# How to have light move faster than C **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [February 24, 2014, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-have-light-move-faster-than-c/682160 "2014-02-24T21:53:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2014, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-have-light-move-faster-than-c/682160/202 "2014-02-28T03:46:02Z")
> [@simster](#): > > I should probably say faulty ‘reasoning’ instead of faulty ‘logic’ - and I think we would be in agreement on this. I consider this logic “unsound or faulty” because it proceeds from a faulty premise - I have not reviewed all of his ‘logic’ to decide if it is internally consistent (regardless of truth) - but on a quick read - it is not. I certainly agree that the reasoning is unsound. The logic can be perfectly valid; it’s only one part of the overall reasoning. Logic is one of those GIGO machines: garbage in? Garbage out. But it isn’t the machine’s fault: it’s working perfectly. It’s the fault of whoever shoveled the garbage into it. The syllogism – All A is B. x is A. Therefore x is B – is valid. The problem is when the major premise is exemplified wrongly. “All men are Socrates.” Oops! Like heck we are! Anyway, a minor quibble, and I certainly agree with your restatement of the issue. ETA: one of the really weird things about logic is that, sometimes, you can put garbage in…and get truth out! But it’s not a “valid” truth. It’s more of an accidental truth. The logic is valid, the result is true, but the overall reasoning is still invalid. A stopped clock is right twice a day, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2014, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-have-light-move-faster-than-c/682160/203 "2014-02-28T03:50:43Z")
> [@mythoughts](#): > > Yes, I am saying that IF Lorenz is correct and the object in relative motion can be seen to shrink in length, then it will make it easy to see how if it shrinks and time dilates by the right amount the ruler will be shorter and the clock faster to speed light up that is measured too slow. > > But that if we assume that, then applying the same logic to light we are heading into that is now moving too fast is now seen as moving even faster as it has less distance to go and our clock is too slow register enough time. . . . The Lorentz transformations do not apply to light. They only apply to material objects moving through space. A spaceship undergoes length-contraction, and its clock undergoes time-contraction. A beam of light undergoes neither. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2014, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-have-light-move-faster-than-c/682160/204 "2014-02-28T03:55:49Z")
> [@BlakeTyner](#): > > Prove reality. Do I have to? My foot is still bandaged from the last time! ---
**Author:** ![mythoughts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7993a0/32.png) [@mythoughts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mythoughts)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2014, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-have-light-move-faster-than-c/682160/205 "2014-02-28T03:56:29Z")
I would like to point something out to anyone impartial reading this thread. We are having a VERY asymmetric discussion, firstly I am on the back foot by having sub-par math skills (I do not understand all the rules of bracketing) and the various notation rules. And I am going up against the whole establishment of current science. But that is not the main point, you see when I do drive a point home there is no acknowledgement at all. But I acknowledge every point, if I agree, disagree or agree conditionally, I do people the courtesy of actually acknowledging almost everything said to me, the exceptions are very rare and not because someone has ‘won’ a point. So I have had The Michelson Morley experiment mentioned many time and every time I explain very clearly why it does not show what is being claimed, or if I have already covered that on the same age I mention so. I have had ZERO acknowledgements of this, instead that person maybe stop saying it and another person does. No wonder I get turn a bit rhetorical at times! So I would like to ask **Itself** to either acknowledge that the Michelson Morley (post 195) experiment does not help us distinguish between an entrained aether (carried by earth), a static aether the earth moves though but undergoes Lorentz contraction (IF has he asserts it can) or SR which is still Lorentz’s with only a (major)philosophical difference of any relevance. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2014, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-have-light-move-faster-than-c/682160/206 "2014-02-28T04:01:00Z")
> [@mythoughts](#): > > I would like to point something out to anyone impartial reading this thread. I wouldn’t worry too much about there being anyone impartial reading this thread. And it’s difficult to blame them, too. You appear to be asserting that aether actually _exists_? What the fuck will you be asking us to accept next? Phlogiston? ---
