How to have light move faster than C

The BBQ Pit
462

It is funny, I’m soooooo stupid…

And yet of all the arguments I have presented, the math has only been done on one.

A full explanation (by Kimble, maybe another too) was only done of that same one.

The same one I was able to disprove myself…

So the only one that anyone else can show the flaw in, is the same one I could also prove is flawed, and agrees with Special Relativity (generally).

So if I am sooo stupid, why are you engaging in personal attacks?
And employing disingenuous arguments about math and my ‘refusal’ to address it.

Maybe you are too stupid too?

Too stupid to see the error in my arguments?

Hence even stupider than I.

OR I am too genius for you to solve my (flawed) riddles?

It’s up to you, but if I am stupid, you are a grade A moron.

463

That is a distraction because you can not solve my riddles…

If I believed in ghosts, or unicorns, what would that have to do with the thought experiments?

If I believed in some religion…

Furthermore you are arguing that something you know next to nothing about can’t possibly be real, which is an argument from ignorance.

So let’s keep unrelated subjects separated. There IS scientific evidence for various forms of non-physical energy, but I do not expect you to be open to this at all.

And again, it is just as relevant as a religious belief would be.

464

Yeah, yeah, science is just another religion…

Except, y’know, evidence.

I’d begun to see that the emperor had no clothes, but I hadn’t realized he was a dripping cadaverous skeletonized ghoulish lich, preying on the souls of the living.

Or else just a jerk. Shrug.

465

a) its not up to us to ‘solve’ your riddles - its up to you to prove they are valid - so far you have failed pretty fucking miserably.

b) nonsensical riddles have no ‘solution’ other than trying to educate you to their nonsense or flaws - clearly something you’re beyond.

466

As I (and other people here) have said above, your problem is that you’re unable to respond to comments without going on a completely irrelevant tangent, either ranting about zealotry and orthodoxy or proposing yet another unnecessarily complicated thought-experiment about clocks on rotating treadmills.

So, there are two possibilities here:

  1. Everyone else is wrong but you. And not just wrong— they’re also not as intelligent, thoughtful, or free-thinking as you. Now, I’m a mathematician, and there are several physicists on this thread and others, and quite a few scientists in general. None of us agree with you. No physics professors agree with you. (I know, I know, you have some mysterious physicist you claim totally supports you, and you were trotting out for a while some GPS researcher who you’ve decided supports you.) The entire field of physics for the last 100 years or so does not agree with you. The paradoxes you’ve tediously brought up have been rehashes of the twin paradox, the Ehrenfest paradox, the ladder paradox, and other things all of us who have taken even just one term of physics have seen and explained before. They have been resolved decades ago, and their resolutions disagree with you. Decades of experiments verifying relativistic predictions disagree wtih you.

You can’t do high-school-level math, you aren’t a professional physicist or even a scientist, you can’t express your ideas as an actual experiment, as a physical model, or even a set of computations. But that’s fine, because you’re a unique, special snowflake who has a magical, idiot-savant-like ability to understand the real physics without resorting to fancy but unrealistic math or orthodox physics.

or:

  1. You’re a fucking idiot.

It’s all right to not know or understand something. No one is an expert in everything. Some people, however, realize that there are things that they don’t know and try to learn them. In fact, it’s often nice to realize that; it means there are more worlds to conquer. You, however, have decided that everything you don’t understand is just a lie, and that everyone who claims to understand is just making stuff up because they can’t handle thinking as deeply as you. Have you noticed how people are referring to the Dunning-Kruger effect? You’re vastly overestimating your own skill and vastly underestimating the skills of others.

Don’t feel obligated to respond for preserving your anonymity, but have you ever done any real physics? Have you taken physics classes at a university; have you published papers in physics; have you ever worked in a physics lab or university department; or have you read and understood (regardless of whether you agreed with it) a real physics textbook— not a pop-science gloss of the subject, but an actual textbook that uses actual math and makes actual predictions? Quite a few of us have. I’m not a medical doctor, but I concede that surgeons have some specialized that knowledge that I don’t. It’s not magic— anyone can learn it, with enough time and effort— but I don’t claim that surgeons are just making shit up because I didn’t learn what doctors learned in med school.

Accept that you don’t understand special relativity, make an effort to learn about the subject, and come back when you do. If you still want to talk about thought-experiments involving putting ladders into rotating barns, great; you’ll at least know enough to understand the answers at that point. You don’t understand enough about special relativity to disprove it, and your repeated insistence that your word-salad-like thought-experiment are conclusive proofs is laughable. If you want to be a physicist, you have to learn about physics first.

467

Those riddles being, for example, how a photon can still travel at the speed of light as you’re moving towards it? Because of Lorentz invariance, as has been explained to you many times. At least understand the basics of the theory you’re arguing with.

468

Best thing I’ve read in a month.
Thank you for your genius.

