Room-temperature superconductivity?

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

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ladajo
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Post by ladajo »

Tom and Carter,
Both of you have one hand's fingers worth of years in Grad level physics, while Johan has decades.
I think you both have good arguments, but I think the entire thread has again gotten acrimonious to the point of borderline loss of productive debate.
I agree with Teemu and his point that vested interest can and does color debate. But I would also add that it can come from both sides, and maybe the lens of youth is coloring your perceptions as is the lens of age for Johan.
Now that said, I have thought all along the thread that Johan has not adequately explained the physical observations in executed experiements, and was mostly the reason I tossed out the satellite model proposal earlier. I wondered if he would try to explain how it would not work.
I guess this is what makes physics fun. Everyone has singular points of view, and they may or may not align with others...

I would suggest that the observed existing experiments get discussed for merit.

krenshala
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Post by krenshala »

GIThruster wrote:Now, since special relativity lets us use either rest frame, we assume Bob is the at-home twin. Ann speeds away at 3/5c. No problem so far. But after 4 years of waiting, Bob must change his inertial frame. If we allow Ann to return, we've only restated the problem with the names switched. In the first version, Ann stayed in an inertial frame, and she must stay in an inertial frame in this version. Bob zooms off after Ann at 15/17 light speed (now we know why it was important), and of course catches up. It takes him 4 years, and he has seen 8 years since Ann left. Ann has aged 10 years. Same result. No paradox.

http://mentock.home.mindspring.com/twins.htm
So, if Ann moves away, then Bob chases after, and Ann see 10 years pass for herself and 8 for Bob, how you do you explain that Bob would see 10 years pass for himself and 8 for Anne if you reversed which FOR you used for the description without changing the order of events? From my understanding of the arguments, it is because of the Lorenz transformation on observed time. It makes logical sense that both actually experience 10 years time passing, while observing what appears to be 8 years of time passing for the other twin due to how time is transformed when viewed from the "outside" frame of reference.

[edit to fix a typo -- ok, make that multiple typos ... I shouldn't post so early in the morn *sigh*]
Last edited by krenshala on Wed Nov 16, 2011 3:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.

DeltaV
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Post by DeltaV »

Johan is not alone in his view.

http://mendelsachs.com/on-the-twin-clock-paradox/
What the respondents failed to recognize or mention was my main claim: that the letter 't' in the formulas from special relativity, such as the Lorentz transformation, that require a contraction of the time measure in a moving reference frame, is not a physical process, such as the physical aging of a human being or the unwinding of the spring of a clock! Rather, 't' represents an abstract measure of time, such as the reading of the hands of a clock, not the physical unwinding of the spring behind the face of the clock.
In his later years, Einstein appears to have changed his mind about his original 1905 assertion when he said: "Strictly speaking, measuring rods and clocks would have to be represented as solutions of basic equations,(objects consisting of moving atomic configurations), not, as it were, as theoretically self-sufficient entities." (Autobiographical Notes, in Albert Einstein: Philosopher - Scientist, Open Court, 1949, P. A. Schilpp, editor).
40 years later, no one has been able to refute Sachs' view of time in SR.
Yet the accepted groupthink continues.

Betruger
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Post by Betruger »

I wonder what Julian Barbour would say.

Teemu
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Post by Teemu »

DeltaV wrote: 40 years later, no one has been able to refute Sachs' view of time in SR.
Yet the accepted groupthink continues.
Theory should provide something, predictions, based on which it can be tested. Refuting vague verbal acrobatics is kinda hard.

DeltaV
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Post by DeltaV »

Teemu wrote:
DeltaV wrote: 40 years later, no one has been able to refute Sachs' view of time in SR.
Yet the accepted groupthink continues.
Theory should provide something, predictions, based on which it can be tested. Refuting vague verbal acrobatics is kinda hard.
Have you read his 1971 Physics Today article and the follow-up letters, or are you just pontificating? He does not refute any accepted experimental results. He's saying the interpretation is in error, per the first quote above.

