Yes there is a difference, not for a dimensionless point, but for anything larger.
Now if ‘spacetime’ itself was spinning, then that would be something different and would depend on the interaction of spacetime and the stuff inside it, so that would be undefined. It could cause the apparent expansion of the universe or we could be totally insulated from it much like a warp bubble in scifi.
And yet there are many ways in which the brain can be fooled into thinking that your body is moving when it is not.
To sum up the physics of it: We don’t know, and we have no way of knowing, since we can’t just spin the whole Universe on a whim (and if we did, we would have no way of knowing we were doing it). Either scenario can be described mathematically, and both descriptions are mathematically equivalent.
Although I find the biological info fascinating, my question does reduce to the “bucket argument” others have mentioned. I like the “there is an absolute space” resolution the best. The only other answer I can find online is what others have been calling Mach’s principle. I think it is ridiculous. The more I think about modern physics, the more I think they picked the most ridiculous answers to every dilemma.
Well, that’s what Newton thought. And that guy punched his sister and squirted water on Sunday.
Everyone accepts that motion is relative. So the strange thing is why acceleration should not be. The kind of hypothetical experiment that could investigate it is so far outside our realm of experience that our intuition is pretty much worthless, so thinking that it’s ridiculous doesn’t count for much. Einstein thought Mach (in some formulation) was right. QM, where we can do experiments to show that it’s right, is far more ridiculous.
I have felt funny after playing first-person shooter games, also after trying those Oculus Rift goggles.
This is classic motion sickness, which can be triggered by any disagreement between your vestibular system and your visual system. Most people are used to the situation where your vestibular system says you’re moving and your eyes say you’re not (e.g. in an aircraft), but it can also be triggered in situations where your eyes say you’re moving but your vestibular system says you’re not, which is what you experienced.
One of the big development problems with VR goggles like Oculus Rift has been getting the display response time low enough to avoid motion sickness. When you move your head, there’s a fraction of a second before the system alters the scene to match; that fraction of a second of disagreement between ears and eyes can be enough to sicken some people. The quicker the response time of the VR goggles, the fewer users get sick, but I expect there will always be some percentage of users who are extremely sensitive and prone to sickness.
On my way to Turkey, decades ago, I read a travelogue by a British writer in Turkey. I wish I could remember the author and title. It’s such a good quote I wish I could cite it in full. Anyway…
The author goes out for a walk near the waterfront of Istanbul one midnight, encountering a variety of vagrants. One guy (I forgot his name, call him Ahmet) has had too much to drink and is lying on the ground. He opens his eyes and starts to moan. The author remarks,
“The Earth is always turning around. Generally we don’t notice it. But Ahmet did.”
I would say its important to point out that in a truly Machian physical theory the decision as to which observers are inertial (unaccelerated) is a choice (like a gauge choice). This is not true in any physical theory worth mentioning, and if we want to use mathematical sleight of hand to transform a spinning object to a non-spinning object, we really redefining what it means (physically) to be spinning. That’s not to say a truly Machian theory is not possible, but a lot of people have tried unsuccessfully.
Well first, you would have to be the center of the universe…
I think that if everything started spinning around me getting dizzy would not be my first concern.