Some time ago I blogged on Politics and Science and commented on instances of political interference in issues of science. The problem is still very much ongoing as recent events attest.
Over the past few weeks James Hansen, a climate scientist at NASA, claimed that the Bush Administration tried to curtail his speaking out on climate change. This was then followed up by the strange case of George Deutsch, a public affairs officer also at NASA, who decided to tell NASA what to say regarding climate science and the Big Bang. Deutsch’s undoing was lying on his resume as documented here (via John Quiggin).
As for the Australian experience, tonight’s episode of Four Corners concerns The Greenhouse Mafia:
Are Australians getting the whole truth on global warming?
Not according to evidence given to Four Corners, which returns with disturbing allegations about the power wielded by industry lobbyists, the self-proclaimed greenhouse “mafia”.
A whistleblower steps forward with claims that industry representatives have burrowed deep inside the federal bureaucracy in a successful bid to hijack greenhouse policy.
Some of the ex-CSIRO scientists speak out in today’s SMH.
Update: Tim Lambert has more on connections between the Liberal Party and industry groups.
Update of the update: John Quggin and Gary Sauer-Thompson also have blogged the Four Corners episode.
The spin on this from the government side of things appears to be that the scientists were exceeding their brief and taking positions on policy, rather than science.
Given that it’s science policy we’re talking about, how could they not?
Whatever the truth of this, Robert Manne makes a very telling point in the latest issue of The Monthly:
Hope springs eternal. For half a nano second I thought that they might be doing an expose on wimpy bearded birkenstock wearing tree hugging geeks getting in the way of jobs and progress. Four Corners? ABC? How silly am I? And I thought you guys were naive.
The 4 Corners report was interesting though a tad unsatisfying. The relevations of Dr Guy Pearse need more evidence than hearsay.
The allegations of the CSIRO gagging scientists on speaking about certain aspects of climate change was more disturbing. I think some incidents could be abscribed as resulting from typical management cowardice. However if someone from the PM’s office has told scientists to not comment on certain matters then that is cause for concern.
In regards to climate change, rising sea levels would create environmental refugees. The current government seems unwilling to acknowledge that fact. They prefer policies that speak of ‘adaption.’ I assume they hope the people of Tuvalu and the like will be able to grow gills. Acknowledging that rising sea levels would displace millions is not proscribing policy. It is a matter of fact and needs to be planned for.
That quote from the CSIRO’s deputy chief exec was a bit worrying. The SMH paraphrased it as:
“The CSIRO’s deputy chief executive, Dr Ron Sandland, said while the CSIRO encouraged scientists to talk about their work, it insisted they did not comment on government policy.”
What if their work contradicted government policy? Is talking about their work then commenting of government policy?
Thanks for the heads up on this one Shaun. Unfortunately I got home when the program was almost over. But from what I saw on Lateline before Hitch went and trashed it, there seems to be a couple of things going on.
1) The Government in bed with the coal industry. This hardly seems newsworthy anymore. Unsurprisingly this has had an effect on the sorts of appointments they’ve made.
2) The comments from the CSIRO manager in response to ‘censoring’ seem to indicate that management thought that its role as an honest broker had been compromised.
As to the PM’s office politicising policy options (assuming that’s what it was) … it’d be a shame if they were [advocating] bad options
Was Hitch drunk? Just askin…
I didn’t see Lateline. What did I miss?
CSIRO management over the last 4 years has taken incompetence to a previously undreampt of level. See The Funneled Web or Australasian Science (only partly online) for detailes.
Yet Garratt has been reappointed for another 3 years, without a single obvious achievement to balance his failures. It’s hard to resist the conclusion that the thing he has done to “earn” reappointment is his stiffling of scientific comment.
It may not have been a direct order from the minister, but I’ll bet that he knew that keeping the scientists quiet was what he was employed to do.
Hits on all the tropes essential to the genre, but fails to combine them in an original or entertaining way. A solid but uninspired piece of trolling. 5/10.
One thing I was thinking about what if the government uses a scientist’s finding yet distorts the findings by under or over emphasizing the results (for example). There would be an obligation to correct the record however it may be construed as commenting on policy (and hence silenced) which would betray any integrity in the process.
I think I love the sight of my own text too much to be a troll in its purest sense, Bill.
Well I like to think so anyway.
But merely funding scientists off the backs of low-paid workers IS interfering with Science.
It is pretty hard to think of greater interference then that.
And its having growing consequences. Pure physics, for example, has been hi-jacked by mathemeticians posing as natural philosophers. And I’ve gone over to the nth degree just how bad things are in economics. Both proffessions dominated by bully-boy advocates of the intellectual staus quo.
I’m willing to concede that initially these spending programs can get very good results. But wait two generations and the rot starts spreading.
Interesting Graeme, do you have any evidence for this assertion?
How would you see physics develop without the mathematics?
Oh come on Steve - everyone knows that physics started to go to the dogs in 1905 when that smartarse Einstein came up with all complicated mathematical stuff based on the ridiculous idea that it’s impossible to travel faster than the speed of light. If physicists hadn’t allowed that to cramp their thinking for the past century, we’d have a colony on Alpha Centauri III by now.
How would physics develop without the mathematics………
Why. Whoever said such a foolish thing? Not me. And if you acknowledge that I did not say or imply this and you were showing immensely poor form to make this thinly disguised false accusation then maybe I shall point you in the direction of what is going on in physics. It’s a disgrace is what it is.
“…everyone knows that physics started to go to the dogs in 1905 when that smartarse Einstein came up with all complicated mathematical stuff based on the ridiculous idea that it’s impossible to travel faster than the speed of light.”
No that was the true heyday of modern physics. It lasted right up through the twenties I think. Those guys were terrific. True scientists. Not afraid to put up a speculative model, knowing it was speculative and Einstein and Plank were particularly cool since they always expected their own ideas to be proved wrong sooner or later.
