John,

I am reading your message, but, felt it necessary to quickly explain that looking back at the quote, I truncated it too much. It should have included: After he gives an analysis of the "fully equivalent system (to a body rotating with respect to the fixed stars)" of fixed stars rotating around a fixed point and reaching super-luminal speeds, he states that:

"... Here seems a contradiction.

This, however, arises only because the law v is less than c is entirely restricted to the special theory of relativity. In the general theory it has to be formulated in the following more elaborate way. As we know, (then I started the quote) it is always possible ..."

James Putnam

John,

I added that in quotes to make clear that when I rotate myself the fixed stars appear to rotate around me. They don't actually do that, but from my perspective they appear to. The theory of relativity says that both perspectives are equivalent. It says that if I rotate that this is equivalent to myself being fixed and not rotating while the stars rotate around me. The farther away the stars are the faster they must be moving, in this relativity equivalence sense. There is a distance where they must be rotating around me at faster than the speed of light. For stars that are further and further out, their equivalent speeds become much faster than the speed of light and their speeds increase more and more as the stars are more and more distant.

Relativity theory accepts the above interpretation as being equally real and effectively causing the far away stars to rotate around me at superluminal speeds. I am not going along with all of this, I am just trying to make clear what Max Born says.

After he argues in favor of the two above cases being equivalent, he states that the rotating stars example appears to contradict the rule that objects cannot exceed the speed of light c. Then he goes on to explain that this is not a contradiction because the limit on the speed of objects is only valid in special relativity. The fuller quote I sent begins by covering this point and then explains the view from the general relativity viewpoint.

James Putnam

James,

He does seem to have edited out important factors in that interpretation. For instance, we can see those stars, so they and we are part of the same frame. Yet they and the space they occupy and define, is far greater than the space you or I occupy, so their inertial state has far greater influence then ours. One could as well hold one's thumb up to a large mountain in the distance and because they appear to be the same size to our view, assert they are equivalent.

hi Richard

i took a couple of minutes to edit the first couple of paragraphs of your paper

so you might see my interpretation, and also with an eye to conciseness...

i hope all is well with you, i you don't mind my limited unasked for input

The Unification of Physics

Introduction

this paper proposes a new common-izing direction to physical theory by constructing a unified worldview. AT present there are many differing description ie. (theories of general relativity, quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics, string theory and the standard model of particle physics) all based on differing concepts. The approach here starts with an assumption that "the theory of general relativity" is a complete and comprehensive description of spacetime at all levels, and then recovers all other theories by the utility looped spacetime.

As review, the papers written by Albert Einstein reveal he proceeded with a number of thought experiments to reach his conclusions. First he worked out that a constant speed of light leads to certain conclusions about Minkowski

space time. The theory of general relativity then simply involves an additional abstraction of the equivalence between uniform acceleration and gravitational effects. He realised that space coordinates could not be Euclidean and

that Gaussian coordinates were needed; which then tells us that the effect we experience as gravity is due to the curvature of spacetime. The presence of mass curves spacetime so that there is an energy difference between an apple

hanging in a tree and an apple on the ground due to the mass of the Earth. The same principle is universal and ensures that the moon follows its orbital path.

The theory of general relativity is a fully complete, and comprehensive upto any abstract(or so thought of domain).However, general relativity does not explain how an object with mass curves spacetime. As part of the theory of

special relativity it was found that there is an equivalence between mass and energy in the sense that conservation laws must be changed so that it is mass plus energy which is conserved with the possibility of conversion between

mass and energy following the equation

E = mc2

John,

The quote that follows is not really covering what I am looking for, but it is Einstein's take on alternative models for the redshift:

The Meaning of Relativity, 5th ed., Albert Einstein, 2nd printing, 1970, page 178; (I think Einstein added this appendix in his 2nd ed. in 1945, I didn't interject anything other than the (sic) indicating what I think is a typo:

"(5) Some try to explain Hubble's shift of spectral lines by means other than the Doppler effect. There is, however, no support for such a conception in the known physical facts. According to such a hypothesis it would be possible to connect two stars, S1 and S2, by a rigid rod. Monochromatic light which is sent from S1 and reflected back to S1 could arrive with a different frequency (measured by a clock on S1) if the number of wave lengths of light along the rod should change with time on the way. This would mean that the locally measured velocity of light would depend on time, which would contradict even the special theory of relativity. Further it should be noted that a light signal going to and fro between S1 and S2 would constitute a "clock' which would not be in a constant relation with a clock (e.g. an atomistic clock) in S1. This would mean that there would exist no metric in the sense of relativity. This not only involves the loss of comprehension of all those relations which relativity has yielded, but it also fails to concur with the fact that certain atomistic forms are not related by "similarity" but by "congruence" (the existence of sharp spectral lines, volumes of atoms, etc.).

The above considerations are, however, based on wave theory, and it may be that some proponents of the above hypothesis imagine that the process of the expansion of light is altogether not according to wave theory, but rather in a manner analogous to the Compton effect. The assumption of such a process without scattering constitutes a hypothesis which is not justified from the point of view of our present knowledge. It also fails to give a reason for the independence of the relative shift of frequence(sic) from the original frequency. Hence one cannot but consider Hubble's discovery as an expansion of the system of stars."

James Putnam

James,

I know Einstein accepted the expanding universe idea, but that was before things like inflation and dark energy were added to support it.

In the above quote, he makes the argument for monochromatic light. Consider the following:

"Introduction

The propagation of waves in linear dissipative systems is well studied but most of the investigations are concerned with the propagation of a single-frequency wave. On the other hand, in any of the practical situations, one is faced actually with a wave packet, albeit with a very narrow spread around the central frequency. This means that one should take a special care to separate the effects of dispersion and dissipation on the propagation of the wave packet from the similar effects on a single frequency signal.

The effect of dissipation of the propagation of wave packets seems important because their constitution can change during the evolution and these changes can be used to evaluate the dissipation."

" Conclusions

When packets of small but п¬Ѓnite breadth are considered the presence of dissipation changes the central wave number of the packet. The distribution of the wave length around the central

length is assumed to be Gaussian which is the most frequently encountered case in cosmology when hot stars are observed. Dispersion relation for the damped wave equation is derived and the evolution of the packet density is investigated in time(orspace). It is shown that the attenuation acts merely to decrease the amplitude of theshiftspacked, while the dissipation damps the higher frequencies stronger than the lower frequencies and shifts the maximal frequency of the packet to lower frequencies (longer wavelengths), i.e., the packet appears redshifted upon its arrival."

Not saying its something I can prove, but an example of how assumptions can be limiting of reality.

Regards,

John M

6 days later

Tom,

You wrote:

**(I wrote) "I consider it more important to accept the now and scrutinize theories that arose from merely postulated symmetries."

If the "now" is asymmetrical, you will be able to say where it is and where it is pointing. So?

(We should move this particular discussion to another forum. "Alternate theories" perhaps.)**

I didn't find "Alternate theories", only "Alternative models of reality".

The topic "now" was already often addressed without any success, e.g. by Craig Callender. About a decade ago, my boss declared it "so was von fundamental". Maybe it is even too fundamental to the foundational questions institute because established experts are not ready to question that spacetime includes the future too. Claude Shannon was perhaps one of the last ones.

In my last but one fqxi essay I illustrated what you are asking for: the asymmetry. Neither the infinite to both sides line of (abstract) ordinary time nor the unilaterally extending just elapsed time is asymmetrical in R. The latter fits to R, and this is not at all an effect of perception but a logical necessity. Attribution of negative elapsed time to reality contradicts to causality which is the most fundamental assumption and basic to all physics. Measurable in reality traces do always indicate that something already happened and is not merely expected to happen.

Eckard

    Eckard,

    " ...established experts are not ready to question that spacetime includes the future too. Claude Shannon was perhaps one of the last ones."

    Shannon was no expert in general relativity.

