Tuesday, December 7, 2010

A Maverick Philospher's quest for objective morality

Many theists believe there is an objective morality to be discovered. However, since you can't uncover such a morality in the same way you can lift a stone and find a pill bug, empirical systems are not use for this process. Instead, many rely on various works that they give implicit trust to, except when the advice of such books goes against their innate beliefs. Hence, we see homosexuals barred from military service, but don't see single women non-virgins barred in such a fashion, much less executed for being a single non-virgin.

Some attempt a seemingly more sophisticated approach of creating a morality based upon a few accepted notions and creating a formal system to reflect it. That's when you see people like the Maverick Philosopher examining the details on what their basic positions entail when examined in detail. Below the fold, I'll go into why I think this helps to pinpoint the inherent lack of objectivity in this construction of a moral system.

I'm not really concerned with the particular argument that Dr. Vallicella is making in his post, rather, I want to highlight what happens when he finds his argument is inadequate. In particular, he doesn't like the breadth of the conclusion of the argument, so he proposes a new starting point. That is, in creating this supposedly objective moral position, he changed his starting point to get the conclusion that he felt was the right one.

Now, I have no objections to this activity per se. In fact, this is one of the better advantages of operating strictly within a formal system. If the starting positions lead you to a situation you can't use, changing the starting positions is to be expected. If you are tracking the movements of ships on the surface of the earth, you don't pretend that the surface of the earth matches Euclid's parallel postulate; instead you assume that no lines (aka great circles) are parallel and use a Riemannian geometry. It will have the tools you need to look at ship movements around a globe.

However, the process of choosing these starting positions is strictly based on the conclusions you want to derive. That makes the starting positions arbitrary, and those positions will be carefully chosen so the results conform to the desired outcome. So, far from getting some objective morality that can be applied to all, you get a tailored morality designed to support a specific set of positions. Some of these systems, like natural law, were debated for hundreds of years before they were codified, and even then still generate disagreements around the edges.

When people come up with another method of knowing things that can exhibit certainty, reality, and demonstrability, that method of know may indeed lead to an objective morality. Until that time, there will be no such creature. All the construction within formal systems will not be able alter the shaky foundation upon which they rest.

2,208 comments:

«Oldest   ‹Older   1401 – 1600 of 2208   Newer›   Newest»
aintnuthin said...

Essen: "He conclucled that on its return the moving clock was slower than the stationary clock. Moreover. since only uniform motion is involved there is no way of distinguishing between the two and each clock goes more slowly than the other."

One Brow said. "Except, there is a way."

Yes, there is a way, as Essen says. The way is to abandon the pretense to "relativity" and revert to straight Lorentizan theory, as Essen correctly notes that Al has done.

When Essen says: "Moreover. since only uniform motion is involved there is no way of distinguishing between the two and each clock goes more slowly than the other" he is NOT talking about his personal beliefs, he is talking about what SR supposedly postulates via the imputed reciprocity which is required to claim that there is a least a superficial appearance of satifying the purported "principle of relativity" being supposedly adhered to when it aint.


Essen correctly notes that one clock will run slower, per the Lorentz transforms, with or without a change of inertial states, so once again your supposedly "refutations" simply display an inability to read, understand, and address the problem.

You yourself quote Essen as stating that it is a basic assumption of the theory, not his assumption, and that was as an introduction to the claim which you falsely impute to Essen and then undertake to dispute. You are not disputing Essen, you are disputing relativity theory, just as Essen is.
One Brow quotes Essen as follows "Taking into account the basic assumption of the theory that uniform velocity is purely relative..."

You use the exact same tactic with me. If I recite a claim of SR, you impute the source of the claim to me, and claim I am wrong. Once again, you are merely denying the percepts of SR, not my personal opinion. A typical example, from your last series of posts:

One Brow said: "You claim one of the clocks must be truly moving slower. How do you show it?"

Exactly the question Dingle repeatedly asked. But it is NOT *my* claim, it is a claim of SR (or, more particularly, the Lorentz transforms). As usual, you try to refute SR while claiming to accept it. At least Dingle was consistent. He took SR at face value with respect to its claims about the "principle of relativity," as you do, but he saw the inconsisency in that, as you do NOT see. Even the mathguy acknowledges that Dingle had a valid point, he just rejects Dingle's reasons for rasining it. The mathguy, as Einstein himself does (see Essen), essentially rejects the principle of relativity and reverts to LET to "explain" things.

