Time

[John Smith]

There is something very unsettling in Einstein's theory of relativity. There is really nothing special about the speed of light, and yet it is absolute while everything else is relative. It is as though the speed of light was arbitrarily chosen to be the the absolute point of reference, only to conclude that there is no such thing as absolute point of reference. Seems like a dirty trick to me. After all, we could as well assume that the speed of Jupiter is constant in all frames of references, and come up with all the relativistic effects (such as time dilation) as a result, and I bet we could even demonstrate it with the experiments.
I've got an alternative theory, my fellow ranchers. Just like gravitation and acceleration are the same thing, space and time are also the same thing. In other words, time does not exist.
Everything else falls down in their places neatly. For example, the two atomic clocks (one on the surface of the Earth, one is above the surface) show different times not because the time of the higher clock slows down as a result of a relativistic effect, but because the location of the clocks is different. You may say that if you put these clocks in different locations but on the same elevation from Earth, they will register the same time, but it doesn't actually disprove my theory. The clocks will show the same time because the space is warped by the same amount, that's all. That is, the clocks measure the curvature of space, not time.
I gotta think about this some more, but I welcome your comments. I am willing to put aside 10% of my Nobel prize for challengers and contributors.

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Eugene Kononov:
The clocks will show the same time because the space is warped by the same amount, that's all. That is, the clocks measure the curvature of space, not time.

That fails to take into account the effects of acceleration on time.

[Jim Yingst]

[Eugene]: After all, we could as well assume that the speed of Jupiter is constant in all frames of references, and come up with all the relativistic effects (such as time dilation) as a result, and I bet we could even demonstrate it with the experiments.
I bet you can't. If you can, go to it; I'm sure you'll start another scientific revolution. But I'm 99.9999% sure that if you measure the speed of Jupiter relative to significantly different frames of reference, e.g. relative to us on Earth vs. relative to Voyager, you'll get predictably different results. Whereas if you measure the speed of light from the same, you'll get the same result. You may not like it, but hte speed of light really is special, and experiments support this.
I've got an alternative theory, my fellow ranchers. Just like gravitation and acceleration are the same thing, space and time are also the same thing. In other words, time does not exist.
Therefore, space does not exist either, right? So what is there to talk about?
Your remaining vague statements sound not inconsistent with gneral relativity, which allows us to describe giravity in terms of curved spacetime. We can say that an orbiting satellite has centripetal accelleration due to gravity, or we can say it's traveling "straight" through curved spacetime. It's a toe-MAY-toe / toe-MAH-toe sort of thing. I don't see how your "alternate theory" is significantly different from current understanding of general relativity, other than the fact that it's a lot more vague.

[Thomas Paul]

I ignored Eugene's point about Jupiter because it was nonsense but just to clarify for those who are not familiar with special relativity.
Imagine two trains on two separate tracks moving at the same speed in the same direction. You are sleeping on one train when you suddenly wake up. If you look out the window it will appear that the other train is stationary while to an observer on the platform both trains are moving at 75mph. Again, imagine two trains moving at the same speed on parallel tracks but in opposite directions. To you in one train, the other train will appear to whiz by at 150 mph but to an observer on the platform the other train will cruise by at 75mph.
Now replace one of the trains with a photon and replace the other train with a space capsule travelling at half the speed of light. Here is where the amazing part comes in... Both you in the capsule and the stationary observer will get exactly the same speed for the photon no matter what direction you are travelling in relation to the photon.
That is why Eugene is wrong when he says "There is really nothing special about the speed of light." In fact, the speed of light is incredibly special.

[John Smith]

You may not like it, but hte speed of light really is special, and experiments support this.
It can't be any more special than the speed of Jupiter. The results of experiments can be explained by different theories. We knew for several centures that the Newton's laws of motion are right because they were confirmed by countless experiments, yet it all turned out to be a model, an approximation, useful for everyday experience yet having nothing to do with reality and nature of accelerated motion.
Therefore, space does not exist either, right? So what is there to talk about? ... I don't see how your "alternate theory" is significantly different from current understanding of general relativity, other than the fact that it's a lot more vague.
I didn't say that space doesn't exist, -- just that time is a measures of the curvature of space, rather than a quantity orthogonal to space. If you accept that, there is a lot to talk about (although I admit that I am hesitant to ask the first question).

