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Einstein's Theory Passes Strict New Test
FiReaNGeL writes with an excerpt from a story at e! Science News: "Taking advantage of a unique cosmic configuration, astronomers have measured an effect predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of General Relativity in the extremely strong gravity of a pair of superdense neutron stars. Essentially, the famed physicist's 93-year-old theory passed yet another test. Scientists at McGill University used the National Science Foundation's Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) to do a four-year study of a double-star system unlike any other known in the Universe. The system is a pair of neutron stars, both of which are seen as pulsars that emit lighthouse-like beams of radio waves."
...is the value of good old-fashioned study.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
in summary:
1. GE says two objects can cause a wobble in each other's axes due to gravity
2. Measurement of this wobble wasn't possible earlier
3. With this star system, since they are massive and pulsate, and that they are aligned in a manner that makes a measurement possible, astronomers took the plunge
4. Prof...proved.
An overview presentation of the capabilities of Pulsars has been uploaded to Youtube.
Einstein has yet to prove why hot dogs and hot dog buns come in inequal quantities.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
That there isn't any type of classification in between LAW and THEORY
Makes things like this sit in the same bucket as one of my drunken musings. "I have a theory that.... in..... etc". There should be a state of a theory where they can say "Well, we can't yet prove all of it, but we have managed to prove x amount, or in x years of testing, it has yet to be unproven".
Maybe term it Conjecture? It's the fitting word to use.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
what is the mechanics that cause gravity to produce wobble?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
And that is why it is named after him. The telescope was build with some of the pork he brings to WV.
More proof that it doesn't pay to doubt Einstein.
Consider, as examples, Newton's laws of motion, or the laws of thermodynamics. Newton's theory of motion is deduced from his laws; the conventional theory of thermodynamics, likewise.
I say this because there are plenty of non-scientists who deliberately attempt to exploit confusion induced by popular use of the terms "law" and "theory" so as to imply that scientific theories, notably the theory of evolution, are held tentatively.
Wikileaks, no DNS
Usually pop culture gets these people's character pretty wrong. Elvis, for example, is "the King", when he was just a singing truck driver.
But Einstein they got pretty right. Sure, he didn't know everything, was smart really only within his very narrow discipline of mathematical theoretical physics. Einstein himself used to say "I really only ever had 4 good ideas, and 2 were wrong". But the couple he was right about, he was really right.
And with the wild hair, the pacifism, the "same suit every day so I don't have to waste time thinking about it", and the snappy short equations that explain everything, he's probably the coolest smart guy since they all used to wear togas and live on wine and souvlaki on the beach.
--
make install -not war
what is the mechanics that cause gravity to produce wobble?
its called Hyper Redundancy
If they want to REALLY test a theory, they should just post it on slashdot. You know, because mass opinion is what really matters, regardless as to what's right and wrong.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
I hate it when people discuss science in this banal way. It is as if they think that the physical theories are what cause nature to act (the Laws of Nature). This is wrong. These physical theories only describe how nature appears to act. Quantum mechanics is a classic example. Look at all the different formulations that describe how the state vector or wave function or whatever you want to call it acts (Heisenberg's, Schrödinger's, Dirac's, Feynman's, etc.). They are all good theories because they explain the experimental evidence, they are simple, and they can predict things. Take a look at the so-called wave-particle duality. A photon, for example, doesn't act as a wave or as a particle. It acts as a photon (paraphrasing Feynman). We only describe it as acting as a wave or a particle.
The truth about science is that it may very well not be possible to understand why the Universe acts as it does. It may not even be possible to understand the most basic laws governing it. But we can certainly study and try to understand its behavior where we can observe it. General relativity does that well, and quantum mechanics does that well. Calling one right and the other wrong sort of loses its meaning in this context when both theories describe their data exceptionally well for the ranges that they observe. Neither of them proposes to govern nature, nor should we ever expect that of a physical theory.
Einstein, is there anything he can't do?? Mmmmm, Bacon.
Shh.
Feynman's take was that light is *always* particles. He was unequivocal about that.
So, more evidence supporting general relativity, but we still insist on viewing it as an approximation of a quantum-mechanical system (like how Newtonian physics can be viewed as an approximation of relativity).
My understanding is that relativity has been directly observed several times, whereas quantum theory is still just based on the interpretation of a series of controlled laboratory experiments, which mostly amounts to sifting through the wreckage of a high-energy collision and trying to derive the original state from the leftover pieces.
