Replace the light source with a gun that can fire bullets in each direction. Each bullet travels in a straight line.
Since you have a moving object, the bullet that is aiming at your object when the gun is fired is not the bullet that hits your object later on. Your object has moved. You can’t trace one photon because each photon is traveling in a straight line. The way to know which photon hits your object is to trace back along the shortest line to your light source when a photon hits you.
What in quantum physics breaks if C is exceeded?
As far as I am aware QM is more interested in breaking the speed of light barrier, for instance if a wave function collapses from an area to a point, how long after the particle appears does it take the wave to disappear? Is it instant.
Then there is the Einstein-Rosen_Podolsky bridge that is considered to instantaneous, even that apparently unusable as a means of communication.
In QED Richard Feynman explains the way partial reflection off the surface of a transparent substance works, that involves interference from the internal reflection from the back of the substance based on the wavelength of light it reflects best.
And in classic quantum style this works even if you only fire a single photon at a time toward the glass surface, the photon at the surface interferes with it’s effecting the probability that it will reflect.
Ok, so how does the photon know how thick the glass is to know if it should weight the odds in the favour reflecting or not?
If the glass is thicker the frequency of light with better odds of reflecting at the surface changes, but at a single frequency as the glass gets thicker the odds of a given frequency reflecting at the surface rinse and fall continuously as a series of peaks.
Additionally if another layer of glass is placed behind the first even with an air gap in between, the thickness of the second will also effect the probability of reflection at the surface of the first glass.
If we project that out, you could shine a light at a piece of glass and the probability of light reflecting off the first piece of glass will be effected by the thickness of a piece across the room, or much further with no known limit, at least none that was mentioned in QED.
So what if we set this up and let no light shine on this, then send a bunch of photons at once?
Presumably they already know the thickness of that glass.
What if we suddenly change that glass? Since the effect does not use actual light to interfere but each photons wave function, seemingly this should be a viable means of instantaneous communication.
And if it doesn’t, then you would have to make the assumption that in all cases if the censor that detects the light is closer to the surface of the glass than the most distant surface that effects the probability then if C is really the limit then QM would have to lose if SR it to be correct.
So if I can lead QM and SR to a point that one must break they seem somewhat at odds to me.
Additionally quantum uncertainty is at philosophical odds with us being completely 100% precisely certain what the speed of light in the vacuum is.
And if light was slowed by anything in the vacuum to any degree whatsoever then you could overtake the light, just as an electron can more near the speed of light in a substance that slows light a tiny bit giving off Cherenkov radiation by literally moving faster than the speed of light (in that substance).
It seems odd that you can go to 99.99999c and make no gains on light, it then slows the most immeasurably small amount and you can overtake it!
There are other ways that QM does apparent instantaneous things, there is an effect with 2 prisms I don’t understand that has C breaking communication but like EPR can apparently not be used for communication.
And tunnelling (quantum jumps) seem instantaneous to me.
I would be any example where QM disallows FTl, since is seems to require it to me.
I’ve been following your threads with curiosity. This post blows my mind. That you would propose you know more than the world’s physicists on one hand and then back up other assertions of yours by linking to Yahoo Answers, of all things, shows a big disconnect somewhere.
I have a serious question for you, is there a reason you are not willing to do the math for your proposals? Your last attempt at a thought experiment really lost me. Like Trinopus I’m confused by the lack of a clear description of what you are talking about and even more confused by the details which don’t seem important or don’t seem to make sense. I reiterate his queries.
Finally, this notion you keep hammering on that you are being ignored (and would be in the press and journals) because of some “sacred Cow Hamburger” is bologna. Lay out your theory clearly, show the math and someone with sway will carry the torch for you.
I do not understand your setup or the point you are trying to make, perhaps you do not understand my setup?
The light travels from the lab frame (not rotating) through the censor A, though a vacuum to censor B.
Please clarify your setup, thanks.
I was not using yahoo answers as proof of what academic credential Einstein earned, I was using it to say that If I am mistaken about Einstein it is a common mistake.
