Theory of Relativity

[mal4mac]

The idea of space puzzles me. On the one hand there is the coordinate system which is just a model and on the other hand there is the reality of an expanding space in which light is bent around inertial objects. I suspect the theory would say that the universe doesn't have a center. That would just be the origin of a coordinate system used to model the reality.

The standard model of the universe doesn't have a centre - we talk about galaxies being "so many" parsecs from Earth, never form the "centre of the universe".

The big bang happened everywhere, everywhere is the centre.

Where is the centre of the balloon's surface? Please don't say the middle of the balloon - all we know of is the balloon surface and, as Wittgenstein said, we need to be silent about things we don't know - the clown's breath is a figment of your fantastic imagination.

Is expanding space a reality or just our best guess?

Hindus suggest that everything is a dream, i.e., everything is a model. Why not?

[cacian]

Space is permeated by the Microwave bakcground Radiation, which is at a temperature of about 3K (yawn...)

It is now more fun talking about it, I read too many of pop sci books in my youth... it tends to be yawn, here we go again,... or I get angry when they don't explain things well (too often the usual case...) The reason I recommend hawking to friends is at least he's short* and his books have lots of pretty pictures, so I probably won't get accused of boring my friends...

I would take cacian's approach to explaining it to a seven year old - you'd both have lots of laughs and that's the main thing. Have you read Calvino's "Cosmicomics"?

Have you tried your 7 year old with Hawking? Try "A Briefer History of Time" for bed time reading and see how it goes. Get the hardback, it's really nice and should last till he's 14 and you want to encourage him to do GCSE physics... (note the "briefer" it's been made easier since "brief" - Mblobdinow is a co-author and he used to right Star Trek episodes ... careful your 7 year old doesn't become a little know-all Wesley Crusher... ("Come on dad, it's obvious,the dilithium crystals are overstretched, so it can't go into warp drive...")

*It's the wheelchair

Haha hi mal4mac thank you the lengthy post very very helpful. It is weird I never imagined we were set up like a microwave with radiations at the back. I think the reason is that I think radiation I think danger.
In my mind I had it that space was just round and safe place with airvent to circulate oxgen and regulate carbon so that breathing is permeated and radiation are something man made.
I have not read Calvino but will have a look.

No it has to be hot otherwise we would freeze when the Sun was on the other side of the Earth, and Emperor Penguins would rule.

Space must have an atmosphere, because Fred Hoyle said there were viruses in space, and viruses need an atmosphere to get a party going.

Holy what !!! viruses in space? that is really new to me. Why would they be viruses in space?
The other thing I had it in my head, again that is me in my little world, that the center of the earth was like a vaccum , in French I would describe it as a centrifuge, circular and hollow in order to circulate movement and regulate temperatures. A bit like a cold and hot oven with an air vent that keeps check on temperatures.
Volcanos however are like little heating systems to keep the earth and atmosphere in balance with the extreme cold.
How else would one explain the presence of volcanos?
Again I obviously had it planned out differently.
Anyway this is how I have written and drawn in my story I am working on called the a history of the earth. Haha I much prefer my version because it is easier to draw on a map.

[YesNo]

The standard model of the universe doesn't have a centre - we talk about galaxies being "so many" parsecs from Earth, never form the "centre of the universe".

The big bang happened everywhere, everywhere is the centre.

Where is the centre of the balloon's surface? Please don't say the middle of the balloon - all we know of is the balloon surface and, as Wittgenstein said, we need to be silent about things we don't know - the clown's breath is a figment of your fantastic imagination.

Is expanding space a reality or just our best guess?

Hindus suggest that everything is a dream, i.e., everything is a model. Why not?

The part about Wittgenstein I feel safe to ignore.

Otherwise, I agree with most of what you said up to the final sentence. That part I am still trying to clarify for myself. The exercise of trying to explain relativity to a 7 year old may help me understand the relationships between Hinduism and science better.

By the way, I'm reading Amir D. Aczel's Entaglement, The Greatest Mystery in Physics to get a better understanding what is the scientific evidence for non-local events. It has more substance than the Hawking and Mlodinow's The Grand Design, but it is not very technical.

[Cioran]

No it has to be hot otherwise we would freeze when the Sun was on the other side of the Earth, and Emperor Penguins would rule.

Space must have an atmosphere, because Fred Hoyle said there were viruses in space, and viruses need an atmosphere to get a party going.

1, Outer space does not have an atmosphere.

2. Fred Hoyle's panspermia/virus thesis depends on such entities being transported by comets. There is zero (0, nada, zilch) evidence to support the claim of viruses or any living thing coming from space to earth.

3. In general, Hoyle was nuts.

[cacian]

1, Outer space does not have an atmosphere.