**Author:** ![BlakeTyner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@BlakeTyner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlakeTyner)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2014, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-have-light-move-faster-than-c/682160/207 "2014-02-28T04:11:17Z")
> [@mythoughts](#): > > We are having a VERY asymmetric discussion, firstly I am on the back foot by having sub-par math skills (I do not understand all the rules of bracketing) and the various notation rules. Lookit…from the jump I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt that, as I said earlier, all of this makes sense in your head. But you have to admit that you do a piss poor job of getting it from your head onto the page in a way that the rest of us can follow. Since you’re making the claim, the burden of proof is on you to prove the claim–and you can’t do that by beating dead horses like aether. There’s an old saying in poker: if you’re at a table and you don’t know who the sucker is…it’s you. If you want to be taken seriously at all, then do yourself a favor and spend some time learning some basic algebra. There are free sites all over the internet, designed by really good teachers, that make it easy–and I say this as someone with dyscalculia. Numbers on the page get jumbled to me. But if you can add, subtract, multiply, and divide, you can do algebra. Then come back and try this discussion again. At least then, you’ll speak the same language as everyone else. ---
**Author:** ![mythoughts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7993a0/32.png) [@mythoughts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mythoughts)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2014, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-have-light-move-faster-than-c/682160/208 "2014-02-28T04:12:16Z")
> [@Itself](#): > > I just tried to do that for a simpler thought-experiment, and you summarily rejected it, then claimed that the math was irrelevant and that you were right anyway. I said I do not trust the math and that I can not read it. It would be much like me asking you a question and you giving me the answer in another language, it wouldn’t be considered. (without translation) I COULD follow it, but based on my math skill that would probably take as another poster mentioned, about 2 weeks and to be sure that the math describes something physically possible rather than an abstraction I would likely need longer. And if I could then find an error with it I am sure it would become impossibly hard to try and explain why it works as a calculation but not as a possibly description of reality. > [@](#): > > I’m not going to bother doing any calculations for a larger one AS I PREDICTED. It was just a smoke screen. Like the people who answer my thought experiment they can’t solve with a different common one they can. > [@](#): > > , particularly when (as many people here have pointed out) they’re just rehashes of the twin paradox, ladder paradox, the Ehrenfest paradox, etc. **No, they are not! Of course they are about paradoxes sure but not explainable by SR, but you can’t even possibly hope to give me an even vaguely coherent description of what will be seen to happen, so you hide behind the obfscation of math, and not even mah of my thought experiments!** > [@](#): > > your response to any objection is either dismissing it it out of hand NO I DO NOT! I BOTHER TO ACTUAL EXPLAIN EVERY ISSUE. People don’t read what I say, or acknowledge it! > [@](#): > > or proposing yet another unnecessarily complicated; you refuse to substantiate your experiments with any numbers or data NONE IS NEEDED, and I am unable to comply with that at my current skill level in math which I have covered numerious times before!!! > [@](#): > > , and you refuse to read it when it’s given to you; I can’t, I also ‘Refuse’ to read every language every devised beside English and one version of assembly, a bit of basic. > [@](#): > > and you react to criticism by ranting about skeptics and zealots. I’m done with this thread; I suggest you give up as well. OF COURSE YOU ARE! I CALLED YOU ON YOU CRAP! You are unwilling to answer my thought experiments. Please stay gone too! ---
**Author:** ![mythoughts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7993a0/32.png) [@mythoughts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mythoughts)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2014, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-have-light-move-faster-than-c/682160/209 "2014-02-28T04:25:03Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > I wouldn’t worry too much about there being anyone impartial reading this thread. > > And it’s difficult to blame them, too. You appear to be asserting that aether actually _exists_? What the fuck will you be asking us to accept next? Phlogiston? That is not a scientific argument. In fact many substances to space have been theorized and proven since. Indeed the quantum reference frame is essentially proven to be entrained by the earth. While obviously different to the aether I put forward, Einstein never said there wasn’t an aether, but when he first put his theory out he said it wasn’t ‘required’. Later he said Quote: According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable" - Albert Einstein ---
**Author:** ![mythoughts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7993a0/32.png) [@mythoughts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mythoughts)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2014, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-have-light-move-faster-than-c/682160/210 "2014-02-28T04:49:50Z")
> [@BlakeTyner](#): > > Lookit…from the jump I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt that, as I said earlier, all of this makes sense in your head. > > But you have to admit that you do a piss poor job of getting it from your head onto the page in a way that the rest of us can follow. Agreed. I do not know (besides the fact that people resist changing their beliefs very strongly) why that is. > [@](#): > > Since you’re making the claim, the burden of proof is on you to prove the claim Define PROVE? I