Because I am biased anti-Special Relativity (SR).
I hate SR. From the first time I encountered it in high-school and all we were asked to do was apply the math, to the second time I encountered it in undergrad and we were asked to suspend disbelief (we are not smart enough to understand it you see? ) to my Ph.D where by that time, General Relativity (GR) was actually making sense. To 20 years forward and now where I decided to invest a full month and finally "understand" SR.
I did and it is now with conviction that I want to see SR replaced by something else.
The seemingly innocuous statement of “same laws of physics according to every observer” does lead to all the minkowski diagram machinery. There is NOTHING that will explain to you why you need to embrace ‘relativity of simultaneity’, curved space-time ( mixing time and space (different concepts)) and all the mental gymnastic the full SR picture requires.
I consider it, to this day, a monster.
It is important to remember that when people claim SR ‘has been fully tested’ it is not true. No one has ever tested the point of view of particle at close to C. The equipement doing the test is always 'earth bound'. Entrained aether theories for example strive to find models that are classical aether in essence. The ‘relativity of observers’ has never been tested, and until we get lab equipment going at the speed of light we will not test it. It does lead to all the philosophical monsters.
I am amused to see people seriously entertaining the idea that time travel backwards is possible, ‘what would it mean?”, the forums and blog are alit. And I want to yell "It doesn’t mean anything. Time travel backwards is a philosophical monster because it violates causality (receiving a message before it is sent etc)". Why backwards time travel is not dismissed out of hand is bizarre to me. Causality must remain whole.
Part of it has been the math diktat. Little girls of science get very impressed by complicated looking mathematics on a blackboard. I know I was in awe of 11th graders computing an integral, that symbol looked so hmmmm, sexy. Little did I know I would one day train in the dark arts of renormalization in field theory.
Unfortunately the physics profession, from my standpoint, has taken the "trust the math" ethos so far that it is ready to accept just about anything the math models tell it. I vividly remember deciding I would get out of the field of theoretical physics the day I swallowed without questioning that the universe had 23 dimension (string theory class at the ecole normale in Paris) and the teacher said “accepting un-seen dimensions can be problematic for a few folks”. I chuckled and wondered why. I turned around to my neighbor and asked him, he just rolled his eyes at pointed at the space around us, “what do you see?”. I felt silly, like I had lost all common sense. I had been brainwashed.
The truth is, while I was a stellar student of science, I did finish my PhD (as a visiting scientist at MIT) without any joy or conviction and just got out as fast as I could.
So it is with a certain glee that I hope the Opera results will hold. Until then I will gladly repeat what I consider fundamental philosophical truth, namely that causality is a deeper principle than SR. I don’t care what SR says, there are plenty theories that account for the phenomenology of SR without all the suspension of disbelief. Backward time travel doesn’t mean anything to a human brain and should not be entertained on the basis that ‘the math tells us so’ in violation of causality.
I want to see some sanity restored to the field of physics. Unfortunately the battle is going to bitter, already some theorists are running scared in 'extra dimensions' and wormholes and what not. I am not holding my breath, but I know who I am cheering for.
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4 comments:
Just out of curiosity, have aether theories been tested with even one observer. And, if the answer is yes, then why don't more scientists accept it as a viable alternative. Pure sociological reasons? I have no horse in this race; I'm just curious.
well, the history of physics is littered with the aether. Michelson Morley type of experiments invalidated the old aether theories by failing to detect an effect. And then the SR juggernaut came around and eventually rallied a lot of people. The way this happened, historically, for me is in fact a study in sociological forces in physics. See the, hmmm, opacity of the SR framework worked in its favor. The math, lorentz transform etc is intimidating and what pro is going to be caught saying "I don't understand". I certainly felt like a little kid at my "I don't understand". Now I understand it and simply reject it. But to your point, aether was invalidated by the MMX type of experiments. There are aether theories that in fact would take into account the MMX null result but say out loud that you are interested in those and people look at you funny. Except this guy Sean (professor at cal-tech, who openly embraces 'aether theories that break lorentz invariance' but I am not sure what it means).
Thanks Marcf. One following up. Is it your view that the ostensible identification of "FTL neutrinos" or whatever it turns out to be, could be an "effect" of aether?
yes. That is what I write in a older blog entry. Essentially an aether in a media is 'compressed' and a compressed elastic media has slightly higher speed of wave propagation. The difference between 1987a and opera is that opera runs through the earth crust while 1987a is through vacuum. You should see an effect then.
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