You seem to want to be inserting a third reference frame in here, and that’s fine, as long as you acknowledge that that is what you are doing.
So, you are in one reference frame, the clocks are in two others. The clock that is moving slowest is the clock that is moving fastest relative to you.
If you are just comparing the two reference frames, then they will both will see the other clock as moving slower.
It would be impossible if there wasn’t an experimentally validated framework that explains how different frames of reference relate to each other. I wonder what sort of name we could give to that framework?
I think the problem is the assumption of a privileged correct or absolute reference frame. You’re being asked to describe relativity in absolute, non-relative terms. Like being asked to define exactly what kind of insect is a Blue Whale.
The answer is, of course, an inelastic collision.
If you and I are standing such that there is a distance of 10 metres between us, which one of us is 10 metres away?
This is starting to remind me of this:
Never mind that. I like your earlier analogy, from Father Ted.
I and many others have made a number of genuine good-faith attempts to present the science as simply and intuitively as possible, apparently to no avail whatsoever, met only by the persistent recitation of the same nonsense. We are therefore left only with analogies, imperfect though they may be. Allow me to present one such analogy, based on the inspiration in your clip.
Bessie and Bossie are two brown cows with big brown eyes. Bessie and Bossie are very good friends. They graze with each other all the time.
But one day Bessie and Bossie wander away from each other and find themselves on opposite sides of a large meadow. Bessie, seeing Bossie in the distance, concludes that Bossie is very small. Bessie takes out her angular measurement instrument and confirms that this is true; Bossie’s arc-size is very small indeed.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the meadow, Bossie takes the same measurement and concludes that it’s actually Bessie who is very small.
Each of the brown cows has measured the other as being smaller than herself. This is impossible. I therefore conclude that the theory of vision is wrong.
It’s incredible that no so-called “scientists” are able to understand this simple fact.
The trouble with the small/far away analogy is that there exists the temptation to invoke a privileged referenced frame in which we can measure that neither cow is actually small.
But that’s just the trouble with analogies - they are by definition different from the thing they try to explain, and nobody should expect that the analogy holds when extended beyond the stated constraints.
I think it gets deeper than that. If we move the two cows back next to one another they are clearly the same size. And moreover, there is no set of movements we can come up with that will change this. Doesn’t matter which cow moves. Bring them back together again and they are the same size. So it isn’t hard to come up with the a notion of actual size. Moreover, this isn’t a million miles away from gauge invariance. So one wants to be pretty careful.
The questions about relativity do demand some precision in answer. What is missing from a large part of the above conversation is the question - how do the two travelling clocks perceive the other as running slow? It is all well and good to say that each see the other are running slow, but how?
Analogues with acoustic Doppler shift in air are all well and good, but again still not quite correct. As you move closer to the speed of sound the analogue breaks down.
So how and why does each clock see the other as slow? And why is this not some illusion that can be trivially unmasked - say by moving the cows back together?
The trouble one has with talking with anyone who comes in with a fixed belief that special relativity is wrong is that there are multiple preconceptions that all need to be bridged to get to the heart of the matter. You can’t win by only addressing one at a time.
This is perhaps why the twin paradox is so important. You can’t trivially unmask the simple truth by moving the clocks back together. Depending upon the exact manner in which you do the experiment you can end up with utterly mind bending results. In the end, you can end up with one twin undeniably older than the other sitting down together to discuss the world (and whether it is OK to ask your twin brother’s really hot granddaughter for a date.) This is undeniably real, not an illusion born of reversible perspective.
The two clocks in flight are much harder to nail down as we have as many different reference frames as we like, and a number of different relative clocks rate results possible depending upon the reference frame. (However none of them have the clocks running at the same speed.) So a single universal truth is elusive, and actually prohibited. The most useful thing we can say is that each clock sees the other as running slow. But that is only two of an infinitude of perspectives. It is still real, in the sense that there is no hidden underlying truth that can be unmasked. They are different reference frames, and by definition, the truth about the passage time is relative to each frame, and there does not exist a fundamental true reference frame that determines a universal truth about time.
