Dear Basudeba,

You wrote: "Data from the first experiment available in US naval archives proves that [time dilation] was fudged." Is this obvious in Wikipedia?

Anyway, I agree with you on that length contraction and time dilution are fictions, and I see our perhaps common obligation not just to show that Einstein's special relativity (SR) is based on wrong speculations but rather to look for reasonable explanations to "relativistic" phenomena that are so far ascribed to SR. Cf. Christov. In particular, I envision an understanding of the limit to the speed of light as the point of some resonance.

Best,

Eckard

Paul,

You are a presentist who ignores what I wrote about presentism in my essay. OK.

Just a friendly hint: You quoted "1905, Part 1, Section 1, para 8" without mentioning to whom you were referring. Obviously you did not refer to Poincaré but to Einstein.

Anyway, having only skimmed what you wrote I guess we agree on that in reality there is only one common time.

Eckard

Dear Peter,

I am fine, thank you for your kind hope.

My first attempt to skim your new essay failed because my English is perhaps not good enough as to easily digest your somewhat too literate style of writing.

I do not see any chance for a good rating of my essay in the competition because my endnotes are at variance with the idolization of SR while the topic seems to even solicit support for Wheeler's visions.

What about asymmetry and in particular rotational asymmetry, I would like to offer Fig. 1 of my previous essay. Abstract time extends from minus infinity to plus infinity with an arbitrarily chosen point of reference (birth of Christ in Greenwich at midnight). Measurable is always only the positive already elapsed time that naturally refers to the very moment.

Best of luck to you too,

Eckard

Dear Sir,

We have discussed the speed of light in our essay.

Regards,

basudeba

It would help if you both worked off SR as defined by the man himself. Then you would realise that there is no issue here. SR is Einstein's attempt to resolve what he saw as the potential irreconcilability between his two postulates of 1905. And it does, in so far as, if there is light then the only physical circumstance which accommodates the two concepts is that defined in SR, ie what can be characterised as stillness/nothing is happening. The point is that there was no observational light in Einstein. Nobody observed anything, because there was nothing to observe with. SR is an irrelevant hypothetical statement. His relativity, irrespective of what he meant it to be, is an assertion of time variance in the occurrence of existence. Which is nonsense. The time variance is in the receipt of light, which is a physically existent representation of that occurrence. But to be able to receive something, it needs to exist. That is, please do not try to see with lightening!

Paul

Paul

Hello Eckard,

Shannon's view "We know the past but cannot control it. We control the future but cannot know it" jumped out at me as analogous to my essay's observer/observation approach that revealed a Fibonacci pattern.

In my case it would be: - We know some information but cannot reveal it. We reveal some information but cannot collect more.

I already suggested an arrow of time from this, but your essay has further helped make it relevant given the Shannon analogy.

Thoroughly enjoyed reading it - thanks for a great essay!

Antony

    Paul,

    What do you mean with lightening? I just recently experienced lightning during a thunderstorm. Lighten may mean making something less heavy. A lightening face means it becomes more cheerful. And when something lightens then it becomes less dark in color.

    What about Einstein's two 1905 postulates, I merely question the first one for the reason given in my endnotes. In contrast to I do not see any necessity to operate with observation and observer. Maybe this is what you meant?

    Eckard

    Hello Antony,

    What do you mean by "the Shannon analogy"? If you draw an analogy between two things, you show that they are alike in some way. Did you refer to your essay or did you mean an analogy drawn by Shannon himself.

    I consider Shannon's statement a view that sharply contrasts to some belief-based tenets. While he makes his view plausible to everybody by the "we" perspective, it is still compelling if we do not at all invoke observer and observation but just causal relations and the now.

    Let me point out that the now implies an arrow of time while some physicists accept the arrow of time without admitting the now. My explanation is illustrated in Fig. 1 of my previous essay.

    Eckard

    Dear Eckard,

    I have down loaded your essay and soon post my comments on it. Meanwhile, please, go through my essay and post your comments.

    Regards and good luck in the contest.

    Sreenath BN.

    http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1827

    Dear Eckhard,

    I'll try again. I hope the fact, stated above, that I agree almost completely with this essay does not imply that you will not find other ideas in my essay which I invite you again to read and comment on. I hope that the flooding and ill health are in your past. What a horrible combination to deal with.

    I know that you like critical comments to argue with and thereby improve your arguments, but the fact is I do not find anything to argue with in your current essay. You've done a masterful job.

    Edwin Eugene Klingman

      Hello Eckard,

      Yes I'd mentioned Shannon's view was analogous to my essay in the first paragraph then was lending reference to it in the third paragraph.

      I agree that Shannon's view sharply contrasts belief based tenets.