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Eugene Kononov:
It can't be any more special than the speed of Jupiter.

Actually it can. Nothing can go faster than light. Lots of things can go faster than Jupiter.

[John Smith]

TP: Now replace one of the trains with a photon and replace the other train with a space capsule travelling at half the speed of light. Here is where the amazing part comes in... Both you in the capsule and the stationary observer will get exactly the same speed for the photon no matter what direction you are travelling in relation to the photon.
That is why Eugene is wrong when he says "There is really nothing special about the speed of light." In fact, the speed of light is incredibly special.
Tom, you are using a hypothesis about the absoluteness of the speed of light to demonstrate the absoluteness of the speed of light. I know, it became more than a hypothesis because of the many experiments, but again, the same experiment can have different explanations.

[John Smith]

TP: Nothing can go faster than light.
Only if you accept that as a fact.

[Mani Ram]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
Nothing can go faster than light.

I'm searching for Cerenkov Radiation. Once I find it, I will come and talk about Tachyons.

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Eugene Kononov:
Tom, you are using a hypothesis about the absoluteness of the speed of light to demonstrate the absoluteness of the speed of light. I know, it became more than a hypothesis because of the many experiments, but again, the same experiment can have different explanations.

I am not using an hypothesis. I am stating the result of an experiment. If two observers report the speed of Jupiter they will get different results based on their relative motion in relation to Jupiter. If two observers observe a photon they will always report the exact same speed no matter what their realtive motion is in relation to the photon. That is profoundly different. To pretend that this can be explained away shows that you have not appreciated the implications of the result.

[Mani Ram]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
just to clarify for those who are not familiar with special relativity.

Now, how about explaning about General relativity for thouse who are not familiar?

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Mani Ram:
Now, how about explaning about General relativity for thouse who are not familiar?

The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory

[John Smith]

TP: To pretend that this can be explained away shows that you have not appreciated the implications of the result.
What it shows that I appreciate the possibility of alternative explanations of the same result. As I pointed out before, you can conduct many experiments to "prove" that F=ma is the absolute thing, yet it would be wrong, as quantum mechanics demonstrates.
My methodology is different: come up with a hypothesis, and keep changing it until all contradictions are resolved. The fact that the speed of light is absolute and everything else is relative is a contradiction. You may either accept it, or challenge it, -- that's all.

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Eugene Kononov:
What it shows that I appreciate the possibility of alternative explanations of the same result.

So offer an alternative and demonstrate a way to test your hypothesis in a way that will prove it is correct and relativity is wrong.

[Jim Yingst]

[Eugene]: I didn't say that space doesn't exist
You said that time and space are the same thing, and time doesn't exist. I employed simple logic to demonstrate that these two statements were too vague to be remotely meaningful.
[Tom]: Nothing can go faster than light.
[Mani]: I'm searching for Cerenkov Radiation. Once I find it, I will come and talk about Tachyons.
OK Tom's statement is not literally true here, but it seems clear that he meant the speed of light in a vaccuum. I think we can safely assume that just about any time someone mentions the speed of light in this thread, then mean the speed of light in vacuum, unless otherwise stated. Also when we say "nothing", well, there are some other loopholes there, but they are essentially optical illusions. No physical objects acceleerate past the speed of light, and new information cannot be transmitted at faster than the speed of light. See this past discussion for more about alleged loopholes.
As for tachyons:, they're a cool idea, but there's no real evidence they actually exist, or if they do, that they can interact in any meaningful way with more conventional matter. Moreover, tachyons would suffer from an inability to ever decelerate to slower than the speed of light. On top of that, tachyons are pacifists. So there might be a loophole or two in Tom's statement here, but not much of one. Conventional matter can't travel faster than light, and we cant send signals faster than the speed of light. As Tom and I have been saying, the speed of light is special, strange as it may seem. And thing like Cerenkov radiation and tachyons are irrelevant to the basic fallacies Eugene is attempting to perpetrate here.
[Eugene]: The fact that the speed of light is absolute and everything else is relative is a contradiction.
What's contradictory about it? "Speed of light" and "everything else" are disjoint sets - how does one statement contradict the other?
I acknowledge that it's not immediately apparent why the speed of light should be special. There's certainly room to question why it's special, or perhaps to propose alternate explanations. If you find current explanations intellecutaly unsatisfying for some reason, OK. But acting like there's no existing evidence to indicate that the speed of light is a fundamentally different sort of thing than the speed of Jupiter - well, that just seems like you're in denial.
[ October 31, 2003: Message edited by: Jim Yingst ]

