If Einstein was wrong - 100 years wasted?

[Atellus]

Before I continue, I should make it clear that I am a complete layman and have no formal physics education.

 

Now that's out of the way...

 

I have come across mention in the media of the theories of a certain Reg Cahill, Associate Professor of Physics, who says that Einstein is wrong, that there are many experiments performed over the past years which prove this and that the only reason it's not widely accepted is partly institutional inertia and partly because experimental data that does not conform to Einstein's theories are discarded as artefacts.

 

What really got my attention was Cahill's comment to the effect that physics could have been going off on a tangent for the last hundred years. This idea intrigued me so, being in no position to analyse any of the technical information, I looked up some comments. These varied from "idiot" to "while I accept that someone will probably surpass Einstein someday, and that this is reasonable, I don't think it's happened yet." Another view was that good scientists let the data stand for itself while bad scientists with dodgy ideas run to the media because the media can't do the math.

 

Obviously, there are two sides to every argument, but as I said, I'm not qualified to properly assess them. I would, therefore, be very interested in, and grateful for, any comments and assessments that any board members might find the time to express below.

 

Thank you

[ajb]

Can you give more detailed references for Cahill?

 

It will depend exactly what you mean by "Einstein was wrong". For example, his equations of general relativity may not hold at all scales. It is possible that at small scales that general relativity needs modifying to include quantum mechanics. In this sence Einstein was not wrong, just not included the full picture.

 

So tell us exactly what you are talking about and we can take it from there.

[insane_alien]

einstein isn't wrong. incomplete, yes probably. it is the best understanding we have at the current time. until someone comes up with a more complete theory then we are 'stuck' with it. we have built many machines that utilise his theory of relativity (GPS navigation, particle accelerators etc. etc.) hardly a waste of 100 years.

[Martin]

Before I continue' date=' I should make it clear that I am a complete layman and have no formal physics education.

 

Now that's out of the way...

 

I have come across mention in the media of the theories of a certain Reg Cahill, Associate Professor of Physics, ...[/quote']

 

 

You didnt give a link to Cahill's research group.

 

here is a link:

http://www.scieng.flinders.edu.au/cpes/people/cahill_r/processphysics.html

 

There is a picture of Cahill. His page indicates that he has 3 people with PhDs working in his group, plus himself and a couple of students. He is an Assoc. Prof at Flinders U in Australia. He refers to actual experiments.

 

His theory called "Process Physics" has a bunch of published papers and one published book. The links to PDF are there. I would say after a brief glance that some of the stuff looks like it got thru peer review.

 

To me is sounds wacky, but I hope other people comment. I don't have time to comment on his technical ideas. IIRC I have seen OTHER THREADS discussing this guy's ideas. I don't remember which threads or where, maybe you can find them by searching.

 

No matter what it looks like, THE GUY IS NOT A NUT! He may possibly be part charlatan---this is hard to determine. But he is an academic.

 

From his picture he looks old (white hair and trim white beard) and IMO stubborn and cunning.

 

It is important for scientists to seriously pursue wrong ideas. Most theories that physicists pursue and test eventually prove wrong. The important thing is to do EXPERIMENTS TO CHECK and if the experiments show it is wrong then you should give it up and try something else.

 

(the most popular fundamental theory at the moment that lots of theorists are working on could well be wrong or basically worthless in the sense of being unpredictive----there is no harm in this, it is part of the science method----the trouble comes when people don't make their ideas submit to experimental trial.)

 

In my snap judgement Cahill ideas probably quite wrong. However I can't fault him because he seemingly does NOT avoid putting them to test. I can't be sure but it looks like he is sincerely trying to test his ideas. You can work on wacky ideas and STILL BE A LEGITIMATE SCIENTIST as long as it's empirical.

 

I realize this does not help you very much but it is all I can say about Cahill at the moment.

 

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Oh yeah, I forgot to say. Even if he were right it wouldnt mean that past 100 years of physics is wasted!

 

Einstein special relativity (1905) has been great to have----works out to amazing precision.

 

It will probably turn out to be just an effective theory emerging from something more basic, and it will probably have to be corrected out at the umpteenth decimal place.

 

but it is so good that even when some more basic formulas are known people will surely go on using it because it works so well.

 

the laws we have are only APPROXIMATIONS to the true laws and the approximation gets better as we improve the laws.

but that does not mean that the earlier versions are wasted!

 

Nor do I see Cahill claim that the earlier picture was wasted effort.

 

==============

 

Personally I think Cahill barks up the wrong tree and that there are OTHER corrections of Einstein special rel which are in progress and will be tested soon, like in 2007 or 2008----revisions involving more and smarter and younger less-isolated people.

A French by name of Laurent Freidel, a Pole named Kowalski-Glikman, a guy in the UK named Majid. a Russian named Starodubtsev. I think these other guys have a better chance of slightly tweaking Einstein theory and getting it right. They don't do any publicity, they just publish in the peer-review journals and talk at conferences.

[swansont]

His theory called "Process Physics" has a bunch of published papers and one published book. The links to PDF are there. I would say after a brief glance that some of the stuff looks like it got thru peer review.

 

To me is sounds wacky' date=' but I hope other people comment. I don't have time to comment on his technical ideas. IIRC I have seen OTHER THREADS discussing this guy's ideas. I don't remember which threads or where, maybe you can find them by searching.

 

No matter what it looks like, THE GUY IS NOT A NUT! He may possibly be part charlatan---this is hard to determine. But he is an academic.

[/quote']

 

Being an academic is not proof that he's not a nut, though. As for peer-review, I see citations for Infinite Energy and Apeiron; these are not journals I'd put on my publications list. They may be "peer-reviewed," but who are the peers?

 

But I have not yet looked at the material in any depth. I agree that relativity works. It's been tested and continues to be tested, continually. If someone thinks that there's more to be had by taking a different tack, great: go for it. But your results have to agree with all the relativity results accumulated so far.

[Atellus]

Thanks for the comments, folks.