There’s a couple of quotes from Ernest Rutherford that I’ve kept in my head. Today seems like a good day to take them out of my head and put them to the WUWT readership. I’ll refer back to these at some point in the future I’m sure.
An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid. – As quoted in Einstein: The Man and His Achievement (1973) by G. J. Whitrow, p. 42
“If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.” – As quoted in many Internet sources.
With thanks to Evan.
Dr. Kevin Trenberth is also a New Zealander, but there’s light years separating him and Rutherford when it comes to how they view science and statistics. One was a model scientist, and the other is a scientist who models.
UPDATE: here is another –
“In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.” – Samuel Clemens
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Okay, enough of the “barmaid” talk. Female bartenders are called bartenders as tender has nothing to do with gender.
Hey, what’s with the jibe about statistics? If one subset of science practitioners has come out relatively well from the climate alarm fiasco, it is the statisticians. It is their business to design better and better experiments, so I’d be inclined to say that “if your experiment was not designed using competent statistical guidance, then you’ve probably wasted resources”
And just to undermine Rutherford’s quote-based authority a little bit, how about
“Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of the atom is talking moonshine”
Hey, what with the jibe about statistics? Of all science practitioners in and around the climate alarm debacle, I think the statisticians have come out relatively well. It is their business to design better and better experiments, so that I’m inclined to say ‘if you didn’t use statistical guidance in designing your experiment, you’ve probably wasted resources’ as a counter-riposte!
And while we’re chucking ripostes about, here’s another one from Rutherford:
“Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of the atom is talking moonshine”
Fallibility, eh?
“The trouble with predicting the future is that it is very hard.”
— Yogi Berra
Let me give another Einstein quote in support of my own discipline:
‘Politics is more difficult than physics.’
Actually, having studied both, I think he’s wrong – but there are plenty of ‘concerned scientists’ who provide supporting evidence (though that’s largely confirmation bias at work).
Dr. Bob says:
April 8, 2012 at 7:53 pm
Thanks for correcting my mistake. Spent too much time on computers today reloading after a virus attack. SMART HDD is nasty.
———————————————————————————————————————
SMART HDD is pure evil. If you haven’t gotten rid of it yet try:
http://support.kaspersky.com/faq/?qid=208283363
Be sure to enter address by hand, SMART HDD can redirect links to trojans.
“The train standing at the station and not moving is going to get to tomorrow at exactly the same time as the train that is speeding from one end of the country to the other,”
I’m a thicko when it comes to relativity theory but wasn’t one of the main tenets that if one object is travelling in space close to the speed of light time does change relative to a ‘stationary’ object? In other words the two trains will not get to ‘tomorrow’ at exactly the same time.
Why are you people so hung up about Polish dancers? Nubian dancers are bloody marvelous too.
I call racism!
Ric? I’m right, aren’t I?
“If facts conflict with a theory, either the theory must be changed or the facts.” Spinoza
I’ve been thinking about this, and I think it possible that everyone simply got caught up in the ‘idea’ of it which presented such an interesting take on the universe and didn’t go back to the explanation to see there was no joined up logic – it reminded me of something else I came across recently, the Planck and Ultraviolet Catastrophe. I was reading about it’s history and was struck by the statement that this was a problem because ‘the well known physics of the day said it would happen’, but it didn’t.. Then Planck came up with quanta and it seemed to solve the problem, but, I couldn’t find what that ‘well known physics of the day’ was – surely if the Ultraviolet Catastrophe doesn’t happen though predicted by this ‘well known physics’, then that physics was wrong. If you, or anyone reading this, know what that was I’d be very grateful for the information, it’s really bugging me..
