something more fundamental to our universe, (or multiverse), is responsible for the behaviors we can domonstrate both mathmatically and through experimentation for both relativity and the standard model of QM.

  In summary, physicists generally DO agree there IS something more fundamental than either.
• 

  ThisFellowCheap

  Personally, I think a lot of persons do have problems grappling with the "spacetime" coordinates. They have been acclimatised mentally to the Cartesian coordinates with the time component an the independent variables which the space components depend on. They see time and space as different components and not as a fourvector. And the funny thing about most religious (especially Christian) scientists is, you have to believe in the theory of Special Relativity if you do wish to explain how God knows things ahead of time and other stuff like it. Yet they are hard-bent on not understanding it because to me they seem to think that part is the preserve of "God", at least according to one of my fundamentalist lecturers. I always joke that, since people could hardly think even at pace with a snail, how in the world would you expect them to think at the speed of light which is what is expected to understand the SRT?! Heck, a lot of people still grapple with GRT!
• 

  kepler

  DT,

  This is a challenging writing topic, but I'll give it a try. Not my specialty, but I have had exposure as well...

  When I first scanned your introduction, my knee jerk reaction was to respond and somehow say something in support of relativity theory being a theoretical answer to physical observation. But then when I look more closely at what you said, I don't think that would be necessary. It sounds like you've been examining the subject for yourself and find it plausible enough to defend in argument yourself.

  To others I would say that special relativity arrived on the scene because there was an odd discrepancy in physical observations: No matter what motion was observed in a source of light, arriving light seem to be moving at the same speed. And if the speed always remained the same, then maybe time was not absolute... The physical and geometrical implications are included in college introductory physics courses, but the philosophical implications are left to the student. Special relativity was the camel's nose of this initial observation. General relativity gave us a concept of space and time that made time another dimension which was warped by mass - or as the saying goes:"Space time tells matter how to move, matter tells space-time how to curve." In the space of 10 years from 1905 to 1915 Einstein and some correspondents worked out most of the deep implications of this theory, derived from the initial observations...

  And continually confirmed by subsequent experimental observations ( residual movements in celestial space of Mercury's perihelion, the bending of light in neighborhood of stars about twice what Newtonian theory would predict...) and practical applications (GPS satellite programming includes corrections for relativistic effects).

  Speaking of Newton's theory, celestial mechanics for centuries and present day space navigation have done very well without Einstein, save for:

  - such small discrepancies in the solar system

  - and much larger effects elsewhere in the universe where there are objects where motions often approach light speeds

  - or in the laboratory with particle accelerators

  All these regions depart from newtonian mechanics. But what's more. Newton never had an explanation for why matter attracted other matter. Einstein's GR does. Matter warps the shape of space. And energy has an equivalence to matter ( e= mc^2) - so that means a sphere of energy would alter the path of passing matter as well - just by being intensely "hot".

  And in describing the physical world - all this seems to work.

  That's about where special and general relativity theory stand. Explanation. But as edifices of human thought, they are as excellent as anything ever produced.

  Is there no argument about either in the science community?

  I wouldn't say that. There have been periods of neglect between 1915 and the current day, because GR seemed to be removed from practical application other than an explanation for stellar evolution or making bombs. But there have been controversies within it.

  In recent years my e-mail box has been stuffed with arguments about the nature of GR and the discussions have been heated. One that is easier to characterize than most is the issue of inertia and Mach's contribution to Einstein's thought. Since Einstein explained attraction of bodies there was still the question of where does inertia or centrifugal force come from? If a bar bell with two masses were rotated in space, an inhabitant on one of the ( balanced ) pair would feel accelerations. He might become dizzy as he watched the spin of the fixed stars. Mach attributes this effect to the fixed stars, the entire mass of the universe causing a resistance....

  OK. Now what if there weren't any? You wouldn't be able to tell if you were spinning or not. What if there were fewer or farther away? Would the acceleration be less. There are arguments pro or con or whether the effect is attributable to the total mass ( and energy) at all. But would either answer overthrow GR? Hardly.

  Researching this question I found that Mach was a proponent of positivism. Which is to say that he did not believe in atomistic theory since there was no "observational" evidence for them in the 19th century. So he advised Einstein accordingly. Einstein at first adhered to his general advice, but broke with him later. On the other hand, Thompson in England attributed experimental results to a particle he named the "electron". Kaufman in Germany with better instruments and procedures saw the same phenomena more clearly, but discovered nothing. He was a positivist.

  I gotta go...
• 

  DT

  Thank you for your comments.

  I was thinking about discussing some of the apparent paradoxes of relativity, but then I decided that it might make more sense to discuss each paradox in a different thread to avoid confusion and keep the discussion focused.

  One thing that I have found interesting in my research is that the interpretations of Special Relativity have changed somewhat over time. Yet, there seems to be a reluctance for the scientific community to acknowledge past ideas that have now gone out of fashion. It is easy to fall into the trap of being more concerned with defending an idea than in explaining or building upon it. This can obscure areas where additional research could shed greater light on the subject.

  I suspect that there will be even greater challenges for the theory in the future as new discoveries are made and new attempts are made to reconcile Relativity with other theories. It will be interesting to see how the scientific community and culture in general will react if the conditions become ripe for a new paradigm shift.