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marzojr
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Long have I tried to put the forced Tails respawn trick to use in AIZ1. I have finally succeeded. Here are 2 WIPs: AIZ1 WIP for newgame+ run, 35 frames faster than the published run. This movie needs either of the initial savestates from here. Partial AIZ1 WIP for any% run, where the mini-boss appears 44 frames before the published run. If a certain timed object is in a good place further down the level (still haven't tried), it may be possible to keep this improvement till the end. The any% run may or may not get a full revision; that depends on whether or not I can improve more levels down the road. The newgame+, on the other hand, will definitely have many improvements.
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An easy yes vote. Truly nice work.
True wrote:
Again, camhack-enabled emulator binary available anywhere?
Here. This is, in fact, the very same emulator I sent to FuzZerd way back then when he was starting the TAS, and it features camhack (toggled by scroll lock, controlled by page up/down and home), hitbox and solidity display, and ground angle and sprite RAM address (toggled by numlock). All of this was coded by Nitsuja and Upthorn, by the way, I just compiled it from the source.
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Because the shortcut does not work in a Sonic+Tails game, simple as that. In this shortcut, and in a Sonic solo or Knuckles game, jumping after hitting the capsule spawns Tails to carry the character, as if it to fight the boss. For some reason, this allows the score tally to begin and permits the transition to the next zone.
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MrSweed used a different path that also zipped under the boss, but it is hard to perform in non-TAS circumstances -- it requires some precisely timed jumping while zipping to jump down several levels. Edit: I forgot to mention: I also tried causing Tails to despawn at the right moment to see if I could get the shortcut to work for Sonic+Tails. Still no go.
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At least for Sonic + Tails, this new path is (sadly) useless -- hitting the capsule after the boss doesn't end the level no matter what is done because Tails is already spawned. It might possibly work for Sonic solo (or Tails solo), but I doubt it. Seems that it will remain a Knuckles-only thing. Edit: MrSweed has proven that Sonic solo can use this shortcut.
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Very interesting. It is possible that it will save real time, as it skips the act 1 miniboss and score tally (the latter takes 00:08.33 s because of the sub-1-min time), and the time on the clock also means that the act 2 score tally may be shorter; I don't know if it will save any in-game time, though, but it will be interesting to find out.
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Love the zip in AIZ2. Have you tried replicating the new zip in HCZ1 (from the any% run)? It may just be possible with the right subpixel manipulation and a timely jump/glide.
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Sonikkustar wrote:
I wonder if there is anybody else who will improve the 100% TASes now that mmarks got banned. They just seem slightly outdated with all the new zips that have been discovered.
I will be updating the newgame+, and maybe the Sonic 100%. The first is more certain, the latter much less likely.
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Nicely done; this run is getting more and more awesome! It will be an easy yes vote when it hits the Workbench.
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rhebus is absolutely right: your observable universe is in your past, and you cannot send anything into it without some for of time travel. Your observable universe is constantly expanding as time passes because there will be a bigger region of space-time which could have affected you, just as your interaction universe is constantly shrinking (even though it remains the same size -- infinite -- because of the universe's accelerated expansion).
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Warp wrote:
So my question could be summarized as: Can these two observable universes overlap?
Yes. For any event horizon (apparent or not), you can separate the universe into the following (possibly empty) sets:
  • Observable universe: that portion of the universe that can influence the observer in some way (e.g., light). This is the causal past of the observer.
  • Interaction universe: that portion of the universe that can be influenced by the observer in some way (e.g., light). This is the causal future of the observer.
  • Post-horizon universe: that portion of the universe that can neither influence nor be influenced by the observer. This is the (set theoretical) complement of the (set theoretical) union of the causal past and the causal future of the observer.
(except for the observable universe, these names are not "standard") Both observers can see the light coming from (the same) distant stars located in directions orthogonal to their relative motion, so their observable universes overlap. Their interaction universes will also overlap in a similar manner, but in the future instead of in the past; but the two observers' will be outside each other's observable and interaction universes. The observable and interaction universes may overlap in some regions and they may be disjoint in others. That explanation is enough to answer the conundrum you presented; I can explain it later if you can't work it out.
