Merged Does CERN prove Einstein wrong?

Anders Lindman said:
The vacuum energy is of course not visible. So-called 'empty' space IS the vacuum energy.

"Vacuum energy is an underlying background energy that exists in space even when the space is devoid of matter (free space). ... The effects of vacuum energy can be experimentally observed in various phenomena such as spontaneous emission, the Casimir effect, the van der Waals bonds and the Lamb shift, and are thought to influence the behavior of the Universe on cosmological scales." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energy
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... and if you keep reading, you'll note that it's Lorentz invariant. That means the vacuum energy appears the same in different reference frames, and therefore cannot be used to set some sort of default reference frame.
 
Anders Lindman said:
No, I'm not joking. Just as a thought experiment, if a spaceship is traveling 0.3c away from Earth and then a headlight is switched on, then the photons (that travel straight ahead) from that light will have the velocity of 1.3c relative to Earth.
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This is exactly what people thought was true under Newtonian/Gallilean physics. It turns out that this is false; the light has a velocity of c relative to Earth.

Again, we have all sorts of experiments that confirm this to be true -- not to mention that our basic equations for electricity and magnetism require it to be true.

The hypothesis that you are putting forward has been evaluated and found to not be so. There is no difference between the velocity of light of an object heading rapidly toward us versus rapidly away from us, and we often observe both.

If your belief were correct, the world would look different than it does. I'm afraid your belief just doesn't conform to the facts we have.
 
Anders Lindman said:
The vacuum energy is of course not visible. So-called 'empty' space IS the vacuum energy.
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Right, but you could pretend. But forget pretending. What you've just said would be a reason you can't use it as a frame of reference, even in your naive view of what a FOR is. The more sophicisted reasons flow from questions other posters are asking you. But still, how do you think it can be used as a frame of reference?
 
Anders Lindman said:
I'm not an expert in physics. I have to picture things in simple to understand terms.
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The problem is, not every aspect of reality can be pictured simply. The universe has no requirement to give us the ability to comprehend more than what we need to know to survive on the savannahs of Africa.

There is no other way around it: If you want to really grasp advanced physics, you have to be able to do calculus.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
Right, but you could pretend. But forget pretending. What you've just said would be a reason you can't use it as a frame of reference, even in your naive view of what a FOR is. The more sophicisted reasons flow from questions other posters are asking you. But still, how do you think it can be used as a frame of reference?
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But taking the vacuum energy into account we can use any point in space as the origin of a frame of reference.
 
Anders Lindman said:
No, I'm not joking. Just as a thought experiment, if a spaceship is traveling 0.3c away from Earth and then a headlight is switched on, then the photons (that travel straight ahead) from that light will have the velocity of 1.3c relative to Earth.
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For a thought experiment to be valid, it must agree with observation. Otherwise I could say, "Just as a thought experiment, when I snap my fingers my wife will turn into Brooke Shields."
 
AvalonXQ said:
This is exactly what people thought was true under Newtonian/Gallilean physics. It turns out that this is false; the light has a velocity of c relative to Earth.

Again, we have all sorts of experiments that confirm this to be true -- not to mention that our basic equations for electricity and magnetism require it to be true.

The hypothesis that you are putting forward has been evaluated and found to not be so. There is no difference between the velocity of light of an object heading rapidly toward us versus rapidly away from us, and we often observe both.

If your belief were correct, the world would look different than it does. I'm afraid your belief just doesn't conform to the facts we have.
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Let's look at another example. No spaceship with mass will be able to reach the speed of light according to Einstein. Ok, but let's say that we have a spaceship that can reach 0.5c. And on that spaceship another spaceship is mounted that can also reach 0.5c. The spaceship accelerates away from Earth until it's velocity is 0.5c relative to Earth, at which point the second spaceship is detached and accelerates to 0.5c relative to the first spaceship. Isn't then the relative velocity between the second spaceship and Earth 1c?
 
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sol invictus said:
If v1 and v2 are the velocities of two photons moving directly towards (or away) from each other, then according to SR the magnitude of their relative velocity |v1-v2|=2c in all inertial reference frames.

In fact, this is the only case in which relative velocity remains constant under changes of frame .....
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Of course your main point stands, but isn't this bit wrong? Say v1=(c,0,0), v2=(-c,0,0) in some frame. In a frame whose relative velocity is in the y direction, the photons' velocities have an equal (and non-zero) y-component. So the photons aren't moving in opposite directions, and the magnitude of their relative velocity is less than 2c. In other words,`moving directly towards each other' is not Lorentz invariant.

(The only invariant relative velocity is 0, of course.)
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
Tell us how. (And then tell us why we need the VE to do that). (and why a reference frame even needs an origin)
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With super-advanced technology I suspect it would be possible to shape the vacuum energy, but let's say that we only have today's technology. Then a point in space has to be located by some reference points such as stars and planets.
 