Now what seems to have happened is the ideas formulated in this spirit of running tentative hypothesis in parallel have become written in stone and as I say hijacked.
“…..based on the ridiculous idea that it’s impossible to travel faster than the speed of light.”
It is not a ridiculous idea. But it is an arbitrary idea. And it appears to be breaking down. It was formulated as part of a model of best fit. A terrific model but not one that needs to be set in stone if some holes in its logic or some empirical counter-evidence is found. Since it was an arbitrary assumption of the model in the first place. And since other models have been developed which derive all the correct empirical predictions that this model does but which does not include the prohibition on exceeding light-speed.
Graeme,
That was not meant to be an accusation, but was perhaps was hastily worded. Please try not to read everything as an attack.
You said physics had been hi-jacked by mathematicians. I was interested in what areas of mathematical physics that you have a problem with.
Incidently Gummo, Einstien’s postulate was not that nothing could travel faster than light, but rather that the speed of light is constant in all frames of reference. This was not arbitrary but came out of the observation of the Michelson-Morley experiement which showed the speed of light constant in all directions despite the fact the earth was moving through space.
The idea that nothing can travel faster than light is a corrollary of this principal, arising out of the Lorentz transformations implying that it take infinite energy for a partical with mass to reach the speed of light.
Well good stuff Steve. A bit of civil behaviour for a change.
He DID place a speed limit on light. It was arbitrary in that he constructed a model that would predict the historical data. This is what you are supposed to do in science. Or in the solving of any mystery. But it did not mean that other models not including a light-speed limit cannot be constructed to explain the data also.
Lorentz relativity itself can be extended to explain everything derived by Einstein.
I signed up to Physlink where they reckon they’ll answer your questions on physics. But they won’t answer questions that bring into doubt the mainstream.
I asked questions bringing in to doubt the idea of singularities. No answer. The concept of the singularity is an example of the cart leading the horse. It comes out of mathematical models where the mathematician mistakes his models to be what the real universe is like. There is no reason to believe that one exists anywhere at all. In fact its pretty irrational to do so. Whose to say that at the centre of a black hole the matter hasn’t the cross section of a suburb?
And if there was a light speed limit then gravity waves could not escape this black hole to exert a gravitational pull. So the whole theory of light-speed limits as it relates to black holes is self-contradictory. Yet both the light-speed limit and the theory of the existence of black holes (with singularities) was (and still is) mainstream dogma that a practising physicist could not contradict with impunity.
You saying that Einstein’s model doesn’t postulate a light-speed limit sounds like the revisionism of someone who grudgingly realises the light-speed limit is breaking down and has to give that one inch of ground but will relinquish nothing else.
God. Damn.
I’ve been waiting for postmodernism to kick in outside of the History departments, ladies and gentlemen, we have its champion! No work of theory is too big or small to be fought! First the black-armband historians, then the feminists, tomorrow Einstein and Heisenberg!
Go get those PC bastards repressing post-relativity theory, Graeme. If you can’t manage to get yourself published, consider paying students to inform on their lecturers if they teach the stuff, apparently that’s the way things are done these days.
Everything you say and imply here is right on target. And the general phenomenon can be explained by the long-term rot of the dead hand of socialisation. Even if the initial effects of extorted financing can be very positive.
Now if only there wasn’t a tad of irony thrown in there. That irony negates all your good work.
But you forgot about the global warming fraud. And I don’t know whether I come down hard on the feminists. I correspond with a particularly sexy, intelligent and open-minded femminist quite regularly these days.
I’m not sure I’m following Graeme here. Isn’t the point of a singularity that the laws of physics break down at that point in space?
Laugh all you want you naive young beret-wearing fool. The light speed limit and black hole doctrines are both evidence of blatant left wing bias in physics. The light speed limit serves the purpose of Green fundamentalist in subliminally brainwashing us into believing there are any limits on growth. The black hole doctrine is an obvious concession to Afrocentrist and radical feminist dogma.
“I correspond with a particularly sexy, intelligent and open-minded femminist quite regularly these days. ”
I see. Very interesting. Tell me, Mr Bird, this femminist, does she correspond back?
“I correspond with a particularly sexy, intelligent and open-minded femminist quite regularly these days.”
Not the same as actually bonking her though is it?
By the way, love the gravatar Madame Bird. Is it Mao? It certainly looks like some fat old bloody-minded bossyboots in a tight suit.
Said feminist rarely puts out for commenters she’s only just met.
Reminds me of the Aeon Flux eye in the titles and on the dvd cover - that’s a big compliment btw!
“I’m not sure I’m following Graeme here. Isn’t the point of a singularity that the laws of physics break down at that point in space?”
The point is that such conclusions come out of mathematical models. And these science workers have a tendency to get their mathematical models confused with reality.
To say that the laws of physics breaks down in a singularity is like saying that crazy things happen when you make the denominator zero when doing simple division.
There isn’t really much more backing some of these ideas then that.
Graeme,
I’m not doubting that the light speed limit is an intrinsic part of Einstein’s theory but rather it was a result of the posulate that the speed of light is the same in all frames of reference, and the other assumptions.
As to your comment on singularities, the point I would make is that yes they are a mathematical outcome of the theory however objecting to them on the basis that they seem irrational isn’t really a good enough reason in my opinion. Quantum theory is littered with examples of where believing the maths rather that what seemed rational ended up being proved correct. So we may not gave seen one but we know that the theory works fine everywhere else.
Also see the mechamistic philosophy of the 17th C which held action at a distance as irrational and occult, and precluded the sort of theory of gravity that newton discovered. Discarding outcomes because they seem illogical is fraught with peril.
