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Re:Planets in the Fourth Dimension by subnaught on Wednesday March 18, 2015 @02:10PM (#9227476)
General Relativity is not needed to explain elliptical orbits. This is a very clever reformulation of classical mechanics, and certainly not horseshit.
Re:Planets in the Fourth Dimension by zamalek on Wednesday March 18, 2015 @06:08PM (#9229003)
Also, General Relativity is 4 dimensional.
Re:Planets in the Fourth Dimension by pqomdv on Wednesday March 18, 2015 @02:50PM (#9227807)
Ebbv might be referring to problems with orbital precession, which was explained completely by general relativity.
Re:Planets in the Fourth Dimension by ebbv on Wednesday March 18, 2015 @02:40PM (#9227705)
I could "very clever"-ly reformulate Newtonian physics as a series of invisible frogs who push things around by jumping into them. It's still horse shit.

This article about a "weird fourth dimension" that's "like time but not time" certainly seems like horse shit to me.

Re:Planets in the Fourth Dimension by mbrubeck on Wednesday March 18, 2015 @04:43PM (#9228559)
The author could instead have used only abstract mathematical language (like "a configuration space with a basis of cardinality 4" and "parameter s defined by s = ..."), but this would be accessible to fewer readers. If you prefer dryer language, read the second half of the article, or the other resources it links to.

Using a configuration space that is a good fit for a specific system is not unusual in math or physics. It's the same thing that astrophysicists do when they work in orbital elements, or that engineers and programmers do when they make calculations in Fourier space. It's worth understanding these concepts even if you're not a physicist.

Configuration spaces are so fundamental and useful that they are introduced in the very first lecture on classical mechanics in Leornard Susskind's excellent series of Stanford physics courses: http://theoreticalminimum.com/courses

(Neal Stephenson's novel Anathem also has a simple introduction to configuration spaces in an appendix, because that's the sort of thing that ends up in a Neal Stephenson novel.)

Re:Planets in the Fourth Dimension by subnaught on Wednesday March 18, 2015 @02:50PM (#9227810)
So it's horseshit because it "seems like horseshit" to you?

In fact, coordinate transformations are at the heart of the modern conception of classical mechanics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_mechanics

Re:Planets in the Fourth Dimension by ozankabak on Wednesday March 18, 2015 @02:58PM (#9227886)
Your "invisible frogs" would not be a reformulation of Newtonian Mechanics (NM). A reformulation needs to make the exact same predictions as the original theory. There are many reformulations of both NM and GR, and they are quite useful (and interesting) in various contexts. This is a solid, interesting work that does not deserve being dubbed "horse shit" by a person who does not even have a formal training in the field.
Re:Planets in the Fourth Dimension by apalmer on Wednesday March 18, 2015 @03:54PM (#9228218)
As stated in the top portion of the thread, the original paper is completely not horsesh!t. It is a reformulation of a 3 dimensional problem in 4 dimensions that significantly simplifies the specific calculations/relationships of interest.