Real-Time Physics

Indeed, back to basics, reverse usual thinking on this subject. I'm 'replying' on this last post but am addressing ones above. Light is just a medium Wil through which we can experience reality. It has properties, eg speed of travel, frequency. These properties mean there is a limit to our ability to see (literally, there are other senses) reality. That does not mean that that part of reality we cannot see descends into some form of chaos/whatever, ie is structurally different from the rest of reality that we can see. We just can't see it. [I suspect that this is the problem with the commodity labelled dark energy/matter]. The ultimate rythm of a clock does not depend on light/time, it (and any entity is a 'clock') has an intrinsic rate of change. Our ability to see the clock (which in this context means a particular movement-ie rate of change- that we have designated to measure 'time') depends on light. One could have the world measured by 'decay rate in the average white cabbage', but that's not a particularly good reference point for the measuring system known as time. Lorentz Transformations are one of proabaly many 'theories' which try to resolve the original fault. To really paraphrase Thim:'if light started here, it cannot have the same shape when it gets over there'. In amongst all the relativity, the assertion that light is isotrophic 'sticks out a mile'. It's a 'convenient' (but probably at the time genuinely held) view to have since that then resolves a fundamental flaw in the argument which stems from attributing relativity effects to an intrinsic dimension of reality rather than an iterference effect in the process of seeing with light. In the Twin Paradox, the perception of different rates of change is real, but it is only a perception, and once the two are back at the same relative spatial point (in order to measure their relative rates of change, ie age) they will again both have the same relative rate of change. Perceptions do not create reality, which is that which exists idependently of our ability to experience it. Doesn't it strike anybody as peculiar that whist nobody subscribes to the notion that we 'think' 'big' entities into existence, suddenly when dealing with elementary particles, etc that seems to be OK?

Paul Reed

Cyclic should read a vicious circle.

Dear Tom.

You wrote: "Those who are unconvinced, due to false assumptions, lack of understanding of relativity, or both, will likely remain unconvinced."

Well, the opponent of SR who made me aware of the petition expressed his hope that the challenge to clarify which of the mutually contradicting variants to justify the twin paradox will overcome just this deadlock. NPA is perhaps more critical towards possible flaws in the very basics as compared e.g. with philsci. Nonetheless, I found in the philsci archives also what I consider more valuable food of thought than your to me enigmatic wife-beating metaphor.

Meanwhile, I have to admit being no longer a neutral judge. I maintain my arguments, in particular the following ones:

- While Poincaré synchronization is a proven old method for objects at rest relative to each other, it is not fair else.

- In case of a twin's round trip, the two intervals with acceleration at the beginning and at the end are independent from the travel with constant velocity back and forth and are to be considered separately. Hence, the putatively different aging cannot be compensated by them. Langevin's paradox is a true paradox as are several others that also prove SR untenable from the very beginning.

Do you read what Nicholas Maxwell wrote?

Regards,

Eckard

Regards,

Eckard

Sorry, Eckard. I shouldn't have used American idiom. "When did you stop beating your wife?" refers to a reporter's unfair question to a politican -- any way in which the politican directly answers the question will put him in a bad light. Either he once used to beat his wife, or he continues to do so. If he answers, "I never beat my wife!" then he either protests too much, or he suspiciously refuses to answer the question. To put it another way, it's a "Heads I win, tails you lose," proposition, which I think is universally understood.

In the context of your question to me, since it's based on a misconception of relativity in the first place, I can't answer the question directly without increasing misunderstanding. You've already made up your mind that relativity is flawed (though it isn't flawed at all) on assumptions that are themselves flawed.

Again, special relativity is not a different theory from general relativity. Just as in geometry a straight line is a special case for a curve, special relativity is a special case of uniform motion while generalized motion (acceleration) is the subject of general relativity.

Because straight-line acceleration from the fixed point (stay at home twin) is directly opposite the moving point (traveling twin), the relativistic effect of time dilation compels each twin to see the other's physical processes as being slowed, from their respective inertial frames, though the physical processes in their own local frame appears normal. So as long as the twins maintain this relation, they each see themselves as growing older and they see the other as staying young.