Isn't it about time to abandon the concept of the graviton and just accept that gravity is not a fundamental force, but is simply the observed effect of the curvature of spacetime due to the presence of matter and energy?
There's a saying in engineering: When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
Lame /. posts produce wobble?
Freedom is assumed. Then they try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free.
Yeah, I think you are correct. I thought I remembered hearing a Feynman lecture (perhaps the New Zealand lecture) we he was discussing which of the many formulations of QM was correct and where he described that nature acts as it wants to and that our physical theories only describe it to the best degree that we can reason and that they are all equivalent in the sense that they correctly describe how nature appears to act. But since I can't find a quote online, this argument probably came from another physicist.
You are exactly right, but to paraphrase:
"All models are wrong, but some are useful."
... and still they are gonna go without any real proof that the LHC won't kill us, and turn it on.
Ironic, ain't it?
Calling one right and the other wrong sort of loses its meaning in this context
I agree. Once again science... REAL science, is never about "right" or "wrong". It's about "can I use what you just told me in a predictable manner?". If it's BS and it doesn't work, then leave me alone I have stuff to do. :)
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
No, but I'm pretty sure it was proved that they are invariantly unequal under any Brand Name and Store You Buy Them At transformation. What a triumph!
Only if they are sufficiently prolific and redundant.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Term limits. That's all I ask for when it comes to Congress. Reps longer than Sens. How anyone could look me in the eye and say someone like Strom Thurmond was still in touch with todays society at his age when he retired compared to when he was first elected, IHNI.
No sig for you!!
Being out of touch with today's society is one of the most important functions of the Senate.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I'm getting sick of Einstein's theories continually being proved right.
We already know that there is something wrong with it on the quantum end of the scale. When are we going to get some tests which prove it wrong in a way that will help us refine it? Doesn't anyone have any tests they can do that will give us that information?
Cow Cube
The word you are searching for is hypothesis.
There are 4 terms that need to be understood in the realm of science - hypothesis, theory, law & fact. They are all separate & distinct, except for the only progression that occurs - hypothesis => theory.
A fact is what has been carefully observed.
A law describes that observation.
A hypothesis is a proposal intended to explain that observation.
A theory seeks to explain that observation & has been confirmed by considerable evidence and has endured all attempts to disprove it.
example:
Fact
Objects fall at the same rate regardless of mass.
Law
http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/GBSSCI/PHYS/Class/circles/u6l3c1.gif
Hypothesis => Theory
Mass causes a curvature of spacetime which creates the effect of gravity.
You are begging the question that posting that was of more value than reading the article and not posting it...
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Now THAT is a summary (perhaps with the exception of point 4 which gets -1:redundant). Take note slashdot editors.
I might as well be asking for millions of dollars to fall out of the sky.
Too bad I can't mod you up.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
as a sort of intellectual modesty, a reverence for the pursuit of science and the natural world
of course, this modesty doesn't translate well into a religious culture of simpletons who only talk in arrogant absolute laws on topics, like human sexuality, or crime and punishment, that are inherently subtle and complex. such that all these scientific "theories" to them can't possibly ring true, as flimsy and modestly phrased as they are. what they need is some cruel visage of a god to threaten fire and brimstone before something is respected
loud ugly morons need crude mental hammers in order process their world. morons ruin the world for the rest of us
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Now THAT is a summary
Actually I recommend reading the article. It's short, understandable, and contains other cool facts about these neutron stars.
Also, as for that last "proved" bit, the article ends with:
"It's not quite right to say that we have now 'proven' General Relativity," Breton said. "However, so far, Einstein's theory has passed all the tests that have been conducted, including ours."
Robert Byrd was a Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops in the Ku Klux Klan, and opposed desegregation of the armed forces to such an extent that he did not volunteer for service during World War II.
It is also worth mentioning that he opposed the Iraq War resolution vociferously, as well as the creation of the Homeland Security department, and has endorsed Barack Obama for president, despite Obama's loss in Byrd's home state in a rather race-baiting campaign.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
I want to know if time slows down for the pulsars. We seem to see them (I rtfa) orbiting around each other every couple of hours... If you were standing on that orbiting pulsar, how long do you think your watch would read? From the outside - earth, you appear to move around every 2 hours...but if you were sitting there, time slows down...so would you think you were there for weeks? oddness. measure that.
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
All the stories are the same, some observation was made that surprise, surprise turned out to be consistent with General Relativity. It's not like the theory was "proven", it just survived another chance to be not proven.