Now if you can provide evidence that they don’t exist, or find a theory where they don’t appear, and predicts all the stuff we know occurs plus more stuff that we can test then it might be accepted.
The crazy mathematical outcomes of physical theory are usually the place where the most progress is made, either in refutation or further confirmation.
“I’m not doubting that the light speed limit is an intrinsic part of Einstein’s theory but rather it was a result of the posulate that the speed of light is the same in all frames of reference, and the other assumptions.”
Right. So there was a light-speed limit. And now its breaking down. But the bully-boy advocates of the intellectual status quo are making excuses.
1. Pretending there was never a light-speed limit.
2. Complicating the story as to whether there is a light-speed limit.
“As to your comment on singularities, the point I would make is that yes they are a mathematical outcome of the theory however objecting to them on the basis that they seem irrational isn’t really a good enough reason in my opinion.”
No that they seem irrational. That they ARE irrational. And that there is no reason to believe they exist. No evidence for them in the first place.
But here you have done the leftist reversal. I’m not objecting to them. I’m saying that you hold a whole series of competing models in parallel. Mainstream physics is policing contrary theories rather then building them up in parallel. Nice little switcheroo that you’ve done there.
“Quantum theory is littered with examples of where believing the maths rather that what seemed rational ended up being proved correct.”
No that’s not right. Look you make models to best fit. But you don’t fool yourself that the model you have made is revealed truth. And you don’t rubbish other people making parallel models to best fit. In fact its not science unless you are running hypothesis in parallel. You seem to be getting mixed up with the guys who invented the Quantim Physics and the people around now defending this voodoo as holy writ. When Plank came up with the idea of Quanta he always expected that it would be overturned sooner or later.
“So we may not have seen one but we know that the theory works fine everywhere else.”
If you make a model to best fit of the data you already have don’t THEN be surprised if it predicts quite well the data that you already have.
This is good Steve. Since you are really highlighting the point I’m making. That mathematicians posing as natural philosophers have hijacked the field.
“Also see the mechamistic philosophy of the 17th C which held action at a distance as irrational and occult, and precluded the sort of theory of gravity that newton discovered. Discarding outcomes because they seem illogical is fraught with peril.”
Do you see the switcheroo you are doing? You are putting me in the position of people who want to clamp down on the new models. I was saying that it was the mainstram physicists that are doing this. Now you are saying that it was MY ATTITUDE in the past that gets in the way.
But the idea is to hold various models in parallel. And be continuing inventing and building them in parallel. There is no PERIL if you do this. Yes attraction at a distance is indeed Voo Doo. You go with the best model you can get yet not trash the others and you don’t discourage the further development of new models.
Clearly gravity needs more work. It appears to weaken in proportion to the square of the distance. But if its held to be the result of gravity waves filling up the space in between two bodies you would expect it to weaken to the cube or the fourth power of the distance if its two bodies filling the universe with these waves.
So they should have gone with Newton. Since it was the most useful model around. But they ought not have rejected their former assumptions outright.
“Now if you can provide evidence that they don’t exist, or find a theory where they don’t appear, and predicts all the stuff we know occurs plus more stuff that we can test then it might be accepted.”
That is predjudicing one model in advance. The fact is that there is not one jot of evidence that a singularity exists in the first place. Its as I said. Akin to getting excited about crazy things happening when you use zero in the denominator: “LOOK MA MY CALCULATOR IS BREAKING DOWN. The universe is not how we thing it is. That means I have to go off and become a Buddhist.”
“The crazy mathematical outcomes of physical theory are usually the place where the most progress is made, either in refutation or further confirmation.”
That’s circular reasoning.
To Physics Division Director
Sir,
Maverick thinker sighted in blog located in the Antipodes which calls itself Larvartus Prodeo. A Mr Graeme Bird, regular troublemaker. Field agents in other divisions have observed but luckily undermined his rebellions in other divisions in the past. Now it seems he has moved on from the Social to the Physical sciences.
Mr Bird has raised extremely dangerous doubts about Light Speed Limits, Black Holes and Singularities. This may lead to future unrest in populace. Request permission to out down by all means necessary, including forced lobotomy.
Field agent #2345AQ,
Sydney,
Australia
Planck may have assumed that the idea of quanta was no more than a useful mathematical trick that could be abandoned later, Graeme, but then that young smartarse Albert came along and demonstrated that they were very real in his 1905 paper on the photo-electric effect.
Maybe this is a historical example of Sheldrake’s formative causation at work: if Einstein hadn’t published the paper and got it widely accepted, someone else could have come along and fulfilled Planck’s expectations. Then neither physics nor reality need be constrained in the straitjacket of quantum mechanics and the light speed limit.
Which unfortunately is very real. Follows from JC Maxwell’s work on electromagnetism, as I understand it (relying on faulty recollection of an old Fontana Modern Masters series paperback I have kicking around the house somewhere) - and it was the problem of reconciling this with Newtonian mechanics that got Al started in the first place. Or so I’ve heard.
Since they were coming out of a capitalist era times were different then. Einstein was working in the patents office yet Plank reccomended him for the Prussian academy despite diagreeing with him in the application of his (Plancks) own work.
This sort of thing doesn’t happen these days. There are plenty of alternate models out there. But to even be working on them will brand you as a crank/crackpot. The State funding skews things in the direction of building on the old stuff.
But the old stuff was itself speculative. Which is fine. But if you build speculative models on top of models which themselves contain fairly arbitrary speculations you’re likely to hit a dead end. Then when the new data comes in that doesn’t fit the old models you are forced to make all sorts of excuses or make the mathematics infinitely more complicated.
These guys also get caught up in Grand Unifying theories of everything. I think this is a waste of time. I think you want to be working on lots of small useful models. Because after all think the grander models that we have are really only to be thought of as ‘useful models’ anyway. If later some great unifying theory comes out of all the small useful models well and good.