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Nice work. There is a possible improvement for the current version of Oil Ocean 1 which should give around a second, possibly more. I spliced the improvement into your movie (starting at frame 36749); it is here. The important bit is the amount of speed gained in the pipes; there is possibly more to be gained after it.
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Warp wrote:
I still have hard time understanding or accepting that notion. Imagine General Relativity predicting light bending when passing close to massive objects or the perihelion of the orbit of mercury precessing (in a non-newtonian way) or time changes caused by gravity wells, and nobody bothering to actually check if those are true by actual measurements in 80+ years because it would just confirm the prediction and hence it would be extremely boring and uninteresting. I just don't buy that.
But this is not an experiment where a null result was expected -- there were arguments that we should observe light deflection even in Newtonian theory. Sure a null result was a possible result, but there were other results which had to be ruled out even if GR was not being tested.
Warp wrote:
I know next to nothing about quantum mechanics, but I find it curious and interesting why the particle behaves like it passed through two of the slits even if there are more available.
Ah, but it is nothing of the sort; this is just Huygen's principle in the context of quantum mechanics -- each slit acts as if it were a particle source, and the waves (probability amplitudes) are linearly superposed. The interference effects are seen only when you calculate probabilities from the (linearly superposed) amplitudes, and the squared-norm relation between amplitudes and probabilities naturally splits out the slits pairwise. This is perfectly consistent with Feynman's path integral interpretation. Moreover, and like the quantum eraser, this it is not even a quantum thing -- a macroscopic beam of light going through a 3-slit experiment will give the exact same thing because the electromagnetic fields are linearly superposed after the slits and the field intensity is proportional to the squared-norm of the electric field.
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Warp wrote:
One would think that an experiment that confirms a prediction made by a scientific theory is extremely interesting and useful. And reading articles about the experiment seems to confirm that its result are considered interesting, even if expected.
Oh, the articles are interesting to read, yes; but doing an experiment whose result is expected to be a null result is uninteresting to the person doing it -- it is harder to get grants for it for one -- unless the results turn out to not be null. Science thrives on new things. After actually reading the article, I confirmed my suspicions about its underlying mechanism: the actual "prediction" of Born used is none other than Born's rule, a central tenet of quantum physics -- namely, the way in which probabilities are obtained from probability amplitudes. If the experiment had not resulted in the expected null result, then just about every experiment in quantum physics would have shown unexplainable differences from the theory. Particularly since the same thing would probably happen in a classical 3-slit experiment with light under classical (macroscopic) conditions -- the light intensity is proportional to the squared norm of the electric field (for light, E = cB), and the electric field superposes linearly; hence, the exact same argument used in their paper can be made for the electric field. Sinha et al just had very good PR... and lots of hype.
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I will have to read the article before I can give any reasonable reply; but at least for (2), the authors were also stunned to find out no one had done it before. My guess is that everyone was going for more interesting experiments instead of one that would almost assuredly give a null result as this one does -- null results are generally uninteresting.
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Lookup tables: they had pre-generated tables for sines, cosines and tangents of several angles and looked up in those tables when needed. Intermediate angles could get rounded up, rounded down or interpolated. Similarly, they also had tables to calculate the arcsine, arccosine and arctangent when they were needed.
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Sonikkustar wrote:
We have saved over a second in MC1, and were trying to hex it in ASAP. However, the editor im using refuses to edit anything so this may take a while.
If you are on Windows, or have a VM with Windows on it, I recommend the TAS Movie Editor. Requires .NET, but it is very good.
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nfq wrote:
well, it's pretty strong at 20 meters from the earth, but not at 2 million km...
Sun's mass: ~2x10^30 kg Earth's mass: ~6x10^24 kg Gravitational constant: ~7x10^-11 m^3/(kg * s^2) Earth-Sun distance: ~1.50x10^11 m Force exerted on Earth in Newtonian gravity: ~3.7x10^22 N A person's mass: ~80 kg Earth-person distance: 20 m Force exerted on person in Newtonian gravity: ~8.4x10^13 N Thus, the force of the Sun on the Earth 150 million km away is a mere 9 orders of magnitude stronger than the force of the Earth on a person 20 m away. And before you start complaining: Newtonian gravity is enough to explain the motion of planets in the solar system to within 43 arc-seconds per century (1 arc-second = 1/3600 of 1 degree) for the precession of the perihelion of Mercury, the planet which feels the strongest gravitational pull from the Sun and for which the general relativistic effects are the strongest. Unless you can match that level of accuracy with your guesses and beliefs, please keep them out of this thread.
nfq wrote:
i think all forces are equally strong (they are the same force), gravity just seems to be less strong because it extends further (infinite). that's also why strong nuclear force is stronger than electromagnetism.