For the traveling twin to return to the stay at home twin by negatively accelerating and reversing course, she is no longer in a straight line relation to her sister. She joins an acceleration curve in which intervals toward the fixed point shorten in proportion to the rate of acceleration, until the interval is zero and the twins share the same reference frame at which they started. In this frame, the traveling twin is really younger than the stay at home twin ("reality" being defined in the original fixed reference frame) because of the relativistic effect that moving mass ages slower in relation to mass at rest. This effect is well known and well tested; convoluted "logic" aside, the physics is real. And true.

Tom

Dear Tom,

From time to time the media report one more "evidence" for what is misleadingly called theory of reality. The first reason for me to deal with the seemingly never-ending controversy was Hilbert's denial of the obvious fact that as Shannon expressed it the past is known in principle but can definitely not be changed while the future can be influenced but is not known for sure. Secondly I wondered why the Lorentz gamma does not depend on the sign of velocity as does the Doppler effect. Then I disagreed with the round-trip synchronization introduced by Poincaré and adopted without crediting him by Einstein. I looked into Wikipedia articles and textbooks concerning SR, Lorentz transformation and the like. Nowhere I find convincing arguments in favor of LT and SR. Moreover, I should mention that I am familiar with acoustic waves as well as with Maxwell's equations. Accordingly, I do not see any reason to question c as the maximal velocity of propagation of electromagnetic waves.

Admittedly, I am absolutely unqualified concerning questions like quantum gravity, GPS problems and the like. I just realized that e.g. Van Flandern who was perhaps a good expert stated that Galilean electrodynamics is in position to even more easily explain all putatively relativistic effects.

What about the idea that moving mass is aging faster than mass at rest, I wonder how we can attribute a motion just to one of the twins. Isn't there only relative motion between them?

You wrote: "This effect (1) is well known (2) and well tested (3); convoluted "logic" aside, the physics is real (4). And true (5)." Is my logic convoluted? In Parentheses I added the numbers 1 to 5 as to count mere statements i.e. lacking arguments.

As I did not expect the breakdown of communism achievable by means of a single discussion, I do not have similar illusions concerning aleph_2 and SR.

Regards,

Eckard

Eckard,

You wrote, "What about the idea that moving mass is aging faster than mass at rest ...?

Just the opposite. Moving mass ages slower relative to rest mass. That is, physical processes as observed from the rest frame appear to slow down -- but from the moving frame, the rest mass appears to age slower. Because there is no preferred frame of reference, each observer is correct.

The twin "paradox" concerns what happens when one frame is considered fixed and the other moving. The symmetry is broken.

Tom

Dear Tom,

I didn't pay attention to the question of what I consider inconsistent SR related conventionality. Of course, due to the simple Doppler effect each twin perceives the pulse frequency of the other one slower and not higher if the distance between the twins increases while higher if they move towards each other.

However, so called theory of relativity actually breaks with the compelling insight of Galilei, the relativity of motion. If twin 1 is chosen to be the preferred frame of reference then twin 2 seems to age slower in case of growing distance. Just with twin 2 chosen the preferred reference, twin 1 seems to age slower than twin 2, i.e., twin 2 ages faster. Which one is moving, which one is at rest? Be honest and consequent. There is only motion between both twins.

You might argue gamma depends on the squared velocity. Well, in case of a car crash the damaging energy also depends on the squared velocity. However, such a crash is always the irreversible result of decreasing distance.

I conclude that the application of gamma to increasing as well as decreasing distance is definitely nonsensical. In that I agree with Van Flandern. I am merely asking myself: Is gamma justified at all? So far I found out that the mathematical derivations are flawed, and putative evidence has proven untenable.

Einstein provoked a lot of unjustified distrust against the limit to the speed of light. When Nimtz claimed having measured transmission of signals with a speed in excess of c, he attracted a lot of crowd. These people were perhaps not just to lazy as to critically read the original papers and get aware of foundational mistakes in them. I see the root for acceptance of SR and block universe in the belief that the future does already exist in advance but is not yet known to us. Isn't it absurd to stubbornly demand integration over t from minus infinity to plus infinity if measured data are only available for past time? I see Galilean logic at odds with Poincaré's round-trip synchronization.

Regards,

Eckard

Eckard,

You wrote, "I didn't pay attention to the question of what I consider inconsistent SR related conventionality. Of course, due to the simple Doppler effect each twin perceives the pulse frequency of the other one slower and not higher if the distance between the twins increases while higher if they move towards each other."