      Best wishes & kind regards,

      Antony

      • [deleted]

      • Post #26

      Dear Edwin,

      Let me excuse that I did not yet respond. Before I was urged to leave my home because of the risk of flooding, my younger son helped me to rescue anything important including a copy of your essay by moving it upward to the second floor. While our dikes were fortunately successfully defended, we are still waiting for someone who repairs the bus system that controlled the electric installation in my home before it was destroyed by a lightning stroke hitting our neighbor's chimney. My connection to the internet is also shaky. So I am in rather a mess.

      Admittedly, I didn't yet grasp how gravity relates to the nature of information. I didn't even understand how to read the three Chinese pictures you put at the beginning while it seems to be clear that you are sharing Schlafly's opinion.

      I agree, an error by 120 order's of magnitude points to a false premise, and your GEM theory does certainly deserve scrutiny by an expert. Not sufficiently qualified readers like me can only guess that G stands for gravity and EM perhaps for electro-magnetic. With G and C you introduced on p. 3 rather uncommon, at least to me, quantities. Are they immediately useful for what were my students of EE? You specified on p. 5 "the G - or gravito-electric field" and "the C - or gravito-magnetic field". The following unnumbered picture relates only to the C-field.

      You mentioned on your p. 3 that your equation is the only fundamental in physics to yield asymmetric time. Do you see a possibility to also consider the now?

      Best regards,

      Eckard

      Eckard

      There is no observational light in Einstein. There is always some form of light (with the train it is lightening) but it is being used as a reference against which to calibrate duration and distance, not for observation. Indeed, in Cox & Forshaw there is a light beam clock, but nobody sees with that. In other words, his second postulate as defined is void, because he did not deploy it as defined. So all this effort to reconcile speed of light and constancy of rate of change is pointless, because the issue does not exist. Apart from the fact that nobody seems to have taken the bother to read what the man defined SR as, but I have been through all this before, and the usual quotes explaining what the man actually said are in a thread on Jim Akerlund's blog.

      My post was in respect of this exchange with B, not necessarily your essay.

      Paul

      Paul,

      I am ready to some extend to guess what you meant. Did B stand for Basudeba?

      I asked what you meant with lightening because you are telling us

      "to be able to receive something, it needs to exist. That is, please do not try to see with lightening!"

      and

      "there was no observational light in Einstein. Nobody observed anything, because there was nothing to observe with. SR is an irrelevant hypothetical statement."

      Perhaps you meant with observational light something that lightens an object it in the sense of it illuminates that object? Well, I did also object to misuse of words like "observe" or "watch" if simply "look at" is meant. For instance an English teacher of my granddaughter was presumably wrong when she declared "watching photos" correct and "looking at photos" wrong. However, my English is shaky. I am just a German who had no chance to speak English before I got 50 years old.

      Anyway, I did not yet understand your objection against SR. Let me reiterate, I question the first postulate.

      Eckard

      Dear Eckhard,

      I hope your electricity, Internet access, and all the other necessities of modern life are quickly restored. These minor disasters remind us of things we'd rather forget. But your health is most important. I wish you good health.

      I made the decision to write an extremely high level overview of my theory in 9 pages, guaranteeing that those unfamiliar with it will find it confusing, or at least incomplete. The list of references are intended to "fill in the holes". But of course most will not have time or interest to explore these. For this reason your self-contained and well-written essay is superior. I am, in effect, drawing a high level map of my theory and staking a few claims.

      You ask how gravity relates to information. My theory of gravity produces particles, the particles create structures, and local energy transfers cross thresholds restructuring or "in-form"-ing the structure, and creating and storing information. There exists a long chain of details stretching from the gravity field to the information stored in the local structure. I merely sketch the chain.

      The scenes from the Chinese tapestries simply illustrate that humans have always been presented with contradictory information since antiquity. The contradictory information referred to here is "it from bit" versus "bit from it". An 'artistic' illustration, nothing more.

      I agree with most of Schlafly's essay, but I think the best essay in the contest currently is Mark Feeley's.

      My master equation for self-evolution of the universe yields solutions G = 1/r, C = 1/t. And it leads to a Newton-like equation suggesting G = gravity. If my G is multiplied by c-squared, it assumes the dimensions of acceleration, as required for Newtons gravity. The C solution already has the dimension (1/t) of Maxwell's and Einstein's gravito-magnetic field (the gravitational analog of the magnetic field).

      So, from the simplest and most universal equation I can imagine, I obtain solutions that are easily interpreted as the two aspects of gravity, just as E and B are two aspects of the electromagnetic field. The G field is radial and relates to local mass, whereas the C field is induced by mass density in motion, i.e., momentum density. Therefore the picture relates to moving mass such as relativistic particles, as the problems I am interested in are dominated by C so I ignore G for simplicity.

      As for your astute question about the possibility that my asymmetric time can be considered 'now', that is how I interpret it, however the inverse time refers to local 'frequency' associated with the de Broglie-like wave function induced by particle momentum.