Your thinking is flawed and demonstrably wrong: even if they are the same force (and there is evidence that there is), it does not mean (and indeed is not the case) that these different manifestations of this force are equal in magnitude. Moreover, electromagnetism has exactly the same range as gravity -- infinite -- and would be stronger were it not for the fact that charges come in both signs in equal amounts and mostly cancel each other's effects rather quickly.
nfq wrote:
Both Neptune and Pluto were discovered through theory before they were observed.
yeah, i knew that already.
nfq wrote:
because i think there's another natural force that keeps them in their orbits
Boy, cognitive dissonance is a bitch... here you have an example that demonstrates quite forcefully that gravity is enough not only to keep planets in their orbits, but to calculate said orbits well enough that deviations from the expectation can be confidently taken to mean something has yet to be observed and where to observe it and still you cling to the idea that there must be something else...
nfq wrote:
you can say it both ways, but neither of them explain why the solar system is stable. it's begging the question.
No, it is invoking the anthropic principle: the fact that the solar system is stable does not require justification, it just is. If something predicts the solar system to be stable within its framework, it matches reality; if it does not, it must be tossed away. Modeling of the solar system using gravitational models is complex, but it is good enough to show that it is stable in the short term -- the long term is a harder problem to solve. But in either case, proving it is not is not done by stating it is, but by either doing the math or by doing enough simulations to show it is not. Edit: Ninja'ed by Kuwaga.
nfq wrote:
pluto is not a planet
By convention only, and you wouldn't have dreamt of using this line a couple of years ago. But now that Pluto no longer within the arbitrary delimitations of what constitutes a planet and what does not, suddenly nothing else that applies to planets need to apply to Pluto, right? It can spin on a dime, or move in a highly elliptical manner and it won't matter.
nfq wrote:
you mean two objects could just appear out of nowhere a distance apart from each other? that's not what the big bang theory says at least. it says it all just started with one object, so what you're saying seems to contradict established science (big bang).
So now you resort to quoting something you clearly have no understanding of in an attempt to make your point? The Big Bang theory does not say that everything was one object; or even that there was an initial singularity. It states that the further back in time you go, the more densely packed was everything. It is usually extrapolated (even by scientists) to an initial singularity because there is a theorem by Hawking and Ellis stating that such an initial singularity must exist within general relativity; but strictly speaking, general relativity breaks down at that point exactly because of the singularity. Regardless of whether or not this singularity existed, and even in the absence of other forces general relativity predicts that this densely-packed universe will expand -- if the conditions are right, forever.
nfq wrote:
unmoved movers
Because everyone knows that all 2,000+ year-old philosophical concepts with no basis on reality, and with a lot of unproven or demonstrably false assumptions, are still valid tools for understanding of the world... if you want to discuss these outdated philosophical concepts, please start a new thread, as this thread is for physics -- and when Warp started it, I am guessing he wanted to get clarifications to his questions with answers based on modern Physics, not on guesses and opinions that go against the evidence.
nfq wrote:
the ink does not move, but the dots move (the particles that the dots are made of).
analogy (plural analogies)
    1. A relationship of resemblance or equivalence between two situations, people, or objects, especially when used as a basis for explanation or extrapolation.
Analogy != exact match in every point to the thing being explained. An analogy is only valid if one does not try to extend it beyond the explanation; the further you go from the explained point, the worse the analogy becomes. Edit: deleted something I had forgotten to delete.
nfq wrote:
strange, because i actually don't believe in supernatural phenomena. or well... i think it's possible that there are things like ghosts for example, but if they exist, aren't they part of nature, and thus not supernatural?
If they are part of nature, where is the evidence?
nfq wrote:
ironic video. i could make the same kind of video and direct it towards materialist science.