Except this time the experiment was to do something that couldn't be done before and in the end they give Einstein's theory a little more credit. A new measurement (observation) matches theory. It's a win-win. You would prefer to only hear of when he is discredited? And their results aren't focused on saying Einstein was right. They already knew he was. They just couldn't properly measure the predicted effects.
From the article:
"Those eclipses are the key to making a measurement that could never be done before," Breton said.
Einstein's 1915 theory predicted that in a close system of two very massive objects, such as neutron stars, one object's gravitational tug, along with an effect of its spinning around its axis, should cause the spin axis of the other to wobble, or precess.
Studies of other pulsars in binary systems had indicated that such wobbling occurred, but could not produce precise measurements of the amount of wobbling.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Nice try, but let's ask the Cloud: Nope, Googlefight definitely says that quantum theory is the correct one.
Otherwise, we will never leave our solar system.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Lame /. posters do tend to wobble. Is it still confirmable by observation if no one wants to observe it?
yes, but the hard problems, like interstellar travel, will best be solved by a theory which holds up at all levels, quantum, micro, macro, and cosmological.
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It's called Optionally Observable Hyper Redundancy. You don't know if you've seen it before or not, until you look in the box. The box itself, however, gives you a sickly form of déjà-vu.
Except that isn't possible, because theories that hold up well at describing things like gravity on a large scale break down horribly at the quantum level. Even basic interactions between particles cannot be described in the sense of, say, a truck hitting a telephone pole.
Except that isn't possible, because theories that hold up well at describing things like gravity on a large scale break down horribly at the quantum level. Even basic interactions between particles cannot be described in the sense of, say, a truck hitting a telephone pole.
person A: "one day, man will fly"person B: "Except that isn't possible, because man was not born with wings!"VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
A statistician said that. You know what they say about statistics, right?
You are aware that "impossible" means "cannot be done" and not just "we can't do it right now", right?
There's lots of right and wrong in science. Just not applied to entire theories. Well, right never applies to a whole theory. Wrong does.
General relativity gave the right (ie observed) answer in this case. That doesn't make general relativity right. But if GR had given the wrong answer, in a test in a domain that it claims to describe accurately, then we'd know that GR is in fact wrong. That is opposed to GR not making proper predictions in the quantum realm, where it is known not to work properly, which reveals that GR is incomplete.
Since no one answered with anything intelligent:
I don't know. I suspect it involves frame dragging though, since the article mentions rotation. A massive rotating body with drag spacetime around with it to some degree. That produces some asymmetry.
The article says that the bodies are expected to precess which is kind of like a wobble, I guess, but a very specific one.
"The laws of science are descriptive, not proscriptive."
Blasphemers! Model != Reality. The model is our best representation of how reality works. Models are never "proven," they simply have not yet been falsified or have only been falsified under specific conditions. The longer they stay unbroken, the more reliance we place on them. But, at no point do they become the reality they were created to represent. Recant, you unscientific rabble.
Invenio via vel creo
REAL science, is never about "right" or "wrong". It's about "can I use what you just told me in a predictable manner?". If it's BS and it doesn't work, then leave me alone I have stuff to do.
What you're describing sounds more like engineering than science, you know. As an engineer, I don't care too much about why nature acts the way it does - as long as I can find a usable method to get things working the way I need them to work. I take the pragmatic approach, because I have a real-life goal.
Science, on the other hand, is not per se concerned about "using what you just told me", it's about discovering the whys and hows. Mathematics is "REAL science", as you put it, and they are most definitely concerned about "right" and "wrong". Engineers use the model that works best for them, while scientists are coming up with the new models (or trying to consolidate them into grand unifying theories, as usual).
CJ
PS: yeah, I noticed the smiley.
Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
Lecture 1-1 of the Feynman Lectures in Physics that he gave as a two-year undergraduate course in physics at Caltech.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and absurd generalizations that fail to take into account the manifold subtleties of their subject?
Man does not fly. The machine does.
Facts, truths, half-truths... science is full of it all.
And you're essentially person C who then says that man will just grow wings and fly anyway.
You know, the fact that some obstacles can be overcome doesn't mean all obstacles can be overcome. Will there ever be interstellar travel? I haven't got the slightest, but while your naive optimism is not without charm, your apparent idea that there is no doubt that it will be possible - that, in fact, *everything* will be possible sooner or later - fails the laugh test.
Not sure if you're talking about superluminal travel or subluminal travel.