[John Smith]

Jim: You said that time and space are the same thing, and time doesn't exist. I employed simple logic to demonstrate that these two statements were too vague to be remotely meaningful.
Ok, you are right, I'll take that back, or rather phrase it more precisely: time is a measure of the curvature of space and therefore is not orthogonal to space. That is, it doesn't exist as a dimension. It's just a property of space. It doesn't exist by itself.
With that hypothesis, the immediate paradox (speed of light is absolute, everything else is relative) is removed, or rendered irrelevant. The speed is no more the amount of time it takes to cover a unit of distance, but something else.
I think I made a mistake of posting this a bit prematurely, -- it just hit me, and felt an impulse to share it. I obviously don't have a complete and coherent theory, -- just a hypothesis. I'll take time to think about it and come back.

[Joe Pluta]

I really shouldn't get into this, since I really, really don't have a lot of time... I'm leaving for a speaking engagement in less than 72 hours and I will be spending most of that time preparing, except that I've also got a slew of family things to take care of.
But I did want to point out one interesting issue. The equations derived from special relativity do not state that nothing can travel faster than light. Instead, they imply that nothing can be accelerated TO the speed of light. That is, the amount of energy required to accelerate a body to the speed of light (whether it be at rest, or already at .999999c) is infinite.
Thus the speed of light is a barrier through which nothing can pass. Because we deal primarily with objects traveling less than the speed of light, that in effect means that nothing we deal with can go faster than the speed of light. And other than massless objects such as photons, nothing can travel at the speed of light.
However, there is conjecture that objects already traveling faster than light, such as the tachyon, cannot decelerate to slower than the speed of light; that it in fact takes the same infinite amount of energy for a tachyon to slow down to light speed. The equations are a little fuzzy here, though, because it seems to take an infinite amount of "negative energy", whatever that term means.
Also, there are any number of theories that posit being able to, at least temporarily, supersede the lightspeed barrier, but they get quite exotic, usually involving many extra dimensions and stressed space.
Anyway, just thought I'd throw that into the pot.
Joe

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Eugene Kononov:
Ok, you are right, I'll take that back, or rather phrase it more precisely: time is a measure of the curvature of space and therefore is not orthogonal to space. That is, it doesn't exist as a dimension. It's just a property of space. It doesn't exist by itself.

But that is nothing new. Space is curved in space-time according to Einstein. I don't think I understand what you are trying to say. But then, I don't think you understand what you are trying to say.

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Eugene Kononov:
I obviously don't have a complete and coherent theory, -- just a hypothesis.

I don't even think you have an hypothesis. It looks like random meaningless words on the page to me.

[Michael Ernest]

Yeah, but the Yankees lost in 6 games to the Marlins, in New York. So we reject your science! It is no good!

[Michael Ernest]

Seeing as we, human kind, have at times proven that a human being is incapable of running a mile under four minutes, of travelling at speeds in excess of 60 miles per hour (because the Venturi effect would rip the air out of our lungs if we tried to breathe), of surviving a trip through the sound barrier (once we decided it was possible to even break it), etc., etc., I hold out for the possibility that our current mathematics and experimentation explain that part of the universe our collective appreciation can accept.
I don't quite see where you're going, Eugene, but I certainly like the struggles. Perhaps the pain of imcomprehension intereferes with your effort to express what you mean?

