General Relativity Is At Least 99.95% Right

ultracool writes to mention a ScienceDaily piece on compelling proof of general relativity. A team at the University of Manchester have used three years' worth of data on a pair of pulsars as a litmus test, against which they've benchmarked Einstein's theory. From the article: "Though all the independent tests available in the double pulsar system agree with Einstein's theory, the one that gives the most precise result is the time delay, known as the Shapiro Delay, which the signals suffer as they pass through the curved space-time surrounding the two neutron stars. It is close to 90 millionths of a second and the ratio of the observed and predicted values is 1.0001 +/- 0.0005 - a precision of 0.05%. A number of other relativistic effects predicted by Einstein can also be observed. 'We see that, due to its mass, the fabric of space-time around a pulsar is curved. We also see that the pulsar clock runs slower when it is deeper in the gravitational field of its massive companion, an effect known as "time dilation."'"

Comments

Re:Interesting, but wrong

[chreekat]

What the fuck?

Maybe I don't know about the "Cartesian method of doubt", but it doesn't have anything to do with physics. Are you saying that if I measure something with a ruler, I should throw in a couple extra percentage points to the error calculation because I'm not sure if the universe exists? Jesus. Even if I *should*, what percentage should I throw in?

Maybe, but I don't think so!

[SmartAZ]

Einstein's is not the only theory, and there is a major flaw in his: there is no such thing as "fabric of space-time". It's a convenient buzzword but it doesn't mean anything. This is a case of "exactly as if ..." Things work as if Einstein was right, but there is no evidence that he was right. Here's an example: If you pass a current through a wire it generates a magnetic field. If that field crosses another wire it generates a current in that wire. It's exactly as if the magnetic field moved from one wire across the other. The flaw is that if you wrap both wires through an iron donut all the field is inside the iron - absolutely NO field is detected anywhere around either wire. The theory is false, but it is "exactly as if" it were true. Likewise, Einstein's theory may give correct answers even though nobody actually knows why. For one thing, plasma physicists can easily explain a lot of effects in electrical terms, relying on laboratory observations instead of imagined theories. Astronomers ignore plasma physics because nobody ever taught it to them.