Real-Time Physics

Oh for goodness sakes...really? Einstein's relativity is based fundamentally on the equivalence of mass and energy. That equivalence then means that there are different clocks for each moving frame.

That the speed of light is independent of motion is simply a consequence of matter-energy equivalence. What all of this has to do with multiverses or string theory is simply a matter of belief, not science. It is not that these disciplines are not fun, it is just that they do not have any results that that are useful to help us predict action.

Space time has one perspective, matter time has a different perspective and both depend on matter-energy equivalence. Taking matter-energy equivalence away really does create a large number of pathologies. How do you explain nuclear matter defects?

The NIST latest and greatest cool clock is the 199Hg at 282 nm, a wonder with several orders of magnitude improvement over the existing 133Ci clock at a lowly 32 mm, some 10 orders of magnitude difference in frequency.

If you raise the Hg clock one meter, its frequency changes by exactly that expected by GR. That is so cool...Micelson-Morley, eat your hearts out.

Look, there are problems with GR, that is true. But it is decidely unhelpful to throw the baby out with the bath water. We need to build on the science that we know in order to discover the science that we do not yet know.

Can you tell me how I can buy one of these your 'cool' clocks so I can verify myself that it works as you claim. One should avoid depending on hearsay. In the event that it is only for the exclusive use of mainstream people, if you have a link I can read more about the latest rabbits being cooked for us to eat.

Don't misinterpret me. I don't intend throwing the baby away with the bath water but to give the baby a proper name not the one by which it is currently called.

In the quote I posted before, Einstein said velocity of light varies with position. Why then are you surprised that the frequency changes at one metre altitude? If c = fL that should not surprise you but what may be surprising to you is how light velocity can be invariant, a sacred principle to some and at the same time be said to vary with position. Certainly both can only be true in the Republic of Einsteiniana.

Regards,

Akinbo

This stuff is really fun...it is incredible what they can measure today and there is no doubt about a small variation in alpha over time. Here are the Hg and Al clocks.

Recent atomic clock comparisons at NIST

Improved Limits on Variation of the Fine Structure Constant and Violation of Local Position Invariance

Here are two different Dysprosium isotope clocks, so this stuff is great.

New limits on variation of the fine-structure constant using atomic dysprosium

I looked at these papers and others very closely in doing my alpha variation analysis. NIST is now using the measured variation in alpha to characterize their different clocks.

The clock frequency changes with elevation, but remember the speed of light in each of those two frames was constant. It is their clocks that vary relative to each other. Don't get your rabbits mixed up...

Also you might like to see other papers that show the alpha variation not only with clocks, but with cosmological line shift ratios.

The value of the fine structure constant over cosmological times

...and this 2000 paper discusses the math of the alpha shift in a very useful way...

Some possibilities for laboratory searches for variations of fundamental constants

Although there is much controversy over whether universal constants evolve over time, especially alpha the fine structure constant, the evidence for a change is overwhelming, albeit quite small. If alpha changes, well, everything changes. However, even though c and alpha change over time and space, that is still consistent with Lorentz invariance.

Lorentz invariance is a clock change with velocity that comes along with the equivalence of matter and energy. The speed of light can and does change for a large number of different reasons, just not in what we call a rest frame. Note that there really is no such thing as a rest frame since everything moves all of the time.

In particular, the matter time contracting universe predicts changes in alpha, but I have just now reconciled the observed changes with matter time. It does look like the alpha change measurements are consistent with matter time, but more on that later...

Really impressive stuff Steve. One can only hope these advances in technology will also advance the cause of truth. Thanks for the links.

Regarding, "The clock frequency changes with elevation, but remember the speed of light in each of those two frames was constant (i.e. at different elevations). It is their clocks that vary relative to each other. Don't get your rabbits mixed up...". I suggest this advice should have been directed at Einstein for saying that, "... the velocity of propagation of light varies with position".

Whatever is the case I think it is all a matter of choice of interpretation.

All the best,

Akinbo

Spacetime, the breathtaking consequence of Einstein's 1905 postulates, is wrong and will have to be abandoned (at least some Einsteinians say so):

WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? Steve Giddings: "Spacetime. Physics has always been regarded as playing out on an underlying stage of space and time. Special relativity joined these into spacetime... (...) The apparent need to retire classical spacetime as a fundamental concept is profound..."

Nima Arkani-Hamed, 14:31 : "We strongly believe that spacetime doesn't really exist. (...) The slogan is that spacetime is doomed and something has to replace it."

NEW SCIENTIST: "Rethinking Einstein: The end of space-time."

"And by making the clock's tick relative - what happens simultaneously for one observer might seem sequential to another - Einstein's theory of special relativity not only destroyed any notion of absolute time but made time equivalent to a dimension in space: the future is already out there waiting for us; we just can't see it until we get there. This view is a logical and metaphysical dead end, says Smolin."

"Was Einstein wrong? At least in his understanding of time, Smolin argues, the great theorist of relativity was dead wrong. What is worse, by firmly enshrining his error in scientific orthodoxy, Einstein trapped his successors in insoluble dilemmas..."

