MM and common sense

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>A. Does common sense have a role to play in developing theories in Physics? If yes, why and how?<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

I am sure the writer of that phrase must have intended "common sense" to mean "consistent with physical principles", to use more technically accurate language. If that equivalency is correct, then the answers to several of your questions are obvious.

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>Lots of people attack GR for violating common sense.<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

I doubt the writer had GR in mind. The "no deep reality to the world" of QM was a more likely target. But even for GR, it is obvious that "black holes" (bodies collapsed to a mathematical singularity, and an accompanying reversal of space and time inside an "event horizon"), as contrasted with Mitchell stars (ordinary collapsed bodies with such intense gravitational fields that escape velocity approaches or exceeds the speed of light), violate the prohibition against singularities in the principle that "the finite cannot become infinite", and the principle that prohibits time reversal.

Black holes were introduced by Wheeler, and were resisted by Einstein, who never accepted them. In fact, Einstein wrote an excellent paper at Princeton about 1944 in which he argued that black holes were forbidden. So one cannot argue that GR requires black holes. Yilmaz showed that Einstein adopted a first-order expansion of an exponential in his equations, so the Schwarzschild solution is just a first-order approximation. Yilmaz showed the restored exponential metric that represents the truly general solutiuon of the field equations. It differs from the Schwarzschild solution primarily in having no singularity.

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>GR and related abstract mathematical concepts obviously go against the common sense of the masses...<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

Much of my own recent writing has the theme that GR has more than one physical interpretation (long recognized), and that only the so-called "geometric interpretation" violates common sense by requiring that space curves. However, the "force interpretation" that Einstein, Dirac, Feynman and others preferred does not require that space be a tangible thing that curves. When the gravitational potential is recognized as an optical medium, all GR phenomena such as light bending, redshift, Shapiro effect, etc. can be understood as refraction in the optical medium rather than "space curving". That is what I would call a common sense interpretation. Yet it does not change a single symbol in Einstein's GR.

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>...truths the majority of people fail to comprehend simply because they haven't reached that kind of mental sophistication...<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

Always be wary of elitist thinking. If something is beyond the comprehension of the ordinary person who takes the time to acquire the needed background, it is most likely nonsense. At the very least, it lacks the normal chacks and balances that apply to everything else. Good science has two important attributes: It leads to a deeper and fuller understanding of nature; and it is easily communiacted to others. -|Tom|-

Early scientific ideas were based on common sense notions up until Einstein's SR. His theory defied the Newtonian view of space and time, by joining them together - spacetime.
Since relativity forms the basis of modern physics along with QM, it can be concluded that common sense is not a basis for modern physics.
The result of which, even though modern theories make amazing predictions, which prove "true", nobody really understands them. Because there is no common sense basis.
Einstein played a key part in abandoning common sense as a basis for his new theories, and it is likely that a price will be paid for violating the principle of common sense.

Wisp

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>[wisp]: Since relativity forms the basis of modern physics along with QM, it can be concluded that common sense is not a basis for modern physics.<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

Read on in these discussions. You will find out that Lorentzian relativity (LR), more than special relativity (SR), is incorporated into general relativity and best explains all eleven independent experiments (including GPS) that bear on the relativity of motion. (This is a result published last year in "Foundations of Physics".)Yet LR keeps its accord with common sense. -|Tom|-

quote:
__________________________________________________________________
Read on in these discussions. .. explains all eleven independent experiments (including GPS) that bear on the relativity of motion.
__________________________________________________________________

Thanks for the reply. I will study the GPS experiment data. I am a firm believer in common sense explanations. The fact that LR is based on common sense is good. But I am not convinced that space and time are joined as Einstein states in SR and GR.
I am interested in finding out if the GPS data can be explained by motion though the ether. It is the only bit I have not tested in my alternative relativity theory - wisp unification theory.
wisp

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>[wisp]: I will study the GPS experiment data.<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

A good place to start is [url] metaresearch.org/solar%20system/gps/absolute-gps-1meter.ASP [/url].

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>I am not convinced that space and time are joined as Einstein states in SR and GR.<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

I am certain they are not. See [url] metaresearch.org/cosmology/gravity/spacetime.asp [/url]. Also, LR interprets space and time as immutable, but recognizes that meter sticks and clocks can change.

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>I am interested in finding out if the GPS data can be explained by motion though the ether.<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

That depends on what you mean. In LR, the local gravitational potential field serves as the local "ether". It is fully entrained by (gravitationally bound to) Earth. So Earth's rotation produces fringe shifts in a Michelson-Morley experiment, but Earth's orbital motion does not.

Our web site has several other related articles about GPS and SR/LR that you might want to familiarize with to avoid re-inventing the wheel. For example: [url] metaresearch.org/cosmology/gps-relativity.asp [/url]. -|Tom|-

tvanflandern thanks for the references. I did a search on google for GPS clocks info and found a paper in the top 10 searches that explained how it works. It was the same paper you referenced "What the Global Positioning System Tells Us about Relativity" - it just a coincidence it was your paper.
Wisp theory can explain the MM null result on the Earth's surface due to a factor called jiggle (matter jiggles the ether at right angles to its motion through it),but jiggle does not spread out into space - it's local to the Earth (or any body of matter).
So I was concerned that my theory could fail it is tested against GPS clocks, as it predicts a non zero result if a MM type experiment is carried out using satellites.
Using your data I calculated a GPS-MM time difference of approx (L*V^2)/c^3 seconds.
L=26600km, V=30000m/s Earth's orbit speed (assumed speed through ether).
This gives a time difference of 0.9nS. Could this explain why there are random errors of about 1nS in the system?
This type of system cannot properly test the MM result, because of the issue of clock synchronisation.
The system does not test for one-way light speed measurements either, its more a two-way test. So it doesn't prove my theory is right or wrong.
What is needed is a simple one-way light speed test using two clocks (they don't even have to be synchronised).

The part about the local gravity field being an important reference for LR. Wisp theory uses a similar
jiggle to explain the behaviour of light near bodies of matter. It suggests that the Sun forms the local frame
that determines the speed at which the Earth's moves through the ether - its orbital speed 30000m/s.

I will read the other papers soon.

wisp