Misconceptions in Relativity

Photons: zero rest mass, never at rest.

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It is far easier for you, as civilized men, to behave like barbarians than it was for them, as barbarians, to behave like civilized men.

Good answer - the photon's mass is zero in all frames - but not what I was thinking about. It's more about the usually erroneous idea of something gaining so much relativistic mass, it collapses into a black hole.

Thanks for the reply. Ok, this is much clearer now. Thanks, cave.This is more in the area of Minikowski spacetime, right? Where the increase of energy with velocity originates not in the object but in the geometric properties of space-time itself? I would also say photon, but wouldn't that also qualify the theoretical graviton? One of my favorite bands. In my opinion Tool is on of the few bands who have been around since the early 90's (I saw them in 93) who are still turning out great music. Metallica has honestly been depressing for a while.I saw they have some new dates but none in my area. I may be in New Jersey at the end of July, which if can extend that stay, I can see them Aug 1st.Big Tool fan, cave?

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"I smoke pot. If this bothers anyone, I suggest you look around at the world in which we live and shut your mouth."--Bill Hicks"I never knew there was another option other than to question everything"--Noam Chomsky

Thanks for the comments CD.As I've said, I could not really evaluate Hartnetts calculations in his book, since I'm not educated enough on this (as I've said, im starting maths and physics in september). I didn't buy Carmeli's books on cosmological general relativity either.But I like the introduction Hartnett put in his book, so I'll put it here so you can tell me what you think.He talks about the time in Greece where they thought that earth was at the centre of the universe, but that this view would not apply very well with the observations and measurements. But rather then change their theory (geocentricism) they simply added epicycles to make it match their observations. As we all know, the right solution was to change the theory from geocentricism to heliocentricism.A sort of similar thing happened in astronomy a bit 100 years ago. Newton's theory of universal gravitation was viewed as the supreme theory in cosmology, and was being applied to the objects in the solar system. Once again, as we all know, the observation didn't fit the theory. It could not fully explain the precession of the perihelion of the orbits of the planets, especially of planet Mercury. Once again, rather then changing the theory, they postulated the existence of another planet between mercury and the sun, a planet we could not see, but its existence was essential to correct the mismatch between the theory and the observations: Planet Vulcan. Here again, it was the wrong way to proceed, since it was the theory which was in error, and it took Einstein Relativity to fully reconcile Observation and theory.Hartnett feels that this is happening yet again. We are seeing that our observations do not fit with our theory. And once again, we are postulating undetected matter and energy to make the observatiosn match the current theory. Could it be that, once again, it is the theory who should be changed ? This is what Hartnett thought, and made him discover Carmeli's Cosmological Relativity. AStonishingly, applying this theory to the large-scale structure of the universe, he found out that dark matter and energy was not needed, because the new theory matched perfectly with the observations!As I've said, I could only understand his explanation of the results of his theory, and although he put all his calculations in his book, I am progressing at a page per day rate trying to digest it a little at a time lol.I'll be exploring carmeli's new physics also, because if it involves is true, then it may well crucial to our understanding of the universe. Basically, from what I read, the velocity of the expansion of the universe works as a 5th dimension in his calculations. Instead solved the planet vulcan problem by adding a 4th dimension, could it be that the dark matter problem could be solved by adding a 5th dimension ?One last thing I found very compelling about Carmeli's physics is that his theory predicts that the universe is in accelerated expansion. He predicted this in 1996, and it was discovered (through supernova 1A observations if i remember correctly) in 1998 that this was the case. Such a prediction is very interesting, it is almost equivalent to if Einstein had predicted the expansion of the universe back in his days.Waiting for your thoughts on this, thanks

Yep, reads like just about every other book where the author thinks he's being revolutionary So creationist Hartnett "discovers" creationist Carmeli's amazing new cosmology, that just so happens to have been dreamt up whilst Carmeli is quite clearly undergoing meltdown, as evidenced by his nonsense in his recent books. This cosmology makes just about zero sense to any cosmologist except Hartnett, who isn't actually a comsologist anyway, and surprise surprise, it answers all of the "issues" with the standard Lambda CDM. We have been adding dimensions for the past 100 years. I have worked in every dimension from 2 to 12, and 26. The only thing interesting about Carmeli's approach is just how little sense it makes. No, it "predicts" three possible states, of which one is accelerated expansion. A bit like FLRW, except about seventy years later I would love to tear apart Hartnett's work, line-by-line, but unfortunately it makes so little sense that there's very little to work with. I'll try to find time to go through his calculations of rotation curves.

