Peter,

My one-way definition of the speed of light in empty space is apparently too simple and irrefutable as to be accepted by you. What is the obstacle?

Everybody is used to refer speed to something. You mentioned "the rest frame of the fermions" and "the sol rest frame". Persson's essay (A Tragedy in Physics) mentions "boundary conditions that are relevant in relation to the wave motion".

In contrast, I agree with Einstein on that there is no naturally preferred point of reference, no rest frame in space. Because my definition is restricted to empty space, it does perhaps not collide with your focus on reemission by fermions. I wonder if I am the first one who claims that the far field of light waves in empty space simply propagate with no direct reference to a frame of emitter, reemitter, medium, or receiver. Only the distance matters, not an arbitrarily chosen point of reference. Did nobody else already distinguish between empty space as a medium as Maxwell imagined it and empty space as mere mutual distances?

Incidentally, what is your opinion concerning the conflict between limitless growth of world population and protection of nature, etc.? I guess, I understand the voters for Brexit and Trump to some extent. Germany's future president often says the world is out of joint. I see a necessity for correcting ethics.

Eckard

Eckard,

On humans v nature I broadly agree with you as my essay on that. But I also identify the

Eckard,

On your 'c' description. The basic issue I have is that it doesn't meet the essential test of hypotheses; correspondence to findings. As an astronomer I've focussed on that subject for decades and it's indisputable. What will please you is that the current SR interpretation similarly fails. Einstein conveniently 'forgot' the odd issue (actually he didn't as he well recognised even in 1952 that he hadn't found the complete answer). Relativists will always sidestep each issue circularly, so the theory can take us nowhere.

Unfortunately that's exactly what you've been drawn into with your own description. I set out some simple falsifications clearly in my post but you chose to 'look away' as they're inconvenient. You DO need some reference frame to define your emission 'point' and measure from it even though claiming you don't. Your description is also inconsistent for our observer at rest in Earths outer atmosphere. Good science is about facing and recognising inconsistencies. So identify a valid observer for me!

The first thing you must accept is the reality of experimental discovery. If you haven't looked' then do so as any solution described will otherwise fail. We know very accurately the make-up of most of 'space'. Certainly none of it is entirely 'empty', just quite diffuse between galaxy clusters, and all regions are in relative motion. Einstein didn't know any of that but we now DO so can correct the errors - once we apply not ignore it!

The more flawed ideas there are the more confused the situation and the more confounded will be our efforts to gain clarity. That's why they must be 'called out'. I'm sure you agree our biggest problem is those clinging to old or 'pet' theories and ignoring evidence. That's non-s(ci)ence!

Your description only needs a little updating to correspond to reality and be useful. I'm sure your mind can still do that if the will exists!

Best

Peter

Peter,

You wrote: "You DO need some reference frame to define your emission 'point' and measure from it".

No. As do incremental sensors, I only measure the distance between the emitting point at the moment of emission and the point of arrival at the moment of arrival. Emitter and receiver may have frames of reference that are moving relative to each other.

In particular if their distance doesn't change then it and also the time of flight can be measured, in principle.

You wrote: "1st; Who can properly determine 'Time of Flight'? The answer is nobody! Choose an observer and I'll show you his problem."

I am curious. For the sake of simplicity I consider an emitter E and a receiver/observer R on a line without any reference point. Let the distance between E and R increase during the time of flight from d_0 to d_1.

Notice: There is no third point of reference relative to which E and R could have a velocity of relevance.

The notorious problem is thinking in terms of either the Newtonian ballistic picture where the speed of a bullet depends on the speed of the cannon or of the picture how a wave travels in a medium.

My definition makes an uncommon distinction between empty space without any point of reference and the hypothetical medium aether that was ad hoc attributed to a differently understood space, thought to include a center point or a boundary being equivalent to it. CMBR is not qualified as such boundary.

Eckard

Eckard,

Your essay is a very good recounting of the historical evolution of mathematics and philosophy over the past few thousand years. It could just as easily have been presented as an entry in the last essay contest. The emphasis upon the evolution of natural systems is a key point I think.

