On Thursday, June 12, 2025 at 6:05:41 PM UTC-6 Brent Meeker wrote:
On 6/12/2025 4:33 PM, Alan Grayson wrote: On Thursday, June 12, 2025 at 1:56:20 PM UTC-6 Brent Meeker wrote: ... The problem is you don't even have a proper conception of "understanding". *GR has many unexplained postulates, like the physical reason mass distorts spacetime. * Yes, but what would count as an explanation for you? Entropic gravity? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropic_gravity *I'm not familiar with this theory, but I've heard of it. GR tells us how to calculate the effect of mass/ energy on spacetime curvature, but nothing about the physical mechanism upon which the effect depends. AG* *You're the one who has an improper concept of "understanding". You don't seem to have a clue of what you don't understand! Consider the muon. Why does applying the LT cause its half-life to dilate? * I know that one. It's because when going fast it takes an inertial spacetime path with more space and less time, as quantified by the Lorentz transformation. In it's own frame it is decaying at the same rate as a stationary muon...which is good since otherwise we'd have absolute motion. *I don't think you understand my question. In part I am asking how the dichotomy arises wherein the muon's half life implied by the LT, differs from what it measures internally? And how does the muon acquire a clock? And more. AG * Brent *It's not even being observed, just thought of as being observed. Yes, one can say it happens in order to preserve the invariance of light speed. Is that really enough? You just don't want to go deeper and are happy with your equations. Sad. AG * You're like Faraday who conceived of the electric and magnetic fields as lots of masses and springs. If it was just equations it wasn't understood. It had to be masses and springs. When you saw the infalling space model of gravity you thought it provided you "understanding", but it wouldn't even allow for orbits. *No. You read worse than a Trumper. I wrote it didn't explain what happened to space when it reached the center of the gravitating mass, among other things unmentioned, like why does it flow. AG * In graduate school, if not earlier, physicists learn to let equations speak for themselves. Examples are good to develop intuition. But every example is incomplete. And every made-up visualization is misleading in some respect. So think about what counts as "understanding". Knowing the equations and how to apply them is the real understanding. *That means you've de-facto given up on any model that explains the physical interaction of mass/energy with spacetime. AG* -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/243ee664-f930-4eef-9926-d722ea8fdaeen%40googlegroups.com.