We’ve got to get away from this idea that all these science workers are all that bright. After all we’re probably only neotinised chimps. And these science workers are as prone to setting up priesthoods and orthodoxies as anyone else.
Graeme,
As to point 1, my first statement on this said quite clearly
where corollary means “A natural consequence or effect; a result.� The point of this being that it was not, as you said “an arbitrary idea�, but rather a consequence of the observation by Michelson and Morley that the speed of light is constant regardless of the orientation of their experiment, despite the differenct relative motion of the earth.
Regarding singularities,
Why are they necessarily irrational? They are only irrational in terms of other beliefs you hold. Now I am quite willing to admit that sometime we may discover that singularities don’t actually occur in reality. Clearly when you pack matter down to essentially a single point then obviously this stretches our knowledge of how matter behaves in these circumstances and perhaps at these extremes there is a hitherto known effect that changes everything. The point is though we don’t know what that may be and at the moment the best theory we have, one that predicted everything known at the time of its construction, plus made later predictions which have since been confirmed, predicts them to exist. Now it may be possible to construct other models that don’t allow singularities but unless they are going to give us something more that we can really test, then they aren’t going to be taken on in the mainstream because they are essentially metaphysical speculation. Quantum mechanics has a number of different but equivalent formulations, the Parallel universe hypothesis being one of the more popular ones amongst sci-fi types.
The thing is we do hold hypothesis in parallel, at least until the time that most of them are refuted. Look at string theory exactly the sort of thing you should like. Avoids singularities potentially solves the problem of quantum gravity as well as being a theory of everything. Plenty of top people researching in it, but it still as yet has not made any falsifiable predictions. Until it does its going to remain a fringe theory but its hardly been crushed by the mainstream. It is being held in parallel as you suggest it should be but until it proves itself more useful no one is going to take it seriously merely than GR and Quantum theory because it removes singularities.
Yes quite true, Plank thought Quanta were a convenient way of getting around the predicted “ultraviolet catastrophe�, but nothing more. He was eventually swayed from this belief by Einstein in around 1911. Perhaps he would have done well to believe in the reality of the mathematics a little earlier.
See this is where you are wrong, general relativity did not only that but made a bunch of other predictions such as the bending of light around the sun, the slowing of time, gravitational red shift, and the expansion of the universe.
Of course Einstein rejected the prediction of an expanding universe, and spent years trying to add a cosmological constant to correct it, however it was of course discovered that he was right the first time, and he described the whole incident as the “biggest mistake of my career”. Another example of where he would have been better of trusting the maths.
No I was not trying to portray you as a gatekeeper, but rather trying to illustrate that throwing the mathematical conclusions that you don’t like away because you think that they are illogical, for whatever reason, is a limiting exercise. In response to Einstein’s famous “God does not play diceâ€? quote, Bohr replied “Stop telling God what He must do!”. This is the attitude that many physicists have. Quantum theory showed that the universe behaves in ways outside our expectations, but has been proved right countless times despite the results seeming to defy our everyday rational viewpoints.
Not sure what you are on about here Graeme, gravity is held to be a curvature of space-time in GR.
Well that’s how science works. Someone develops some hypotheses, we test what is correct, the one that makes the best predictions becomes the standard theory, and then it up to others to beat its predictive power. If they can, it will be replaced by the one that performs better.
What this all boils down to is that you have philosophic objections to GR, on some non-testable criteria. That’s fair enough, but unless you can provide a new theory which is actually testably superior then no one is going to replace the mainstream. Or take it particularly seriously.
Graeme Bird,
re your point about Grand Unification Theories (GUT) - these are motivated by the need to iron out inconsistencies, which is what theoretical inquiry is all about. Every physicist since Newton has been in search of GUT. If there was no quest for GUT there would be no scientific progress and then people like you would be complaining instead about how makeshift current theories are and how one isn’t consistent with the other.
“As to point 1, my first statement on this said quite clearly.”
Sure but you were making it up.
Singularities are entirely irrational. Since
1. there is the arbitrary assumption in a point of infinitely concentrated mass. But then what if you add more mass? Well its still infinitely concentrated mass. Its just mathematicians imagining there is something magical dividing by zero.
2. As stated before they assume that nothing goes faster then light as well as gravity waves. Yet this singularity is alleged to exert a force outside of the event horizon. So something has to go.
“Now it may be possible to construct other models that don’t allow singularities but unless they are going to give us something more that we can really test, then they aren’t going to be taken on in the mainstream because they are essentially metaphysical speculation.”
And the theory of black holes isn’t a metaphysical speculation? Not only is there no evidence that they exist. The theories which say they exist are themselves speculative, the outcome is ridiculous and self-contradictory, and it is set up not only to be unproven but unprovable. ie nothing gets out of an event horizon. It doesn’t even meet the Popper falsifiability criterion.
“See this is where you are wrong, general relativity did not only that but made a bunch of other predictions such as the bending of light around the sun, the slowing of time, gravitational red shift, and the expansion of the universe.”
No I don’t have it quite wrong. What do I have wrong? You say:
“See this is where you are wrong…”
Then you don’t show a damn thing that I have wrong. Yes the theory predicted as well as historical data, also future data. And einstein set up a whole set of tests that could potentially falsify his theories. He did great. And they pretty much held up for half a century or more.
But other models can derive the same results without some aspects of Einsteins model including the light speed prohibition.
“but rather trying to illustrate that throwing the mathematical conclusions that you don’t like away because you think that they are illogical, for whatever reason, is a limiting exercise.”
I’m not throwing away mathematical ideas THAT I DON’T LIKE. I’m talking about running hypotheses in parallel. I’m saying that putting the maths before the empirical data doesn’t work. These examples where you think you’ve shown that it DOES work are by no means settled matters. Attraction from a distance is as I said Voodoo. So the Newtonian model should have been accepted for the time being without forgetting the older qualms.
