Liz, For the first part of my answer to the question of in what sense might space be absolute see my new topic post on 'Newton's Bucket and Mach's Principle'..
Edgar On Friday, February 7, 2014 9:57:32 PM UTC-5, Liz R wrote: > > On 8 February 2014 15:45, <[email protected] <javascript:>> wrote: > >> >>> but can you throw the relative character out of the window, and speak >>> of an 'absolute landscape' implied by relativity theory that is made up of >>> all the gravity wells, that definitely suggests a 'reality' that goes >>> beyond the principle of equivalence. In that, the landscape shows what's >>> big and what's small, so the relation between them, in one big picture. >>> >>> I ask this in context that acknowledges it wouldn't be any good >>> for resolving much useable knowledge about the world. In fact none at all, >>> save that relativity does imply such a reality is really there. >>> >> >> > But does relativity imply that? I don't think Einstein thought so, since > he was taken with the ideas of Ernst Mach, in which there isn't an absolute > landscape. But I'm told that general relativity doesn't obey Mach's > principle, so perhaps it does imply it. (Certainly quantum gravity theories > that try to make something different of space-time at the fundamental level > seem to me to imply that there is an absolute framework involved... but I > have been known to be wrong :) > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
