You realize that Einstein was being facetious there, right? He wasn’t nearly as good at math as he was at physics, but his work in general relativity involves serious math: Riemannian geometry, vector bundles, tensor analysis, and so on. The Einstein field equations (which were actually Einstein’s), for example, involve reasonably sophisticated math.
In any case, SR only involves high-school level math. There’s just no way to talk meaningfully about the theory without invoking math at even that level, as many people have to tried to explain to you already.
That is utterly false: the Lorentz transformations, for example, do exactly that. After ten pages, have you not realized that lengths, time, etc. depend on a particular frame? They’re not getting ‘universally’ shorter or slower; measurements depend on the frame in which they’re computed.
At this point, you’re just being obtuse. Stop whining about math, go read a special relativity textbook, and come back when you can understand the most basic concepts in the subject. You’re like a child asking why the sky is blue, who summarily ignores whatever answer he’s given and just asks another irrelevant question.
What I thought an inertial frame was turned out to be correct.
I had read about them long ago, but forgotten the details so when challenged I asked what they meant to that person.
Both in the event I was mistaken (as the seemed to imply, incorrectly) and in the event their interpretation was incorrect.
As for Lorentz contractions, I have understood this to encompass initially length contraction and then time was added by another physicist (not Lorentz or Einstein).
But rather than be shown as wrong, and in order to again understand the other parties view I would rather reach a consensus rather than just assume that my understanding is both correct and shared by others.
This is not the same thing as having no idea about these subjects.
Fine.
Yes, this is what I thought it meant in the first place BTW.
I do.
That is just an assumption, an axiom.
Enforce? Let’s say explain.
No, no it is not. Even the round trip speeds do not conform to C.
And one way measurements are maybe even possible given SR’s logic game.
Yes, which makes as much sense as having God as an axiom, or creation as an axiom, or a life force energy as an axiom. It doesn’t defend the position as based on logic.
Coordinate systems that can’t be comprehended it seems.
I understand time dilation and length contraction, and these do not explain the constancy of the speed of light, except in round trip measurements which they do just fine. But round trips do not make the speed of light to be C in each direction, in fact it pushes it further from C.
Which is fine if you are happy to be taking things blindly on faith and engauge in magical thinking.
Ok, so here is the thing.
Length contraction and time dilation can’t make a photon appear to move slower!
Both give a speed increase to photons going both ways.
And this works just fine if what you want to do is bring the 2 way speed of light back to C.
That is what I was able to establish (somewhat in reverse) from the thought experiment with Moe and Stacy that Kimble and I were able to show conformed to SR.
We do not need precise answers, if you can explain how a shorter ruler or slower clock can make a photon that would otherwise be above C now be moving at C, I’d like to hear it.
But it can’t, these things will always make the speed seem higher.
And while these DO fix the round trip time to be precisely C, they only further imbalance the one way trip time.
I know that SR claims they do.
That is NOT the issue.
The issue is that length contraction and time dilation can not make a superluminal photon be measured as moving at C once more.
I would argue that 2 objects both having the fastest/slowest time while both are longer/shortest length might be impossibly paradoxical, but these are mu understanding of Lorentz transformations.
It is you who has not tried to address how a photon could appear slowed by time dilation and length contraction.
Well D’oh.
These are all things I have made clear in my posts.
I know SR far far better than you are implying.
Pot, kettle, black.
I do understand it very well it is you that has some obvious gaps at least in your ability to read.
No, you are like the guy who reads none of the posts and then attacks a strawman by misrepresenting everything.
You’ve responded by summarily ignoring it, screaming and whining about how my saying that you “refused” to consider an argument involving (oh no!) math was the worst injustice in the history of the universe, rambling about how real physics shouldn’t involve math, or…well, whatever this nonsense is supposed to mean:
But sure, you obviously understand special relativity very well.
Saying I refused to do something was the height of gall when you knew I couldn’t.
Saying I ignored it is no better, since I did not even know what was addressed.
If it can explain reality, it should be able to be explained with a model of reality.
It you can’t explain it, and if even Einstein can’t follow the math, then really this is just being taken on faith IMO.
You want to explain things with logic but not math because you don’t understand the math. The problem is that math IS logic. Setting an arbitrary cutoff point of saying “don’t use any math that’s algebra or higher because I don’t understand it” is basically asking someone to explain SR to a 5 year old.
SR explains reality nicely. Your aethered theory doesn’t - and I’m being generous granting your ravings “theory” status.
Who’s appealing to authority now? I really don’t know what you’re looking for here. If you indeed had a theory so obvious that it doesn’t even require picking up a pencil, then you’re sitting on historical immortality. Nothing would make people happier than to witness groundbreaking scientific breakthrough. The problem is you don’t have that. The frustration is that people try to tell you that you don’t have that and you lash out at those people.
Ouch! That site made my eyes hurt and brought back memories of AOL dial up access.
He seriously studied under Wheeler? I’m not quite seeing how the EPR paradox would be solved by getting rid of photons. There’s still action at a distance and that still needs to be mediated by something.
So the double slit experiment hasn’t been done with a single photon at a time due to the sensitivity of the film? So the work I did with a ccd camera some 20 years ago doesn’t count then? I certainly remember working out the s/n ratio to prove that it was detecting a single photon. (With maths!) And I’m sure it’s been done hundreds of times since. Just that part of his argument is enough to convince me that he’s a nutter. I have a lot of respect for Wheeler, so I’m not sure how this guy could have worked with him.
One way measurements are difficult, because it would require synchronized stopwatches. Most practical measurements of the speed of light involve a round-trip. e.g., put a mirror on a distant mountaintop – or the moon – and then flash a light at it.
However, there is an extant one-way measurement of the speed of light: observe the transits and eclipses of Jupiter’s Moons.
Since Jupiter is closer to the earth at some times in our mutual orbits, and at other times it is farther away, we will observe given transits or eclipses at slightly different times. It takes light something like ten minutes longer to arrive at earth from Jupiter when Jupiter is farthest away. Since we know, to a very fine accuracy, when Jupiter’s moons will transit and become eclipsed, and since we have a very good measurement of the distance to Jupiter at any time, we can measure the speed of light in this way.
It is a one-way measurement, and it’s reasonably accurate.
Really, the ideal compromise was when it got moved to the Pit. Those of us who haven’t burned out yet can engage with the amateur physicist – and even use opprobrious language for cathartic purposes – but it no longer clutters up the legitimate opinion and debate forums.
FWIW, I’d never heard the phrase “Lorentz Boost” before either, so I am willing to forgive our illustrious correspondent for wondering what it meant.
For not being willing to figure out how to use square roots, I find it much harder to forgive him.
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.
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No, the speed of light is never measurable as faster than c.
IANAPhysicist, but the Lorentz transformations don’t make the speed of light c. They explain why it is never faster than c.
It is an observed fact that light is never measurable as being greater than c. That never happens. Special relativity is the explanation of that fact.
All of your “thought experiments”, to the extent that I can figure out what the hell you are talking about, seem to consist of saying “if we do thus-and-so, then light will go faster than c, and therefore special relativity is disproven”. And that is nonsense. Light will not go faster than c under the conditions you think you are describing.
If you think that it will, then you actually have to do the experiment and show that it happens. You can’t do that, both because you don’t understand what you are saying, and because lots of other people have done the same, or very similar experiments, and without exception the speed of light never exceeds c.