ok, name one inconsistency, I'm more willing to believe something that makes sense, than something that is completely illogical and no proof, only mathematical theories

Not exactly sure yet, haven't started my physics degree yet. No one is exactly sure how gravity works except that it has a direct relation to mass, at least at macroscopic distances and masses. There's theories it has something to do with the supposed higgs particle or possibly the graviton but they don't really know. Gravity is the least well understood force. As for the other forces... electromagnetism, weak force, strong force it has something to do with the interaction of photons, gluons, and bosons.

Oh but wait, I can't make a model or draw an accurate picture of what a boson or photon looks like so it must not be real.



edit: read my post about his speical relativity. Seems pretty inconsistent to me. It's pretty tricky trying to debunk something that is used by GPS satellites all over the world.

This post was edited by thenoose on Jul 31 2010 12:07pm

Ok, so your saying, theres a higgs boson which is supposedly the particle that gives other particles MASS and also that gravity has NO effect on the small scale. thats completely illogical

Or heres something hilarious to think about, lets think about this.


this is the famous picture used to describe relativity, but I have a question for you, whats causeing the Sun to sink into the grid? the answer is gravity, well that doesnt make sense, they are just using gravity to explain gravity in some stupid circlur definition

This post was edited by elitepie on Jul 31 2010 12:13pm

Just like the dude in the video you ignored what i said and went off on a tangent. The higgs boson is still a theory, it may or may not exist. I could try to explain how its supposed to work but I don't understand it that well and you certainly wouldn't listen/believe it. Also, gravity does have some effect on a small scale it is just EXTREMELY weak compared to the other forces, so its basically negligible in most calculations on this scale. Consider this, you take a small refrigerator magnet and pick up a paper clip with it. Not too strong but it did get the paper clip off the ground. The force of gravity has the entire mass of the planet, trillons and trillions of tons pulling on the paper clip in the other direction. Compared to the mass of a what... 1 oz. magnet. So, you can see gravity is very weak, gravity has some effect on a small scale but it is to weak to matter in most calculations on a small scale.

As for the picutre, the mass of the sun is causing it to "sink into the grid". This is only an analogy though as its quite difficult to draw 4 dimensional space. The mass of the sun causes it to warp space time which results in gravity. Gravity isn't the cause of the warping of the grid, gravity IS the warping of the grid, without a mass there to cause it there would be no warping/gravity.


Oh and once again just to make sure, ever heard of GPS satellites? They would not work with out incorporating the theory of special relativity.

first you have to define the word FORCE for what you said to make any sense what so ever, then explain how gravity is a FORCE, And just becuase a gravity is weak on the small scale, does that mean you can it out of the equations? All matter in the universe has some gravitional pull on all other matter in the universe, if you just leave that out of your equations then your going to have an increasing amount of error, which is why scientists predictions for far away places are so flawed, and this forced them to invent "dark matter" and "dark energy" but the truth is that the theory is flawed.
When a REAL scientist discovers their hypothesis is wrong, they make a new one. they don't invent fake reasons why it is still right.

Next you are saying that Time is a dimension, but that if you look at the definition of Dimension "The least number of independent coordinates required to specify uniquely the points in a space" What are Coordinates? Any of a set of two or more numbers used to determine the position of a point, line, curve, or plane, So how can Time be a dimension when its lacking orthogonality from the other 3 dimensions and you only need 3 coordinate pairs to describe the location of an object in space.

Yes an analogy thats fundamentally flawed, What is causing the Sun to sink in either your 4D space or in the picture? If you say gravity causes it to "warp" the space you are simply using gravity to explain gravity, which is like saying something does something becuase it does.

What does GPS have to do with gravity, can you explain that to me, I'm not up to date with how everything works these days

This post was edited by elitepie on Jul 31 2010 01:14pm

A force is something that causes an object to accelerate or cause a change in velocity of an object. Velocity is a speed with a direction or how quickly something is moving in a particular direction. So, simply a force is something that causes an object to change speed and or direction of movement.

I did forget to differentiate this from the fundamental forces (gravity, weak force, strong force, electromagnetism) when i was comparing gravity "to the other forces" in my post. These are the fundamental forces that govern the interactions of particles. The weak force is responsible for the decay of particles and atoms. The strong force is what keeps quarks stuck together as protons and neutrons and keeps atomic nuclei stuck together. Electromagnetism is the force that governs the interactions between charged particles like protons and electrons as well as magnets and electricity. Gravity is a force that pulls all particles with mass towards one another.

Particle theory generally leaves out the effects of gravity because it has a miniscule effect on the interactions when your dealing with a couple of atoms. The problem arises when your dealing with a system where you cannot ignore the effects of gravity like something very dense. The equations break down and don't work anymore. This doesn't mean that quantum mechanics is entirely wrong the predictions it makes are correct at many scales. It's certainly not entirely correct either though, there's a flaw with quantum mechanics and/or general relativity. They don't know how to reconcile this difference but people are trying to figure it out. Dark matter is a strange concept. It may not exist and they may just have to go back and figure out what is wrong with some fundamental theories. They'll keep looking for it, if its never found they'll have to figure something else out to explain what they're seeing. Dark energy is a little different though. Something is causing the universe to expand we're not sure what it is, so may as well call it dark energy. Sounds neat right?

