Obviously this was inspired by the “Relativity” thread. I have heard it said that it has been proven that Einstien’s Theory of Relativity has been proven to be incorrect. Is this so ? If so, how ? His theory was a subject of great study of mine for a long time, I truly wish to know the straight dope about this. Thanks
“A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject.” - Seneca
I haven’t heard of any widely accepted disproof, but if you find one, please run it through http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html first. (And watch #8, please.)
Einstein was no more wrong than Newton was.
That is, they both made great strides in improving what came before them, yet their own discoveries were refined and improved by those who came later.
Remember, you are unique.
Just like everyone else.
I always have had a hard time with his theory of relativity, in that the closer you approach the speed of light, the more time distorts. I read about how it was proven by clocks on the Shuttle, but I still disagreed with it, but not being mathematically inclined, had no way to prove it.
In my own theory, there is a universal time, which affects all of the universe, depending upon ones view. Like if it is 12 am where you are on Earth, then it is 12 am to you and your vicinity. Now, eliminate the newly invented time zones – originally created by the rail roads to make things easier – and whisk yourself instantaneously out to the orbit of Pluto and look back. Technically – it is still 12 for you and that zone of Earth. (Not including any milliseconds or microseconds here) Instead of going to the orbit of Pluto, instantaneously whisk yourself to Andrometer. Again, it is STILL 12 for you and that spot on Earth.
Carry it a step further, and from that spot on Earth, instead of Andrometer, whisk yourself to the ends of the Universe - if any – and look back. Somewhere in there is Earth and it is still 12 there and for yourself and, according to you, 12 for the entire universe.
I’m a big science fiction reader and there aren’t too many of those writers to agree with the theory of relativity either. There is a flaw in it somewhere, but I’m not smart enough to figure it out.
What? Me worry?’
a) It’s Andromeda, no Adrometer.
b) So, despite scientific evidence, you don’t believe in relativity, just because it’s counterintuitive * and science fiction writers don’t use it?! *
c) You don’t know what relativity is, judging by your example.
You have destroyed what little faith I had in the average intelligence of the human race.
–John
Rainbowcsr
I read about how it was proven…but I still disagreed with it
It is clear that reasoned scientific debate is alive and well.
When you suggest that there aren’t too many of those [science fiction] writers to [who?] agree with the theory of relativity, do you mean that they actually do not agree with it, or they find it inconvenient for the purposes of Science Fiction? I can only assume that you are aware of the importance of the word fiction, here and near Andromeda.
Come on, Yue Han, you didn’t have to be mean 
For those of you that disagree with relativity, but can’t really come up with a reason, I suggest you read the FAQ of relativity here…
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/relativity.html
This is the same site which Knappy’s crackpot index is on by the way…
Knappy, I like that crackpot index.
In #17, “10 points for each favorable comparison of yourself to Einstein, or claim that special or general relativity are fundamentally misguided (without good evidence).” You should get extra credit for both comparing yourself to Einstein and claiming relativity is misguided.
It is too clear, and so it is hard to see.
Rainbow, the time dilation effect has been observed on mere airplanes. IIRC a 747 flown around the world so you don’t need a shuttle. In fact an amateur astronomer can observe the effect directly because the orbit of Mercury is not “correct” according to pure Newtonian laws of motion.
As Keeves said Newton wasn’t wrong. He did an excellent job of describing most of what we can observe. Relativity takes it much further but it takes a different understanding of what time, space, matter and energy are.
There is a lot to understand about relativity so it naturally seems counterintuitive if you only look at one part of it.
You should have posted a warning Knappy. I programmed the crackpot index in visual basic and scaned my copy of Velikovsky’s Worlds in Collision into it. The resulting cataclysm flattened cubicle walls in a 20 yard radius.
FWIW I was not kidding about having the book 
Speaking as a science fiction writer, nearly everyone in the field accepts relativity. We invent ways to get around it (warp drive, wormholes, etc.), but the last author who didn’t agree with it was probably Doc Smith (and he probably knew he was cheating; either that, or too many donuts).
“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx
Read “Sundials” in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction. www.sff.net/people/rothman
Your theory has been proven wrong. Leaving aside any ad hominem remarks such as John provided, here is what special relativity says about your ‘time in my vicinity’ theory:
If you have a clock in your house and a clock 5 miles away in your friends house, and they are perfectly synchronized, and you can watch them both (maybe closed-circuit TV) then you can verify that the time is the same in your house and your friends house.
So far so good. Also, if you have a friend on Pluto or in Andromeda who is not moving relative to your position on the earth, and they wait the requisite amount of time for the TV transmission of your clocks to reach them, they’ll agree that the clocks read the same. Let’s leave out the ‘whisk yourself instantaneously’ thing for now.
So far, still so good. Now, what happens if I fly by in my spaceship at nearly the speed of light? I’ll look at your clock and at your friend’s clock and see different times. That’s what relativity says.
