August 26, 2004
RELATIVITY IN ECLIPSE:
An unexplained effect during solar eclipses casts doubt on General Relativity (The Economist, August 25, 2004)
"ASSUME nothing" is a good motto in science. Even the humble pendulum may spring a surprise on you. In 1954 Maurice Allais, a French economist who would go on to win, in 1988, the Nobel prize in his subject, decided to observe and record the movements of a pendulum over a period of 30 days. Coincidentally, one of his observations took place during a solar eclipse. When the moon passed in front of the sun, the pendulum unexpectedly started moving a bit faster than it should have done.[H]is suggestion would fit in with another odd phenomenon: the fact that
the Pioneer 10 and 11 space-probes, launched by NASA, America's space
agency, in the early 1970s, are receding from the sun slightly more slowly
than they should be.
Sometimes breakthroughs are made by smart people who are not specialists in the required field. They have the advantage of seeing phenomena with fresh eyes, and haven't absorbed the Conventional Wisdom that can often harden to dogma. Peter Frey was an English Professor at Northwestern but helped popularize a time-control technique known as iterative deepening for computer chess. Thomas Gold is an astronomer and geophysicist who made contributions to audiology (and defends an abiogenic theory of the origins of oil). Dr. Allais is a Nobel Prize winner in economics, as the article states.
The Theory of Relativity has to be a strong contender for the most crank-prone theory in the history of science. It is wildly counterintuitive, and the Special Theory portion has just enough mathematics (a gasp square root!) to attract attention. Nonetheless, when people of the caliber of Maurice Allais make a suggestion, it is worthy of a followup.
Posted by at August 26, 2004 10:26 AMNo one still buys that Relativity hokum do they?
Posted by: oj at August 26, 2004 10:29 AMMr. Judd;
Well, the DoD does in order to make GPS work. It would fail with purely Newtonian mechanics.
It's another myth that long used physical theories like General Relativity are discredited. GR has predicated a large range of phenomenon and makes very accurate predicitions which are correct and not provided by any other theory. Any successor theory will be either an extension or a refinement of GR, not a replacement, just as GR is both a refinement and extension of Newtownian mechanics.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at August 26, 2004 11:07 AMIt is general not special reletavity that is being discussed in the article. As was discussed last week, relativity is a misnomer. The theories are theories of invariance. And no OJ, they have nothing to do with morality.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at August 26, 2004 11:08 AMOk, but if the sun going behind the moon causes this effect, why wouldn't the sun going behind the earth (ie, nighttime) cause it as well?
Strange stuff...
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny...'" - Isaac Asimov
Posted by: mike earl at August 26, 2004 11:15 AMIts almost certain that GR and SR are incomplete. Eventually someone will discover some flaw or anomoly that GR and SR cannot account for. This will eventually generate a new improved physical model. Just like GR and SR were responses to anomolies discovered in Newtonian Physics.
This is not to say that Newtonian Physics is wrong, or that GR and SR are wrong -- they are just incomplete.
Newtonian Physics is perfecly accurate for 99.99% of all of human activity.
Posted by: AML at August 26, 2004 11:22 AMEinstein himself never expected GR to last.
Posted by: Anthony Perez-Miller at August 26, 2004 1:07 PMRobert Schwartz -
Yes, the cranks like Special Theory (it is easy enough to grasp without getting bogged down in tensor calculus), and by extension try to knock down General Theory.
By the way, I'd like to tout the Economist for its science articles, which are unexpectedly good for a non-specialist publication.
Posted by: Bruce Cleaver at August 26, 2004 1:13 PMGo back about 5 years and you'll find articles about physicists questioning Eotvos's determination of the gravitational constant.
Questioning theories is what scientists do.
This article does answer a minor question for me. Back when I paid more attention to formal economics than I do now, there was a mini-tempest about the Nobel Prize for Economics.
The problem was, someday they'd have to award it to a Frenchman, but whom?
Now I know.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at August 26, 2004 3:04 PMJust for the record, my own views on TOR are those of Annoying Old Guy's and AML's. It's too successful numerically to call it 'wrong'. I am more persuaded than ever that the name 'Relativity' is 50% of the problem when it comes to cranks.
The next theory that replaces TOR will in all likelihood be far stranger still, and quite unsettling.
The really fascinating thing about the article is that the pendulum effect was large enough to get noticed. The article goes into great detail about trying to quantify off-the-wall but natural effects that might cause the observations.
Posted by: Bruce Cleaver at August 26, 2004 3:56 PMJust an amateur's guess, but mass distorts space-time.
Just like Newtonian mechanics cannot definitively solve something as seemingly simple as a three-body problem, maybe the alignment of three masses produces space-time perturbations that are completely consistent with the Theory of Invariance, but devilishly difficult to tease out in detail.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at August 26, 2004 8:22 PMI'm afraid that I disagree with Bruce Cleaver regarding the quality of the Economist's science writing.
The article appears to be little more than fluff, a diversion for readers whose eyes glaze over from reading about current account balances and politics.
Our intuition, of course, is often just wrong. Take this thought experiment, for example. Place a ball inside a roulette disk -- set flush in a level surface -- which has a hinged door on its rim. Start rotation. At some point, as the ball is traveling along the disk's rim, open the hinge. What is the trajectory of the ball as it exits the disk? Many laypeople will draw some kind of (semi-)parabolic trajectory.
In fact, the trajectory is straight as a ruler (Newton's First Law of Motion).
An excellent primer on the Special Theory of Relativity (with endearing badly-drawn pictures.)
The "Pioneer anomaly" may or not may be real; the eggheads are still debating it. "Dark energy" may be the culprit.
Posted by: Eugene S. at August 27, 2004 6:06 AMWhy does this series of articles sound like they were written by leftists? ("No one still buys that capitalism hokum do they?")