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Steve
Lv 5
Steve asked in Science & MathematicsPhysics · 1 decade ago

Is special relativity just an enormous experimental error?

It's my understanding that the "proof" of special relativity (i.e. that a particle's mass approaches infinity as its speed approaches the speed of light) is mostly taken from particle-accelerator experiments. These particle accelerators tend to use powerful electromagnets to speed up particles.

But...magnetic waves also travel at the speed of light. Therefore, as a particle approaches the speed of light, the amount of speed that the magnet can contribute to the particle becomes less, since their speeds are nearly matched. So it takes more and more energy to drive the magnets to make the particle go faster, but of course there's no way a magnetic wave moving at the speed of light could ever push something to go faster than the speed of light.

I put it to you that this is a monumental oversight. Am I wrong?

Maybe Einstein was just a failed patent clerk with bad hair and a genius for marketing?

6 Answers

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  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    Many scientists said that there is an error in the special relativity and I will give you these 2 books:

    http://www.amazon.com/Faster-Than-Speed-Light-Spec...

    http://www.scribd.com/doc/23995976/Special-Relativ...

    I won't judge these books you judge.

    As for Einstein, maybe you are right, because :

    It has been said that he created the general relativity, but in fact Galileo is the one who created it and Einstein used the help of MANY OTHER physicists to develop the theory so in fact Einstein is not the one who created the general relativity but he is the one who took the credits ! And he took also the credits for the special relativity even though he is not the one who created it! you can check Wikipedia if you do not believe me!

    It has been said that he created the space-time theory but in fact his teacher is the one who created it! Check Wikipedia-I checked!

    It has been said that he discovered the photoelectric effect and took a Nobel prize for it, but in fact a Lebanese scientist named Hassan Kamel Al-Sabbah discovered it, but he died in mysterious car accident before presenting the discovery, And they say that the CIA killed him because they didn't want that an Arabic Muslim guy to take credits for such a discovery!

    The only theory that Einstein tried to prove it alone is the Unified field theory but he died before proving anything.

    You can see Einstein mistakes here :

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Einst...

  • 1 decade ago

    You've kind of missed the point. Yes the magnets can't accelerate anything faster than the speed of light as predicted by special relativity, in fact all electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light due to the invariance of the speed of light in all inertial frames. You've also kind of mixed up fields and waves, it's not waves that are pushing the electrons, it's more that when the electrons move through the potential provided by the electromagnetic field they gain kinetic energy.

    As the velocity of the particle increases in does take increasingly more energy to accelerate it and it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate any mass to the speed of light (clearly not realistic). The limit is therefore nothing to do with the speed of electromagnetic waves, but rather the amount of energy that can be transferred to a charged particle by a magnetic field.

    Particle accelerators are far from the only evidence of special relativity, any decent textbooks will have countless examples such as muon decay from cosmic waves. Particle accelerators in fact rely on the mass energy relation implied by special relativity to create new exotic particles.

    It would seem that einstein is still a rare genius who did some of his best work as a patent clerk with a great haircut.

  • Anonymous
    5 years ago

    The problem with this question as posed is that it assumes that either proton A or B would even be able to measure the speed of any object, because in order to measure speed, one needs 1) a clock, and 2) a yardstick in which to measure the other's moving frame. Any massless entity cannot possess a clock or any other time-keeping means, and any moving frame moving at light speed would be contracted to a single plane, i.e. the entire universe would be contracted to a single plane. How do you even make sense of measuring velocities in such a context? You can't. So let's use a couple of spacecraft A and B moving towards each other at near light speed. This time, each spacecraft can have the necessary measuring devices, and moreover, they take careful measurements as the spacecraft flash by each other, much like trains on parallel tracks. Now, how is spacecraft A really going to measure the speed of spacecraft B? The question isn't as obvious as you think, because more than one answer is possible, depending on how one measures the speed! Let's look at two imporant but different ways to do it: 1) Spacecraft A notes the time when the nose of spacecraft B lines up with the nose of spacecraft A, and then notes the time when the nose of spacecraft B lines up with the rear of spacecraft A. If the length of spacecraft A is L, and the time difference is t, then the speed is L/t. This figure never exceeds the speed of light. 2) Spacecraft A notes the time when the nose of spacecraft B lines up with the nose of spacecraft A, and then notes the time when the rear of spacecraft B lines up with the nose of spacecraft A. If it's already known (from public records, whatever) that the length of spacecraft B is M, and the time difference is t, then the speed is M/t. Surprisingly, this can EXCEED the speed of light, approaching infinity! Part of the reason why we have such strange paradoxes is because if both spacecraft A and B have carefully synchronized all clocks along the lengths of the ships, should spacecraft A take a "snapshot" of all the clocks visible on spacecraft B, all the clocks would NOT appear synchronized. That is it say, to personnel of spacecraft A, it would appear that they're seeing spacecraft B in different time zones! This is a small but true fact that many people don't understand or leave out when trying to make sense out of these strange relativity problems. It makes problematic the job of measuring things, because one would literally be trying to measure a spacecraft that is existing in different time zones, for example. And, by the way, the method of using "public records" to find and use the value M for spacecraft B is a "no-no" in relativity theory, because this value M wasn't actually MEASURED, only known beforehand.