Teemu
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Post by Teemu »

DeltaV wrote:
Teemu wrote:
DeltaV wrote: 40 years later, no one has been able to refute Sachs' view of time in SR.
Yet the accepted groupthink continues.
Theory should provide something, predictions, based on which it can be tested. Refuting vague verbal acrobatics is kinda hard.
Have you read his 1971 Physics Today article and the follow-up letters, or are you just pontificating? He does not refute any accepted experimental results. He's saying the interpretation is in error, per the first quote above.
So it is one of these, "Time must be absolute, not just an axis in 4D, the reality is Euclidean, special relativity is just distortion, just because I feel more comfortable with that. Tests like Hafele-Keating are just incompetence" theories. I don't think it is really surprising at all that some fields of physics are not as easy to feel comfortable with as fast as everyday classical mechanics. I don't think it's surprising at all, especially the closer we go the extremes, whether in extremely small size or extremely high speed.

Supposedly parrots, crows, pigeons and vultures are the most intelligent bird families/subfamilies. Here one representative of the vulture families meets something that is beyond it's everyday existence, something that it has trouble to perceive and understand, and gets smacked hard by the reality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RcTjdY1aN4

tomclarke
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Post by tomclarke »

DeltaV wrote:Johan is not alone in his view.

http://mendelsachs.com/on-the-twin-clock-paradox/
What the respondents failed to recognize or mention was my main claim: that the letter 't' in the formulas from special relativity, such as the Lorentz transformation, that require a contraction of the time measure in a moving reference frame, is not a physical process, such as the physical aging of a human being or the unwinding of the spring of a clock! Rather, 't' represents an abstract measure of time, such as the reading of the hands of a clock, not the physical unwinding of the spring behind the face of the clock.
In his later years, Einstein appears to have changed his mind about his original 1905 assertion when he said: "Strictly speaking, measuring rods and clocks would have to be represented as solutions of basic equations,(objects consisting of moving atomic configurations), not, as it were, as theoretically self-sufficient entities." (Autobiographical Notes, in Albert Einstein: Philosopher - Scientist, Open Court, 1949, P. A. Schilpp, editor).
40 years later, no one has been able to refute Sachs' view of time in SR.
Yet the accepted groupthink continues.
I'm not interested in philosophy or literary interpretation.

However the twins example is one of physics.

The key scnario is where one twin stays stationary and the other accelerates away and then returns (with more acceleration).

The assymmetry means the accelerating twin must have greater time dilation than the inertial twin. this has been measured, compensated for GR effects (gravity) and the result exactly agrees with SR time dilation.

So I don't care how many people agree with Johan, unless there is good experimental evidence to the contrary, I will believe the (plentiful) experimental evidence that does exist, and happens to show time dilation as a reality.

In the many versions of the twins paradox where the two clocks are never brought together again it is a matter of metaphysics/choice etc how you compare the clocks. But where they are brought together you can precisely determine the amount of time dilation.

It is astonishing that there should be support here for a view that is flatly contradicted by experiment, as well as physics textbooks.

tomclarke
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Post by tomclarke »

DeltaV wrote: 40 years later, no one has been able to refute Sachs' view of time in SR.
Yet the accepted groupthink continues.
It can be refuted.
sachs wrote: Do you really believe that if a physical body A moves relative to another physical body B, that A's rate of aging is retarded relative to B's rate of aging, by virtue only of A's motion relative to B?
This is the classic argument for "paradox". A more subtle (and true) interpretation shows that:

(1) Where there is no acceleration clocks in two different frames can never uniquely be synchronised. Using light both clocks will indeed see the other clock as slower.

(2) Where there is acceleration of one twin such that relative to the other one twin moved away and then returns the classical time dilation can be applied to the accelerating twin by the inetrial twin to find that the acclerating twin ages less.

(3) the accelerating twin cannot use the same argument because he is not in a fixed inertial frame. When the change in FOR is taken into acount he will agree with the intertial twin that his total elapsd time for journey will be less than that of his twin.

(4) The accelerting twin follows a worldline in Minkowski space which is bent and overall nearer to the light cone than the non-accelerating twin. Therefore he experiences time dilation relative to his twin. The time dilation is actually a property of the bent worldline, which itself happens because of the acceleration. It is not a direct property of the acceleration.

(5) the difference in times has been measured. Sachs does not I believe directly address this case. But if he does, and says there is no time dilation, he is wrong. Certainly his quoted argument above is wrong.
Last edited by tomclarke on Wed Nov 16, 2011 7:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

I'm sure Sach's believes no one has refuted him in 40 years. He may be the only one who believes that.

