Things Scientists Believe I Can't Accept

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/maxeq.html

Quincy - much of your apparent confusion may be due to the fact that you focus on individual theories instead of the general concepts involved.

For instance: Maxwell came up with his historic electromagnetism synthesis while still believing in the existence of "ether" - later shown not to exist, as you know - but even in the absence of ether his equations system is dazzlingly true.

Think also of another great genius, Schroedinger, whose Wave Mechanics (incorporating theories by Planck, Bohr, Einstein and others) came closest to a unified field theory uniting quantum mechanics and electromagnetism. His later work on unified field theory, attempting to incorporate also one of the nuclear forces, was less successful, but thanks to him we have the clear distinction between affine geometries (with curvature of space-time determining gravity) and metric geometries (e.g. Riemannian or Euclidean).

Whether that helps I'm not sure, but taking a step back to see a whole, rather lots of little parts, usually does

There are different theories for different scales. The people who believe in GR probably believe in the standard model "except for" the graviton part. But it's not like everyone is saying that GR is right -- clearly there are enough people pushing the graviton theory to put it on the standard chart already even though it hasn't been observed. You seem to still be incredulous of me...I'm not sure you read all I said, did you notice this part?...To quote Wikipedia, "In other words, general relativity and the standard model are incompatible." The fact is, NO existing theory fits with everything perfectly...which means none of them are completely correct.



According to string theory, fundamental particles are not really "things" but rather specific vibrations or wave packets on strings. It doesn't really make much sense to me. So that's the difference...particles are not vibrations under the standard model; they aren't Newtonian particles, mind you, but they aren't "vibrations" either.



No, of course there is no proof of cosmic inflation. There is only evidence.
Basically there are two main pieces of evidence: homogeneous background radiation, and the red shift. All the stars we look at in all directions look redder than they should. Light is just electromagnetic waves, and red means longer wavelength (= lower frequency).

If the stars are emitting wave crests at some frequency, but the star is moving away from us, then the time we measure between wave crests will be increased causing us to observe a longer wavelength (= more red). If all the stars in all directions are moving away from us, and we make the assumption that this is not just coincidence due to our location, then the whole universe is expanding. That is the logic they are using.

At first they assumed that stars were expanding due to a traditional Newtonian force, and that there would be some finite amount of matter which would have a center of mass which would cause an opposing force and cause the universe to slow down its expansion and then eventually come to a big crunch. This theory was eliminated when it was discovered that the stars are not only moving away from each other, but they are accelerating.

At this point, one could either propose a new force that is the opposite of gravity that works at long ranges, or one could propose that gravity becomes repulsive at long ranges, or one could propose that something else is causing the perceived red shift such as a phenomena of electromagnetic waves that we didn't previously know of (which would require modifying the theory of relativity), or we could say that the very fabric of space is stretching apart for some other random reason and call it inflation. Everyone has jumped on the inflation bandwagon, which I find a bit odd, because it requires the greatest modification of existing concepts...but whatever, I think they like it because it gives them a reason to believe in additional dimensions.

Well thank-you everyone that responded thoughtfully and intelligently (which is to say, all the responses were), and special thanks to stuh505 and TheCorrectResponse. It's good to debate these things and learn something on the way. Once again, thank-you all.

Gravity DOES slow gravity down?
Stuh505 said
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"Warning: tangent...Now, you'd probably think I was very naive if I told you that a friend and I have come up with a hypothesis (I won't be so bold as to call it a theory because it hasn't been tested and that is a requirement for usage of the word theory in any scientific context)...one that provides a unified explanation for why light has a maximum speed, as well as explains the gravitational attraction of matter, and the apparent warping of spacetime in GR, and the existence of uncertainty, and also inflation of the universe and its acceleration. Ok, so there is still one small problem with my theory...I am having trouble reconciling it with SR. We didn't set out to discover a grand unified theory, but it stemmed from a somewhat logical "what if" question my friend had, and based on that everything else just seemed to click and make perfect sense. But of course, I'm not going to tell you that, because you'd think I was very naive, or you'd just steal the Nobel prize for yourself
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I also have a hard time believing that mass distribution can bend light but it can't slow it down (for the record, this is the problem that my little hypothesis has -- it predicts gravity to also be able to slow down light). ......."
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Stuh has raised a point on a subject I was working on years ago. My understanding was that gravity does slow light down. The idea was that the clock of an observer in a strong gravity well slows down, due to time dilation and so light slows down too. This way, the speed of light appears constant locally to the observer. It is a long time since I tried to fathom GR out so my recollection of the subject may be wrong. I would be interested if anyone has a good understanding of GR would confirm or refute this.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that from the principle of equivalence, that an observer on the surface of a massive body would measure the same laws of physics as an observer on a rapidly accelerating rocket undergoing acceleration equal to the acceleration of gravity on the surface of the massive body.

Quincy,

Without getting too deep remember that "c" is a constant. This is different than saying that the speed of light is constant.

In our particular little part of heaven a second is the time it takes light to travel 186,000 miles.

Since speed is derived from time and distance its quite possible to have a location and direction somewhere that has very different values. Thats probably why Einstein found the concept of "space-time" necessary.

For instance "Black Holes". There have been several past threads on that particular subject. You might find them interesting.

It also helps to think that the observer and the emitter may well be occupying two different or differing space times.