Timeline for General relativity (and other theories) when proven wrong
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Oct 15, 2020 at 18:02 | history | edited | Peter Mortensen | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Copy edited (ref. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_clause_structure#Run-on_sentences> (the alternative is to use the shamed semicolon) and <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/square_one#Noun>).
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| Oct 13, 2020 at 22:58 | comment | added | Kevin | @Barmar Even though you're correct that the Earth isn't actually flat, we often assume it is for the sake of calculations when the curvature is negligible. The same can be said for gravity, even though Newtonian Mechanics don't accurately describe how all interactions work, it is still accurate enough in the vast majority of cases that we usually run into | |
| Oct 13, 2020 at 16:32 | comment | added | Paul Sinclair | @Barmar - but "most" are also not familiar with the actual concepts of relativity, by which the geocentric model isn't wrong (at least, the idea of having the Earth at the center - the concept of celestial spheres was wrong). Neither is the heliocentric model, the galactocentric model, the acentric model, or even the egocentric model ("I'm the center of the universe"). The only difference is that the math is much easier for some models than others. | |
| Oct 13, 2020 at 16:02 | comment | added | Charlie | If you want the word wrong to mean that then sure. But if I can use, say, Newtonian mechanics to correctly predict the outcome of an experiment within some finite degree of accuracy I would argue this prevents you from labelling it as "wrong", by the standard definition. At this point we are just arguing about semantics, I would of course not bite someone's head off for describing outdated theories as "wrong", since the context is understood. | |
| Oct 13, 2020 at 15:54 | comment | added | Nuclear Hoagie | I think a theory could be considered "wrong" if another theory can accurately predict everything the first one does, plus more. The geocentric model was compatible with the limits of astronomical observation for 1000 years, and even after Copernicus' heliocentric model was published, it didn't catch on for decades because it didn't predict anything the geocentric model couldn't. Over time, geocentric predictions became only a subset of the heliocentric predictions, so the model has a strictly smaller domain and became "wrong". It predictions are entirely subsumed by the heliocentric model. | |
| Oct 13, 2020 at 15:44 | comment | added | Charlie | I (semantically) disagree, "totally disproved" is not a meaningful statement in physics. There of course exists a point at which any sensible person would agree a theory has zero or near-zero predictive power. The statement is meaningful in the mathematical sense, but asking someone to prove that the world definitely doesn't behave according to a particular model is asking them to prove a negative, which is not meaningful. | |
| Oct 13, 2020 at 15:32 | comment | added | Barmar | True, you chose your words carefully. But the first line gives the impression that the idea of a theory being wrong doesn't really exist, there's just a scale of accuracy. But there's a limit to that, and some theories can be considered totally disproved. | |
| Oct 13, 2020 at 15:28 | comment | added | Charlie | I didn't write anything in my post that contradicts what you've just written though. My point was that "wrong" is usually a relative term in physics. Most people would agree that Newtonian gravity and the geocentric model are "wrong", in that they are outdated theories, but one is certainly "more wrong" than the other when their predictive abilities are compared. @Barmar | |
| Oct 13, 2020 at 14:41 | comment | added | Barmar | I think most would agree that the geocentric model of the universe was wrong. And anyone who believes in a flat earth is wrong. So the concept does exist. However, the scientific method makes it unlikely that theories that are so wrong would achieve concensus. | |
| Oct 12, 2020 at 22:19 | history | answered | Charlie | CC BY-SA 4.0 |