"How exactly do you propose Einstein would have tested his theory of general relativity back in the early 1900s?"

Gee, I don't know, doofe. Why don't you google it and learn something?

"It wasn't until very recently, using atomic clocks on a plane and one on the ground was the general theory of relativity proven to be right."

Wrong.

This is an excellent explanation for someone of his age and his skill with video editing obviously helps a lot. It held my interest, the world needs more entertaining and educating videos like these.

My only criticism - and some youtubers have already pointed this out - is that the explanation of time dilation "..the same bodily change that happens on earth takes much longer to occur when you are moving so fast.." is wrong.

Signals sent within the body can be analogous to a clock - any fixed duration measured between two ~lightspeed reference frames will be different, including seconds measured by an atomic clock - but time dilation specifically has nothing to do with the mechanics behind how you measure the time or the time it takes a signal to travel. It's a property of the nature of spacetime. Time itself actually slows down. There's no 'trick' to understanding how or why, it's just a property that it has. We can forgive him because he'd already demonstrated that physics is the same in any inertial reference frame and there is no "preferential" reference frame; therefore the motion of the reference frame can't be responsible for the observed difference, so he obviously already really knew all this.

There's no shame in getting that wrong, because he'll be taught more and better about it as he progresses through school. Generally the arbitrary subjects are the hardest to live with because you just have to accept them as they are rather than 'understand'. Quantum mechanics is the same - you just have to accept the rules and apply the maths. Everyone struggles with it, even Feynman said "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics."

Your video, How An Atomic Clock Works, And Its Use In The GPS, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

So basically, you cannot provide a refutation to the information itself but instead try to discredit the source. I've got hundreds of these..it's not exactly a secret among palentologists that the evolutionary theory has more holes than swiss cheese. Another issue is just the dating itself..take these quotes out of context:

Curt Teichert of the Geological Society of America, "No coherent picture of the history of the earth could be built on the basis of radioactive datings".

Improved laboratory techniques and improved constants have not reduced the scatter in recent years. Instead, the uncertainty grows as more and more data is accumulated ... " (Waterhouse).

richard mauger phd associate professor of geology east carolina university In general, dates in the “correct ball park” are assumed to be correct and are published, but those in disagreement with other data are seldom published nor are the discrepancies fully explained

... it is usual to obtain a spectrum of discordant dates and to select the concentration of highest values as the correct age." (Armstrong and Besancon)

professor brew: If a C-14 date supports our theories, we put it in the main text. If it does not entirely contradict them, we put it in a footnote. And if it iscompletely out of date we just drop it. Few archaeologists who have concerned themselves with absolute chronology are innocent of having sometimes applied this method.

In the light of what is known about the radiocarbon method and the way it is used, it is truly astonishing that many authors will cite agreeable determinations as 'proof' for their beliefs. The radiocarbon method is still not capable of yielding accurate and reliable results. There are gross discrepancies, the chronology is uneven and relative, and the accepted dates are actually selected dates. "This whole blessed thing is nothing but 13th century alchemy, and it all depends upon which funny paper you read.” Written by Robert E. Lee in his article "Radiocarbon: Ages in Error" in Anthropological Journal Of Canada, Vol. 19, No. 3, 1981 p:9

Radiometric dating of fossil skull 1470 show that the various methods do not give accurate measurements of ages. The first tests gave an age of 221 million years. The second, 2.4 million years. Subsequent tests gave ages which ranged from 290,000 to 19.5 million years. Palaeomagnetic determinations gave an age of 3 million years. All these readings give a 762 fold error in the age calculations. Given that only errors less than 10% (0.1 fold) are acceptable in scientific calculations, these readings show that radiometric assessment should never ever be used. John Reader, "Missing Links", BCA/Collins: London, 1981 p:206-209

A. Hayatsu (Department of Geophysics, University of Western Ontario, Canada), "K-Ar isochron age of the North Mountain Basalt, Nova Scotia",-Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, vol. 16, 1979,-"In conventional interpretation of K-Ar (potassium/argon dating method) age data, it is common to discard ages which are substantially too high or too low compared with the rest of the group or with other available data such as the geological time scale. The discrepancies between the rejected and the accepted are arbitrarily-attributed to excess or loss of argon." In other words the potassium/argon (K/Ar) method doesn't support the uranium/lead (U/Pb) method.

