Light Speed Surpassed?
Astrophysicists studying a distant pulsar have detected radio waves traveling through space at faster-than-light speed. More rigorous study is needed, but if confirmed, the faster-than-light radio waves emanating from the dead, spinning star call into question some basic tenets of physical law established by Einstein.
Image courtesy of NASA.gov
- 1-22-10
- Bill Machon's blog
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Don't underestimate the
I think its aliens
I think its aliens communicating!
http://www.theemotionmachine.com
Oops!
In the immortal words of the Firesign Theatre: "Everything you know is wrong!"
Well this is what will continue to happen when we look to scientists and mathematicians to explain how reality works. Epic fail.
"Well this is what will
"Well this is what will continue to happen when we look to scientists and mathematicians to explain how reality works. Epic fail."
Yeah science doesnt have a clue about the nature of reality..We are much better off listening to channelings and our inner self....lol
Btw, you may want to take a look around you for examples of how science does actually have a handle on the "nature of reality".. How do you think we are communicating for example? A magic spider web sprinkled with pixie dust?! :)
No: Still no Faster-Than-Light
If you point a laser pointer at the moon and jiggle it, a person on the moon would see a dot on the ground that seemed to leap away at faster than the speed of light, but nothing would in fact be moving at faster than the speed of light.
Or if you have a sun-sized disco ball, and a giant wall around the solar system, and point a laser at the sun-sized disco ball in the center -- the "dot" that appears on the wall will appear to be jumping around at faster than the speed of light -- however, this is just an appearance, and nothing will be moving faster than the speed of light.
There are other ways that this illusion happens, such as when waves interfere to produce the illusion of faster-than-light motion -- see Greg Eagen's applet that demonstrates this appearance.
?????
Mr. Kimbro, what the hell does your facile explanation have to do with the story???
I love that you think your examples couldn't possibly have occurred to the researchers in the article.
Why don't you track them down and set the " facts " straight for them so they stop wasting time and energy on this obviously useless pursuit.
It's right there in the paper.
Look, it's right there in the paper:
It says right there in the intro to the paper:
"Pulses traveling through a cloud of neutral hydrogen should undergo “anomalous dispersion,” which causes the group velocity of the medium to be larger than the speed of light in vacuum. This superluminal group velocity causes pulses containing frequencies near the resonance to arrive earlier in time with respect to other pulses. Hence, these pulses appear to travel faster than light. This phenomenon is caused by an interplay between the time scales present in the pulse and the time scales present in he medium. Although counter-intuitive, it does not violate the laws of special relativity."
So this is about group velocity vs. phase velocity. (Another article, perhaps a bit clearer.) Whenever you see an article about things going "faster than the speed of light," it's almost always, if not always, a story about group velocities.
And for that, again, I refer you to the Greg Egan applet, which gives a easy to understand animated picture of how frequencies moving at or less than the speed of light gives rise to the appearance of something (a combined wave) going faster than the speed of light.
And again, it's described right there in the paper:
"The reason that this pulse advance is not a violation of causality and relativity is a subtle one. Put simply, the peak of the pulse does not necessairly carry information. When the rising edge of the pulse enters the plasma, it causes the atoms to start emitting radiation at the same frequencies as that present in the wave-packet, but each with a slightly different phase. This radiation interferes
with the radiation in the wave-packet in just the right way as to cause the intensity to start to decrease earlier than it would have in vacuum. Hence, the peak has advanced. It will not advance earlier than the time the leading edge reached the plasma."
Not No but Maybe
lionkimbro didn't suggest
In case Lionkimbro is
sonofman has it right
Lionkimbro knows the scientists ARE aware of his points, though those reporting on the scientists' findings don't seem to understand them fully.
Yes, this is exactly it.
The scientists already know. As I demonstrated above, they wrote it right into their articles. It's all there.
