# 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:** 1\ **Showing post:** 215
**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. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-have-light-move-faster-than-c/682160)._