When speaking of infinite series, you note that an infinite series cannot be complete. Would you make a similar comparison between evolution and "emergence"?

BTW, although an infinite series can not be computed in finite time, a partial sum and a residual can be added together to give the correct result if the residual coincidentally has the correct value.

I agree with your definition for light speed. My only question is how to measure the transit time ....

Best Regards and Good Luck,

Gary Simpson

    Hello Eckard,

    Congratulations for your essay,objective, rational and respecting our postulates.Relevant like always to read your developments.

    All the best and good luck.

      • [deleted]

      • Post #24

      Gary,

      Thank you for agreeing on my definition for the speed of light in vacuum. There is nonetheless a paper of NIST in nature 2010 that allegedly proofs time dilution. I see my definition an alternative. While exact one-way measurement of time is indeed a challenging task, I rather trust in logical scrutiny. My essay focuses on checking non-arbitrariness.

      As did already Leibniz, I tend to question any perfect symmetries in nature.

      To me, frequently occurring striking mirror symmetry rather indicates a mathematical artifact. In general, I see mathematical items like the line, the circle, and infinity merely ideal and therefore strictly speaking unphysical simplifications of reality.

      If we are speaking of an infinite series, we have convergent ones in mind. The alternating series 1, -1, 1, -1, 1, ... does not converge.

      Entities may suddenly emerge in any part of reality including physics, live, history, politics, science, feelings, ideas, plans, art, etc.; I see them as always just distinguished levels of an evolution that is pretty continuous and traceable back to multiple causes. A foetus evolves and gets a baby with its emergence by birth.

      I don't see the primary goal for menkind in equality and freedom but in survival by means of responsible self-control. Leaving a poisoned earth is a dangerous illusion.

      With your theory you will need good look, too. I don't expect much recognition of my often unwelcome reasoning in this contest. I merely hope my grandchildren will see me active on the right side from the perspective of responsible human evolution.

      Regards,

      Eckard

      I feel in debt to FQXi for guiding me to develop hopefully useful while admittedly uncommon conclusions.

      Eckard,

      Re; "I consider an emitter E and a receiver/observer R on a line without any reference point. Let the distance between E and R increase during the time of flight from d_0 to d_1. ... There is no third point of reference relative to which E and R could have a velocity of relevance."

      OK. Firstly, the ability to measure 'in principle' is highly arguable and anyway meaningless if it can't be done in reality. No possibility of experiment = valueless model.

      You also DO have a 'hidden' reference point for measurement; which is the 'position' of observer R with respect to (wrt) E at the moment of emission. Doing away with backgrounds is ok but it can't also do away with that! You'll struggle to impose that over embedded beliefs so let me put it again like this;

      How can R ever know 'where' or HOW FAR AWAY E is at the time of emission??

      The fact is Eckard he can't can he!

      Sure Einstein was wrong, but your simplest of descriptions wasn't 'missed' by he and others but dismissed as valueless.

      Just to finish; If an observer was beside E what would he pin his instrument or 'tape measure' too to judge the distance to R by? YT The only solution is to CREATE the reference point you've tried to remove. (And unless he traveled at light speed he could never find R anyway).

      Can you think of any application where the description may be of use? As an astronomer who's struggled to improve on inconsistent data and flawed distance measurement 'conventions' already I can't find any. If we take an observer on a planet offset half way between E and R then we're just back to and observer reference frame wrt R and E.

      There IS a useful logical solution but you must perhaps be honest with yourself that it lies elsewhere.

      Nonetheless your essay itself deserves a high score. However my first score was high and I was immediately trolled with two 1's. I'll hold fire so you don't suffer the same fate, unless you're unconcerned.

      Peter

      Peter,

      You are unable to get free from your selfish point of view. You asked: "How can R ever know 'where' or HOW FAR AWAY E is at the time of emission??" As an astronom you should know that already Roemer in 1676 and Breadley in 1728 managed to determine the one-way speed of light from Jupiter's satellites and stellar aberration, respectively. Fitzeau (1849), Foucault (1862), and Michelson (1879) used a toothed wheel or a rotating mirror. Since then, inferometric measurements were performed in labs with stationary equipment that emits and receives the light.

