"Proving Einstien wrong" - or: "alternative" ideas and observation

[theMark]

"Proving Einstien wrong" - or: "alternative" ideas and observation

Hi,

this is more of a "hypothetical" problem i've encountered. The question is: with the amount of knowledge about the world available today, can anyone seriously still make a claim of having "disproved" general relativity, or things like "newtonian mechanics"?

For example, someone claims that the speed of light is not the upper limit, and that all those formulas are just plain wrong, and his new theory is right especially for speeds > 0.9 c. (hypothetical, i've not come across any crackpot that actually claims this).

Since those original formulas DO fit the available observations (in case of "Einstien" see e.g. the GPS system which afaik needs to compensate for the clocks running at a marginally different speed due to their own movement and gravity in orbit), this would force any of those "new" formulas to contain, at the very least as a special case, the original formulas (like "conventional" physics says F=m*a if the speed<<c )?

Same goes for things like loss of energy, conservation of energy, "over unity" etc.
I mean, do those Perpetual Motion Machine guys *ever* give their gizmos a push just to see what happens, and if maybe that bugger just runs for a long, long time because they used really good bearings? (in this case, i've met an elderly couple deep into the alternative lifestyle that claims that a "brilliant ex-yugoslavian inventor" has his over-unity device which mimics the shape of the solar system to produce power, but each machine can only create 500 watts of energy, does NOT scale at all, is horribly expensive because of the rare earth materials like silver and gold needed to build it, is a bugger to set up and that's why he only sells the plans for cash; and because of all this limitations and since he's enabling common folks to produce their own energy cheap, he's constantly harassed by the "big electro" companies... note to self: never ever again ask, don't make eye contact...)

In short: Does the thought of "If my new formula for X does not contain the old formula for X, at least as a special case, then it may just be a lack of understanding on my part" ever cross the minds of those "brilliant" people in the alternative scene?

Wow, now i'm not even sure any more if this is not just a rant. Trying to get back to my question:

Am i being reasonable in assuming that, most of the time, new knowledge tends to refine the "coarse image" of the world we have, instead of painting it over in entirely different colors?

-theMark

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Am i being reasonable in assuming that, most of the time, new knowledge tends to refine the "coarse image" of the world we have, instead of painting it over in entirely different colors?

Addressing just this one ...

Depends on what you mean by 'entirely different colours'!

General Relativity (GR) is the same as good old Newtonian gravity for stuff that's low mass, small-ish, slow, and as long as you don't want many-decimal-places accuracy. To that extent, it is simply a 'refinement'.

However, gravity, for Newton, is a force, acts only on mass, is an action at a distance, and instantaneous.

Gravity, in GR, couldn't possibly be a more different kind of beast!

It's no longer a force (merely 'geometry'), isn't instantaneous, and treats energy and mass as merely two slightly different forms of the same thing.

Doesn't that count as "painting [the world] over in entirely different colors"?

 

[ben m]

In short: Does the thought of "If my new formula for X does not contain the old formula for X, at least as a special case, then it may just be a lack of understanding on my part" ever cross the minds of those "brilliant" people in the alternative scene?

I don't know if the thought crosses their minds spontaneously, but I've certainly pointed it out to some of them. The response is always somehow that their theory (a) works but (b) in such a radically different way that there's no way to reduce it to special cases, and anyway (c) contrary experiments are probably wrong. ErkDemon pulled one of these on this board last week---there's a standard list of ways that a new gravity theory could agree/disagree with GR, and Erk said only that his paradigm was so different that it couldn't be shoehorned into the appropriate equations.

 

[BenBurch]

It is actually impossible to prove Einstein wrong, but you could prove that his theories need some small tweaks, or to find a superseding theory that incorporates general and special relativity. In the very same way, Einstein did not prove Newton wrong, he just modified Newton. NASA still uses plain Newtonian mechanics to pilot spacecraft after all...

 

[Cuddles]

this is more of a "hypothetical" problem i've encountered. The question is: with the amount of knowledge about the world available today, can anyone seriously still make a claim of having "disproved" general relativity, or things like "newtonian mechanics"?

Well, since general relativity disproved Newtonian mechanics, that's not really such a big claim.

Am i being reasonable in assuming that, most of the time, new knowledge tends to refine the "coarse image" of the world we have, instead of painting it over in entirely different colors?

