Comments on: A Gamma Ray Race Through the Fabric of Space-Time Proves Einstein Right

By: John Miesner

John Miesner — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:31:06 +0000

0.9 second in 7.3 billion years is 0.99999999999999999 agreement. Is someone trying to say that this is not an acceptable error? Have you ever heard of anything being measured to this accuracy? Of course you can’t prove Einstein right but he has been proven closer to right than anything else has ever been in all of human history.

By: Ashchaya

Ashchaya — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:51:40 +0000

Seagull Says: “Keep in mind that this light travelled 7,300,000,000 light years, and that the initial explosion was not instantaneous (and in fact could have thrown off different ‘layers’ of gamma ray energies at slightly different times). The study here is within its acceptable error range.”

Nice blinkers.

By: Brian Beverly

Brian Beverly — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:53:09 +0000

Einstein cannot be ‘proved right’, however, we can falsify him. Fortunately for quantum physicists cosmologists understand stellar structure evolution and the early universe perfectly. The experimental error in cosmology is so small that there is virtually no background noise. Why no discussion of their error analysis? Has everyone checked their work?

If space time is grainy then do you see any potential problems or bias by already referring to the quanta of light only in terms of their wavelengths? The fact that no one has mentioned integer multiplies of the ground state worries me. The data may falsify a discrete space-time but this article and the publicity for Einstein is dogmatic, when was the last time a null experiment was published in the NYT? I smell a rat.

Can science move past hero worship?

By: Seagull

Seagull — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:22:59 +0000

#9: The fact that they are 0.9s apart supports the idea that either there is no granularity or that it is so small that it doesn’t affect the shorter wavelenghts as quantum theories suggested. If the granularity was on the order of size predicted by quantum theories, the separation would have been more than 0.9 seconds. Keep in mind that this light travelled 7,300,000,000 light years, and that the initial explosion was not instantaneous (and in fact could have thrown off different ‘layers’ of gamma ray energies at slightly different times). The study here is within its acceptable error range.

By: Measuring Cup

Measuring Cup — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:52:00 +0000

Or, perhaps time is simply a man made measurement that can only be used once in space and space is real. Therefore there are no grains of space-time. Only a measurement of how much time is needed to go through space.

By: Ashchaya

Ashchaya — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:13:14 +0000

I see no proof here. The fact that they’re 0.9s apart contradicts the very point of the article that they supposedly travelled at the same speed. So desperate are so many to cling to humble Einstein’s theories that they put blinkers on to make it so.

Popular science is so unscientific it makes me sad. “Close enough, eh guys?”

By: amphiox

amphiox — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:20:08 +0000

#5: “Or that possibly they all traveled through the same space “terrain” on their way from point of origin to here, thereby encountering the same intervening forces?”

Actually chubbee, that was the whole point. The hypothesis being tested was that spacetime was “grainy” enough that the high energy short wavelength photons would experience a “different” terrain en route than the longer wavelength lower energy photons – for a short wavelength photon, a small irregularity is a large obstacle, while for a long wavelength photon, the same sized irregularity might was well not be there. Think of listening for FM and AM radio waves broadcast from the same point. The AM radio can be detected from further away because the longer wavelengths pass over obstacles that the shorter FM wavelengths get blocked.

The hypothesis was not confirmed, meaning that the “graininess” of the intervening spacetime must have been so small that the high energy short wavelengths pass by unimpeded the same as the low energy long wavelengths (ie, relative to the “graininess”, even the short high energy wavelengths are long), thus giving the theoretical upper limit to the size of the hypothesized “graininess” that the researchers report.

By: AlanM

AlanM — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:15:43 +0000

Doug #2, two reasons (I think).

1. We have a pretty good idea of what generates the gamma rays and they would have been generated at the same time by our theories
2. If they were generated at different times then it would be a truly mind-melting coincidence for them to arrive at the same time on Earth. John and Mary were both told to be at your place at 4PM, so it’s not so surprising that different start times resulted in the same arrival time. Of course, mind-melting coincidences *do* happen, which is why this experiment should be replicated (not that it wouldn’t have been anyway).

By: YouRang

YouRang — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:00:58 +0000

The part that I find strange is: Is there no large mass approximately between here and the explosion? I.E. gravitational lensing from relatively small masses doesn’t ordinarily generate multiple signals since the source is so uniform. If the source is highly confined in time, one should expect that there would be multiple lensing events. Indeed how many bursts associated with high mass objects are the mirage from a more distant object whose primary signal arrived some time ago. At 1 second separation from straight on, the delayed signal would arrive several hundred thousand years earlier. Admittedly the cross section is small; but the payoff in terms of relative distances would be huge.
With the usual quoted number of 100 *10^9 galaxies within 13 billion lyrs, we get about 10 billion galaxies within 7 billion lyrs. Assume all galaxies at an average distance of 5 billion lyrs, Then each galaxy occupies radius about 10^5 lyrs circle. So a black hole at the center of that galaxy is within 10^5/7*10^9 rads of the straight path. Hmm that’s still about a second. Astronomers don’t see as finely as I thought.
Even if they had found a difference, the long wavelength inhomogeneities in space should make shorter wavelengths arrive earlier. After all if you fire a gamma ray and a visible ray through glass at an angle, the gamma ray would go straight thru and the visible would be diffracted both because of the path integral summation. So the null result can just be the result of competing disadvantages for long wavelengths and short wavelengths.

By: chubbee

chubbee — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:37:53 +0000

“they must have all traveled at almost exactly the same speed. That suggests either that space-time is smooth and continuous, as general relativity proposed, or that the grains of space-time are smaller than we ever thought possible”
Or that possibly they all traveled through the same space “terrain” on their way from point of origin to here, thereby encountering the same intervening forces?
Dare I say, Duh?

By: deadnoon

deadnoon — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:45:56 +0000

maybe the different route with difierent speed

By: Kin

Kin — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:50:18 +0000

Apparently Doug is (too) to consider it [and I only say so rudely because I think his wording was rude], but I do believe they mention the explosion. It is “the” explosion not explosions that created the gamma rays.

So they came from the same source and same moment.

By: Doug Nusbaum

Doug Nusbaum — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:36:21 +0000

John and Mary both arrived at my house at the same and they both left from the same apartment, so they both traveled at the same speed. And no one sees any problem with that?
How about Mary stopped to put on lipstick so she left 1/2 hour after john.

Exactly how was it determined that the high and low energy gamma rays left the source at the same time? That point was not even raised. Perhaps the editors think that we consumers of discover science are to dumb to understand these nuances?

By: Stevie

Stevie — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:08:07 +0000

Ahhh .. Do you want Fries with that ? …