[Mani Ram]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:

The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory

Hmm...I was actually serious when I posted that. :roll:
To me, the GTR is more complicated than the STR and I wanted a simple few line explanation for that, if it is possible. But searching for that book and buying it and reading it and understanding it.....
Betterm I will live with out knowing what GTR is

[Thomas Paul]

The problem with special relativity is that it only applies to non-accelerating observers. If we put you in a box in space and sped you off at 1,000 feet per second there would be no way for you to determine if you were moving or not. But if we put you under constant acceleration then you could do experiments to determine if you were moving. The easiest experiment would be to drop a ball. The ball would move in the opposite direction of your acceleration.
The big jump from Einstein was to realize that there would actually be no way for you to know if you were moving or if you were sitting on the Earth being effected by gravity. If your box moved at 32 feet per second squared you would not be able to tell if you were travelling through space or if you were sitting in a parking lot in Cleveland (assuming the box was sound proof). In essence, gravity is the same as accelerated motion.
Why is that important? Special relativity already shows that motion affects measurements of time and space. Since gravity is the same as acceleration then a gravity source must distort time and space as well. Clever experimants have been done to prove that this is the case. The orbit of Mercury around the Sun is in fact affected by general relativity because of its proximity to the space-time distortions created by the Sun. Newtonian physics failed to explain the orbit of mercury. Einstein's general relativity calculates the answer perfectly.

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Michael Ernest:
Seeing as we, human kind, have at times proven that a human being is incapable of running a mile under four minutes, of travelling at speeds in excess of 60 miles per hour (because the Venturi effect would rip the air out of our lungs if we tried to breathe), of surviving a trip through the sound barrier (once we decided it was possible to even break it), etc., etc., I hold out for the possibility that our current mathematics and experimentation explain that part of the universe our collective appreciation can accept.

Very amuisng. Do you actually have any proof that any of these things were actually generally accepted by scientists based on scientific theories or is this just babbling?

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Michael Ernest:
Yeah, but the Yankees lost in 6 games to the Marlins, in New York. So we reject your science! It is no good!

And how far did the SF Giants get this year?

[John Smith]

I don't quite see where you're going, Eugene, but I certainly like the struggles.
I am trying to reach peace of mind. It occured to me that a man's mind is like a pendulum, never at rest, swinging back and forth, trying to find an equilibrium.
Perhaps the pain of imcomprehension intereferes with your effort to express what you mean?
Yeah, I guess so. I let myself slide into thinking that someone else will ease it for me, but it's clear by now that no one will put your mind at rest except your mind itself.

[Michael Ernest]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
Very amuisng. Do you actually have any proof that any of these things were actually generally accepted by scientists based on scientific theories or is this just babbling?

What, as in special relativity is upheld by 4 out of 5 physicists who concede the limitations of a Newtonian universe?
I'm fresh out of the Einstein exhibit they've got over at the Field Museum of Natural History in The Windy City -- the politics of scientific acceptance have little, if anything, to do with the truth. The truth emerges, over time. Whether the scientific community at large rejects proper conclusions or accept flawed findings is to my mind irrelevant. If a premise is wrong, it is wrong. If it is right, it is right. But everything ultimately found to be wrong, on whatever basis -- incomplete models of the question at hand, new information coming to light, whatever -- is just wrong. There are no more shades of wrongness that are better than others.

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Michael Ernest:
What, as in special relativity is upheld by 4 out of 5 physicists who concede the limitations of a Newtonian universe?

So your claim is that 20% of physicists think special relativity is wrong? Do you have evidence of this or is it just more babbling?

[Paul Stevens]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:

And how far did the SF Giants get this year?

Seven games against the Marling

[HS Thomas]

               ^^              
                  || 
         _________||____
infinity  |______________|                               __|_    
 __________O___O____O___O________________________________^__^___ infinity
 

Newton's time was a single line like the railroad track that stretched to infinity in both directions. Time and space were like a stage in which things happened but events were not affected by them.
Einsteins theory of relativity brought curving space into the picture to provide an answer for the beginning and end of the Universe.
Space that was looped or curved has to involve time inextricably; but time has both one-way direction and a shape in this model.

