| Last Cereal: Message Board: posting |
| re: 100 years after Einstein |
| [50410] by "RobPfeifer" (dsl-210-211-88-042.qld.veridas.net) on Tue 19 Jul 2005 06:14:51 [ reply ] |
|
Somebody in Italy must be up to no good! (How bizarre.)
So... what am I doing? Well, I figure 100 years of using the same laws of gravity, it's probably time for a change. So I'm rewriting them. In 1905 Einstein published the Special Theory of Relativity, which was good. Over the next decade or two he worked out the General Theory of Relativity, which had some good points - the ability to relate accelerating reference frames, for example - and allowed you to describe gravity by saying matter curved space-time. As theories of gravity went, it was the best anybody had going. But in modern times we have discovered problems. Things that don't quite make sense. The Pioneer space probes are experiencing just the /tiniest/ bit more gravity than they should. The speeds at which stars rotate around galaxies should see them flying off into space. For galaxies, people suggested the presence of Dark Matter, and recently one guy (Milgrom) tried to rewrite gravity, with considerable success, but couldn't explain why nature should be like that. And it didn't help with Pioneer. For the Pioneer probes, we just call the phenomenon "The Pioneer Anomaly" and hope someone will sort it out before it became embarrassing. I have a new theory. One which makes a whole load of sense, and may explain both problems in one go. It may even do away with the need for curved space-time. The lecture I gave was on one aspect of this. Unfortunately, it is an aspect that has since turned out to be more or less completely, utterly irrelevant to the big results. But if I can pull this off, maybe they _will_ remember that lecture in 100 years time. And if not, well, at least I'll get a good mark for my research project! Rob |