Anyway, I’ve been looking for what else I can find, not got very far, these are the first two I’ve found both of which I think interesting reads:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-First-Test-That-Proves-General-Theory-of-Relativity-Wrong-20259.shtml
http://www.new-science-theory.com/albert-einstein.php
I’ve just found this article: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/relativity-and-the-cosmos.html
And it has the usual take that Einstein’s spacetimegravity was proved by that event of light being bent by it, which when I first read of it struck me as not proving any such thing, all it showed was that light is affected by the gravity of a planet it passes, why shouldn’t it be? It doesn’t need any space/time warping explanation. Since reading up on light [from the arguments I have about it on this board], I’ve learned that light is slowed down by passing through a medium, it slows down through our atmosphere and even more through the ocean (not a great memory, I think it was 14 times more in the ocean than in the atmosphere). I’m going to have to re-read that second link I posted because there a quite a bit new to me.., but, from my own take on the description of motion affecting time, I have to agree with this in it in principle:
“Classical experimental physics theory certainly had holes so that Einstein could push his fictional-experiment ‘relativity’ physics theory. And some now think that real physics started with Einstein, though there is a maybe stronger argument that Einstein ended real physics theory and started a science-fiction physics theory based on his ‘thought-experiment’ or ‘fictional-experiment’ method.”
Because the thought experiment doesn’t make any sense, contradicted by what is actually happening.
Larry
Knutsfordian says:
April 9, 2012 at 3:53 pm
“The train standing at the station and not moving is going to get to tomorrow at exactly the same time as the train that is speeding from one end of the country to the other,”
I’m a thicko when it comes to relativity theory but wasn’t one of the main tenets that if one object is travelling in space close to the speed of light time does change relative to a ‘stationary’ object? In other words the two trains will not get to ‘tomorrow’ at exactly the same time.
Which was my other point – that it’s not because the majority are to thick to understand it, esoteric as its been presented, but that the logic isn’t there to support it. We find it difficult to grasp because it’s nonsense, not because it’s too clever for us.
Here’s the extract from the original piece [the time axis, up and down, is the y axis and the horizontal, space, is the x axis]:
“You can visualize this by imagining a pair of axes drawn on a sheet of paper. The axis that runs up and down is the time axis, and the upward direction points toward the future. The horizontal axis represents space. We’re only considering one dimension of space, because a piece of paper only has two dimensions total and we’re all out, but just bear in mind that the basic idea applies to all three dimensions of space.
Draw an arrow starting at the origin, where the axes cross, pointing upward along the vertical axis. It doesn’t matter how long the arrow is; just know that it can be only one length. This arrow, which right now points toward the future, represents a quantity physicists call four-velocity. It’s your velocity through spacetime. Right now, it shows you not moving in space at all, so it’s pointing straight in the futureward direction.
If you want to move through space — say, to the right along the horizontal axis — you need to change your four-velocity to include some horizontal component. That is, you need to rotate the arrow. But as you do, notice that the arrow now points less in the futureward direction — upward along the vertical axis — than it did before. You’re now moving through space, as evidenced by the fact that your four-velocity now has a space component, but you have to give up some of your motion toward the future, since the four-velocity arrow can only rotate and never stretch or shrink.
This is the origin of the famous “time dilation” effect everybody talks about when they discuss special relativity. If you’re moving through space, then you’re not moving through time as fast as you would be if you were sitting still. Your clock will tick slower than the clock of a person who isn’t moving.”
The “four velocity” doesn’t need to be changed. Why should it? Everything happening on the x axis regardless of speed is all travelling up the y axis – there’s no joined up logic to say the arrow of time on the y axis has to change by someone moving along the x axis.
So it doesn’t matter how fast you go, you’re not pulling the arrow down to you relative to your speed, you’re not slowing time, you’re still going to get to tomorrow at the same time as someone who hasn’t been moving.
The “you must give up some of your motion towards the future” is a fiction. So the ‘the faster we go the more time slows for us’ is a fiction, and all speculation about what happens if we’re travelling as fast as it takes to reach tomorrow and what someone who isn’t moving is observing, is just more nonsense. Einstein’s thought experiment really is nonsense, that’s why we can’t understand all that’s being said about it, why the explanations don’t make sense. Calling it “four vector” and the rest just re-inforces in us the idea that we’re thickos for not understanding it, but really, the majority of us don’t understand it because it is illogical, it goes against observation and rational thinking about our observation.
