Einstein's Theory of Relativity....Was he incorrect?

Light does not have mass.

Not really. I would suggest that careful analysis of most of these links would reveal that nothing is actually propagating through space faster than c. Anyway, the theory doesn't say that nothing can travel faster than c. It says that matter may not be accelerated to c, and also predicts some rather odd behavior for anything that does travel faster than c.

If light does not have mass then why would it be affected by gravity? Like blackholes?

Wrong

ok Brandon, retract that, you're right



Cant quite get my head round something with positive momentum having no mass, however...

People who like to think in terms of geometric theories like General Relativity would say that this is because the space itself is curved.

Re: Einstein's Theory of Relativity....Was he incorrect?


Yes. Relativity was based on thought experiments, not a terribly good basis for physics. It turns out that the theory which lives by the thought experiment can expect to die by it:

http://www.bookch.com/booksellers7845.htm

wherein the author, Hans Zweig, presents several thought experiments which simply kill relativity. Zweig makes more of a study of the concept of "thought experiment" than I've seen elsewhere.

Other than that, it turns out that there are other explanations (other than deformable time) for the results of the Michelson/Morley experiment, Most notably that of Ralph Sansbury:

http://users.bestweb.net/~sansbury/book03.pdf

Dearly departed Timothy Leary used to speak of "electromagnetic chauvinism."

Of course Leary and his friends found that their sort of "thought experiment" tended to not only take one beyond the limitations of energy and matter but also the limitations of thought.

Crick who also recently died commented that Leary's form of "thought experiment" was responsible for his and Watsons modeling of the DNA double helix. He complained that the government had prevented funding of some of the more interesting research on the evolution of the central nervous system of humans from megamolecules common to all life forms.

An agent that can so profoundly effect the highest life form in a dose of micrograms must have implications on the molecular level. Developing the bomb was controversial too and much more popular.

Curiously, some have observed that the mind is constructed as a sphere which can encompass the entire universe and even the most distant galaxies are projected onto the outer walls of the mind that is aware of the shape of the universe.

Some posit that the Law of Conservation of Energy and Matter makes the notion of anything beyond individual death rather absurd. However it's constructed the universe appears to be a breeder reactor and an apparently entropic recycling center. If there are black holes - what are the implications in reference to "entropic doom?"

And because of the space time continuum and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle which renders our own existence as expressions of matter and energy to be rather illusory - what more can we do than watch and wonder? (Load up the Enterprise, let's go!).

We are in an exciting time in spite of the demise of the Hubble and other zero gravity projects hampered by budgets and hurricanes etetera.

Thanks to all you well informed physicists for your commentary. I'm sure as an interested lay person and amateur astronomer that Einsteins theories General and Special are still a good basis for pondering the universe and even calculating critical mass of unstable elements, half lives and other phenomena that comprise the evolving field of modern physics.

The developments in the last twenty years of better instrumentation have doubtless put Einstein's theories to the test and you'd have to expect uncertainties and inaccuracies and the naming of new particles and subparticles.

If the mind can think faster than light I'd offer that if light doesn't have mass, that the mind has less.

I always like that movie title The Incredible Lightness of Being. I'm sure Einsteins theories are still relatively correct. I suspect Rene Descartes system also remains coordinated.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Keep calibrating your instruments.
Why whale myoglobin for some spectrometers as a control? That has puzzled me. What is it about whale myoglobin?

As for it being impossible to approach the speed of light. As I understand it, assuming you cannot travel faster than light is a misconception.
It's not excluded, you just can't 'slow down' to the exact speed of light. Nor can you approach is from a speed slower than that of c and build up to the exact speed of light. It seems to be as simple as 1/x, for x going to 0. Well, you get the analogy I'm making.

Then there's the optical illusion. In my opinion you'd have to use entropy as a model to end time so you can visualize it slowing down, thus movement becomes 'less', slower. And therefor time. Movement = Time. Pardon the blunt formula which has 'some' (:p) inconsistencies with physics :p

Light not having mass but positive momentum is...well, troubling.
If it's the curvature of space, please explain to me exactly 'how' it's curved. I always imagined it's gravity curving it, if that's true and that's the reason light 'bends' around eg. a black hole, this would imply light is in fact influenced by gravity and therefor has mass.

Correct these remarks please :-)

I am not a physicist, but I've tried to understand some of this stuff as best I can.

Einstein was trying to use relativistic/deformable time to account for the Michelson/Moreley experiment which showed that light apears to move at the same speed regadless of origin, i.e. that it does not obey the normal additive/vector laws for velocities.

Suppose there is a planet 10 light years from here that you want to get to, trade a few cases of whiskey with the natives for whatever they have to trade, and then return. As I understand it, there is nothing in Einstein's theory which forbids you from getting there in two years assuming you have enough horsepower on whatever you are riding. What IS forbidden is returning and finding that your family and friends have aged less than 20 years since, according to Einstein, time will have proceeded differently for them than it did for you while all that was happening.

In practical terms, it's difficult to think of anything you could throw out the exhaust of your vehicle fast enough to exceed the speed of light but in theory at least you could harness gravitational forces and ride them to your planet like our forbears rode the wind in ships and there should be no theoretical limit to the speeds you might reach that way.

Now, there are problems with relativity. It was based on what Einstein and others called "thought experiments" and not on real evidence and, as at least one author has noted, the theory which lives by the thought experiment can die by it:

http://www.aquestionoftime.com/

Another problem is that there appear to be other ways to explain the Michelson/Moreley experiment which do not require deformable time and Occam's principle pretty much demands that one of these methods be accepted. One of the more interesting such theories is that of Ralph Sansbury:

http://users.bestweb.net/~sansbury/book03.pdf

Sansbury's version of an explanation of light satisfies the simplistic requirement that when you have traits of both waves and particles present (light), it MIGHT just be because both waves and particles are actually present, as opposed to thinking that something with properties of both (a photon) is present.

I'm bookmarking the links, I hope they are of more help then your post was (Sorry, it's probably just me, I should have gone to bed 2hours ago).

And I assume you meant 2 rather than 20 years; even still, I found the answer little explanatory
I suppose you were merely giving synthesis of the url's. I apologize.

I meant 20. The idea is that you might could get to a target point faster than C from your own perspective, but not from the perspective of anybody who remained at the point from which you started. The basic idea of relativity is that time proceeds differently for people in reference frames which are in motion with respect to eachother. That is, IF you believe in relativity. I USED to. Like I say, at this point in time, there seem to be some better answers.

Laser measurements confirm Einstein's general theory of relativity.

New Nature article.

great!

The working of gravity may not be fully understood, for example, pioneer anomaly casts intriguing questions.

Sorry, no sale., at least not to me. Reasonable theories don't have to wait 90 years for proof or confirmation. Moreove, years after a theory has become a general paradigm, you HAVE to look askance at first ever confirmations because most researchers would get fired for disconfirmations at that point.

Einstein's description of gravity violates causality which is the most basic idea in science. Without that, we're back to the dark ages.

And yet, "it still moves."

What are your credentials in critiqueing the work of these and other scientists?

What still moves?

Indeed. I know he had right.

Hi Merlin: We don't need credentials or even much smarts to guess that some scientists in compromising positions might occasionally do that which is dishonorable. Neil