The Emergence of Crackpots from the SciForums Space-Time

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by BenTheMan, Mar 17, 2007.

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  1. BenTheMan Dr. of Physics, Prof. of Love Valued Senior Member

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    And you've just destroyed Lorentz Invariance.
     
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  3. Farsight

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    I'm not sure what you mean.

    What you mustn't do is start saying to yourself that my c only looks less because I'm travelling fast and the light is actually travelling a path like this: /\/\/\/\. If you do that you're introducing your preferred reference frame and placing me in your aether. That's not in the spirit of relativity.
     
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  5. Farsight

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    How? I measured c at 300,000km/s during our experiment. Just like you did. I didn't notice anything different. My arms didn't feel leaden, my air didn't become unbreathable, my lights didn't fade.
     
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  7. BenTheMan Dr. of Physics, Prof. of Love Valued Senior Member

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    You broke Lorentz Invariance because you treated time and space differently. You said yourself

    Lorentz Invariance says that both time and space get the same Lorentz factor----length contraction AND time dialation. You never get one without the other without treating time and space differently. You manifestly broke Lorentz Invariance in a hard way (i.e. it didn't "fall out", you "put it in"). And because there are extrememly tight constraints on Lorentz Invariance (and because it is almost as sacred as the Second Law), I have to conclude that any effects like you mention must be relegated to very small distance scales or nonexistant.
     
  8. BenTheMan Dr. of Physics, Prof. of Love Valued Senior Member

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    This is exactly my point---Lorentz Invariance is one of the first things you learn about when you learn Special Relativity. I mean, in some sense it is the motivation for SR, and how we have doen theoretical physics since the 1920's.

    You read some popular level science books and start to form opinions which you propogate (and can even defend!). You have assumed that you can comprehend the subtelties of a subject without doing any calculations, or understanding the thing in any mathematical rigor---it's ok, because you are just taking everything you read on the internet or in some book for granted, irrespective of the fact that those things were written for laypeople. Sorry if I sound like an ass, but you make sweeping claims like:

    which are true, but they also give the impression that you know what you're talking about. And you don't.

    I am 100% behind people thinking about physics, and if you want to discuss your interpretations of energy or time, then I will try to make comments wherever I can, and try to give you good references. But if this was your original intention behind all the "(Insert Physics here) Explained" threads, it failed. I could never get past the titles and first paragraphs. You should pose your threads as questions, not as statements of fact---if for no other reason than to save people from reading them and taking them as Dogma.

    But at the end of the day, what do I know? I'm just a redneck theoretical physicist, stuck in the dark ages thinking that AIDS is inextricably linked to HIV

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    MetaKron, at least, was right on about this.
     
  9. URI IMU Registered Senior Member

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    >> there's an anti-science thought police out there >>

    Indeed there is. In all revolutions the intelligentsia are murdered
    In this day and age, bomb makers are cursed... err this is SCIENCE.. science is the way people change the world.... even to sword making, or life giving medicines
    So you can see when a population is terrified, insecure and just plainly pissed off,
    anyone who knows is disqualified.
    Well the WORM will turn.

    I would change "intellectual arrogance" to "arrogant ignorance"
    This is the inability to discuss a subject in an effort to get to the "nitty gritty" of the concepts involved, so that science can be advanced.

    I have been banned from every science forum on the planet, and am still banned from most.

    LOL, Why ? because I am a scientist that doesn't eat shit, and I really don't care, things are changing, and the arrogant Masses...bastards are due for a serve, BIG TIME.
     
  10. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    Try cracking a book on basic health maintenance and hygiene. Look up things like food and water-borne illnesses. Diarrhea is a huge killer in Africa, genius. Good God.
     
  11. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    as far as i know science has not been able to prove ID didn't happen.
     
  12. BenTheMan Dr. of Physics, Prof. of Love Valued Senior Member

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    That's because Intelligent Design isn't science, no matter what you want to believe. Scientists don't start with a hypothesis, neglect all data to the contrary, and invoke some outside omniscient force to fill in all of the gaps. In this sense, ID is mysticism. There can be no tests of the premises ("die and ask God" doesn't count), and there can be no predictions. This means it is not science (as much as the president would like it to be).

    I don't even know the point you're making here. Is it that deaths related to HIV/AIDS can be explained away as stomach flu or dissentary? Because people die from these things in Aftrica, too. They have doctors and nurses there who went to school, just like here in America. Don't you think those doctors can tell the difference?
     
  13. invert_nexus Ze do caixao Valued Senior Member

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    Two things.

    One:
    Not quite.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_pyramids
    Crackpots are crackpots the world over.
    In fact, many of the crackpots here on this site aren't American.


    Two:
    About why the crackpots flock here?

    Two things:
    A: They're sent here by strict science forums that brook no nonsense.
    B: They're absolutely crucial for a certain species of poster. If there were not crackpots, a good portion of our 'legitimate' posters wouldn't have anything to talk about. You do know that soime among us are obsessed with crackpots, woo woo's and theists, yes? Take away the crackpots and you take away their reason for being here.

    Also.
    The crackpot ratio seems rather light these days compared to the once upon a time. The pseudoscience forum is practically devoid of life these days.
     
  14. Farsight

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    The transverse metre rule doesn't get length contracted. Time and space are different. We have freedom of movement through space. Look. I can backwards by one metre. I can't do that with time. They are different. And if you think they're the same, go step back a second.

