What they mean by "99.95% right" is not that there is a 99.95% probability that Einstein's theory is dead right, and correct, and a 0.05% probability that it is dead wrong.
Horseshit. The ±0.05% isn't about relativity at all. It's the precision of the measurement used to gather data from the star. What they're actually saying is "we have data which is accurate to ±0.05% and the data fits relativity."
Maybe I don't know about the "Cartesian method of doubt", but it doesn't have anything to do with physics.
Uh, yes it does. The Cartesian Method for Doubt was introduced by Reneé Descartes as a method for seperating expectation from measurement when learning to interpret experimental data (as well as existentialism and skepticism as worldviews tolerant of "false senses.") Rule of thumb: if you don't know what something is, don't contradict the person talking about it. Even if it sounds incorrect, it might actually be correct.
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?
Wow, you gave a dramatically oversimplified and openly absurd interpretation of something in order to discredit it. Impressive. No wait, that other thing: tedious. Yes, you should add a few hundredths of a percentage point to the error tolerance for a ruler, in order to account for wear and tear, manufacturing error tolerance, material growth/shrinkage due to temperature, wood expansion due to wood absorbtion, and to that you're apparently a complete tool who isn't able to seperate expectation from actuality.
Even if I *should*, what percentage should I throw in?
You would have to give a non-retarded example in order to receive an answer.
Well, they are (up to about 0.6 c, at least,) but that's not the point. Indeed, the disparity between expected and measured data is less than 0.01%, which is also specifically mentioned in both the writeup (phrased as the measurement ratio and posited as 1:1.001) and in the article.
99.95% of what?
The ±0.05% refers to the accuracy of the measurement used to glean the data, and has nothing to do with the theory or the difference between the expected and measured value. They're codifying the error tolerance of the pulsar measurement.
There's no such thing as proof of a scientific theory, so talking about how a theory is "almost proven" is just plain wrong.
The word "almost" does not occur in either the article or the Slashdot summary. You might as well lambast them that claiming iron is made from honeybees and old shoes is just plain wrong.
And trying to quantify the "provenness" of a theory with a figure also shows a deep misunderstanding of how science works.
This is probably why nobody attempted to do so.
There are any number of quantifiable tests that have matched general relativity's predictions, and each of these have different error bars.
Yes. This one has an extremely broad range of data over an extremely long time frame available and works on a physically huge scale. It also has an "error bar" (huhu, we call that "error tolerance" back in the civilized world) of ±0.05%, making it the most accurate specific measurement of relativity that we have so far. That's why it's news.
So picking one at random and using it as the measure of how "proven" general relativity is doesn't make any sense at all.
This isn't picked at random. It's a new measurement and we're on a news site. Besides, nobody attempted to measure how proven relativity is.
If you're going to complain about story quality, at least wait a few hours for one with actual flaws to show up. They're not exactly rare.
Isn't Einstein's relativity just a much smaller magnitude extra term on Newton's mechanics?
God, no. Einstein's relativity is a complete inversion of physics, that recasts all fundamental processes as related to time and the speed of light. Relativity and Newtonian Mechanics are as similar as a paintbrush and spraypaint, in that they achieve generally the same results, but through a fundamentally completely different approach.
[[0.05%]] Negligible at human scales.
0.05% of a six foot tall man's height is 0.036 inches, or 0.91 millimeters. A millimeter is not negligable at human scales, and you don't get much more of a human scale than scaling against a human.
0.05% is not a small amount.
Einstein's correction to Newton was much less than 0.05%.
Einstein didn't correct Newton. He completely replaced Newton. Relativity and Newtonian Mechanics are highly dissimilar. Moreover, the difference in expected values gets higher than 0.05% at about 0.6 C. Humanity has already launched half a dozen objects at higher speeds than this (not counting things like particle accelerators - I'm talking about Voyager.)
When you get into Voyager's speeds, the divergence in expectation is almost a quarter of a percent. When you hit 0.9 C it's almost a full percent.
If relativity is really as much as 0.05% off, that leaves a vast amount of unexplained phenomena in our big Universe.
You need to start reading articles. Nobody (except slashdot readers) said that relativity was 0.05% off. What they said was that we have data with a ±0.05% accuracy which fits the relativistic model. The ±0.05% has nothing to do with the theory at all; it's the limit of precision on the technique we used to get the data from the pulsars in the first place.
No. The ±0.05% error is tolerance for experimental inaccuracy. It's not a measurement of how wrong the theory is according to data. It's a measurement of how close the correct data is to our recorded data.