One Brow said: "Jill does not see 10 seconds pass on Jack's clock (nor on clock 1) while seeing eight pass on hers."

The professor, very clearly and very explicitly, at the very outset of his example, tells you what Jack and Jill both see. Typically, you display a total inability to read and comprehend even the simplest propositions if the proposition stated doesn't suit your ends.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "I'm not going to read the entirety of Essen's analysis if he makes the elementary error of mixing two different inertial frames to describe the end result of the experiences of the travelling twin."

Of course you will not read it. You will simply assume, as you do here that it makes mistakes which is does not make, and refuse to read it, knowing, a priori, that it must be wrong because it doesn't conform to your personal misunderstandings.

Just as well, actually. You have already amply demonstrated that you would be virtually incapable of reading it for you it says, rather than misreading it to suit yourself

aintnuthin said...

Edit: Meant to say:

"...you would be virtually incapable of reading it for IT [omit "you"] says..."

aintnuthin said...

Oops, now I can't even to make intended corrections properly. As is probably obvious by now if it wasn't already, I meant to say:

"...you would be virtually incapable of reading it for what [not "you']it says..."

aintnuthin said...

As Brown has noted: "Half a century of argumentation has not removed [the serious contradictions which have marred SR] and the device of calling them only apparent contradictions (paradoxes) has not succeeded in preventing the special theory of relativity from becoming untenable as a physical theory."

Now, more than half a century after he said that, the debate still rages on and his statement is just as valid as ever.

Relativists never acknowledge the problem (even though, in 1918, Einstien himself noted that the twin paradox resolution was inconstent with the premises of SR). Instead they evade, make meaningless and unpersuasive "distinctions" and, mainly, just loudly declare that "there is no contradiction," to "defend" their position. They do no meet the challenge head on, because they can't.

There is nothing logically inconsistent abouting noting that two people with contradictory assumptions will reach contradictory conclusions. In fact, that is exactly what logic dictates, not forbids.

Nor is there any contradiction whatsoever in claiming that a clock will, with increased speed, "really" slow down. None whatsoever.

The contradiction only comes in when one claims that the contradictory assumptions which generate contradictory conclusions are "equally valid" and that both are ABSOLUTELY CORRECT!"

Even Dingle was 100% correct about this, even if he was wrong about a lot of other things.

I said: "The asserted "reciprocity" of the Lorentz transformations is merely formal, not actual.

You replied: It is empirical, not merely formal.


It is not empirical, and has never been experimentally verfied. But why should someone even attempt to verify something which, according to theory, will not occur?

The theory says that the moving clock (and ONLY the moving clock) will run slower than the stationary clock. This is totally independent of any change in inertial states. Ultimately, any claim of "actual" reciprocity is utterly abandoned by the theory.

Yet is adherents attempt to maintain that the formal reciprocity is actual and that is has not been effectively abandoned by the acceptance of the validity of the Lorentz transforms.

This is the "dogma," first propounded in this context by Liebniz and kept alive by Mach (and others) at the time SR appeared, which you will attempt to defend and justify by any means, no matter how illogical, improbable, or incoherent those means my be.

And you will, of course, claim that anyone who spots your logical contradictions is an ignoramus who "just doesn't understand."

aintnuthin said...

I've said it, and explained why, a thousand times "There is nothing logically inconsistent abouting noting that two people with contradictory assumptions will reach contradictory conclusions. In fact, that is exactly what logic dictates, not forbids."

How does each observer come to "see" the others clock running slow? Take two observers moving relative to each other at .6c. What do they "see?"

1. Both observer agree that, according to SR, as between their two clocks, the clock which is moving will run slow. OK, now what.

2. According to SR, each will then insist that HE is motionless and that the other has the "moving" clock, and proceed to deduce (not "see") which clock by that means. Under SR, given those assumptions, the answer is automatic: The OTHER guy's clock is the one which is "actually" running slower.