Yet, while Einsteinians apparently want to reject spacetime, the wrong consequence of Einstein's 1905 postulates, they still strongly believe that the postulates themselves are true:

QUESTION: Setting aside any other debates about relativity theory for the moment, why would the speed of light be absolute? No other speeds are absolute, that is, all other speeds do indeed change in relation to the speed of the observer, so it's always seemed a rather strange notion to me. LEE SMOLIN: Special relativity works extremely well and the postulate of the invariance or universality of the speed of light is extremely well-tested. It might be wrong in the end but it is an extremely good approximation to reality. QUESTION: So let me pick a bit more on Einstein and ask you this: You write (p. 56) that Einstein showed that simultaneity is relative. But the conclusion of the relativity of simultaneity flows necessarily from Einstein's postulates (that the speed of light is absolute and that the laws of nature are relative). So he didn't really show that simultaneity was relative - he assumed it. What do I have wrong here? LEE SMOLIN: The relativity of simultaneity is a consequence of the two postulates that Einstein proposed and so it is deduced from the postulates. The postulates and their consequences are then checked experimentally and, so far, they hold remarkably well.

Nima Arkani-Hamed: "When first encountering relativity, what really struck me about it more than anything else was actually how incredibly simple the underlying ideas were. The big point wasn't hidden in some minutiae of some deep mathematics, or these stunning, very striking assumptions - that the speed of light is constant and that physics looks the same in all frames of reference - and from these two seemingly innocuous assumptions come this incredibly different worldview than the standard Newtonian picture of the world."

Conclusion: Spacetime is not and cannot be doomed in Einstein's world. Einsteinians are not going to reject it - making more money is the only goal of the campaign:

QUANTUM MECHANICS AND SPACETIME IN THE 21ST CENTURY, NIMA ARKANI-HAMED, INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2014 AT 7:00PM, PERIMETER INSTITUTE - 31 CAROLINE ST. N., WATERLOO. Tickets for this event are SOLD OUT.

Pentcho Valev

Pentcho, well spotted. Tom, when you asked why some don't intervene and clarify what you called nonsense, I told you there is some sort of business going on. Don't however carry out your threat of not posting again because I personally find them interesting and helps in providing me alternative insight.

Akinbo

On second thought. Maybe I should be more sportsmanly and use the word 'game' instead of 'business' in above post. Apologies to Nima Arkani Games.

The grey aliens are at work. Hamed instead of Games. The auto correct function changed it without my consent.

Argh. Akinbo, as John R pointed out, these are not "alternative insights," just fundamental physics. When your 'alternative ideas' contradict fundamental physics, we can't as a group get anywhere toward understanding truly alternative physics.

And that's my complaint with members, which includes almost all of them, who don't jump in with their implied authority to set things right for the group. The site has become a mottled collection of cranky physics -- whose interests does that serve?

This clock stuff is really great...why there is not more interest in these amazing new clocks is beyond me. The fact that they have measurable changes in frequency with just a foot or so in elevation is incredible. They also measure the changes in the fine structure constant...or at least some believe there are changes...others believe it is only noise.

I mentioned before that time has two dimensions, but I was confused about proper time being one of them. Proper time is the norm between rest time and moving time, not the other dimension of time. Likewise, proper mass is the norm between rest mass and moving mass, not the other dimension of mass.

Space time uses 4-space to express its norms, but matter time uses only time and matter, but the math works the same. The differential of proper time is a consequence of mass-energy equivalence. Mass-energy equivalence makes a moving clock different from a rest clock, but really, we are never truly at rest. There are always things whirring and whizzing about inside and outside of us.

What proper time and action allow us to do is to focus on predicting a particular action and action always involves motion and a time center for that action. As soon as we have a time center of action, we have a proper time and proper mass for that action.

The key thing is that there really is no such thing as rest frame nor a moving frame...there is just the concepts of rest and moving frames that we imagine prior to an action. The action has the proper time and mass norms, the object in and of itself..

So we really only imagine rest and moving frames and the only thing that we can really experience is the proper frame of some action. Without action, there is no experience.

Steve,

"Einstein's relativity is based fundamentally on the equivalence of mass and energy." ?? Sequitur? Having His 1905 paper "Zur Elektrodynamik...° at hand I am looking in vain for where He already mentioned this equivalence.

Incidentally, instead of writing "Micelson-Morley, eat your hearts out" you should correctly interpret Michelson's 1881/87 (Potsdam/Cleveland) null result.

What about clocks, even Einstein referred to clocks of exactly the same Beschaffenheit. Elevation may change it, while speed as something relative to a chosen reference at rest doesn't.

Eckard

Steve,

These amazing new clocks, do they tell us if the nuclear vibration changes in frequency with elevation in a gravitational field, or does each fluctuation of the vibration simply have to transit a greater or lesser quantity of time in the same size of nuclear volume as elevation changes? Isaac or Albert? jrc

It might really be a surprise to some, but Einstein, despite all of his great stuff, did not figure out everything, i.e., unification. Einstein did not even believe in quantum theory for example. Quoting Einstein has some utility, but no theory explains all observations...some theories are just more useful than others for prediction of action.