Anders Lindman said:
Let's look at another example. No spaceship with mass will be able to reach the speed of light according to Einstein. Ok, but let's say that we have a spaceship that can reach 0.5c. And on that spaceship another spaceship is mounted that can also reach 0.5c. The spaceship accelerated away from Earth until it's velocity is 0.5c relative to Earth, at which point the second spaceship is detached and accelerates to 0.5c relative to the first spaceship. Isn't then the relative velocity between the second spaceship and Earth 1c?
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No. It's 0.8c. We've been over this already.
 
Anders Lindman said:
No, I'm not joking. Just as a thought experiment, if a spaceship is traveling 0.3c away from Earth and then a headlight is switched on, then the photons (that travel straight ahead) from that light will have the velocity of 1.3c relative to Earth.
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There goes a perfectly good thread.
 
sol invictus said:
More like time travel, the unravelling of causality, quantum feedback loops, and the consequent instantaneous annihilation of the universe. :eye-poppi

Or, maybe they're just off by a meter or so on the distance.
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Hu? How so? If they find out that some things can travel faster than light, than it means just that. Of course that also means that everything that uses the speed of light as absolute maximum speed needs to be changed/adapted as well.

So, if any given formula gives "time travel" results or anything like what you said, based on using the speed of light as maximum, it follows that such a formula needs to use the new maximum speed instead.

Of course it's also possible that any such maximum would just not depend on the speed of anything at all, but would turn out to be some constant instead, and we simply used something else instead because it was close enough.

Or am i missing something?

Greetings,

Chris
 
Hey, wait a minute. If we send two photons U and V in opposite directions, isn't then the relative velocity relative to ourselves as the observer: (u + v) / (1 + uv/c^2) ?

According to SR we thus have an observed velocity between the photons of 1c.

Yet if we test this in a laboratory and send two photons in opposite directions and measure the time it takes for the photons to travel 10 meters each, we get a measured velocity of 2c.

So, doesn't this mean that Einstein's special relativity definitely is false? Or have I missed something?
 
Anders Lindman said:
No, I'm not joking. Just as a thought experiment, if a spaceship is traveling 0.3c away from Earth and then a headlight is switched on, then the photons (that travel straight ahead) from that light will have the velocity of 1.3c relative to Earth.
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And two cars travelling at 100 km/hr in opposite directions do not violate a 100 km/hr speed limit.
 
Anders Lindman said:
Hey, wait a minute. If we send two photons U and V in opposite directions, isn't then the relative velocity relative to ourselves as the observer: (u + v) / (1 + uv/c^2) ?

According to SR we thus have an observed velocity between the photons of 1c.

Yet if we test this in a laboratory and send two photons in opposite directions and measure the time it takes for the photons to travel 10 meters each, we get a measured velocity of 2c.

So, doesn't this mean that Einstein's special relativity definitely is false? Or have I missed something?
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And that still means that the photons travel at c, do you really think that if two cars travel 100 km/hr in opposite directions and pass each other that they violate a 100 km/hr speed limit?

Funny thing, for all observers in cars and on the ground when they measure the velocity of the same beam of light they get c.
 
Dancing David said:
And that still means that the photons travel at c, do you really think that if two cars travel 100 km/hr in opposite directions and pass each other that they violate a 100 km/hr speed limit?

Funny thing, for all observers in cars and on the ground when they measure the velocity of the same beam of light they get c.
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The photon travels at 2c in relation to the other photon, just as the car travels 200 km/h in relation to the other car (the speed limit is for the speed of the car relative to the road). Special relativity states that all velocities are relative.

If we send two photons at the same time in opposite directions and measure the time it takes for the photons to travel 10 meters each (total distance between the photons = 20 meters), and then calculate the relative velocity between the photons we get 2c, two times the speed of light, as observed by us doing the experiment.

According to Einstein's special relativity the calculated relative velocity between the two photons is 1c, one time the speed of light, as observed by us doing the experiment.

So we have an actual measured result of 2c and a calculated result based on the theory of SR of 1c. I would say that the theory is false. We could also use particles traveling at 0.99c each (if photons are not valid in SR) and get similar contradiction between actual measured velocity and calculated velocity based on Einstein's theory of special relativity.
 
Anders Lindman said:
The photon travels at 2c in relation to the other photon, just as the car travels 200 km/h in relation to the other car (the speed limit is for the speed of the car relative to the road). Special relativity states that all velocities are relative.

If we send two photons at the same time in opposite directions and measure the time it takes for the photons to travel 10 meters each (total distance between the photons = 20 meters), and then calculate the relative velocity between the photons we get 2c, two times the speed of light, as observed by us doing the experiment.

According to Einstein's special relativity the calculated relative velocity between the two photons is 1c, one time the speed of light, as observed by us doing the experiment.

So we have an actual measured result of 2c and a calculated result based on the theory of SR of 1c. I would say that the theory is false. We could also use particles traveling at 0.99c each (if photons are not valid in SR) and get similar contradiction between actual measured velocity and calculated velocity based on Einstein's theory of special relativity.
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I'm probably the 4327th person to point this out to you, but let's try one more time. Neither photon is going faster than c. How fast they are going relative to each other is besides the point. An outside observer would measure the velocity of each photon as c. That means each photon will cover a light second of distance every second. period. full stop.
 
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