I see that I’m going to have to be repeating myself over and over and over again. Since we have a first class physicist-ideologue here whose managed to hide it with polite language.
“Quantum theory showed that the universe behaves in ways outside our expectations, but has been proved right countless times despite the results seeming to defy our everyday rational viewpoints.”
No it doesn’t show either of those. It shows that the theory needs more work. Since it is patched together by probability and voodoo. The Voodoo and probability of gaps as it were.
“Not sure what you are on about here Graeme, gravity is held to be a curvature of space-time in GR.”
Yeah well that’s hocus pocus as well. It takes one lot of voodoo and replaces it with another. And that’s well and good but not to be confused with revealed settled and finalised truth. THERE IS A FORCE INVOLVED WITH GRAVITY.
Just get it through your head that there is a real force involved here. There is no space between your ass and that chair to warp. Now notice how you dodge the issue of the non-curvature of space and instead use the hocus pocus of the curvature of space-time. SPACE-TIME. Why didn’t you just say space? The point I made was valid since the gravity waves are going out into a three dimensional space. They should be diluting in their Voo Doo power of attraction at a distance. They ought to be diluting by more then the square. By the cube or the fourth power. But they only dilute by the square it seems. So the theory needs more work.
Now you can get about with a mini-tramp and ball all you want showing that demonstration. But you won’t take the force out of gravity. And you won’t show that the theory doesn’t need a bunch more work.
No science doesn’t work by predjudicing one model against another. That’s what HOLDS UP science. That’s why Philip Adams is always using the quote science progresses one funeral at a time.
That’s why the mindless elevation of Keynes held up many aspects of economics for 50 years. And why the tragic adoption, of what ought to have been appreciated as clever tentative models,……….. why the adoption of them instead as cosmic truth has been holding up physics.
No Jason. People like me would not be complaining in the way you suggest.
But the thing is they are not ready to go for a grand theory by building on the old stuff. I’m not saying they should abandon all hope for a grand theory. I just think its counter-productive to be going for it directly. I think it should come as the result of competing small theories in parallel. To be producing small working models that make life easier. Rather then shoring up the old ones with endlessly more complicated maths.
And then the grand theory might arise out of that.
No I wasn’t Graeme. Blustering won’t cover for your ignorance. Have a look at some references. Wikipedia will give you a start, but you can look at any other number of place for information and they will say the same thing.
Einstein starts at two postulates.
1. The laws of electrodynamics and optics will be valid for all frames of reference in which the laws of mechanics hold good (non-accelerating frames).
2. Light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c that is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body; here the velocity of light c is defined as the two-way velocity, determined with a single clock.
Get it. Its no “arbitrary idea”, rather number 2 is a principle based on experimental observations. The faster than light prohibition is an outcome of these postulates.
“Stop telling God what He must do!�
Why because I wanted to be correct. It’s become clear that you don’t really have a grasp on this stuff which is probably why you have problems with it. I said space-time because for GR theory to work it not only curves space but time as well. If you’ve got a grasp of maths and have been through the theory it will make sense.
Graeme all I can say is get up to speed on this stuff actually try to understand it first. In my experience most people running around convinced their brilliant theory haven’t got the basics of existing theory down.
Well I must say you being a Phillip Adam’s fan is the most suprising thing so far.
I’m saying that you were making it up that there was no light-speed limit. But mainstream physics has been postulating that there was a light-speed limit. That is to say a total prohibition on anything going faster then the speed of light.
And lately they have been making excuses for this when that assumption has been breaking down. Which is pretty much what you are doing now.
Now it is no use for you to then start listing points that you have not been making up as a substitute for that stuff that you have been making up in order to pretend that we are talking about an whole other subject.
It’s the light speed limit that is the arbitrary idea. And your claim that there never was held to be a light-speed limit is the claim that you just made up.
So stop bullshitting and try again.
Because I’ve argued with other physics ideologues like you and they always put on this fancy footwork to squirm out of it. The idea is you’ve got to engage the person you are arguing with and not spend the whole time putting words in their mouths. And that goes for physicists too.
You’re not exempt.
I sez (speaking about Quantum Mechanics):
It shows that the theory needs more work. Since it is patched together by probability and voodoo.
Physics Ideologue sez:
“Stop telling God what He must do!�
That has to be about the second stupidist response I’ve seen today.
I can’t make this any simpler
Me earlier
So the light speed limit is an outcome, a corollary, a derived result whatever you like, of the above postulates, which are based on experimental evidence.
I’ve been saying the same thing all along, but you don’t seem to get it.
Well you’ve been setting a low bar so I just gave it my best shot.
I’m afraid I’m going to have to break these up into sub-topics so that the physics ideologue isn’t able to pull some fancy footwork on you.
So here is all the references to gravity in one HIT.
GRAVITY.
Physics Ideologue sez:
Also see the mechanistic philosophy of the 17th C which held action at a distance as irrational and occult, and precluded the sort of theory of gravity that newton discovered. Discarding outcomes because they seem illogical is fraught with peril.
I sez:
Clearly gravity needs more work. It appears to weaken in proportion to the square of the distance. But if its held to be the result of gravity waves filling up the space in between two bodies you would expect it to weaken to the cube or the fourth power of the distance if its two bodies filling the universe with these waves.
So they should have gone with Newton. Since it was the most useful model around. But they ought not have rejected their earlier qualms.
Physics Ideologue Sez:
Not sure what you are on about here Graeme, gravity is held to be a curvature of space-time in GR.
I sez:
Yeah well that’s hocus pocus as well. It takes one lot of voodoo and replaces it with another. And that’s well and good but not to be confused with revealed settled and finalised truth. THERE IS A FORCE INVOLVED WITH GRAVITY.