It's the journalists who got it wrong. Journalists regularly get it wrong -- anything with "superluminal" or "faster than light," and they get excited -- they get excited because the public will go excited, regardless that the physicists themselves are saying, "There's really nothing exciting here about this. This is all in line with special relativity."
There is zero debate amongst physicists about this; Any talk about "debate" over FTL here is going to be amongst the audience, not the physicists.
Disappointed..
Hey Lion K.Here was I, all excited about surpassing the speed of light and you rain on my cosmic parade.
I was ready to be whizzing through wormholes and beamed across the universe instantaneously. The singularity was in my sights and now ... crushed again!
You devil :O)
Enchantment
This is a separate subject, but --
I think that the desire, need, hope for enchantment -- is completely sensible and real.
When we are disenchanted, the world is grey, robotic, and pointless. What good is that, for anybody? This is something that I have struggled with for a long time.
My research has led me to two major routes:
* to study that which is both imaginary and real at the same time (the "imagi-real", I call it)
* to strive to co-create a worthy future
Paul Levy wrote an essay, "God the Imagination," that gets at the nature of my perceiving. "Our only limitation is our imaginary lack of imagination."
I would say to keep the vision of surpassing the speed of light, to continue to imagine whizzing through wormholes, and beaming across the universe instantely. Search for that singularity, whether techno-magic or earth-magic. Transcend all limitations, of all types, in the service of (X), and on the way home. We may not be psychic, today, in fact, but continue to imagine and hope to be psychic -- the idea that two minds may touch at the heart, -- I can think of few things greater than to hope for. All romance and merit is bound up in it. I am convinced that these feelings and intuitions and longings are the future calling to us from the depths of the soul. The wonders we imagine in boys' comic books are the dreams of humankind and even the whole Earth's life force, and they are our guides and warnings and teachers and caretakers.
Just don't mis-report the science. We won't know more by knowing less. If we fool ourselves into thinking that the Earth rests on the back of a turtle, we won't be doing ourselves or the planet a favor -- especially if we did that as a reaction to disenchantment, that the turtle doesn't fit any more. But if we learned something by feeling the world was a turtle, we can continue to imagine it, in order to see that thing that we learned, and we lose nothing; We just need to recalibrate our distaste for imagination, our over-exposed taste for the literal.
Matrix Consciousness
Great comment.
We may not be psychic, today, in fact, but continue to imagine and hope to be psychic -- the idea that two minds may touch at the heart,
Perhaps is the other way: first there is a matrix consciousness, then the egoic structures develop.
There are many reports from anthropologists telling about how first people "knew" who was coming with an anticipation of days/weeks.
Christopher Bache has collected evidence about the resonance of group mind: http://www.sunypress.edu/p-4710-the-living-classroom.aspx
"The SACRED (whatever that means) is surely related (somehow) to the BEAUTIFUL (whatever that means)..."
Gregory Bateson
Enchantment is political
wonder, delight, awe, and meaning are linked to both personal and political spheres of action:
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/592435
"The SACRED (whatever that means) is surely related (somehow) to the BEAUTIFUL (whatever that means)..."
Gregory Bateson
To Lionkimbo I read the
To Lionkimbo
I read the article by Kevin Spiess and to me that is not suggesting at all that the Astrophysicists worked on the research are troubled by your points. Unless of course you have read the very original article by the scientists themselves. Also i find it hard to beleieve that those researchers would need to look up the misconceptions about faster than ligth propagation on the internet, but they easily could if they wanted to since it is easy to find. You must admit it would sound very reasonable from them (the researchers) to check their own results first before it gets into the hand of some misrepresenting reporter and if they did how did it end up as an article in the first place.
I like what you wrote about enchanment too but can not help to wonder about your motives. This article does not strike me as a delibrate misrepresentation of science, it might be a bit too hasty. Creationists are misrepresenting science with a preconcieved goal in mind.
