Quote:
Originally Posted by sjastro
Carl as you know we don't live in a Universe where we all travel faster than light,where the speed of light is the lower limit and mass takes on an imaginary value. So we can discount that option....
With regards to "hyperspace" let's put that in the right perspective as well. While there are people out there who suggest that faster than light travel is possible through String theory, energy conditions are violated in GR. So we can discount that one as well. On top of that you know my opinion of String Theory.
Our judgment is based on what is happening now. Not tomorrow, next week, 10 years from now, or 20000 years from now. That is how science operates. As it is stands now, the speed of light in a vacuum is the upper limit. Scientists are satisfied with SR, the observations and the experiments.
To argue to withhold judgment until we have a fully informed opinion, one needs to consider the logic.
(a) It assumes our current level of understanding on the speed of light is deficient.
(b) It assumes someone in the future is going to come up with a better idea, experiment or observation.
and most importantly
(c) When is a fully informed opinion decided? (eg is the new value a limit or can we go faster?)
If (a) is an ongoing event it implies we will never reach point (c).
That's the trouble when you don't have a crystal ball. Everything is based on assumptions.
Regards
Steven
|
I'm not talking about the superluminal solutions to SR, Steven, I'm talking about solutions like the Alcubierre Metric etc.
You talked about discounting this and that (sure you're not in the retail business
) just because it violates what we know of physics now. If that held for all physics (or anything else), we wouldn't be where we are now. Remember, right up until the 30's and 40's, they thought it was impossible to break free of the planet's gravitational pull because it would take too much energy. Very many prominent scientists thought that. Lord Rutherford said it was going to be impossible to harness the energy in an atomic nucleus...they'd never split the atom. You couldn't travel faster than the speed of sound because you'd hit a "brick wall" that would destroy your aircraft etc etc. I could go on for a long time about scientific truths that were rock solid, that turned out to be wrong.
Science is about making assumptions. If you don't assume something then you have no hypothesis to test. Your assumption maybe wrong, or it maybe right. In the case of SR and GR, with our current state of knowledge we believe them to be rock solid (for the most part). But that's not to say that they'll not be modified in the future, or that maybe something else may come along to replace them. Newton thought his theory was rock solid. So did most other scientists for 250 years. But Einstein comes along and changes things with Relativity.
You're assuming (or at least implying) that Relativity is going to be the definitive answer, ad infinitum. The logic of that is faulty as well. That implies 3 things...1) That the logic on which it is based is flawless, 2)That no other theory will be derived that will challenge it, and, 3)That no experiment or observation has or will be made that will contradict the premise of the theories. Just as you have implied I am crystal ball gazing, so are you in this instance
Science is not about the here and now, Steven. Science is about the "what if", "what can be or could be", "what might be". If science just dealt with what it knows and never considered the infinite possibilities (wrong or otherwise), we'd have never left the safety of the caves (if they were ever that safe in the first place!!). We'd have never landed a person on the Moon, no probes would've visited any planets, we wouldn't have flown in the first place, we'd have no atomic energy, you wouldn't be able to take your astropiccies, I wouldn't be typing this out on a computer keyboard etc etc.
Yes, our judgment is based on what we know of things at present, I agree with you on this. Yes, the efficacy of SR and GR have been satisfied through experimentation and observation. However, in saying "as it stands, now", you know yourself that at some future stage it may not have the standing it holds at present. Or, it may still have...we just don't know.
Funny thing here Steven, neither of us will probably totally agree with the others' arguments simply because we think differently...you're the orthodox literalist and I'm the radical
. You like your boxes, I get claustrophobic
Agree to disagree
