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A hole discovered in einstien's theory of relativity

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ruveyn
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28 Sep 2011, 4:25 pm

DC wrote:

Hard science is 'provable' in the sense that you can take a predictive theory get a million people to do an identical experiment a million times and they will all get the same results. If they don't get the same results you can fairly rapidly point to experimental error.


PS the closest thing I can think of is the corpuscular/non-corpuscular research before the double slit experiment. The double slit still didn't overturn experimental results in either branch though, it merely united them.


The first (above) is corroberation, not proof. If an outcome is contrary to prediction and the anomaly cannot be explained by either instrumental error or some factor not observed, then one has a case for falsification. For example, when the "strange" motion of Uranus was observed, it did not ipso facto prove Newton's theory was wrong. Another planet, not previously observed accounted for the anomaly. However, when the same thing was tried to explain the anomalous precession of perihelion of Mercury's orbit, it was a no go. No "hidden" planet was found to explain the anomaly. The problem was Newton's theory, based on a flat space and absolute time was faulty.

The second was not properly settled until the development of quantum field theory. In that theory there is no contradiction between being a particle and being a wave.

In any case it is much too early to conclude that a hole has been found in the theory of relativity. It will take a lot more work to do that.

ruveyn



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29 Sep 2011, 2:26 am

Jono wrote:
If the results of the experiment cannot be repeated, then it's a good bet that it wasn't a real effect but rather some sort of experimental error that was overlooked.


Correct, the statistical probability will favor human or equipment error.

However, when you are measuring a dependent variable, such as the speed of this nuetrino, you can never be 100% certain of all the contributing independent variables that contributed to the phenomena.

I like everyone else is waiting to see if the results can be replicated in a similar apparatus elswhere. In the likely scenario where the results can;t be replicated it does not PROVE the phenomena observed by CERN scientists did not take place. It merely places doubt on the initial result,

For this reason I am actually more interested to see if CERN can replicate this subphotonic nuetrino again by replicating the same experimental conditions.