469

Over and over, posters have pointed out the flaws in your experiments and the errors in your understanding, and you have repeatedly dismissed those factual, reasoned arguments because you don’t understand the math. That’s like positing that there are translation errors in the Iliad, and handwaving away all contrary points of view with “Sorry, I don’t even know the Greek alphabet.” Math isn’t the whole story here, but it is very much a language vital to the understanding of physics. You have ventured into a foreign country here, assuming that repetition and speaking louder compensate for not knowing how to order a sandwich in that country’s language. Many posters have graciously and patiently tried to tutor you in the simplest terms, but you can’t be bothered. You’re too busy leaping to unsupported conclusions, based on factual errors.

You aren’t special, you aren’t brilliantly insightful. You are lazy and ignorant and arrogant. Perhaps, if you want, you can address all of those issues - they aren’t incurable, after all - but this is the wrong message board if you are just looking for blind acceptance of your fallacies.

470

Firstly Askance made an unfounded rant about antisemitism and nazi’s that was entirly off topic.

Yes, as has been demonstrated by those who comment on my arguments while neither understanding the argument or SR sufficiently. Oh, but that wasn’t the comparison you wanted me to make.
This is not an effect of physics.
And being that I have studied SR to a greater degree than many here, and hence still irrelevant.

Secondly, even if it were true, it would not mean that I was wrong.

Hence still an irrelevant dodge because it is still not relevant, just a way to avoid addressing my arguments.

It is true that those with too much investment (time, money, respect) in the status quo will find such concepts shameful.

And would rather dodge questions thy can’t answer with personal attacks.

I did actually. But if you ignore it…

471

Lorentz invariance was used to explain the average speed of light being C while the one way speed of light was slower and faster than C.

SR has never explained how Lorentz transformations can make the speed of light be C.

But please explain how it can, what I have missed.

Are you talking about a change other than length contractions and time dilation (slowing)?

472

nit: prompts the question. Begging the question is something entirely different.

473

Do you actually know what Lorentz transformations are? Your latter statement is practically nonsensical.

If you postulate that the speed of light is constant in any inertial frame, you can easily derive (as Einstein did) the result that space-time coordinates transform according to Lorentz transformations (rather than the non-relativistic, Galilean transformation). Take a frame F, and apply (for simplicity) a Lorentz boost in an arbitrary direction. If you consider a particle travelling at speed c in the original frame, it will still travel at speed c in the boosted coordinates. Are you looking for a proof of that (beyond, say, what’s on wikipedia)? I’m afraid it does involve math.

474

He can’t do the math.

475

The 2 possibilities you present are in fact both possibilities.

I very much consider the first to be certain, and unsurprisingly consider the second to be certain.

And yet you are correct in saying that both are actually possible!

So since we are naturally going to disagree which of those possibilities we believe in, let us table that since that can not actually do anything but serve as an appeal to authority.

And an appeal to authority is not how to win an argument, it is a way to signal you have run out of valid arguments so you use whatever remaining ammo to win the war…

Just point out that it seems unlikely that little old me could be right against the almighty oracle of truth you cite…
Which I readily said in the first message is very fair.

Honestly there is no contest if we are talking about who should be believed on grounds of status, on agreement, etc…

But then again nothing that was ever widely believed but is wrong could ever be disputed unless it was adopted by someone with status, with clout.

So we are forced to accept that sometimes ideas can come from unconventional sources. And be correct, even as they go against the status quo.

At least it is true from a factual perspective, even if it is invalid from a status POV.

476

It’s not a war; it’s a thread on a message board. People are stopping by to laugh at your idiocy, but that’s about it; you’re not convincing anyone. That’s also why people aren’t responding to every single thought-experiment you propose: we just don’t care enough, especially given how vituperative and condescending you are towards the ‘zealots’ and ‘orthodoxy’. Many people, including me, have tried to show you exactly where you’re wrong, rather than simply citing authorities. You’re unable or unwilling to respond without going off on a complete tangent; you’re not capable of understanding math; and it looks like you don’t even understand the basics of special relativity.

As I’ve said before, you should go find a real book of relativity (warning: it will involve math), read it and understand it (even if you disagree with it), pick your favorite thought-experiment, polish it up till it’s as simple and uncluttered as possible, present it concisely yet precisely, and respond to criticisms of it constructively without ranting.

You do not understand special relativity. Judging from your posts here, you do not understand Lorentz invariance, Lorentz transformations and boosts, how velocities add, or any of the other simple things that are covered in the first day or so of a class on relativity. Your comment, for example, that “SR has never explained how Lorentz transformations can make the speed of light be C” is garbage. I don’t mean that it’s wrong; I mean that it’s a jumble of words that has no real meaning. I would be thrilled if you were capable of responding to specific arguments against your theory, but we tried that already, and you can’t handle it.

477

You’d think that after spending more than 20 years studying relativity and reading dozens of books on the subject, he’d at least pick up a high-school algebra book. But maybe he’s right to eschew math. After all, Einstein himself thought that math was a kind of hippopotamus, and all the scary equations that popped up in his papers were put there by educated stupid and evil physicists who couldn’t handle thinking outside the orthodoxy. Also, he can create some sort of magical cosmic energy that he can use to save the world from the ether-manipulating cell phone companies who use their powers for evil, so…that’s a thing.