consider if I use simple logic and no one can explain the error without making a bigger error themselves, that I have ‘Proven’ it as far as is possible given that this is though language. I consider that I can give straight forward physical scenarios, and no ne can give me a set of observations that are not absurd to be a kind of proof. Or that when they do analyse a thought experiment it is the classical form that can be solved easily, not mine that can’t. But, as for changing peoples beliefs, only one has said I did. > [@](#): > > –and you can’t do that by beating dead horses like aether. Yeah, but it isn’t. You see since then the aether has been discovered many times and given different names. You see a dead house is not the same as a horse that just got ignored because you bought a car. Nothing contraindicated a version of the aether that had any degree of likelood of being real. But I’m only bringing the aether up because people can’t challenge my arguments so they say things like “you can’t disprove SR without a better theory to explain the evidence”. which is of course if entiely false. But I fall for it and say I DO have a theory that lines up with all that evidence, an entrained aether. Oh and Einstein still believed in an aether, not one with a preferred reference frame, or at least not a frame he could work out how to detect. Oh, And Michelson and Morley still believed in the aether after their experiment. And so did Lord, erm, I forget his name, who also seemingly disproved one the earth moves through. > [@](#): > > There’s an old saying in poker: if you’re at a table and you don’t know who the sucker is…it’s you. > > If you want to be taken seriously at all, then do yourself a favor and spend some time learning some basic algebra. Yes, but there is a catch. If I can’t get someone to agree with a few obvious statements, to untangle math and then explain to someone why it is invalid, honestly I can’t comprehend the difficulties. Maybe 1000 time harder! And most people would not understand me since this is the first use of math in and of the threads I think, and is still not relevant to anything I have said. I agree it is a nifty skill and I do hope to pick it up someday. > [@](#): > > There are free sites all over the internet, designed by really good teachers, that make it easy–and I say this as someone with dyscalculia. PLEASE I am interested. I looked and couldn’t find one. [/QUOTE] Numbers on the page get jumbled to me. [/QUOTE] I am a bit dyslexic myself > [@](#): > > But if you can add, subtract, multiply, and divide, you can do algebra. I can do all that. What I can’t do is know how the rules of backeting work. I could do something but I would have no idea if I was getting it right. Mr “ididthemath” actually didn’t do the math, there was no result because there were no numbers, if he had used letters and an example number I could have followed it. But he didn’t want me to follow it, it was just a put down, a distraction from the fact that the math can’t be used to produce a sane conclusion in the experiments I give. That is why everyones uses the math argument but none even attempt to solve anything with it, correction, they solve their own problem then don’t even give and numbers or results. > [@](#): > > Then come back and try this discussion again. At least then, you’ll speak the same language as everyone else. No, that’s the thing! The fact that none have produced or acted in any way agreeable to putting numbers to my thought experiment and have vanished after I mention this is the point. They aren’t my audience. And there are people asking for math that can’t even read it much better than I can. I have an equation for you, math=distraction. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2014, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-have-light-move-faster-than-c/682160/211 "2014-02-28T04:51:21Z")
> [@mythoughts](#): > > I said I do not trust the math and that I can not read it. > It would be much like me asking you a question and you giving me the answer in another language, it wouldn’t be considered. (without translation) . . . The problem is that mathematics is the language of relativity. It’s as if you’re arguing that a particular Bible translation is wrong…and yet you don’t know Hebrew or Greek. Well, without Hebrew or Greek, how can you possibly know whether or not a Biblical verse is translated correctly? You proposed a (complicated) experiment involving rotating disks. We said, “No, it doesn’t work that way.” Without math, how can you know? You can only go so far in relativity using common language. Time dilation, length contraction, these are concepts. But how much does time dilate or length contract? This is a mathematical question. This is one of the several major problems you have here. The other problems are: you have never addressed why it is that only you have ever seen this problem with relativity, while a hundred thousand other people have missed it. Your descriptions of experiments are difficult to understand. Your experiments are too complex. They’re weird Rube Goldberg machines. Stick with simpler ones. Until you comprehend what relativity says, you can’t meaningfully rebut it. You move between frames of reference without clarity. You jump from an inertial frame to an accelerating one, and from a gravitational one to a free-fall one, without compensation. You use terms loosely. At one point you said that the Lorentz transformations are “axioms.” They aren’t. The word doesn’t mean what you seem to think it does. And…you’re getting frustrated – for which I can entirely sympathize. This can’t be any more fun for you than it is for us. But the answer to that is for you to take the time and care to make yourself explicitly clear. Also…your posts (like this one, alas, of mine) tend to be too long. Walls of text are hard to work with. Start – just start – with relativistic addition of speeds. It’s easy. Seriously easy. When you get that, you’ll have the key to the city. ---
