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Just As Einstein Predicted?

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  Just As Einstein Predicted? Pentcho Valev <pvalev@yahoo.com> - 2016-02-23 23:02 -0800
    Re: Just As Einstein Predicted? Pentcho Valev <pvalev@yahoo.com> - 2016-02-23 23:56 -0800
      Re: Just As Einstein Predicted? Sam Wormley <swormley1@gmail.com> - 2016-02-24 09:28 -0600
        Re: Just As Einstein Predicted? jay moseley <jaymoseley@hotmail.com> - 2016-02-24 23:57 -0800
          Re: Just As Einstein Predicted? Sylvia Else <sylvia@not.at.this.address> - 2016-02-25 20:13 +1100
            Re: Just As Einstein Predicted? jay moseley <jaymoseley@hotmail.com> - 2016-02-25 06:44 -0800
              Re: Just As Einstein Predicted? Sam Wormley <swormley1@gmail.com> - 2016-02-25 08:57 -0600
                Re: Just As Einstein Predicted? jay moseley <jaymoseley@hotmail.com> - 2016-02-26 11:55 -0800
                  Re: Just As Einstein Predicted? Odd Bodkin <bodkinodd@gmail.com> - 2016-02-26 15:34 -0600
                    Re: Just As Einstein Predicted? jay moseley <jaymoseley@hotmail.com> - 2016-03-02 05:41 -0800
                      Re: Just As Einstein Predicted? Odd Bodkin <bodkinodd@gmail.com> - 2016-03-02 08:21 -0600
          Re: Just As Einstein Predicted? Odd Bodkin <bodkinodd@gmail.com> - 2016-02-25 08:25 -0600
            Re: Just As Einstein Predicted? jay moseley <jaymoseley@hotmail.com> - 2016-02-25 06:48 -0800
              Re: Just As Einstein Predicted? Odd Bodkin <bodkinodd@gmail.com> - 2016-02-25 08:50 -0600
      Re: Just As Einstein Predicted? Pentcho Valev <pvalev@yahoo.com> - 2016-02-24 23:15 -0800
        Re: Just As Einstein Predicted? Pentcho Valev <pvalev@yahoo.com> - 2016-03-01 14:49 -0800
          Re: Just As Einstein Predicted? Sam Wormley <swormley1@gmail.com> - 2016-03-01 16:52 -0600
          Re: Just As Einstein Predicted? Odd Bodkin <bodkinodd@gmail.com> - 2016-03-01 17:20 -0600
            Re: Just As Einstein Predicted? benj <nobody@gmail.com> - 2016-03-01 21:19 -0500
            Re: Just As Einstein Predicted? noTthaTguY <abu.kuanysh05@gmail.com> - 2016-03-02 11:17 -0800

#556152 — Just As Einstein Predicted?

http://dailycampus.com/stories/2016/2/18/first-detection-of-gravitational-waves-marks-groundbreaking-scientific-event 
 "Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Rafael Reif speaks during a news conference about an experiment at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, that resulted in the discovery of gravitational waves, during a presentation on the school's campus, in Cambridge, Mass., Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016. In a blockbuster announcement, scientists said after decades of trying they have finally detected faint ripples of gravity reverberating invisibly through the fabric of both space and time, just as Einstein predicted."

Just as Einstein predicted? Hmm... Einstein's predictions:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1602.04674 
 "Around 1936, Einstein wrote to his close friend Max Born telling him that, together with Nathan Rosen, he had arrived at the interesting result that gravitational waves did not exist, though they had been assumed a certainty to the first approximation. He finally had found a mistake in his 1936 paper with Rosen and believed that gravitational waves do exist. However, in 1938, Einstein again obtained the result that there could be no gravitational waves!" 