You could; but it would fail. It would fail because science is not philosophically materialistic, but pragmatically materialistic; natural causes are considered first because (a) they have thus far been enough and (b) they are useful. Mostly because of (b): a natural explanation allows things like cell phones and computers to be created from the study of electromagnetic, quantum and thermodynamic phenomena in terms of natural causes; a supernatural explanation does not yield anything because it does not really explain anything. If and when something comes along for which pragmatic naturalism finds no explanation, it will be tossed out of the window.
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Warp wrote:
I don't know how much you have read nfq's past posts, but at least previously he has clearly expressed his "open-minded" philosophy, meaning that he has a strong belief in many of the purported extraterrestrial and supernatural phenomena that are so popular among pseudoscientists, ufologists, paranormalists and many other "new age" movement representatives.
Ah, so I was right; thanks for confirming it. Personally, I refer to this kind of "open-minded" philosophy as the "garbage-dump mind" philosophy: accept whatever crap comes along uncritically -- except, of course, for established science, which is evil and wrong and must be doubted whenever it appears. I am always reminded of this video when I encounter this mindset. (edit: oops, linked to wrong video) This mindset is rather ironic in that science is based on skepticism -- ideally, you are supposed to take everything provisionally and only when there is evidence for it, filtering out things which have been shown not to work or exist. So in order to work as it does, the garbage-dump mind must embrace gullibility and, at the same time, be skeptic of skepticism...
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nfq wrote:
shouldn't gravity cause it to lose speed too, and make it crash? that's what gravity does, right... it attracts things towards itself, and when both are close enough, the motion stops.
Gravity also does not affect speed in the transverse direction. At any point in the trajectory, gravity will point from one body to the other, and unless their relative velocity is entirely in this direction, they will move without crashing (as long as they are sufficiently far away).
nfq wrote:
but they will just move towards each other and then the motion stops.
Whoever told you that did you a disservice... if it was a school, go get your money back.
nfq wrote:
it's a little strange that such a weak force like gravity can hold them in their orbits. but some comets will leave the solar system. it will take a long time though.
Jump off of a 10-story building to see how "weak" it is. Gravity may be weak compared to the other fundamental forces, but it is always attractive; the other forces have charges that cancel out on macroscopic scales (or even intra-atomic scales, for strong and weak nuclear forces) and end up being almost throughly negligible on the inter-planetary scale.
nfq wrote:
i think if only gravity and speed is holding them in their orbits, they should have all crashed or left the solar system (lol), because it would be too big of a coincidence for the speed and distance to be just right for them to stay in their orbits for billions of years. everything in the universe should be in one giant ball of matter. but i guess that's kinda what the big bang theory says was in the beginning.
Ah, guesswork. Nothing is more out-of-place in science than pure wild-***** guesses. Let me ask you a question: do you know the history of how Neptune (and later Pluto) was discovered? By your comments, I would bet large sums of money that the answer is "no". So here it goes: Both Neptune and Pluto were discovered through theory before they were observed. Yeah, you read that right. Physicists since Newton have been calculating the orbits of planets using Newton's equations and comparing them to astronomical observation. In the early 19th century, as accuracy of astronomical observations increased, they started to notice discrepancies between the calculated and observed positions of Uranus for which they had no explanation. After some proposed that an as yet undiscovered planet could be the cause, they calculated, using the theory, where this planet would have to be, its mass and speed in order to account for the observations. Then, looking at the calculated position, they found Neptune. There was an element of luck, because the orbit of Neptune was similarly perturbed by Pluto, which was eventually found in the same way. So, to reiterate: gravity, speed and distance are enough to keep the solar system stable for billions of years? Yes; we know this by direct computation and observation, not by guessing. Is it a "coincidence" that they are "just right"? No, and no: there is considerable leeway in the orbits that still keep the solar system functional. Moreover, you have it backwards: the solar system isn't stable because the positions and speeds of the planets are "just right", but they are "just right" because the solar system would have disintegrated long ago if they were not. Not that "stable" means "pretty" or "ordered": there is evidence of several powerful collisions at the beginning of the solar system, including one strong enough (with a Mars-sized object) to blast enough material from the Earth to form the Moon while the Earth itself was being formed.
nfq wrote:
the orbits of planets are slightly elliptical, but i would call them circles because they're almost perfect circles.
