/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.4156600]

You've just time traveled to 1641 and have to explain Einstein's special and general theories of relativity to Isaac Newton. What do you say to him?

[Anonymous No.4156605]

would get sword and stab him for the calculus

[Anonymous No.4156606]

Beat him over the head with Einstein's book until dead. Take notes and burn them. Publish Einstein's work as my own. Assuming all goes as planned, physics leaps ahead by 200 years. Teleportation invented in mid 20th century. Teleport and kick your ass before you could ask the question. Cause time discrepancy. Universe collapses.

Nothing of value was lost.

[Anonymous No.4156610]

>>4156605

lol'd hard

[Anonymous No.4156607]

E=mc2

He would understand. Then I would fetch a trolly and spend the rest of my evening and the dime in my pocket on having sex with 14 unattractive British prostitutes just due to the novelty of them being dead and hundreds of years older than me.

[Anonymous No.4156608]

>Implying I would bother explaining a flawed theory to Newton

[Anonymous No.4156616]

>>4156608
>implying anyone will fall for this troll

[Anonymous No.4156618]

>>4156608

>implying there is a theory without flaws.

Fucking freshmen...

[Anonymous No.4156624]

>>4156618
>>4156616

Shit... My bad.

[Anonymous No.4156628]

Nothing.
Women back then didn't speak unless spoken to.

[Anonymous No.4156631]

2 different approaches resulting in different uses. I wouldn't say anything.

[Anonymous No.4156632]

>>4156628

Good times.

[Anonymous No.4156634]

In the future, experimental evidence will reveal a model for the universe in which light can be described as both a discrete particle and a wave. This particle/wave will have a constant speed from any inertial reference frame, therefore meaning quantities like time, volume and mass are related to the momentum of said particle.
I can't do general relativity

[Anonymous No.4156645]

I spend a couple days telling him what I remember from the course I just took on general relativity - of course, we'll have to re-derive the details ... (plus rigorously re-deriving all of multivariate calculus that was only fully developed hundreds of years in the future) would be a bit of a bitch...

[Anonymous No.4156648]

Do you think Newton died a virgin?
I think I'd ask him if he ever got laid.

[Anonymous No.4156650]

>>4156648
Newton was probably a stud. Bitches loved white wigs

[Anonymous No.4156657]

>>4156648

Nah, son.

Alchemy was a vagina-magnet back in those days. He was to sex what JFK was to bullets.

[Anonymous No.4156661]

>>4156657
In other words... Newton got some once? :)

[Anonymous No.4156662]

>>4156600

Anything I said would be a waste of time since I would be too busy fapping to his mum's excessively swollen, fetus bearing womb because Newton wasn't born until 1642.

My pregnancy fetish is mild at best so I'm counting on the potent aroma emanating from her unwashed anus really putting me over the top.

[Anonymous No.4156664]

newton himself stated he felt his greatest achievement was lifelong celibacy.

[Anonymous No.4156669]

>>4156664
isnt that the old timey equivalent of overstating how much sex you have now?

[Anonymous No.4156670]

i think we all know that, even without explaining special relativity, if we killed newton, leibniz would reign supreme and england wouldn't waste their years dawdling in notational bullshit

civilization would jump ahead by centuries

[Anonymous No.4156668]

>>4156661

At least... More like twice :) BIG PIMPING

[Anonymous No.4156675]

>>4156664

Doubt it. I saw that movie. He hooked up with the foreign chick before settling with the band nerd.

[Anonymous No.4156678]

>>4156664

That is quite an achievement, actually.

It's not as if he was doing it for religious purposes, or was just unattractive to women, he probably just considered it a waste of time and chose instead to focus solely on his work.

[Anonymous No.4156686]

>>4156678
>It's not as if he was doing it for religious purposes

Well, he didn't directly do it for religious purposes...

But I have bad news for you

[Anonymous No.4156693]

>>4156686

Celibacy is the lamest thing that can be done in the name of religion, it's even worse than flying planes into buildings.