Of course the presumed insistence that each will maintained he is motionless is unfounded, unnecessary, and contrary to all human experience. If I am riding a motorcycle I would NEVER insist that I am motionless while the ground move past me. Nor would any other sane person.

aintnuthin said...

But, either way, whatever two people assume, whether reasonable or not, they cannot BOTH BE CORRECT if they assume contradictory things.

To claim otherwise is assert the contradiction which Essen, Dingle, and allother sensible people refuse to accept as logical or valid.

aintnuthin said...

More from Essen about the dogmatism prevalent in the "teaching" of SR:

"No one has attempted to refute my arguments, but I was warned that if I persisted I was likely to spoil my career prospects....Students are told that the theory must be accepted although they cannot expect to understand it. They are encouraged right at the beginning of their careers to forsake science in favor of dogma...The theory is so rididly held that young scientists who have any regard for their careers dare not openly express their doubts."

The general public are [sic] misled into believing that science is a mysterious subject that can be understood by only a few exceptionally gifted mathematicians. Since the time of Einstien...there has been a great increase in anti-rational thought and mysticism.

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/8/24/2063601/physics/WW1978-Oct-p44-45.pdf

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "Feel free to present his actual criticisms here, if you think they hold up to scrutiny."

Heh, as if they would be subjected to scrutiny "here?" By you? I don't think so. Your idea of "scrutiny" tends to take this form:

1. Scan a criticism, but don't bother actually reading it.

2. In what you do scan, ignore all context. Ignore even trying to determine, from the context, what meaning the author intends to convey by his choice of words. Do not even try to actually understand what he is saying, but, instead:

3. Find one sentence or one phrase or even one word and then argue that by using that word (sentence or phrase) the author has just said all sorts of things that you want him to say, even when what he actually said and means, in context, is the exact opposite of what you impute to him by your divine powers of *special* linguistic analysis.

Frankly, Eric, your whole approach to aruging and "proving" your conclusions is sophistic, childish, and very boring. Not to mention asinine.

One Brow said...

aintnuthin said...
Yes, there is a way, as Essen says. The way is to abandon the pretense to "relativity" and revert to straight Lorentizan theory, as Essen correctly notes that Al has done.

The only difference between mainstream SR and Lorentzian theory is that the choice of the inertial reference frame in Lorentzian theory is predetermined in a non-empirical manner. Otherwise it operates the in the same fashion.

When Essen says: "Moreover. since only uniform motion is involved there is no way of distinguishing between the two and each clock goes more slowly than the other" he is NOT talking about his personal beliefs,

He's incorrect, regardless of whether you classify this as a personal belief or not. The traveling twin is not in uniform motion. He changes his motion at the turn-around point. You can't add up small pieces of uniform motion and call the overall result uniform. Down that path lies Dingle, although Essen did not travel that far.

he is talking about what SR supposedly postulates

However, making such a fundamental error in an elementary thought experiment means he's not actually talking about what SR actually postulates, just what it supposedly postulates.

Essen correctly notes that one clock will run slower, per the Lorentz transforms, with or without a change of inertial states, so once again your supposedly "refutations" simply display an inability to read, understand, and address the problem.

That you brushed aside my motation of a fundamental error in Essen's analysis reveals where the insufficient reading lies. Deal with the error I pointed out and show that Essen is not making that error, if you can. If you can't, or won't, why should I bother to take an analysis based on that error seriously?

You are not disputing Essen, you are disputing relativity theory, just as Essen is.
One Brow quotes Essen as follows "Taking into account the basic assumption of the theory that uniform velocity is purely relative..."


Sorry if my comment that he was not making the error of Dingle and Brown confused you. I meant that this comment was accurate, in the sense that velocity itself is relative, therefore any determination of a uniform velocity was relative. The uniformity of that velicity is absolute, but that did not seem to be relevant to the point Essen was making.

One Brow said: "You claim one of the clocks must be truly moving slower. How do you show it?"

Exactly the question Dingle repeatedly asked. But it is NOT *my* claim, it is a claim of SR (or, more particularly, the Lorentz transforms).


Again, ",,, it follows that each clock goes more slowly than the other when viewed from the position of the other. This prediction is strange but not logically impossible." Even Essen agrees that it is not a contradiction to say each clock observes the other to be moving slower.