We observe that no matter how fast or slow we’re moving in the world, we all reach tomorrow together. Simple as that.
“If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.”
Rutherford was a brilliant man, but this is a moronic thing for him to say. All measurements are imperfect. All measurements must be repeated and repeatable. They will never be identical due to their imperfection. Hence statistics.
I thought of this one myself and am ever so proud of it.
How do you change the mind of a person for whom the answer to the following question is a firm yes and how will that way of thinking effect their life?
If I am right and you are wrong does that make you a bad person?
I think this explains a lot. Especially if what they believe makes them a hero or gives them their sense of value as a person or defines their place and value in life.
Myrrh, the arrow isn’t the basis for the time-dilation, it is just a real cool way of expressing it… I’ve never heard that explanation for time dilation before. The origin is the whole “Light travels at the same speed no matter how fast you are ‘moving'”.
If I am sitting in my late-model Toyota Star-Cruiser, and shine a laser straight up at a mirror in the ceiling of my cabin, it goes to the mirror and down to the floor. I see it move at a speed c. You go cruising by in your Nissan Galaxy Blazer at 0.5c, you will see that laser move to the ceiling and down to the floor. You will also see the beam travel at speed c. But the relative distance you see it travel is greater.
So, for me to see the beam travel up 4 feet and down 8 feet in time x, and you to see it move up 6 feet and down 12 feet in the same time x, and it moving at the same speed, your clock needs to be moving slower…
You won’t see this in any measurable amount if you just get up off the divan and go to the kitchen to throw on the kettle for a cuppa, but it is there.
It’s been measured with atomic clocks flying around the world, and my/your GPS wouldn’t be worth its weight in drachmas without it.
Having said that, it IS just a theory 🙂
sanders400 says:
April 9, 2012 at 8:36 pm
Myrrh, the arrow isn’t the basis for the time-dilation, it is just a real cool way of expressing it… I’ve never heard that explanation for time dilation before. The origin is the whole “Light travels at the same speed no matter how fast you are ‘moving’”.
Yes, but that’s why it’s such a good explanation. It gives a perfectly rational way of imagining it because the speed of time into the future is taken as the constant.
If I am sitting in my late-model Toyota Star-Cruiser, and shine a laser straight up at a mirror in the ceiling of my cabin, it goes to the mirror and down to the floor. I see it move at a speed c. You go cruising by in your Nissan Galaxy Blazer at 0.5c, you will see that laser move to the ceiling and down to the floor. You will also see the beam travel at speed c. But the relative distance you see it travel is greater.
You’re just extrapolating, or rather, just creating another scenario from the initial illogical jump, there’s no logic to support that my speed is physically altering the objects in space.
So, for me to see the beam travel up 4 feet and down 8 feet in time x, and you to see it move up 6 feet and down 12 feet in the same time x, and it moving at the same speed, your clock needs to be moving slower…
They say a bat hears everything slowed down, it isn’t altering space or time, it’s filtering it through its own perception to hear it as this.
You won’t see this in any measurable amount if you just get up off the divan and go to the kitchen to throw on the kettle for a cuppa, but it is there.
No it isn’t, not until you can show how my movement physically alters the objects in space and time around me – there’s no logical connection between my speeding up and time physically slowing down for me. I don’t get to tomorrow any slower than you just because I’m moving and you’re sitting watching. And why do I always have to get up to make the tea?
It’s been measured with atomic clocks flying around the world, and my/your GPS wouldn’t be worth its weight in drachmas without it.
I remembered after posting that there was an example claimed as proof, we had a discussion about it earlier here which is where I first began thinking about this, I’d forgotten about it.. Nope, can’t recall my ‘buts’ in that discussion, but there is nothing to prove that clocks are being physically slowed down by a physical altering of ‘space/time’. It’s like the supposed proof that space/time/gravity will alter the beam of light going past a planet, of course it does, stands to reason as light is a physical thing and gravity will have some effect on it, but, to say that this is proof of ‘space/time’ physically being altered is an illogical jump. All Einstein did was say that such a thing would happen and that it would be proof of his hypothesis – how? The joined up logic is missing. Simple gravity explains it. Simple gravity could just as easily explain a physical slowing down of clocks orbiting a planet, and that would alter according to the gravity exerted by the planet. There’s no connection between speed and and physically altering time, any further than the faster you go the quicker you get somewhere.