[Anonymous No.4156701]

>/sci/
>no one can explain relativity

[Anonymous No.4156705]

>>4156645

Actually, once you grasp the concept that the speed of light is constant for all observers and independent of the motion of the source, then special relativity can be explained through some fairly simple geometry. Anybody from that time period educated in mathematics and geometry could understand it

General relativity on the other hand requires a level of mathematics that simply didn't exist back then. You would have to describe an infrastructure including differential geometry and tensors first, before you could even begin.

[Anonymous No.4156709]

>>4156701
Oi, I know general relativity (I had a cross-listed graduate / undergrad course on it this semester). Takes forever to explain it though - you have to start with differential geometry, build up the math you need to describe curved spacetime, and then FINALLY you can start to discuss the actual physics...

[Anonymous No.4156734]

Give him these three postulates

1) Gravity is locally indistinguishable from acceleration
2) Objects respond only to the local situation
3) The speed of light is constant in all reference frames

I would then go to the local inn for the night, and familiarize myself with the local wenches. By the following morning, Newton would have re-derived all of Special and General Relativity, and would have extended them into newer and deeper forms.

[Anonymous No.4156753]

I wouldn't even try. I'd immediately seek out Leibniz.

[Anonymous No.4156754]

>>4156734
Actually, unless you have UNIFORM gravity, you CAN distinguish it from acceleration :)

For example, suppose you're sitting on the surface of the earth and you drop two pennies side by side. They'll both fall towards the center of the earth which means their paths will converge (i.e. not be exactly parallel).

[Anonymous No.4156755]

>>4156754

You couldn't be more wrong.

[Anonymous No.4156758]

>>4156734
The third point is the one I think he'd have the most contention with. That said, that is a very reasonable approach.
>>4156753
Aha, there we go.

[Anonymous No.4156760]

>>4156754

Notice that I said >locally

[Anonymous No.4156762]

>>4156758

Yeah, the third point is the one that really fucks you. The first two seem nice and reasonable, but you need the third one to really set things off, and it's so damn hard to accept at first.

[Anonymous No.4156767]

what's ron paul's position on relativity??

[Anonymous No.4156770]

>>4156767

He leaves it up to the states.

[Anonymous No.4156771]

> backwards time travel
> explain Relativity to Newton.

I see what you did there...

[Anonymous No.4156800]

Start with explaining vectorcalculus leading to electromagnetism and Maxwells equations. Back it up with some simple experiments, i.e. magnets, simple battery, electromagnets etc. to make him believe it. Then explain differential geometry to him, and phrase EM as a gauge theory. Point out that the theory implies that the speed of light is independent of reference frame, and that this plus the principle of relativity leads to special relativity, which you give in a geometrical formulation. Then since you taught him diff. geometry he'll probably invent GR by himself, but otherwise it's easy to explain. He should like it, since it gets rid of the spooky action over a distance.

The natural continuation, quantum mechanics, is a bit more difficult, but by now he might just take my word for it, and then we can quickly proceed through quantum mechanics to quantum field theory and string theory.

[Anonymous No.4156808]

Ideas ſuas de tempori ſpatioque abſoluto errata ſunt. Materia (et lumen, quod quia credis, particulum eſt, ſed cum qualitatibus ſini), per ſpatio movet modis relativo.

Quoque: alchemia errata eſt, noli plus conari, inutilis eſt.

[Anonymous No.4156825]

>>4156808
I think the latter part of this man's post is also very important.

[Anonymous No.4156856]

>>4156770
i lol'd

[Anonymous No.4156863]

"Hey Isaac, wanna see a cool trick? Fetch me a cat and we'll put 'er in this here box here."

Then I put him in that box and now he's in a superposition of being alive and dead. Fuck you. I then invent everything.

[Anonymous No.4156893]

>>4156760
Unfortunately, not really. The Riemmann curvature tensor (which describes the curvature of space AT A POINT) varies from point to point, and you can always detect the curvature of spacetime, even in an arbitrarily small volume. The penny example was just a simple way to visualize the issue. It's a very subtle point that my general relativity professor was careful to stress in our *very first lecture*.

[Anonymous No.4156913]

He may have invented calculus, but Newton can talk to me when he's experienced the horror and filthiness of linear algebra, tensors and four-vectors.

[Anonymous No.4156926]

>>4156893

>you can always detect the curvature of spacetime, even in an arbitrarily small volume.

