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Flat Earth Theory / Re: Something odd about magnets
« on: August 29, 2021, 12:59:05 AM »Quote
The major one we are discussing, however, is the acute lack of mechanism/description/definition of WHAT gravitation is and how it accomplishes its many miracles.
Just repeating that there is no mechanism or description of what gravitation s and how it works doesn’t make it true. GR describes both the mechanism and how it works.
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If by "solved" you mean "ignored" and "showing", you mean "assuming" - then yes, that's correct.
I have no idea what you mean by that. Newton assumed that gravity acted instantaneously. GR shows that gravity doesn’t, nor does it have to. I Nobody is ignoring anything.
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Relativity is an aether theory (though I doubt you were taught this). It mathematically presumes a physical substrate to "empty" reality which contorts with the presence of mass. The contorting of this aether is the presumed cause of gravity in relativity. Empiricism demands that we provide observational and experimental support for the theoretical entity itself (aether/spacetime) as well as the mechanism responsible for matters contortion of it from a distance. Because we excised aether from the schools, and physics is so poorly taught generally, there was believed to be nothing to go looking for (in part because many that tried found nothing)
This is where you ignorance shines the brightest. There is no shame in ignorance, it can easily be cured by a little education.
Einstein didn’t assume a physical substrate at all. In fact, he started out trying to prove the exact opposite. He was an admirer of Mach and like him opposed to the idea of absolute space, to which all motion is relative. If there was any philosophy guiding Einstein’s science it was that space wasn’t a “substrate” or a physical reality.
In 1918, Einstein defined three fundamental principles of GR
"(a) Principle of relativity. The laws of nature are only assertions of timespace coincidences; therefore they find their unique, natural expression in generally covariant equations.
(b) Principle of equivalence. Inertia and weight are identical in essence. From this and from the results of the special theory of relativity, it follows necessarily that the symmetric ‘fundamental tensor’ (gμν) determines the metric properties of space, the inertial relations of bodies in it, as well as gravitational effects. We will call the condition of space, described by the fundamental tensor, the ‘G-field.’
(c) Mach’s principle. The G-field is determined without residue by the masses of bodies. Since mass and energy are equivalent according to the results of the special theory of relativity and since energy is described formally by the symmetric energy tensor (Tμν), this means that the G-field is conditioned and determined by the energy tensor.
That last sentence means that the gravitational field is determined by what is in it. All motion within the g field is relative to other matter within the field, not the field itself.
Ultimately, he was unable to incorporate Mach’s principle into GR and later disavowed Mach. The tl:dr is that over the course of 10 years, Albert realized that even if the universe was completely void of any matter, the g field would still exist.
This is a really good account of that process if you are interested. Like I said there is no shame in ignorance. But there is shame (or should be) in spouting off things “you know” without any knowledge or education on the matter.
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/4377/1/LoveMinusZero.pdf
The first couple of chapters of Brian Greene’s “Fabric of the Cosmos” is also a good account. I think you can download a pdf of that for free. And it’s easier to read. Anyway, we seemed to have strayed from the OP’s original intent, so if you want to start another thread, I’m happy to discuss further.