One Brow said...

The mathguy, as Einstein himself does (see Essen), essentially rejects the principle of relativity and reverts to LET to "explain" things.

That would be in the mythical quote from the mathguy you could never produce? Remember that mainstream-SR has absolute inertia as well, so presenting quotes supporting absolute inertia is not support of LET over SR.

The professor, very clearly and very explicitly, at the very outset of his example, tells you what Jack and Jill both see.

Yes, and he very explicitly describes 6.4 seconds passing on clock1 and Jack's clock while 8 pass on Jill's, as I noted.

Of course you will not read it. You will simply assume, as you do here that it makes mistakes which is does not make, and refuse to read it, knowing, a priori, that it must be wrong because it doesn't conform to your personal misunderstandings.

So, is your claim that Esen does not use two different inertial frames to describe the experiences of the traveling twin in his analysis of the scenario? YOu will commit to that, and acknowledge error if I can demonstrate that he does?

Now, more than half a century after he said that, the debate still rages on and his statement is just as valid as ever.

I*n the scientific community, there is no menaingful debate. You can't get 100% of scientists to agree on anything, but mainstream-SR is the established consensus.

They do no meet the challenge head on, because they can't.

The challenges based on misunderstandings, with the misunderstandings addressed, and then the corrections ignored by the initial proponents thereof.

Nor is there any contradiction whatsoever in claiming that a clock will, with increased speed, "really" slow down. None whatsoever.

Of course not.

The contradiction only comes in when one claims that the contradictory assumptions which generate contradictory conclusions are "equally valid" and that both are ABSOLUTELY CORRECT!"

Yet, even Essen acknowledges there is no contradiction there.

It is not empirical, and has never been experimentally verfied.

Describe what you think an empirical verification would resemble.

But why should someone even attempt to verify something which, according to theory, will not occur?

Because the mischaracterizations of theory you champion do not hold sway.

One Brow said...

The theory says that the moving clock (and ONLY the moving clock) will run slower than the stationary clock.

Absolutely.

This is totally independent of any change in inertial states. Ultimately, any claim of "actual" reciprocity is utterly abandoned by the theory.

In what fashion? The theory is that the determinaiton of movement is arbitrary with respect to the inertial states themselves. How does reciprocity get abandoned by that?

This is the "dogma," first propounded in this context by Liebniz and kept alive by Mach (and others)

Mach was a relationist. I'm not.

And you will, of course, claim that anyone who spots your logical contradictions is an ignoramus who "just doesn't understand."

If you find any logical contradictions, I'll acknowledge them. However, when you find apparent contradicitons that are based on misunderstandings, I'll point that out.

2. According to SR, each will then insist that HE is motionless

Actually, each may select any arbitrary inertial frame as the rest frame, and then determine whose clock is moving slower. Most people select their own inertial frame for reasons of convenience, not because SR insist upon anything.

If I am riding a motorcycle I would NEVER insist that I am motionless while the ground move past me. Nor would any other sane person.

Yet, you can't apply your reasoning to two spaceship passing each other. What's changed about SR in that situation?

But, either way, whatever two people assume, whether reasonable or not, they cannot BOTH BE CORRECT if they assume contradictory things.

However, both assumptions may be valid if it turns out there is no truely correct assumption.

"No one has attempted to refute my arguments,

Essen's argument was based on such an elementary error that I find this difficult to believe. More likely, Essen simply did not accept the corrections he was offered.

but I was warned that if I persisted I was likely to spoil my career prospects....

The career from which he retired a year later? What prospects would have been ruined?

Frankly, Eric, your whole approach to aruging and "proving" your conclusions is sophistic, childish, and very boring. Not to mention asinine.

It's so much easier for you to characterize and attack me than to actually address my criticisms. You should expect better of yourself.

Repeated for emphasis: Is your claim that Esen does not use two different inertial frames to describe the experiences of the traveling twin in his analysis of the scenario? You will commit to that, and acknowledge error if I can demonstrate that he does?

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "The only difference between mainstream SR and Lorentzian theory is that the choice of the inertial reference frame in Lorentzian theory is predetermined in a non-empirical manner."