Er. Wormholes don't come from General Relativity, and in fact there's a debate over whether Lorenzian wormholes even can exist under General Relativity.
No. It's the tolerance of error for this particular measurement. The measurement taken is closer than 0.05% to the predicted value. 0.05% comes from to what precision we believe the experiment is valid.
As long as we're in language Nazi mode, please learn what Irony means. Rebuttal references to bargain-basement dictionaries whose sales are set by their word count, or to user-written collections of mass misimpression like Princeton Word-Net and Wikipedia will be met with derision and mockery. Oh, and by the by, grandparent's error isn't in grammar, it's in conjugational syntax. Believe it or not, not every single rule in language is a grammar rule. A real language Nazi would know that.
Please don't engage in language Nazi mode until you've learned to goose-step properly. You don't even have your moustache on straight.
I don't think you are giving classical mechanics enough credit. Sure, it is wrong on several accounts. But it some ways, it seems to have gotten things fundamentally right, in a way that I personally think almost seems to transcend the mathematics.
The reason it seems so right is that it accurately describes the physics approximation that's hard wired into your brain. Do remember that instinct formed some science too.
Of course you can. It's one of the two locus collapses of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. You can measure location perfectly if you're willing to accept indeterminacy in time.
I do have a degree in physics
This seems highly unlikely. In fact, your degree too may be subject to the uncertainty principle: you can measure location accurately if you're vague about time (you might, for example, have a physics degree from MIT circa 1885) or time accurately if you're vague about location (you might have a contemporary degree the Zsa Zsa Gabor school of Quantum Chromodynamics.)
Given that you believe location cannot be measured in quantum physics, I do not believe that you have a contemporary degree from a modern school. Either that, or you watched Naruto until you knew exactly how to cheat on that final exam. Such a degree was clearly not earned through comprehension.
Within its limits of significance Newton's theory of gravitation is still just as "correct" as Relativity.
That's like saying "for whatever region of the hypothesis space a given theory gives usably correct predictions, it's useful."
No, it isn't. What he said compares the utility of accuracy to the demands of daily use, and thereby displays the lack of contrast in daily life between two progressive states of the understanding of physics. What you said is a tautological observation that a usably accurate predictive model is useful; the alternative would be unusably accurate predictive models, which is the defining line for usefulness in a predictive model.
Quantum theory has demonstrated that the fundamental concepts in newtonian physics (position, momentum, energy, time, etc) are not really meaningful when you boil things down to the lowest levels we can observe.
Please re-read grandparent. You seem to have missed his point. His point was that at the macroscale in everyday life, there isn't a germane distinction between Newtonian Mechanics and cutting-edge physics. To attempt to rebut him by referring to something that isn't at the macroscale and isn't part of daily life is really kind of off the mark.
I mean, you can tell someone that a VCR works because there's a little man in there that knows when you said you wanted something taped and writes all the TV programs down on tape.
This is a complete red herring. The difference is that we didn't invent the means by which the physical universe works. We don't have to attempt to approximate the behaviors that make a VCR function, because they're our invention.
Newtonian physics is not merely an appoximation error, the fundamental set of concepts and intuitions are just completely unhelpful at any scale but mezoscale (that on which we exist, somewhere between atom and star).
Mezoscale is the sub-visible scale at which microscopic scale effects no longer occur. Pre-GMR hard drive heads worked on mezoscale elements. We exist at the macroscale. Stars are exoscale. Don't use words you don't know, and especially don't attempt to explain them wrongly to other people.
And logic, semantics, many subfields of philosophy, tactics, game theory, economics, and other purely theoretical rigorous fields. But, your point remains valid.
Ignoring the predictive value of a model, whether it is complete or not, demonstrates that you are an idiot.
Well, either that, or that he's trying really hard to be academically proper, and doesn't know how. Cut the kid some slack.
If by correct you mean "approximation adequate for daily use," sure. But, not correct in the sense that it is an accurate conceptual modelling of the forces at work, which is generally what is meant in discussions along these lines.
Now, in reality, this new battery/capacitor hybrid is likely to have a far lower capacity rating (quoted in mAh on the box) than your typical NiMH AA cell.
Actually, as cited in the article, the new polymer battery has roughly double the capacity of current Li-ion cells.
As technology matures there's a race for bigger, faster, and finer. But this race is not eternal: in few years the sweet spot is hit and people are not interested in higher resolutions.
