Re: Was Einstein (slightly*) Wrong?
Posted by Uncle Al on Jun 08, 2002 at 11:52
(68.5.243.16)Re: Was Einstein (slightly*) Wrong? (Mike Kremer)
(Apologies if this duplicates. There was a typo in the URL.)
Looking is a good thing. Relativity is self-consistent. It contains no internal mistakes. It can only be successfully attacked externally, through its postulates. Relativity has about 5 postulates:
1) Lightspeed is identical for all inertial observers. There's the Scharnhorst effect, the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox, and a couple more dimples but... nobody claims to discredit #1.
2) Lorentz invariance. If you take a "stationary" object and rotate it, move it, accelerate it (kick it through space only), or boost it (kick it through space and time), all physics laws remain unchanged. Particle accelerators to galaxies at the extreme visible edge of the universe, that's apparently solid.
3) Position invariance. All physics laws remain unchanged regardless of where you look in the universe. Apparently solid.
4) General covariance. Reality is modeled independent of scale (conformal symmetry) to be a smooth and continuous transformation of any arbitrary set of coordinates (covariance). Quantum mechanics says "up yours!" Alas, obvious contradictions only arise at Planck mass, time, and distance. Those conditions are only obtainable in a black hole - from which no information can leave. It's a push.
5) Equivalence Principle - all bodies fall identically. (4) can be used to ding (5), http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/eotvos.htm. Parity is a discontinuous coordinate transformation. Nobody has ever challenged the Equivalence Principle with opposite parity test masses. We can calculate parity divergence. Single crystal selenium comes in at 99.6% divergent. That's a good start. Somebody should look.
It's a lot cheaper to do it my way in existing apparatus on a bench top than to spend $100 million to diddle in space. The space experiment is obviousy the more attractive one for about 100 million reasons. "8^>)
--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Unsafe for children and most mammals)