| From: John E | 2/09/00
12:16:18 |
| Subject: Inertia & Mach | post id:
127269 |
| Does anyone know where I could
get some material,if it exists,on latest science/philosphy developments on
inertia and its link(?)between classical and quantum physics. I don't have a background in science,although I've read a few of those nasty 'pop-sci' books, by those naughty turncoat cosmologists,but most of them only allude to this problem (I remember John Gribbin talking about it briefly). Surely inertia must be a classical example of 'Spooky Action at a Distance'.How does a body 'know' how to resist a given force. It sounds to me like every little particle in the universe is connected to every other little particle like the mother of all webs. I wonder if the property of inertia would decrese ever so slightly when a blackhole is formed! Anyway I would love some help here,thanks. Johno. | |
| From: Chris (Avatar) | 2/09/00
14:23:50 |
| Subject: re: Inertia & Mach | post id:
127300 |
Hi John I've done a few posts on this in the past, they might be in the faq, or else in the archives. Briefly, inertial mass (the measure of an object's tendency to resist an acceleration) and gravitational mass (the measure of an object's coupling to gravitation) are required to be equal by Einstein's theory of general relativity. In particular we're talking about GR's principle of equivalence here, which relates acceleration to being stationary in gravitational fields. Which might lead you to expect that inertial mass and gravitational mass are two faces of the same thing. One current theory (courtesy of Peter Higgs) explains mass in terms of a particle's coupling to a scalar field called the Higgs field. Particles "swallow" a quantum of the Higgs field (called a Higgs boson) to acquire their mass. Current experiments at the Brookhaven accelerator are attempting to discover the Higgs boson which would support this theory. Some other people are trying to explain inertia in terms of other effects (I'll let Alan M explain this), but these theories should be examined rather critically as they are far from accepted. Physicists these days are uncomfortable with invoking Mach's "fixed stars" as the origin of inertia, largely because GR and quantum mechanics are both local theories, which describe the interaction of bodies/particles in terms of what's going on their local vicinity. Relativity does not tolerate "action at a distance", and QM doesn't deal with masses on the scale of "the fixed stars". Hope this helps! Chris | |