Your example of the turtle is a bit overdone, i would like to remind you that you are not writing to 10 year olds here, nobody suggested that the rabbit can run faster than the speed of ligth (Jeff was talking symbolicaly). Einstein and his theory is the same way subject to possible advancement as Newton's were and if you ask me it will probably show itself as an observation of faster than ligth propagation. To me, that is the reason why the article is exciting even if this time it's a wrong call (if it is).
Also what about all the shit that is happening and science doesn't want to touch them. Anyways as solid as Einstein Relativity is lets not go into the merit and service of science in two sentences.
agreed. besides, the article
agreed. besides, the article deals with RADIO waves... not light. So any of lion kimbro's points about how sometimes light appears to be moving 'faster than light' are irrelevant. a laser pointer emits light... not radio waves.
considering that every wave is part of a spectrum, it's not too hard to believe that there are things that are of a higher frequency than those things that we can quantify with modern science.
here's to keeping an open mind
Dunning-Kruger...
Hmmm... methinks this discussion is an excellent example of Dunning-Kruger:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect
in action. If you really know the physics, then by all means, state your well-imformed objections; otherwise, keep them to youself lest you lead people astray!
radio waves
this is breakthrough...
Dunning-Kruger
Ok let's take Bertrand Russell. Does it appear to you, that Lionkimbo is underrating his ability and suffering from illusory inferiority?
Sammy, we are astray brother, look around a little bit and give it some serious thought where all the "competence" has lead us so far. Besides, this is not a convention for Astrophisics, i hope you are not suggesting, that only Nobel Prise Winners should participate in this debate (because then what are you doing here?).
Your letter shows exactly what my problem is with this constant quoting, you loose your independent thinking Sam (or should i call you Bertand Russell number 2). Reference should be prophetic not literal.
Re; Five i love your thinking dude i read you on other threads too, impressive
we are infront of doors we have never seen
Bertie
First, I don't particularly like that quote of Bertrand Russell, since it doesn't quite get the nuance of the Dunning-Kruger right. Dunning-Kruger is not a matter of intellectual ability so much as it is skill and competence (though, British people often use the word `stupid' more like Americans might use `silly' or `foolish'; that is, it refers more to behavior and actions than to innate ability); and, I have known many very intelligent people who have done and said `stupid' things through overestimating their competence in a field in which they know little.
If one is not an expert in, say, physics, or maybe climate science, and if one has a conversation on the internet, it behooves one to say things like ``I really don't know much about this, but I think that...'' or maybe ``What I am about say is perhaps totally wrong, since I not an expert...'''. One should go to great lengths to make it clear that what one is offering is idle speculation.
But this poses a dilemma: How do we hold an expert in field X (say X = pharmacology), in which we are not experts ourselves, accountable? I suppose one answer is to trust the community of experts in field X to police it responsibly through the peer-review process. Alas, these days experts are not trusted by the masses, so a popular solution is to ignore them altogether. In their place, self-taught ``scholars'' who have little competence in physics, math, climatology, or what have you, are elevated to the status of gurus. Those who listen to them are led astray, and though their desire to understand a difficult subject like physics is sated for a short while, because they have acquired false knowledge, a light of the world is dimmed. And when all the lights go out, the evilest bigotry and superstition will ascend from the shadows, and the most horrible agonies shall come to pass...
Lest I leave you with the wrong idea, some among the self-taught really do know their stuff, and most credentialed experts would probably say something like, ``Well, she doesn't have a degree, but she really knows her stuff. Let's invite her over to one of our seminars.'' True knowledge is recognized as such by others who also possess it. And now this brings me full-circle, because Bertrand Russell is an example of someone who once recognized true knowledge (and ability) in the mind of a once homeless teenager named Walter Pitts. Partly with Russell's help he eventually became a famous scientist who, along with Warren Mccullough, produced the first rudimentary mathematical model of neurons.
Science or faith
After fundamentalistic 'divine scientism' mostly weeded itself out of existence, present day science has a more relaxed attitude. It's often able to communicate across epistemological borders, and it happens more and more often, that scientists retract their own 'epoch-making' theories.
