Slashdot Mirror
Testing Relativity
MGDruss writes "NASA are proposing an empirical measurement on the ISS which would test general relativity to a precision within the bounds of superstring (and other) theories to predict deviation." We mentioned the Cassini experiment last year.
That is what they are looking for. A simpler explaination then the Standard Theory :) Have you sutdied that theory in depth? It is enough to make your head explode. At least with the 11-dimensional theories the math makes some sense :)
That is often true but... what is that simplest solution? People compare string/M-Theory to how the geocentric view of the universe was justified. People had supposed a heliocentric view of the world, but people believed that there were epicycles and such instead of that.
Where is the simpler solution here? General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are NOT compatible in many cases (for example extremely small but extremely heavy objects like black holes cause things like infinite probabilities which does NOT make sense). We have no simpler solution. String theory is about all we have now.
Humans are needed when things go wrong
sure when everything goes as planned we don't
need any human intevention, but since men first looked up to the sky the fact remains big projects always have something go wrong.
The robots are not able to improvise. Have you looked at the mars score card which was published on slashdot a while back? unmanned missions tend to fail.
To the best of my knowledge each and every manned mission to space had something go wrong, and a human being on board help fix it. You can't tell your robot to perform an unplanned spacewalk because something went wrong. and you just might want to do just that.
In addition to this, some of the tests we are intrested in doing involve testing how humans can live in space how we react to a micro-gravity enviorment these obviously require sending men and women into space.
Yes there are risks involved but there are many dangerous proffesions out there, cleanning windows on high-rise buildings is a dangerous job, but we still do it, and it gives back to humanity much less then space exploration.
Me.
The dude who invented this principle phrased it this way (translated from the Latin): "Entities should not be multiplied more than necessary." But what entities are "necessary"? To Ockham, God was a necessary entity, yet you hear Ockham's Razor used to deny the existence of God.
Bottom line: OR is a highly subjective tool that should be applied with great care. And even then, it can mislead you -- the simplest plausible theory can still be wrong, due to evidence you haven't seen. OR is a strategy for coming up with good theories, not a law of nature!
"Humans are needed when things go wrong"
Humans are resourceful and adaptable, but we also have fragile bodies that need lots of facilities and supplies to survive in space. For the enourmous price of providing life support for a manned mission, you could duplicate an unmanned mission many times over. There are many good reasons for putting humans in space, but doing science experiments better than robots is not one of them.
Actually, Occam's Razor is not "the simpler theory is usually the right one," it is "create no unnecessary hypotheses." That may sound the same, but it's not. For example, many religions posit a soul or other non-corporeal entity that persists after the death of the body. Modern science doesn't claim to have a firm grip on sentience and awareness, but it appears to be a highly complex system of nervous reactions. (I imagine most of the Slashdot crowd knows that a complex system of conditionals, like a computer, can seem very life-like.) The point is, the mechanistic understanding of awareness explains it without recourse to a soul. Consider the natural chemicals in our bodies that contribute to mood, or artificial chemicals (like drugs or alcohol) that can alter one's personality, or even cases of trauma to the head, and "soul" is left as nothing but a non-explanation -- an unnecessary hypothesis.
p ri nciples.asp
Another non-explanation is the idea that "warped space" explains gravity. All it does is push the explanation back one step from "what is gravity?" to "why do masses warp space?" So which is the correct theory? I don't think there is one, and our ideas or "understanding" of the universe will continue to evolve with everything else around us. The Pythagoreans believed that math was truth, and that reality was merely an imperfect shadow of the real world hidden beyond the veil of our senses. Well, this isn't the Matrix, an no amount of passion for "perfect" answers (like "elegant" equations or crystal spheres in the sky) will make it so.
You want an alternative theory? Give Tom Van Flandern's Meta Model a try. It may be no better than the orthodoxy of Einsteinian Relativity and quantum mechanics, but at least it won't resort to mathematical trickery and the comforting reassurance of what we'd LIKE to believe. A good introductory article may be found at:
http://metaresearch.org/cosmology/physicshasits