                                  /-----|
                                  \     |
                                   \----|
          __                        \   |   
       /--^^----\                   |\  |----
       �         �                  | \ |    |
       |        /                   |  \|    |
        \--|  �                     |   |    |  
           |  |                     ----|    | 
           \--                          |    |
              time and space are        ----- 
              like a train on a track that can loop 
back to rejoin the main line at an earlier junction.

Space with no time would have no direction and therefore purposeful events cannot occur. IMHO You'd walk towards a door to get through the door but never get there
because space would become a moving directionless escalator. or escapeless-ator. How's that analogy?
Putting clocks in places suggest events that involve time itself so is not a good analogy for proof. again IMHO
regards
[ November 01, 2003: Message edited by: HS Thomas ]

[Thomas Paul]

I read another book recently that suggested that humans could not exist in a universe that did not have one dimension of time. Anything else, as HS suggests, and there would be no causality and living creatures could never learn anything.

[HS Thomas]

The theories were about studying the history of time and predicting the future .
The only time when space and time appear not so inextricably linked is on
considering wormholes within warped spacetime.I am not sure if that means time is slowed down and space moves very quickly past time. (escapee-tor)
There can be no memory (history) of it as Thomas mentioned.
Or is wormhole entering another spacetime of which one is not keeping record ? Travelling past the speed of light barrier fits nicely.
Why even bother with warped space ?
I'd have to think that everything would have to be done at different speeds or have selective memory for different time measurements/speeds.
Just hallicunating. Projecting!
regards
[ November 01, 2003: Message edited by: HS Thomas ]

[Jim Yingst]

[ME]: Whether the scientific community at large rejects proper conclusions or accept flawed findings is to my mind irrelevant. If a premise is wrong, it is wrong. If it is right, it is right. But everything ultimately found to be wrong, on whatever basis -- incomplete models of the question at hand, new information coming to light, whatever -- is just wrong. There are no more shades of wrongness that are better than others.
Sure there are. Science is a series of successive approximations, in which older theories are gradually replaced with newer theories with better explanatory and predictive power. Few scientists are naive enough to believe that any current theory represents the ultimate truth on a subject - nonetheless we manage to build bridges, and planes, and computers, using these "wrong" theories. And for two out of three of those, we still use good old Newtonian physics. No one uses that newfangled relativity stuff to design a bridge or plane. Even most of our space program has relied on Newtonian rather than relativistic dynamics. When theories get improved on, it's not really the case that the old theory is completely invalidated. There's often a good range of situations where the old theory is just as accurate as the new one, and maybe easier to use.
With respect to relativity and whether there's any way to travel faster than light - well, we don't really know for sure, true. There will most likely be new theories coming along later which will improve upon our current understanding of these things. But that doesn't mean they'll be able to toss out the old stuff entirely. Relativistic dynamics have been very well tested in things like particle accelerators. Any new, improved theory will have to account for things like the fact that when we accelerate a tiny particle to a sizable fraction of the speed of light, the energy requirements to do so grow tremendously - and the closer we get to the speed of light, the more the energy requirements grow, following an ever-steepening curve that shows no signs of leveling off for us. Special relativity is on very firm experimental footing here, much more than any alleged past "proof" that a four-minute mile is impossible, or 60 mph untenable for humans, or other past failed predictions. (And I think you'd find a lot more disagreement from other scientists at the time each of those assertions was made, than you will about relativity now.) If there's some loophole waiting to be discovered which allows FTL, it's got to be in a regime we haven't been able to test extensively. E.g. in the close vicinity of superdense matter, that's a good one, as we don't have a lot of hard data there. But the particle accelerator experiments won't just go away, and attempting to treat the unique properties of light speed as some sort of arbitrary illusion that will somehow magically vanish if you look at it from the right perspective... is not going to work.

