Quote:
Originally Posted by renormalised
You still don't understand, and what you said proves yourself otherwise. They're not wrong, just incomplete. To be wrong, they would by definition have no validity whatsoever. They would be wrong in all cases if that were true. Since they plainly are not, they therefore cannot be wrong...only incomplete.
|
Sorry, but I disagree. CP IS wrong AND incomplete. But I am not saying that it does not have validity. What I said is that it is a USEFUL approximation for most occurances. The Lorentzian Transformation (which is a part of Special Relativity) states that t = t0/(1-v2/c2)^0.5, where t is the appratent time, t0 is the time at rest, v is the velocity and c is the velocity of light in a vacuum. On the other hand, Classical Physics states that t = t0.
What it means is that there is time-dialation for a object moving with respect to an observer at t0 at a velcity v.
At 10 metres a second past a multinova, the time dialation is about 0.000000000000055%, which is not really that noticable. But at 299,500,000 m/s it is about 2265%, which would be quite noticable.
A similar transformation exists for length and an inverse one for mass.
But of course not much on earth travels at speeds close to c - unless its in a cyclotron or a high energy (eg therapy) x-ray machine, in which case it is relevent.
But on a cosmological scale, these relativistic velocities, masses and lengths are relevent and so relativity and quantum does make a difference. A good example was the failure of classical physics in accounting for the procession of Mercury, but which was easily explained by Einstein.
Classical Physics is wrong - but still very, very useful.
As for Paul's comment that "The physicists I know, live quite modestly and earn far, far less than they could in private industry.", yes that's right. As a nuclear medicine physicist that does dosimetry for radiotherapy (and if I get it wrong I kill someone - but haven't done that yet....), I earn about 1/5 to 1/10 what someone earns digging holes at a WA minesite.