Why do people want to disprove Einstien?

[Darth Servo]

If you really believe that people have the same intuitive faith in rulers and SEM, if you really believe that you have the same intuitive faith in rulers and SEM, then you and I think very differently indeed.

Not the same but there isn't a sharp cut off point either.

[Howedar]

I never claimed there was. That doesn't make the point any less valid.

[OmegaGuy]

Maybe it has something to do with the rather depressing things relativity theory has to say about humanity's chances of reaching the stars (in something less than decades or centuries). There are parts of it I wish were wrong.

This is my answer too, this probably especially holds true for scifi fans.

[Lord Zentei]

What?

Even if that IS true, what does it matter? Ever heard about basing theories on stuff proven before?

Yes, exactly, scientific progress is successfull building on things that already existed before and Einstein is not the only guy who contributed to world science, merely one of the most promoted.

Yes indeed. However that does not mean that he "gained access to [earlier things] by working in a patent office" - as if he had pinched them or something.

Because relativity is basically an affront to everything you can see and smell and hear with your own body. It is intuitively wrong, and that really bothers a person.

So why don't people pick on quantum mechanics to the same degree? It certainly seems far more absurd to me. I mean, "the cat is both dead and alive"!?!? Fuck off.

QM was not devised by a single titan but by several giants.

[Admiral Valdemar]

How to you have measurements without instruments? A simple ruler is an instrument. "Measurements" without instruments are called "guestimates".

Estimates. Say that G-word one more time and prepare for a thrashing. It is an utterly contemptible piece of English.

Maybe it has something to do with the rather depressing things relativity theory has to say about humanity's chances of reaching the stars (in something less than decades or centuries). There are parts of it I wish were wrong.

More like the lack of anything to really cover those distances. There is a HUGE energy gap between going to Pluto and the heliopause, and going to Alpha Centauri. Even if FTL were possible, the energy needed for that would likely be impossibly huge. Going STL isn't all that bad thanks to relativity and time dilation. It means a trip to a local star takes only a couple of years subjective time, though you still get the objective time being however long it takes light assuming you're skimming below lightspeed at a constant one gee acceleration. To do such a feat requires a revolutionary drive (preferably a Bussard ramjet that negates Brehmstrahlung somehow, or a RAIR) with some pretty nifty engineering trickery.

[Lord Zentei]

Going STL isn't all that bad thanks to relativity and time dilation. It means a trip to a local star takes only a couple of years subjective time, though you still get the objective time being however long it takes light assuming you're skimming below lightspeed at a constant one gee acceleration. To do such a feat requires a revolutionary drive (preferably a Bussard ramjet that negates Brehmstrahlung somehow, or a RAIR) with some pretty nifty engineering trickery.

Or increase human lifespan by a couple of orders of magnitude, so people won't mind using a slowboat as much. More people than astronauts and colonists will benefit from such a development, in any case.

[Sikon]

Perhaps develop hibernation like this. There are alternatives to the conventional thought of the whole crew going into suspended animation for the whole trip. For example, if one could have crewmembers hibernate 6 days out of each week, a 30-year trip with nuke-pulse propulsion could take 4 years in subjective time while having part of the crew running the ship at all times. That's no longer than many people spend at college, and the ship could have the effective land area of an university campus, as it is not so much volume-limited as mass-limited.

Of course, life extension too would be best.

Even aside from relativity, the situation probably wouldn't be very greatly different with Newtonian mechanics alone, as reaching more than a moderate fraction of lightspeed with a very massive payload would still be prohibitively expensive for technology known to be possible short of a major breakthrough like self-replicating technology. For example, with nuke-pulse propulsion, there is a very exponential increase in initial mass needed beyond obtaining a few percent of the speed of light if one starts increasing the number of stages. Starships are more limited by technology than science, in fact also more limited by economics than technology alone.

[General Trelane (Retired)]

I think the topic question has been adequately answered. As for the sample Letter to the Editor, SirNitram's point #4 applies in spades.

Observations of stars moving away from us at distances far greater than would be possible unless they are moving at speeds far greater than the speed of light disproves the theory that nothing can move faster than the speed of light.

Where is the evidence that FTL speeds are required to explain this?

The only way Einstein could be right is if the Earth were the ceter of the universe.

He ignors the fact that you could leave Earth, slow down, which - if his theory were correct -- make time speed up for the traveler in a ship relative to the time on Earth. This would have to be true because there is no starting point for the effect of movement on relative.

So, if you where to come to a complete stop in Space, you would die of old age instantly, but according to Einstein, time cannot exist without movement.

Simply astounding! Has he even looked at the time-dilation formula? If so, he clearly fails to grasp it at all!

Can he define a 'complete stop'? Relative to what? Oops, there that word 'relative' again. Looking at the formula:

Tr = T / [1-(V/c)^2]^0.5

The formula itself shows his contention is not supportable. Imbecile.

If he had any intelligence, his statement, "there is no starting point for the effect of movement on relative," would have clued him in that a complete stop is nonsense.

This is called a paradox, so much for Einstein!.

There nothing necessarily wrong with a paradox. . .it's only a problem if it's an unresolvable paradox. He may think he's come up with one, but he's only an idiot.