2. Fred Hoyle's panspermia/virus thesis depends on such entities being transported by comets. There is zero (0, nada, zilch) evidence to support the claim of viruses or any living thing coming from space to earth.

3. In general, Hoyle was nuts.

LOL I thought viruses only lived amongst humans. To think they exist in outer space sounds rather scary is .
I thought outter space is too clean to withhold any viruses of any sort.

[mal4mac]

Haha hi mal4mac thank you the lengthy post very very helpful. It is weird I never imagined we were set up like a microwave with radiations at the back. I think the reason is that I think radiation I think danger.

And it's not like meteors, this radiation does make it down to Earth. Tin foil hat anyone? No stop panicking - it's very mild and hard to detect - it was actually detected by accident by Bell Telephone labs in New Jersey, by Penzias & Wilson, ... It's what finally blew Fred Hoyle's steady state theory out of the water. He couldn't stand the laughter when besides suggesting that protons just appear everywhere from nowhere, microwave radiation "just happens" as well.


In my mind I had it that space was just round and safe place with airvent to circulate oxgen and regulate carbon so that breathing is permeated and radiation are something man made.

I have not read Calvino but will have a look.

The earlier stories are better - I borrowed the "complete" from the library and they tailed off a bit. But the early ones are really funny.

Holy what !!! viruses in space? that is really new to me. Why would they be viruses in space?

Why not?

The idea is still in common use, never mind what others say here. For instance, Channel 4 has "Apocolypse" running at the moment, where mad mind bender Derran Brown is convincing some poor Sid that the apopocolypse is actually happening.. employing full Hollywood special effects, and false newscasts. The story is that meteors are falling down destroying everything, PLUS they are full of viruses that turn people into zombies.

I should be so nuts as Fred Hoyle... look up his Wikipedia page, if you must, and see all the accepted stuff he has done, even his bad ideas are good ideas, 'cause they get others to think better - like the Big Bang lot.

The part about Wittgenstein I feel safe to ignore.

Otherwise, I agree with most of what you said up to the final sentence. That part I am still trying to clarify for myself. The exercise of trying to explain relativity to a 7 year old may help me understand the relationships between Hinduism and science better.

By the way, I'm reading Amir D. Aczel's Entaglement, The Greatest Mystery in Physics to get a better understanding what is the scientific evidence for non-local events.

It's good.

There, I just saved you reading the book!

I'm tempted to read up more on Hinduism, especially Vedanta.

I just re-read Huxley's "the Perrenial Philosophy" which is good on all this mystical stuff - Christian, Buddhist, Hindu... is there a broader overview? All the Christian stuff got a bit tedious, though. All this "God, I see you God!" stuff only drew a "There's no one there, you daft bat!" response from my skeptical self (the one in control...) Is Vedanata the most appealing religion?

No soul, or atman, that is the question.

No soul seems a bit harsh, but atman too good to be true. Time to re-read "My Gurus and his Disciple" by Christopher Isherwood methinks...

I read Capra's "The Tao of Physics" when it first came out and kept thinking "why isn't my course as interesting as this" - I think it's still rated quite highly (by some) and might give it a re-read.

P.S. I've given up on Wittgenstein as well (Tractatus, what's that all about?) I throw in his name & twopenny ideas, now and again, so that people think I'm Mr Big Philosopher. {JBI/MM: "No one would make that mistake...", there you are, saved you making the post, you cynics

[YesNo]

It's good.

There, I just saved you reading the book!

I've actually read the Tractatus or whatever it's called. I understand even Wittgenstein thought it was wrong and wrote his next book opposing it, which I didn't read.

Although I read the Tractatus, I didn't understand the book. However, I read parts of it to my wife and we both laughed at it. It had some use-value.

I'm tempted to read up more on Hinduism, especially Vedanta.

I just re-read Huxley's "the Perrenial Philosophy" which is good on all this mystical stuff - Christian, Buddhist, Hindu... is there a broader overview? All the Christian stuff got a bit tedious, though. All this "God, I see you God!" stuff only drew a "There's no one there, you daft bat!" response from my skeptical self (the one in control...) Is Vedanata the most appealing religion?

No soul, or atman, that is the question.

No soul seems a bit harsh, but atman too good to be true. Time to re-read "My Gurus and his Disciple" by Christopher Isherwood methinks...

I read Capra's "The Tao of Physics" when it first came out and kept thinking "why isn't my course as interesting as this" - I think it's still rated quite highly (by some) and might give it a re-read.

I don't know much about Hinduism. I realized when I argued with Paulclem in some thread about the non-atman idea in Buddhism, that I don't know much about any of these religions.

The Isherwood book sounds interesting.

[KillCarneyKlans]

http://www.online-literature.com/for...-thread-Niotes
Short version Below ...

