OT:Tempted to get this book

[douglas]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
'When you lift something up, you increase its mass by a very small amount. When it drops, it's mass decreases.'

Could you provide some back-up for that, please? Very interesting.

I don't remember where I heard or read or inferred that, and I can't find any solid support for it on google. The closest thing I've found is this with a short paragraph about whether "gravitational energy" acts as a source of gravity and no definite conclusion. Now that I think about it, it would be nearly impossible to test that because the difference in mass is so tiny. It makes sense to me, but I can't back it up.

That chapter also ignores the fact that Newton's law of gravity has far fewer restrictions on when it is valid than any other theory or equation dealing with the same phenomena except general relativity. IMO it's a bunch of pseudo-scientific bunk.

[Aiken]

Probably you meant that there's possibility of slight difference between gravitational and inertial masses. IIRC it's based on the definition that full energy E = mc^2 + K + W, there K - kinetic energy, and W - potential energy in the gravitational field, so higher module of W (closer to gravitating mass) means lower E (and smaller mass), since W is negative.

He also repeatedly claims that the "twin paradox" and the atomic clock experiment relating to the effect of time dilation is logically faulty because movement is relative. However, in standard science, it is not movement that is responsible for the time dilation effect but acceleration.

Actually t'= t*sqrt(1-v^2/c^2). There's nothing about acceleration here. Accelerating frames are matter of special relativity. Also twin paradox can be solved in special relativity only (edit: sorry not special, but general relativity in both cases).

[AMF]

If you're looking for a book that deals with "science as a whole, in a new way" I would try A New Kind of Science
by Stephen Wolfram. Well respected, intriguing, cool.

See:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...00720?v=glance

[deccan]

aiken said:
Actually t'= t*sqrt(1-v^2/c^2). There's nothing about acceleration here. Accelerating frames are matter of special relativity. Also twin paradox can be solved in special relativity only (edit: sorry not special, but general relativity in both cases).

Ah yes, you are right. I was thinking about the wrong thing. Let me try again: the author's contention that the relativity of motion (which is true) makes time dilation logically suspect is wrong because of the symmetry of time dilation while the twin paradox effect is actually an example of non-symmetry.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

http://www.drunkduck.com/Number_85/?i=348721

Beleive me, that's very relavent.

[sachmo]

I was hoping this was a thread about Fitzpatrick's War.