**Author:** ![mythoughts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7993a0/32.png) [@mythoughts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mythoughts)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2014, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-have-light-move-faster-than-c/682160/212 "2014-02-28T04:51:25Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > The Lorentz transformations do not apply to light. They only apply to material objects moving through space. A spaceship undergoes length-contraction, and its clock undergoes time-contraction. > > A beam of light undergoes neither. I know. They apply to the length of the object measuring light. Oh, and look that is what I said! ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2014, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-have-light-move-faster-than-c/682160/213 "2014-02-28T05:08:39Z")
> [@simster](#): > > incomplete thought - I meant to basically say that the entire article is a cut and paste from stormfront - [http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t928728/](http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t928728/) - the OP has yet to show his work on any of his ‘thought’ experiments. So the entire basis of this, and the other ridiculous “c isn’t really c” thread, is an antisemitic rant against “Jewish science”? That’s all this cauldron of stupidity and blind willful misunderstanding boils down to? How frickin’ unutterably tedious. I had hoped for, at the least, a new and original kind of craziness, but the OP doesn’t even have that. I should have known when he abnegated maths as a useful tool for understanding relativity merely because he himself is not up to it, it’s exactly the kind of wallowing in ignorance and coarseness that the nazis glorified in. I mean, I’m not up to Einstein-level maths either (through at the least sheer intellectual laziness) but I respect those who are; he just says “well I can’t do it so it can’t be needed or relevant, let’s just construct a new physics that doesn’t need it”. [Lysenkoism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism)101 - if it contradicts my politics it must be wrong. No wonder the frickin’ nazis lost the war, the communists the cold war, and deservedly so. OP: if you don’t understand the merest basics of the maths that underlies the theory, maybe you aren’t qualified to comment on it? You think? See [The Dunning-Kruger Effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect) - those who know least about a topic feel the most qualified to critique it - you are a walking talking breathing exemplar of same. You wear your ignorance and incapability as a badge of pride, but people who actually know what they are talking about see it as a badge of shame. Maths is a superset of physics. Physics is a superset of chemistry. Chemistry is a superset of biology. So if you don’t understand maths you don’t understand anything about the universe or our world, which is why you don’t have a girlfriend and will never have children, thankfully. BTW: I’m thrilled that you make no attempt whatsoever to answer the question in your thread title. I mean, none. Just wonderful. ---
**Author:** ![Kimble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kimble/32/19185_2.png) [@Kimble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimble)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2014, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-have-light-move-faster-than-c/682160/214 "2014-02-28T05:34:01Z")
> [@Askance](#): > > So the entire basis of this, and the other ridiculous “c isn’t really c” thread, is an antisemitic rant against “Jewish science”? That’s all this cauldron of stupidity and blind willful misunderstanding boils down to? How frickin’ unutterably tedious. I had hoped for, at the least, a new and original kind of craziness, but the OP doesn’t even have that. To be fair, simster wasn’t referring to the original post (or anything written by mythoughts) – mythoughts had completely copied that linked post and said as much. The mod deleted the post since it was a copyright violation. (If mythoughts had posted the Stormfront replies that eviscerated the original post or noted that Stormfront moved the original post from Sci/Tech to Revisionism to (eventually) Lounge, we could’ve saved a lot of time.) Back on “topic”: The [Michelson-Morley experiment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment) shows the Earth isn’t moving through a stationary aether. The [Michelson-Gale-Pearson experiment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment), among others, shows the Earth isn’t dragging aether. The [de Sitter double-star experiment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Sitter_double_star_experiment), among others, shows the speed of light isn’t related to the speed of the emitting device. What else is left? For further study, check out the animations on [this page](http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/einsteinlight/jw/module4_time_dilation.htm) previously linked some time ago (it feels like decades – insert relativity joke here). ---