      Eckhard, thanks, in the middle of your current discomfort, for reading my essay and putting such thought into it. I hope all amenities are soon restored to normal.

      Best regards,

      Edwin Eugene Klingman

      Eckard

      "Perhaps you meant with observational light..."

      Er, no, observational light is what enables you to see anything, as I said, and in Einstein there is none, as I said (the original joke being that seeing with lightening is not a good idea). Therefore, as I said, in respect of this exchange, the points being made are meaningless, because there was no issue over observational light, because there was none. Apart from the fact that SR is not what is it is being presumed to be.

      I cannot understand how you have any issue with the first postulate. This is a statement of the obvious. That is, in all circumstances existence follows the same rules. The phrase "frames of reference" has nothing to do with observation. It is the equivalent of 'with respect to'. Any statement being based on a comparison in order to identify a difference. So the obvious point is that, irrespective of whatever reference is used for calibration, whatever existed did so, and it moved, or whatever, in a unique way. The process of calibration does not create the reality, it just creates a calibration of it. This is why Einstein then says "only apparently irreconcilable" when introducing the second postulate, because unless one differentiates reality from the light based representation thereof, the two postulates do not operate together, or at least only in the 'nothing happens' circumstance of SR. But Einstein did not have any observational light, so the second postulate is irrelkevant, because he did not deploy it as defined.

      Paul

      Dear Edwin,

      I consider Feeley's Bush Doctor quote and your three Chinese pictures unnecessary hurdles of understanding. Your text explains the meaning of one picture but I felt unable to understand the whole arrangement.

      While I understand your theory and its importance meanwhile already a bit better, the connection between gravity and information was perhaps too far-fetched as to provide an immediately plausible example for the application of your theory.

      My question concerning the "now" is not astutely meant. I do not entirely share Feeley's argument that an observable is just the result of a measurement. I see it an abstraction that describes what could already have been measured. People like you Mark Feeley and me who did not lose their common sense will agree on that future data evade measurement in advance. In biology there is a distinction between in vivo and in vitrio. The "now" is something similar to in vivo, something outside the scope of Einstein's and Wheeler's physics.

      My objection against Einstein's first postulate might indeed be astute. I will try and explain it in reply to Paul.

      Thank you again for your warm words.

      All the best,

      Eckard

      Paul,

      You are in company with the whole community of physicists when considering the first postulate "a statement of the obvious". I have only Einstein's original paper in Annalen der Physik IV. Folge 17, 1905, p. 891 in German at hand.

      My translation:

      "The laws that describe how the states of the physical systems change do not depend (on the decision) on which of two coordinate systems we relate these changes of state if the two coordinate system are in steady motion relative to each other."

      I added "on the decision". Of course, symmetry demands that coordinate system A and coordinate system B are interchangeable. However, are we really entitled to chose A and B independently?

      As I mentioned in my endnotes, we may look at reality each time only from one arbitrarily chosen coordinate system. Neglect of this led to the twin paradox. Strictly speaking the first postulate is only wrong when we tacitly assume that it implies use of the same quantities in both systems.

      Einstein abandoned ontological simultaneity as to apply an asymmetrical method of synchronization and as to formally arrive at Lorentz contraction by means of averaging the Doppler effect back and forth.

      Eckard

      Eckhard,

      You say, "I do not entirely share Feeley's argument that an observable is just the result of a measurement."

      I would modify that to say, "A quantum mechanical observable is just the result of a measurement." There may be more there physically, but QM is formulated on the measurement.

      And I have filled in all of the details of the 'gravity-to-particles-to structure-to-information' chain in other works, listed in my references. I do realize that the essay is too brief to be convincing.

      For a good analysis of the 'now', I recommend Daryl Janzen's current essay.

      Best regards,

      Edwin Eugene Klingman

      Eckard

      That is interesting. Because if that is literally what he wrote as his first postulate then the misconception is there to be seen. The caveat of "steady motion relative to each other" is superfluous. A physical circumstance is in a state and changes to that state occur independently of another. So any law which defines what is happening just needs to do so.

      The quote I have (1923 English version) is: " the same laws of electrodynamics and optics will be valid for all frames of reference for which the equations of mechanics hold good. We will raise this conjecture (the purport of which will hereafter be called the "Principle of Relativity") to the status of a postulate,"

      "As I mentioned in my endnotes, we may look at reality each time only from one arbitrarily chosen coordinate system"

      Indeed, by definition anything is only anything by virtue of comparison and the identification of difference, and then in order to ensure comparability of other such identifications, constancy of reference has to be maintained. But the real point here is not how reality is 'looked' at but how it occurs.

      Einstein did not abandon simultaneity. This was one of his fundamental mistakes which meant he thought he had an 'extra' layer of time. The Lorentz contraction (ie dimension alteration) becomes a consequence of the 1905 way of viewing what is happening. Having been the catalyst which caused them to think there was some form of relativity of occurrence in reality.

      Paul