Observations and Science
The last few posts have allowed the point of view to be formulated, but in order for it not to look like “taken from the ceiling,” you need to take a brief look at the history. Go through the milestones, not much delving into the details.
So let's start with the ancient Greek science - from Aristotle and Ptolemy. The device of the world was quite simple and logical:
Do not think that such a picture of the world was too naive or did not correspond well to the observed facts of the time. Scientists of that era could perfectly interpret their observations, and, for example, the sphericity of the Earth was already known to them. Due to a lot of facts - what a lunar eclipse looks like, the difference in the position of the Sun at the same time in different cities, the presence of the horizon and its change with an increase in the height of the observation point, etc. - All this not only made it possible to understand that the Earth is a ball, but also very accurately calculate its size.
The planets, of course, were known too. But as the stars, which for some reason move not with the rest of the sky, but along their own cunning trajectories. Why it was so was not clear, but it did not prevent to build a very good model of their movement - all the planets move in circles around the Earth, while simultaneously moving in spheres of smaller diameter. This design made it possible to predict the position of these planets with the necessary accuracy for the needs of the time (for example, for navigation and astrology). The very description of this model was given by Ptolemy in his Almagest.
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So, this knowledge and understanding of the world around was enough for almost more than a millennium. By and large, nothing so substantial happened in the world that would not fit into this system of knowledge. Also note that this system does not contradict our intuitive view of the world around us - the stationary Earth is in the center of the world, everything revolves around it.
Unfortunately, in the Middle Ages, with the gradual accumulation of observations, with the improvement of measurement methods, facts appeared that for some reason did not fit into this system. Increasing the accuracy of measuring the coordinates of the planets meant that the planets "had to" move along more and more circles, or sometimes the spheres had to intersect. This in itself was somewhat "unnatural", although it did not present a big problem. However, at some point, thanks to the work of Copernicus, (although this idea had arisen before), the idea of transferring the Center of the world to the Sun began to get spread. Its advantages were quite pragmatic things - it allowed, for example, more simply to calculate the coordinates of the planets than the geocentric model. In addition, the planets began to move "only forward", without these incomprehensible stops and even movements in the opposite direction, as was the case in the Ptolemy / Aristotle system.
But only “practical convenience” for changing the paradigm is not enough - a real revolution in consciousness occurred decades later - thanks to the updated astronomical data obtained by Tycho Brahe and the work of Kepler, who was able to give them an interpretation. Kepler noted that all these data fit into a model in which the Sun is in the center, and the planets move in elliptical (rather than more “natural and natural” circular!) Orbits, and the Sun must be in one of the ellipse foci (in focus and not in the geometric center of the ellipse!). Moreover, they noticed other patterns in the motions of the planets (all together, these are the three Kepler laws), which made it possible to calculate their coordinates with much higher accuracy.
I want to pay separate attention to this part - it was thanks to observations and the emergence of new data that did not fit into the dominant model at that time - and a new theory appeared that was able to consistently explain these new facts. The second moment is that the surrounding world (for some reason) turned out to be not at all intuitive or ideal - the planets do not move in circles, the Earth is not located in the center, and the law itself can have an unobvious formulation like "squares of the planetary orbits correspond as cubes of the big semiaxes of their orbits ". All this is unimportant, but what is important is that it somehow works.
Further, several more decades passed - and, thanks to a qualitatively new mathematical apparatus (what is today called "integral and differential calculus"), Newton could take another step - he could mathematically describe how gravity acts on bodies and derive all three Kepler's laws as direct consequences of its law of gravity. Moreover, since it has now become clear that the planets are attracting among themselves, this allowed us to further minimize the difference between the observed coordinates and the calculated ones (and, in between cases, discover a new planet!).
Triumph? The greatest triumph. But not for long.
Again, unfortunately, all new knowledge accumulated as a result of observations. In particular, accurate measurements of the time of Jupiter’s satellites coming out of its shadow (and for some reason they sometimes came out not when they should have been, but with a delay) did not have an explanation. However, they led to the idea that light travels distances not instantaneously, but with some limited speed (albeit rather high by earthly standards). To put it mildly, this is strange, unusual, again - counter-intuitive and incomprehensible why it is needed. In itself, this would be just a funny fact if (much) later a more wierdly strange fact did not come to light: the speed of light does not change, even if we move relative to its source at some speed (for example, approach or move away from it )! This is not only in contradiction with common sense (not to mention intuition), it directly contradicts Newtonian mechanics - which has already shown its effectiveness and versatility - when studying the motion of cosmic bodies, when making the calculations necessary to build a bridge, engine or multi-storey building.