**Author:** ![mythoughts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7993a0/32.png) [@mythoughts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mythoughts)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2014, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-have-light-move-faster-than-c/682160/215 "2014-02-28T05:42:14Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > The problem is that mathematics is the language of relativity. Then it isn’t a physical theory if it can’t relate to what happens to matter, time, clocks, observation. If it does relate to these things then math is only required to show that the right amount of something occurs for things t make sense, all the effects of reality are measurable though vastly different in magnitude from from a snails pace to a velocity indistinguishable to the speed of light. No one can dispute that, so if we use relative terms like slow, fast, long short we can get the type of thing, or we can go the other way and give the effect and let the velocity required be established from that. No, mathematics is the language of obfuscation that what is being calculated does not only describe reality, it describes something that can’t be, an unreality. Something not possible, false, trick, manipulation etc… But when I am unable to read math and have stated so many times, presenting it was disingenuous. > [@](#): > > It’s as if you’re arguing that a particular Bible translation is wrong…and yet you don’t know Hebrew or Greek. Well, without Hebrew or Greek, how can you possibly know whether or not a Biblical verse is translated correctly? I wouldn’t. But if I knew Hebrew and someone read the English version and talks to me in Hebrew, I know they are wrong. Your analogy reversed, mathematics is a translation of the world, I know the real world, if the math spits out a nonsense answer I can spot it precisely because I don’t know math! How when others can’t? A computer can do the math but has no comprehension of the physical world it describes. I AM A PHYSICIST, uncredentialed yes, but a physicist and I work just as long and hard as any other. And because I never learnt the math, I have had to do every physical model in my head. Most books on SR don’t go into how a magnetic field isn’t required if you follow the conclusions of SR, but it isn’t and Einstein showed this. But none of the books I read went into this. But I thought about electromagnetism, something I know a great deal about and worked out that it wasn’t required to have a magnetic field, that the distortions of an electric charge in motion account for every aspect of electromagnetism. When I told some people, one mentioned that is already known, Einstein beat me to it, and sure enough he is right, magnetic fields can be argued not to exist however counterintuitive that might seem, they are complex electric field interactions. And that is Einstein saying that! So I have a far better ability to visualize thought experiments since I can’t fall back on math, I work from a practical model of visualizing reality as it may be. I have to do this for everything, until I need to know how many amps, ohms, etc. Then I use an online calcuator. > [@](#): > > You proposed a (complicated) experiment involving rotating disks. We said, “No, it doesn’t work that way.” Without math, how can you know? Because I know reality rather well. And because if it is what I think you mean, the guy answered that a clock time dilated from SR in a dropped in a rotating train would be seen to oscillate between normal and fast. But what frequency would it possibly oscillate at? Nothing with any such varying nature existed in the thought experiment. And it showed that a dropped clock (separate to the dropped clock argument in this thread) would keep faster time which was my pint, and the answer was absurd. I asked some questions about it, but he never replied, I don’t think he liked his answer. > [@](#): > > You can only go so far in relativity using common language. Time dilation, length contraction, these are concepts. But how much does time dilate or length contract? This is a mathematical question. Agreed. But if we just assume that everything goes to the amount that SR would like to see, then we are actually being generous to, what if the math had it do the right thing to the wrong amount? All my though experiments are ‘kind’ to SR, they all assume that since I can’t prove a transformation in the right direction doesn’t go to the right amount, I assume it just does. > [@](#): > > This is one of the several major problems you have here. One of several false problems other people have. > [@](#): > > The other problems are: you have never addressed why it is that only you have ever seen this problem with relativity, while a hundred thousand other people have missed it. A lot of other people have thought experiments that SR can’t address. Other think they have thought experiments that that SR can’t address but they are wrong. It is not just me. > [@](#): > > Your descriptions of experiments are difficult to understand. I do my best. Did you look at the image I made? (for the one in this thread) What is hard about a train on a big turn table? Or a shorter ruler and slower clock measuring the speed of light as faster? Or the elevator thought experiment that is just Einstein’s with a dropped clock added? > [@](#): > > Your experiments are too complex. Some maybe, but most are very very simple The one at the start of this thread is the hardest one. > [@](#): > > They’re weird Rube Goldberg machines. Stick with simpler ones. Until you comprehend what relativity says, you can’t meaningfully rebut it. They are as simple as will disprove SR I think you are confusing hard to understand, with hard to make sense of if Relativity is correct. > [@](#): > > You