Re: Parity Eotvos Experiment update

Posted by Pasti on Jun 18, 2003 at 02:26
(64.10.121.146)

Re: Parity Eotvos Experiment update (Dogrock)

"If the experiment is a true test of EP, then I would think it is an extremely important experiment."

OK,Dogrock,let me try to clear the air a little.What Al proposes is an ideea that has a certain merit, but it is by no means what you call "a true test of the EP". It is another test of the EP, and it is concerned with aspets that have not been investigated yet,it is true.But even if the experiment is sucessful,it will not "infirm" the EP,in the sense that it will not disprove the earlier experimental tests.It will merely become, at least in a first stage "the exception that enforces the rule", and maybe (hopefuly) it will spark the interest for further study.But again, by no means will it infirm the EP, as Al claims so boldly.And he knows that,advertising aside.


The situation is pretty much like special relativity and classical mechanics.You cannot say that classical mechanics is "infirmed" by special relativity, and therefore classical mechanics is wrong.Within its limits, classical mechanics is correct,but it represents a certain limiting case of a more general theory, i.e. of special relativity.The same would be valid if Al's experiment turns out sucessfully.People will start looking into the possibility that the EP as we know it today might be some particular case of a more general principle.

The EP, at the time it was "developed" was based on certain information, available at the time, and therefore it is very possible that it needs "adjustments", as new data/information becomes available. Science in general,and physics in particular(and other fields too, but sice I am not an expert in other fields, I cannot offer you very many relevant details)develops in a self-consistent manner (in spite of other's oppinions)in the sense that it does not "acccept" singular principles that do not fit in the more general puzzle, if you understand what I mean by that. So by the time a principle is accepted in physics(and the EP has been and still is tested, even today), it has experimental confirmation comming from different directions/sub-fields, such that any new data that comes in and "contradicts" that principle points out toward a more general theory that the one that is considered at the time,and not toward disqualification of a theory as wrong.

"I'm not qualified to know that but would consider it the only factor in not doing the experiment."

I am afraid I do not quite understand what you wanted to say in this sentence. Maybe the second "not" should not be there. If that is the case, I would agree with you.As I said,Al's Ideea has some merit, and the experimet should be done at one time or the other (and of course the sooner the better).

Unfortunately, in the real world fewer and fewer people focus their interest on an ideea just because the ideea is "worth the while".Funding mainly,social context (can you belive that some people want to ban M.Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" from the shelves because it is not good for the kids to read?!?!?!),and not in the least the approach to the problem and human interaction,tend to become imortant factors when it comes to the testing of Al's ideea.You might consider it unfair,unidealistic,or whatever,but unfortunately this is how the real world works.

This is becoming more complicated than I thought,but let me try to elaborate a little.Al is not a (theoretical) physicist working on (theoretical) experimental GR (and this is quite obvious to me after "nitpicking" a little on some technical details).I would suspect that he is somehow involved with either some solid state physics of some or chemistry of some sort.This means in the first place that he cannot apply/obtain a grant to do his experiment, due to lack of experience and credentials in the field.So this limits him to somehow gain access in some way or another to one of the labs that currently do tests of the EP. He doesn't have too many choices in this respect(there are not so many labs doing what Al needs).And again, lack of funding, and lack of experience and credentials in the field are very possible obstacles.Moreover,Al becomes very easily frustrated with the details (the bigger picture argument),and can be rather tactless on occasions (this would be the human interaction part, as I have been able to infere it), and these aspects are not exactly helpful, like it or not.

Claiming in a noisy manner that he found a way to infirm the EP (read his website for example),lack of experience in the field,the inability to sustain tiring discussions on details of principles,frustration, and the gap between theoretical and experimental physics are very strong reasons for someone to actually dismiss him ,like it or not.As I said earlier, there is no shortage of "quacks" making various more or less preposterous claims in theoretical physics and cosmology, and physicists have kind of become tired of them(I have). And in my oppinion it would be a pitty if all the work and time he put into this project would be wasted for reasons like the above.He does have chances to see his experiment done, but he might want to use a different approach to the problem.

"Enjoyed the debate Pasti, but fail to see your argument. Just maybe and only in the sence "make it worth their while". But I think it should be worth their while just to find out if this great theory is true or false."

The argument is very simple.The people Al needs for his experiment have a quite full plate, and they would have to "squeeze" him in somehow,and not in the least, commit funds and people to his experiment.That is not the biggest problem he has.As I said above,the chances are quite good for this to actually happen.
His biggest problem is for the moment the fact that he does not have a quantitative/qualitative description of his experiment.What he has on his website are just claims and results of calculations/simulations of the structure properties of the test bodies. I am not sure if he realizes it(he might,or he didn't want to post it on his website for priority reasons), but there is a big, very big chunk missing, namely the model of gravitation and matter (the coupling between matter and gravitation) that he considers for his experiment.And from this aspect issue a lot of secondary problems/questions like experimental bounds, parameters, resolution needed,magnitude of the violation expected and other such "details" which, again, like it or not,are essential in setting up an experiment.Al has only an ideea, and some simulations regarding one aspect of the picture, but a large part of the picture is still missing.And here comes the "worthwhile part".Any experimentalist would like to know before committing to an experiment , for example,what is the quantity that he wants to detect(based on some model),what woud be an order of magnitude of this quantity in the said model,and if the resolution of his equipment is good enough to detect the alleged effect.It sounds trivial, but it involves a rather large amount of work to answer these questions.And you wouldn't like to start the experiment and to realize only later that your equipment is not sensible enough to detect what you need.G.Smoot describes very nicely these aspects in "Wrinkles in time" (this is the guy that launched the COBE experiment).
And maybe not surprisingly, it is Al who should provide at least a significant/relevant part of the answers to these questions.
Someone strolling into a lab with an ideea and some partial calculations, so to speak, won't exactly cut it for the lab guys.His ideea that "this is the experiment, just do it and let the others bother with the details" (more or less) that he expressed in a previous post,might not be such a good ideea.
So what I am trying to tell him, if he will bother to listen, is that he still has a lot of work in front of him,unless some very fortunate opportunities,before seeing the experiment done.And he knows that,despite his arguing.And this is the reason why I keep asking him for the model,for the "lagrangean/action", if you noticed.His ideea is fine,but I would like to see in more detail the practical implementation.

Hope this helps you understand the ideea behind the discussions with Al.

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