That’s why the example of the train is so brilliant, it becomes obvious if the time taken for the train to reach the first station is seen as the constant, of ‘movement into the future’ – travelling faster on the train by running down the corridor isn’t going to get you to the next station slower than someone sitting still reading for the journey…
Having said that, it IS just a theory 🙂
Hypothesis, or perhaps as Smokey points out with regard to AGW claims, a conjecture.
Re the bat example and the difference between perception and actual physical alteration of ‘space/time’ – I was once in a situation where an oncoming car was coming straight for me when I was in the overtaking lane going up on a long steepish incline stretch of road where traffic coming down had only one lane, someone had decided to overtake going down and misjudged it. When I saw the whites of his eyes, literally, I saw by his total frozen panic he had no way out, nor it seemed had I when I glanced around at my options as I was overtaking a line of cars going at a speed not much below mine and the line of cars he was overtaking was just as solid. That’s when I started thinking, and time slowed right down. I calculated that if I could drop my speed by five miles an hour, I was doing seventy, I could get down to the speed of traffic on my left and with some deft manoeuvring could slip into the stream. I did it, and time went back to normal as I glanced in the mirror to check there was no great pile up behind me and then gripped the wheel and concentrated really hard on the car in front to try and maintain my speed at his. It took around half a mile of this before I could begin to relax concentration and return to normal from the shock. Nothing changed in the space or time around me, only my perception of it. My speed of thinking had apparently slowed down time, but only for me, time and space around me hadn’t changed.
..and I’m sure I aged somewhat faster than those who hadn’t seen the problem..
Myrrh says:
April 9, 2012 at 4:53 pm
http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-First-Test-That-Proves-General-Theory-of-Relativity-Wrong-20259.shtml
;——————————————-
Regarding the above URL, the authors are using a background metric, i.e., they created a flat metric (with off diagonal perturbations) so they could couple to electromagnetism.
They did not generate the metric using general relativity.
Hence, they’re merely testing their ansatz – they are not testing general relativity.
Since this is off topic, see any book on general relativity.
“Subtle is the Lord. Malicious, He is not.”
A. Einstein
Agile Aspect says:
April 10, 2012 at 3:32 pm
Myrrh says:
April 9, 2012 at 4:53 pm
http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-First-Test-That-Proves-General-Theory-of-Relativity-Wrong-20259.shtml
;——————————————-
Regarding the above URL, the authors are using a background metric, i.e., they created a flat metric (with off diagonal perturbations) so they could couple to electromagnetism.
They did not generate the metric using general relativity.
Hence, they’re merely testing their ansatz – they are not testing general relativity.
OK, I can’t actually understand what you mean here, but thanks for the input. How would you test for it?
Since this is off topic, see any book on general relativity.
[I’ve now brought in some quotes ..] I think you’ve missed my point here, there’s a leap to general relativity which has no joined up logic – this can be seen in deconstructing the time dilation paradigm. There is no ‘space/time’ continuum in which speed alters time – reading books on relativity which begin with the premise that this is reality are the problem, not the solution, they sound clever but they’re based on a fiction.
I can only suggest you read through the description RobotRollCAll I posted here: http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fjwkh/why_exactly_can_nothing_go_faster_than_the_speed/c1gh4x7?utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=10%20Things%20In%20Tech%20You%20Need%20To%20Know&utm_campaign=10ThingsTech_NL_022211
If you follow this brilliant explanation of it, hopefully, you’ll see he has to make the same jump to relativity without any joined up logic, there is nothing connecting movement in space to changing time.
What should be asked for is proof of the claim, because no such proof has ever been given, it’s actually not for us to construct an experiment to prove it wrong, but for you to construct an experiment to prove it right. Until then it is only a conjecture. You, generic, have to yank it up to a hypothesis.