move between frames of reference without clarity. You jump from an inertial frame to an accelerating one, and from a gravitational one to a free-fall one, without compensation. Show me where, or ask for a clarification. I am only aware of one that was confusing. > [@](#): > > You use terms loosely. At one point you said that the Lorentz transformations are “axioms.” They aren’t. The word doesn’t mean what you seem to think it does. It does. > [@](#): > > And…you’re getting frustrated – for which I can entirely sympathize. This can’t be any more fun for you than it is for us. But the answer to that is for you to take the time and care to make yourself explicitly clear. I do try, I really though the elevator argument was so clear as to be impossible to understand. A dropped clock in a gravity field is assumed to keep time as it did a moment ago. A clock let go on when accelerating is no longer accelerating and so not effected by effect on time that acceleration was causing on the clock. Simple. Nope. turns out the argument then if that the non accelerating clock is accelerating, so I cover that one. Then SILENCE just like everytime I explain the reason the M-M experiment proves essentially nothing…Crickets… > [@](#): > > Also…your posts (like this one, alas, of mine) tend to be too long. Walls of text are hard to work with. But I actually go to the courtesy of reading and replying to everything so that you are as clear as possible. But I am never given this courtesy, especially when I drive a point home. > [@](#): > > Start – just start – with relativistic addition of speeds. It’s easy. Seriously easy. When you get that, you’ll have the key to the city. I have answered the math issue as completely as I can. But no one responds to my points even on those! I RESPOND to what people say. Do me the same courtesy, do you agree with my arguments? Disagree? Why? I don’t like walls of text either but if I showed as little courtesy as you show me I’d just ignore anything I didn’t like. ---
**Author:** ![mythoughts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7993a0/32.png) [@mythoughts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mythoughts)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2014, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-have-light-move-faster-than-c/682160/216 "2014-02-28T05:44:58Z")
> [@Kimble](#): > > To be fair, simster wasn’t referring to the original post (or anything written by mythoughts) – mythoughts had completely copied that linked post and said as much. The mod deleted the post since it was a copyright violation. (If mythoughts had posted the Stormfront replies that eviscerated the original post or noted that Stormfront moved the original post from Sci/Tech to Revisionism to (eventually) Lounge, we could’ve saved a lot of time.) > > Back on “topic”: > > The [Michelson-Morley experiment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment) shows the Earth isn’t moving through a stationary aether. > > The [Michelson-Gale-Pearson experiment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment), among others, shows the Earth isn’t dragging aether. > > The [de Sitter double-star experiment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Sitter_double_star_experiment), among others, shows the speed of light isn’t related to the speed of the emitting device. > > What else is left? > > For further study, check out the animations on [this page](http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/einsteinlight/jw/module4_time_dilation.htm) previously linked some time ago (it feels like decades – insert relativity joke here). I felt uncomfortable reading that board so I only read the initial post, and only parts of it. Thanks, this is one of the few times I’ve observed fairness here. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2014, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-have-light-move-faster-than-c/682160/217 "2014-02-28T06:09:17Z")
> [@mythoughts](#): > > Then it isn’t a physical theory if it can’t relate to what happens to matter, time, clocks, observation. Math does relate to physical reality. Two inches, four pounds, six seconds. Without the math, all you have is roughly descriptive language. Distance, weight, time. Only with math are the units defined and the quantities measureable. > [@](#): > > . . . if we use relative terms like slow, fast, long short we can get the type of thing, or we can go the other way and give the effect and let the velocity required be established from that. If we do that, we don’t have any way to address the issues you, yourself, wish to raise. > [@](#): > > No, mathematics is the language of obfuscation that what is being calculated does not only describe reality, it describes something that can’t be, an unreality. Something not possible, false, trick, manipulation etc… It reduces your point to being mere assertions. I assert otherwise. Prove me wrong. The debate goes nowhere. > [@](#): > > Your analogy reversed, mathematics is a translation of the world, I know the real world, if the math spits out a nonsense answer I can spot it precisely because I don’t know math! Your descriptions contradict the real world. > [@](#): > > I AM A PHYSICIST, uncredentialed yes, but a physicist and I work just as long and hard as any other. > And because I never learnt the math, I have had to do every physical model in my head. I am a better physicist, because I can do the math. > [@](#): > > But if we just assume that everything goes to the amount that SR would like to see, then we are actually being generous to, what if the math had it do the right thing to the wrong amount? We would conduct physical experiments – tens of thousands of them – to find the right amount. So far, they have all agreed with relativity. Not one has contradicted it. > [@](#): > > I have answered the math issue as completely as I can. You’ve only ducked it. You haven’t answered it. ---