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160218-gravitational-waves-kennefick-interview/ 
 ""There are no gravitational waves ... " ... "Plane gravitational waves, traveling along the positive X-axis, can therefore be found ... " ... " ... gravitational waves do not exist ... " ... "Do gravitational waves exist?" ... "It turns out that rigorous solutions exist ... " These are the words of Albert Einstein. For 20 years he equivocated about gravitational waves, unsure whether these undulations in the fabric of space and time were predicted or ruled out by his revolutionary 1915 theory of general relativity. For all the theory's conceptual elegance -- it revealed gravity to be the effect of curves in "space-time" -- its mathematics was enormously complex."

Pentcho Valev

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#556160

Generalization: Einstein's general relativity predicts what Einsteinians tell it to predict. It cannot be otherwise because, even though mathematically complex, general relativity is an empirical model:

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/01/09/einstein-right-and-wrong/ 
 "In 1917 Einstein published a paper on the application of the theory of relativity to the universe at large—cosmology. He had decided that the universe was stationary—neither expanding nor contracting—so he added a term, the cosmological constant, to his original equations with a value of the constant, the Λ in the above equation, chosen to guarantee this.  He abandoned this once it was shown in the 1920s by Edwin Hubble that the universe was actually expanding. Now it has been shown that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate—so the cosmological term is given a new value, the dark energy, now adjusted to produce the acceleration." 

Typical empirical approach isn't it? Unlike special relativity, general relativity was not, to use Einstein's words, "built up logically from a small number of fundamental assumptions". Rather, it was "a purely empirical enterprise" - Einstein and his mathematical friends changed and fudged equations countless times until "a classified catalogue" was compiled where known in advance results and pet assumptions (such as the Mercury's precession, the equivalence principle, gravitational time dilation) coexisted in an apparently consistent manner: 

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/einstein/works/1910s/relative/ap03.htm 
 Albert Einstein: "From a systematic theoretical point of view, we may imagine the process of evolution of an empirical science to be a continuous process of induction. Theories are evolved and are expressed in short compass as statements of a large number of individual observations in the form of empirical laws, from which the general laws can be ascertained by comparison. Regarded in this way, the development of a science bears some resemblance to the compilation of a classified catalogue. It is, as it were, a purely empirical enterprise. But this point of view by no means embraces the whole of the actual process ; for it slurs over the important part played by intuition and deductive thought in the development of an exact science. As soon as a science has emerged from its initial stages, theoretical advances are no longer achieved merely by a process of arrangement. Guided by empirical data, the investigator rather develops a system of thought which, in general, is built up logically from a small number of fundamental assumptions, the so-called axioms." 

The making of general relativity was analogous to "curve fitting" ("empirical models") as defined here: 

http://collum.chem.cornell.edu/documents/Intro_Curve_Fitting.pdf 
 "The objective of curve fitting is to theoretically describe experimental data with a model (function or equation) and to find the parameters associated with this model. Models of primary importance to us are mechanistic models. Mechanistic models are specifically formulated to provide insight into a chemical, biological, or physical process that is thought to govern the phenomenon under study. Parameters derived from mechanistic models are quantitative estimates of real system properties (rate constants, dissociation constants, catalytic velocities etc.). It is important to distinguish mechanistic models from empirical models that are mathematical functions formulated to fit a particular curve but whose parameters do not necessarily correspond to a biological, chemical or physical property." 

Note that the parameters of the empirical model "do not necessarily correspond to a biological, chemical or physical property". So in Einstein's general relativity one of the parameters - the speed of light falling towards the source of gravity - absurdly DECREASES (in the gravitational field of the Earth the acceleration of falling photons is NEGATIVE, -2g): 

http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae13.cfm 
 "Contrary to intuition, the speed of light (properly defined) decreases as the black hole is approached." 

http://www.speed-light.info/speed_of_light_variable.htm 
 "Einstein wrote this paper in 1911 in German. (...) ...you will find in section 3 of that paper Einstein's derivation of the variable speed of light in a gravitational potential, eqn (3). The result is: c'=c0(1+φ/c^2) where φ is the gravitational potential relative to the point where the speed of light c0 is measured. Simply put: Light appears to travel slower in stronger gravitational fields (near bigger mass). (...) You can find a more sophisticated derivation later by Einstein (1955) from the full theory of general relativity in the weak field approximation. (...) Namely the 1955 approximation shows a variation in km/sec twice as much as first predicted in 1911." 