[Michael Ernest]

JY: Science is a series of successive approximations, in which older theories are gradually replaced with newer theories with better explanatory and predictive power.
ME: You're suggesting that science is a measure of progress?
JY: Few scientists are naive enough to believe that any current theory represents the ultimate truth on a subject - nonetheless we manage to build bridges, and planes, and computers, using these "wrong" theories.
ME: I think you give scientists at large too much credit. We can have a tiresome argument about who really is a scientist, in order to better qualify your point or mine, but on the whole I disagree with you. The human search for truth is no less (nor more) pig-headed and misguided than the search for anything else humans deem worthy of searching for.
JY: When theories get improved on, it's not really the case that the old theory is completely invalidated. There's often a good range of situations where the old theory is just as accurate as the new one, and maybe easier to use.
ME: We talking about views of theorteical science or engineering here? For the sake of this argument, you seem to be having it both ways.
JY: With respect to relativity and whether there's any way to travel faster than light - well, we don't really know for sure, true. There will most likely be new theories coming along later which will improve upon our current understanding of these things. But that doesn't mean they'll be able to toss out the old stuff entirely.
ME: No one said that. But someone did say you cannot accelerate to the speed of light without requiring an infinite amount of energy. That's a line in the sand; it's right or it's wrong. No one said anything about all of relativity being tossed out the window because one of even its most heralded conclusions might later prove not to lie on a false assumption that is not yet evident.
JY: Relativistic dynamics have been very well tested in things like particle accelerators. Any new, improved theory will have to account for things like the fact that when we accelerate a tiny particle to a sizable fraction of the speed of light, the energy requirements to do so grow tremendously - and the closer we get to the speed of light, the more the energy requirements grow, following an ever-steepening curve that shows no signs of leveling off for us.
ME: What does this have to do with the consensus of the scientific community, then?
JY: Special relativity is on very firm experimental footing here, much more than any alleged past "proof" that a four-minute mile is impossible, or 60 mph untenable for humans, or other past failed predictions. (And I think you'd find a lot more disagreement from other scientists at the time each of those assertions was made, than you will about relativity now.)
ME: These were not proofs that I was asserting, mind you. But they did each come from scientists with well-regarded reputations, i.e., the kind of catalyst that accelerates processes such as consensus, and they were widely reported in their day. It was not my point that science is wrong all the time and in the most ludicrous way (ahemcoldfusionahem), but that consensus about the meaning of evidence isn't what TP seemed to be making it out to be.
JY: If there's some loophole waiting to be discovered which allows FTL, it's got to be in a regime we haven't been able to test extensively.
ME: Are you suggesting the Truth is limited to what we can test?
JY: But the particle accelerator experiments won't just go away, and attempting to treat the unique properties of light speed as some sort of arbitrary illusion that will somehow magically vanish if you look at it from the right perspective... is not going to work.
ME: We're human beings. Changing perspective is exactly how we banish arbitrary illusions from our notion of how the universe operates. And it's precisely the reason that when we come upon your "more complete" new theories people don't smack themselves on the head, saying "geez, of course!" Your confidence in the consensus of the scientific community is admirable, but while I am sure it is a better informed community today than it was 20 years ago, any sense of a dramatic qualitative improvement in its agreements strikes me as no less naive than thinking most people infer the phrase "travelling in a vacuum" when talking about lightspeed.

[Joe Pluta]

Originally posted by Michael Ernest:
ME: No one said that. But someone did say you cannot accelerate to the speed of light without requiring an infinite amount of energy. That's a line in the sand; it's right or it's wrong. No one said anything about all of relativity being tossed out the window because one of even its most heralded conclusions might later prove not to lie on a false assumption that is not yet evident.