      My students regularly used a simple means as to roughly measure the speed of signals. Of course, we measured distances before the experiments, and time by means of signals of given frequency on an oscilloscope. When I reduced the issue to E and R on a line, I assumed empty space consisting of mutual distances and a pre-SR notion of time.

      I translate your teleological ascription of missing "knowledge" to R into a more serious argument: You argue that there is no causal link between the time of flight and the distance between E and R. Indeed, the value c of the speed of light in vacuum is an empirical measure despite its relation to epsilon and my.

      My definition differs from Poincaré's two-way approach while it is similar to the aether hypothesis except for it doesn't refer to a light-carrying medium.

      If you are still convinced to have a better solution, you might point to it.

      Eckard

      :) always surprising and intersting to read you in all case.

      Friendly

      Dear Eckard Blumenschein

      it is an interesting comprehensive essay, where I in particular agree about the block universe, the significance of evolution, and the importance of values for the future of humanity. I believe that the key feature you focus on, Non-arbitrary reasoning, is possible because logic choices can emerge from physics via biomolecules at the micro level, as I explain in my essay, which are then incorporated in physiological structures (brains) at the macro level which enable the micro logic to be built up to underpin macro logic, as also occurs in the case of digital computers.

      It is good to argue with breadth and historical depth, as you have.

      George Ellis

        7 days later

        Eckard,

        In many ways I agree the world has an open nature to it, which in part is what you appear to argue for. I also think that a part of what you are thinking of with QM is similar to the Heisenberg algebra. The matrices are upper right triangular as generators of Borel groups.

        I am a bit unsure how the part at the end with population fit in. However, you paper seems to deserve a higher score than where it is at.

        Cheers LC

          Dear Lawrence,

          As to demonstrate my lacking command of the language of modern mathematics, I tell you how I understand the notion "open": The condition m_ij = в€ћ for a Coxeter group means no relation of the form (r_i r_j)^m should be imposed.

          Thank you for hinting to upper right triangles in Heisenberg and Borel groups. I have to admit, my common sense approach does already fundamentally differ from Sophus Lee's one. I see selected and restricted mathematics as more or less appropriate tools.

          Well, IR+ can be interpreted as special case of IR. However, I agree with my former boss who called my suggestion, seeing it from human perspective the other way round, utterly fundamental.

          I dared to write about responsibility for coping with population growth because I see it logically a most important part of any comprehensive view on evolution of science. Wudus must not be ignored.

          Cheers, Eckard

          The approach with Borel groups is connected with Kleinian coset models. This is something of particular interest to me.

          Mathematically open sets are those with topology, or where there is some epsilon disk or region around any point. My point with openness is with quantum information and cohomological groups describing entanglement symmetries that are closed and not exist (without boundary).

          My feelings about human population is that at this point trying to address that issue is like closing the barn door after the horses have run away. To be honest we have already blown it.

          Cheers LC

          Dear readers,

          Please find my comment concerning Lee and symmetry at Yanowsky's essay.

          To begin with your pessimism concerning evolution, I see the future open. As Shannon said, it is unknown but we may influence it.

          While I highly appreciate your profound knowledge of group theory, I got aware of deliberate neglect of logics not just in the application of mathematics but perhaps already in its very basics. You mentioned topology and a region around a point. Someone mocked, topology cannot even act like a child and perform a symmetrical cut. Why? Because a real number is a number. Is a number really a number? Hausdorff's surrounding of a point and the picture of how to imagine the Dirac impulse as an infinitely narrow bell-shape don't fit to what Terhardt revealed and also not to my intention for strictly dividing between positive and negative or past and future.

          David Joyce confirmed my ideas as interesting when I criticized pebbles instead of Euclidean points.

          Katz made me aware of the fact that the logical notion infinity as used by Galileo is different from the mathematical (relative) infinity by Leibniz/Bernoulli.