The problem these days isn't science, it's what happens when sensationalists or fundamentalists hijack a scientific hypothesis or theory, using it in a way and for purposes far from the scientific intention. The 'uninformed' (not scientific schooled) seem to be unable to distinguish between the various degrees of validity in scientific arguments, and as to basic assumptions any old doctrine apparantly will do. And woe to anyone, who questions these assumptions/doctrines.
A few examples: Religionist 'intelligent design'; 'love-is-all-you-need'/'nature's wisdom'/cosmic harmony' black-white anti-intellectualism still having it's own outdated guerrilla-war with 'scientism'; 'the trousers of time' as an excuse for forgetting the 'responsibility' part of 'freedom with responsibility'; social Darwinism making sociopathy housebroken (it's 'natural') etc.
On this background academic schooling or expertise isn't the main point. What's important is to know, what you basically MEAN semantically and epistemologically, when you express an opinion. And then having a willingness to admit, that you probably started out mechanically from assumptions you never saw fit to examine...assumptions which maybe aren't that selfevident, when they are brought out in the light.
On the subject of this thread this implies, that any definitive conclusion on FTL electromagnetic emissions hasn't been demonstrated, and to take an absolute stand for or against such a possibility is more on the line of doctrinal retorics than on considering what's known so far. What seem to be generally accepted by specialists is, that SOME kind of FTL signals/information is possible. My own thought is, that we have to go beyond cosmic manifestations (=zero-point or 'further'), where we have passed the event horizon.
which dead spinning star
to E.sam
I got the Kruger reference but thanks for the further clearification.
The debate lately was not actually over our scientific results or credentials but over the fact, that the article made it to the RS and even from the referred article it doesn't show any signs of lionkimbo's easily detectable reservations.
About making sure that people know that i am not an "expert"in the field why don't you just outrigth ask me to make a disclaimer before i post a comment Sammy, maybe the best to call some lawyers.
On other notes,"and the most horrible agonies shall come pass" well, which planet you are living on, what possible agonies are there that haven't passed yet?
Also you reckon that a good self-tought scientist will be invited into the big boys club, well i must admit you get me pretty emotional with your naivity. The entire point of an centraly directed institution as a University is that it will act as membership to an exclusive club called scientists. You will never land a "proper" job without it and you will never be accepted in the circle of science without it. That is one out of a thousand ways that science protects itself from the "outsider", independent thinkers. Science protects the establishment and there isn't a way out of that. Imagine some dude would come up with a car that can run on water better than on patrol, come on now, what chance is he gonna stand. My renegade genius friend have tried for endless years to break through the walls of the science community to teach children age of ten of the simplified mathematics of the General Theory of Relativity, so simplified in fact that anybody with an IQ of 80 would comprehend it in two months. I have seen the result with my own eyes how they treated him, what kind of indignation he recieved, now he is homeless on the street, lost his will to stay afloat.
We all understand the groundwork put into scientific discoveries as i said non-of us are ten year old kids here but forgive us if there are doubts folating around in regards to taken their words as the ultimate truth to this world.
The ligth you mention is off for a long time now and really exists in the non-established community solely.
thoughts...
First, I'd like to say that I really appreciate Bogomil's comments. They were very insightful.
Now as to ``Hungarian Heart'': ``The debate was not actually over our scientific results...reservations''. FIrst, I was referring more to comments of ``groove in the heart''; even so, your comment ``I read the article by Kevin Spiess...'' has an ``I read it, so it must be true'' quality to it -- you seem to be questioning the validity of Kimbro's objections on the basis of what you read in the article, not on the basis of deep knowledge about the subject. Though, your sentence ``Unless of course you have read the very original article...'' (he had at least skimmed it, if you look at his comment `It's right there in the paper') somewhat redeems you on this point.
