What is beyond Newton's and Einstein's discoveries?

[Boris Lagutin]

Happy New Year to You, Joe! All the best to You and your family, your university staff!

[joe]

Thanks Boris,

and good luck to you, especially with your thirst for understanding!

Joe

[Boris Lagutin]

Thanks a lot, Joe.

[Boris Lagutin]

Just my contemplation. Neither of length (meters etc.), speed, velocity and acceleration is a natural occurrence. All of them are the related forms describing what we, people, observe. In other words, they are our interpretation of what's going on around us. It must be said that this interpretation works to relate and understand different real processes and relations between them. However, what is a natural occurrence that we describe by using these forms? The answer is "object's displacement in space" which we observe (in my opinion)!

Here is an interesting point. Whether we may describe the same natural occurrence "object's displacement" by using other forms that could work? I am just curious about thinking of that...

[joe]

It's interesting how biology and culture flavour our observations.

We have a nervous system that prioritises stimuli that change (perhaps because a crocodile is more dangerous than a log). So we tend to think of the static as the 'natural' state (cf Aristotle).

Imagine beings that were blind and whose only perceptions of objects came from colliding with them. Such beings might think of momentum as the basic concept and stasis as the difficult case when momentum is zero.

Joe

[Boris Lagutin]

Interesting... In this case the question is whether different understanding of the reality causes creating other technologies or not?

Of course, such understanding does not change the reality itself but I suppose it may lead, at least, to another approach and as a consequence - creating other technologies.

P.S. I met many questions about why mathematics works to describe the world and build technologies. I seem I have found an answer. It is because mathematics based on one method which I called "length". In other words, separating everything into some parts (meters, seconds and so on). So this all work in a frame of this method. It's necessary to say it works pretty well!

P.P.S. However, whether we may categorically claim that it is the only method to work? Truly saying I don't know an answer to this question. But if it is so it makes one suppose that human beings are some kind of "God" creatures or at least the nature of intelligence has a special place in the universe!

[joe]

The strength of maths comes because it is not related to technologies, physics or the world. (Or length.) Of course, the areas of maths which have been the most used (and therefore probably the most developed) are those which have useful applications in the world and perhaps especially in physics.

In contrast, physics is developed to describe and to explain observations. It uses maths, but philosophically it's a very different subject!

You might be interested to read Wigner's essay on 'the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics'
https://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDra ... igner.html

Joe

[Boris Lagutin]

Thank you, Joe. I'll read it, however, before it I would like to say some words about "length". Let me take just numbers, for example, 1 2 3 4. What are they? Just numbers. But how we apply them to analyze something or the world? We separate something into parts, appropriately 1 part, 2 parts, 3 parts or 4 parts. I think you agree that it may be called "separating into parts". So we can separate a distance between points into 1, 2, 3 and 4 centimeters or meters or kilometers. Analogously we may separate into 1 second, 2 seconds, 3 seconds or 4 seconds. Mathematics itself contains "separating" as its basic method. Numbers themselves denote separation. So I simply called it "length method" as length is based on such a separation.


Thanks.

[Boris Lagutin]

In terms of different beings and their understanding of the world. I would take bats. What if Nature had given intelligence to them? Would they use mathematics to explore the world? Creatures that cannot see and communicate by using ultrasound. The world of energies, fields and waves may require other approaches than just "separating" to be explored more effectively. It's just assumption, of course.

P.S. We cannot state that we have absolute knowledge about the world so we are limited by our organs of perception and forms of reasoning. Therefore, we will never be able to understand the world as it is itself. By the way, example of "dark matter" confirms this my conclusion. Even if we get able to understand "dark matter" it does not mean that we understand the world absolutely.

[joe]

Interesting example to choose: there is a famous essay about consciousness by the philosopher Nagel called 'What is it like to be a bat'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_it ... e_a_Bat%3F

I would argue that we understand radio waves fairly well, even though we can't perceive them directly (in normal doses). And we don't do that by extrapolating vision: we do/did that by experiment. We could go further and say that some physicists (not including me) understand quantum chromodynamics pretty well. We can understand things that are very remote from our senses.

[Boris Lagutin]

An object is passing by an observer at the distance of 1 meter and at a speed pretty close to the speed of light. The effects of "Time Dilation" and "Length Contraction" take place in this case. The speed of the object with respect to the observer matters. Do we need to measure Length (distance) between the object and the observer? I think we don't need. We need to know the object's speed to describe these phenomena. Hmm... But what is "speed"? Length (distance) divided by time? Yes. How may one explore the natural occurrence happens with respect to the observer without speed, velocity? Maybe by using Relativity... Maybe if we didn't use the conception of "speed" we could discover another reason of the effects I don't ask any answer. I am just contemplating about it....

P.S. As I wrote above, speed, velocity or acceleration of an object is not a natural occurrence but "displacement of an object in space" is a natural occurrence.

Thanks a lot.

[Boris Lagutin]

Although I suspect that in this case we would need to use another system of coordinates based on Relativity principle. Whether one may describe what we call "object's movement with a definite speed" now by using other means? Would it give us deeper understanding of natural occurrences which we now explore by using speed, velocity etc.? These are interesting questions for me. Possibly they are very philosophical but interesting. Just thoughts...

[joe]

Gday Boris

In 2005, the centenary of relativity, the School webmaster and I put a lot of effort into making an introduction to relativity that could be readily understood. Go to Physclips
http://www.animations.physics.unsw.edu.au
and, at bottom right in the main screen, see the link to relativity. Spend a few hours there and see if we succeeded.

Joe

[Boris Lagutin]

Hello Joe!

I thought you sleep already. I didn't expect that you may post right now As you possibly understood Relativity makes me "thinking". I try not to post my thoughts but it sometimes helps to fix it and rethink later. Moreover, you give interesting links and comments, also sometimes someone may post interesting stuff like "Em Drive" and other.

P.S. Yes. I need to learn more about Relativity. However, my keynote question is about method to explore the same things. Ok, will post my thoughts after learning more. I am a little bit emotional about it so I need to be more "cool" thinking of it.

Thank you very much as always.

[Boris Lagutin]

By the way, I understood and understand that while Jasper is traveling at a high speed close to the speed of light Jasper observes "normal length" with respect to himself but Zoe sees "length contraction" and "time dilation" in Jasper's system. It does no any means terminate my conclusions

Have a nice night.