-theMark

There are essentially two ways science progress - incremental increase within the current paradigm and jumps to a whole new paradigm. For example, everything between Newton and Einstein was essentially just refining the current understanding, while relativity and then quantum physics completely altered the current understanding twice in quick succession and required a whole new way of looking at the world.

As you say, obviously any new theory has to explain the old observations, but it often does so in a completely new way. For example, Newton was wrong. Instantaneous light and gravity, no curvature of space, no speed limit, no spacetime, no quantisation, and so on. However, as an approximation it's pretty good, even good enough to send probes to other planets. It's not so much painting over the old image in completely different colours, it's more painting a very similar picture, but in oil paints instead of water colours. Overall it looks pretty much the same, but up close the entire basis is utterly different.

 

[TheDaver]

Lack of understanding gets my vote. I’ve debated (if you can even call it that) some CT goons who honestly think they can fuel a car with water. They’re smart enough to grasp the concept of using electrolysis to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen, but they’re not smart enough to understand that you’ll never get as much energy from the hydrogen as it took you to split the water. Some of them insist, despite my correcting them, that a car’s alternator is some sort of woo-doo voodo free energy device that generates electrical current without putting any load on the engine, and that this is the source of the energy that allows the whole water fuel system to work.

Actually, in my experience, this seems to be a constant with these people: When you dispel their ignorance of a certain concept, they just retreat to another concept they’re ignorant on to try to support their claims. This could go on forever, but usually doesn’t, because at some point they cry foul and complain that you’re “calling every single one of [their] ideas stupid”.

“Never argue with an idiot. He’ll drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.”

 

[theMark]

Actually, in my experience, this seems to be a constant with these people: When you dispel their ignorance of a certain concept, they just retreat to another concept they’re ignorant on to try to support their claims. This could go on forever, but usually doesn’t, because at some point they cry foul and complain that you’re “calling every single one of [their] ideas stupid”.

Oooh, this tactic i already know! (waves hand in the back of the classroom) "Moving the goalpost", right?

Thanks for your replies! That's why I really do enjoy the JREF forums - I not only learned something new about Relativity today , it really makes me pity the three decades i spent without such a refreshing source of knowledge, humour and sarcasm (seriously, folks!) Even in some other threads with, uh, "skepticality-impaired" contributors, there's something to be learned from the different ways of discussions and/or how people respond. One may not be able to convince the opponent, but it may influence the fence-sitters...

Once i come up with another idea, i'll report back

-theMark

 

[Upchurch]

It is actually impossible to prove Einstein wrong, but you could prove that his theories need some small tweaks, or to find a superseding theory that incorporates general and special relativity. In the very same way, Einstein did not prove Newton wrong, he just modified Newton. NASA still uses plain Newtonian mechanics to pilot spacecraft after all...

I disagree. It is always possible to prove Einstein's theories wrong (or anyone's theory, for that matter), because it is always possible that some future breakthrough will completely redefine our model of the universe. No theory is proved, it is only not yet disproved. Nothing is sacred in science.

That being said, it would take something absolutely phenomenal to completely overthrow Relativity. Nothing we've seen so far would do the trick. Certainly nothing that just some guy with no mathematical or physics training on an internet forum could come up with.

 

[drkitten]

That being said, it would take something absolutely phenomenal to completely overthrow Relativity. Nothing we've seen so far would do the trick. Certainly nothing that just some guy with no mathematical or physics training on an internet forum could come up with.

I disagree.

As a historical example --- the discovery of radiation, which led relatively quickly to the overthrow of the laws of conservation of mass and of conservation of energy, could have been done by anyone. "Gosh, when I leave my photographic plates next to a piece of pitchblende, the plates fog." Any housewife might find something that overthrows the law of conservation of momentum --- "Gosh, when I leave a Twinkie out next to my stove, my turkey cooks faster," which it turns out, is caused by the hyperkineticity of the Twinkie (you just thought it was the sugar, but it's not) leaking into the turkey molecules and making them move faster.

I submit that a confirmed and reliable way to violate conservation of momentum would be a pretty firm disproof of Einstein.

What our hypothetical housewife and Becquerel have in common, though -- and that the physics crackpots do not --- is a set of clean experiments that show a real effect. And a lot of luck, of course. But no one could argue with Becquerel's photographic plates, and anyone who liked could reproduce them. That's what's needed to overthrow Einstein, not arcane and misunderstood arguments about the theory.