As to the sentence ``On other notes... haven't passed yet?''. I can think of many examples. Here is one: Imagine a deadly flu sweeps the globe -- much deadlier than the 1918 flu. And then imagine the CDC issues a warning that this is the worst flu in the history of mankind, and everybody should get vaccinated immediately. Alas, a ``self-healing'' movement has washed through the U.S., leaving in its wake millions of people distrustful of the ``government lackeys at the CDC'', who think that some meditation and good nutrition is all that is needed to save them from the coming pandemic. By the time it has run its course, millions of the unvaccinated perish in a prolonged torture that replaces that soft, kind look of sensitive souls with the teary-gray blush of death.
For another example, look up ``Lysenko''. Could something like Lysenkoism happen here?
As to ``Also you reckon...''. First of all, there is no ``big boys club''. It is certainly true that academia is full of some Roman-Senator-like big-shots, who anytime you talk to them they look over your shoulders in search of someone more `important' than you. However, many professors look and act quite ordinary -- some even resemble hippies (see that guy Ralph Abraham) and would like nothing more than to talk to an interested outsider. Those are the ones your friend should talk to. Some people I have known who tried to talk shop with professors (two of whom were homeless also) were unsuccessful more because they didn't have the social skills to know how to approach them. They might say something like, ``I think Einstein is wrong, want to hear my theory?'', instead of starting with, ``I have been a fan of Einstein from an early age, and in particular I have always wanted to talk to someone about general relativity. Could I ask you are few questions about it?'' The first comment comes off as arrogant and cocksure, while the second is friendly and has the right measure of humility.
Peace out, brother...
Discussion
where is my flu vaccine?
RE : E. sam
Ok, i give up you are right im gonna stop my response and run down to the doctor to check for some Flu vaccine.
You know Sammy you started sounding like you wanna scare us. The good old fear trick eh. That sounds familiar we poor little helpless creatures in utter need of the benevolent Governments interference and help just to survive the tomorrow. This whole sherade had been played too many times now, aren't you tried of it yet. It's either the flu or the Commies gonna come and who's gonna save us then. The way you described that scenario gives me the suspesion, that it wasn't the first time you attempted to strike fear into somebody. This is either your job or just you are too fearful yourself and turned out to be a Drama-Queen, i am yet to decide, in any case there were tears in my eyes as i read your lines.
You are the kind of guy who will make a very nicely composed condemnation of Douglas Rushkoff's (the fella on the other thread on Most Commented: Beyond life Inc.) study of the history of money saying something like "what a atrocious accusation of our proud history and our leaders"
We should just leave meditation behind and just buy food from Mc Donalds.
I sure will pass your advice to my friend about the exact words to use when he talks to those folks, i will tell him he got it all wrong its got nothing to do with content it's about humility.
Your attempt to sound cool or ironic in the end was really amusing
more nuance...
We have drifted very far from the original point of the article. This is my last posting on this thread.
First, I rather enjoyed Rushkoff book Life Inc. One fact that stood out in my mind concerning corporate funding of research was that example of the roach bait that was too effective -- it was so good that it could end the business, so it was shelved. I am a little skeptical about that, but maybe it is an example of one way in which I am naive.
I am sure the CDC has its inefficiencies, being government-funded; but, I personally take the word of CDC scientists much more seriously than that of some self-healing guru.