478

My understanding (and I have said that this is not my strength) is that Lorentz described length contraction and apparently time dilation.

If it is something other than that I would genuinely like to know.
If it includes length expansion or time acceleration then it would be along the lines of the superior SR I proposed in jest.

I do not (unless by inertial frame you mean entrained aether, but you don’t).
But SR does.

I have asked this question and seen others ask it, and the only answer I have see being given is that the speed of light is C end of story. It is because we say so and a bit of hand waving…

Please define “Lorentz Boost”
I can see Wikipedia mentioning this term, but it delves straight into math.
I am going to assume it is an alternative way of saying a Lorentz contraction and or time dilation.

So can we say a Lorentz boost is the same as these?

If not, please define what is meant by it (in English) and explain how it helps measure the one way speed of light as C.

Well there is a lot that does not involve math.

You can explain how the 2 way speed of light can be C without math.
Or how time dilation causes a light clock with an orthogonal axis (creating a zig-zag) can lead such light to still be measured at C.

So why is this a special case that no words, no concepts exist, only mathematics?
If it can’t be visualized, explained, put into language and only exists as an abstract mathematical solution, I would not trust it.

You seem to be saying that it is beyond the ability of the mind of man to conceive it or explain it.

And if that is so, how do you know it relates to the real world?

You don’t!

479

Your joke is closer to the truth than you may think.

Einstein may have liked math, he said that once the mathematicians were done with his theory, HE DID NOT UNDERSTAND IT!

As well as he understood his own theory and despite his excellent math skill, he was no longer able to be certain if the math related to reality in a coherent way.

Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself anymore.
Quoted in P A Schilpp, Albert Einstein, Philosopher-Scientist (Evanston 1949).

480

This sort of thing— not knowing what Lorentz transformations or inertial frames are— is why people, including me, have been telling you that you don’t know what you’re talking about. This is very, very basic stuff and crucial to understanding the subject.

If you have two separate frames F and F’, then you have two corresponding coordinate systems. How do you map coordinates from one to the other? In the non-relativistic case, it’s easy: you just have a spatial translation (depending on time, if the (constant) relative velocity is nonzero), and the time is the same in both frames. In the relativistic case, it is not; the map between the two is given by a Lorentz transformation, which is a particular linear map.

An ‘inertial’ frame is a non-accelerating one. Again, this is exceedingly basic stuff. You should know this already if you’re trying to disprove relativity. This is the sort of thing that makes me and other conclude that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

You are confusing two questions: Why is the speed of light constant in every (inertial) frame, and how does SR enforce that? The first is because it’s confirmed by experiment. We could have a completely non-relativistic, Newtonian universe; we just don’t. For the second, there are two possible approaches. One is to note that SR takes the speed of light invariance as an axiom, and then works out coordinate systems have to transform in order for that to work. The other is to just take those coordinate transformations as given and show that they make the speed of light invariant.

Your assumption is incorrect. A Lorentz boost is the coordinate transformation corresponding to a frame moving at a constant velocity; it includes both a length contraction (in that direction of motion) and time dilation. (In general, a Lorentz transformation may also include a spatial rotation, but nothing interesting happens there.) This is, again, stuff covered in the first problem set of a introductory class on SR.

If you want to make precise statements about the world, you have to use math. If you had just asked something simple, like what happens in relativity if you’re travelling at a speed v > 0 and then emit a photon, then we could have answered that easily and concisely. If you want to make the argument that math fails to describe the real world, then you’re a century too late: we already have electricity, GPS, particle accelerators, and all sorts of brilliant technology that happily work with math.

481

Appealing to an axiom that can’t be supported by logic is, illogical.

Well, there are many cases where the speed of light has not been found to be C, such as Sagnac and various others involving the rotation of the earth.
Secondly most all measurements are measurements of the 2 way speed of light.
Hence entirely irrelevant to the one way speed of light.

The problems is that any transformation that would make light in one direction be C could not possibly help light going the other way be C.
If you make rulers shorter and clocks run slower, that only helps light with a subtracted velocity now appear to be back at C.

So unless the transformations involved involve something other than length contraction and time dilation, I do not see how both sides of the problem could be accounted for.

Now when you say you know how to do this in math but you can’t explain it, this makes it sound like you have lost connection of precisely what the math is implying of the real world.

And you would not be alone, neither could Einstein apparently!

But if you can’t comprehend visually, or explain it in words, if you can’t make a model of it… Then you can’t be sure that the math still addresses reality.

I accept that some calculations that may have no basis in reality could bring the speed of light to C, but are these equations giving us a coherent view of reality?

If you can’t explain it, then you are taking it on faith IMO, and certainly I would be to believe you in something you can’t explain yourself.

Yes well obviously matter can exceed the speed light is actually going, Cherenkov Radiation.