We constantly say that Einstein’s General and Special theories of relativity have passed many different tests, insenuating their accuracy.
Before Einsten, we tested Isaac Newton’s theories, which also passed with accuracy until Einstein came along.
What’s to say another Einstein/Newton comes along 200-300 years from now to dispute Einstein’s theories?
Is that even possible or are his theories grounded in certainty at this point?
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And Newton is still right. Newton gets us around the planet (GPS notwithstanding) and to the Moon, and space probes to other worlds.
Newton was not wrong! It is more accurate to say his theory of gravity is less *complete* than Einstiens, as Einstein’s can be used in *any* frame of reference (compare any two speeds) while Newton’s works well (but only for human relevant speeds on and around Earth).
Newton’s laws can put a GPS satellite in orbit, but GPS requires Einstein in order to work on the software end because the radio communications and software process fast enough that the limits of Newtonian mechanics start to impact accuracy. The satellites are high enough and fast enough that they move quite a bit between each ‘ping’ they broadcast (which your phone picks up) that without adjustment for that speed & altitude the accuracy is lost, but we know enough about their Newtonian orbits that the software in your phone can make the appropriate filter/correction and put your location to within a few meters. If/when the US government ever decides it is necessary to turn off that “correction” factor, you’ll see accuracy expand out to something like a few hundred meters — you’ll know what part of a city you are in, but not which block or building.
In much the same way, Alan Turing was not wrong about computers (he was a freakking genius), but his knowledge of processor chips was zero because they hadn’t been invented yet. Had he lived he would have learned, but that’s another story. His fundamental programming abilty was correct, but he lacked knowledge of how to get the hardware to do what he needed except through racks of analog gears and switches. His knowledge was incomplete, not incorrect.
And so it is with any science or technology. Gregor Mendel worked out the math and “flow chart” of how genetics worked from generation to generation (1850s), but it was a full century before anyone worked out what the involved molecules were (Watson and Crick, DNA in the 1950s) and here we are coming up on two full centuries still trying to figure out the details of how DNA works. Yet if you take a high school biology class you learn the charts and tests Mendel developed because they still work. They are still correct — they are not wrong, they are simply incomplete. Watson and Crick and the nature of DNA are a different unit in biology, and then genetics is still a third unit.
And it’s the same with gravity – Newton was right, but only for the sorts of speeds and environments humans are used to operating in. Einstien upgraded Newton only on account of he removed that limitation so we can do the equations for *any* speed or environment we can find in the observable universe. The holy grail, which we are still looking for, is to figure out how to do this for all of these environments as well as those we *can’t* observe, such is those inside a singularity (a black hole) or in a hypothetical universe with different physical laws or conditions. Right now, every hypothetical or un-observable requires a different equation, our knowledge is limited, but once that breakthrough is made we’ll have a third name to add to our list of gravity theorists. Someday!
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