And here is a more nuanced answer to the question about your friend who wants to teach kids about relativity: There is another hurdle that one must overcome, besides proving that one is competent, in order to get a high-paying job in academia. One must show that one can produce lots of quality research and can teach students. It is not enough to just ask some physicists for a job because you have some interesting epistemic insights into the nature of reality -- What is time? What is space? Is causality absolute? What *is* causality? (and I am not suggesting that this is what your friend had in mind. I read what you said -- he had suggestions for how to teach 10 year olds about relativity.) While these questions are vital to producing new physical theories, and I think physicists should question their underlying assumptions (as, say, Lee Smolin discusses in the Trouble with Physics) much more often than they do, questions alone is not enough for a good job. One has to have good, well-thought-out, peer-reviewed publications where these questions are addressed and potential solutions, analyzed. An example of someone who had a nice theory (or so I gather, based on what experts have said in the media -- I am not an expert by any means), but no academic position, yet was listened-to by the establishment is Garret Lisi, the ``surfer dude'' physicist. I would need to check, but I believe he dropped out of graduate school, and then took off for Hawaii to think through his theory. Once he presented it, many physicists seemed excited by it (e.g. there were some positive comments by a physicist named David Finkelstein), though excitement turned to skepticism, and now it seems it wasn't quite as good as initially advertised. He is now trying to strengthen his theory, apparently. Perhaps we will hear about it soon enough if he patches the flaws. I would think that what he has right now is good enough to merit a job in at least a small college somewhere -- certainly he could get some sort of lectureship position if he only asked.
But that is only physics. There is a world of difference between physics and zoology, say, which isn't in search of a theory of everything (well, Evolution and genetics are perhaps zoology's TOE). Although there isn't as much room for big conceptual breakthroughs, there is still plenty ``butterfly collection'', and behavioral analysis to be done. Probably it is much harder to get a job in zoology in academia without the usual paperwork.
And, according to Howard Bloom, the biological sciences do seem to have some sort of ``big boys club'' mentality -- they brushed him aside when he and a group of NYU researchers argued for ``group selection'' as a powerful force in evolution, or so he claims. If you read Dawkins (particularly the God Delusion), he offers arguments against some flavors of group selection. And here is something interesting I have noticed: I haven't seen a single academic book or article from the group selection camp (other than Bloom's books) that mention Howard Bloom. Maybe I'm not reading the right books... or maybe...
E.sam before you go Im
E.sam before you go
Im not going to be hard on you cause i know you leaving us and i was a bit cheeky with you so far yet you reamained very civil, not to mention at the end of your last letter you even wanted to seem like a little conspiracy theoriest, that was really cute.
I start with you comment that you rather enjoyed Rushkoff's paper, i bet it was quite splendid with a cup of tea. Rushkoff's work is a kind of writing after which one should turn off the computer, fall to the ground and scream to the full moon, call up his daughter and all his friends and tell them that they got ripped off and they should pull all their savings out because the whole money system is corrupt and rotten to the bone, one's complete vision of reality should be shattered, but for you it was a Hitchcock novel, you rather enjoyed it. Nice. It did not even shake your belief in the CDC.
I should have probably posed the following point to you earlier but we still here: Let suppose tomorrow someone would come with a complex formula and write a work about it on the RS claimig basicaly, that he has succesfuly contradicted the Thoery of Relativity (unlikely scenario i admit). What do you think would the chances be of you, Sonofman, or Lionkimbro understanding a frigging word out of it? It took the scientific community 15 years to come to terms with Einstein's theory and it is said, that even after 20 years all about 50 people fully understood the Relativity. So, the answer without speculation is zero. In that case wouldn't you think that my or Groove-in-the-heart's opinion or anybody else's for that matter is just as viable and acceptable at least for a comment. we did not try to prove or disprove the article about this thread, we merely commented on it!
And now about your advice to my friend: If someone comes up to you on the street and says, that he can materialise gold out of the thin air are you gonna look at his shoes or interogate him about his parent's job( you probably do)? How would anyone's humility or sentence formalisation ends up being an issue when the guy claims he could teach children of the Theory Relativity and provide the simplified mathematics to prove it? They should have fougth a war over him, and everything else is ridiculous.
Your list of requirements about what one has to do if he wants to teach something that only he can only further justifies my point about the protectionism lies in the core of the scientific tower of Babel.
anyways thanks for debating Sam see you on another thread
the nature of scientific revolutions
It took the scientific community 15 years to come to terms with Einstein's theory and it is said, that even after 20 years all about 50 people fully understood the Relativity.