http://www.mathpages.com/rr/s6-01/6-01.htm 
"Specifically, Einstein wrote in 1911 that the speed of light at a place with the gravitational potential φ would be c(1+φ/c^2), where c is the nominal speed of light in the absence of gravity. In geometrical units we define c=1, so Einstein's 1911 formula can be written simply as c'=1+φ. However, this formula for the speed of light (not to mention this whole approach to gravity) turned out to be incorrect, as Einstein realized during the years leading up to 1915 and the completion of the general theory. (...) ...we have c_r =1+2φ, which corresponds to Einstein's 1911 equation, except that we have a factor of 2 instead of 1 on the potential term." 

Here Michel Janssen describes endless empirical fudging and fitting until "excellent agreement with observation" was reached: 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254043454_The_Einstein-Besso_Manuscript_Looking_Over_Einstein's_Shoulder 
 Michel Janssen: "But - as we know from a letter to his friend Conrad Habicht of December 24, 1907 - one of the goals that Einstein set himself early on, was to use his new theory of gravity, whatever it might turn out to be, to explain the discrepancy between the observed motion of the perihelion of the planet Mercury and the motion predicted on the basis of Newtonian gravitational theory. (...) The Einstein-Grossmann theory - also known as the "Entwurf" ("outline") theory after the title of Einstein and Grossmann's paper - is, in fact, already very close to the version of general relativity published in November 1915 and constitutes an enormous advance over Einstein's first attempt at a generalized theory of relativity and theory of gravitation published in 1912. The crucial breakthrough had been that Einstein had recognized that the gravitational field - or, as we would now say, the inertio-gravitational field - should not be described by a variable speed of light as he had attempted in 1912, but by the so-called metric tensor field. The metric tensor is a mathematical object of 16 components, 10 of which independent, that characterizes the geometry of space and time. In this way, gravity is no longer a force in space and time, but part of the fabric of space and time itself: gravity is part of the inertio-gravitational field. Einstein had turned to Grossmann for help with the difficult and unfamiliar mathematics needed to formulate a theory along these lines. (...) Einstein did not give up the Einstein-Grossmann theory once he had established that it could not fully explain the Mercury anomaly. He continued to work on the theory and never even mentioned the disappointing result of his work with Besso in print. So Einstein did not do what the influential philosopher Sir Karl Popper claimed all good scientists do: once they have found an empirical refutation of their theory, they abandon that theory and go back to the drawing board. (...) On November 4, 1915, he presented a paper to the Berlin Academy officially retracting the Einstein-Grossmann équations and replacing them with new ones. On November 11, a short addendum to this paper followed, once again changing his field equations. A week later, on November 18, Einstein presented the paper containing his celebrated explanation of the perihelion motion of Mercury on the basis of this new theory. Another week later he changed the field equations once more. These are the equations still used today. This last change did not affect the result for the perihelion of Mercury. Besso is not acknowledged in Einstein's paper on the perihelion problem. Apparently, Besso's help with this technical problem had not been as valuable to Einstein as his role as sounding board that had earned Besso the famous acknowledgment in the special relativity paper of 1905. Still, an acknowledgment would have been appropriate. After all, what Einstein had done that week in November, was simply to redo the calculation he had done with Besso in June 1913, using his new field equations instead of the Einstein-Grossmann equations. It is not hard to imagine Einstein's excitement when he inserted the numbers for Mercury into the new expression he found and the result was 43", in excellent agreement with observation." 

Pentcho Valev

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#556207

On 2/24/16 1:56 AM, Pentcho Valev wrote:
> Generalization: Einstein's general relativity predicts what
> Einsteinians tell it to predict. It cannot be otherwise because, even
> though mathematically complex, general relativity is an empirical
> model


   Nope, just the opposite. General relativity makes very specific
   predictions. There is no wiggle room. The theory is either right
   or wrong.

   Every test of General Relativity to date, shows that nature is
   in agreement.


