Re: OT: The end of the world in roughly 3 hours

On Sep 23, 11:15 am, Michael Kraemer <M.Krae...@xxxxxx> wrote:
AEF schrieb:



No, that's not true. The MM experiment was done before relativity and
it did not confirm it.

It was decisive insofar as it showed that one can't
add further to the speed of light (and killed the ether
hypothesis btw). This limitation nearly inevitably leads
to SR.

> There were other explanations at the time. In

fact, IIRC, SR wasn't even well accepted at the time.

This doesn't mean much. Kopernikus, Kepler, Galileo come to mind.

Also, at least according to Einstein, His Life and Universe, by Walter
Isaacson, the eclipse experiment did not provide very accurate or
consistent results, but Eddington was so convinced that GR could not
be wrong that he threw out the results of one expedition that didn't
agree with the more favorable results of another, which still had
somewhat large error bars (margin of error). Additionally, there have
been many variants of GR proposed by others,

There might have been other theories of gravitation,
but there can only be one GR.
Of course quite a bunch of additional
tests have been performed or proposed
in the mean time, including pretty expensive ones
like gravitational wave detection.
But the most decisive experiments happened early
and were rather cheap.

and as more research is
done, including astronomical observations and terrestrial experiments,
the others continue to fall by the wayside.

If subatomic physics (nuclear and particle physics) is to progress, it
is almost certainly unavoidable that the size and costs will only
increase. (There's only so much you can learn from cosmic rays.)

I am not aware of any fraud or other bad behavior perpetrated by the
scientists who proposed and obtained funding for the LHC.
No one
promised anything.

You are bit overly optimistic or maybe naive.
"Big science" isn't any different from "big politics"
or "big finance". Those who lobby better the politicians
will get the most funds. It does not mean that they represent
better science. Research funds can only be spent once
(creative financing a la Wall Street Casino is hardly possible),
and those who promise the most practical fall-out will
be able to talk politicians into big spending.
And I'm pretty sure the Cern people promised a lot
of fall-out to the politicians.

Yes, politics is involved. So? What could CERN have promised that they
didn't already do year after year? Some people, me included, think
basic research is important not only for possible -- perhaps even
likely -- application later, but as a noble cause in continuing to
learn more about how our world works. Back to fraud: Can you give some
specific examples? Did CERN promise to cure all cancers? Did they
promise a Star Trek-like world? Paradise? A successor to Teflon?
What?

You talk of better science but you seem to be focused on direct
applications. That would be applied science.

Getting back to the cost of SR: The problem with Maxwell's equations
is that its wave equation is not invariant with respect to Galilean
(non-SR: the usual space and time as separate absolutes)
transformations: Changing from one inertial reference frame to another
would completely change the form of the equations. This is fine for
other waves as the medium through which they pass is the preferred
frame. But what was the medium for light? Hence the ether theory --
which had obvious problems.

Enter Einstein: There were three possibilites:

1. Maxwell Equations were incorrect. Highly unlikely based on their
amazing success.

2. The ether theory. The Lorentz transformation was developed for
this, but it was a kludge.

3. Galilean relativity was wrong.

for various reasons I won't go into here, Einstein picked no. 3.

So where's the cost? Maxwell's equations didn't come for free. They
were the accumulation of a vast amount of EM research by Ampere,
Coulomb, Cavendish, Faraday, and many others. No, it wasn't $6
billion, but some science is cheap and some isn't.

In fact, we may find nothing new, but I think
that's the least likely case. If people are willing to fund it, what's
the problem? ...

You could fund useful things more directly.
Look at the Desy example I gave a couple of
days ago.

Please elaborate. I'm not familiar with Desy but my quick glance at
the wikipedia article for it I only saw one sentence about any applied
science. The main purpose of the device was to do research in
fundamental physics, without which there'd be no Desy. Please
elaborate on your view, as I spent little time on this part.

AEF
.

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