As I implied, those who don't understand relativity in the first place won't be swayed by explanations that follow directly from the model. Even though relativity clearly illustrates that all motion is relative and there is no preferred Galilean frame of reference, there just has to be "something else" that "makes sense" to one's naive sensibilities. I see it in this forum time after time.

The Doppler effect has nothing to do with the twin problem. RELATIVE motion between the twins in straight line acceleration where each sees the other as staying young (though in their own respective frames they see themselves age normally) implies that there is no preferred Doppler frame. There is no objective third observer, in other words (which is another error some forum participants consistently make).

Only when the traveling twin reverses course, does the aging of each twin appear asymmetrical, because the curved path the traveling twin takes on return to his sister implies decreasing increments of spacetime between them. Now there IS an (arbitrary) fixed reference frame, that of the stay at home twin. That is, the traveling twin speeded up his own aging process (relative to his twin) only at the period of negative acceleration in reversing course; otherwise, his (relative) motion preserves some of the youth that his sister lost.

The physics is straightforward, and I think that's all I have to say about it.

Tom

Dear Tom,

While I shared your agitation for decades, I am sorry if you do not have more to say. You wrote "there is no objective third observer". Well none of the possibly many other observers is "objective" in the sense of to be preferred as neutral reference. However, when you wrote "another error" does this mean you are blaming me for assuming "a preferred Doppler frame"?

Woldemar Voigt was the first who introduced what we are calling Lorentz factor in a paper "Ueber das Doppler'sche Prinzip", dealing not with light but with oscillations within an elastic incompressible medium. More precisely, he started with the constant velocity of propagation for plane acoustic waves.

It does not matter whether I see the relative motion from the "objective" perspective of twin 1 or twin 1. The Doppler effect is measurable and logical the same back and forth and seen from either side unless we break the symmetry of relativity and the separation between past and future by arbitrarily declaring one twin moving and the other one at rest.

My concern is to reveal and remove any unjustified arbitrariness from physics. Our time scale is arbitrarily bound to midnight in Greenwich and the birth of Christ. Isn't the only natural point of reference is the very moment, the border between past and future?

Minkowski introduced so called proper time. Did it prove useful? I cannot confirm any benefit. See Proper_time in Wikipedia. I merely recall proper time that it gave rise to ridiculous science fiction.

Regards,

Eckard

Space-time is a conceptual mistake.Attachment #1: Is_spacetime_a_conceptual_mistake.pdf

"Time is an illusion" is a consequence of two postulates - the principle of relativity and the principle of constancy of the speed of light - advanced by Einstein in 1905. Anyone who rejects "time is an illusion" should make a suggestion as to which postulate is false. Pentcho Valev

'Time' is misunderstood, and the proof of its quality, whereby 'either light speed or 'time' must vary', is false. That incorporates a confusion between the experience of reality and reality itself, which leads to the mis-attribution of 'time' as a spatial dimension, when actually the effect which we experience is just a function of light.

Think on this: We do not see the dog, we see a light based representaion of the dog. That is, the experience of reality is not reality, it is an experience of reality.

And so, yes Amrit, 'space-time' is a conceptual mistake

Paul

Penchto,

Both the principle of relativity as found by Galilei and the principle of constancy of the speed of light in vacuum can be correct, and nonetheless time need not to be an illusion.

On the other hand, the round-trip method of synchronization, which was used by Poincarè and tacitly adopted by Einstein, is unfounded. Tom Van Flandern called it perhaps aptly desynchronization. Is here anybody who can justify Poincarè? Obviously no.

Tentative interpretations of some experiments concerning the ether hypothesis and aberration gave rise to what Poincarè called Lorentz transformation.

Subsequently Einstein and Minkowski built further speculations on this primary misconception. Einstein's 1905 relativity is obviously a logically broken relativity.

Being a German myself, I wonder why in particular Germans before the two WWs were prone to admire questionable or even horrible ideologies including Cantor's naive set theory and Minkowski's spacetime. I do not consider just Einstein worth to be blamed for what he largely plagiarized. One hundred years after in France Paul Langevin found the first one of several SR-related paradoxes, and in a situation where some theorists are ready to abandon anything including time and the Euclidean notion of number except for aleph_2 and spacetime, only retired experts are in position to frankly utter criticism.

