Why Special Relativity is wrong and the speed of light is NOT the same for all observers

In My Humble Opinion
101

I have no idea what you mean by “a muon positioned in the center of the rotating muon”.

There are two different effects at work, one caused by velocity and one caused by acceleration.

If a spaceship flew past earth a near light speed we would see its clock ticking slowly even though it’s not accelerating.

I’m not “claiming” anything. I’m just telling you what GR says.

And, no, it does not disagree with experimental verification. For example, in calculating how the clocks behave on GPS satellites, you have to take into account:

  1. Their orbital velocity.
  2. The effect of gravity (acceleration) on the observer.
  3. The altitude of the satellite above the observer.

We observe that GPS clocks tick slower because they are moving relative to us. But we also observe that they tick faster because they are higher up in Earth’s gravity well. (Being higher in a gravity well is exactly the same as being farther away from an observer experiencing acceleration.) You need to take both factors into account to calculate their expected tick rate.

So, no, what I’m telling you does not run counter to experimental verification.

See, this is exactly what I mean about you being sloppy with your thought experiments. Once you say that the plank is flying in circles in the room you’ve introduced a massive acceleration that completely changes things. No, relativity does not say that a 100 ft. plank can fly in circles in a 50 ft. room.

102

Aha, now I understand the muon comment.

A muon experiencing a 1g centripetal acceleration at that distance must be in orbit around something truly massive, like a really large black hole. So there’s a huge gravitational gradient which causes a large change in how the two clocks tick relative to each other.

103

He says

The ironic part is that Einstein didn’t get a Nobel Prize for relativity. He got it for explaining the photoelectric effect. Based on what? Quantum mechanics. I had also seen the kind of claim made by Cantrell and posted it here, where I was de-ignoranced with this fact.

Einstein always questioned a lot of aspects of QM, but he didn’t reject it. Quite the opposite, he provided the first good evidence for it, and helped it along with discussions with the other pillars of physics of the day.

104

Basically:

  1. Time dilation is observed AFTER you correct for signal propagation. So bringing things like Doppler shift into your thought experiments often just confuses things.

  2. If you’re moving relative to another observer you see their clock ticking slower. This effect is reciprocal.

  3. If you’re accelerating toward another observer you see their clock ticking faster. How much faster is a function of your distance from them.

  4. If you’re accelerating away from another observer you see their clock ticking slower. Again, how much is a function of distance.

All of these effects come into play in the scenarios you’re describing, and until you understand what relativity actually says you’re bound to come to grief.

105

Yup.

That in itself should give you pause. Only fools and religious zealots are completely and utterly certain with no room for doubt. But I applaud you for agreeing to try to take a different tack, to avoid

Great one! From that: The Crackpot Index (Act 3 begins around 30 minutes, btw.)

Anyone who wants to be treated with respect, when posting an iconoclastic theory, should carefully read this list and make it a point to do the opposite of as many points as possible.

Of course, the most important points are to be able to express the idea mathematically and to make testable predictions that disagree with the dogma. All the other errors would be forgiven if the above two criteria are met.

Even then it wouldn’t necessarily be immediate, not unless the experimental results were very clear. Someone said “Scientific revolutions happen one death at a time.” That was certainly true for the demise phlogiston theory, but wasn’t the case for either relativity or quantum mechanics.

106

I’m not well versed in special relativity, so this is on a much more basic level.

mythoughts’ reminds me of Zeno’s paradoxes of motion, which can be disproven with algebraic techniques that his contemporaries didn’t have.

The paradoxes can still be useful in metaphysical problems, but not physics. It seems like mythoughts is approaching SR metaphysically but believes he is refuting physics instead.

107

I think that since the OP has seemingly denied the ability of mathematics to define physical reality*, there is really little one can do to convince him of the mathematical (and real) truth of SR.

Mythoughts, what is your opinion re: General Relativity?

*And may have stated as such… there’s a lot of words between the first post and this one.

108

First off, I have not denied that mathematics can describe reality, I have stated that math can become entirely abstract, give results that make zero sense if we fail to get a complete physical view of what they are explaining.

Now listen up, because here is the gist of it without getting lost in details.

Imaging that I told you that I have 2 chairs facing each other a short distance apart, and that if you sit in one chair and a trusted friend sits in the other you will both see that time has stopped for the other, and any amount of time may pass for either of you including a century if you could bare to sit in the chair for so long and you would still have seen no more than a second or so pass for your friend, and he for you.

Also if while sitting in the chair you measured the velocity of light, you would both measure the same velocities for the same light sources, indeed you would measure the speed of all light, even light around your friend to be moving at C despite the time dilation you see him experience and you would acknowledge that if he tries to measure the speed of that same light despite the time dilated state you see him in, he would see it is at C.

And now finally the moment you both stand up out of the chairs you both see the other is experiencing time in a normal manner again.

Both would expect to see the other has aged less.