So, again, that gets us back to the simple answer. If you want to compare the actual times of the clocks, you have to bring them together in the same reference frame. Then you can talk about what is impossible or not. But doing so means that one of the clocks needs to change reference frames. And do so more than once. It needs to swap to a reference frame that is travelling back towards the first clock. It can’t do that without transiting through a non-inertial reference frame. And at this point things are going to go very weird.
But in order to convince someone of this you need to convince them about the need for different reference frames, the non-existence of a privileged frame, and the constancy of the speed of causality.
Where you get into trouble is that they won’t budge on at least one, eg Michaelson Morley was flawed or trivially explainable, so causality isn’t constant in speed. And so on. Every time you go around the loop there is always a reason why not to accept one of the conditions. Of course it is crafted based upon a simple unassailable premise: special relativity is wrong, and thus it is allowed that new truths can be invented to dismiss it. Eventually, like all good CTers, there is a conspiracy of entrenched scientists to bury the truth.
The alternativephysics web page linked to earlier is a perfect example. I get the feeling that whoever wrote the page has roughly the mathematics of junior high school, but is otherwise reasonably smart. So they cannot manage to do any maths that involve even simple special relativity. The twins paradox is dismissed qualitatively as not working even with special relativity. Not with numbers, just gut feel. Just plain lazy. The page discussing GPS gets deeper, but suffers from a failure of understanding how GPS receivers actually work. And has trivial errors that could easily have been found with a few minutes research. And so on. Yet it is cited all over the Internet.
k9bfriender, I am not using a third reference frame, I don’t know what makes you say that. As Einstein said that these effects are real, your answer is invalid. I want to know according to the rules of relativity which clock is running slow, and why that one.
Tom Hollings.
Analogies are just dangerous in a hostile or emotive debate. They are sometimes illustratively useful in a context where all parties have no axe to grind, but otherwise, the listener is always going to nitpick on the out of bounds features of the compared object that diverge from the subject.
By insisting that one of the clocks must be running slow, you are invoking a privileged reference frame, even though you keep denying it.
Sigh.
The rules of relativity do not say that one clock is running slow.
You have the patience of a saint. I dub thee St. Francis.
We can explain to you why this question doesn’t make sense, but we can’t comprehend it for you.
Francis, this is getting tedious. You are almost succeeding in your aims - throw that many spurious objections at him and he will give up. Well, it may work, but it certainly will not mean that you are correct. Here are the rules (if you don’t like that word, use premises) of relativity.
Suppose the relative velocity is 161,000 miles a second. Then, according to the theory, the time according to one clock (A, say) between the readings 1.0 and 2.0 o’clock of B is 2 hrs., so that A works twice as fast as B. This is a particular case of a general result obtained by Einstein in 1905 and universally accepted. But, similarly, the theory also requires that the time according to B between the readings 1.0 and 2.0 o’clock of A is 2 hrs., so that B works twice as fast as A.
Using that theory, answer the question.
Tom.
Your arithmetic is probably correct. What is the problem with this?
It is. You are simply not getting the point that you are asking a non-question. You just ask the same question time and time again, and keep saying it is impossible that the clocks do what special relativity says.
You refuse to answer the question we keep posing. Why do you think this is impossible? You claim it is, but never deign to say why. Clearly you have some deep problem with it, but refuse to elucidate why. Until you do that we can’t progress.
Tell you what. Read this. Right from the source. Take particular note of the second half of section 4.
You just did. It depends on your frame of reference.
Telemark, OK I will re-phrase it. A and B are two reference frames with clocks in them in unaccelerated motion. Einstein said that from A, B’s clock runs slow. The reciprocal is also true - from B, A’s clock runs slow. This requires that each clock runs slower than the other, which is impossible.
From “Science at the Crossroads” :- Suppose the relative velocity is 161,000 miles a second. Then, according to the theory, the time according to one clock (A, say) between the readings 1.0 and 2.0 o’clock of B is 2 hrs., so that A works twice as fast as B. This is a particular case of a general result obtained by Einstein in 1905 and universally accepted. But, similarly, the theory requires that the time according to B between the readings 1.0 and 2.0 o’clock of A is 2 hrs., so that B works twice as fast as A. These results are clearly contradictory.
Tom Hollings.
This is unsupported. Until you make your case for this, the question remains meaningless.