    So you don't read the essays, it seems you don't read the posts or actually think about the concepts to hand. You certainly don't seem to engage in an open conversation. Instead you throw abuse and spit out nonsense like Intelligent Design.

    That's not rational at all. What is the matter with you?
     
  15. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    Bangui definition, Oh Great and Powerful Aahz. Don't make me read it aloud to you.
     
  16. BenTheMan Dr. of Physics, Prof. of Love Valued Senior Member

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    Farsight---at a classical level there is an assymetry in the laws of nature which allow you to move forward and backwards in space but not in time. This is well established.

    The quantum world is quite different, however, and Lorentz Invariance is pretty sacred. If you assert that time and space are different, you are basically throwing out special relativity. Lorentz Invariance (the idea that time and space are deep down the same) is sacred to all of physics done since the late 1920's, and no self-respecting physicist today thinks that that science is wrong.

    Everytime you post something correcting me, you prove my point. I have spent a significant amount of time studying these things at a high level. Most of you hide behind anonymity. That's fine. If you don't believe I actually know what I'm talking about, then I can't convince you. I don't want this to turn into a pissing contest, but trust me, I know all about space and time.

    If you will do me the honor of rereading the above posts, you will see that I have called Intelligent Design "mysticism". That's not a nice word.

    I don't read your posts because they are long and filled with things that are wrong. I can gather as much from the titles of your posts. Because you will obviously not be convinced here, I will eventually read your Whatever Explained thread and comment.

    Sigh. Now I'm irrational. Whatever. Your physics is wrong because you do not understand the most central concept to all physics done since Einstein.

    And if you think I am abusing you, you are mistaken. You have obviously taken comments directed at your thoughts as comments directed at you. I don't know you, so I can't "abuse" you. But I do know your thoughts (vis a vis the difference between time and space) and I am very much abusing them because they are so clearly wrong.
     
    Last edited: Mar 20, 2007
  17. BenTheMan Dr. of Physics, Prof. of Love Valued Senior Member

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    invert nexus:

    I'm sure there are crackpots everywhere in the world, but I think the concentration of them in America is particularly high.

    Try the Physics forum---there is quite a lot of pseudoscience going on there. Notables are Zanket, UClock, Singularity, Farsight... the list is quite extensive

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  18. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    Ben, you wouldn't know the term "intellectual freedom."
     
  19. BenTheMan Dr. of Physics, Prof. of Love Valued Senior Member

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    Surely this explanation makes perfect sense to you, but you could not justify this in terms of math, which is precisely why this thread exists.

    If you cannot accept the idea of Lorentz Invariance, which is absolutely central to all of theoretical physics, and is espoused in the Second Postulate of Special Relativity, then you are most certainly a crackpot. Hands down.
     
  20. BenTheMan Dr. of Physics, Prof. of Love Valued Senior Member

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    What freedom? I suppose the freedom to be ignorant is a freedom.
     
  21. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    You definitely have that one covered.

    I give up. You are too easy.
     
  22. Farsight

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    Sacred? That word doesn't belong in physics. Yes, I assert that Time and Space are different. Now watch my lips: You have freedom of movement in space. You don't have freedom of movement in time. It's that simple. And I'm definitely not throwing out Special Relativity. I'm with Einstein. I understand it way past the postulates down to baseline reason. And if you'd ever actually read what I wrote, you'd realise it.

    Not so. And you don't know the first thing about space and time. I can hop backwards a metre, so you can hop backwards a second? Spot the difference? Or maybe you'd prefer to change the subject.

    And if you will do me the honor of remembering, you suggested I was an advocate of Intelligent Design:

    http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1268588&postcount=57

    But you don't read them. How do you know they're filled with things that are wrong?

    Yes you are irrational. In your "sacred" physics and in the things you write here. My physics is right. You don't know it's wrong. You don't get past the titles.

    Oh LOL the irony. In in his very next post we see the "psuedoscience" and there's my name. And oh look, in his next post there's a crackpot. LOL. No, you are definitely not rational.
     
  23. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    A theory has to be pretty sacred to say something like this:

    "Also, since relativity postulates that the speed of light is the same for all observers, it must preserve the spacetime interval between any two events in Minkowski space."

    Believers in Einstein see a criticism of something like this and they start crying like the "crackpots" they go on and on about. They will scream and scream and scream.

    So how can the speed of light be the same for all observers? You all do realize that a hypothetical closed opaque box traveling at relativistic speeds is transparent to the curvature of space, which we usually observe as gravity. There is more than one problem with the idea that light will appear to be moving at the same speed for that observer, moving at, for example, half the speed of light. They postulate that the geometry of the moving object changes to accommodate the expectation that the speed of light will appear to be the same from that observer's viewpoint.

    Up there, it says that any mathematical theory such as the Lorentz Transformation must preserve this "postulate." Just exactly why? A postulate such as this is an assumption not based on anything. They would call it something else if after roughly a century it has more substance. So the Lorentz equations are coerced into becoming a sort of proof of special relativity.

    A much less fantastical interpretation of this postulate is that all observers will observe the same speed of light when they account for their own motion, the motion of the object that they are observing, and the motion of the frame that they and the object share. At most practical distances for observation the relativistic frame can be treated as if it is not there. In any case, the moving observer sees a different speed of light only if he fails to take his own motion into account, and failing to do that would not be very good science.
     
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