-- 

sci.physics is an unmoderated newsgroup dedicated
to the discussion of physics, news from the physics
community, and physics-related social issues.

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#556454

Sam..
> Nope, just the opposite. General relativity makes very specific predictions. There is no wiggle room. The theory is either right or wrong.

>Every test of General Relativity to date, shows that nature is in agreement.

GR makes no predictions that can also not be made with by a
classical model. For instance take preccession of mercury. GR
takes the newtonian prediction, adds in the extra observed 
preccession , and claims this is a successful prediction. 
One could make the same successful "prediction" for classical.
Take the Newtonian prediction, add in the extra preccession 
and call that a successful prediction for a classical model. Or,... 
the supposed observed relativistic energies for protons in colliders.
In fact no individual proton energies have ever been measured.
What actually happens is the total beam energy is worked out,
and then the total amount of protons in the beam is calculated.
Assuming that each proton has a certain energy. This isnt a successful 
prediction. It is a successful fiddling of data by relativists to validate
a pseudoscientific theology.
And finally... the LIGO results. Notice that the graphs touted as
verification of GR. Nothing of the sort. The actual observation is
the spectral image showing the anomaly in frequency/time. A single
blurred image that shows no similarity to the template.
Then researchers have used just some of the data *selectively* 
by researchers to match to a preferred relativistic template. 
In fact the data could be used to equally as well match to a neutron 
star or any binary merger. Or even a template of a single asymetric
'wave' evolving from longer to shorter wavelength.

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#556459

On 25/02/2016 6:57 PM, jay moseley wrote:
> Sam..
>> Nope, just the opposite. General relativity makes very specific predictions. There is no wiggle room. The theory is either right or wrong.
>
>> Every test of General Relativity to date, shows that nature is in agreement.
>
> GR makes no predictions that can also not be made with by a
> classical model. For instance take preccession of mercury. GR
> takes the newtonian prediction, adds in the extra observed
> preccession , and claims this is a successful prediction.
> One could make the same successful "prediction" for classical.
> Take the Newtonian prediction, add in the extra preccession
> and call that a successful prediction for a classical model.

The difficulty with that approach is that it's ad-hoc. For each 
situation you have to include special terms to get from the Newtonian 
prediction to the observed reality. You don't end up with one theory, 
but with as many theories as you have scenarios.

By contrast, general relativity is a single theory that addresses both 
the orbit of Mercury, the behaviour of clocks in orbit, the bending of 
light in a gravitational field, and indeed every other situation it's 
been tested against.

Sylvia.

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#556494

Sylvie......
> The difficulty with that approach is that it's ad-hoc. For each situation you have to 
>include special terms to get from the Newtonian prediction to the observed reality. You don't end up with one theory, but with as many theories as you have >scenarios.

>By contrast, general relativity is a single theory that addresses both the orbit of Mercury, the behaviour of clocks in orbit, the bending of light in a >gravitational field, and indeed every other situation it's been tested against.

Yes but I wasnt trying to suggest a classical model has to do what GR 
seems to do mathematically with the preccession ( by taking a Newtonian
calculation and adding in the observed anomaly).
In fact Newtons calculation is not correct either because it puts all the suns mass
at the center. But do a 3 body calculation where the suns mass is spread
across its volume, and you do get a correct answer. It isnt ad hoc anymore,
but still consistent with a classical model.

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#556510

On 2/25/16 8:44 AM, jay moseley wrote:
> In fact Newtons calculation is not correct either because it puts all the suns mass
> at the center. But do a 3 body calculation where the suns mass is spread
> across its volume, and you do get a correct answer.


   That's not true.


-- 

sci.physics is an unmoderated newsgroup dedicated
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community, and physics-related social issues.

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#556963

Sam
>> On 2/25/16 8:44 AM, jay moseley wrote: 
>> In fact Newtons calculation is not correct either because it puts all the suns mass 
>> at the center. But do a 3 body calculation where the suns mass is spread >
>> across its volume, and you do get a correct answer.

>That's not true.