© 1993-2003 ENCARTA Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
The energy of a photon is equal to the product of a constant number [h] called Planck’s multiplied by the frequency [v], or number of vibrations per second [E=hv] ... Photons that are visible to the human eye have energy levels around 1 electron volt (eV) and frequencies from 1014 to 1015 Hz ...

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GL...-insights.html
"One of the best places to look for these faint gamma-ray signals is in dwarf spheroidal galaxies, small satellites of our own Milky Way galaxy that we know possess large amounts of dark matter," Siegal-Gaskins explained. "[Boring] astrophysical ... systems, with little gas or star formation and no objects like pulsars or supernova remnants that emit gamma rays." ... many dwarfs lie far away from the plane of our galaxy, which produces a broad band of diffuse gamma-ray emission that stretches all around the sky.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/main/index.html
Fermi is a powerful space observatory that will open a wide window on the universe. Gamma rays are the highest-energy form of light ... Fermi data will enable scientists to answer persistent questions across a broad range of topics, including supermassive black-hole systems, pulsars, the origin of cosmic rays, and searches for signals of new physics.

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread895027/pg1
... Research [is focused] on revealing the properties of dark matter using observational probes such as gamma rays and other high-energy particles ... NASA['s] "revelation" on Thursday will be exciting in that we have discovered some very important details [forms stars] about the 70% of Dark Matter that exists in our universe by looking at our own Milky Way Galaxy.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GL...st-energy.html
During a powerful solar blast on March 7, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected the highest-energy light ever associated with an eruption on the sun. The discovery heralds Fermi's new role as a solar observatory ... The flux of high-energy gamma rays, defined as those with energies beyond 100 million electron volts (MeV), was 1,000 times greater than the sun's steady output ... Fermi's LAT detected high-energy gamma rays for about 20 hours ... "Seeing the rise and fall of this brief flare in both instruments allowed us to determine that some of these particles were accelerated to two-thirds of the speed of light in as little as 3 seconds."

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ca...i20120302.html
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has "sniffed" molecular oxygen ions around Saturn's icy moon Dione ... Dione's oxygen appears to derive from either solar photons or energetic particles from space bombarding the moon's water ice surface and liberating oxygen molecules.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GL...derstorms.html
Scientists using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have detected beams of antimatter produced above thunderstorms on Earth

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GL...structure.html
NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has unveiled a previously unseen structure centered in the Milky Way. The feature spans 50,000 light-years and may be the remnant of an eruption from a supersized black hole at the center of our galaxy. "What we see are two gamma-ray-emitting bubbles that extend 25,000 light-years north and south of the galactic center" ...

[cafolini]

http://www.online-literature.com/for...-thread-Niotes
Short version Below ...

© 1993-2003 ENCARTA Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
The energy of a photon is equal to the product of a constant number [h] called Planck’s multiplied by the frequency [v], or number of vibrations per second [E=hv] ... Photons that are visible to the human eye have energy levels around 1 electron volt (eV) and frequencies from 1014 to 1015 Hz ...

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GL...-insights.html
"One of the best places to look for these faint gamma-ray signals is in dwarf spheroidal galaxies, small satellites of our own Milky Way galaxy that we know possess large amounts of dark matter," Siegal-Gaskins explained. "[Boring] astrophysical ... systems, with little gas or star formation and no objects like pulsars or supernova remnants that emit gamma rays." ... many dwarfs lie far away from the plane of our galaxy, which produces a broad band of diffuse gamma-ray emission that stretches all around the sky.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/main/index.html
Fermi is a powerful space observatory that will open a wide window on the universe. Gamma rays are the highest-energy form of light ... Fermi data will enable scientists to answer persistent questions across a broad range of topics, including supermassive black-hole systems, pulsars, the origin of cosmic rays, and searches for signals of new physics.

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread895027/pg1
... Research [is focused] on revealing the properties of dark matter using observational probes such as gamma rays and other high-energy particles ... NASA['s] "revelation" on Thursday will be exciting in that we have discovered some very important details [forms stars] about the 70% of Dark Matter that exists in our universe by looking at our own Milky Way Galaxy.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GL...st-energy.html
During a powerful solar blast on March 7, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected the highest-energy light ever associated with an eruption on the sun. The discovery heralds Fermi's new role as a solar observatory ... The flux of high-energy gamma rays, defined as those with energies beyond 100 million electron volts (MeV), was 1,000 times greater than the sun's steady output ... Fermi's LAT detected high-energy gamma rays for about 20 hours ... "Seeing the rise and fall of this brief flare in both instruments allowed us to determine that some of these particles were accelerated to two-thirds of the speed of light in as little as 3 seconds."