PLEASE, if you're going to quote me, take the time to quote me correctly. What I said was that the mathematics of the special relativity theorem imply that acceleration to light speed requires infinite energy. This is not a guess, nor even a theory... I'm simply stating what the equations come out to. The dividend in the Lorentz transformation tendes towards zero as velocity approaches the speed of light, at which point the requried energy becomes infinite. That's just what the equation says, and there's no getting around the fact that 1/0 = infinity.
Now, is special relativity actually correct? A theorem becomes a law when repeated experimentation proves it to be correct in all possible situations. Hence Newton's Laws of Motion, which passed every known test, right up until relativity stepped in. So far relativity has passed every known attempt to measure it, from nuclear explosions to light curving due to the sun's gravitational pull. But so far we still haven't promoted relativity from Theory to Law; I guess we don't want to make the same mistake we did with old Newton, eh?
Anyway, until someone comes up with a new theory that supplants relativity and has a better record at matching with observed data, then we have to deal with its assumptions and thus its conclusions.
Joe

[Michael Ernest]

JP: PLEASE[/i], if you're going to quote me, take the time to quote me correctly.
ME: If you're going to irritate me with this kind of rhetoric, do it for a really, really good reason. You'll know when I am quoting you because I'll put your name to it.
JP: That's just what the equation says, and there's no getting around the fact that 1/0 = infinity.
ME: It's "undefined" in my corner of the universe.
JP: Now, is special relativity actually correct? A theorem becomes a law when repeated experimentation proves it to be correct in all possible situations.
ME: Theorems are demonstrated by experimentation. Laws are asserted; one can demonstrate the principle underlying a Law, but proving it is another matter. On what authority do you prove the 'correctness' of any law? Or rather, what Absolute Law is there that establishes the validity of a subsequent law? Repeated experimentation? Please.
JP: But so far we still haven't promoted relativity from Theory to Law; I guess we don't want to make the same mistake we did with old Newton, eh?
ME: It is a theory for precisely the reason that it cannot be fully tested, repeated, successful experimentation notwithstanding. As for Newtonian Laws, they were assertions, and while flawed assertions given the scope of inquiry assumed by later theorists, a lot of practical good comes from them.
JP: Anyway, until someone comes up with a new theory that supplants relativity and has a better record at matching with observed data, then we have to deal with its assumptions and thus its conclusions.
ME: Which you can't really promote by nay-saying any contradicting or overlapping propositions that come your way. If you want true scientific rigor, you have to develop every contending theory and allow it to collapse under its own weight.

[Joe Pluta]

JP: PLEASE, if you're going to quote me, take the time to quote me correctly.
ME: If you're going to irritate me with this kind of rhetoric, do it for a really, really good reason. You'll know when I am quoting you because I'll put your name to it.
I'm the only one who said it in this conversation, so you were quoting me, regardless of attribution.

JP: That's just what the equation says, and there's no getting around the fact that 1/0 = infinity.
ME: It's "undefined" in my corner of the universe.
I'm not sure how much calculus you've taken, but an expression tends towards infinity as the divisor tends towards zero. Quibble all you want, but 1/0 is infinity (aleph null, to be precise).

The rest of your post I'll leave be, as it's really just about semantics, not science. I don't have the energy to fight semantics. Besides, I don't think I much like your tone of typing .

Joe

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Joe Pluta:
I'm not sure how much calculus you've taken, but an expression tends towards infinity as the divisor tends towards zero. Quibble all you want, but 1/0 is infinity (aleph null, to be precise).

Michael was a liberal arts major which explains 99% of his babbling.

[Nick Allen]

"I've got an alternative theory, my fellow ranchers. Just like gravitation and acceleration are the same thing, space and time are also the same thing. In other words, time does not exist."
If time did not exist we would not have the problem of being unable to appropriately draw 4-d diagrams and pictures. A continous 4-d diagram (there are three space dimensions + time, and I know about the theories about there actually being twenty or so dimensions, but it states in those theories that they are to small to effect things noticeable to us) is just a blur with perfect detail on the leading and starting edge, nowhere else, unless you want to draw a round ball or something.
And last time I checked my car didn't accelerate solely due to gravity. So how are gravity and acceleration the same. Acceleration is the result of a force acting on an object, gravity is a force.

[Nick Allen]

Facts and statistics can be used to prove almost anything, 47% of people know that.
-Homer