Does that seem even vaguely possible? At all? To be right next to someone and both see that time isn’t changing for the other!

Because the difference between what this asks you to accept and what SR asks you to accept doesn’t really change the paradoxical nature of this one bit.

Yes motion can confuse the observation of the others time rate if observers are moving apart or together, but if they are not moving apart or together, either because they are passing, or some form of motion besides linear motion is involved then the difference between what I am proposing and what SR is proposing is really insignificant.

Any objection such as acceleration or the like only applies to derivations of the primary idea which has no such objections, except that the moment of passing is (very) brief or the 2 observers are not close (but are still not moving toward or away from each other).

If time dilation only occurred if acceleration was used momentarily to create the relative velocity, then time dilation would not be observed to take lace if the other party was ‘nat;ve’ to that reference frame.

Longer and closer does rub the paradox in your face harder, and yet if it is impossible to experience 2 feet away for a century then it is impossible to experience for a microsecond and a mile or more away.

If you can accept the paradox with the chairs in your mind as a possibility, then I certainly can’t convince you that SR is nonsensical.

However if you can not accept the paradox with the chairs, then you can’t accept the time dilation scheme that SR sets out is possible since there is no actually relevant difference.

As for General Relativity, I have never paid as much interest in it, although I am not entirely certain where the dividing line is between Special and General.
But I think almost everything I have covered relates to SR, except the equivalence of inertial force and gravity and the time dilation associated with both.

109

I would add though:

If an inertial observer is moving directly towards us, then their clock will visually appear to run faster than our own clock. This is because the distance that the light travelling from them to us is getting progressively less always causes their clock to appear to run faster more than time dilation slows it down.

Generally speaking if an inertial observer is moving so that they are decreasing the distance between us, then whether their clock is visually appears faster or slower than our own clock depends on both their velocity vector relative to our line of sight of them. The clocks of observers who are increasing the distance between us always visually appear to be slowed.

If we bring accelerated observers into the mix things get more complicated because, whilst Time dilation in special relativity has a well defined meaning in terms of the frames of inertial observers, the definition doesn’t go over into accelerated frames of reference. However we can still say whether or not a clock visually appears faster or slower to an accelerated observer, though the equations for working out whether two observers undergoing arbitrary accelerations visually observe each others clocks to be faster or slower than their own can be a bit more stickier.

110

I don’t know what you are trying to illustrate, mythoughts, but the transverse Doppler effect is not just a consequence of special relativity, but an experimental fact.

111

Thank you for saying that, now may I ask what objections would you have to the train on the turn table experiment, with occupants at zero and 180 degrees observing each other? Their relative linear velocity is very high leading to a strong degree of expected time dilation. And their acceleration is symmetrical and distance changes are not involved.

And G-force related time dilation (which is General Relativity I believe) would be equal on both and a separate matter, and based on diameter not just velocity.

You can’t say there is a flaw, it could be built and tested, even easily if we use sufficiently precise clocks.
If it was built and tested, what would be seen by both occupants?
What if they meet either with the turn table rotating, or stopped, what would they see?

If for some reason there is no time dilation despite the relative motion, then why wouldn’t time dilation kick in the moment something went momentarily on a linear trajectory? (fell) To have a falling clock not register any time till it hits the floor/walls would be a very odd claim. And if such minor deviations from linear or curved paths lead to massive changes in time dilation how could it go unobserved?

Again, it is up to you to tell me what would happen if this were tested.
If I do not tell you what would happen then what can I be mistaken about???

Why do you say acceleration here? Do you mean to imply the same would not be true with constant motion away or towards an observer?

And why bring up Doppler in point 1 only to repeat it in points 3 and 4, you do realize that this is a result of the Doppler effect right?

  1. Mutual time dilation is impossible. You simply can’t have time going slower for A than B and slower for B than A.
    It would make no more sense than me saying that cup A has hotter water in it than cup B, and cup B’s water is hotter than A’s.

If by the time the person measuring cup A gets to cup B it has cooled, and the person measuring cup B gets to cup A it has cooled, this impossibility could appear confirmed.

The only way either of these statements can be pretended to be true is if a direct immediate comparison is impossible, where it is possible there is no way for both to check out as true, it is logically impossible.

It would be a mistake to believe that the experiment with the cups says anything about the nature of reality.

112

No. Their relative linear velocity is 0.

113

Unfortunately mythoughts has not been clear in the problem set out, but what I think he means is the following situation:

Two observers move with the same circular path with the same angular velocity, but with a phase difference of 180 degrees (i.e. they are always appear on opposite sides of the circle to an observer at rest in the centre of the circle). The two observers moving around the circle always have a big difference in their instantaneous speeds.

Of course what he then says is confusing as he then asks what if the two observers meet, but that can’t happen unless at least one significantly changes their motion, so it is hard to answer the questions he poses.

114

Or in other words mythoughts: layout the situation clearly and concisely in a concrete way and then I might have an idea at what you are getting at.

115

Their relative velocity is most definitively not zero.