Non-empirical?

"The gist of the principle of relativity is the following: It is in no way possible to detect the motion of a body relative to empty space; in fact, there is absolutely no physical sense in speaking about such motion. If, therefore, two observers move with uniform but different velocities, then each of the two with the same right may assert that with respect to empty space he is at rest, and
there are no physical methods of measurement enabling us to decide in favour of one or the other."

Among other problems with Planck's claim:

"Planck’s assertion2 that there is no physical method of measurement of the velocity of motion through space is made void by the various markers available in cosmology, especially the dipole anisotropy of the CMBR."

http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/dec252005/2009.pdf

One Brow said: "He's incorrect, regardless of whether you classify this as a personal belief or not. The traveling twin is not in uniform motion."

He points out, repeatedly, that acceleration is involved. Why don't you read it? One of his points is that Einstein treats this as being irrelevant (which, according to experiment, it is). Why don't you try reading Essen instead of trying to throw out blind objections? Again, your objections are to SR, and Einstein's formulation of it, not Essen.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"That you brushed aside my motation of a fundamental error in Essen's analysis reveals where the insufficient reading lies. Deal with the error I pointed out and show that Essen is not making that error..."

What "error?" Be specific. "Dingle's error" says nothing, and I've already commented at some length on Dingle and his views. EVERYBODY I've ever read, pro-relativists, anti-relativists and Einstein himself agrees that two clocks cannot each be running slower than the other. Dingle was certainly not in error with that claim.

One Brow said...

aintnuthin said...
One Brow said: "...predetermined in a non-empirical manner."

Non-empirical?


Probably imprecise. Better would be "predetermined in a manner that does not use measurements".

What "error?" Be specific.

Essen tries to analyze the traveling twin scenario from an viewpoint that uses acceleration (that is, the viewpoint of the traveling twin). That is an error.

Anonymous said...

One Brow said: "I*n the scientific community, there is no menaingful debate."

Yeah, right, eh?

"According to my actual poll, sampling over 100 physicists’ beliefs, less than 5 percent still believe in special relativity. Why discuss a dead issue? Why beat a dead horse?"


http://www.cartesio-episteme.net/quest.htm

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "Essen tries to analyze the traveling twin scenario from an viewpoint that uses acceleration (that is, the viewpoint of the traveling twin). That is an error."

1. How do you know? Where does that part of his analysis appear, and how would you know if you haven't read it?

2. In what way (why) is your claim an error? I still don't understand what you are getting at.

3. Did Einstien make the identical putative "error" when HE talked about an organism travelling and returning home younger?

aintnuthin said...

One Brow asked: "So, is your claim that Esen does not use two different inertial frames to describe the experiences of the traveling twin in his analysis of the scenario?"

I've already responded to this and you yourself have quoted Essen on the topic: You quote him as saying, for example:

"One of the predictions of the theory was that a moving clock goes more slowly than an identical stationary clock."

He is not discussing the twin scenario, per se. Only that the theory predicts that a "moving" clock goes slower--with or without concommitant acceleration of any kind. Furthermore, he is merely citing what Einstien actually says, so if you have a problem with the accuracy of those statements, take it up with Al or his heirs, eh?

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "Yes, and he very explicitly describes 6.4 seconds passing on clock1 and Jack's clock while 8 pass on Jill's, as I noted."

1. The whole point(initially)was about what they "see" and that they agree on what they see. No one cliamed that time was not different for the two--that's understood and irrelevant.

2. You are wrong, anyway. You claim that if the situation were the same, but the moving parties were reversed, Jill would see 8 seconds on her clock. Wrong, she would see 10, not 8.

3. And why would that be? Because then Jack would be moving, and it is always the moving clock which runs slow. The actual outcome is not "reciprocal" in the sense that you will get the same answer regardless of which one is moving. You wouldn't.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "Yet, even Essen acknowledges there is no contradiction there."

Demonstrating, once again, my observation that you have no idea what Essen is saying and try to impute your own inaccurate reasoning and understanding to him on the basis of a single sentence.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "Describe what you think an empirical verification would resemble."