Explaining extra dimensions is a tricky concept, someone smarter than me would do a better job im sure but i'll give it a try. By your definition "The least number of independent coordinates required to specify uniquely the points in a space" 4 dimensional space would thus require 4 independent coordinates to define a point in it. One in the x,y,z and t dimensions. I'll admit that doesn't seem to help a lot. So, i'll use an analogy, i know analogies are bad but its impossible to visualize space in more than 3 dimensions. Our brains just don't work that way. Imagine a being that lives entirely on the surface of a piece of paper. They have no knowledge of this weird 3rd dimension called depth they know only length and width. How would you go about explaining the 3rd dimension to this being? I'll admit, a poor attempt but this is a very strange concept to grasp.

Gravity doesn't cause space to warp. It is the mass of the object that causes space to warp. This warping is the cause of gravity according to general relativity. Don't confuse mass with gravity. Mass is a separate thing from gravity but mass does cause gravity to occur.

As for GPS satellites, they would not function with out incorporating special relativity. GPS satellites require extremely precise time keeping to function properly. GPS receivers get signals from 4 or more satellites and use calculate location based on the amount of time it takes for the signal to travel from the satellite. This requires extreme precision down to millionths of a second. One of the effects of special relativity is that objects traveling at faster speeds experience time at a slower rate. Also, being closer to a gravitational body causes time to go slower, so the receivers here on earth are actually a little bit slower than the clocks on the satellites. It's a small difference just a few millionths of a second a day. However, if they did not account for this time loss the gps system would be off by an addition few km every day. While you cannot "prove" anything is 100% correct in science this is extremely concrete evidence of special relativity.


Oh btw, sorry for the massive text wall

I don't know enough about GPS to argue on it but anyways, I can say that time isn't a dimension by the strict definition of the word, either you are going to have to change the definition of the word (like mathmeticians love doing) or come up with a new word, becuase you can't have coordinates in time, you can't point in the direction that time goes, time is simply a human precept.
Extra dimensions do not exsist and i define the word exsist as meaning an object that has location, everything dealing with physics deals with things that exsist, you cannot prove something that does not exsist, and therefore it belongs only in mathematical theories
Mathematics and physics are 2 different things even though these days scientists try to combine them as one

and ya, i said gravity causes warp, i didnt mean that, but what I would like u to answer is then, what cuases Mass to warp space? It can't be a particle becuase particles only interact with other particles
and how can particles have zero radius and have a clockwise or counter clockwise spin, and also have mass at the same time like the standard model predicts.

This is what happens when mathematicians try to be scientists

Time is a difficult thing to discuss really. People have been trying to figure it out for millennia and still don't understand it. You can describe time in terms of a dimension, though it is different than the spatial dimensions. All I need to define a coordinate in time is to pick a place as zero, say today. Yesterday was -1 tomorrow will be +1 if i use 1 day as a metric. If you want to describe an event you can't just say it happened 2 blocks over, 3 blocks to the left and on the 3rd story. The reason being is that time is not a constant, it is not the same everywhere or for everything. To fully describe an event you need to say where and when it happened. A coordinate system is a mathematical thing, you can't argue physics and math are completely separate while defining physical things ie dimensions in terms of mathematical systems.

Regardless of how we interpret time there is some connection between it and space. As objects travel faster time passes slower for it. Time is slower under higher gravities. My GPS example shows that these things happen, go look it up.

I'm not sure what causes mass to warp space, ie create gravity. Once I figure it out I'll tell you right after I inform the nobel prize committee. I believe the leading theory involves the hypothesized higgs boson particle. Is this true? Who knows, it may be wrong and they may have to go in a completely different direction to explain gravity. Particles don't necessarily have a radius = 0. It's just very difficult bordering on impossible to measure radius at this kind of scale. The radius of an electron is supposed to be something less than 10^-15m. Unfortunately they do not make rulers this small so it's difficult to know exactly how small they are. It's very very tiny in any case. Mass is another interesting question, they're not exactly sure what mass is or what causes it, the higgs field is the leading theory, don't know if it is actually true yet however.

Trying to separate mathematics from science is just silly. They are different certainly but math is one of science' most useful tools. You need some way to quantify observations and make predictions of complicated phenomena. You could predict that putting more wood on the fire will make the fire bigger but you can't get much information from this. You can deduce that wood is flammable but with out quantified measurements you don't know how quickly the wood will burn or how much heat it will release. However I will admit that some fields can be based more heavily in math than science such as string theory. This theory makes interesting predictions that are supported by the math but we don't have the technology to test their theories yet. It is arguably only in the realm of mathematics but this is only because we lack the technology to test the theories it proposes. It could all be a bunch of bored mathematicians with too much time on their hands, who knows only time will tell.

Relativity is different though, Einstein didn't just pull it out of a hat and say, here ya go now where's my nobel prize? He developed the theory to explain the results of experiments being done at the time. There are many experiments that have been done confirming it's predictions. Is it 100% correct? No, nothing in science is. It breaks down at certain very small scales and high energies. There's still something more fundamental going on that we don't understand yet, but this doesn't mean relativity isn't science or that it isn't useful.

Well, im excited to find out what the LHC finds. either way if they are right or wrong it will still be an amazing discovery

gravity effects time/space how does this pic not make sense? and time/space u cant separate gps proves gravity effects time thus it effects space