[TheForge] YAK relativity- WAY OT, or not...

[Andy Vida]

Another term commonly used by the astro-boys is the "fixed stars".

There is no such thing, and to say that they are "virtually fixed"
has also left me shaking my head.

Anyone remember about 30 years ago when the great brains were ready to
declare that Einstein's theories appeared to be wrong because many of
the predictions were not panning out in empirical observations?  Turned
out that some lowly graduate student showed the sad error of their ways
when he pointed out that their use of rounded values in calculating
results of their observations might be causing the variances.  He was
laughed at at first, and then several names ate some crow when it
turned out that error multiplication accounted for the differences
between the expected result and those computed.  The ridiculous one
was substituting 3.0 x 10^8 meters/sec instead of  299,792,458 m/sec.

What appeared to the great brains as an insignificant discrepancy 
multiplied itself into very significant errors over the span of
complex calculations.  An engineer would have been VERY unlikely
to have made this mistake because of their familiarity with 
tolerances, especially mechanical engineers.

I remember before learning of this, having wondered about it more
than once, but refraining from bringing it up because I didn't want
to look like a dumbass.  My assumption was that because these were
Great Brains(tm) that they knew what they were doing and that I was
a dumbass for not knowing it.  It turned out they were  wrong-0 in
assuming that so small a discrepancy in a value would not significantly
affect the outcome of a calculation.  My only error was in assuming
their infallibility, that they would not miss so obvious and basic
a thing as this.  I noticed it in high school physics when Mrs. Solomon
substituted the abbreviated value for the precise one.  My training in
machine technology and mechanical drawing immediately made this jump
out at me.   That graduate student saw it, and I bet thousands of other 
kids had seen it too.  Fortunately one of us opened their yap and 
actually said something. I was too busy feeling stoopid.

This is why I used to bang it into the heads of my students that there 
is no such thing as a stupid question and that it is unlikely that 
anybody that has ever walked this planet was in such absolute 
possession of the truth that their knowledge was without fault.  

I'm in the middle of reading "Guide For The Perplexed" by Maimonides.
Just yesterday, whilst boiling my butt in the tub, I came across "the
fixed stars" in one of the 26 Postulates.  I am now eager to see where 
old Moses-baby goes with it.  I am finding mystical Judaism to be a
curious mix of scientific attitude and mystery.  At times it strikes me
as having much in common with Buddhism and Hinduism and even American
Indian attitudes.  At others, it reads like the screwed up rantings
that most people have come to expect from so-called "western" religious
traditions.  I'm trying to figure out if this is just a matter of
the limitations of language.  Once again I find myself needing to
reinvent a wheel as the written words of another are of limited value
to the internalized "understanding" of an idea.

What a curious little universe we live in.