"The age of our globe is presently thought to be some 4.5 billion years old, based on radio-decay rates of uranium and thorium. Such `confirmation' may be shortlived, as nature is not to be discovered quite so easily. There has been in recent years the horrible realization that radio-decay rates are not as constant as previously thought, nor are they immune to environmental influences. And this could mean that the atomic clocks are reset during some global disaster, and events which brought the Mesozoic to a close may not be 65 million years ago, but rather, within the age and memory of man." (“Secular Catastrophism”, Industrial Research and Development, June 1982, p. 21)

“The procession of life was never witnessed, it is inferred. The vertical sequence of fossils is thought to represent a process because the enclosing rocks are interpreted as a process. The rocks do date the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks more accurately. Stratigraphy cannot avoid this kind of reasoning, if it insists on using only temporal concepts, because circularity is inherent in the derivation of time scales.” (O’Rourke, J.E., “Pragmatism Versus Materialism in Stratigraphy,” American Journal of Science, vol. 276, 1976, p. 53) (emphasis mine)

"The rocks do date the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks more accurately. Stratigraphy cannot avoid this kind of reasoning . . because circularity is inherent in the derivation of time scales."—*J.E. O'Rourke, "Pragmatism vs. Materialism in Stratigraphy," American Journal of science, January 1976.

Dr. Donald Fisher, the state paleontologist for New York, Luther Sunderland, asked him: "How do you date fossils?" His reply: "By the Cambrian rocks in which they were found." Sunderland then asked him if this were not circular reasoning, and *Fisher replied, "Of course, how else are you going to do it?" (Bible Science Newsletter, December 1986, p. 6.)

It is a problem not easily solved by the classic methods of stratigraphical paleontology, as obviously we will land ourselves immediately in an impossible circular argument if we say, firstly that a particular lithology [theory of rock strata] is synchronous on the evidence of its fossils, and secondly that the fossils are synchronous on the evidence of the lithology."—*Derek V. Ager, The Nature of the Stratigraphic Record (1973), p. 62.

"The intelligent layman has long suspected circular reasoning in the use of rocks to date fossils and fossils to date rocks. The geologist has never bothered to think of a good reply, feeling the explanations are not worth the trouble as long as the work brings results. This is supposed to be hard-headed pragmatism."—*J.E. O'Rourke, "Pragmatism vs. Materialism in Stratigraphy," American Journal of Science, January 1976, p. 48.

"Material bodies are finite, and no rock unit is global in extent, yet stratigraphy aims at a global classification. The particulars have to be stretched into universals somehow. Here ordinary materialism leaves off building up a system of units recognized by physical properties, to follow dialectical materialism, which starts with time units and regards the material bodies as their incomplete representatives. This is where the suspicion of circular reasoning crept in, because it seemed to the layman that the time units were abstracted from the geological column, which has been put together from rock units."—*J.E. O'Rourke, "Pragmatism vs. Materialism in Stratigraphy," American Journal of Science, January 1979, p. 49.

"The prime difficulty with the use of presumed ancestral-descendant sequences to express phylogeny is that biostratigraphic data are often used in conjunction with morphology in the initial evaluation of relationships, which leads to obvious circularity."—*B. Schaeffer, *M.K. Hecht and *N. Eldredge, "Phylogeny and Paleontology," in *Dobzhansky, *Hecht and *Steere (Ed.), Evolutionary Biology, Vol. 6 (1972), p. 39

"The paleontologist's wheel of authority turned full circle when he put this process into reverse and used his fossils to determine tops and bottoms for himself. In the course of time he came to rule upon stratigraphic order, and gaps within it, on a worldwide basis."—*F.K. North, "the Geological Time Scale," in Royal Society of Canada Special Publication, 8:5 (1964). [The order of fossils is determined by the rock strata they are in, and the strata they are in are decided by their tops and bottoms—which are deduced by the fossils in them.]"The geologic ages are identified and dated by the fossils contained in the sedimentary rocks. The fossil record also provides the chief evidence for the theory of evolution, which in turn is the basic philosophy upon which the sequence of geologic ages has been erected. The evolution-fossil-geologic age system is thus a closed circle which comprises one interlocking package. Each goes with the other."—Henry M. Morris, The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth (1972), pp. 76-77

"It cannot be denied that, from a strictly philosophical standpoint, geologists are here arguing in a circle. The succession of organism as has been determined by a study of theory remains buried in the rocks, and the relative ages of the rocks are determined by the remains of organisms that they contain."—*R.H. Rastall, article "Geology," Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 10 (14th ed.; 1956), p. 168.