**Author:** ![mythoughts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7993a0/32.png) [@mythoughts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mythoughts)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2014, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-have-light-move-faster-than-c/682160/218 "2014-02-28T06:20:35Z")
> [@Kimble](#): > > The [Michelson-Gale-Pearson experiment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment), among others, shows the Earth isn’t dragging aether. I have not yet looked at DeSitter yet, but thanks for this experiment. Firstly id doesn’t and can’t discount a dragged aether theory unless and until the theory gets specific about heights. Since I assume that this was not done deep underground I assume, it merely gives us information on the degree of entrainment. The Silvertooth experiment shows similar effects, he looked for effects up a mountain in a galss house and found the aether moving. So I wasn’t expecting perfect aether entrainment. [http://www.aetherscience.org/www-aspden-org/books/Asp/1990a.pdf](http://www.aetherscience.org/www-aspden-org/books/Asp/1990a.pdf) > **[A Replication of the Silvertooth Experiment](http://www.conspiracyoflight.com/Silvertooth/Silvertooth.html)** > > An experimental replication of Silvertooth's one way wavelength of light experiment using a standing wave sensor. The validity of his claims are examined through detailed re-analysis of his setups. And to me, interpreting Michelson-Gale-Pearson as proof of SR when it noted the speed of light varied I find very odd, the motion of rotation is mostly linear. To propose you should see light not to be anything like C is there is a slight curve in the motion is non-sense. But you know what? This is all a distraction, I didn’t come here to quibble over the technical details of experiments or to argue their interpretation. IF I am wrong about the aether (which I do not accept this as any indication of) has zero bearing on the validity of my thought experiments in proving SR impossible. Totally unrelated. ---
**Author:** ![Idle\_Thoughts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/838e76/32.png) [@Idle\_Thoughts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Idle_Thoughts)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2014, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-have-light-move-faster-than-c/682160/219 "2014-02-28T06:21:16Z")
> [@mythoughts](#): > > Like the people who answer my thought experiment they can’t solve with a different common one they can. > **No, they are not! > Of course they are about paradoxes sure but not explainable by SR, but you can’t even possibly hope to give me an even vaguely coherent description of what will be seen to happen, so you hide behind the obfscation of math, and not even mah of my thought experiments!** > > NO I DO NOT! > > I BOTHER TO ACTUAL EXPLAIN EVERY ISSUE. > People don’t read what I say, or acknowledge it! > > NONE IS NEEDED, and I am unable to comply with that at my current skill level in math which I have covered numerious times before!!! > I can’t, I also ‘Refuse’ to read every language every devised beside English and one version of assembly, a bit of basic. > OF COURSE YOU ARE! > > I CALLED YOU ON YOU CRAP! > > You are unwilling to answer my thought experiments. > > Please stay gone too! You seem to be getting very heated for this forum. I’ve already given you many notes in this topic. Rather than give you yet another note, I’m just going to move this thread over to the BBQ Pit, where you can feel free to flame out as you wish. **Please do NOT make another one of these topics on these boards** unless you can keep a calm head. Even so, you should **make it in Great Debates** , because it’s clear this is a subject you’re looking to debate, rather than look for opinions on. Do not make another topic about this outside of Great Debates. As for this topic, it’s in the Pit now so that you (and everyone else) can feel free to say what you really want without holding back. ---
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2014, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-have-light-move-faster-than-c/682160/220 "2014-02-28T06:30:13Z")
> [@Idle\_Thoughts](#): > > As for this topic, it’s in the Pit now so that you (and everyone else) can feel free to say what you really want without holding back. Well done sir. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2014, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-have-light-move-faster-than-c/682160/221 "2014-02-28T06:41:59Z")
Now it’s two months out and it’s two months back, when you’re pushing the speed of light Twenty years on your homeworld’s track, pushing the speed of light And your friends are gone and your lovers too And there’s damn-all left that you can do And you try to lie, but you know it’s true, pushing the speed of light Pushing the speed of light And you’ve left behind you the world of men With no way in space to go home again When you’re pushing the speed of light Pushing the speed of light – [Julia Ecklar & Ann Harlan Prather](http://lyrics.wikia.com/Julia_Ecklar_%26_Anne_Harlan_Prather:Pushing_The_Speed_Of_Light) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-have-light-move-faster-than-c/682160.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-have-light-move-faster-than-c/682160.md?page=12)