They are moving in opposite directions, at near the speed of light.

And you have completely ignored a crucial part of the thought experiment, if they drop something, or walk in a way that does not momentarily conform to an arc around their common axis of orbital movement, then that object would also have to be considered.

Which is to say that if you believe there is no time dilation before, now suddenly there is potentially massive time dilation of the object that no longer momentarily conforms, and this would be seen then even in the same cabin that the non-conforming object is in!

If you like, a counter-rotating train could be setup with an undeniably large relative velocity, and every 180 degrees of rotation/orbit the same trains would line up.

Another wrinkle if you claim that having a constant view of the opposite train cabin changes anything, then there should be no relative time dilation anywhere on the turn table (further out of further in) including the center, and if someone spinning at the center does not undergo relative time dilation with the cabins, then is there going to be time dilation between this center position and the Laboratory? Remember the the RPM of this turn table can (if it grows astronomically) be low.

If you want to consider the thought experiment, you can’t leave a part out.

116

Thank you for acknowledging that there is a big difference in the instantaneous speeds of the observers, that means we do not need to compare curved path time dilation with linear path dilation. And when is anything perfectly straight in reality, especially when paths are bent by gravity.

Ok, now first off let us just wallow in what we are seeing (I think you would agree), each observer sees the other stuck in time (with sufficient velocity) and the difference in the time their clocks reads from each perspective moves further and further out of sync to a ludicrous degree, what must be happening to the various messages (light, electrical signals) that pass between them?

Next you can select one of the following and tell me what you think should happen in each:
1: The turn table comes to a stop, they see the rate of time resume to normal (obviously), they get out of their cabins and meet, how can their divergent expectations (but symmetrical situations) be reconciled? Each should be the oldest (and youngest).

2: One gets up and walks to the opposite cabin while it is still rotating, he walks in the direction the turn table is rotating.

3: The same as 2, but he walks in the opposite direction.

Please tell me what you think should occur in these examples.

117

That should have read each of the following, not select one.

Though each one should lead to an illogical result.

118

No. Neither observer is in an inertial frame of reference, and you would need to use General Relativity to asses what each observer would see when he looks at the other. You’re only considering the effect from Special Relativity when you say “each observer sees the other stuck in time”.

It’s a symmetric situation, as is obvious from a third observer at rest in the center of the circle, and they have aged the same.

119

It seems like this is your primary beef with relativity. And granted, it is very counterintuitive, that each observer could see the other one going slower than themselves. But reality doesn’t always conform to our intuitions, and that’s just the way it is. (And that’s not just the Doppler effect, it’s a real physical phenomenon.)

You may want to look into the relativity of simultaneity, which helps explain how it’s possible for time to be going more slowly for A than B in B’s reference frame, and also for time to be going more slowly for B than A in A’s reference frame.

120

I think we should ignore gravity, general relativity is much more complicated than special relativity, IMO adding gravity to the mix could lead to unnecessary complications.

I would bring your attention to what I said in post #109 in response to Hamster King as there are a number of relevant things here. Firstly I pointed out that the time dilation between two arbitrarily accelerated observers in not well-defined, in this situation we are dealing with two accelerated observers so we have to tread carefully and in fact in many ways what the observers actually see is really the only thing that is relevant. However what is well-defined is that for either of the observers, in the inertial frame that they are at rest in at any given time, the other observer will have a large relative velocity. But I will again draw your attention to post #109 and the point that I made that, even for inertial observers travelling at large relative velocities, their clocks can appear (in terms of what they visually see) to the other to run at a faster rate.

So in fact no I don’t agree that the clocks of each observer will appear (again in the visual sense) to the other to be almost frozen. What they will actually see (due to the relativistic Doppler effect) is the other observer’s clock to run at the same rate as their own clock. The reasons for this probably are not abundantly clear I admit without having some sort of handle on the maths involved (though see here for the relevant equation), but it’s due to some handy symmetries at play.

To make the situation more explicit: let’s say they start at the central point synchronize watches and both walk (let’s assume it is a leisurely stroll and not too great a distance as we’re not interested in the time dilation from this part of their journey) in to their cabins, the turntable is then starts to spin*. At some later point the turntable stops, they both get out and meet in the centre and compare watches.

As you note the situation is symmetrical and from this fact alone we can see that when the two observers meet up their watches display the same time when they meet up and compare them. This is not paradoxical, as we’ve noted the two observers actually see each others clock running at the same rate whilst the turntable is rotating, so there is no incompatibility between their observations.

In this case the symmetry is now broken, the observer who got out of their cabin will have less time on their watch than the other when they meet up.

Thie symmetry is again broken, but this time the observer who got out of their cabin will have more time on their watch than the other when they meet up.

Note 2 and 3 are examples of the experimentally-verified Sagnac effect.

*there is an issue with a turntable behaving this way in special relativity, but will ignore it as we’re interested in the observers on the turntable, not the turntable itself