Whats not true?
1)Its true that Newtons calculation isnt correct.
2) And its true that in 1859 le Verrier published a 3 body calculation predicting
the preccession correctly. 
Le Verrier interpreted this as Vulcan, but it is no less true that this 3 body 
calculation spreads the suns mass out across its volume. 
Rather then incorrectly assuming 100 % of the suns mass is confined to an 
infinitely small point ats its center.

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#557022

On 2/26/2016 1:55 PM, jay moseley wrote:
> 2) And its true that in 1859 le Verrier published a 3 body calculation predicting
> the preccession correctly.
> Le Verrier interpreted this as Vulcan, but it is no less true that this 3 body
> calculation spreads the suns mass out across its volume.
> Rather then incorrectly assuming 100 % of the suns mass is confined to an
> infinitely small point ats its center.

It's a mathematical theorem. Gauss is the one most famously associated 
with it but Newton proved it as well.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_theorem

-- 
Odd Bodkin --- maker of fine toys, tools, tables

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#558549

Odd.
> It's a mathematical theorem. Gauss is the one most famously associated with it but Newton proved it as well...
 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_theorem 

They both got it wrong didnt they? 
Why were they unable to model the preccession when a 
3 body calculation could?
Why? 
Because the 3 body comes closer to mathematically modelling
gravitational orbits.
Just goes to show. You mathematicians are skilled at maths. But 
dumb as asses when it comes physics.

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#558555

On 3/2/2016 7:41 AM, jay moseley wrote:
> Odd.
>> It's a mathematical theorem. Gauss is the one most famously associated with it but Newton proved it as well...
>   https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_theorem
>
> They both got it wrong didnt they?

It's a MATHEMATICAL THEOREM.

Are you saying that a theorem can be wrong?

> Why were they unable to model the preccession when a
> 3 body calculation could?
> Why?
> Because the 3 body comes closer to mathematically modelling
> gravitational orbits.
> Just goes to show. You mathematicians are skilled at maths. But
> dumb as asses when it comes physics.
>


-- 
Odd Bodkin --- maker of fine toys, tools, tables

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#556486

On 2/25/2016 1:57 AM, jay moseley wrote:
> Sam..
>> Nope, just the opposite. General relativity makes very specific predictions. There is no wiggle room. The theory is either right or wrong.
>
>> Every test of General Relativity to date, shows that nature is in agreement.
>
> GR makes no predictions that can also not be made with by a
> classical model. For instance take preccession of mercury. GR
> takes the newtonian prediction, adds in the extra observed
> preccession , and claims this is a successful prediction.

Not what happened, Jay. What you're talking about is an empirical fit, 
not a theory. That's not what GR is.

> One could make the same successful "prediction" for classical.
> Take the Newtonian prediction, add in the extra preccession
> and call that a successful prediction for a classical model.

Again, you're proposing dropping classical mechanics as a theory and 
simply doing an empirical fit. Not even Newton would buy that.

> Or,...
> the supposed observed relativistic energies for protons in colliders.
> In fact no individual proton energies have ever been measured.

And that's bullshit.

> What actually happens is the total beam energy is worked out,
> and then the total amount of protons in the beam is calculated.

And that's bullshit.

> Assuming that each proton has a certain energy. This isnt a successful
> prediction. It is a successful fiddling of data by relativists to validate
> a pseudoscientific theology.
> And finally... the LIGO results. Notice that the graphs touted as
> verification of GR. Nothing of the sort. The actual observation is
> the spectral image showing the anomaly in frequency/time. A single
> blurred image that shows no similarity to the template.

No similarity to you is a five-sigma significance to physicists. If you 
don't know what five-sigma means, then you have some reading to do.

> Then researchers have used just some of the data *selectively*
> by researchers to match to a preferred relativistic template.
> In fact the data could be used to equally as well match to a neutron
> star or any binary merger. Or even a template of a single asymetric
> 'wave' evolving from longer to shorter wavelength.
>

I don't know what your bias is that you say scientists FUDGE data to 
support models they politically favor, but you're WAAAAAY out of line. 
Bordering on slander.