"The rocks do date the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks more accurately. Stratigraphy cannot avoid this kind of reasoning, if it insists on using only temporal concepts, because circularity is inherent in the derivation of time scales."—*J.E. O'Rourke, "Pragmatism vs. Materialism in Stratigraphy," American Journal of Science, January 1976, p. 53.

>> ^MaxWilder:
Let us begin with this definition of "quote mining" from Wikipedia: The practice of quoting out of context, sometimes referred to as "contextomy" or "quote mining", is a logical fallacy and a type of false attribution in which a passage is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning.
Thank you, shinyblurry, for your cut&paste, thought-free, research-absent, quote mining wall of nonsense. The only part you got right is that you should google each and every one of these quotes to find out the context, something you actually didn't do.
>> ^shinyblurry:
Even the late Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Geology and Paleontology at Harvard University and the leading spokesman for evolutionary theory prior to his recent death, confessed "the extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology..."

This Steven J. Gould quote is discussed in talk.origin's Quote Mine Project. Gould was a proponent of Punctuated Equilibria, which proposes a "jerky, or episodic, rather than a smoothly gradual, pace of change" in evolution. The quotes that are taken out of context are arguing that the fossil record does not indicate a gradual change over time as Darwin suggested. The specifc quote above is discussed in section #3.2 of Part 3. Far from an argument against evolution, Gould was arguing for a specific refinement of the theory.
More to the point, your own quote says "extreme rarity", contradicting your primary claim that transitional fossils do not exist.
>> ^shinyblurry:
Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist at the British Museum and editor of a prestigious scientific journal... ...I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book... ...there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.

Dr. Patterson is discussed on a page dedicated to this quote in the Quote Mine Project. This page touches on the nature of scientific skepticism. As Dr. Patterson goes on to say, "... Fossils may tell us many things, but one thing they can never disclose is whether they were ancestors of anything else." This is the nature of pure science. We can say that a piece of evidence "indicates" or "suggests" something, but there is nothing that may be held up as "proof" unless it is testable. As a man of principle, Dr. Patterson would not indicate one species evolving into another simply because there is no way to be absolutely sure that one fossil is the direct descendant of another. We can describe the similarities and differences, showing how one might have traits of an earlier fossil and different traits similar to a later fossil, but that is not absolute proof.
Incidentally, this is probably where the main thrust of the creationist argument eventually lands. At this level of specificity, there is no known way of proving one fossil's relation to another. DNA does not survive the fossilization process, so we can only make generalizations about how fossils are related through physical appearance. This will be where the creationist claims "faith" is required. Of course, you might also say that if I had a picture of a potted plant on a shelf, and another picture of the potted plant broken on the floor, it would require "faith" to claim that the plant fell off the shelf, because I did not have video proof. The creationist argument would be that the plant broken on the ground was created that way by God.
>> ^shinyblurry:
David B. Kitts. PhD (Zoology) ... Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of "seeing" evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the most notorious of which is the presence of "gaps" in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them...

This quote is from 1974. Think maybe some of those gaps might have gotten smaller since then? Doesn't really matter, because the scientist in question goes on to explicitly state that this does not disprove evolution. He then discusses hypotheses which might explain his perceived gaps, such as Punctuated Equilibrium. A brief mention of this quote is found in the Quote Mine Project at Quote #54.
>> ^shinyblurry:
N. Heribert Nilsson, a famous botanist, evolutionist and professor at Lund University in Sweden, continues:
My attempts to demonstrate evolution by an experiment carried on for more than 40 years have completely failed… The fossil material is now so complete that it has been possible to construct new classes, and the lack of transitional series cannot be explained as being due to scarcity of material. The deficiencies are real, they will never be filled.