Unless the task has some special appeal for you, I wouldn't waste your time analyzing inarticulate propositions. Hartnett never makes any effort to conform his work to the normal standards of science or even just consistency and clarity of thought. I don't see how pointing out how anyone's random meanderings are wrong has much value, unless slevesque wants to ask specific questions.Just my 2 cents. --Percy

Unfortunately, these random meanderings are now published in a peer-reviewed journal and are being broadcast by the creationista as evidence of real creation research in mainstream science. I would like to be in a position where I can verbally destroy it with specifics given a few seconds notice, rather than just describe it as generic nonsense, as I do above.

Okay, Job, have fun! But seriously, I think it's quite a challenge. A critique would probably be difficult to follow for those of us here with a half decent background, but you have to make it simple enough for your target audience to understand. First you have to explain what Hartnett's actually saying, then what science actually says and why it's correct, and then why Hartnett is wrong. If all this can't be put in simplistic form at about the level of the pithy simplicity of the creationist thermodynamic argument (e.g., evolution requires increasing order, and 2LOT says order can never spring from disorder) then I don't think your point will be grasped. Worth a try, I guess, and good luck!--Percy

Not really the way I wanted this discussion to go, I would have like to know you thoughts on dark matter-energy and the way it seems to act as a 'fudge factor' in the conventionnel big bang model. By the way, Carmeli is not a creationist at all. Although he looks like some sort of 'creationist rebel' because he challenges the established thinking, in his mind his new theory does not present anything more than a new type of big bang cosmology. Has the velocity of an expanding universe being one of the dimensions you worked on ? Maybe I misexpressed myself there. He did not predict three possible states, he predicted that we MUST be in an accelerating-expading universe. (Carmeli M. Cosmological general relativity, Communications in Theoretical Physics 5:159, 1996)Edited by slevesque, : No reason given.

You're conflating two terms with different meanings. Dark energy is the name by which we refer to the unknown something responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe. Dark matter is the name by which we refer to the unknown something responsible for holding galaxies together.--Percy

Err, did you read this?

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The First Six Days of the Universe
Professor Moshe Carmeli

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Abstract
The early stage of the universe is discussed, and the time lengths of its first six days are given, as well as the age of the universe. There seems to be no contradiction with the biblical claim that the universe was created in six days.

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No, nor did I work on the dimension of the lengths of rabbits' ears, nor the dimension of gulibility of creationists, though the latter shows some strong promise. You cannot string a bunch of cosmological terms together in random order and hope that it makes some sort of sense, even if they were suggested by a *once* respected scientist. No, he did not. He "predicted" (the quotes are because his derivation is completely nonsensical) three states, dependent on the critical density, which we still don't know for certain. Our best estimates for the critical density come from interpretations that are not even valid in his "comsology"... see section three of his update of that book. Dark matter is the simplest explanation for the non-Newtonian behaviour of galactic rotation curves. I agree that it does have a fudge-factor-like appearance, but now with strong independent observational evidence coming from observations such as those of the Bullet Cluster it is starting to appear unassailable as a feature of the Universe.Dark energy is certainly no fudge-factor, and the myriad of such accusations simply express the extreme ignorance of relativistic cosmology. For nearly a century we have been considering the effect of the cosmological constant in General Relativity, and one of the biggest mysteries in cosmology was its apparent absence. We have now found evidence of its existence. It's value is still surprisingly small (not zero, but very close) but to many of us, it is a relief to find one. Not only that, it is fantastic evidence of post-Standard Model physics, something that those of us in quantum gravity, string theory, etc have been desperate to find.

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Err, did you read this?

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Err, did you read what followed you quote ?(link: http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0008040) It was probably just unintentional on your part, so I'll assume it was. But had I misquoted someone like that, there would have been some evolutionist out there who would have discarded me on the spot.

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No, nor did I work on the dimension of the lengths of rabbits' ears, nor the dimension of gulibility of creationists, though the latter shows some strong promise. You cannot string a bunch of cosmological terms together in random order and hope that it makes some sort of sense, even if they were suggested by a *once* respected scientist.

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No of course I know you didn't. But your comment (''We have been adding dimensions for the past 100 years. I have worked in every dimension from 2 to 12, and 26. The only thing interesting about Carmeli's approach is just how little sense it makes.'') gave the impression you were saying 'been there, done that', when this was not it obviously. You were reffering to (i believe) the extra dimensions in string theory, where this dimensions are unperceivable in reality. This is very different to what Carmeli is proposing: the extra dimension (5th) is the veolicity of the expanding universe, which would be a perceivable dimension in our universe, just as time is. So it is no longer spacetime, but spacetimevelocity, or simply spacevelocity.

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No, he did not. He "predicted" (the quotes are because his derivation is completely nonsensical) three states, dependent on the critical density, which we still don't know for certain. Our best estimates for the critical density come from interpretations that are not even valid in his "comsology"... see section three of his update of that book.