I've aleady said that there is no reason to expect verification of a claim that theory denies would be the case. Why don't you explain just exactly how, as you claim, the "actual" (as opposed to formal) assertion of reciprocity has been empirically verfied.

One Brow said...

"According to my actual poll, ...

The sample of relativity denialists. Hardly surprising.

One Brow said: "Essen tries to analyze the traveling twin scenario from an viewpoint that uses acceleration (that is, the viewpoint of the traveling twin). That is an error."

1. How do you know?


How do you not know that is an error.

Where does that part of his analysis appear,

On the page numbered 127 in the link you provided, bottom of the first column and top of the second column, when he says only uniform motion is used.

and how would you know if you haven't read it?

How would I quote from it if I haven't read it? Those are very good questions based on a specific presumption.

2. In what way (why) is your claim an error? I still don't understand what you are getting at.

That the traveling twin was engaged in uniform motion.

3. Did Einstien make the identical putative "error" when HE talked about an organism travelling and returning home younger?

Do you have the original German article? Either way, in modern SR theory the motion of the twin is not uniform. So, if Einstein did claim said motion was uniform, than Essen claim that "Einstein fooled generations of scientists" is wrong, because scientists don't think the motion of the traveling twin is uniform.

I've already responded to this and you yourself have quoted Essen on the topic: You quote him as saying, for example:

Interestingly chosen example. A more-to-the-point one would have been "He conclucled that on its return the moving clock was slower than the stationary clock. Moreover. since only uniform motion is involved there is no way of distinguishing between the two and each clock goes more slowly than the other."

This is an explicit discussion of the twin scenario.

Furthermore, he is merely citing what Einstien actually says, so if you have a problem with the accuracy of those statements, take it up with Al or his heirs, eh?

Regardless of whether that was what Einstein said, it is not what mainstream SR says. Either way, the criticism of mainstream-SR is wrong.

One Brow said...

2. You are wrong, anyway. You claim that if the situation were the same, but the moving parties were reversed, Jill would see 8 seconds on her clock. Wrong, she would see 10, not 8.

Sorry, but no. Assuming Jill is really at rest and clock1 and Jack are really moving at .6c relative to Jill, separated by by a distance Jack meaures as 6 light-seconds. Their *actual* separation distance is 4.8 light seconds. It takes 8 seconds for them to pass by Jill.

3. And why would that be? Because then Jack would be moving, and it is always the moving clock which runs slow.

Sure. That's why Jack's clock ony ticks off 6.4 seconds. It's running slow.

The actual outcome is not "reciprocal" in the sense that you will get the same answer regardless of which one is moving. You wouldn't.

You get the same answer for the number of ticks on Jill's clock between two (scalar) events.

Demonstrating, once again, my observation that you have no idea what Essen is saying and try to impute your own inaccurate reasoning and understanding to him on the basis of a single sentence.

Essen is trying to say that while there is no contradiction in unaccelerated travel, even though the idea is counter-intuitive, the contradiction arises in two-way travel. He errs as I described above.

I've aleady said that there is no reason to expect verification of a claim that theory denies would be the case. Why don't you explain just exactly how, as you claim, the "actual" (as opposed to formal) assertion of reciprocity has been empirically verfied.

I don't know that it has, but I can describe an experiment where it could be.

Set an apparatus moving inertially with respect to earth. Synchronize two clocks. Have one clock come to rest with respect to earth, and then catch up to the other clock. The clock that was brought to rest will show less time to have passed.

aintnuthin said...

2. In what way (why) is your claim an error? I still don't understand what you are getting at.

One Brow said: "That the traveling twin was engaged in uniform motion."

In what way is that even relevant? We been through this at length before.

1. Primarily the was in inertial motion, and the acceleration adds nothing to the time differential.

2. The result would be the same, for the time and distances involved (with perhaps an insigniifcant difference whether the travelling twin started at reat or in uniform motion.

So how is it a 'mistake," other than by virtue of your irrelevant claim, to calculate the time dilation results accordingly?

Anytime two objects are moving with respect to each other, their situations are NEVER symmetrical, because only one clock is "actually" slowed down, and that will always be the moving clock.

It is senseless and shows a profound lack of understanding to ask questions like: "Why should I expect symmetrical results from an asymmertical situation?"

