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Talk:Counterexamples to Relativity (view source)
Revision as of 02:46, August 19, 2011
, 02:46, August 19, 2011→Attempt at Helping the Consensus Along
:I doubt that the speed of light has been constant throughout history, and I doubt that it is constant for all observers. But note that Relativity is based on more assumptions than that. It also assumes that all (non-accelerating) frames of reference in the universe are physically equivalent, which is particularly implausible.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 20:40, 18 August 2011 (EDT)
:I doubt that the speed of light has been constant throughout history, and I doubt that it is constant for all observers. But note that Relativity is based on more assumptions than that. It also assumes that all (non-accelerating) frames of reference in the universe are physically equivalent, which is particularly implausible.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 20:40, 18 August 2011 (EDT)
::You're really hard to convince! [[User:SamHB|SamHB]] 22:45, 18 August 2011 (EDT)
This will be my final posting here. I apologize for its length.
Of course, no one is suggesting that the truth of a scientific theory is determined by polls. MM87 wasn't asking for a poll so that the issue of relativity could be settled. He was asking whether there was any consensus among Conservapedia editors of their positions on the matter. And he noted the extremely small number of interested people. As one of that very small number, I thought I would reply.
The premise of this page is that theories can be refuted by counterexamples, and that even one counterexample would do it. This is true, but the counterexamples need to be much more compelling than the 35 items listed. Several of the items are are the form "this is complicated" (9, 18, 19, 20, 21), or "I don't understand this" (22, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32), or "many textbooks explain it badly" (7, 8, 25, 26), or "there is some phenomenon somewhere that relativity doesn't explain" (2, 3, 4, 5, 14, 15, 17).
Remember that the actions of Nobel committees or tenure committees or conference committees, or the perception that "liberals like it", as much as we might disagree with them, don't determine the correctness of a scientific theory. Experiments and observations do.
An example of something that refutes a theory would be an observation that is clearly at odds with the predictions of the theory, and that can't be explained away. For example, observations of planetary motion refuted the Ptolemaic theory of epicycles and more epicycles. (Actually it was the increasing number of epicycles needed to fit the observations, and the Copernican theory, that started the process. Occam's Razor finished the job.)
So what kind of observation would actually refute relativity? Failure of the time dilation or length shortening of special relativity would do it, as would failure of gravitational time dilation. Failure of light bending would do it, that is, no bending, or bending at 0.875 second instead of 1.75. Failure of the Shapiro effect would do it. Failure of the Lense-Thirring effect would call it into question, though the observations of the GPB are near the limits of our ability to measure.
Failure of planetary precession would do it. But let me say something about that, since it has been discussed at length on many pages. The Mercury measurements are very "noisy", making it not a good test if one is looking for incredible accuracy, that is, better than 42.98 second. The actual precession is something like 5600, with an enormous amount of noise from other planets, solar oblateness, etc. If one really wanted to claim that relativity is refuted because the 42.98 figure doesn't match exactly, one would have to go through all the sources of noise much more meticulously than anyone has. One would also have to take into account asteroids that haven't been discovered yet—keep in mind that a new "trojan" asteroid at one of Earth's Lagrange points was discovered only a few weeks ago. And remember, the Yarkovsky effect was undiscovered for years, as was the reflection of infrared radiation off the back of the Pioneer antenna dish. Can you really say that you know, exactly, all the forces acting on Mercury? Did you consider the frame-dragging effect from the Sun's rotation or the Yarkovsky effect? My guess is that this has never been done. There are much "cleaner" measurements that scientists can make than tracking all possible influences on Mercury's motion. Examples of "clean" tests are the quasar measurements, the pulsar measurements, and the Shapiro effect.
Speaking of other ways of explaining the precession non-relativistically, Andy refers, above, again, to the "Newtonian exponent tweaking". This is the Asaph Hall / Simon Newcomb hypothesis. It was refuted, by actual observations, 100 years ago. Please see the analyses that I wrote [http://www.conservapedia.com/Theory_of_relativity#Fallacious_Claims_of_Experimental_Verification_of_Relativity here] and [http://www.conservapedia.com/Debate:What_is_the_exponent_of_r_in_Newtonian_gravity%3F here]. The latter contains some pretty graphs that I made and that JacobB uploaded for me.
Andy is quite right in that general relativity does not have "tweakable parameters" to alter planetary precession. Precession is determined by the planet's speed and the speed of light, which is, of course, not tweakable. If one were to change the number <math>8 \pi</math> appearing in Einstein's equation, it would just tighten or loosen the orbit; the precession would not change. Changing the "cosmological constant", that is, R<sub>00</sub>, would do the same thing.
[[User:SamHB|SamHB]] 22:45, 18 August 2011 (EDT)
==Open problems in cosmology==
==Open problems in cosmology==