First of all, Nilsson is only famous to creationists. To scientists, he's a bit of a wack-job. But that neither proves nor disproves his findings, it only goes to show that creationsists will frequently embellish a scientist's reputation if it will increase the size of the straw man argument. His writings would naturally include his opinions on the weaknesses of what was evolutionary theory at the time (1953!) in order to make his own hypothesis more appealing. He came up with Emication, which is panned as fantasy by the scientific critics. Perfect fodder for the creationists.
>> ^shinyblurry:
Even the popular press is catching on. This is from an article in Newsweek magazine:
The missing link between man and apes, whose absence has comforted religious fundamentalists since the days of Darwin, is merely the most glamorous of a whole hierarchy of phantom creatures … The more scientists have searched for the transitional forms that lie between species, the more they have been frustrated.
The popular press. Newsweek Magazine. 1980!!! What year are you living in, shiny???
>> ^shinyblurry:
Wake up people..your belief in evolution is purely metaphysical and requires faith. I suppose if you don't think about it too hard it makes sense. It's the same thing with abiogenesis..pure metaphysics.
Now, after over 120 years of the most extensive and painstaking geological exploration of every continent and ocean bottom, the picture is infinitely more vivid and complete than it was in 1859. Formations have been discovered containing hundreds of billions of fossils and our museums are filled with over 100 million fossils of 250,000 different species.
The availability of this profusion of hard scientific data should permit objective investigators to determine if Darwin was on the right track. What is the picture which the fossils have given us?… The gaps between major groups of organisms have been growing even wider and more undeniable. They can no longer be ignored or rationalized away with appeals to imperfection of the fossil record. 2

Well, now you're just quoting some anonymous creationist. Any evidence whatsoever that the gaps between major groups are growing wider? No? Can't find anything to cut and paste in reply to that question?
>> ^shinyblurry:
You've been had..be intellectually honest enough to admit it and seek out the truth. Science does not support evolution.

I wonder, shiny, if in your "intellectually honest search for the truth" if you ever left the creationist circle jerk? Your quotes are nothing but out of context and out of date.

How exactly do you propose Einstein would have tested his theory of general relativity back in the early 1900s?

It wasn't until very recently, using atomic clocks on a plane and one on the ground was the general theory of relativity proven to be right.

The same invisible theory surrounds the existence of the Higgs particle.

Light is both a particle and a wave. It seems confusing to average Joe, and it may seem to be a paradox, but the definition of "paradox" is: An assertion that is essentially self-contradictory, though based on a valid deduction from acceptable premises. A paradox is not a "circular statement." That is something entirely different. That may be what you are thinking of when you think "paradox." When I was studying the quantum mechanics section of physical chemistry class, I honestly thought I would go crazy. It is NOT easily graspable. The equations that Schrodinger used and others like him used are insanely complicated. In the end, I, like everyone else, forgot all the equations and only remembered the concepts and the sheer TERROR of it all. If anyone here chooses to pursue it in curiosity, I recommend keeping to the general terms and avoiding the math... unless you're a genius or some sort of servant, that is.

Anyway, relativity is easy to buy and it has been proven. In brief, they synchronized an atomic clock "stationary" on the ground (that is, it was the "stationary" frame of reference for the experiment) and an atomic clock on a high-speed jet that proceeded to fly VERY fast around the world and such. At the end of the experiment the clock on the jet was BEHIND the one on the ground. There were significant and quality controls in place that allow us to conclude that time itself was moving at a relatively slower rate on the jet than it was on the ground. Light is related to both velocity and "length" of space. A GREAT explanation can be easily found on Wikipedia.

The mind-boggling part of this is that if you are on the top of a high mountain, you are experiencing time at a slower rate than those in a valley. Soooo, if you wanna life a millionth of a second longer than the Jones's in the valley, get thee to a mountain.

Also of note, several authors have used special relativity as a key part in their works, see the "Ender's Game" series (A LEGENDARY CLASSIC) in which Ender et.al. sometimes jets off into space at HUGE speeds in order to let a HUGE amount of time pass before he returns.

I absolutely love special relativity, but it really complicates everything. Newton may have been right about a number of things, but not on a quantum level. And not in reality in fact. Chaos theory is the new Newtonian theory. Now THAT is fun stuff.

In brief? Chaos Theory is the idea that in order for one to understand an event in REALITY, one must include EVERY SINGLE VARIABLE in addition to Newtonian physical calculation. That means: the mass of the object, the wind, the air resistance, the chemical make-up of the air at that moment and throughout the experiment, the particulate matter in the air, the light amount and angle, the gravity, the velocity relative to the many gravity sources, the many gravity sources, the human error, the sensor error, and on and on and on. This is of basically impossible since it would change constantly... in other words, it would change so fast that you would not be able to isolate a single moment with everything stable. mwahahaha fun.

