For the alternative theorists:

Any alternative theory or new physics and ideas, will almost assuredly come from the mainstream itself.
Afterall it is they that have access to the giant 'scopes, the LHC, ISS, and the other probes like WMAP and Planck amongst many others.

 

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You can look at the issue from the other direction as well: In modern times, none has ever come from anywhere else.

 

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Russ_Watters

And I think that is a fairly good indication that modern scientists are largely on the right track toward the understanding of reality, of which there is only one. Before technology allowed a more organized inquiry science was like a drunken walk toward the goal(home, in the case of the drunk), but without the evidence technology gives us they stumbled from one erroneous concept to another, each a little better than the last but not quite right itself. The last step of that sort was Newton, in physics. He applied math to describe the interactions of the planets and got it 99% right(at least for low relative speeds). Einstein was the first to put together the modern ideas and the known constant speed of light in one theory, though even then we had to wait before technology allowed us to confirm Relativity. Einstein did not get everything right to begin with but revised it given better evidence and understanding and it became a platform for the first theory that seems to tie all of the evidence together in a single coherent whole(much like Darwin did for biology). It's not perfect, nor is it complete, but 500 years from now scientists will probably still be using his theory as the platform to reach even better understanding of reality.

Grumpy

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Fraggle Rocker

Other Universes are of no import to the one we know exists. We know of only one Universe, just like we know of only one White Hole(the Big Bang itself). We can only perceive the one reality we are in. If and when we find that there are other realities(other Universes)then we will have to deal with those as they are as well. My point was that we seem, finally, to be on the right path to understand the one reality we see.

Newton's laws are not 100% correct anywhere, but they are close enough at non-Relativistic speeds or levels of acceleration for the difference between reality and those laws is slight enough to ignore. But even within our own Solar system Newton can be seen to fail in calculating the orbit of Mercury, which moves fast enough for Relativistic effects to show up(if you measure it carefully). And every particle collider on Earth has to deal with Relativistic effects every time they turn it on.

Grumpy

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Newtons laws are perfect. Relativity is a refinement and a rethought of simplifying complex interactions with respect to the laws. The laws of relativity are purely mathematical as opposed to Newton's ability to apply linguistic laws to mathematical formulas. Though relativity has given us this it has also created the ability to calculate most every interaction with precision, it would not if newtons laws were not 100% correct.

 

No: if Newton's laws were 100% correct, they wouldn't give wrong answers!

 

No they are not perfect. They are though not incorrect and when used within their accepted parameters, give the desired correct results and help us to send probes to the Moon, Mars and beyond.

 

Wholeheartedly agree. The same applies to the BB/Inflationary model...Any new model will encompass it and just be extending the parameters.
SR/GR, even more so.

 

Beaconator

No, Newton was approximately right only under conditions that are non-relativistic and he had no explanation of the source of gravity.

No, Relativity and Newtonian physics are entirely unrelated paradigms. Newton's was a clockwork universe, Relativity is a relativistic one.

And here I've been discussing Relativity for years on this forum(and the previous version)and I never need mathematics to describe Relativity. It is true that you can only talk about Relativity at a basic level without using math, but that is true of Newtonian Mechanics as well.

Yes, it is, Newton was only approximately correct, and then only at low speeds, as the orbit of Mercury made plain long before Einstein. Relativity does not have Newtonian physics anywhere in it.

Grumpy

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Newton was the first to look for a source of gravity and explain equivalence of force in order to explain gravity. Relativity is just the next step in first principals realized by newton to be applied to more advanced technology.

To say it carries more accuracy is no stretch for relativity. To say it carries more significance to a paradigm that it isn't related to would be another.

Relativity was engineered by talking about advanced levels of Newtonian mechanics and brownian/Gaussian motion (eg. Probability). They had no time to write down every equation for every interaction until Einstein solved the basics within a field and a couple main equations.

You can't derive the initial force from the acceleration without knowing the velocity.

You can't derive newtonian mechanics from relativity without probability.

you can't derive newtonian mechanics from relativity without knowing error.

Why in this day are we trying to drive them apart? To find something of more probable than relativity and less error than newton laws? Finding something with less error than relativity and more probability than newtons laws would be an equally difficult challenge.

The first principals laid down by Newton re surge in the theory of relativity. They are not necessarily spoken nor always mathematical, but both follow the same line in logic.

 

Beaconator

Crack a book, that post is babble.

Grumpy

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No, Newton set out to explain the reason that all of the known planets were obeying Kepler's laws. For example: why do the planets sweep out an area under the arc of orbit which is proportional to time of travel?