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... and see section 4 to see that he says: ... I'm not saying his calculations are right, nor that they are even sensical since I do not have the knowledge right now to judge this. I'm just saying that he did predict the universe was in an accelerated expansion in 1996, 2 years before the discovery that this was the case.

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Dark matter is the simplest explanation for the non-Newtonian behaviour of galactic rotation curves. I agree that it does have a fudge-factor-like appearance, but now with strong independent observational evidence coming from observations such as those of the Bullet Cluster it is starting to appear unassailable as a feature of the Universe.

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Dark energy is certainly no fudge-factor, and the myriad of such accusations simply express the extreme ignorance of relativistic cosmology. For nearly a century we have been considering the effect of the cosmological constant in General Relativity, and one of the biggest mysteries in cosmology was its apparent absence. We have now found evidence of its existence. It's value is still surprisingly small (not zero, but very close) but to many of us, it is a relief to find one. Not only that, it is fantastic evidence of post-Standard Model physics, something that those of us in quantum gravity, string theory, etc have been desperate to find.

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I'm not in any position to call dark matter and energy 'fudge factors', but these guys are: Open Letter on Cosmology With the vast majority of them being secular scientistsFinally, ''if gravitationnal lensing is correct in the bullet cluster, why don't we see it in the CMB ? After all, cosmic microwave radiation is supposed to come from the background of all the galaxies (supposedly containing putative dark matter) in the visible universe and therefore should be lensed by foreground galaxiesbut it isn’t.'' (Hartnett, Has 'dark matter' really been proven? - creation.com)Lieu, R, Mittaz, J.P.D., On the absence of gravitational lensing of the Cosmic Microwave Background, ApJ 628(2):583—593, 2005.In my limited knowledge, I don't think you can rightfully claim that the bullet cluster discovery is emperical proof of the existence of dark matter unless you can answer that question.Edited by slevesque, : No reason given.

MISQUOTED??? It was his fucking abstract. I'm sorry, but you a rapidly losing any credibility. And I thought you might be a breath of fresh air here... grow up, or be ignored.Who the hell cares if he follows up his abstract with some screwed up cosmological theory. How does that make him NOT creationist leaning??? I guess you're going to tell me that Humphreys is not a creationist because he knows what a metric is? No, I have not 'been there, done that', when 'that' is pure utter bullshit and the ravings of a once-respectable scientist. There are many concepts of multi-dimensional spaces in mathematical physics, not just those in string theory. I know what Carmeli is proposing, and it is nonsense. Fair enough if he was just creating a larger parameter/moduli space, through which he was tracing some evolution, but this is not what he is doing. He is bastardising the physics and maths and in his delusional state thinks that this is meaningful. kid, when you can describe stuff in your own words rather than just parroting idiotic terms you have picked up from his papers, let me know. The problem is you haven't a fraction of the understanding to be able to see this as utter gibberish. Go and study that maths and physics, and come back in eight years or so and we can talk. First, I do not have access to his 1996 publication, only his papers in 2004. He makes no claim that he had predicted acceleration back in 1996, and he does not even cite the 1996 book, despite having it listed in the references! Can you shed any light on this? Yes, the old old cosmology statement crap - you will find a handful of respectable astronomers in there, many more astronomers of Arp's camp, all seriously pissed off at how much they've been ignored for decades and at how unfair reality is when observations do not conform to what they want them to be. And the vast majority? Idiot engineers and cosmological wannabees who mistakenly think they have an opinion that matters. Harnett said this?? He doesn't have the first fucking clue How can someone write papers on cosmology and not know what the CMBR is? And this is the guy the creationist community is heralding as their new saviour... A question asked by Harnett? I thought we'd already ascertained his complete lack of credibility?And "On the absence of gravitational lensing of the Cosmic Microwave Background" - cited four times, and only once is it specifically mentioned, with the comment: "The contrary claim in ref (31) is erroneous."Notice that neither author ever cites their own paper, even though they both go to work in similar territory, especially Lieu. I think you need to stop listening to Hartnett if you want any hope of credibility.

I going to guess that language is getting in the way here. Carmeli is trying to reconcile cosmology with the Bible. The title of his paper is The First Six Days of the Universe, a purely Biblical reference. This is pure and simple creationism. Nothing could be more obvious. No other conclusion is possible. Carmeli is a creationist.--Percy

The problem is that Slevesque is trying to assess Carmeli who he doesn't understand against Cavediver who he doesn't understand. Since we don't want Slevesque to accept arguments based upon authority, the only solution is to bring Slevesque's comprehension level up to an adequate level. Since you stated that this would take eight years of study in math and physics, what can you really hope to accomplish here?If you want to make progress then you'll have to figure out how to put things in terms that Slevesque can understand while taking into account that Slevesque has at times exhibited that special kind of confidence possessed by those who do not see ignorance as an obstacle to forming judgments.--Percy