If I have fallen for an urban legend, that is because my passion is physics and not reading biographies.
Thanks, dick jokes are, fun and all, but they aren’t why I bothered to write up a though experiment.
I started another thread on Relativity, I answered this and similar questions there, but the short answer is that it is not something I could readily do.
Also it excludes the more open minded layman who should be able to grasp my argument better than a scientist that will be far more reluctant to accept it, my sentiments echo what standingwave said:
Sadly, the world has more respect for the status quo than it has a love for the truth. Intellectual dishonesty and zealot are the name of the game. Better to write a letter to the President of Physics.
I consider this to apply to those who paid to learn about and become credentialed in Physics and SR than a layman. Additionally the professional has more to tearn.
In the meantime I would be alienating those who can’t readily access the equasion, IF I could do it.
And IF I could to it, to know it was right those who can follow it would need to do the equation themselves to even see if they agree, maybe I made an error.
And if they made an error in explaining who I am wrong this would become a really inaccessible thread of trying to correct mathematics for something that is in my opinion blatantly impossible the math could work, you could not balance all sides on a contradictory equation.
If anyone with the math skills to actually check my concept out they can just as easily work out how to do it themselves pretty much if they had the ability even access my equations with any probability.
Dare I say if they did it all themselves and it still didn’t balance it would be more impactful than if they read mine and possibly replicate an error.
Now granted if someone shows a mathematical proof of why this can work out fine, it will be meaningless to be, but they can convey what will will be seen, what the results are.
And if any result that does not contradict SR exists or makes some other absurd assumption about all the space between and co moving objects experiencing a time dilation field for all frames in that space.
Which would actually only take care of the time dilation paradox and not the varying length but same travel time paradox.
And be a new very bold assumption in GR that hasn’t previously existed.
Do you mean the partial reflection one?
Simply put it is the fact that partial refection of light depends on the frequency of light and the thickness of the surface and subsequent surfaces if any.
You know how oil film on water shows lots of different colours?
Well the decision to reflect at the surface of the glass seems to depend on the light knowing in that instant (it can’t wait around for information to relayed there and back) the optical details of everything it could go though if is does not reflect!
It seemingly move from the light source, come upon the surface of the glass and stop, become a wave function, expend out to see how far it might go if it doesn’t reflect and then return to the surface before it can decide what to do.
Or more accurately before it can decide what odds it should have of reflecting (high, low, mid).
Remember this effect works one photon at a time.
Actually it is a real challenge imaging this effect without the light superluminally communicating under hardly any circumstances, because if you propose that photon turned into a wave function that both reflected and went through, then the wave that went through needs to catch back up to the wave that has been heading at the speed of light in the opposite direction.
If you mean the Cherenkov radiation issue, you should know that electrons can go faster that light in moving if light is slowed very slightly.
The electron can go as fast as it want and light will still be the same speed, but the moment light drops a tiny tiny bit below C it is possible for the electron to move faster than the light.
If there was any uncertianty in the velocity of light in a vacuum, and variation at all it would be very paradoxical because how fast do you have to go to move faster than like that is not doing C? The easy answer is faster that the light is moving relative to the current matter slowing light down.
But the light isn’t moving through matter it is moving in a vacuum, so any velocity should be enough to actually move faster than the current speed of light, but not faster than C because light is going slightly slower than C.
This would mean that photons should just randomly and momentarily reverse direction in a vacuum, move toward you at some inestimable velocity then shuffle off at C again in their original direction.
And QM is based on the idea we can never know everything about the velocity and position of something.
That does not mean that it requires the speed of light stray, and there is another possibility, that is C might not be a constant but variable, if light moves slower because C is not actually a constant, then it avoids this attack.
But then it’s lost it’s prestige as a constant.
Phew, I hope you were asking about one of those 2!
Ok, well I would currently need help on the math.
And the other this is you MIGHT be right, but I am not inclined to agree, I suspect they would use the torch to do something less pleasant to me.
Still I am hoping, so far I am mostly getting attacks here and disagreement here.