Newton's search for the explanation for Kepler's laws has nothing to do with Einstein's research, which began with explaining the invariance of the speed of light to what was at first believed to be a luminiferous aether. That research began before Einstein was born, if we mark the born-on date as the related work of Fitzeau. Einstein was not the first person to speak of reference frames and time and length contraction and dilation, but in may respects he was the final word. Special and general relativity explained this highly counterintuitive behavior of nature.

You would get a zero for this answer on a quiz. Kepler's laws had nothing to do with relativity, therefore, Newton's explanation, Universal Gravitation, does not account for any relativistic observations. In many cases Universal Gravitation, when used to calculate the effects of gravity, will be accurate to within more decimal places than the observer's instruments, so usually no one cares which is the better way to formulate a physical scenario. The reasons for working from Einstein's field equations usually has nothing to do with making measurements, but rather, to research other questions in particle physics and cosmology.

Zero for this too. Relativity began as research into the nature of light propagation, with no reference to either Newton or probability theory. See Einstein's 1905 paper. Also see the precedent works by Lorentz, Poincare, Michelson & Morley and Fitzeau, and any of the experiments they refer to. Also see Maxwell, Ampere, Gauss, Faraday and Coulomb for their research in electromagnetics that fomented the questions Einstein answered.

Zero. They had no model that explained the invariance of lightspeed in all frames until Lorentz, Poincare and Einstein began to search for the answers, and began to offer explanations.

Zero. You can't derive the initial force from the acceleration without knowing the mass.

Zero. You can't explain Kepler's laws of planetary motion without first deriving Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation.

Zero. It makes no sense to derive the Universal law of Gravitation from Einstein's theory of General Relativity. "Error" has nothing to do with this.

As far as I know, all we are trying to do is to reduce the urban myths about science that are being used to leverage public opinion for the sake of deregulation and Victorian fundamentalism.

No, to replace ignorance and fear with knowledge and opportunity.

Finding a good text on elementary physics and opening it is the only challenge that has not been met in this post. That, and solving the end of chapter problems.

Zero. Newton's work solved a different problem: how to explain Kepler's laws.

The first principles of physics are clearly explained in great detail, with copious examples and practice problems, in any typical freshman college text in physics.

All that remains to be seen is why you insist on declaring things to be so without any personal knowledge of the subject matter. Why aren't you simply asking people who took the courses to give you some advice or explanations? Why not just test yourself by enrolling in a remedial physics class?

 

Relativity totally has Newtonian physics in it. By design. Without this feature it cannot use the left-over precession of Mercury as a piece of evidence.

 

Albert Einstein first intuitions of his theory of relativity came when he was 16 years old. By the standards of this topic, he was an alternate theorist, who was also a layman, since he was only 16. With 20/20 hindsight one can see where his thinking was heading, but if relativity did not yet exist, like it did not then, and he presented his intuitive reflections, in these forums, he would be under attack as not conforming to the status quo and not making sense.

The reality of science is, all status quo, begins as similar basic intuitions. It useful to keep an open mind.

 

An Einstein does not come along too often, in fact very rarely.
We are though fortunate enough to have at least three claiming that status on this forum. [tic mode on]

 

You are arguing against your point: this anecdote shows that if you follow the rules, the current process works just fine.

...not that I agree with your characterization: Einstein was tackling a known problem with physics at the time, not pointlessly attacking a theory with no known flaws on vague or philosophical grounds. There was no argument to be had over whether current theory was wrong: everyone already accepted that it was!

 

...and at least one person that claims Einstein to be a charlatan and nincompoop.

 

Certainly, we have morons around that would Imagine that....
Probably due to self delusions of grandeur, anti establishment bias, tall poppy syndrome and plenty of other agendas to boot, including of course just plain lacking any brain matter....
Yeah, they exist.

 

Exactly. He was piggybacking on what he had read from Lorentz, combined with his awareness of the consequences of the discovery that c was constant for cases it shouldn't have been (in media, in aether).

Well said. They had already deduced that time and space underwent contraction and dilation, based purely on empirical evidence. Einstein didn't conceive of relativity, he simply explained it, by marrying the explanation which was only then emerging--the Lorentz transformation--with the laws given in Maxwell's equations (for starters), to show that Lorentz/Poincare were not only correct, but generally so, in a happy marriage with electromagnetics. And, of course, preserving the fact which had recently become evident to them all -- that c was constant in all frames.