Many non-scientists do not understand the way theories are formulated, and so say things like "Einstein proved that Newton's laws are false."
The non-scientific phrase I used was "blew the doors off Newtonian physics".
It can be [and often is] viewed that the 2nd law still holds. From that perspective however, the very nature [interpretation] of the variables and the formulation of the equation needs to be tweaked... to line up with the full facts. So there is still a 'disconnect' from reality (when viewed as Newton saw it).
Originally Posted By: tacit
Hell, if you were to have all the supercomputers the world has yet constructed at your disposal and you could duplicate all those computers a billion times over, you might have enough computing horsepower, maybe, to use quantum mechanics to calculate the path of a baseball. And if you did that, you'd find that that answer also matched Newton.
An ordinary calculator with a 'square root' key (such as Calculator.app in scientific mode) will do. As mentioned in my other post, the beastly factor comes down to...
E.g., for momentum (p = mv), the true value is: p = mv / SQRT( 1 - (v^2/c^2) )
Originally Posted By: tacit
What laypeople see as one theory "proving wrong" another theory, scientists recognize as one theory being more general and applying to a larger set of circumstances as another theory. But any theory that disagrees with reality about the path the baseball takes is wrong on the face of it, no matter how elegant, because we *know* the path of that baseball.
I cranked out 3 select [high velocity] samples using the above factor (as a divisor), and compared Newtonian predictions to their relativistic equivalents.
My (possibly imperfect) reckoning was:
for objects moving at 200 million m/s (almost 67% lightspeed), Newton's results are low by a factor of 1.34 -- i.e., 33% error.
Â
for objects moving at 224 million m/s (almost 75% lightspeed), Newton's results are low by a factor of 1.5 -- i.e., 50% error.
Â
for objects moving at 260 million m/s (almost 87% lightspeed), Newton's results are low by a factor of 2 -- i.e., 100% error.
Beyond 90% lightspeed ("warp 9"?) -- the increase in error is exponential. [Frankly speaking, it explodes (the magnitude of error that is).]
I understand your point about a "larger set of circumstances"... but that doesn't automatically absolve all previous (historical) scientific assumptions. I doubt anyone even questioned, "Hey... does this stuff still work when mass moves faster than 100 million meters per second?". Most likely, Newton (and the entire global scientific community for almost the next 200 years) essentially took it for granted that p = mv would accurately determine the linear momentum of any object (be it particle or planet), moving at any velocity, traveling anywhere in 'De Mundi Systemate'. For all practical purposes, the feeling was that Newton had mastered physical motion in the universe.
Knowing what we know now... was that not simply faith in unfalsified theory?
If not... how would you prefer to characterize it?
Note: i'm not *faulting* science in any respect, since i don't always associate negative connotations with the word "faith" (as seems to be the current wisdom).