Tell that to Pluto. But no, they are not circles and they are not elliptical: the orbits are messy, having oscillations around the "elliptical" orbit that is due to the gravitational interaction with the other planets and moons. And even the elliptical orbit precesses around the Sun due to the interactions with other planets and due to general relativistic effects. All these effects are observable, have been observed and are accounted by theory, by the way -- some being predicted by theory before being observed. Almost perfect circles? Bah.
nfq wrote:
i say the earth is round too, even though it's not perfectly round (nothing in nature is).
Round != spherical. The Earth is round, but it is not a sphere.
nfq wrote:
btw, i don't think the orbits have anything to do with ID.
Yeah, right. I know that this cannot be really true because of this:
nfq wrote:
not really, because like i said earlier there had to be something that moved them apart in the first place, right? so how could they be unmoved movers?
Busted. I was going to reply to the rest of your post, until I reached this. This alone shows that you are not really sincere about wanting to learn anything, and should be regarded in this thread as just a troll. Either that or you are pulling a Poe. Either way, further replying to you is a waste of time. Edit: Forgot this:
DarkKobold wrote:
Warp wrote:
I understand that General Relativy allows the distance between two points in space (and consequently the distance between two particles) to grow faster than c
Can someone explain how this works, in very simple language?
In simple language? Let me try. Space-time in general relativity is an integral participant in the dynamics of a system. It is warped by matter, and in turn, tells matter how to move, which warps it depending on how it moves and so on. In particular, global solutions of the equations of general relativity show that space-time, in its entirety, is not static; it may expand and contract (globally). This will affect the distances between objects in it; and since space-time is not a material object, it is not limited by the speed of light for the rate of expansion. One common analogy is a balloon: here, the rubber represents space-time. Place dots on the surface of this balloon to represent stars. When you fill the balloon (representing the expansion of the Universe), the distance between the dots will increase, even though the dots themselves haven't moved in the surface of the balloon. The stars (dots, in the analogy) cannot move faster than (or even at) the speed of light because they are massive objects; but space-time itself has no such limitation.
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nfq wrote:
But spacetime curvature hasn't been observed either, so couldn't that be called "invisible pink unicorn curvature"? We have observed effects of gravity, like gravitational lensing, but not the curvature of spacetime.
It depends on your definition of "observed"; for all but the most pedantic definitions, space-time curvature has been observed, while gravitons haven't. This is because only curved space-time theories of gravity can account for all observed phenomena in the observed magnitude, whereas flat space-time "theories" of gravity can't and graviton "theories" have had no predictions observed that are unique to them.
nfq wrote:
Btw, shouldn't the orbits of planets be circular, and not elliptical, according to the spacetime curvature theory (because of the uniform curvature of spacetime around celestial bodies)?
When it is all accounted for, general relativity actually predicts that orbits aren't even elliptical, but are ellipses that precess around one of the foci. And this is nicely confirmed by experiment. This all happens because curvature isn't uniform, as rhebus said.
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Warp wrote:
I once read a wonderful introduction to special relativity (IIRC from a book) which was surprisingly easy to understand. It started with the simple assumption that the speed of light in vacuum is the same for all (intertial) observers (which I think is a fair assumption to make because it's a measurement result rather than a mere hypothesis), and from that single assumption it deduced the Lorentz transformations in a logical and easy-to-follow way. It was rather illuminating. (Of course this was many, many years ago, and damned if I remember any of it now.)
Strictly speaking, you also need the principle of (special) relativity (i.e., that the laws of Physics are the same for all inertial observers), plus the assumptions of spatial homogeneity and isotropy and memorylessness (for example, the proper time cannot elapse differently depending on the past history of an observer, but only in its current state of motion). This way of deducing relativity comes all the way back to Einstein, although he left the latter 3 assumptions unstated.
Warp wrote:
I'm assuming from your explanation that the general relativity equations can likewise be deduced by making the further assumption that the speed of light in vacuum is the same for all observers regardless of their state (ie. inertial or accelerating) and that gravitational mass and inertial mass are the same thing. I'm assuming this naturally leads to the result of curved spacetime. Is that about correct?
