The Earth can’t be round; people would fall off the bottom!
On a brighter note, it’s trivial to exceed the “speed limit” c, and by a huge factor.
I gaze at Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion. I switch my gaze to Sirius.
There! The target of my gaze has moved almost 640 light-years in less than a second!
Why is there Lorentz contraction in this part? Are you asserting Lorentz contraction as a postulate? Are you just saying that you can choose to assert this, along with time dilation, the relativity of simultaneity, etc., as the “axioms” instead? And that, if you do, the speed of light is observed to be independent of reference frame? If so, it seems a great bit easier to just postulate the invariance of the speed of light. Everything else falls right out from that simple postulate.
What do you mean by “it just makes no sense”? Under what set of physical laws is the constancy of the speed of light not allowed? I agree that it might seem counterintuitive, but that’s no strike against the claim, per se.
Would you agree that the following two cases are the only two possible cases?
(A) The observed speed of light in a vacuum is independent of the relative speed of the source and the observer.
(B) The observed speed of light in a vacuum depends on the relative speed of the source and the observer.
It is just a matter, then, of figuring out the consequences of these and testing them experimentally. Option (A) requires that time dilation, length contraction, etc., should be observed in very specific ways. These are observed. Option (B) requires a different set of observations to hold, and these are not observed. Thus, option (B) is not the correct one.
I am having trouble deducing which part of the above logic you have a concern with. Is your concern something more than “it just makes no sense”?
More or less.
We have to be careful here with frames of reference (precisely the problem mythought is having.
Say you have two clocks, one on the thirteenth floor and one on the second floor. Both are on tables (hence, at rest). Without loss of generality, if you, the observer, are on the 13th floor clock, you observe the 2nd floor clock ticking slower than it should. Alternatively, if you are on the 2nd floor, you instead see the 13th floor clock ticking faster than it should. That’s from general relativity.
Now say we have a 3rd clock and we’re on the thirteenth floor. We drop this clock out the window. When it passes the 2nd floor, it’s observed to tick even slower than the 2nd floor clock because it now has some non-zero velocity (taking care that this is non-zero from the appropriate frame of reference). We have both general and special relativity at play here and both produce an apparent slowing. From experiment, we know the amount of slowing will be consistent with the difference in altitude and the velocity of the clock.
Again, this is precisely what we observe with GPS satellites. We have to correct for both the difference in gravity and the relative velocity of the satellites’ motion to our local frame of reference or the clock signals get grossly out of sync with expectation.
And this last point really gets my goat. We have, currently in orbit, a small constellation of satellites that provide a continuous validation of relativity (both special and general). And the Hafele-Keating experiment verified both GR and SR using airplanes.
It’s not horrible to think relativity might be wrong. It is horrible to state it is wrong and offer nothing but a thought experiment that doesn’t provide an alternative explanation of the confirmation tests we already have. As I stated earlier, if your thought experiment produces a result that is at odds with observed reality, it’s time for a re-think.
By the way, I’m only a geophysicist, so I’m not qualified to get too far into the details of relativity. Fortunately, even my high school physics education is sufficient to show where the OP is going wrong (we had a pretty good physics teacher in high school).
Case in point here. The frame of reference should be the observer, for whom no acceleration is apparent but who sees the rest of the universe accelerating. The instant the clock is let go, it stops accelerating with respect to the universe but STARTS accelerating relative to the observer.
As I’ve repeatedly stated, the problem is a common one - inconsistent frames of reference.
Special Relativity as it stands is so flawed that I fully expect every bit of electronic equipment on the planet to suddenly cease to function.
It’s a wonder anything with no moving parts operates at all.
There’s also the problem of holding up Einstein as some sort of guiding light of relativity. Yes, he put it together and, yes, he was brilliant. But a lot of the pieces were already there.
Lorentz, for one. His equations of time dilation and length contraction predated Einstein’s work and included the concept of frames of reference. Henri Poincare, likewise, did a lot of work predating Einstein that was most of the basic theory of relativity.
So, no, it wasn’t just Einstein making half-assed assumptions. Other physicists were thinking along the same lines. And not for random reasons but because these ideas make a kind of sense (better yet, one that could be tested and verified).
Worst of all, the OP’s theory doesn’t match observations we have. As in the other thread, the single example of the GPS system and its reliance on both special and general relativity is a major counterexample. I’d like to see the OP first provide an alternate theory that can explain observations we already have before jumping off into speculative wankery.
mythoughts, I suggest that you take the time to participate in other threads and reconsider your rhetorical style.