Well, sure in an arbitrarily small volume. What about at a point? That's really what counts here. I shouldn't have said "locally" really, since obviously you don't need to consider the global situation to determine that you're dealing with curved spacetime. I really meant "gravity and acceleration are indistinguishable at a point", thanks for the correction.

[Anonymous No.4156928]

>>4156913
I'm pretty sure every single one of those would be like nothing to him.

[Anonymous No.4156939]

>>4156926
You CAN actually detect it at a point (or at least, if you're allowed to take derivatives...).

For example, you can define the Riemann curvature tensor (describing the curvature of spacetime) in terms of a special derivative (you take the so-called covariant derivative, swap the indices, and subtract from the original covariant derivative).

[Anonymous No.4156942]

>Can't remember.
>???

Fuck me. Hey do you guys have any good drugs?

[Anonymous No.4156947]

>>4156939

What? You can detect "it" at a point, what is "it"? What allows you to differentiate between curved spacetime and smooth acceleration, purely at a single point?

[Anonymous No.4156948]

>>4156600
Quantum theory we'll save for later. Ok, you have the calculus right? Now suppose, for the sake of argument, that experiments showed that the speed of light is constant to all observers irrespective of their current velocity. Moreover, consider that all physical laws as we know it are irrespective of the observer's current velocity. Use 4 dimensional coordinates, with time on an imaginary axis, and go to town. Oh, you'll also need to know Maxwell's equations, and the Lorentz transforms. Here's this really cool idea called the "equals sign". Finally, man up and just use Leibnitz's notation, for the love of god.

[Anonymous No.4156958]

>>4156948

Newton doesn't need to use no casual-tier, babby's-first-notation.

[Anonymous No.4156974]

there is 1 problem here. Einstein came up with relativity theory after many experiments where after giving much energy to electron particle its velocity wasnt increasing accordingly. Youll have to convince Newton that there is something like particles, that you have to speed up in magnetic field. Newton was an experimental phisicist, so he could be sceptically attuned to this.

[Anonymous No.4156996]

>>4156650
>>4156657

Newton was a too-kool-for-skool occultist, the kind of dude who was just far, far too intelligent to ever do anything the normal way.

>In one experiment, to prove that colour was caused by pressure on the eye, Newton slid a darning needle around the side of his eye until he could poke at its rear side, dispassionately noting "white, darke & coloured circles" so long as he kept stirring with "ye bodkin."

This whole "go back in time and interact with person x" thing is problematic enough no matter who you pick, but I think Newton could very well be the most problematic candidate of all. He was just too smart, too out there, and too foundational in his fields for this sort of thing.

He was already probing at elemental questions in acoustics when he was either 7 or 9 with water pouring experiments. I'm referring to his descriptions of the vowel correlates he could hear as he filled a container with water, which relate to fundamental frequency and which are still the basic motivation of the source-filter theory of speech production. Bernoulli + Pascal + Newton = the basic science behind human speech. Point: he was shit-smart from an early age and knew it.

So say you go back in time to talk with Newton. Unless you're the guy who just figured out time travel, how would you even talk to him?

[Anonymous No.4157000]

>>4156996

Actually, first the linguistic considerations -- how would you even communicate with him? You'd absolutely have to speak Latin, but even then, your Latin wouldn't be much like his. You wouldn't understand his everyday speech for a while; "standard" Early Modern English pronunciation is nothing like any dialect of English you've ever heard, it had entirely different vowels and all sorts of phonological patterns that differ from modern English significantly.

You'd have to start with mostly written communication, but even then, your sentence structure and spellings would be a real problem, and you'd have to be really excellent at explaining the semantics of the new words and concepts you introduced when telling him about future-stuff, because from his perspective, he'd be learning a foreign language just to begin trying to grasp the already mindboggling things you'd want to tell him about.