But not exclusively.
I guess that is what I am trying to do at the current non-mathematical skill level and a lower expectation of success, but I would rather someone with sway would listen.
Still there have been thought experiments that SR can’t solve that break it and have been made on websites for a long time.
I do think mine are reasonably top notch as far as thought experiments go to disprove SR, so I could have more luck.
If anyone is willing to donate the math, which would be about as difficult as checking math I did, then please speak up!
I missed this question initially, possibly the best one yet.
But I will note these questions would probably be solved if you read the looong form of the experiment.
Some of your questions go together:
Q:Rotate them, how, exactly? and Why “shaped like CD?”
A: To make it hopefully clear how they rotate, just like a CD does. Additionally to make it clear that light would be sent through the outer part where the centrifugal force is greatest, and a hole to mount them on a shaft like a CD is.
Q:Why are they transparent?
A: So light can be measured that goes through them, if they were not you could measure light that goes between them, but that creates more issues, and a second set of stationary sensors (A2 and B2) can’t be used in that event either.
Q: “Send a signal to both clocks,” but that is the first mention in your set up of clocks at all.
A: My bad, though I guess this isn’t a question so that is all I can answer.
Q: And where are the clocks?
A: Good question, ideally they would be positioned half way between the 2 sensors for symmetry in delay for the signals, alternately if the delay in the signals moving to the clocks bothered anyone too much, then you could have 4 clocks, bring them all together to set then in sync and move two to one end and two to the other end, the distances and symmetry would have these clocks about as well synchronized as they can be under SR, then the distance between the censors need not be very great (1 meter say, maybe less with very sophisticated methods)
and so the degree to which simultaneity would be an issue would be vanishingly small anyway.
Oh, and I should add that one of the clocks if 2 clocks (or 2 of the clocks if we use 4) is rotating with the censors to be in the same degree of time dilation and to see the light path lengthened.
Q:Are the clocks part of the sensors?
No, the clocks just record the passage as they see it in their frames of time and space, each sensor sends a message to both the rotating time dilated clock and the non rotating time dilated clock.
To help you understand it a bit better, the sensors rotate like CD’s would is you stacked 2 CD drives (aligning so they share a common axis and direction of rotation) and then separated to x meters being careful to keep them aligned.
They don’t even know how babby is formed.
It is very valid to show what beliefs are out there which is all I used it for not to say what was true, but…
I searched something the other day and found 2 people give the right and rarely heard answers.
It is a little known that magnetic effects are able to be mostly or entirely modelled apparently accurately for most things if you project how motion distorts the electric field including length contraction.
In other words if you look at anything where you would normally imagine a magnetic field field, you can expect that the magnetic field in not actually real and just project what forces you should get from the electric forces and arrive at the same answers!
The magnetic field if this is not just chance (and maybe it is) is just a convenient fiction of how we interpret a straight forward motion distorted electric field.
It is important that nothing in physics moves along magnetic lines of force, magnetic fields are always created by charges in motion (ignoring QM particle spin) and always occur as an electrical force/field perpendicular to the magnetic field.
While the magnetic field sure seems convincing, it isn’t real apparently.
Or at least is unnecessary, and if simultaneously present magnetic force should be doubled. Could that be why magnetism is twice as strong as physics can really explain? (from Wikipedia:The factor of two implies that the electron appears to be twice as effective in producing a magnetic moment as the corresponding classical charged body.)
I worked this out myself (without math), and then when I told people about it I was informed that Einstein beat me to it, maybe I still hold a grudge 
Of course without math, I was unable to be certain that the magnitude was enough to explain magnetic forces, I just knew that the axis and direction of seemingly all magnetic forces were seemingly explainable without magnetism.
Here is the most supurb Yahoo answers reply to which I refer:
Q: Why does a moving charge create a magnetic field?
A:If you are not well-acquainted with special relativity, there is no way to truly explain this phenomenon. The best one could do is give you rules steeped in esoteric ideas like “electromagnetic field” and “Lorentz invariance.” Of course, this is not what you’re after, and rightly so, since physics should never be about accepting rules handed down from on high without justification.