Point is, in science, the final arbiter is observation, and I have to join Tom in wondering why the various tests of the Twin's Paradox result aren't enough for most people.

There may be a sense in which, relativity has not had its whole say. There are some aspects to this still under active investigation, but none of them lead to the result Johan has reached.

For example, here's one I find fascinating:

http://www.epj.org/_pdf/HP_EPJP_twin_paradox.pdf

Regardless of what people may think they "know" about "the principle of relativity", it was not a simple issue to Einstein.

"That the resolution of the twin paradox is somehow connected with the “starry sky” was noted by Einstein already more than seventy years ago [10]. Neglecting localized mass distributions and writing about the twin paradox from the point of view of a non-inertial twin (the one who must be acted upon by non-gravitational forces) he says that all the stars in the world are accelerated relative to this twin, and they then induce a gravitational field analogous to the electrical field induced inside an accelerated electrically charged shell [11]. More recently B.R. Holstein and A.R. Swift [12] wrote: “The Earth-bound twin is at rest relative to the Universe, while his brother accelerates relative to the Universe. In the frame of the traveling twin, his brother and the entire Universe moves away and returns. This accelerating Universe generates a gravitational field which slows his clocks.”"

See Einstein was indeed fully Machian, and we know from observation both that he was right, and Johan is hopelessly out of touch with reality.
Last edited by GIThruster on Wed Nov 16, 2011 6:41 pm, edited 2 times in total.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

johanfprins
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Post by johanfprins »

GIThruster wrote:A simple-minded question: just how many subjects are you the world's most expert authority despite you've no training in them?

Obviously the answer to your question is "yes".
Thanks for a rational answer amongst all the garbage you are usually spewing. I will obviously not respond to the rest of your insulting and illogical diatribe.

So here is the next "simple-minded" question: If two identical atomic clocks, each stationary within its own inertial reference frame, keep time at different rates within their respective inertial refrence frames, can the laws of physics be the same within each one of these inertial refrence frames? YES or NO?

PS:
There has been quite a lot of discussion above. In order not to respond to red herrings, I will only post again after I have obtained a clear answer on the question that I have just asked.

sparkyy0007
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Post by sparkyy0007 »

Teemu wrote: Supposedly parrots, crows, pigeons and vultures are the most intelligent bird families/subfamilies. Here one representative of the vulture families meets something that is beyond it's everyday existence, something that it has trouble to perceive and understand, and gets smacked hard by the reality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RcTjdY1aN4
Perception was not the problem, interpretation was. This is a soaring bird
and rotating windmills are perceived as another bird enjoying a free ride
in a thermal. The vulture was only trying to join in. Birds in the air think everything moving
up there is a bird. I speak from experience.

johanfprins
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Post by johanfprins »

I decided to slip in this answer since Iadajo usually post logical arguments:
ladajo wrote:Tom and Carter,
I agree with Teemu and his point that vested interest can and does color debate.
In physics this has become the norm and that is why physics is in serious trouble. It is thus possible that also in my case vested interest might be playing a role: However, after having seen what this has done to physics during the 20th century I have tried, and am still trying, not to fall into that trap. It is absolutely imperative in physics that you must always be ready to abandon cherished theory if required to do so. Tom Clarke is a supreme example of a person who refuses to even consider any alternative to what he WANTS to believe. But he is not alone, since the majority of physicists are at present falling within this category. This is why gravity has not yet been reconciled with quantum mechanics and why billions of dollars are being wasted to look for the Higgs boson; instead of developing processor chips that superconduct at room temperature.
Now that said, I have thought all along the thread that Johan has not adequately explained the physical observations in executed experiements, and was mostly the reason I tossed out the satellite model proposal earlier. I wondered if he would try to explain how it would not work.
Any experiment that does not occur within a gravity free space cannot settle the so called "Twin Paradox" issue experimentally. Even though twin paradox has been an oxymoron concept from the start which does not require experimental proof to prove that it violates the "principle of relativity" on which the Special Theory of RElativity is based. and that it therefore MUST be wring. I have proposed an experiment above which everybody just ignored. In this experiment any acceleration must not be caused by gravity at all or move the clock within a gravity field at all. That is why I suggested my "tunnel experiment" within which the gravity field stays the same along the tunnel, and a clock is continuously accelerated and decelerated along the tunnel and then afterwards compared with a clock which was left stationary within the tunnel. I predict that the clocks will show exactly the same times no matter how many cycles the moving clock has completed.

tomclarke
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Post by tomclarke »

GIThruster wrote:I'm sure Sach's believes no one has refuted him in 40 years. He may be the only one who believes that.