You SHOULDN'T. But, then again, there are no symmetrical situations predicted by SR. Only one clock is faster, and only one clock is slower in EVERY situation.

The better question is: Why would anyone claim that the Lorentz equations entail actual symmetry when the opposite is true?

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "On the page numbered 127 in the link you provided, bottom of the first column and top of the second column, when he says only uniform motion is used."

I see no such numbers. The link I provided starts with page 1 and ends with page 27.

However at the bottom of the first column on page 13, Essen notes that Einstien claims: "The result [a moving clock runs slower] is said to hold good for any polygonal line...[amd] it is assumed to hold good for a closed curve..."

As a result the theory, as espoused by Al asserts that "...if a clock makes a round trip from A it will be slower on it's return than a clock which has remained at A. Although the clock has accelerated during this journey, no allowance has been made for any for any effect of this acceleration-which indeed is not mentioned."

Essen is simply repeating Al's claims. It's nice that what you authoritatively call "mainstream SR" (which is, I suspect, no more than contents of a course you took long ago as you remember those contents) makes claims which Einstien rejected, but Essen is not responding to the your high school or college teacher, but rather the source itself.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "Set an apparatus moving inertially with respect to earth. Synchronize two clocks. Have one clock come to rest with respect to earth, and then catch up to the other clock. The clock that was brought to rest will show less time to have passed."

This is incomprehensible..."have one clock come to rest"--from what state of motion? Where is the other clock during the times before and after "one clock comes to rest?"

Where do you even begin to suggest actual reciprocity? If the two clocks have different readings, then the transformations are not, by hypothesis, reciprocal in your example (whatever else it is supposed to convey) to begin with.

aintnuthin said...

If your point is that SR's pretense that the moving clock always runs slower generates a whole new set of ambiguities, inconsistencies, and paradoxes, you probably have a valid point as I said before. As this guy points out (under the section entitled "counter-examples":

"Consider two clocks in a laboratory thatare moving very fast inertially. Then one of the clocks, B, is transferred to another laboratory that decelerates and stops, say relative to the reference markers provided by the distant stars or the CMBR. A proceeds along its inertial motion. Finally B accelerates again such that it comes to rest relative to A. In the special relativistic analysis of this problem, it is the accelerated clock B that ages less...Applying any of the standard resolutions, including Einstein’s gravitational
time dilation gives the result that B ages less relative to A, whereas in this particular problem it is A who ages less."

Elsewhere he notes that:

"I may also note here that a logically consistent possibility is to acknowledge that the rate of a clock is modified according
to the standard Lorentz factor with the velocity always
relative to the average rest frame of the universe or the frame in which the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) is isotropic, and then there is never a paradox of the clocks. Indeed, the entire voluminous and
elaborate writings on the twin clock problem can all be
replaced by the single-sentence resolution that the clocks age with Lorentz factors corresponding to their velocity relative to the preferred frame of the matter-filled universe. The answer is always unique, unambiguous and it
matches with all known experimental results. Further, it
does not discriminate between inertial and noninertial motion
and this simplifies and unifies all calculations on clock
comparisons, including those required in sophisticated
GPS timing. The universe as a preferred frame provides
the unambiguous solution to the twin clock problem, and this point is discussed in detail elsewhere9."

http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/dec252005/2009.pdf

Incidentallly, this guy also notes that: "It is well known from experiments that the rate of a clock, while being affected by motion, does not change due to
acceleration. In particular, the rate of a clock in uniform
circular motion is the same as the rate of a clock that is in rectilinear motion at the same speed."

So, again, where is any "mistake" in treating as identical for time dilation purposes two situations which are, in fact, identical for time dilation purposes?

aintnuthin said...

I still don't see the language you cite and the context the comment was made in. I do, however, see this statement by Essen in the second article of his that I cited:

"[Many writers] conceal the paradox, as Einstein did, by giving only half the result and by pointing out that the two clocks are not symmetrical, overlooking the fact that they have made them symmetrical, AS FAR AS THE EXPERIMENT IS CONCERNED, by assuming that acceleration has no effect. Without this assumption, they would not be able to obtain any result at all. Vague suggestions are then made that the result is due to the accelerations."