The fact is, magnetism is nothing more than electrostatics combined with special relativity. Unfortunately, you won’t find many books explaining this - either the authors mistakenly believe Maxwell’s equations have no justification and must be accepted on faith, or they are too mired in their own esoteric notation to pause to consider what it is they are saying. The only book I know of that treats the topic correctly is Purcell’s Electricity and Magnetism, which was recently re-released in a third edition. (The second edition works just fine if you can find a copy.)
A brief, heuristic outline of the idea is as follows. Suppose there is a line of positive charges moving along the z-axis in the positive direction - a current. Consider a positive charge q located at (x,y,z)=(1,0,0), moving in the negative z-direction. We can see that there will be some electrostatic force on q due to all those charges.
But let’s try something crazy - let’s slip into q’s frame of reference. After all,** the laws of physics had better hold for all points of view**. Clearly the charges constituting the current will be moving faster in this frame. But that doesn’t do much, since after all the Coulomb force clearly doesn’t care about the velocity of the charges, only on their separation. But special relativity tells us something else. It says the current charges will appear closer together. If they were spaced apart by intervals Δz in the original frame, then in this new frame they will have a spacing Δz1−v2/c2−−−−−−−−√, where v is q’s speed in the original frame. This is the famous length contraction predicted by special relativity.
If the current charges appear closer together, then clearly q will feel a larger electrostatic force from the z-axis as a whole. It will experience an additional force in the positive x-direction, away from the axis, over and above what we would have predicted from just sitting in the lab frame. Basically, Coulomb’s law is the only force law acting on a charge, but only the charge’s rest frame is valid for using this law to determine what force the charge feels.
Rather than constantly transforming back and forth between frames, we invent the magnetic field as a mathematical device that accomplishes the same thing. If defined properly, it will entirely account for this anomalous force seemingly experienced by the charge when we are observing it not in its own rest frame. In the example I just went through, the right-hand rule tells you we should ascribe a magnetic field to the current circling around the z-axis such that it is pointing in the positive y-direction at the location of q. The velocity of the charge is in the negative z-direction, and so qv→×B→ points in the positive x-direction, just as we learned from changing reference frames.
BTW the same transformations happen if the electron moves though the aether, so this does not need SR to be true as it uses Lorentz (an aether theory) contractions an the primary effect. In fact there are some reasons that SR with all frames being equal has never perfectly jived with some subtleties of real world ‘magnetism’.
Actually I can even pretty definitively create a free energy device if SR is true with a loop hole (negative induction), and I bet none of you will find the error in that one either (there is one, it’s that SR isn’t correct!).
And there is math for that one, because I shared the idea online and a few years later someone posted the math for it, diagrams, photos of it seemingly running and a probably improvement I had not considered. They didn’t give me credit, but they didn’t take any either.
It is possible for light to exceed C, and the following will prove it:
It just depends on where you are standing: If 2 vehicles are meeting each other on a 2 lane highway, and each has a speed gun sticking out the back window, and each vehicle is going 30 mph, as they pass and each reads the receding vehicle, they will read 60 mph.
If there are 2 bystanders on the side of the road, and they have speed guns, they will read the 2 vehicles as traveling 30 mph…
If there is an object approaching earth at .6 C, and earth is approaching the object at .6C, the relative speed is 1.2 C, and if someone standing between both earth and the object (he’d best move, and quickly) were to read individual speeds, he would read .6 C.
Any more questions ? ?
Things aren’t nearly as complex as some might think . . .
Simple is great, but your assertion is wrong.
I don’t see how any of that is relevant here.
It’s yet another example of how people can be wrong about physics, just like the OP.
Hey, these thought experiments sound fun and easy! (But how do I profit?)
Let me play this game! (Forget the mathmatics, though.)
So I keep pushing on some massive object, and as I do so, it keeps going faster and faster. Say, for example, that I have my object accelerating at 3 ft/sec/sec. (Or is this only valid if I use metric measures?)
