This is the flaw I see. One observer may stand still on earth but he has moved, ever so slightly, relative to the sun as has our second observer. I don't think Einstein's equations take this tiny difference into consideration, and in dealing with vast distances, the farther out you get the greater the error appears.

Ack, this is a problem of Frames of Reference (FOR). I hate these.

The trick is to make your FOR the one in which the Sun is the corrdinate axis, in this case. If you are dealing with objects outside the Solar System then you just choose a FOR that is suitable.

The idea is that you choose a suitable FOR in which everything experiences these "tiny errors" the same way.

The other point is that General and Special Relativity are only local theories. Local in this context can be applied to a wide area. Think of it this way. How fast are you going at the moment, reading this? Are you statoinary? Cause you are becuase you are sitting in a chair (or whatever) and hopefully not reading this while driving. But hang on a minute, you are actually doing several hundred miles an hour as the Earth rotates about its axis. Hold on a sec, thats wrong as we are doing thousands of miles a second round the Sun, and even faster than that going round the Galaxy. In fact, we must be going at super-luminal speeds if we are being observed by an obeservor 20-30 Billion Light Years away.

Relativity works because it allows us to choose the FOR so that all these extra factors can be conveniently neglected to make the maths simpler. We all know that reality is more complex but that only makes the math complex and you still get the same basic answer anyway.

Yelmalio

• Re: Yelmalio - Wayne/">Wayne - November 17, 1999 - 14:51 UTC
  • Re: Yelmalio - yelmalio/">yelmalio - November 19, 1999 - 11:28 UTC