These new clocks are simply incredible. The Japanese AIST have a Sr lattice clock that is very impressive. What I like about these new clocks is not how well they keep time, but that they decay over time. What I like about pulsars is not so much there nice pulses, but they decay in time. Both of those decays validate the decaying and collapsing universe.

The reported variation in the line ratios of two different kinds of clocks reveals a second order variation in the fine structure constant. Many report line ration variations are ~1e-15/yr...this is really small. Well, completely different reports from astrophysics also show variations of ~1e-15 in spectral line ratios over astronomical times.

This seems more than coincidental.

This will be really cool to show as all due to classical 0.255 ppb/yr matter decay of matter time.

Oh for goodness sake...

""Einstein's relativity is based fundamentally on the equivalence of mass and energy." ?? Sequitur? Having His 1905 paper "Zur Elektrodynamik...° at hand I am looking in vain for where He already mentioned this equivalence.

Look, Einstein did not figure out everything, not did he figure out everything he did in 1905. The matter energy equivalence is certainly a major theme in his work, but the 1905 paper you cite does not have it directly, although special realitivity does depend on MEE. Look in the 1915-16 papers on relativity. There mass energy equivalence is all over the place. Not surprizingingly, clocks are all over the place as well. With mass-energy equivalence, clocks vary with velocity and acceleration. This is the basis of Lorentz invarience.

In fact, the speed of light can vary as a function of time like in the decaying universe, but that does not violate Lorentz invariance.

Obviously, you are mocking my current obsession with these clocks...

"These amazing new clocks, do they tell us if the nuclear vibration changes in frequency with elevation in a gravitational field, or does each fluctuation of the vibration simply have to transit a greater or lesser quantity of time in the same size of nuclear volume as elevation changes? Isaac or Albert?"

But, I like clocks...they are useful. Do they tell us about nuclear stuff. In fact, certain of the clocks are very sensitive to nuclear states, those clocks based on hyperfine splitting. These are the Cs and 162,164Dy clocks and the decay of the ratio of the nuclear magnetic moment in time occurs.

Other clocks are sensitive to spin-orbit coupling and the fine structure constant is more important, but for all clocks, the fine structure constant is very important.

Astrophysical line ratios also show a variation in the fine structure constant, but this is controversial. All of this data is still very close to the limits of technology and so of course, there are two diametric camps, for and against fine structure variation in time.

Count me for.

Steve,

Nope. Conventionally, both QM and (R)elativity assume that time and space have the same physical scale because we can't look to anything by which to establish a universal scale for either. Ultimately both theoretical approaches are bootstrapped such that we really can't say that any time-keeping device provides an experimental means of falsifying either time paradigm. Now, in your own theoretical hypothesis you take space out of the picture. Without overdiversifying with examples of affirmation of your theory (which would take hours +++ of coaching, research and demonstration to follow) do you see any way that your time paradigm could be subjected to falsification by fine hair-splitting in 'quantum clocks' which is not bootstrapped back to your matter-time paradigm. Geologists use clocks to detect minute gravitational anomalies, that's amazing but not very revealing of the nature of time. :-] jrc

There is most certainly measurements that would falsify matter time. For example, the IPK artifact kg mass standard has a decay over time that agrees with my theory. The IPK drift has been blamed on an unknown effect, but there are new techniques that will have the precision to decide this issue in the next few years.

My theory depends on a very definite variation of the fine structure constant, alpha of 0.255 ppb/yr. These new amazing clocks have sensitivities that have measured a variation in alpha of 1e-16/yr or so with precisions on the order of 1e-18/yr. However, my theory shows these variations are actually second order in alpha, not first order.

The clocks are getting close to falsifying or rather affirming my approach...such is life. I had always assumed that there was some data that would disprove a collapsing universe, but when I look closely, what I find is instead affirmation. Still, it could be all an illusion.

The latest Japanese AIST Yb and Sr lattice clocks are truly amazing. Because the ratio of two different clocks provides a rather precise determination of an absolute drift for time, the stability curve of that ratio seems to converge onto a constant decay...that guess what, seems to agree with 0.255 ppb/yr. Right now, it is at the limit of what these clocks can do...but soon there will be an answer.

Steve,

I cannot see your theory invalidating Smolin's arguments. Maybe, your statement "Einstein's relativity is based fundamentally on the equivalence of mass and energy" is nonetheless helpful because it indicated why the community of physicists may have accepted as useful what Michelson considered a monster. Although §10 in "Zur Elektrodynamik... " applies the Lorentz factor beta on the energy of an electron, I don't see this a compelling logical justification of SR including an a priori existing spacetime. The relationship between different kinds of masses and different kinds of energy was already investigated before Einstein by Galileo, Newton, Thomson, Heaviside, Searle, Lorentz, and several others. I largely agree with Smolin.

Eckard

Perhaps you should elaborate on Smolin's arguments. He has written a lot and is not always consistent in what he states. I have read some of his books, but mostly, his writing is very meandering and noncommittal so it is hard to know what he really believes.