          In all, I have to make homework as to go through what I feel with Weyl a shaking ground and holpefully falsify my suspitions concerning Pauli's opinion. I don't see myself biased by lacking qualification. My professional work was to a large extent teaching and application of complex calculus.

          Cheers, Eckard

          Eckard,

          I can't agree that identifying 'bootstrapping' is 'selfish'. Among thousands of approximations since Roemer not one has, famously!, yet found a way of precisely measuring the one way speed of light without 'relying' on light itself. We've discussed interferomenters before and I've published papers on their limitations and poor interpretation. Either you can pull yourself from the a swamp by your own hair or your description isn't useful, or a contribution to resolving all the anomalies found and paradoxes in SR etc.

          I've described one option that DOES resolve the anomalies, not requiring the old 'ether' to carry light. We already know light CHANGES SPEED when it encounters any medium on n=

          Peter,

          My definition of the speed of light in empty space does also not need the aether. By the way, the notion aether goes back to Homer and Aristotele. Initially it meant the sky and then a divine immaterial eternal substance free from the contradictions that were thought to be immanent to the elements. When Maxwell's equations explained light as electromagnetic waves, these waves were imagined to propagate in a medium like acoustic waves in air. Before, Newton had imagined light like emitted particles. Your re-emission idea is a variant of his emission theory.

          Your last posting seems to be unfinished. Anyway, I don't at all deal with light in "any medium".

          What about the one-way measurement, it is of course not feasible in astronomy to directly measure distances and timespans "without relying on light itself". Nonetheless, it is feasibile to reproducibly measure distances on solid objects and also timespans with high accuracy. Einstein was wrong when he denied the possibility of one-way measurement. I see his two-way Poincaré synchronization as a trick to arrive at Lorentz' length contraction formula.

          When I wrote "selfish", I meant your attempt to simply declare my essay not as correct as your former essays, without a detailled critical comparison. Moreover, I feel immune against blackmailing.

          Eckard

          Eckard,

          You're right. Most of the post was cut as I used a symbol that seems to do so!

          Not just Einstein; it's a famous problem in all astrophysics to derive a way to measure 1 way speed! And I didn't suggest you employed ether, only that my (cut- but given before) "detailed critical comparison" doesn't either. You didn't open up to allow yourself to grasp it before but maybe now;

          Fermions are condensed as pairs FROM some condensate, they are not 'ether'. (We've recently found thousands of time more of this space plasma than believed - i.e. 1014/cm-3 even locally in Earths turbulent ionospheric shock.

          We know fermions couple with Electromagnetic signals (including the visible range). We also know such plasma has a refractive index of n=1 (so has NO detectable EM 'signature'). Now all findings support the notion that all particles re-emitting EM energy do so at c. That is LOCAL 'c' IN THE CENTRE OF MASS REST FRAME OF EACH PARTICLE.

          Lastly we know that massive clouds of space plasma move around in space (most often around and in the LOCAL rest frame of co-moving bodies). We also find 'birefringence' (TWO apparent paths/speeds) in less dense plasmas, gases and some other media.

          I hope that 'nutshell' explanation was adequate.

          Best Peter

          Now all we have to do is employ our brains analytical functions and put all those findings together logically. To do it for you;

          EM propagation is at 'c' locally wherever fermions exist, or at c with respect to the last emitters interacted with. Signals may appear to have 'curved paths' in diffuse media until all is interacted with or where (ubiquitous) particle density gradients exist. Light will therefor travel through OUR Solar system at c wrt the SUN unless near a planet. And light in OTHER solar systems will propagate at c wrt to THAT sun, NOT OURS!!

          That description is consistent with ALL findings, including ALL the disparate and otherwise confusing interferometer result. It also solves many anomalous findings. i.e. the KINETIC reverse refraction of light in plasma clouds moving across it's path, (as also found by Lodge in his spinning glass disc experiments).

          Now in fact that's very close to your own description, apart from it recognizes the known physics of coupling, and also has that massive power to resolve all anomalies and paradoxes (think of any for me if you like and I'll explain how). It's no more 'one way measurable' than any other model but is both fully consistent AND exceptionally useful.