True. This has already happened for sound cards. I suggest, though, that it's actually quite a ways off for video. Hell, monitors are already selling at 2048x1536 at reasonable prices, and they keep going up.
We're very visual animals. It's gonna be a while. Kick back and watch the race. I've got $5 on Panasonic, if you're up for some action.
imo it should be more like computers: you basically have a processor that determines your data processing and a display device that determines your viewable resolution. almost everything else is software and thus improvements are continuous and ongoing.
This only works because the computer in question is generating the content. When your PC is rendering Crime Scene Investigation, this will be a wholly legitimate approach. (Also, CBS will probably want to talk to you.)
UXGA is 1600x1200. You're off by 37%, which is better than usual. 'Course, you're trying to compare three 1600x1900 (cough) monitors to one 7680x4320 screen, which even if they were that resolution is still a quarter of the correct neighborhood; given that you probably actually meant a real UXGA monitor and just got the res wrong, you're off by a more typical 83%.
Good work. In other news, 17% the resolution spread across three seperate screens just isn't the same thing. I'm sure you'll soon insist that wasn't the intended comparison, though, and then forget to mention why you brought the gaming rig up at all...
Yes, it is "just" that they've made a video system that pushes 2.3 gigabits per second. Similarly, Taipei 101 and the Petronas Towers are "just" tall buildings, the Tsar Bomba was "just" an explosive device, and France "just" needs a bath.
I'm probably the only one here who is 1) old enough to remember, and 2) actually paying attention to the HDTV fiasco from 1985 onwards.
Believe it or not, there are other people here outside highschool too.
Remember, the public airwaves are supposed to belong to we the people, and the broadcasters and producers are supposed to dance to our tune. Somehow they are now the masters, and we those begging for mercy.
Sounds like you need a TiVo. Or, perhaps, a valium. It's just TV. Read a book if it makes you that angry.
Slashdot Mirror
What they mean by "99.95% right" is not that there is a 99.95% probability that Einstein's theory is dead right, and correct, and a 0.05% probability that it is dead wrong.
Horseshit. The ±0.05% isn't about relativity at all. It's the precision of the measurement used to gather data from the star. What they're actually saying is "we have data which is accurate to ±0.05% and the data fits relativity."
Maybe I don't know about the "Cartesian method of doubt", but it doesn't have anything to do with physics.
Uh, yes it does. The Cartesian Method for Doubt was introduced by Reneé Descartes as a method for seperating expectation from measurement when learning to interpret experimental data (as well as existentialism and skepticism as worldviews tolerant of "false senses.") Rule of thumb: if you don't know what something is, don't contradict the person talking about it. Even if it sounds incorrect, it might actually be correct.
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?
Wow, you gave a dramatically oversimplified and openly absurd interpretation of something in order to discredit it. Impressive. No wait, that other thing: tedious. Yes, you should add a few hundredths of a percentage point to the error tolerance for a ruler, in order to account for wear and tear, manufacturing error tolerance, material growth/shrinkage due to temperature, wood expansion due to wood absorbtion, and to that you're apparently a complete tool who isn't able to seperate expectation from actuality.
Even if I *should*, what percentage should I throw in?
You would have to give a non-retarded example in order to receive an answer.
I think Newton's laws are precise within 99.95%.
Well, they are (up to about 0.6 c, at least,) but that's not the point. Indeed, the disparity between expected and measured data is less than 0.01%, which is also specifically mentioned in both the writeup (phrased as the measurement ratio and posited as 1:1.001) and in the article.
99.95% of what?
The ±0.05% refers to the accuracy of the measurement used to glean the data, and has nothing to do with the theory or the difference between the expected and measured value. They're codifying the error tolerance of the pulsar measurement.
There's no such thing as proof of a scientific theory, so talking about how a theory is "almost proven" is just plain wrong.
The word "almost" does not occur in either the article or the Slashdot summary. You might as well lambast them that claiming iron is made from honeybees and old shoes is just plain wrong.
And trying to quantify the "provenness" of a theory with a figure also shows a deep misunderstanding of how science works.
This is probably why nobody attempted to do so.
There are any number of quantifiable tests that have matched general relativity's predictions, and each of these have different error bars.
Yes. This one has an extremely broad range of data over an extremely long time frame available and works on a physically huge scale. It also has an "error bar" (huhu, we call that "error tolerance" back in the civilized world) of ±0.05%, making it the most accurate specific measurement of relativity that we have so far. That's why it's news.
So picking one at random and using it as the measure of how "proven" general relativity is doesn't make any sense at all.
