DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - Restoring no preferred frame of reference to a single universe

**PefeFoesk** · 09-09-2012, 02:50 PM

I think this confuses many people, and I find it difficult to explain the difference between the laws of physics and physical reality.
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Can I have a shot at this?
The Laws of Physics:
The laws of physics, although as the name suggests are laws and fixed, are only so according to the technological standards and knowledge of that era...eg: We once thought that space and time were invariant and light speed was variable according to the local FoR.
Then along came Albert. Now we observe that time will appear as variable and space can be twisted and curved every which way and the speed of light is constant and independent of the FoR and motion of the observer and/or the emmitter.

Physical Reality:
Physical reality can be termed the basic underlying nature of the Universe which may or may not be aligned to how we interprete our observations and/or the limits of tolerances of our measureing devices.
Both our interpretations of observations and tolerances of our measuring devices, will most probably change over time, enabling us to get more correct interpretations on our observations that align more closely to physical reality.

That's not what I mean by the difference between laws of physics and physical reality. The simplest expression of the difference is that physical reality are the things that exist in a given reality, while the laws of physics are a general statement of how physical reality behaves. As simple as this statement is, there are subtleties that blur the distinction. An example of the difficulty is why the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) is not a preferred frame of reference in the theory of relativity. This is because the CMBR is a physical object (field) that is a broken symmetry, whereas the absence of a preferred frame of reference is the symmetry of the laws of physics.

09-09-2012, 02:50 PM	#10
PefeFoesk Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 488 Senior Member	I think this confuses many people, and I find it difficult to explain the difference between the laws of physics and physical reality. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Can I have a shot at this? The Laws of Physics: The laws of physics, although as the name suggests are laws and fixed, are only so according to the technological standards and knowledge of that era...eg: We once thought that space and time were invariant and light speed was variable according to the local FoR. Then along came Albert. Now we observe that time will appear as variable and space can be twisted and curved every which way and the speed of light is constant and independent of the FoR and motion of the observer and/or the emmitter. Physical Reality: Physical reality can be termed the basic underlying nature of the Universe which may or may not be aligned to how we interprete our observations and/or the limits of tolerances of our measureing devices. Both our interpretations of observations and tolerances of our measuring devices, will most probably change over time, enabling us to get more correct interpretations on our observations that align more closely to physical reality. That's not what I mean by the difference between laws of physics and physical reality. The simplest expression of the difference is that physical reality are the things that exist in a given reality, while the laws of physics are a general statement of how physical reality behaves. As simple as this statement is, there are subtleties that blur the distinction. An example of the difficulty is why the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) is not a preferred frame of reference in the theory of relativity. This is because the CMBR is a physical object (field) that is a broken symmetry, whereas the absence of a preferred frame of reference is the symmetry of the laws of physics.
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