And all this makes Rougy's citation absolutely relevant: "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."

Good quote, dude.

I think Doc's point is hate the foreign policy not the country.

Contributions to Science and Mankind from US government funded research has changed the world for the better. To say otherwise and make blanket statements is both ignorant and stupid.

Now that is not to say that the last 10 years haven't seen an over all decrease in total funding when compared to inflation, it has. And as a result I think science has been set back oh I don't know- 15 years. The point is American science and engineering has bettered the world.

Don't like it rebel: stop using your telephone, computer, and car. Don't get vaccinated, don't use anything to do with satellites cause they use GPS and that was based on the atomic clock... the list goes on and on. Sweeping statements are in general stupid, except the statement that sweeping statements are stupid.

Sorry about the delayed response. Thank you so much for the story! VERY cool!

In reply to this comment by youdiejoe:
Wow another early riser here in LA! I don't have a lot of choice though my son's atomic clock wakes him at 5:50am no matter what.

The photoshop thing just cracks me up.

Speaking of David Lynch (I looked over to my right as I was typing that last line and noticed the Lynchian playlist)

Did you know the reason I came to LA was to work with David Lynch? Oh course you didn't (hehe) I met him in college when he was kind enough to give a lecture about his visual arts and cartoons. We got to talking after the lecture and a group of us went out for dinner and drinks, and during the evening he offered me a job when I came to LA to work on the sound crew for what ever he was shooting. Gave me his secretary's number and said give her a call once a month to check in and see what's going on. Such a nice guy! I was about 8 months away from graduating and now had a reason to come to LA other than a place were other schoolmates were going. I arrived in the summer of 88, Lynch was getting ready to shoot the pilot for "Twin Peaks" but the last big writers strike was underway and everything was put on hold. I had to find work elsewhere and I got a job editing sound in a post production house... sadly after all that when he was ready to shoot, I couldn't get out of the job responsibilities I had taken on. BUT all that did get me out here and working so .... that's my David Lynch story, that you didn't ask to hear.

In reply to this comment by Issykitty:
Thank you for your kind words, YDJ!
None of my Sifts recently have garnered big votes, though. It's a good thing I'm stubborn and compulsive! BTW, your Donnie's Photoshop Tutorials are GOLD! Sooooo funny!!!


In reply to this comment by youdiejoe:
YO! congrats on the 250! wow....I felt the woosh of air, but I had no idea you would get past me that fast!

Wow another early riser here in LA! I don't have a lot of choice though my son's atomic clock wakes him at 5:50am no matter what.

The photoshop thing just cracks me up.

Speaking of David Lynch (I looked over to my right as I was typing that last line and noticed the Lynchian playlist)

Did you know the reason I came to LA was to work with David Lynch? Oh course you didn't (hehe) I met him in college when he was kind enough to give a lecture about his visual arts and cartoons. We got to talking after the lecture and a group of us went out for dinner and drinks, and during the evening he offered me a job when I came to LA to work on the sound crew for what ever he was shooting. Gave me his secretary's number and said give her a call once a month to check in and see what's going on. Such a nice guy! I was about 8 months away from graduating and now had a reason to come to LA other than a place were other schoolmates were going. I arrived in the summer of 88, Lynch was getting ready to shoot the pilot for "Twin Peaks" but the last big writers strike was underway and everything was put on hold. I had to find work elsewhere and I got a job editing sound in a post production house... sadly after all that when he was ready to shoot, I couldn't get out of the job responsibilities I had taken on. BUT all that did get me out here and working so .... that's my David Lynch story, that you didn't ask to hear.

In reply to this comment by Issykitty:
Thank you for your kind words, YDJ!
None of my Sifts recently have garnered big votes, though. It's a good thing I'm stubborn and compulsive! BTW, your Donnie's Photoshop Tutorials are GOLD! Sooooo funny!!!


In reply to this comment by youdiejoe:
YO! congrats on the 250! wow....I felt the woosh of air, but I had no idea you would get past me that fast!

Atomic Clock Flies First Class shocker.