This isn't picked at random. It's a new measurement and we're on a news site. Besides, nobody attempted to measure how proven relativity is.
If you're going to complain about story quality, at least wait a few hours for one with actual flaws to show up. They're not exactly rare.
Isn't Einstein's relativity just a much smaller magnitude extra term on Newton's mechanics?
God, no. Einstein's relativity is a complete inversion of physics, that recasts all fundamental processes as related to time and the speed of light. Relativity and Newtonian Mechanics are as similar as a paintbrush and spraypaint, in that they achieve generally the same results, but through a fundamentally completely different approach.
[[0.05%]] Negligible at human scales.
0.05% of a six foot tall man's height is 0.036 inches, or 0.91 millimeters. A millimeter is not negligable at human scales, and you don't get much more of a human scale than scaling against a human.
0.05% is not a small amount.
Einstein's correction to Newton was much less than 0.05%.
Einstein didn't correct Newton. He completely replaced Newton. Relativity and Newtonian Mechanics are highly dissimilar. Moreover, the difference in expected values gets higher than 0.05% at about 0.6 C. Humanity has already launched half a dozen objects at higher speeds than this (not counting things like particle accelerators - I'm talking about Voyager.)
When you get into Voyager's speeds, the divergence in expectation is almost a quarter of a percent. When you hit 0.9 C it's almost a full percent.
If relativity is really as much as 0.05% off, that leaves a vast amount of unexplained phenomena in our big Universe.
You need to start reading articles. Nobody (except slashdot readers) said that relativity was 0.05% off. What they said was that we have data with a ±0.05% accuracy which fits the relativistic model. The ±0.05% has nothing to do with the theory at all; it's the limit of precision on the technique we used to get the data from the pulsars in the first place.
No. The ±0.05% error is tolerance for experimental inaccuracy. It's not a measurement of how wrong the theory is according to data. It's a measurement of how close the correct data is to our recorded data.
Er. Wormholes don't come from General Relativity, and in fact there's a debate over whether Lorenzian wormholes even can exist under General Relativity.
No. It's the tolerance of error for this particular measurement. The measurement taken is closer than 0.05% to the predicted value. 0.05% comes from to what precision we believe the experiment is valid.
and the univese is asymptotically deSitter space
Er, I thought it was an anti-deSitter space? The two are fairly different.
As long as we're in language Nazi mode, please learn what Irony means. Rebuttal references to bargain-basement dictionaries whose sales are set by their word count, or to user-written collections of mass misimpression like Princeton Word-Net and Wikipedia will be met with derision and mockery. Oh, and by the by, grandparent's error isn't in grammar, it's in conjugational syntax. Believe it or not, not every single rule in language is a grammar rule. A real language Nazi would know that.
Please don't engage in language Nazi mode until you've learned to goose-step properly. You don't even have your moustache on straight.
I don't think you are giving classical mechanics enough credit. Sure, it is wrong on several accounts. But it some ways, it seems to have gotten things fundamentally right, in a way that I personally think almost seems to transcend the mathematics.
The reason it seems so right is that it accurately describes the physics approximation that's hard wired into your brain. Do remember that instinct formed some science too.
You can't measure position in quantum physics
Of course you can. It's one of the two locus collapses of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. You can measure location perfectly if you're willing to accept indeterminacy in time.
I do have a degree in physics
This seems highly unlikely. In fact, your degree too may be subject to the uncertainty principle: you can measure location accurately if you're vague about time (you might, for example, have a physics degree from MIT circa 1885) or time accurately if you're vague about location (you might have a contemporary degree the Zsa Zsa Gabor school of Quantum Chromodynamics.)
Given that you believe location cannot be measured in quantum physics, I do not believe that you have a contemporary degree from a modern school. Either that, or you watched Naruto until you knew exactly how to cheat on that final exam. Such a degree was clearly not earned through comprehension.
Within its limits of significance Newton's theory of gravitation is still just as "correct" as Relativity.
That's like saying "for whatever region of the hypothesis space a given theory gives usably correct predictions, it's useful."
No, it isn't. What he said compares the utility of accuracy to the demands of daily use, and thereby displays the lack of contrast in daily life between two progressive states of the understanding of physics. What you said is a tautological observation that a usably accurate predictive model is useful; the alternative would be unusably accurate predictive models, which is the defining line for usefulness in a predictive model.
Quantum theory has demonstrated that the fundamental concepts in newtonian physics (position, momentum, energy, time, etc) are not really meaningful when you boil things down to the lowest levels we can observe.
