I totally understand this feeling, because it's exactly what our everyday experience of the world tells us....pcCoder wrote:I also dislike some of them because they seem to suggest that their is no objective reality and that it is dependent on the observer, where I tend to believe that there is an objective reality, even if we do not currently know what it is or ever will, regardless of any observer, that the best way to get the closest approximation of it is to try to be in the same frame of reference with an event as it happens, and if not, being able to know how to compensate for the differing frames of reference.
Exactly so. We put things to the test experimentally to see if they are consistent with theories, however uncomfortable that is.But common sense is not always the reality of things.
I tend to the belief that any other explanation would probably need to be substantially more complicated than the one which it replaces, and would probably end up being even more counterintuitive and hard to live with... like String theory. Relativity is conceptually uncomfortable because it doesn't gel with our everyday experiences, but at least it is quite simple.Because the effect is real, it seems that there must be some force that somehow causes this (and more stuff)
This is a personal answer, rather than a science one. I tend to think of the universe as resonant interconnected energy which is rather like a huge galaxy, bright points of light where energy concentrates and thin tenuous threads where information is exchanged like ripples or threads. Its a mentally satisfying picture where I can fit a lot of physics in - like particles exchanging information, spacetime mutation and what have you. It's nice to try and find a mental picture to make sense of the really bizarre universe physics suggests we inhabit....I've wondered what it is that actually causes this. Why does speed differences, gravity, differences, etc, have this effect? Is there some force or drag effect that happens, perhaps affecting the very makeup of matter, quarks, strings, whatever, that cause changes at higher speed or higher gravity relative to lower speed or lower gravity?
Energy is scientifically... what "is". Everything which happens and can happen is described by the patterns physical law makes available for energy to express itself, which are actually very varied.
Mathematical models fall out much more prettily when working with energy and time as dimensions instead of force, acceleration etc...because it moves from a coercive world of cause and effect, to an artistic one of expression and possibility...which is why I love the Hamiltonian formation of Quantum physics. There are satifying ways of learning to conceptualise the new physics. I wish they were more widely taught.