Of course, thanks to the work of Lorentz, Poincaré and Einstein, a completely new physics was built, which was able to describe these phenomena. That is, if earlier we thought that the world around us works according to some “strange” Newtonian laws, which postulate something that is different from our everyday experience (for example, that a moving body will move constantly in the same direction, but we know that this does not happen , that all bodies stop by themselves), now these laws look like a model of harmony, simplicity and order. Why did they have to be abandoned? For the same reason, the conclusions drawn from them are in conflict with the observed phenomena. And it would be okay if “strange” phenomena manifested themselves in any one or limited area of physics. No, now (when it became clear where to look in order to observe anomalies) almost any ordinary experience is, upon closer examination, false:
Do such effects still seem strange and surprising? This means you have not yet considered those phenomena that relate to the microworld, for example:
What is this all about? To a few fairly banal thoughts. First, talking about certain physical phenomena, it is not necessary to appeal to "common sense" or to the "naturalness / unnaturalness" of some sort of theory. As history shows, the laws of the world have little in common with these human notions. Secondly, science is not such a special kind of lottery, where different scientists, lying on the couch, put forward their thoughts about the world order (as far as anyone has enough imagination), and then someone breaks the Nobel Prize jackpot. If you want to share your new theory with the world, you need to be ready to answer some questions:
So let's start with the ancient Greek science - from Aristotle and Ptolemy. The device of the world was quite simple and logical:
- there is a Center of the Universe in which the Earth is located,
- all objects tend to take their "original place". For “heavy” objects, such a place is the Center of the Universe, for smoke and others like it is the Sky. As a result, all the objects fall because they aspire to the Center.
Do not think that such a picture of the world was too naive or did not correspond well to the observed facts of the time. Scientists of that era could perfectly interpret their observations, and, for example, the sphericity of the Earth was already known to them. Due to a lot of facts - what a lunar eclipse looks like, the difference in the position of the Sun at the same time in different cities, the presence of the horizon and its change with an increase in the height of the observation point, etc. - All this not only made it possible to understand that the Earth is a ball, but also very accurately calculate its size.
The planets, of course, were known too. But as the stars, which for some reason move not with the rest of the sky, but along their own cunning trajectories. Why it was so was not clear, but it did not prevent to build a very good model of their movement - all the planets move in circles around the Earth, while simultaneously moving in spheres of smaller diameter. This design made it possible to predict the position of these planets with the necessary accuracy for the needs of the time (for example, for navigation and astrology). The very description of this model was given by Ptolemy in his Almagest.
')
So, this knowledge and understanding of the world around was enough for almost more than a millennium. By and large, nothing so substantial happened in the world that would not fit into this system of knowledge. Also note that this system does not contradict our intuitive view of the world around us - the stationary Earth is in the center of the world, everything revolves around it.
Unfortunately, in the Middle Ages, with the gradual accumulation of observations, with the improvement of measurement methods, facts appeared that for some reason did not fit into this system. Increasing the accuracy of measuring the coordinates of the planets meant that the planets "had to" move along more and more circles, or sometimes the spheres had to intersect. This in itself was somewhat "unnatural", although it did not present a big problem. However, at some point, thanks to the work of Copernicus, (although this idea had arisen before), the idea of transferring the Center of the world to the Sun began to get spread. Its advantages were quite pragmatic things - it allowed, for example, more simply to calculate the coordinates of the planets than the geocentric model. In addition, the planets began to move "only forward", without these incomprehensible stops and even movements in the opposite direction, as was the case in the Ptolemy / Aristotle system.
But only “practical convenience” for changing the paradigm is not enough - a real revolution in consciousness occurred decades later - thanks to the updated astronomical data obtained by Tycho Brahe and the work of Kepler, who was able to give them an interpretation. Kepler noted that all these data fit into a model in which the Sun is in the center, and the planets move in elliptical (rather than more “natural and natural” circular!) Orbits, and the Sun must be in one of the ellipse foci (in focus and not in the geometric center of the ellipse!). Moreover, they noticed other patterns in the motions of the planets (all together, these are the three Kepler laws), which made it possible to calculate their coordinates with much higher accuracy.
I want to pay separate attention to this part - it was thanks to observations and the emergence of new data that did not fit into the dominant model at that time - and a new theory appeared that was able to consistently explain these new facts. The second moment is that the surrounding world (for some reason) turned out to be not at all intuitive or ideal - the planets do not move in circles, the Earth is not located in the center, and the law itself can have an unobvious formulation like "squares of the planetary orbits correspond as cubes of the big semiaxes of their orbits ". All this is unimportant, but what is important is that it somehow works.