Point is, in science, the final arbiter is observation, and I have to join Tom in wondering why the various tests of the Twin's Paradox result aren't enough for most people.

There may be a sense in which, relativity has not had its whole say. There are some aspects to this still under active investigation, but none of them lead to the result Johan has reached.

For example, here's one I find fascinating:

http://www.epj.org/_pdf/HP_EPJP_twin_paradox.pdf

Regardless of what people may think they "know" about "the principle of relativity", it was not a simple issue to Einstein.

"That the resolution of the twin paradox is somehow connected with the “starry sky” was noted by Einstein already more than seventy years ago [10]. Neglecting localized mass distributions and writing about the twin paradox from the point of view of a non-inertial twin (the one who must be acted upon by non-gravitational forces) he says that all the stars in the world are accelerated relative to this twin, and they then induce a gravitational field analogous to the electrical field induced inside an accelerated electrically charged shell [11]. More recently B.R. Holstein and A.R. Swift [12] wrote: “The Earth-bound twin is at rest relative to the Universe, while his brother accelerates relative to the Universe. In the frame of the traveling twin, his brother and the entire Universe moves away and returns. This accelerating Universe generates a gravitational field which slows his clocks.”"

See Einstein was indeed fully Machian, and we know from observation both that he was right, and Johan is hopelessly out of touch with reality.
This is an interesting idea. I can't see how it applies in a simple-minded way, because the period of acceleration can be made arbitrarily small. So the motion time dilation is no way equated to that from gravity equivalent to the acceleration.

But maybe it applies in some other way.

tomclarke
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Post by tomclarke »

johanfprins wrote:I decided to slip in this answer since Iadajo usually post logical arguments:
ladajo wrote:Tom and Carter,
I agree with Teemu and his point that vested interest can and does color debate.
In physics this has become the norm and that is why physics is in serious trouble. It is thus possible that also in my case vested interest might be playing a role: However, after having seen what this has done to physics during the 20th century I have tried, and am still trying, not to fall into that trap. It is absolutely imperative in physics that you must always be ready to abandon cherished theory if required to do so. Tom Clarke is a supreme example of a person who refuses to even consider any alternative to what he WANTS to believe. But he is not alone, since the majority of physicists are at present falling within this category. This is why gravity has not yet been reconciled with quantum mechanics and why billions of dollars are being wasted to look for the Higgs boson; instead of developing processor chips that superconduct at room temperature.
Now that said, I have thought all along the thread that Johan has not adequately explained the physical observations in executed experiements, and was mostly the reason I tossed out the satellite model proposal earlier. I wondered if he would try to explain how it would not work.
Any experiment that does not occur within a gravity free space cannot settle the so called "Twin Paradox" issue experimentally. Even though twin paradox has been an oxymoron concept from the start which does not require experimental proof to prove that it violates the "principle of relativity" on which the Special Theory of RElativity is based. and that it therefore MUST be wring. I have proposed an experiment above which everybody just ignored. In this experiment any acceleration must not be caused by gravity at all or move the clock within a gravity field at all. That is why I suggested my "tunnel experiment" within which the gravity field stays the same along the tunnel, and a clock is continuously accelerated and decelerated along the tunnel and then afterwards compared with a clock which was left stationary within the tunnel. I predict that the clocks will show exactly the same times no matter how many cycles the moving clock has completed.
Johan,

Experiments have been conducted comparing clocks flown round the world in opposite directions around the equator in planes. they are at the same height in the gravity well. The difference in time dilation comes from exactly the effect that you say cannot exist.

There is also time dilation from the gravity field, equal in the two cases, and smaller than the velocity affect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele%E2% ... experiment

agreement (from more accurate repeat experiment) to within 1% of classical SR time dilation.

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