No, that's not true at all; Scientists understood it immediately -- that's why they got excited about the idea.
The mythology is that there was a grand dispensation of truth by Einstein, like the "dispensation of the prophets" -- that was completely out of nowhere, but that's not true at all -- physicists all over were working on these problems and asking these questions, and Lorentz had figured out a lot of the pieces of the puzzle already. Einstein just put the picture all together, and published it.
Tons of people understood it -- that's why it was a recognized breakthrough.
Teaching Methods
The reason your friend's teaching method isn't snapped up isn't because the scientific establishment is trying to lock him out -- the reason is (assuming your friend is not a crank) because people simply don't care about fast teaching methods.
Look, I can show people how to teach matrix multiplication to 9 year olds if they have a decent understanding of multiplication. But people don't care, because it's just not that high of a priority to them. It's well known that kids can do quadratic equations given the right training -- I've seen them written in crayon myself, from studies done in the 1970's.
The school system is not optimized for optimal transmission of ideas over time, and hardly anybody studies that stuff. The last time people did in my memory, my limited research, was in WW2 where the Navy was trying to get as many people who understood electronics as possible. Other than that, -- like, today: I would look at video games. Video games are basically training tutorials, if they're any fun -- showing you new thing after new thing, and doing so on a smooth curve. Schools? Not so much.
This is not to the fault or detriment of schools: Why would understanding special relativity be the main concern?
Efforts at reforming education are all over the map -- behavior, unschooling, curriculum decisions, role of the arts, etc., etc.,. Material design is just a tiny part of that, and "optimal methods in making kids understand special relativity" sort of takes back burner.
Thank you for your letter
Thank you for your letter L.kimbro
It's true as you claimed it, that the basics for the General Relativity were not generated by Einstein alone so that particular theory was not probably the greatest surprise. However, to say that tons of people understood it, is a gross over overstating of the facts. It was pretty groundbreaking in it's time for most very prominent scientist, too groundbreaking to understand it in a quicksmart and the excitement was mainly amongst those who were arm reach away from the theory in the first place. As far as my point wanted to go is to say that, if it was to be presented in a summerised form, there would have been plenty of qcuikly shooting cowboys, self-loving scientific gurus to ridicule the thory and it's findings. Also, the Special Theory of Relativity had No previous collaborators, it was truely an out of the blue breakthrough, no elements of it was there before Einstein and it did polarise the community as well as it Did take a very long time to fully sink in for the others. When i say others i mean people of the quality of specialists and researchers of the quality that appears here on RS, like YOU for instance, i am not reffering to a small number of scientific giants. Sure, Niels Bohr would have had a better picture of it, but you are not saying that any of you guys are of that quality, are you. Now i hope i am not offensive with any of this, just making a point, this is not journal for specialists of Nobel Prize winners category and the Special Theory of Relativity would have been impossible to present here without being shut down by many "experts".
On your second letter you have a good point, and it does probably seem uninteresting to teach Relativity to children as they don't teach anything of great gravity to them either, why would they start with that. So that point does render my comment and criticism on scientists from that regard quite meaningless, i mixed things together and i withdraw that part of my comment. The comment should be, that the Education System is a joke , but that doesn't belong to the topic here present.
Regarding again the misreporting of the science here on RS: Reality Sandvich is after all not a completely unbiased platform, things are generally viewed here from the perspective of counter-culture and most likely if any misrepresentation will occure it will lean toward that edge. It is trying to be cutting edge but also alternative in it's perspective. In a NASA newsletter or in a "Precise Science Report" journal you probably won't have to be troubled by similar mishaps, you will have to put up with different attitudes (at least i would). This is the reason also you had on the other thread encountered the Monster label on the corn (Monsanto here is a bad name -so it should be- and so it's corn gonna be "monster") No reporting is completely unbiased, as Vigotsky said 'every fact is theory-bound'.