Continuing to create new threads that are minor variations on each other and never participating in other discussions makes you a one-trick-pony. You’ll quickly see that few people will bother to engage with you any more.
You say that you’re not interested in convincing anyone, but you are clearly very interested in this subject and want to have a discussion. The problem is that your posts are approaching incomprehensibility because they’re unfocused and you’re discussing something that you don’t have a firm understanding of. People keep telling you to show them the math, and you keep saying you can’t do the math, but that’s not really the issue. Asking for the math is a proxy for saying “You are just spouting words and concepts without clearly defining or understanding them”.
Actually this follows directly from Maxwell’s equations. Unless you want to throw out all of electrodynamics, you have to accept that existence of a propagating electromagnetic wave going at the speed of light, without regard to reference frame. So Einsteins Axiom wasn’t that the speed of light is fixed it was that electrodynamics worked as described by Maxwell.
I suppose you could try rewriting the laws of physics from scratch in order to exclude relativity, but given that these laws match reality so flawlessly it seems a pointless exercise, unless there is some independent reason that relativity is as an anathema.
Why do you care so much?
No one will back you up on this, well no one who knows the theory anyway.
Constant motion is relative (at least according to SR) since there is no obvious way of answering who is moving from any possible clues based on your experience, or theirs.
But with acceleration it is very different, if I an observing 1G of acceleration relative to other bodies, all I have to do is check to see if I am showing the symptoms of experiencing 1G of G-force or weightlessness, or see if they are experiencing 1G of G-force or weightlessness.
Acceleration is absolute, not relative. And if Einstein were here to chip in even he would agree.
cite your sources.
The sad thing is you will never learn any physics beyond special relativity simply because rather than reflecting and learning why the comparatively trivial errors you have made are errors, the allure of thinking that you’ve discovered some sort of flaw in what is fairly basic physics and hence are a super-genius beyond all the great physicists of the past 100+ years who studied the theory and never noticed this flaw is much more attractive.
There are about a billion crackpots on the internet and my own rule is to engage them up to a point (everyone makes mistakes - I disagree with some physics sites which shut down threads and ban people at the first whiff of crackpottery), but only up to a point as once you’ve done what is reasonable to point out an error someone has made, there is nothing else to do.
Misses the point. There is no preferred frame of reference.
Does it matter if you are treating yourself as accelerating or the rest of the universe as accelerating? No. What you observe from your own perspective will be the same. Yes, you observe an acceleration. You can treat it from the POV of an observer in the rest of the universe or treat yourself as the observer with the universe accelerating. No difference in the end.
You are making an erroneous assumption here that what you observe (while accelerating) should somehow resemble what you would observe if you were in a non-inertial frame of reference. That’s contradictory. Your frame is accelerating. But, again, that doesn’t matter to the effect. From your POV, the clock accelerates.
In any case, as soon as you let go of the clock, in YOUR frame of reference, the clock accelerates. The math might be more complicated than anybody likes, but the simple fact you observe the clock accelerating relative to you, with associated time dilation, does not change.
Here is my source. (besides regular experience of the force of acceleration, and the non-force of watching someone accelerate)
Everyone who has ever argued that the classic Twin Paradox is solved because acceleration makes their experiences asymmetric!
If the only difference between the twins was that one felt the G-force, but both were accelerating because acceleration is relative…
Then their experiences are symmetrical!
And if the travelling twin accelerates at 1G, then they even have the same experience assuming the planet is earth the other twin is on.
I should add, this doesn’t detract from the fact that the biggest bit of evidence is just direct observation. Once again, we have continuous confirmation via the GPS system (among other tests) that the theory works as it should if relativity were true.
If you wish to posit an alternative, you should first make sure it is consistent with what we see in reality.
This isn’t a source for any of the assertions you made in your post.
Try again - or as you said earlier - ‘put up or shut up’.
No. It’s not symmetric.
Presumably they began on the same planet. That means one twin briefly experiences more than 1G acceleration when the twin blasts off for space. And again experiences a different acceleration upon turning around and upon landing.
ETA: And it doesn’t explain your issues with SR, either, at that.
Proving Special Relativity wrong does not require a replacement, and is still valid if it leaves questions.