Further, several more decades passed - and, thanks to a qualitatively new mathematical apparatus (what is today called "integral and differential calculus"), Newton could take another step - he could mathematically describe how gravity acts on bodies and derive all three Kepler's laws as direct consequences of its law of gravity. Moreover, since it has now become clear that the planets are attracting among themselves, this allowed us to further minimize the difference between the observed coordinates and the calculated ones (and, in between cases, discover a new planet!).
Triumph? The greatest triumph. But not for long.
Again, unfortunately, all new knowledge accumulated as a result of observations. In particular, accurate measurements of the time of Jupiter’s satellites coming out of its shadow (and for some reason they sometimes came out not when they should have been, but with a delay) did not have an explanation. However, they led to the idea that light travels distances not instantaneously, but with some limited speed (albeit rather high by earthly standards). To put it mildly, this is strange, unusual, again - counter-intuitive and incomprehensible why it is needed. In itself, this would be just a funny fact if (much) later a more wierdly strange fact did not come to light: the speed of light does not change, even if we move relative to its source at some speed (for example, approach or move away from it )! This is not only in contradiction with common sense (not to mention intuition), it directly contradicts Newtonian mechanics - which has already shown its effectiveness and versatility - when studying the motion of cosmic bodies, when making the calculations necessary to build a bridge, engine or multi-storey building.
Of course, thanks to the work of Lorentz, Poincaré and Einstein, a completely new physics was built, which was able to describe these phenomena. That is, if earlier we thought that the world around us works according to some “strange” Newtonian laws, which postulate something that is different from our everyday experience (for example, that a moving body will move constantly in the same direction, but we know that this does not happen , that all bodies stop by themselves), now these laws look like a model of harmony, simplicity and order. Why did they have to be abandoned? For the same reason, the conclusions drawn from them are in conflict with the observed phenomena. And it would be okay if “strange” phenomena manifested themselves in any one or limited area of physics. No, now (when it became clear where to look in order to observe anomalies) almost any ordinary experience is, upon closer examination, false:
- constancy of the mass? Lying. Moving relative to our bodies become heavier.
- equivalence of simultaneity of different events? Lying. Events simultaneous in one reporting system may not be so in other systems.
- time invariance? Lying. All processes in bodies moving relative to us slow down.
Do such effects still seem strange and surprising? This means you have not yet considered those phenomena that relate to the microworld, for example:
- a single photon, flying through the cracks, manages to fly through all of them at the same time, at the same time having interfered with itself. It gives some kind of cheating and fraud, and the first reaction - “can not be!”, But the effect of this does not go anywhere.
- resting particles do not have “coordinates” in our usual representation. That is, in general. A rough analogy to this is an attempt to represent a particle as a fog, unevenly distributed throughout the universe - in some places it is much thicker, in some places the opposite. For such a "fog" it is meaningless to be interested in its exact coordinates, and so are the particles.
- particles can transform into each other. Or disappear completely (by colliding a completely stable electron with a completely stable positron - as a result, both will disappear, giving rise to photons). Or to arise "from nothing" (the reverse process, the production of electron-positron pairs in a strong electromagnetic field) - if only the conservation laws are not violated.
- besides electromagnetic and gravitational forces, two more actively appear in the microcosm - a strong interaction (which manages to hold positively charged protons in the atomic nucleus and prevents them from scattering) and a weak one, which is responsible for some types of decay.
- ... and so on, because, in fact, any quantum-mechanical effect is at odds with classical mechanics, to which everyone is accustomed in the ordinary world.
What is this all about? To a few fairly banal thoughts. First, talking about certain physical phenomena, it is not necessary to appeal to "common sense" or to the "naturalness / unnaturalness" of some sort of theory. As history shows, the laws of the world have little in common with these human notions. Secondly, science is not such a special kind of lottery, where different scientists, lying on the couch, put forward their thoughts about the world order (as far as anyone has enough imagination), and then someone breaks the Nobel Prize jackpot. If you want to share your new theory with the world, you need to be ready to answer some questions:
- what exactly the existing theory is bad (for example: it cannot explain such and such phenomena, contradicts these facts, is not confirmed by such an experiment, etc. The argument “but I have nausea” is not accepted),
- what is the best new theory (for example: the conclusions of the theory more accurately agree with the experiment, or they predict some kind of new effect, or allow generalizing some dissimilar phenomena within a single model, etc.),
- exactly how the theory is formulated. Yes, from the word "formula". No formulas mean no model, and no amount of pictures (even beautiful ones!) Will change this situation. And Ptolemaic celestial mechanics, and Newtonian, and relativistic, or, for example, electrodynamics - all of them can be translated into the language of formulas, why does your theory not do this?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/186506/
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