This fundamentally disagrees with your idea of a universal time - relativity says that simultanaity is not identical in all inertial reference frames.
We can do the experiment, and we have, and your theory is not supported while Einstein’s is.
Most science fiction writers ignore relativity because it is a difficult subject. Most just invent plot devices to get around it. Heinlein wrote a whole novel around the twin paradox.
Actually, Einstein was wrong for most of his life. None of his ideas about the “grand unification theorem” panned out.
However, he was dead nuts right about quanta, special relativity and general relativity. NO, and I repeat NO experiment has shown it to be wrong. Including ones that set out specifically to prove it wrong. In a true test of it, particle physicists have to take it into account daily in order to correctly interpret cloud chamber results.
Oh, he was also wrong about quantum mechanics, in much the same way that most crackpots don’t accept relativity. He intuited that nature would not be as random as QM indicated it was. “God would not play dice with the universe.”
I think it’s fair to say that Einstein’s relativity theory is known to be lacking as a fundamental explanation of how the universe works. Quantum electrodymanics and relativity disagree in some fundamental areas. QE makes an incredible number of incredibly correct predictions under certain circumstances, and relativity makes an incredible number of incredibly correct predictions under other circcumstances. So the next problem is to come up with a theory which includes them both.
Please don’t confuse the fact that relativity is incomplete with the fact that it is correct under a large number of known circumstances. The theory that supplants relativity will of necessity make the same predictions as relativity in most cases. Relativity has not been proven incorrect, and will not be proven incorrect, in the areas where it is known to apply.
jrf
I’d like to point out that * ad hominem * attacks would be making remarks about Rainbow’s personality or appearance and using those as “evidence” against his theory.
I was insulting, but I didn’t claim that he was wrong because of anything personal about him. It was still rude and uncalled-for. I was tired and his post showed an appalling lack of logic.
I apologize.
–John
That makes all of us wrong for all of our lives, as our ideas about TOEs haven’t panned out either.
That’s still being debated. His objection wasn’t against quantum mechanics, just the “Copenhagen” interpretation of quantum mechanics. His ideas are still leading the charge against the Copenhagen interpretation, and some scientists feel the Copenhagen interpretation is losing.
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If no one else is going to answer the question, I’ll share what I’ve found. It turns out there was quite an article published at the end of 1998 that suggests rather strongly that Special Relativity is wrong. You can find a reference to the article and an overview at: http://209.67.208.207/499TAS/bethell.htm
The text of the article can be found at: http://www.ldolphin.org/vanFlandern/gravityspeed.html
Basically, I think this fellow puts forth a pretty good argument. All of the objections I had were neatly addressed in the article.
SR is the bit about time slowing down as you speed up, and includes the idea that nothing, not even information, can travel faster than the speed of light.
Van Flandern shows that gravity must travel at least 20 billion times the speed of light and may well be instantaneous. Take a peek at both links and see what you think.
However, people have done a lot of good things with the Copenhagen interpretation, which is my test of a good theory. My point was that he used his intuition to pronounce judgement on the theory, not facts. In “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” Rohdes talks about a “Solvay Conference” in Brussels, 1927. I quote at length:
'Einstein attended as did Bohr, Max Planck, Marie Curie, Hendrick Lorentz, Max Born, Paul Ehrenfest, Erwin Schrodinger, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg and a crowd of others. “We all stayed at the same hotel,” Heisenberg remembers, “and the keenest arguments took place, not in the conference hall but during the hotel meals. Bohr and Einstein were in the thick of it all.”
Einstein refused to accept the idea that determinism on the atomic level was forbidden, that the fine structure of the universe was unknowable, that statistics rule. “‘God does not throw dice’ was a phrase we often heard from his lips during these discussions,” writes Heisenberg. “And so he refused point-blank to accept the uncertainty principal, and tried to think up cases where it would not hold.” Einstein would produce a challenging thought-experiment at breakfast, the debate would go on all day, “and, as a rule, by suppertime we would have reached a point where Niels Bohr could prove to Einstein that even his latest experiment failed to shake the uncertainty principal. Einstein would look a bit worried, but by next morning he was ready with a new imaginary experiment more complicated than the last.” This went on for days, until Ehrenfest chided Einstein – they were the oldest of friends – that he was ashamed of him, that Einstein was arguing against quantum theory just as irrationally as his opponents had argued against relativity theory. Einstein remained adamant…’
(Any typos mine)
I may be wrong, but arguing against the Uncertainty Principal is more fundamental than disagreeing with the Copenhagen interpretation.
[hijack]
It’s the Evil Mark Ping!
Remember me? CS60C? OCF?
[/hijack]
emarkp
Interesting link above. At first thought it foolish (sorry) but consulted the relativity FAQ as a head check and found there may be a leak. So, I poked around some more in DeJa and found Van Flander defending his point over the last week in news = sci.astro, “Speed of Gravity?” thread. Still working on understanding what he’s saying. Probably hopless (for me) or in there with the wavicle.