-- 
Odd Bodkin --- maker of fine toys, tools, tables

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#556496

Odd..
> I don't know what your bias is that you say scientists FUDGE data to support models they politically favor,

I didnt use those words  but yes hey! You hit the nail on the head.

>but you're WAAAAAY out of line. Bordering on slander.

Sounds like every post you ever made Odd. 

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#556500

On 2/25/2016 8:48 AM, jay moseley wrote:
> Odd..
>> I don't know what your bias is that you say scientists FUDGE data to support models they politically favor,
>
> I didnt use those words  but yes hey! You hit the nail on the head.

Then you show no regard for science or scientists. So why are you 
posting to a newsgroup for fans of science?

Do you also go to a newsgroup for fans of rap music and make posts that 
rap music has destroyed real music?

>
>> but you're WAAAAAY out of line. Bordering on slander.
>
> Sounds like every post you ever made Odd.
>


-- 
Odd Bodkin --- maker of fine toys, tools, tables

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#556444

https://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/HHRG-114-SY-WState-DReitze-20160224.pdf 
 Testimony of Dr. David Reitze, Executive Director LIGO	Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Before the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Science, Space and Technology, on Unlocking	the Secrets of	the Universe: Gravitational Waves, February 24, 2016: "Let me now turn to the science of LIGO. This is what excites us the most! General relativity tells us that space-time is warped, that gravity is geometric, and that black holes exist. These are complex concepts, deriving from a mathematically intricate but elegant theory. It also predicts the existence of gravitational waves. (...) It is worth pointing out that even though Einstein derived the existence of gravitational waves as a natural consequence of general relativity in 1916, he himself doubted they would ever be detected because the waves are so incredibly small."

David Reitze misled the Committee: Einstein did not doubt "they would ever be detected because the waves are so incredibly small". Rather, Einstein doubted gravitational waves existed at all:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1602.04674 
 "Around 1936, Einstein wrote to his close friend Max Born telling him that, together with Nathan Rosen, he had arrived at the interesting result that gravitational waves did not exist, though they had been assumed a certainty to the first approximation. He finally had found a mistake in his 1936 paper with Rosen and believed that gravitational waves do exist. However, in 1938, Einstein again obtained the result that there could be no gravitational waves!"  x 

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160218-gravitational-waves-kennefick-interview/ 
 ""There are no gravitational waves ... " ... "Plane gravitational waves, traveling along the positive X-axis, can therefore be found ... " ... " ... gravitational waves do not exist ... " ... "Do gravitational waves exist?" ... "It turns out that rigorous solutions exist ... " These are the words of Albert Einstein. For 20 years he equivocated about gravitational waves, unsure whether these undulations in the fabric of space and time were predicted or ruled out by his revolutionary 1915 theory of general relativity. For all the theory's conceptual elegance -- it revealed gravity to be the effect of curves in "space-time" -- its mathematics was enormously complex."  x 

Pentcho Valev

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#558448

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christoph-adami/einsteins-struggles-with-_b_9214794.html 
 "What is less well known is that Einstein struggled mightily with the theory of gravitational waves. The fact that Einstein was a genius but nevertheless mortal is, by now, somewhat known. After all, it took him five tries to get the field equations of General Relativity right."

Typical empirical approach isn't it? Unlike special relativity, general relativity was not, to use Einstein's words, "built up logically from a small number of fundamental assumptions". Rather, it was "a purely empirical enterprise" - Einstein and his mathematical friends changed and fudged equations countless times until "a classified catalogue" was compiled in which known in advance results and pet assumptions (such as the Mercury's precession, the equivalence principle, gravitational time dilation) coexisted in an apparently consistent manner: 