Theory already allows slower than light travel. You're spaceship would have to be big. VERY big. But if we really wanted to we could probably send mankind to the nearest stars with current technology.
But superluminal travel is a different kettle of fish. There are only two possible universes, one where there's an upper limit in the speed of information and another where there is no upper limit. The two universes have very different characteristics and our universe appears to be the smaller. It's hard to think of a way where you can transmit matter without also allowing information transfer.
Of course, even today faster than light travel is possible by current theory - but only by points A and B separating faster than light, not by allowing points A and B to communicate faster than light. Effectively this means that the speed of light is only constant locally. Maybe it would be possible to reverse the expansion and shrink the universe so that although the speed of light would still be an upper limit, communication between A and B could occur in less time than light could make the journey in a flat universe.
But I'd wager that faster than light travel in the special relativity sense is, and always will be, impossible.
Tim.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
Doh!
You're = your
smaller = former
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
Ok, but to clarify for some readers, "particle" does not mean corpuscular like a tennis ball, which is why the term "particle" tends to be a little misleading. In fact, it is why any "it's like a " phrase tends to fail, and why it was such a shock to discover indeterminable states to begin with. Quantum theory rests on the (unsurprising) revelation that at small scales, things are not as we have always visualized in the large, solid man-world. I don't think anyone other than Bohr was comfortable at the time with *any* explanation of some of these phenomena, even with models that were so fucking accurate.
And light does travel in wave form. Pics from a slashdot story very short while ago:
http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn14172-fastestever-flashgun-captures-image-of-light-wave.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=news1_head_dn14172
But it is easier to think of the quantized light in terms of... quanta! New particles, now with many new features and a money back guarantee!
Happy Independence Day!
And chimpanzees don't get termites, spit-covered sticks do.
Technology is as much a part of humanity as wings are of birds.
Gravity. It just seems (as long as this new measurement is correct!) to work that way. And GR correctly predicted this wobble, too, so formulas of GR show *how* the wobble happens.
But to answer your question: what ever is "the mechanics" that cause gravity is also "the mechanics" that cause the wobble, because the wobble is direct result of gravity (according to GR, at least).
We just got 1 step further away from time travel and FTL travel :(
I hate you Einstein for making the universe normal!
But then, you can never really prove a physical theory, can you? You can only disprove it by finding a counterexample, or confirm it again and again through experiment.
Here's a clue: look at today's date.
Here's another clue: a lot of people on one side of the Atlantic have a holiday today.
One final riddle: what's "Independence Day" apart from being a moderately engaging sci-fi movie?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I stopped reading after the first two sentences -- did nobody teach you about paragraphs? Seriously.
Jeez that was awful.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
News at 10!
Until the cast of Hannah Montana get appointed to the Hair and Makeup Committee.
You are aware that the difference between the two is sometimes impossible (haha) to spot, right?
I got further.
Apparently the assertion is absolute zero produces anti-gravity, and anti-gravity is a variable force.
The problem with that is we've artifically produced temperatures so close to absolute zero, but the materials chilled never became lighter.
Of course, I got about 15% of the way through. there could have been something more substantial.
please change your post setting to "plain text" under "options". It does not prevent you using basic html tags, it does preserve most of your space formatting though.VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Exactly.
Sure is. That's why it's very dangerous to say something is impossible.
As for this topic, it's quite probable that an explanation that is consistent with both quantum mechanics and relativity exists, because there are real physical situations in which both are important. Unfortunately, they're hard to study because they're both small and far away.
Actually, "spooky action at distance" common in quantum mechanics seems to imply that information can and regularly does travel faster than light. Whether this can be used for travel by us macrobes is another matter.
Even if you could, it wouldn't be particularly useful, because I'm kinda attached to my memories and genes :).
When most people say "faster than light travel", they mean "I can take a trip to Alfa Centauri and return before lunch". Rearranging spacetime to make bring said star system within walking distance fits that description well enough.
BTW. This has been proposed before.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I fail to see how parent can be redundant, when it was specifically replying only to its own parent, and has no siblings.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
That's the test that will prove GR once and for all.
In "Six Easy Pieces", Feynman says:
Newton thought that light was made up of particles, but then it was discovered, as we have seen here, that it behaves like a wave. Later, however (in the beginning of the twentieth century) it was found that light did indeed sometimes behave like a particle. Historically, the electron, for example, was thought to behave like a particle, and then it was found in many respects that it behaved like a wave. So it really behaves like neither. Now we have given up. We say: "It is like neither."
