Einstein's Theory To Go Beta Testing

pinqkandi writes: "This article over at CNN looks into the relativity of Einstein's theory of relativity (pun intended) as equipment becomes more and more precise. Soon atomic clocks will be placed in the International Space Station to analyze the accuracy of Einstein's theories. One of the lead researchers says that if Einstein's theory is not right, it will only need minor adjustments to account for changes in space-time, due to its deadly accurate precision."

it's truly relative

[robburt]

Time does not exist, our perception of time is the only thing that exists.

Re:GPS Satelites know this !

[Merlin42]

GPS sats make adjustments for relativity on, well, relatively large scales. What these researchers are interested in is the small scale(both temporal and spatial I would think) fluctuations. Basically I get the impression that they are attacking the gap b/w quantum theory (small) and relativity(large) from above, so to speak.

Hasn't this been done before?

[ltning]

Like, they put one of those into an airplane and flew it half around the globe or something.. That might have been another aspect of the theory though.

But one thing is for sure: They won't 'prove' Einstein in any way by doing this - but they might *prove* him wrong. Only negative proof can be done by example.

Or other existing equipment

[GMontag]

What is wrong with using existing equipment, like that hive of atomic clocks in the GPS system? They already transmit their time to just anybody that wants to receive it and all of the adjustments for relativity, etc., are known and can be removed for "raw" time measurement.

I guess the hammer and feather experiment just gets more expensive in proportion to the expansion of the beurocracy.

Re:GPS Satelites know this !

[Anonymous Coward]

That was a hypothetical situation. They weren't saying they'd actually done it, just claiming that they could.

Re:Backwards?

[Chuck Lane]

I thought this was precisely what special relativity does predict, that a moving observer experiences less passage of time than a stationary one, increasingly so as the speed becomes a significant fraction of the speed of light. If the ticking rate does not vary, then special relativity would be invalidated.

You're correct about special relativity, but we're considering a different sort of effect.

Special relativity predicts (among other things, as you describe above) that the ticking rate of a clock, when always viewed from its own rest frame, is independent of the clock's orientation and velocity with respect to everything else in the universe. We're studying this idea by watching very sensitive clocks as they rotate or change velocities. Any dependence of a clock's rate on its orientation would imply that some directions are different from others, i.e, it would show a violation of rotational symmetry, which is a subgroup of Lorentz symmetry.

Chuck

Re:Relativity vs. Quantum Mechanics

[Yunzil]

Remember, none of this has totaly been proven.

But remember, nothing is even totally proven in science. The best we ever have is a theory that hasn't been proven wrong yet.

Horrible

[Fatllama]

The CNN article is one of the worst examples of science writing I've *ever* seen. I even thought of submitting it for that purpose alone. Now, what does it mean that Slashdot took it seriously? Good lord.

Questionable journalistic value

[xihr]

The CNN article is a good example of journalism's tendency to misrepresent scientific news, even subtly. The URL contains the string "einstein.wrong," and the headline on the CNN article is, "Has time run out on Einstein's theory?" suggesting that there is some new doubt that general relativity is accurate. (Note also that the article's description of the special theory of relativity is pretty meaningless, particularly to a layman -- and it isn't even special relativity that is being tested.)

In fact the opposite is the case. No one has any reason to believe that general relativity is in error, but as part of good science it is being tested anyway. One can never prove a theory; one can only disprove it. So the best you can do is test your theories with greater and greater precision as the opportunities present themselves.

It's a case where this is, in effect, a pretty mundane story (a very well-established theory is being routinely tested), but the journalist in question is implying that there is some doubt as to its validity. Of course, it's possible the experiment will reveal deviations from general relativity's predictions, which would indeed involve "minor corrections" to the theory since it is so accurate in other areas, but there is a definite spin being put on the story which isn't in the underlying facts.