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/einstein/works/1910s/relative/ap03.htm 
 Albert Einstein: "From a systematic theoretical point of view, we may imagine the process of evolution of an empirical science to be a continuous process of induction. Theories are evolved and are expressed in short compass as statements of a large number of individual observations in the form of empirical laws, from which the general laws can be ascertained by comparison. Regarded in this way, the development of a science bears some resemblance to the compilation of a classified catalogue. It is, as it were, a purely empirical enterprise. But this point of view by no means embraces the whole of the actual process ; for it slurs over the important part played by intuition and deductive thought in the development of an exact science. As soon as a science has emerged from its initial stages, theoretical advances are no longer achieved merely by a process of arrangement. Guided by empirical data, the investigator rather develops a system of thought which, in general, is built up logically from a small number of fundamental assumptions, the so-called axioms."  x

Since general relativity is an empirical model, it can predict anything - e.g. both existence and non-existence of gravitational waves. Or both static and expanding universe. Or both constant and variable speed of light. Anything!

Pentcho Valev

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#558449

On 3/1/16 4:49 PM, Pentcho Valev wrote:
> Since general relativity is an empirical model...



   Nope, just the opposite. General relativity makes very specific
   predictions. There is no wiggle room. The theory is either right
   or wrong.

   Every test of General Relativity to date, shows that nature is
   in agreement.



-- 

sci.physics is an unmoderated newsgroup dedicated
to the discussion of physics, news from the physics
community, and physics-related social issues.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#558460

On 3/1/2016 4:49 PM, Pentcho Valev wrote:
> Since general relativity is an empirical model, it can predict anything - e.g. both
> existence and non-existence of gravitational waves. Or both static and expanding
> universe. Or both constant and variable speed of light. Anything!

Don't be silly. You are taking snapshots DURING THE DEVELOPMENT of a 
theory. During the development of a theory, the understanding of the 
implications of the theory will CHANGE. As you see here. First, in 
trying to work out the implications of GR, Einstein made a MISTAKE and 
thought that gravitational waves were not a consequence of the theory. 
But then in the FURTHER DEVELOPMENT of the theory, he discovered that 
the previous conclusion was wrong, and that gravitational waves were in 
fact a consequence of the theory.

Or are you saying that scientists are NOT ALLOWED to work out a theory 
gradually, making mistakes and dead-end runs during that work, and that 
they have to WAIT and only publish when everything is completely done 
and understood, just so that people like you won't get confused???


-- 
Odd Bodkin --- maker of fine toys, tools, tables

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#558490

On 03/01/2016 06:20 PM, Odd Bodkin wrote:
> On 3/1/2016 4:49 PM, Pentcho Valev wrote:
>> Since general relativity is an empirical model, it can predict
>> anything - e.g. both
>> existence and non-existence of gravitational waves. Or both static and
>> expanding
>> universe. Or both constant and variable speed of light. Anything!
>
> Don't be silly. You are taking snapshots DURING THE DEVELOPMENT of a
> theory. During the development of a theory, the understanding of the
> implications of the theory will CHANGE. As you see here. First, in
> trying to work out the implications of GR, Einstein made a MISTAKE and
> thought that gravitational waves were not a consequence of the theory.
> But then in the FURTHER DEVELOPMENT of the theory, he discovered that
> the previous conclusion was wrong, and that gravitational waves were in
> fact a consequence of the theory.
>
> Or are you saying that scientists are NOT ALLOWED to work out a theory
> gradually, making mistakes and dead-end runs during that work, and that
> they have to WAIT and only publish when everything is completely done
> and understood, just so that people like you won't get confused???
>

No, Boinker, theories must be totally "settled" and worked out before 
release so that people like you can all speak with one voice so the 
public won't be confused and lose confidence in their betters.

Surely, you know this.

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#558636

water is lighter than air, vaporwise;
OCO is heavier than air

> Don't be silly. You are taking snapshots DURING THE DEVELOPMENT of a 
> theory. During the development of a theory, the understanding of the 
> implications of the theory will CHANGE. As you see here. First, in 
> trying to work out the implications of GR, Einstein made a MISTAKE and 
> thought that gravitational waves were not a consequence of the theory. 
> But then in the FURTHER DEVELOPMENT of the theory, he discovered that 
> the previous conclusion was wrong, and that gravitational waves were in 
> fact a consequence of the theory.

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