Further, any meaningful explanation of math or physics after his time would require an incredibly extensive amount of background information on general developments in western civilization. So:

[Anonymous No.4157001]

>>4157000

0a) You'd have to bring metric fucktons of reading material, media, and as much high tech equipment as feasible with you
0b) Info library would need important pre-Newton stuff that he wouldn't know about otherwise, like Bhaskara

1) You'd absolutely need solid knowledge of Latin
2) You'd have to have at least a decent amount of linguistic expertise -- scientific linguistic theory, not just general language faculty
3) You'd have to be able to condense the history of western civilization at least as well as most historians could
4) You'd want a way deeper background in western philosophy than most historians have
5) Of course, you'd have to have the math/sci expertise to know what the fuck you're saying to him about physics
6) Finally, you'd have to be able to derive every single fucking thing in math or physics you wanted to talk about or be able to show him someone else's derivation


You'd actually have to be really careful not to fuck any of the science up, because filling Newton's head with scientific half-truths or misinformation that he in turn believes because he thinks of you as an authoritative source would fuck things up for everybody. The most logical thing to do would be to give him the historically important math that came before him that he never knew about the first time around, then see if that lead to any radical reformulations of basic principles that only a mind like Newton's could conceive of.

And you might not want to tell him everything right away, anyway. A lot of his creativity and drive stemmed from a profound dissatisfaction with existing explanations, which is generally the case with scientific geniuses. He ditched Euclid as reading material for Descartes and others until he was forced to go back and learn Euclid really well for school. He very much wanted the current thing, or at least the most advanced thing.

[Anonymous No.4157005]

>>4157001

Point is, you couldn't possibly know what sort of new information might completely derail Newton's scholarly drive. Everything he was doing was brand new, and he was the only one doing almost all of it. If he was still inspired to investigate the way of things after having learned of what came after him, he'd undoubtedly want to do it as a contemporary of the most cutting edge guys. Do you haul his ass back to your time period or even beyond?

He'd definitely want to go. I mean, try to grasp what it's like for someone like Newton. What is daily life like for such a freakish anomaly of a human? He laid the foundations for basically everything, and he did it with virtually nothing to build on except what he could teach himself or invent. Pascal, Fermat, Descartes, they were brand new and weren't even taught in universities. His higher education was centered around putting up with bullshit about Aristotle and trying not to get the plague.

Intellectually, he was on his own. That must've made for some bleak-ass times, and that had to play some part in the nutty shit he did, like nearly blinding himself with sensory deprivation experiments, doing pain threshold experiments on himself, and all that. If he knew of a future where people understood tons more about everything and regarded him as one of great geniuses of all time, he'd wanna get the hell out of the hamlet of Assfuck upon Black Death and jump in your Delorean. It'd be pathologically cruel not to take him.

[Anonymous No.4157011]

>>4156825
>Alchemy is wrong, don't try it, it's useless.

anon trying to be all fancy and shit

[Anonymous No.4157015]

>>4156947
You can detect curvature at a point, yes. If you can detect gravity, that means you can take derivatives at that point (e.g. of the metric tensor, which describes, in effect, the structure of spacetime). If I can take derivatives, than I can also find the curvature of spacetime at a point. In other words, if you can detect "acceleration" due to gravity, then you can also detect the curvature of spacetime (obviously, you'd need to have some damn sensitive instruments though).

Anyways if you want a better explanation you're kind of stuck learning general relativity properly. The problem is that any PHYSICAL experiment I can construct for you is going to have a finite size, even though you can shrink it to an arbitrarily small volume. The two-pennies-falling-side-by-side-but-convering is probably the best intuitive experiment you can come up with.

[Anonymous No.4157025]

>>4157015

I'm pretty sure that you're misunderstanding the weak equivalence principle (or is it the strong?)

[Anonymous No.4157061]

>>4156600
>mfw when newton discovered to eternal life

[Anonymous No.4157066]

>You're an idiot, there is no absolute space or absolute time. Also you suck at calculus.

[Anonymous No.4157071]

>>4157061

Isn't he a britfag? Maybe Newton was lying about celibacy to make chicks want him more, and that guy is one of his remote descendants. I've always been curious as to where the descendants of important historical figures are today, and if they are anything like the person, or whether they're even aware of being related to them.

[Anonymous No.4157091]

>>4157071

>mfw I still have a shot at achieving lifelong celibacy
>mfw it's the only achievement of Isaac Newton's I could ever come close to matching

[Anonymous No.4158848]

[Anonymous No.4158952]

Kill Newton and take credit for all of it, then go back to the future and claim to be a "descendant" of myself to reap the rewards.