At this rate of acceleration (or any rate of acceleration), it will eventually surpass the speed of light.
There. See how easy that was? Just my thought experiment.
No, it is not an axiom. Why would you think that?
Are you claiming that if an object traveling at, say, 1 * 10^8 meters/second emits a beam of light ahead, that beam of light will travel at 4 * 10^8 meters/second? And if it emits a beam of light behind, that beam will travel at 2 * 10^8 meters/second?
Or, in an equivalent case, if an object is traveling at 1 * 10^8 m/s, light waves coming from ahead be traveling at an effective 4 * 10^8 m/s, and light waves from objects behind will be traveling at an effective 2 * 10^8 m/s?
Because, you know, we’ve done this experiment. Lots of times. Michelson–Morley experiment - Wikipedia
This is the experiment that provided the first evidence that aether couldn’t exist.
Note that if you read that wikipedia article and when you get to the equation part and can’t understand the equations, you should really bone up on freshman algebra before you start working on freshman physics, since physics tends to use a lot of algebra.
We really don’t measure a difference in the velocity of light emitted from objects in the universe, no matter which direction the Earth is orbiting. If you want to be the guy who disproves relativity, you have to be able to explain this result. Like, better than “it doesn’t make sense!”
Well it’s not that I disagree, but SR tries to make it at least a little tricky to prove what you say since it argues that everyones perception of length and time in the different frames disagrees, and that there is no such thing as the same moment in 2 distant locations etc…
And you can’t have instantaneous communication to help clarify any of these views of reality.
The the books that I’ve read argue that this applies but to trying to rectify reality by trying to solve even the illusions of length and time changing from increasing or decreasing message delay.
Oh, and I almost forgot, the faster an object moves the more it’s mass is seen to increase by those in relative motion.
So with a straight line example like these, relativity tries to become so horrifically confusing that it become almost impossible to disprove.
Actually it becomes “Not even wrong” which is to say it is so abstract and hard to pin down and become incoherent about reality, you give up, look at it’s credentials and either decide that it has bested you at least to explain reality using it in a coherent way or even disprove it, given it’s pedigree you will accept it anyway…
Or that in your opinion it’s pedigree means nothing, so it is probably wrong, but hard to pin down.
It is only when you strap Relativity down in a chair, and limit the number of objections it throws up to observations being made that you can prove that the inconsistent expectations of observers in SR aren’t just counter-intuitive and complex, but actually not possible.
That is what I have done.
There is no solution where it can survive, that is why no one is even trying to argue against it directly.
You know what? The argument used at the beginning of this thread could also be used to argue that a physical object could be seen to exceed C also!
If the stationary frame sees an electron move between the censors at almost C, then the longer path and the slower clock view will have the time dilated frame see it as exceeding C!
And the interesting thing is that even if there was no acceleration and hence no GR time dilation or if could have decided that GR time delay can see things exceed C and be ok, it still wouldn’t be ok because the distance is still longer to move in the same time!
Oh, and there would be SR time dilation and length contraction, but the time dilation can only make it worse again (while creating a paradox also) and length contraction has no effect as it is across the wrong dimension to effect anything.
The mass being seen to increase makes it worse because you can’t calculate mass that exceeds, it would become infinite or imaginary, and in any other sense doesn’t change the experiment.
The same location for the detection of light for the 2 points of view (Sensors A and B means that non-simultaneity at a distance can’t be used.
SR’s utility belt of nonsense is expended.
Oh wait, no it’s not, it has one last trump card, Zealots.
Special Relativity is better than logic or reality so screw you! It doesn’t have to make sense! Look at all those scientists that have believed it, so it MUST be true!
La la La fingers in our ears, got my dick caught in a ceiling fan, do the experiment yourself and show me the math, no I couldn’t understand it, but show the math!
Special Relativity has been reduced to school yard taunts and appeals to authority.
oh, and maybe homework.
Hey, if you can’t win playing fair, play dirty.