However, I’ve shown that it’s ludicrous, taking it up to the ‘speed of light’ claiming it is then that the effect shows, as in spaceman returning and not aging relative to twin he left behind, doesn’t have to be made, it doesn’t make sense from the get go.
Unless you can show that I physically change the form of matter around me when I get up to make a cup of tea by slowing down time, because this is what the claim is, that all bodily processes are somehow ‘slowed down’ without altering the physical coherence of my body, that my blood will still circulate efficiently, for example, though I have slowed down time.. See the problem? It’s a nonsense claim that motion slows down time. There is no joined up logic to bringing down the line of time on the y axis as one travels faster on the x. There is no physical reality in someone running down the corrider of a train getting to the next station slower than someone sitting in a carriage reading a book.
I have also given an explanation of what I think has been the cause of this mistake by Einstein, that he has taken a process of the mind viewing the world, (as in bats hearing everything slowed down and my close call on the road, it wasn’t a good day to die, where time stood still while I worked out how to get out of what would have been a multiple car pile up, fear is a great motivator), and claimed erroneously that it’s actually physical reality that changes, that actual physical processes are slowed down.
I’ve just had a look for any quotes by him on relativity, and there’s this:
“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT’S relativity.” http://thinkexist.com/quotes/with/keyword/relativity/
You see? He has mistaken viewing the world of space and time through a medium which can change the perception of it, the mind, with it being actual changes to physical matter.
Here’s another good quote on it from the same page: “Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself anymore.”
What they the mathematicians have done, and so all the tons of books pontificating on this as if his ‘theory’ is right, is to begin from the original logic disjunct, beginning with the premise that movement on the x axis has to bring the constant length of time on the y down to meet it, that the faster one goes the slower that makes time. It’s an illusion.
I think it’s just one of those cases where the illusion is so much fun ‘for science minds’, that having been ‘given permission’ to extrapolate from it by Einstein’s claim that it was reality the whole thing just snowballed, grew like topsy, and the majority never bothing to go back and look at how he came to it. Go through RobotRollCall’s telling of it, the mistaken leap to ‘physically changed relativity’ becomes more obvious. Think about it.
Relativity
“Relativity teaches us the connection between the different descriptions of one and the same reality”.
“I sometimes ask myself how it came about that I was the one to develop the theory of relativity. The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think about problems of space and time. These are things which he has thought about as a child. But my intellectual development was retarded,as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up.”
“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT’S relativity.”
“When a blind beetle crawls over the surface of the globe, he doesn’t realize that the track he has covered is curved. I was lucky enough to have spotted it.”
“I have no particular talent. I am merely inquisitive.”
“It’s not that I’m so smart , it’s just that I stay with problems longer .”
From:
http://www.some-guy.com/quotes/einstein.html
He didn’t stay with the problem long enough..
“Science is the century-old endeavour to bring together by means of systematic thought the perceptible phenomena of this world into as thorough-going an association as possible. To put it boldly, it is the attempt at a posterior reconstruction of existence by the process of conceptualisation. Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgements of all kinds remain necessary.”
He’s confused physical perception of the world where physical processes in the body change it for the perceiver, with this changing the actual physical world. His theory of relativity is falsified.
Sorry mods, I’ve missed a closed italics after “Since this is off topic, see any book on general relativity.”
I’ve falsified the theory of relativity and not even a ‘well done, Myrrh’.
Oh, Dang… I read your post, @Myrrh, and my reality changed… Now my GPS doesn’t work anymore…
Oh, right, it worked because it was going going round the earth at close to the speed of light and so it slowed down time for itself..