Regarding the idea, yes; but it rather more involved than that of special relativity. The principles of general relativity which Esintein originally used are: - equivalence principle; - principle of general relativity/principle of general covariance; - Mach's principle; - correspondence principle: general relativity must agree with Newtonian universal gravity for weak gravitational fields and low velocities, and with special relativity in the absence of gravity; - principle of minimal gravitational coupling: no unnecessary terms should be added when making the transition from special to general relativity. This principle is rather vague, and was used implicitly by Einstein. Note that the constancy of the speed of light is neither a principle nor a consequence of general relativity; in fact, it changes along a gravitational field. The important property of light -- that it travels in space as fast as in time, and is forever being reach of massive objects -- is preserved because the main feature of space-time is kept -- simply put, any sufficiently small region of space-time in general relativity "looks like" a piece of space-time in special relativity. Modern treatments usually dispense with the deduction from these principles, except for historical purposes, and use a different and much more efficient approach.
Warp wrote:
Yes, it was a bit clearer, but it didn't really answer the question of how a black hole can have an electric charge (which can be measured from the outside).
In the same way as you can have gravity: the field is in place before the formation of the black hole, and the presence of an event horizon does not make the charge (or mass, for gravity) cease to exist. Changes in the electromagnetic field from within the event horizon, if any, cannot propagate beyond the event horizon, but the field does not cease to exist -- that would violate conservation of charge, energy and momentum.
nfq wrote:
Who knows, but I have a better question... why is gravity said to be a curvature of spacetime, when it contradicts the theory of gravitons and a superforce? Einstein wanted to unify gravity and electromagnetism, so why did he create a theory that says that gravity behaves in a completely different way than other forces?
This answer has several answers, and several levels of answers. Lets see: 1) theory of gravitons: there is no such thing, really. Gravitons are theoretical constructs which are supposed to mediate gravity in a quantum field formulation of gravity, but gravitons have never been observed and there is no quantum field theory of gravity yet. This means that, for now, your question would still make as much sense as it does now if you substitute "invisible pink unicorns" for "gravitons" :-p. 2) Einstein developed general relativity before quantum mechanics was finalized, and long before quantum field theory. The weak and strong nuclear forces weren't even known yet, and their unification wasn't even dreamt of yet. Einstein started trying to unify gravity and electromagnetism decades after general relativity, and by making electromagnetism into something analogous to what gravity had become -- i.e., by "geometrizing" the electromagnetic field. So your question is also wrong from a historical point of view, as well as the methodology by which Eisntein (and others) were attempting the unification of the forces. 3) Relativity (special and general) ends up dealing with the structure of space-time. It was quantum mechanics which had to be adapted to be compatible with special relativity, not the other way around. By analogy, it is expected that quantum field theories will have to be adapted into the curved space-time of general relativity, even if the field equations of general relativity have to be changed. 4) Special relativity is incompatible with gravity. There have been many, many attempts to dispense with general relativity by making a classical force-field gravitational field within the flat space-time of special relativity. All such attempts were either logically inconsistent (i.e., the theory predicted gravitational attraction would exist and conservation of energy would always be present, but also predicted that conservation of energy would only happen if there was no gravitational attraction), physically unsound (i.e., predicting gravitational waves that had negative energy), experimentally incorrect or identical to general relativity but with unobservable extra features (such as an extra unobservable flat background space-time). Combine with (3), above, at your leisure. 5)At the end of the day, general relativity is still the best theory we have for gravity. Since it predicts gravity to be the curvature of space-time, than that is what gravity is -- until a better theory arrives.
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Warp wrote:
Why is Hawking radiation a well-accepted hypothesis even though it heavily mixes GR and QM?
There. :-p More seriously, it is a hypothesis which is accepted pending confirmation -- it makes sense given what we understand of QM, and is a way of solving the information paradox of black holes (which is one of the many ways in which QM and GR are incompatible). But without evidence, it will never amount for more than a hypothesis.
Warp wrote:
I have to confess that all this goes well over my head.