It tells us a better theory is needed, and to start looking for a better one.
Kinda like you don’t need to have a replacement car to accept that your current one doesn’t sound like it will last much longer.
The need launches the search for a better theory, as has happened with Supersymmetry, after decades of lots of very very smart people thinking it is right, they have been shown it is wrong. (which is something I didn’t know until someone here mentioned it)
Secondly, there are people who have looked at the GPS data,both the guy I mentioned earlier, and something the Navy said I think (from the Stormfront post I pasted before it was removed) that indicates it does not comply.
But what I would need to do such an analysis is firstly serious boning up on my skill with mathematics and equations.
Consider what Newton would expect to happen
Secondly the actual data, since the claim it almost fits according to SR does not mean much to me when things can be massaged to fit.
I would need to see if what the data says actually backs up what SR would have it do.
Then I would need to consider my own aether theory and consider what kind of structure light is in the aether and how the aether might be entrained etc…
It is like trying to guess aerodynamics without having any experience with air except as a vague concept, you only know generally but not precisely what would be predicted.
And even then assumptions of how a fluid works based on experience does not prepare you for say super-fluidity.
And then there is the possibility that the operation of the aether would not look much like a fluid even if I am right about the nature of it, it is very plausible the assurate model would be a fluid that is entrained by w wire cage since the field lines of each particle on earth might be influencing it.
This means that while my aether model can make falsifiable or verifiable predictions, it might do so poorly if the experiment is not designed to clarify it.
In fact it would be better not to make predictions from my model, but fit my model to the data.
So to you GPS fits the data, but I kinda doubt you have seen the actual raw data or done the calculations above, those who have are apparently mixed, but that some are willing to descent surprises me because I might have expected them to either shut up to avoid persecution.
Of course if I did find my theory fit the evidence perfectly, imagine the difficuty in having you agree without taking my word for it!
IS ACCELERATION ABSOLUTE?
First off, the demented nature of the argument that acceleration is relative to fix the dropped clock is staggering, sorry but it is.
So if we take a gravity field we all agree that time dilation occurs in the gravity field, and even the chap in the time dilation gravity well agrees that his clock is slow compared to others, so we are taking the time dilation that is occurring with gravity and saying it happens to acceleration the same (or General Relativity is anyway).
So if what happens is going to be the same then the party that is ACTUALLY accelerating gets time dilated and all agrees including him if he compares time with outside that his clock is slowest.
But once he drops the clock it is not no longer accelerating in an absolute sense!
It is now like the rest of the universe, and if his clock is to be slower than the rest of the universe because it is accelerating, the moment it isn’t it resumes normal time keeping at least till it smashes or gains enough velocity to significantly dilate time under SR.
But here is the really crazy part of your argument.
If the guy accelerating in the elevator has a slowing clock and the rest of the universe does too then time dilation is equal everywhere!
So if time dilation has been applied to him and the universe equally then no time dilation has occurred (how would you know it even had, from outside the universe?), or if you argue that it occurs as in SR, then he should see the time in the rest of the universe slow when he accelerates.
Precisely the OPPOSITE of what the guy in the gravity field would observe by comparing his clock to an outside clock.
If the guy in the gravity field drops his clock and it doesn’t instantly tick faster then you can tell which is which.
Huh, now you are definitely being intellectually dishonest if you count going to space to be the cause of massive time dilation that can explain the earth twin being old, and the travelling twin being young on return.
Congrats, I will not reply to you anymore since I won’t argue with a liar.
Mythoughts, stop creating threads about this. Your last four topics have been–in one way or another–about relativity and you’ve made 3 topics in the last day alone.
Keep it all in one topic, because they all seem to be about relativity at heart, so they don’t all need their own topic. You were also already told to keep it to one topic yesterday.
I have yet again merged your new relativity topic in with this one.
If you make another (different) topic about this, it will be closed and you will get a warning for ignoring mod instruction.
If you disagree with this moderating, make a topic in About This Message Board and it can be discussed there.
Our OP could learn a few things about the speed of C in this closely related thread (e.g. Posts #18 and 33). For one thing, it’s suggested that one can exceed the speed of C by carefully coding in assembly language. So Einstein, et al., got it wrong on at least that point.
Actually, I’m not sure I fully understood the OP, or any of this OP’s other OPs, so I can’t be quite sure that I’m posting quite on-target there. Something to do with C, n’est-ce pas?