=Special Theory Of Relativity=

[Schrodinger's Dog]

Boy are you off base! Erwin Schroedinger was a notorious cat LOVER! His use of a cat in his thought experiment was to show the bitterness of his contempt for Copenhagen quantum physics (he was a coworker and rival with Einstein in developing a unified field theory based on GR).

The current imbroglio over string theory is nothing new; big time physicsits live and breathe these theories, and are ready to fight for their beliefs.

I never new he was a cat lover, but I did know the suposition was eroneous since it's a thought experiment and the cat is irrelevant thus the wink, the joke is meant to be sarcasticly sarcastic,but if he is a cat lover it's an even less substantial joke now thanks

I have no problem with string theory at all, it seems wonderfully imaginative, it just seems a little bit too suppositional,in that it conveniently invents dimensions that can never be perceived to solve a problem that would in my very humble opinion, be served by trying to posit theories that might at least be testable, in my lifetime or ever, also the reason why I feel a little purturbed by many worlds intepritation.

I feel a little jipped by the idea of maths alone describing the universe, a way of garnering breakthrough results that lead to practical application. I guess I shouldn't be descriminating without knowing a large amount about the subject but at least with the current theories the evidence was there wating to be found. I'm not so sure about string theory. Is it useful though, undoubtablly, were imaginary numbers usefull 434 years ago, if nothing else it might illuminate where we've gone wrong. Does learning about one theory in isolation lead to ideas to dismiss another in a vaccuum; I guess no matter how leary you are of potentially unrealisable theories, they do give some a groundwork for new ideas. And what else are physisists meant to do while they're spending ten years getting funding and toying with their experiments to prove the more mainstream? Got to keep the grey matter ticking over

 

[selfAdjoint]

Whenever you try to think about the world you have two choices: rhetoric and mathematics. Rhetoric is very popular and you can see ewxamples of it all over the web, and on our own well-beloved Philosophy boards as well. But rhetoric has a big problem going anywhere. You get down one or two deduction levels and everything seems to fuzz out into a morass. The reason for this is that rhetoric doesn't have a methodology to vet its concepts, and the result is that all the tight reasoning in the world can't save a sloppy idea. If you like this is an example of arguing too far up Korzybski's abstraction tree.

So you want tightly-defined concepts, and that means math (or logic, but logic and math are joined at the hip). Hence the people whose response to the puzzles of the world is to build mathematical models and make predictions from them - and these people go back to the Old Kingdom of Babylon, if not to Ur of the Chaldees - are notably more successful, and can even get other people and governments to pay them money to do do their thing, which philosophers pretty much can't.

 

[clj4]

Thanks for that, I was told perhaps eroneously that this experiment only confirmed time dilation? How is the muons length contraction effect isolated from the more significant time dilation effect?



It's actually in reference To Erwin Schrodinger himself and his obvious dislike of cats , thus my avatar, because I assume Schrodinger was a dog man

In an earlier post you said :

I seem to remember time dilation has yet to be proven experimentally, is that still the case?

I gave you a couple of well known experiments that showcase time dilation, so I don't understand why you come back with:

Thanks for that, I was told perhaps eroneously that this experiment only confirmed time dilation?

Weren't the two links clear enough?

 

[M1keh]

Ok. I've been looking at this on and off for the last two years and I've seen the same arguments time and time again, but it just doesn't look right.

Relativity gives rise to too many questions that can't be answered. Supporters label these as 'anomalies' and sweep them under the carpet, usually hiding behind the maths, but there seem to be some very serious problems with a constant speed of light !

 

[M1keh]

Can somebody confirm my 'understanding' of the rules :

* Constant speed of light in all frames of reference
* Time Dilation
* No one F.O.R is special.

No arguments, can't have one without the others ?

 

[baryon]

Maybe a frame of reference traveling at the speed of light would be special because all other reference frames would be traveling slower than it. This special frame of reference would have a very large amount of energy. Supposedly an infinite amount. Time would be almost at a standstill and particles that decay quickly in the lab would exist for many years.