Yeah right, someone running down the corridor of the train is going to get to the next station slower than someone sitting still in a carriage reading a book… How can we have had a hundred years of this being taught? And his relativity gravity as depicted by the sheet of rubber marked out in grids.. Only works in one direction. Which is where I came in – http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/04may_epic/
There’s no gravity on the other sides of the Earth because the weight of the Earth can only distort space in one direction, 🙂 This is just so silly it’s extraordinary that it has been taught at all. Suspend a ball of suitable weight in a bath of water, where’s the distortion of Einstein’s gravity? [And it doesn’t matter to what ‘fine’ a level you take this, as with the argument that it’s only at great speeds that the time dilation is noticed, if a body is distorting space on one side then its opposite side will not be distorted in this ‘gravity well’ – there can be no gravity there. If you can imagine that your speed alters time you can imagine anything.
Anyway, I’ve shown how he made his basic error, mistaking perception of the physical world around us by thinking it was physically changing the physical world around us. The bat doesn’t physically change the world around us, or actually for itself, it filters hearing sounds in it to better catch its dinner in the night which is still flying at the speed it does as is the bat flying at its speed. You’re not going to get to the next station slower by running down the corridor of the train than someone sitting still reading a book is going to get there faster..
No, silly, my GPS is sitting here happily with me, using satellites that are travelling at high speeds to stay in geosync orbit. Their time is dilated, and the precision needed uses that dilation to accurately place me in the universe.
As far as the sheet of rubber, you actually have to read the text, not just look at the pretty pictures…
sanders400 says:
April 14, 2012 at 8:23 am
No, silly, my GPS is sitting here happily with me, using satellites that are travelling at high speeds to stay in geosync orbit. Their time is dilated, and the precision needed uses that dilation to accurately place me in the universe.
As I said, simple gravity can account for any such changes. That Einstein used simple Newtonian gravity to claim this proved his ramblings and was believed, and scientists still doing just that to tell you your GPS is adjusted for accuracy for this imaginary ‘time dilation’, and you believe them, says, to me, that you’re not looking at this objectively.
As far as the sheet of rubber, you actually have to read the text, not just look at the pretty pictures…
I suggest you don’t read the text at all, but give the pretty pictures a long hard look..
It doesn’t work in 3D.
Einstein’s silly idea creates a vortex in one direction only since it is based on the mass of planet distorting space around it. There is no orbiting around a planet – just orbiting in the EinsteinVortex taking you relentlessly down to crash into the planet, but, only if your approach hits the EinsteinVortex direction – he can’t account for what happens outside of that, on something passing on the other side of the planet, where there is not his ‘vortex gravity’, but a lump in space created by his ‘mass distorting space’ which creates a vortex gravity on the opposite side.
It doesn’t exist in our physical 3d world, because it is just too silly, as well as being clearly falsified by the Moon orbiting the Earth, and falsified by every satellite orbiting ..
Einstein was very clever at ‘predicting’ using Newtonian physics.. 🙂 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1314656/Scientists-prove-time-really-does-pass-quicker-higher-altitude.html
As before, no joined up logic. Someone running down the corridor of the train will not be travelling slower than someone sitting still doing nothing, the one sitting still doing nothing will not reach the next station quicker than someone running down the corridor. That is Einstein’s claim, deconstructed. Do you really think that’s an accurate description of our physical world? There is no, no, physical connection between time and speed of motion in which the faster one goes the slower goes time. Show it.
As I showed, he was mistaking mental perception for actual physical changes in the world.
The bat isn’t changing the speed of the sound made by the Moth in the physical world, only in its own perception of the sound, slowing it down gives it apparently more time to track it. Just as I apparently had more time to think about the situation I was in when time slowed down to ‘practically’ a stop. I wasn’t changing the actual speeds I or anyone was travelling, the distances to speed didn’t change – that’s how I could calculate it, because I was still calculating real world speeds and distances – and the actual time taken didn’t become slower. The moth isn’t travelling in slow motion as the bat hears it…
Anyway, look at the pictures, what exactly is it telling you in 3D? Imagine as described the original exercise I posted where the future direction is the constant speed, does it really make any sense at all when correlating tomorrow to a train travelling to the next station?
Shrug, ask someone who works with GPS how exactly ‘time dilation’ of Einstein’s relativity has anything to do with it, and what in it can’t be explained with bog standard physics..
Well. Done: Myrrh.