Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 00:43:18 -0400
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Newton or einstein?
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

At 08:04 PM 5/12/05 GMT, Ern wrote:
>Driving down the road (pe=1/2mv^2) I was thinking about how we live in a
>newtonian world, and that quantum physics is really besides the point.

Well, quantum physics seems to be as relevant as Newtonian physics since it
describes what's really going on (as near as we can manage at the moment).
For non-relativistic speed differentials, and macroscopic scales though,
Newton is a good enough approximation to get by with.  We don't need to
worry about things closer than that in most situations.  So what if the
plane you rode today put your watch a fraction of a microsecond off from
the rest of the world?  You almost certainly put more error that that into
it when you set it last.  I'm just glad the guys who designed my GPS
receiver understood his math...

>So, what do you think? Is Einstien irrelant in everday life? Do we live in
a locally deterministic universe?

>From the perspective of things like watches in motion, seeing cars and not
getting run over by them, etc., yes, he's not relevant at all.  From the
perspective of the speed of light barrier probably meaning we are all stuck
in this one little solar system forever, he's very relevant.

I'm hoping he turns out to be at least as "wrong" as Newton was...i.e. he's
right under the right conditions, but off at least a bit otherwise.  For
instance, perhaps he's only right when you are deep in a gravity well and
maybe things work differently out where space is "flatter".  Could
be...almost all the data we have to work with originated in deep gravity
wells...and was collected in one too.

-- Mike B.

--

"You see things; and you say, 'Why?'
 But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?'"

                        -- The Serpent in Shaw's
                           'Back to Methuselah'
                            [1921], pt I, Act I