I will try to make it simpler: two of the bedrock principles behind general relativity are the equivalence principle and the principle of general relativity. There are others, but these are by far the most important because they are (a) testable, (b) tested and (c) expected to be present in all theories of gravity to come, even in theories of quantum gravity. The principle of general relativity is the ultimate form of the principle of relativity: it says that the laws of Physics are the same for all observers. Contrast earlier versions which stated that only for inertial observers. This principle basically states that the laws of Physics must be written in tensorial form, as tensor equations are valid for any coordinate system you pick (this latter form was explicitly stated by Einstein as the "principle of general covariance", but most authors nowadays consider it redundant). The principle of equivalence states that gravity and acceleration are equivalent -- more specifically, that any gravitational field is locally equivalent to acceleration of the observer in the absence of gravity; it is often stated as the fact that active and passive gravitational masses are equivalent to inertial mass (see this). It also has the distinction of being one of the most well tested principles in Physics. The principle of equivalence couples everything to the gravitational field: for example, a beam of light in a gravitational field moves in the same way in relation to a freely-falling observer as it would in the absence of gravity from the perspective of an accelerating observer -- hence, it must bend in a gravitational field. In the same way, that beam of light must lose energy as it "climbs" a gravitational field (away from the source) and gain energy as it falls down that gravitational field (towards the source) -- i.e., gravitational redshift. The laws of conservation of energy and conservation of momentum are replaced in relativity (special or general) by the law of conservation of the stress-energy-momentum tensor. As I said, it is an automatic algebraic feature of the theory. This, combined with the principles of equivalence and general relativity, is enough to make everything warp space-time -- for example, if a beam of light bends in a gravitational field (as it must, because of the equivalence principle), it must cause its own gravitational field or conservation of stress-energy-momentum will fail, which is algebraically impossible. I hope I managed to clear it up a bit, instead of further muddying the issue...
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Everything warps space-time in GR (and all other alternative theories of gravity since Einstein)*: if it has energy content, momentum (linear or angular), pressure or stress, then it warps space-time. In GR, this comes because of the contracted Bianchi identities I mentioned earlier. These identities are algebraic identities, meaning they always hold; and by virtue of the core equations of GR, they force the conservation of the stress-energy-momentum tensor to hold everywhere. If something had stress, energy or momentum and that something didn't gravitate, it would cause detectable violations in the conservation of stress-energy-momentum according to GR; and this would violate the fundamental principles at the core of GR -- most notably, the equivalence principle and the principle of general relativity. However, the strong and weak forces have the "disadvantage" of being short-ranged enough that it is usually understood that quantum effects are extremely important when dealing with these forces; and they are short-ranged enough that it is usually understood that gravitational effects are negligible. Regardless of whether or not these assumptions are correct, they have the effect of causing most physicists to avoid studying the nuclear forces in depth from the perspective of GR. This doesn't mean that physicists don't do it -- for example, a former colleague of mine did just that in his doctoral thesis, studying the effects of neutrino confinement in the life cycle of supernovae -- it just means that it is not too common. * GR is still the best of them all because it is the simplest -- it has one "free" parameter, which is fixed by the requirements of compatibility with Newtonian gravitation in its domain of validity, and it is so successful that all other theories are ranked according to how well they match the predictions of GR.
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OmnipotentEntity wrote:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Quantum/virtual_particles.html They exchange virtual photons.
To be quite frank, I think that this answer is terrible and should never be used. Ever. Black holes, such as the Reissner-Nordström, are a feature of general relativity; virtual photons (and virtual particles in general) are a feature of quantum field theory. Trying to explain how general relativity black holes interact by using a different theory which is completely and thoroughly incompatible with general relativity at a fundamental level is not an explanation at all. Moreover, the very idea of the eletromagnetic field (and other fields) being "mediated by photons" is alien to general relativity -- this idea also has its origins in quantum field theory. While the idea might be useful when doing "semi-quantum" gravity analysis, there is no need to use this when talking about general relativity proper. And who knows, the very notion of particle-mediated fields may turn out be wrong when an actual theory of quantum gravity is found. The actual answer for the question is conservation of stress-energy-momentum: given the expression for electromagnetic energy in terms of the potential fields, you can deduce Maxwell's equations from the contracted Bianchi identities (see this for some information on these identities) on all but a few hyper-surfaces in which the electric and magnetic fields are orthogonal; and if you have Maxwell's equations, the Lorentz force can be deduced from those very same contracted Bianchi identities, regardless of the geometry of the situation. This happens because electromagnetic fields warp space-time in very specific ways in general relativity, and the gravitational field itself is responsible for coupling the charges to the electromagnetic fields; this is easier to see in action in the Hilbert-Palatini variational principle formulation of general relativity.
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