Just get it through your head that there is a real force involved here. There is no space between your ass and that chair to warp. Now notice how you dodge the issue of the non-curvature of space and instead use the hocus pocus of the curvature of space-time. SPACE-TIME. Why didn’t you just say space? The point I made was valid since the gravity waves are going out into a three dimensional space. They should be diluting in their Voo Doo power of attraction at a distance. They ought to be diluting by more then the square. By the cube or the fourth power. But they only dilute by the square it seems. So the theory needs more work.
Now you can get about with a mini-tramp and ball all you want showing that demonstration. But you won’t take the force out of gravity. And you won’t show that the theory doesn’t need a bunch more work.
Physics Ideologue sez:
Why because I wanted to be correct. It’s become clear that you don’t really have a grasp on this stuff which is probably why you have problems with it. I said space-time because for GR theory to work it not only curves space but time as well. If you’ve got a grasp of maths and have been through the theory it will make.
…………………………………………………………..
Ok that is where it stood.
NOW because I am dealing with an physics ideologue I will have to repeat myself.
There is a problem with current theories of gravity since
1. There is not much explanation of how you can have the Voo Doo of attraction at a distance.
2. Even if you could have it that gravity was propagated in this way you would expect the force of attraction to drop at at least the cube of the distance and not the square.
As you can see above the Physics Ideologue tried to pull a fast one and bring in the VooDoo of space-time. But then he admits he’s not talking about space. So how in the Universe does he think he’s overcome the problems I’ve raised. Space isn’t compressed. We are still talking about the Volume of space in between the two bodies being three dimensional. And so if there is this Voodoo pull attraction then you would still expect for the drop-off in its strength to be faster then it is.
Just laying out the “Space-Time” Mantra isn’t going to cut it. Because if you admit that space isn’t squeezed or reduced or compressed. But some other thing that you are calling “Space-Time” is then you are not overturning the points I made.
Now the good thing is is that Physics is oh so much easier then other subjects. What we have to get used to is the idea the these physicists will try exactly the same dodges that bully-boy advocates of the intellectual status quo try on elsewhere.
AND THEN THEY WILL RUN AND HIDE BEHIND THE MATHS.
We can trap this physics ideologue and back him into the wall. I know I’ve done this before. But the only thing is we must never allow him to hide behind the maths.
Oh sure he’ll try and run and he’ll try and hide behind the maths. But we can’t let him get away with it.
My whole thesis is that the Physics proffession has been hijacked by a bunch of mathematicians posing as natural philosophers. And he’s tried a number of dodges on so far. But now he appears ready to run and hide behind the maths. I knew this would come and it has.
We cannot let him hide behind the maths.
Now let us get this light-speed prohibition straight.
There has been a prohibition on anything going faster then the speed of light. The speed of light has been considered to be the fastest that anything can go.
Now if you are NOW claiming that there wasn’t this prohibition then you are making it up. That is what I am accusing you of making up. And not anything else. You tried to pretend I was accusing you of making something else up but I wasn’t. But you tried it on anyway.
Now what you are doing is the old trick that the leftist bully-boy advocates of the intellectual status quo used to do when you would see a poster for a talk at the University after Communism fell.
And the poster says:
“What Marx REALLY Said”
You see you’re pulling the revisionism dodge once one aspect of your dogma is looking shakey.
I’ve seen it all before. But fortunately physics, shorn of all its maths, is a very easy subject, and you won’t be able to get away with this sort of thing.
I sez:
It shows that the theory needs more work. Since it is patched together by probability and voodoo.
Physics Ideologue sez:
“Stop telling God what He must do!�
I sez:
Dude. There is no question whatsoever that this is a stupid response. It reminds me of Keynes saying “In the Long Run We Are All Dead”. But its still more stupid then that.
Physics Ideologue sez:
Well you’ve been setting a low bar so I just gave it my best shot.
I sez:
No that is not right. I’m setting a very high standard. So much so that many people will never have seen this sort of thing before but will recognise that there have been things bugging them about physics. They will be saying to themselves ” Yeah I thought of that ” or ” Yeah I always thought that was a bit odd”.
To Physics Division Director
Code red! Code red! Instigator Bird is consolidating his attacks.
Request assistance of field agents Nabakov and Boris of Social Sciences division to provide advice on swarming tactics.
Field agent #2345AQ,
Sydney,
Australia
In GR there is no action at a distance. That’s Newton. In GR, space and time is curved by mass, these disturbances travel at the speed of light.
Why cubed? The intensity of waves spread out as an inverse proportion of the surface area of a sphere not the volume. ie R squared. Check out Gauss’s law and how it relates to coloumbs law for electro-statics.
Feel free to believe this if you like GB. AS your po-mo friend Jacques Derrida said. “Why is it the philosopher who is expected to be easier and not some scientist who is even more inaccessible? “
“Why cubed? The intensity of waves spread out as an inverse proportion of the surface area of a sphere not the volume. ie R squared. Check out Gauss’s law and how it relates to coloumbs law for electro-statics.”
Well exactly. That force would have to be looked at too.
It’s still attraction at a distance isn’t it. So its still VooDoo to think of it as a pull force.
“In GR there is no action at a distance. That’s Newton. In GR, space and time is curved by mass, these disturbances travel at the speed of light.”
Right. But I’ve already said this:
“Yeah well that’s hocus pocus as well. It takes one lot of voodoo and replaces it with another. And that’s well and good but not to be confused with revealed settled and finalised truth. THERE IS A FORCE INVOLVED WITH GRAVITY.