Please re-read grandparent. You seem to have missed his point. His point was that at the macroscale in everyday life, there isn't a germane distinction between Newtonian Mechanics and cutting-edge physics. To attempt to rebut him by referring to something that isn't at the macroscale and isn't part of daily life is really kind of off the mark.
I mean, you can tell someone that a VCR works because there's a little man in there that knows when you said you wanted something taped and writes all the TV programs down on tape.
This is a complete red herring. The difference is that we didn't invent the means by which the physical universe works. We don't have to attempt to approximate the behaviors that make a VCR function, because they're our invention.
Newtonian physics is not merely an appoximation error, the fundamental set of concepts and intuitions are just completely unhelpful at any scale but mezoscale (that on which we exist, somewhere between atom and star).
Mezoscale is the sub-visible scale at which microscopic scale effects no longer occur. Pre-GMR hard drive heads worked on mezoscale elements. We exist at the macroscale. Stars are exoscale. Don't use words you don't know, and especially don't attempt to explain them wrongly to other people.
Only mathematics has proofs
And logic, semantics, many subfields of philosophy, tactics, game theory, economics, and other purely theoretical rigorous fields. But, your point remains valid.
Ignoring the predictive value of a model, whether it is complete or not, demonstrates that you are an idiot.
Well, either that, or that he's trying really hard to be academically proper, and doesn't know how. Cut the kid some slack.
Newtonian physics is still correct
If by correct you mean "approximation adequate for daily use," sure. But, not correct in the sense that it is an accurate conceptual modelling of the forces at work, which is generally what is meant in discussions along these lines.
Now, in reality, this new battery/capacitor hybrid is likely to have a far lower capacity rating (quoted in mAh on the box) than your typical NiMH AA cell.
Actually, as cited in the article, the new polymer battery has roughly double the capacity of current Li-ion cells.
Oh Kif, it's beautiful! It's Spirit, the pony I always wanted but my parents said I already had too many ponies!
As technology matures there's a race for bigger, faster, and finer. But this race is not eternal: in few years the sweet spot is hit and people are not interested in higher resolutions.
True. This has already happened for sound cards. I suggest, though, that it's actually quite a ways off for video. Hell, monitors are already selling at 2048x1536 at reasonable prices, and they keep going up.
We're very visual animals. It's gonna be a while. Kick back and watch the race. I've got $5 on Panasonic, if you're up for some action.
imo it should be more like computers: you basically have a processor that determines your data processing and a display device that determines your viewable resolution. almost everything else is software and thus improvements are continuous and ongoing.
This only works because the computer in question is generating the content. When your PC is rendering Crime Scene Investigation, this will be a wholly legitimate approach. (Also, CBS will probably want to talk to you.)
Recievers recieve. They don't create.
UXGA is 1600x1200. You're off by 37%, which is better than usual. 'Course, you're trying to compare three 1600x1900 (cough) monitors to one 7680x4320 screen, which even if they were that resolution is still a quarter of the correct neighborhood; given that you probably actually meant a real UXGA monitor and just got the res wrong, you're off by a more typical 83%.
Good work. In other news, 17% the resolution spread across three seperate screens just isn't the same thing. I'm sure you'll soon insist that wasn't the intended comparison, though, and then forget to mention why you brought the gaming rig up at all...
Yes, it is "just" that they've made a video system that pushes 2.3 gigabits per second. Similarly, Taipei 101 and the Petronas Towers are "just" tall buildings, the Tsar Bomba was "just" an explosive device, and France "just" needs a bath.
And you just need a sense of scale.
I find it particularly hilarious that you're saying there have been no improvements in optics since the 1980s at the same time that Digg is running two stories about new metallic crystals with negative optical indices. Please learn to differentiate between you not knowing about something and it not having happened.
American TV is 30fps, and other TV... well, who cares. :D But, yeah, with compression you're still looking at eating a DVD every couple of minutes.
it is not possible to resolve individual pixels in an 8x10 photo printed at VGA resolution held 10 meters away
This is Slashdot, where a legitimate reply involves the word "binoculars."
I'm probably the only one here who is 1) old enough to remember, and 2) actually paying attention to the HDTV fiasco from 1985 onwards.
Believe it or not, there are other people here outside highschool too.
Remember, the public airwaves are supposed to belong to we the people, and the broadcasters and producers are supposed to dance to our tune. Somehow they are now the masters, and we those begging for mercy.
Sounds like you need a TiVo. Or, perhaps, a valium. It's just TV. Read a book if it makes you that angry.