Eckard

Eckard (Penchto)

Indeed, the fundamental notion of relativity and the constant speed of light can co-exist, if one understands how reality works and what 'time' is. Your notion Penchto that 'time' is an illusion is sort of on the right track. In that, can anyone go and get me cup full of 'time'. Answer: No. And why not? Answer: because what is known as 'time' is the manifestation of something else in reality. Herein lies the flaw with SR.

Eckard, as a Sociologist (well 40 years ago!)I am fascinated by your comments. Over the past month, having got sufficiently annoyed by Stephen Hawking's book to think it through based on stuff I wrote on reality back then, I think there is a very interesting 'back story' here. How did this fallacy arise, what kept it going, etc, etc

Paul

Eckard

Just had a look at Cantor. Without going into it in any depth admittedly, and indeed I doubt if I would understand it anyway, I'm prepared to suggest that this suffers from the same flaw that Goedal suffers from (I was referred to that a few days ago). I suspect there are several more of the same era if not Nationality. The problem is that they do not recognise that you must be working in a 'closed system', ie if 'A', there is always the possibility of 'not A'. But a) this is only a possibility, b) those that are inherently within the closed system will never be able to prove 'not A'. So, in my opinion, what has probably happened here is that these arcane mathematical theories have 'crossed over' from 'A' to 'not A'. This is the same as someone proposing an hypothesis which has elements of facts mixed in with mustical beliefs. But numbers 'look' so much more objective than words, so the fault goes unnoticed.

Paul Reed

Dear Paul,

You wrote: "what is known as 'time' is the manifestation of something else in reality. Herein lies the flaw with SR." Well, the usual notion of time including future allows manipulations like shift, zoom, and even reversal. I see it derived from unilateral just elapsed time by abstraction and anticipating extrapolation. The natural zero got lost with this abstraction.

What about Georg Cantor's logically split but unfortunately nonetheless accepted thinking, his allegedly rigorous interpretation of his, borrowed from Paul Du Bois Reymond, second diagonal argument assumed trichotomy: either smaller or equal to or larger. Cantor ignored the so called 4th logical possibility which was already described by Galileo Galilei: Infinite quantities are incomparable.

Regards,

Eckard

Eckard Blumschein wrote: "Both the principle of relativity as found by Galilei and the principle of constancy of the speed of light in vacuum can be correct, and nonetheless time need not to be an illusion."

"Time is an illusion" is not the best example of absurd consequence of Einstein's 1905 false constant-speed-of-light postulate. Length contraction absurdities are much more illustrative. Fore instance, the postulate entails that an arbitrarily long object can be trapped inside an arbitrarily short container ant that a bug can be both dead and alive:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/barn_pole.html

"These are the props. You own a barn, 40m long, with automatic doors at either end, that can be opened and closed simultaneously by a switch. You also have a pole, 80m long, which of course won't fit in the barn. (...) ...the rod will be trapped IN A COMPRESSED STATE inside the barn."

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/Relativ/bugrivet.html

The Bug-Rivet Paradox

Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com

Dear Pentcho,

As the velocity of sound in a given medium is constant, I do not see any reason to doubt that there is a corresponding limit to the velocity of photons. You are quite right, SR caused numerous paradoxes. You asked which principle might be wrong.

Experimental results were misleading. Nimtz "measured" propagation of signals with velocities in excess of c. Michelson-Morley were interpreted as evidence against an ether, and this lead to theoretical constructs by FitzGerald, Larmor, Lorentz, Poincaré, Einstein, and Minkowski. Nonetheless, the special theory of relativity is untenable. Einstein's speculative principle of relativity must not be confused with Galilei's logically founded and experimentally confirmed principle of relativity. Presumably, the mistake arose from evident mathematical flaws, a questionable readiness to resort on Poincaré's round-trip synchronization, and the competition-driven preferences for as difficult to imagine as possible applications of advanced, in particular Riemannian, mathematics.

Regards,

Eckard

Experimental data of Gravity Probe A confirm that velocity of material change depends on gravity. Clocks rate is faster on satellite than on the surface of the earth. Same is valid for all material change from chemical to biological one.

Experimental data of Gravity Probe A does not give any evidence that clocks run in time and gravity influences time, so clocks on the satellite run faster. Existence of time as a physical reality in which clocks should run is an unproved preposition. What we can conclude out of data of Gravity Probe A is that gravity influences velocity of material change.Attachment #1: Analysis_of_experimental_data_given_by_Gravity_Probe_A_and_Gravity_probe_B.PDF