    "In my last but one fqxi essay I illustrated what you are asking for: the asymmetry. Neither the infinite to both sides line of (abstract) ordinary time nor the unilaterally extending just elapsed time is asymmetrical in R."

    Well, then, how do you propose to demonstrate that, physically?

    "The latter fits to R, and this is not at all an effect of perception but a logical necessity. Attribution of negative elapsed time to reality contradicts to causality ..."

    Certainly not. Negative elapsed time is observer-dependent; causality is independent of linear observer constraints.

    " ... which is the most fundamental assumption and basic to all physics."

    Who says?

    " ... Measurable in reality traces do always indicate that something already happened and is not merely expected to happen."

    How do observers at relativistic distances or states of motion determine what events are past and future?

    Best,

    Tom

    Tom,

    "How do observers ... determine what events are past and future?"

    Future events cannot at all be observed in advance. There is even always a delay to information about something that has happened right now but on a distant location.

    Your wording "relativistic distance" sounds silly to me. Isn't distance always a positive relation?

    "Negative elapsed time is observer-dependent;" No. The measure "elapsed time" is always as positive as is distance. For instance your age - no matter whether or not someone observes it - is the temporal distance between the moment of your birth and the actual moment. You may however imagine your birth after the present moment. Phantasm does indeed depend on you.

    I wrote: "In my last but one fqxi essay I illustrated what you are asking for: the asymmetry. Neither the infinite to both sides line of (abstract) ordinary time nor the unilaterally extending just elapsed time is asymmetrical in R."

    You replied: "Well, then, how do you propose to demonstrate that, physically?"

    In my earlier essays, I already pointed to several physiological aspects and implications. Let me just mention the fact that our ears, when performing frequency analysis, are definitely not in position to obey the arbitrarily chosen origin t=0 of ordinary time. Their analysis can only refer to the zero of elapsed time.

    Do you believe that one has to be an expert in GR as to question Minkowski's spacetime?

    Best,

    Eckard

    Eckard,

    These forums have taught me that there is no convincing an anti-relativist that his private notion of reality is naive.

    What makes relativity true, is the very comprehensibility and coherence of the world. Were it not so, our classical laws would not be reversible and the speed of light in one direction would differ on its return path along the same line.

    Best,

    Tom

    Tom,

    Your argument is not new. Was this sentence correct: "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."?

    I don't share Wigner's attitude:"a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it".

    I rather would like to maintain in Kant's sense the basic conjecture of causality: There is no reason for suspecting something unreasonable. If one arrives at mounting difficulties to rescue something like e.g. Einstein's theory of relativity or Georg C's alephs in excess of arrangeable vs. continuous then such constructs might be wrong regardless how vehemently they have been "confirmed". By the way, I see the notion relativity an inappropriate choice for Lorentz's guess that there is covariance.

    You must not ignore my question marks:

    "Your wording "relativistic distance" sounds silly to me. Isn't distance always a positive relation?"

    "Do you believe that one has to be an expert in GR as to question Minkowski's spacetime?"

    I don't see how e.g. the principle by Maupertius invalidates the necessity to distinguish in reality between past and future. Can you please substantiate your repetitious reproach that my main arguments are naive?

    Eckard

    "Was this sentence correct: "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."?"

    Insofar as the laws of mathematics do not assume reality, they are not compelled to refer to it. They are certain; it is an open question of whether reality is certain or not.

    Tom,

    A statement that is certain is known to be true or correct. Reality cannot at all be true or correct because it is not a statement. Reality is rather the criterion of correctness.

    Boys are natural. That's why we must restrict to natural numbers of boys. You might call this argument naive, and it was indeed told to me by my grandson. Being natural is in this case synonymous to belonging to reality. In reality there are no traces of future processes. Elapsed time is as unilateral positive as is distance, even in any reasonable theory. Mathematics can be appropriate or inappropriate.

    I consider Einstein's bon mot an unnecessary and detracting excuse of his capitulation.

    Eckard

    "Was this sentence correct: "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."?"

    Insofar as the laws of mathematics do not assume reality, they are not compelled to refer to it. They are certain; it is an open question of whether reality is certain or not.