[In a thread on... whether or not fact and opinion are the same? wtf?]
I've tried avoiding this debate for it's utter absurdity (the title is an oxymoron) but, it seems most of you share the same opinion of the few topics I bring to this forum, so here I am.
It stands to reason that many scientists have overlooked this question entirely, rather accepting many theories as fact, and basing many more theories upon them, when in reality if one were to be disproven, they would all crumble to the ground, and we'd have to start over from scratch reshaping all of our ideas about anyone school of science. The theory of relativity is one of these, upon which countless ideas about physics and the relation of objects and enerygy within our known world have been created. Einstein reported several times throughout his memoirs that he thought he was wrong about this, and invited people to disprove him...though no one ever really tried. Through the simple processes of logic while observing many things that are obvious about our world and energy in general, we can see what Einstein forgot, or simply left out of his famous energy equation; E=MC^2. Frequency, density, modulation, and countless other aspects of matter and energy have simply been overlooked. To say that accelerating any one mass to the speed of light squared would transform it into energy...is proposturous. It is to assume that the speed of light is the end all velocity of the Universe, the fastest any object could ever travel...ever. Quantum physics challenges this theory on many levels, as does the idea of a fourth dimension, and the existance of a black hole...yet given these flaws apparent in Einsteins theory, we still base most of our ideas concerning physics on that one basic principle.
37 comments
"Frequency, density, modulation, and countless other aspects of matter and energy have simply been overlooked."
It's not a bug, it's a feature. And those were perhaps the worst three example properties of matter & energy to invoke there.
I want to be there when archaeologists dig up the first "proposturous".
Yeah, well go and tell that to the people in Hiroshima.
In other news, the principle of equivalence [the correct name, not "energy equation"] has absolutely NOTHING to do with frequency, density and modulation. Only someone with absolutely no knowledge of relativity would say that. Einstein never said that nothing could travel faster than light. Read up on this stuff before you make yourself look like a tool again.
Ah, fundie science! You just gotta love it.
That said, I think some of Einstein's stuff is way out there. I mean, obviously there's something to his stuff since we now have atomic bombs, but according to his theory of relativity mass becomes infinite once it hits the speed of light and anything going faster than that will travel backwards through time (at least that's how it was explained to me). I admit I'm not an award-winning physicist, but I have trouble buying that.
PhoenixUltima: Yeah, Relativity likely is not the final model there is, as it doesn't really work with quantum mechanics. But like Newton's equations back in his day, it's the best one we currently have.
Are we maybe getting off topic here? Ya, this guys a half-educated dimwit, but I read the whole post this is pulled from, and I don't see anything to indicate that this guy's a fundie.
Maybe he belongs in the "Idiots say the darndest things" section?
So EoD is claiming that he, a webmaster and video game junkie who lists his hobbies as "music and executing people," has successfully trumped not only Einstein, but every single theoretical physicist since Einstein in "disproving" the Theory of Relativity?
Dude, if you could really do that, why aren't you accepting the Nobel Prize for physics? Why aren't you writing treatsies on this and getting it published? Aparently you are in possession of wisdom and knowledge that has been eluding the finest scientific minds on the planet for the last three-quarters of a century!
...or perhaps you should face facts yourself. Don't you think other, more qualified and educated minds than yours have already thought of your concerns and examined them? Do you think that the world's scientific community heard about Einstein's theory and just went, "Well, that's it then," and became certified public accountants so they could do something with their math degree that was, aparently, no longer useful in science?
I fail to see how a "webmaster" is the final authority on quantum physics. My cat has a better understanding of it than this guy.
To say that accelerating any one mass to the speed of light squared would transform it into energy...is proposturous.
That's not what the equation means. Try reading the actual derivation of that equation some time.
It is to assume that the speed of light is the end all velocity of the Universe, the fastest any object could ever travel...ever.
It's not an assumption; it's a fact derived through valid (and remarkably simple) mathematics from observable phenomena. Simply put, the closer something gets to the speed of light, the more space and time are distorted in its inertial frame, causing its momentum to increase - in order to reach the speed of light, a finite mass would require infinite momentum, which can never be given to it by known means.
Einstein ... invited people to disprove him...though no one ever really tried.
He's kidding. Disproving Einstein has been the lifelong hobby of every crank physicist and mathematician with extra time on their hands.
Quantum physics challenges this theory on many levels, as does the idea of a fourth dimension, and the existance of a black hole
News to me. I've heard that things can exceed the speed of light within a non-vacuum medium (the source of the blue glow of Cherenkov radiation seen in nuclear reactors, I think), but not that they can exceed the speed of light in a vacuum. Black holes are black specifically because nothing can exceed the speed of light. Once the escape velocity within the black hole exceeds the speed of light, nothing can escape.
Hadanelith,
I don't think it's been tested, but I believe theory says the effects of gravity travel at c. It's one of the classic problems to show the difference between Newton and Einstein. What would happen to the earth's orbit if the sun just disappeared? Newton says instantaneous effect while Einstein says you have to wait some seven minutes or so while we orbit around a missing sun.
@ John:
If I remember what I've read correctly (and what I read was up to date), with Cherenkov radiation, only the "group velocity" of the particles exceeds the speed of light, but an individual particle's velocity never exceeds the speed of light. ie, you can not use this to send information faster than the speed of light.
PhoenixUltima - It has a lot more to do with how much energy it would take to accelerate something up to the speed of light. Specifically, as speed increases, so does mass, which in turn increases the force needed to produce a given acceleration. Thus, to make something travel at the speed of light, you would have to use all of the energy in the universe, including that contained in the object itself.
Where this gets really weird is when you start dealing with neutrinos. They both have a finite mass (a very low one, at that) and move at c regardless of the medium through which they travel.
This guy isn't a fundie, he just utilized fundie logic there. And looking at the posts, he's not at all like a fundie. When someone told him the truth about some of the stuff in his post he was basically like "Oh, my bad." He seems a nice enough fellow.
If I understood correctly, relativity says you can accelerate anything up to the speed of light. This is slightly different than to say that you can't exceed the speed of light, for the equations can be extrapolated to say that if a particle is already moving faster than c, that particle cannot be decelerated to c, and c is a lower limit for its speed. Of course, I just can recall if particles moving faster than c are just a mathematical abstraction or something able to exist. All that stuff about particles and antiparticles was really weird to me.
If the great personalities of science had never existed ...DIFFERENT scientists would eventually have come to the SAME conclusions. If Darwin hadn't existed, Wallace would have published first. If Einstein had never lived, others would have reached the same inevitable conclusions.
That's how you know it's science, not opinion.
I'm a Sonic fan. I've seen a lot of stupid, stupid comments from fans trying to argue that their opinions are facts. Or trying to misdirect the conversation because they don't have a good answer.
So I think I am fully qualified to say, with meaning, that this is the stupidest, most bizarre response to the question I have ever read.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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