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ca...i20120302.html
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has "sniffed" molecular oxygen ions around Saturn's icy moon Dione ... Dione's oxygen appears to derive from either solar photons or energetic particles from space bombarding the moon's water ice surface and liberating oxygen molecules.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GL...derstorms.html
Scientists using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have detected beams of antimatter produced above thunderstorms on Earth

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GL...structure.html
NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has unveiled a previously unseen structure centered in the Milky Way. The feature spans 50,000 light-years and may be the remnant of an eruption from a supersized black hole at the center of our galaxy. "What we see are two gamma-ray-emitting bubbles that extend 25,000 light-years north and south of the galactic center" ...

You might as well use astrology, and many do. You are looking many many light years into the future. You are putting on a cosmicomical proposition, trying to guarantee that things today look the same as in so many millions of conventional years in the past. Ludicrous!!

[KillCarneyKlans]

You are putting on a cosmicomical proposition, trying to guarantee that things today look the same as in so many millions of conventional years in the past

How so? I never stated such a thing ... the laws of physics aren't changed ... at least in this universe ... This is just the latest findings on Gamma Ray [The most intense form of light] detection ... While flying over the earth ... instruments detected TGF's in lightning storms ... pretty solid stuff ... a few million is nothing to evolution ?? As far I know 95% of the [unknown] universe isn't going away soon.

"These signals are the first direct evidence that thunderstorms make antimatter particle beams ... Fermi is designed to monitor gamma rays, the highest energy form of light.

[YesNo]

I usually make the same mistake that cafolini warns against. I assume that the picture of the gamma ray emitting bubbles is how the universe is now, not simply how is looks now. The most that can be said is that is how it was a million years ago or however long it took those gamma rays to reach us. We are just now getting the information.

I started reading Christopher Isherwood's My Guru and his His Disciple based on mal4mac's recommendation. One thing in there that seemed related to this thread on relativity is the following sentence describing Gerald's religious practice of mindfulness from the first chapter:

Whenever your awareness weakened, you slipped back into acceptance of the unreal situation, which is experienced as space-time and which imposes disbelief in "this thing" and belief in individual separateness.

But can we can actually experience Einstein's space-time?

Although we can use space-time calculations in our technology, our experience is only of space and time as separate dimensions. That is part of the "unreal situation" Gerald is trying to escape. My current suspicion is that not only should meditation help us past these illusions, but science should be helpful also.

I am glad that KillCarneyKlans posted the information about gamma rays. I'm also interested in the Mars Rover's search for past or current microbial life on that planet.

[mal4mac]

I think Gerald is just saying that our everyday (unreal) situation is one in which we "see" time passing, e.g. by looking at a clock(!), and experience space, i.e., we walk cross the room and we experience movement in space. Nothing more fancy than that, I don't know why he used the term "space-time" if he just meant "everyday space & time". Wants to sound like a guru maybe

Mindfulness is all about being aware of the present moment, the "now", which is timeless, as it happens in consciousness, there is also no spatial dimension. So Newtonian space & time, Einsteinian space-time, any space+time actually loses all meaning in states of deep meditation. At least I think that's what he means - I haven't read the book for decades, must read it again soon! If you want to get up to date on Mindfulness, which is very big in meditation circles these days, try "Mindfulness for Beginners" by Kabat-Zinn - it's a great quick start and has a superb bibliography.

[YesNo]

I think Gerald is just saying that our everyday (unreal) situation is one in which we "see" time passing, e.g. by looking at a clock(!), and experience space, i.e., we walk cross the room and we experience movement in space. Nothing more fancy than that, I don't know why he used the term "space-time" if he just meant "everyday space & time". Wants to sound like a guru maybe

Yes, that's all he's saying and the "space-time" part was to sound modern. Consciousness can also be viewed as eternal, being only in the here and now. However, from a space-time perspective, a photon could be viewed as eternal also since it only has a here and now. From a Newtonian space and time perspective it could not be so considered.

[cacian]

consciousness is in the now here with us. We are only to establish what we are aware of and therefore to call it eternal is not quite right in my view.

[YesNo]

I am probably going into the area of belief when I associated the here and now with what is eternal. It may not be the case. I don't think that material objects are eternal because they persist in space-time and not just in the here-now.

I define "eternal" as whatever is outside space-time. That may not be correct. With that definition I would then assume that consciousness is outside space-time based on various religious traditions that seem to suggest it is. Consciousness would also be within space-time because we are conscious within space-time and that is an empirical fact. With the assumption and the fact, consciousness becomes a portal between space-time and the eternal.

For those who think that consciousness is derived from matter somehow then consciousness would not be eternal, but wholly contained within the non-eternal space-time. With such an assumption about consciousness it could not function as such a portal. This is not the simplest way to deal with consciousness since the evidence of near and shared death experiences suggest that there is more to it than that.

That relativity allows the photon, for example, to have a single-point space-time reality makes me think there is another portal between the eternal and space-time besides consciousness. That would be energy itself.