On Fri, Dec 02, 2016 at 01:03:49PM +0100, Telmo Menezes wrote: > Russell, > > I don't follow you... If you have time to dumb it down a bit, I would > appreciate it :) > > Best, > Telmo.
One of the things that Einstein was popularly known for is that the speed of light is constant, regardles of who you are (more precisely what inertial reference frame you occupy). Of course this leads to all sorts of crank claims about Einstein being wrong, because the speed of light is slower in glass than it is in a vacuum (say). This work goes on to talk about allowing c (usually called the speed of light) to vary as a function of time, slowing down from infinity at the origin. Hence the attribution "Einstein was wrong". As a scientist that would be very sloppy and attention seeking - but hopefully this was a journalistic override. The only thing fundamental are changes to dimensionless constants - the fine structure constant \alpha being a classic example. For something like c, if we redefined to meter and second to be suitably varying functions of time, then we can damn well make c vary any way we want. It is not fundamental - just a trick as it were. Cheers > > > On Thu, Dec 1, 2016 at 11:26 PM, Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au> > wrote: > > On Thu, Dec 01, 2016 at 04:26:25PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: > >> > >> I am not sure why he says that Einstein was wrong, as I am not sure > >> Einstein ever asserted that space-time or gravity was fundamental. > >> To say that Einstein is wrong looks like a cliché in fashion, today. > > > > It's code speak for saying the speed of light is not a constant. It's > > more a bone to throw to the media to stir up interest, than a real > > scientific statement. > > > > Of course, since the speed of light is just a conversion constant > > beween our time units and our space units, we are always free to vary > > the speed of light. It is just a nonlinear reparameterisation of our > > coordinates. Verlinde's proposal is much, much more than that. > > > > > > > > -- > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) > > Principal, High Performance Coders > > Visiting Senior Research Fellow hpco...@hpcoders.com.au > > Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > -- > > 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 post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > -- > 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 post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Senior Research Fellow hpco...@hpcoders.com.au Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- 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 post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