Just get it through your head that there is a real force involved here. There is no space between your ass and that chair to warp. Now notice how you dodge the issue of the non-curvature of space and instead use the hocus pocus of the curvature of space-time. SPACE-TIME. Why didn’t you just say space? The point I made was valid since the gravity waves are going out into a three dimensional space. They should be diluting in their Voo Doo power of attraction at a distance. They ought to be diluting by more then the square. By the cube or the fourth power. But they only dilute by the square it seems. So the theory needs more work.
Now you can get about with a mini-tramp and ball all you want showing that demonstration. But you won’t take the force out of gravity. And you won’t show that the theory doesn’t need a bunch more work.”
But since you are a physics ideologue we are going to have to go over this many many times.
I’ve already said that. Right. Now I DON’T CARE who it is. I don’t care. Right? And reference to any individuals is not relevant. I’m not competing with these guys.
We have a force. There is a force working on your ass without any space between you and the chair for that space to be warped. You cannot get away from it that gravity involves force. And its not relevant to say someones name and dodge out of it that way.
And its particularly not relevant to just say SPACE-TIME. Because unless space itself is warped it has no bearing on what we are saying. Call it a different name. Call it NOOGLES, or OODLES or something. Because calling it space-time is a gyp that makes your eyes glaze over and makes you think you’ve solved the problem and taken the force out of gravity.
LONG COMMENT WARNING
Is anyone that reads this site other than me a theoretical physicist? Steve, you are doing a great job arguing on behalf of Einstein and the other quantum gang, are you a physicist?
Graeme, I’ve just been wading through the comments, there are quite a few of them now… anyway. Throw me some questions and I will try to answer them. I’ll see if I can make some stuff clear based on what I could piece together by these arguments.
Speed of light: Postulated by Einstein to be the same in all frames of reference. There were a few reasons for this. The first is that he thought this might be true because that’s what the Michelson-Morely experiment was telling us.
Secondly, Einstein was trying to resolve some very old questions about things like the “electromagnetic ether” (which is also what Michelson and Morley were trying to do), anyway he pointed out that this wasn’t a bad postulate as some theories that we quite like wouldn’t make sense if light wasn’t a constant in all frames of reference. Basically, if it wasn’t then we would see physics acting diffently if we travelled in different directions. The point is, we don’t seem to see this. If I am walking North and you are walking East then we should be able to see physics acting in the same way. If the speed of light isn’t a constant in all frames of reference then this might not happen (not the use of “might”, there are new theories floating around that show that there might be loopholes that get around this).
Anyway, as a consquence of this postulate you can ask the right questions and do some pretty easy math (I’m serious about it being easy, an average high-school senior could easily understand it) to show that anything with positive mass cannot travel faster than the speed of light. By “travel faster than the speed of light” I mean that the group velocity of the particle’s associated wave packet cannot travel faster than the speed of light.
Now as for your assertions that somwhow us physicists bully away other theories, we do sometimes but that’s only if they seem really flakey and they lead to conclusions that contradict things that we are pretty sure are right. But, there really aren’t that many things that physicists agree on. We are pretty into the 2nd law of Thermodynamics, we think that the universe is probabilistic (even though we had a war for 70 years to reach this point - and we still have no idea what probability is), and the theory of general relativity (note: not special relativity). After these things it’s pretty hard to get people to agree on much. Even among the things I just mentioned, it seems that there are contradictions. For instance, the nature of gravity is not well understood at all.
As Steve pointed out, gravity seems to be a result of the curvature of space-time, or space (if you are willing to accept that time is space as well). The problem is, that the force law that comes out of general relativity does fit in well with the force laws that we have from other big theories. Gravity doesn’t seem to be able to be “2nd quantized”. This means that it is a force unlike all the others that we know about. This is a big problem and has led to theories like string theory in order to try to resolve it all. One of those problems, as you point out, is that there are singularities that act weird. The study of black holes is an attempt to try to understand what happens in a gravitational singularity, if one can even exist. Objects like black holes seem to have weird relativistic and quantum mechanical features which are very hotly debated.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is that physicists, while not perfect, do debate theories. There is little that is “sacred”. There isn’t some grand collective behaviour pushing a particular world-view. It’s hard to get good new theory out there, and many wonder whether someone like Einstein would survive in today’s environment, but debate is pretty open on all issues.
Oh, and I’m a mathematical physicist by the way - well, at least I’ve been accused of being one. Math is important, but only because it makes physics easier.
mick, Steve’s bio says that he has a PhD in physics.
I must say the intellectual watchdogs should revise the urgency of their warnings about the masses. I’m as perplexed by all this as Derrida obviously was.
Mark, I really really need to learn to read :-). I thought he sounded suspiciously physicsish.
BTW I was just responding to the call by field agent #2345AQ, I got a call on my little red phone. There are nerds like me mobilizing all over the blogosphere for a counter-offensive.
“As Steve pointed out, gravity seems to be a result of the curvature of space-time, or space.”
No mick. It doesn’t SEEM to do this at all. What it seems to do is it seems to exert a force. In fact there is no question but that it exerts a force eg. the force of your ass on that chair you’re sitting on. As I have pointed out a number of times here there is no space in between your ass and that chair to warp.
But I’m going to have to point it out a number of times more I am sure.
Now how about these black holes hey. We are saying that nothing goes faster then light/Right? So if there are gravitrons moving at light-speed how could they escape a black hole?
How could the black hole exert a gravitational pull?
Now Steve says that this alleged warping of space moves out at light-speed.
So we have two arbitrary things going on here:
1 That space is warped. Since we already know a force is exerted why explain it again all over with this warping hocus pocus.
2. That the warping travels out at light speed. This too is arbitrary.
Now those are some small criticisms. But I have a much harsher one that you condescension brings up. I am criticising the physics profession by criticising their attitude towards what ought to be considered merely ‘useful models’.
This is not a problem of me not understanding the models of the people I’m criticising. So stop that dodge right there and don’t try it on again.