  • 1 decade ago

    The speed of light is a constant, meaning it does not change, no matter how fast you are actually moving. Einstein's special theory of relativity is actually famous: E=mc^2, which literally means, the energy measured in ergs is equal to the mass measured in grams, multiplied by the speed of light squared. One erg is equal to one dyne, the dyne being the force when acting upon one gram of substance gives it an acceleration of one centimeter per second per second.

    The revolutionary idea behind this is, movement itself is actually mass, because the measurement of energy in mass is actually the amount of movement gained. What the particle accelerators do is increase the movement of very small bits of matter, usually protons (but not necessarily), then smashing these accelerated particles into a stationary target or a particle speeding in the opposite direction. Upon impact, all of the movement that was previously gained due to acceleration is lost and is expelled from the particle as a high energy photon (gamma-ray) which then congeals into particle/anti-particle pairs.

  • 1 decade ago

    It is still called a "postulate" of special relativity. There is no proof of it. Einstein made several postulates to try to understand relationships between energy and matter and light because the work before him led him to many questions. Most scientists get started (perhaps like you are doing now) by trying to make sense of theories of or works of people before them.

    Einstein studied Maxwell and Planck and Lorentz and didn't like what he saw as valid explanations. That is when he made his own theories.

    I liked Einstein because he didn't act like a genius, but he was very inquisitive and din't accept "fact" if it disagreed with logic.

    To this day, scientists still don't know what an atom is, what is inside a atom, what light actually is, how light moves energy, what actually makes a chemical reaction occur, and on and on... They have many theories and practices that get a lot of valid materials made from these theories...but just because there is a theory , doesn't mean it is fact. No device has been made that really lets us look inside an atom to see if a proton is what we think it is or a neutron, or what a nuclear force is. Up to now it is all guesses that have worked right up to and including the atomic bombs.

    But I like you, think many of these theories are going to be debunked. For example and to change the subject slightly, think of water.

    Chemical theory tells us that you put hydrogen and oxygen together and you get this remarkable substance called water. But if you think of the two components making this up and the way they supposedly bond, this sounds absurd. Hydrogen gas which doesn't liquidfy until near absolute zero and oxygen which liquidfies around -185C supposedly unite by exchanging just two almost mass-less electrons between the hydrogen and a single oxygen and with this simple electron share we are to believe that the new compound now liquidfies at any temperature above 0C and has NONE of the properties of the the gases that compose it !!! This is crazy. But I see chemical compositions that buy into this electron bonding and sharing and that is supposedly what gives us all these compounds from elements that don't seem to be related to the compounds they make whatsoever just because of a single electron or two moving around.

    I know this theory is wrong. I can't prove it, but common sense tells me something is missing. I think chemical bonding is more in line with something occurring in the nucleus and also to add that the protons of one element are completely different from the protons of another element and that when they react together that each element alters the nucleus of the each other to a degree that they become a new SUBSTANCE from that interaction.

    It might of been hydrogen and oxygen gas that came together to make water, but when the protons or neutrons interacted with the hydrogen, the interaction caused changes to the nucleus of each that the new compound becomes water with the unique properties. When you do electrolysis to get hydrogen and oxygen back ( which supposedly is the "proof" that water is H2 and O2) I'm thinking the nuclear changes just reverse and go back to their separate elements and BECOME hydrogen and oxygen.

    So what I'm saying is Kudos to you, your theory is just as valid as Einstein's and he probably wasn't near the genius we all made him out to be. Until someone can get a microscope that can actually see into the inside of an electron or the inside of a light wave then it is all postulates and wishful thinking. Not fact

  • 1 decade ago

    A hair is incondign for that. What's wrong with Bryl-creem, conceivably by John Paul Mitchell or from Alberto-Culver

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