But feel free to Prove Me Wrong! and explain what will be seen and why it doesn’t break SR.
Even if you are unsure what SR predicts, can anyone conceive of a way the experiment could go down that wouldn’t break SR?
Short of the experiment breaking first!
No, from the frame you started at, your job will become harder and harder to do since the mass of the massive object will grow larger and larger.
And from earth perspective, the faster you go the more your time will slow making you think you are going faster all the time but if you compare your motion to earth you will see your not actually getting faster at all.
You could even leave earth with a 2 stage rocket, accelerate to .99c of the speed of light relative to earth and then separate and accelerate accelerate to .99c relative to the first stage, but from earth’s perspective still be less than C, and until you tied SR down in a chair and don’t let it tell you a long confusing lie, you can’t prove that it is wrong.
What it proposes is essentially we are all moving at near the speed of light in various directions right now, it just depends on your point of view.
It is important to realize that you are right, SR can’t really slve your paradox, it definitely looks like it can.
If you try to disprove it with enough observers comparing enough things you could prove it wrong, but then you would have blown the trouble of analysis up so much you end up only proving it wrong to yourself if you are both brilliant (more brilliant that I certainly) and immune to making any mistake.
Which basically means that if you gave a computer a scenario with all the equations and insisted that the picture of reality it creates didn’t involve anything impossible, you would prove SR incorrect, but that would be really hard too, and everything would have to be checked.
And anyone else who did not go over the wrong thing and have the intellect to understand all the code and equations or the intellectual integrity to verify it as sound would not believe the results.
If an experiment is done that contradicts it, it will assumed to be wrong even if it comes from he most respected scientists as has been seen.
If it comes from someone like me, we would not get the time of day.
No one would accept the results.
The only way, short of some spectacular discovery that contradicts it or a lot of funerals and a slow burn of the true (aetheric) nature of reality setting in is…
Relatively simple thought experiments where SR’s other ricks either make the problem worse, or do nothing to change the results in any important way.
But religious zealots hate it when you tell them that their beliefs are nonsense, their “Gods” were dupes (at best) and their evidence ridiculously interpreted.
Let’s try the same argument with sound shall we?
We tried to measure the speed of sound as the earth moves through the air, but we found the speed of sound to be independent of the way the earth moves around the sun, and also independent of the velocity of the thing making the sound.
We also drove as fast as we could in a car and measured the speed of sound in the car to also be the same!
Given this evidence it is clear that the speed of sound is a constant, called ‘S’!
And that there is no such thing as this crazy and old fashioned concept ‘air’ that we embarrassingly used to believe in.
If the air were any more tenuous, and harder to detect the version of Relativity would be even more mind bending with 2 things that always have a constant but different velocity, light and sound.
Nope. Do the math. (It honestly isn’t that hard.)
Satire?
Because it is.
Like I said I didn’t think it, I thought Relativity tried to prove it, I am pretty sure I read explanations in books about SR that give it a go, but Einstein didn’t even try!
Yup, it is impossible and the evidence (most/all) is explained in my analogy about sound.
See: http://physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_relativity_light.html
It should be noted that Einstein did not actually PROVE the constancy of the speed of light in all frames of reference. Rather, it is an axiom (an underlying assumption) from which he derived the rest of his theory. The axiom can be experimentally verified, but it is not proven in any theoretic sense.
Yup, the only evidence to support this impossibility is a criminally stupid interpretation of light speed measurements.
No explanation of how this impossibility can become possible!
I guess he assumed some one else would work that part out with all the distortions of space, time mass, simultaneity…
But no one did.
Look at my argument for proving that air doesn’t exist and the speed of sound is constant above. (by the same logic)
You should bone up on reality, intellectual integrity, visualization, avoidance of social pressure and zealotry, start to read things people write, address arguments rather than changing the subject with your not in the least productive and already covered objections.
oh, do you like being talked to that way?
Me neither.
We really don’t measure a difference in the speed of sound from a car moving toward us or away from us.
Am I going to have to explain it again? Or will you read it in my previous post?
ignorance, really.