Einstein Was Right: Space-Time Is Smooth

[Big Sissy]

Id bet it has to do with what they use to measure it like a lot of other things

 

[calculusftw]

Riemannian geometry bitches!

 

[LucasWithLidOff]

lol, I would disagree, a society based on materialism and self - distracted by iPhones and twitter.

The social engineers are moulding the society - not for the better.


The great thinkers of the world are nearly extinct.

If they aren't extinct, they just get drowned out by the latest celebrity gossip or a talking panel full of angry people screaming over them.

 

[FingerBang]

Amazing how Einstein theories still hold up even with our Best scientist trying to debunk them

There is no "debunking" in science.

That word....it doesn't mean what you think it means.

 

[RemyR]

so ?

 

[mcdowels]

there's no such thing as time

 

[Yardener]

Ocean, can you explain this for the dimwitted (me)?

Is the improbability there because they travelled for such a long time (7 billion years) and you would have expected them to each get deflected about by the "foam" in all that time, thus arriving at different times/points?

What is the probability of them travelling for all that time, and not bumping into something more concrete, like a star or a comet's trail or something? Are these orders of magnitude different?

Keep in mind a photon (both a wave and a particle simultaneously) has zero mass and zero charge, so no interaction with gravity or electircal charge. Photons are the force carrier for electromagnetism. And the speed of photons are always c (the speed of light). Of course, light does interact with matter - think of the refraction of light bending through water. There's scattering and absorption. So, the speed is c until the photon hits, for example, an atomic nucleus - whereby the energy is transferred and the photon slows down.
The way to figure out the probability if a photon will interact with matter along its speed of light journey is called the "linear attenuation coefficient." Depends on the photon's energy and the density of material it's passing through. It's expressed as a probability (as a function of the matter's density and the distance travelled). Considering how relatively empty space is, perhaps the density was so low as to make the attenuation coefficient insignificant??

 

[Amerikuracana]

lol, I would disagree, a society based on materialism and self - distracted by iPhones and twitter.

The social engineers are moulding the society - not for the better.


The great thinkers of the world are nearly extinct.

This is true.

 

[SafyreSchool**]

 

[Lord Commander Palis]

I love it. Only shows how little we actually know. I pray we find the answers some day. We're certainly on the way.

We never will fully find the answers to everything. The only possible way is after death.

 

[ocean size]

Keep in mind a photon (both a wave and a particle simultaneously) has zero mass and zero charge, so no interaction with gravity or electircal charge.

nah bro http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity#Deflection_of_light_by_the_Sun

 

[Yardener]

nah bro http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity#Deflection_of_light_by_the_Sun

Huh. Good call, ocean size. Thanks for the link. So, is it that the light is bending around the sun b/c of how the sun's gravity is curving space-time itself? And the photons then follow along the warped path?

 

[MGLucas]

I love how truly ignorant we are when we believe ourselves to be so advanced. It illustrates that there is so much that we don't know or understand, even when we pretend we do.

Consider the vastness of the observable universe, then consider what may lie even further beyond that, then realize we cannot even safely travel beyond our own planet. Our knowledge and understanding of the cosmos is pathetically inadequate. On the grand scale ofthe universe, we are no more advanced than the primordial ooze we sprang from. It's a very humbling realization.

 

[Slick_36]

Very well put. It's a good feeling though. We have so much to see and learn. So much to look forward to.

 

[ndwolfwood]

I knew it since the beginning.

 

[Toda Hiro-matsu]

I wish I was smart enough to weigh in.

 

[Einar]

That is my understanding. They should have been spaced out a bit more if foam affected them.

What is the probability of them travelling for all that time, and not bumping into something more concrete, like a star or a comet's trail or something? Are these orders of magnitude different?

Good question - even though space is mostly empty, the gamma ray burst was 7 billion light years away - a good chunk of space. You'd think they may hit something. Perhaps the idea is if they did hit something, they wouldn't have reached earth at all.

When it comes to stars, planets, asteroids etc that physically block your path, space in unbelievably empty. When our own Milky way and the Andromeda galaxy "collide" in a few billion years time, the overwhelming odds are that they will simply pass through eachother, with no stars actually crashing. Thats how much empty space is between stars.