Changes

:: Judy, regarding the relativity page, I am going to leave it well alone on reflection. But I will make a few points about it while I have your attention. I don't want to wade in on that talk page really, so I'll explain a few things below and you can take away from it what you like. To stress to other readers, relativity and the Higgs boson are not closely related - I'm just digressing a little. You can view the relationship between the Higgs and relativity as follows: atoms (matter in general) interacts with the Higgs field, gaining mass through the exchange of 'virtual' particles (view this as an exchange of information), which then results in a tiny distortion in the geometry of space, (now we're in the realm of relativity - a seperate theory. The combination of these into one model would be wonderful), propagating out at (probably) the speed of light, which results in the mutual attraction of all objects within each others 'light cones' - which means, simply put, that light could have travelled that distance between the two objects since the creation of those atoms.  

:: Judy, regarding the relativity page, I am going to leave it well alone on reflection. But I will make a few points about it while I have your attention. I don't want to wade in on that talk page really, so I'll explain a few things below and you can take away from it what you like. To stress to other readers, relativity and the Higgs boson are not closely related - I'm just digressing a little. You can view the relationship between the Higgs and relativity as follows: atoms (matter in general) interacts with the Higgs field, gaining mass through the exchange of 'virtual' particles (view this as an exchange of information), which then results in a tiny distortion in the geometry of space, (now we're in the realm of relativity - a seperate theory. The combination of these into one model would be wonderful), propagating out at (probably) the speed of light, which results in the mutual attraction of all objects within each others 'light cones' - which means, simply put, that light could have travelled that distance between the two objects since the creation of those atoms.  

:: The Nobel committee never announce nominees for the Nobel prize. The first you hear of it is after you have won it. On that basis, the information about Robert Dicke being passed over due to his views on relativity, is going to ''have'' to be personal opinion, unless someone on the committee themselves wrote it! I tried to include this in the article, but had it reverted (?) - it is a fair statement. I can look up this information on the Nobel website if necessary. Robert Dicke devised the lock-in amplifier I originally trained in electronic engineering, and I acknowledge this was a very useful invention. I suppose it could be the view of someone in the field that he deserved it, but I have doubts that he rejected relativity himself. I couldn't find anything in the literature that really suggested that. In fact, he devised some very stringent tests for relativity (hey, that's what science is all about). I suppose this could be misconstrued as him disbelieving relativity, but in any case, when his tests were performed, relativity did pass them. I don't really understand why the two theories (general and special) are painted as so controversial on this website. In the very early days, many people had significant doubts about relativity (as you might expect, it was incredibly unorthodox thinking at the time). People mistakenly drew certain philosophical parallels with relativity, and it was met with widespread misunderstanding. It is a purely physical theory relating to the fact that agreements on velocity and time periods depends on the measuring devices inertial frames of reference. No conclusions about morality, the nature of life, or anything biological or theological, can be drawn from the theory of relativity, either general (inc gravity) or special (referring to reference frames without not in the context of gravity)

:: The Nobel committee never announce nominees for the Nobel prize. The first you hear of it is after you have won it. On that basis, the information about Robert Dicke being passed over due to his views on relativity, is going to ''have'' to be personal opinion, unless someone on the committee themselves wrote it! I tried to include this in the article, but had it reverted (?) - it is a fair statement. I can look up this information on the Nobel website if necessary. Robert Dicke devised the lock-in amplifier I originally trained in electronic engineering, and I acknowledge this was a very useful invention. I suppose it could be the view of someone in the field that he deserved it, but I have doubts that he rejected relativity himself. I couldn't find anything in the literature that really suggested that. In fact, he devised some very stringent tests for relativity (hey, that's what science is all about). I suppose this could be misconstrued as him disbelieving relativity, but in any case, when his tests were performed, relativity did pass them. I don't really understand why the two theories (general and special) are painted as so controversial on this website. In the very early days, many people had significant doubts about relativity (as you might expect, it was incredibly unorthodox thinking at the time). People mistakenly drew certain philosophical parallels with relativity, and it was met with widespread misunderstanding. It is a purely physical theory relating to the fact that agreements on velocity and time periods depends on the measuring devices inertial frames of reference. No conclusions about morality, the nature of life, or anything biological or theological, can be drawn from the theory of relativity, either general (inc gravity) or special (referring to reference frames not in the context of gravity)

:: Every model of reality in science is wrong. But some models are also useful. This is the nature of abstracting the real world into, in a platonic sense, a purely mathematical set of rules. Relativity is one of the useful models. I know the GPS argument has been had already, but rest assured it is due to a very very tiny degree of time dilation. As an interesting aside, the astronaut with the greatest calculated dilation was a Russian who has experienced in total <20ms less time than he would of had he stayed on the surface of Earth instead. Newton's inverse square law very closely approximates Einstein's equations, and in many cases they provide an adequate framework for calculations of gravity. So, Newton's model of gravity is also useful. Perhaps more useful - the equations are so much simpler to deal with, and in many cases are fine to use. Plutos orbit comes out slightly wonky with Newton's model of gravity though, as an example)

:: Every model of reality in science is wrong. But some models are also useful. This is the nature of abstracting the real world into, in a platonic sense, a purely mathematical set of rules. Relativity is one of the useful models. I know the GPS argument has been had already, but rest assured it is due to a very very tiny degree of time dilation. As an interesting aside, the astronaut with the greatest calculated dilation was a Russian who has experienced in total <20ms less time than he would of had he stayed on the surface of Earth instead. Newton's inverse square law very closely approximates Einstein's equations, and in many cases they provide an adequate framework for calculations of gravity. So, Newton's model of gravity is also useful. Perhaps more useful - the equations are so much simpler to deal with, and in many cases are fine to use. Plutos orbit comes out slightly wonky with Newton's model of gravity though, as an example)