There is one lucky break, however — electrons behave just like light. The quantum behavior of atomic objects (electrons, protons, neutrons, photons, and so on) is the same for all; they are all "particle waves," or whatever you want to call them.
Interstellar travel is not a hard problem. All you need is a ship and a crew that can last a few tens of thousands of years (that's with current chemical propulsion). Hard is doing that in a few decades or less.
Man does not fly. The machine does.
Not the man. Not the machine. Mind is flying.
ok...
You're claiming that gravity has a corollary force, in much the same way that the electric force and magnetic force are corollaries. Instead of being perpendicular in some manner of cartesian coordinates, gravity and antigravity are prependicular in some form of polar coordinates, where gravity exerts force along r and antigravity exerts force along theta. I could accept this if you can provide some manner of mathematical explanation as to how that works (a rotational force equally opposing a linear force). Better yet would be to construct and execute an experiment which shows an effect that can only be predicted by this specific formulation of gravity, and not by any of the other theories.
You're also claiming a set of hypotheses about star formation, stellar processes, and astrophysical phenomena which almost completely excludes gravity in favor of magnetism. This is demonstrably false; the force of magnetism on a stellar or galactic scale is so minute (in comparison to gravity) as to be completely irrelevant in all but a handful of extreme cases. Additionally, there is absolutely no need, and in fact significant contrary evidence, for any form of heavy matter in the primordial universe. As above, if you can show an equation or model which fits our observation of the early universe (however indirect it may be) that allows for elements heavier than beryllium to exist, then you should publish, for fame and glory will surely be yours. Be sure to rewrite all of stellar nucleosynthesis and explain how the p-p chain, CNO cycle, and alpha cycles are wrong.
Something to consider might be: how does the spin of a nucleon relate to it's mass? Is there any way to demonstrate mathematically the reason for and cause of mass? If so, how does it relate to your rotational force? Set aside the grand galactic consequences of your theory until you fully understand and can formulate the microcosm of forces on particles within the framework of your theory of universal forces. The macrocosm will follow naturally from the microcosm; proof at the atomic level becomes compelling evidence for your theories at the cosmic level.
Please don't take this the wrong way; I'm not disrespecting your ideas or poking fun at you personally. This theory you've given us has some problems that need to be resolved with regard to existing observational and experimental data. That doesn't mean it's without merit, just that you have a very long way to go before you have something that other scientists will take seriously.
-1 raving lunatic; +6 subGenius... Things even out...
"because everything in the known Universe that rotates is spherical"
Galaxies rotate... they're not spherical... also asteroids, and me on a spinny chair. Things generally form spherical due to being dense fluidic with enough gravity to pull them into that shape.
"antigravity is a variable force that causes rotation. This rotation is better known as centrifugal force"
Cause and effect are mixed up there. Centrifugal force is only a perceived force, caused by trying to change the vector of travel against inertia. While increased inertia does increase "virtual mass" (ie, it behaves like a heavier object would in the sense it required a greater force to manipulate the object) it doesn't actually exhibit other properties associated with mass, such as increased gravity.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
visualized in the large, solid man-world.
Or a manbot's manputer's world, for that matter. But what about a fembot's femputer's world?
The problem is, "model" and "reality" aren't as separate as you suggest. In testing our models, we interact with the objects posited by the models, or that were posited by earlier, now confirmed, models. We need to understand these objects as real, not just "not falsified," in order to make sense of our scientific practice. As Ian Hacking puts it, we use electrons to do things, which means electrons must be real.
In general, the Popperian idea that theories are never confirmed, they are only ever not falsified, is pretty much universally rejected by philosophers of science these days.
What you're describing sounds more like engineering than science, you know. As an engineer, I don't care too much about why nature acts the way it does - as long as I can find a usable method to get things working the way I need them to work. I take the pragmatic approach, because I have a real-life goal.
What's the difference between an engineer and a physicist?
noitcnuf naissuaG ehT
;)
Science, on the other hand, is not per se concerned about "using what you just told me", it's about discovering the whys and hows.
No. Science is only concerned with the "hows". "Whys" are assigned to philosophy/religion.
Well, I don't know about you, but: i'm bursting with childlike curiosity =)
The article says that the bodies are expected to precess which is kind of like a wobble, I guess, but a very specific one.
There, fixed it ;)
I'm not sure someone too lazy to type "precess" into Google deserves to know.