To Director, Covert Ops
Field agent #2345AQ, has alerted me to a serious developing situation which could blow the whole gig. We have field operatives in place fighting a holding action but it is urgent, I repeat urgent, that you get a temporal wet-work team into the Berne Impossibly Fast According To The Dominant Paradigm Tram (IFATTDPT) and eliminate this problem at source! I want this probelem dealt with no later than last century. If at all possible, your team should aim to take out the entire ancestral line.
To Director, Covert Ops
His nibs has asked me to remind you that he wants deniability on this one, as always.
Here is CS from awhile back spinning nonsense about the economic fraud Keynes. He is using an argument that both mick and Steve have tried on already:
“An intractable problem with Keynes’ legacy is that it is doomed to be assessed by lesser mortals.”
You see what he is trying to do mick and Steve. That’s exactly what you two have done. You’re not exempt from normal standard reason in these discussions. You try on what CS is trying on I WILL FIND YOU OUT. And you’ll end up running away just like he did.
Here’s another one from cs:
“Joe, and especially Birdy, remind me of those Japanese soldiers found on pacific islands in the 1970s, who refused to believe that the war was over.”
And another:
I sez:
Why is it that you think Keynes is a great economist?
CS sez:
There have been more than a few books written to explain this Birdy (including, I humbly mention, one by the feared ‘central scutinizer’ [sic]). In fact, beyond your angry little island, it’s a commonly settled historical view, world over. You need to get out more.”
Here’s another CS dodge:
“Heh. Delusions of grandeur, Mr Birdy. What colour comes after blue, again?
If you wish to commission professional advice, commercial rates apply under private arrangement. Otherwise, you can buy my book.”
OK so in the end CS had nothing. And he’s been running ever since. So don’t try this sort of thing on guys because you are not exempt from normal human reason.
Cs wasn’t immune just because he could sport a PHD. And you guys aren’t immune just because you’ve been still working on your maths after High School whereas the rest of us have put our maths puzzles away.
Would the Director like his email details fixed so as to correctly display his gravatar, or would he prefer to remain under the cover of darkness?
Graeme, I wasn’t trying to be condesending, but I can if you like.
I know that gravity exerts a force. This is clear. The question is where does this force come from? What I’m assuming Steve told you is that it comes about as a result of the curvature of space time. It was shown that objects with mass travel along geodesics of the space-time manifold. Objects with mass also alter the nature of that manifold. The result, is that we see in our 3 dimensional world a “force”.
To answer your points:
1. We have to use all this warping “hocus pocus” because it seems to be what happens. It is verified by experiment. There were Nobel prizes, many. Deal with it, I got over it a long time ago. A good example of something that practically uses space-time curvature is the global positioning system. When you use GPS to work out where an object is, it uses Einstein’s equations. If you don’t do this, it doesn’t work.
2. The warping travels at light speed because it doesn’t have mass. Lots of things travel at light speed, lots of things that you might not want to call “light”. You seem to have problems with this. What Steve and I have said is that the speed of light is a constant in all reference frames, a consequence of this is that objects WITH POSITIVE MASS shouldn’t be able to travel faster than the speed of light. Gravitons don’t have any mass. In fact, it is theorized that some things might travel faster than the speed of light except we cannot interact with them (which many physicists have argued “well, what the hell is the point in these objects”, which I believe is a pretty valid argument).
As for your criticism of physics. Go to:
http://www.arxiv.org
every day there are hundreds of papers put on this website by thousands of authors. Pick one of the categories (I’d advise quantum physics or general rel and cosmo), watch what gets posted for a few weeks and then tell me how us physicists knock down theories that we merely consider “useful”. Is that a good enough dodge for you? If that gets to intense why don’t you go to a physics blog aggregator like:
http://www.physcomments.org/aggregator
and see how physicists interact for a while.
“What I’m assuming Steve told you is that it comes about as a result of the curvature of space time.”
Stop right there. Don’t assume anything. Go back and read it. So I don’t have to repeat myself or so that you don’t have an exuse to make me repeat myself.
Oh and Graeme, it was physicsists wanting to move data and disseminate ideas faster that created the internet. I don’t know if you missed that. Not to mention in the 90s we created the pre-print (that is pre-publication) arxiv, because peer reviewed publications are often too slow to disseminate ideas and cost too much for many institutions or individuals.
How is it that we are supressing stuff? What else can we do?
1. We have to use all this warping “hocus pocus� because it seems to be what happens. It is verified by experiment.
No that is not true at all. What seems to happen is a force seem to be exerted at great distance. But that light bends a little bit more then that force might predict. And that’s all that it seems. Its a great leap to suggest that space is warping in between.
2.” The warping travels at light speed because it doesn’t have mass.”
pssssst third parties:
(sshhhh) Now I told you third parties that science workers weren’t too bright. Here we are criticising a model these guys are dogmatically sticking too. And this gentlemans answer is always to refer to the model itself. So the reasoning is entirely circular.
But go easy on these people. Since economics and politics are much harder then physics and these guys aren’t really used to thinking.
mick sez:
Lots of things travel at light speed, lots of things that you might not want to call “light�. You seem to have problems with this.
I sez:
No I don’t seem to have a problem with it. I said that the idea that the warping travels out at the speed of light is arbitrary. Actually the warping itself is an arbitrary idea. But putting that aside for the moment. Without referring back to the model we are critiquing you tell me why this isn’t an arbitrary assumption.
Mick sez:
“No that’s not What Steve and I have said is that the speed of light is a constant in all reference frames, a consequence of this is that objects WITH POSITIVE MASS shouldn’t be able to travel faster than the speed of light.”
I sez:
Now don’t change the subject. There was assumed to be a light speed limit. That nothing could go faster then the speed of light. Just quit the fancy footwo