Essen clearly understands the difference between inertial and non-inertial motion, and it is absurd of you (not to even mention arrogantly condescending) to suggest that a physicist of his stature wouldn't understand the difference. He is showing where the "logic" purporting to justify SR's claims is fallacious, that's all.

One Brow said...

aintnuthin said...
In what way is that even relevant? We been through this at length before.

SR analysis only applies to inertial frames. If you apply SR mechanics to a non-inertial frame, you get inacurate results.

1. Primarily the was in inertial motion, and the acceleration adds nothing to the time differential.

Correct.

2. The result would be the same, for the time and distances involved (with perhaps an insigniifcant difference whether the travelling twin started at reat or in uniform motion.

??? I did not understand what you were saying here.

So how is it a 'mistake," other than by virtue of your irrelevant claim, to calculate the time dilation results accordingly?

Time dilation getxs calculated in an inertial frame. You can use the stationary twin, the outgoing frame of the traveling twin, or the ingoing frame of the traveling twin. You don't mix together two different frames.

Anytime two objects are moving with respect to each other, their situations are NEVER symmetrical, because only one clock is "actually" slowed down, and that will always be the moving clock. ... But, then again, there are no symmetrical situations predicted by SR. Only one clock is faster, and only one clock is slower in EVERY situation.

So, if you have two spaceships moving relatively to one another, how can you tell which clock is moving slower?

I see no such numbers.

Sorry, it was the link I found: http://www.wbabin.net/historical/essen1.pdf

... but Essen is not responding to the your high school or college teacher, but rather the source itself.

Assuming Essen is correctly interpreting Einstein, he's just mistaken about Einstein's influence on modern physics. Works for me either way.

One Brow said: "Set an apparatus moving inertially with respect to earth. Synchronize two clocks. Have one clock come to rest with respect to earth, and then catch up to the other clock. The clock that was brought to rest will show less time to have passed."

This is incomprehensible...


I'll expand upon it. Set an apparatus, which contains two clocks. moving inertially with respect to earth. Synchronize those two clocks. Have one clock come to rest with respect to earth, and then catch up to the apparatus/other clock. The clock that was brought to rest will show less time to have passed.

Where do you even begin to suggest actual reciprocity? If the two clocks have different readings, then the transformations are not, by hypothesis, reciprocal in your example (whatever else it is supposed to convey) to begin with.

Reciprocity does not imply two clocks on different paths will always read the same time when they are rejoined. It says the Lorentz transformations work using any inertial frame as the rest frame.

One Brow said...

aintnuthin said...
As this guy points out (under the section entitled "counter-examples":


"This guy" is wrong, period.

"Consider two clocks in a laboratory thatare moving very fast inertially. Then one of the clocks, B, is transferred to another laboratory that decelerates and stops, say relative to the reference markers provided by the distant stars or the CMBR. A proceeds along its inertial motion. Finally B accelerates again such that it comes to rest relative to A. In the special relativistic analysis of this problem, it is the accelerated clock B that ages less...Applying any of the standard resolutions, including Einstein’s gravitational time dilation gives the result that B ages less relative to A, whereas in this particular problem it is A who ages less."

Is B supposed to catch up to A, or just return to the same inertial state? If the former, B will slow down even more than A has while catching up to A. If the latter, A and B have different observations on who slowed down. There is no way to measure who is right, becasue A and B are no longer in neglible spatial proximity. A observes B to be behind A. B observes A to be behind B. As Essen noted, no logical inconsistency.

"I may also note here that a logically consistent possibility is to acknowledge that the rate of a clock is modified according to the standard Lorentz factor with the velocity always relative to the average rest frame of the universe or the frame in which the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) is isotropic, and then there is never a paradox of the clocks.

This is also true if you modify with the velocit always relative to .8c in a specific direction from the CMBR. In fact, you can use any velocity in any direction relative to the CMBR. The choice of the inertail rest frame is arbitrary, and once you choose it, thee are no paradoxes. Paradoxes only seem to appear when you compare different inertial rest frames.

So, again, where is any "mistake" in treating as identical for time dilation purposes two situations which are, in fact, identical for time dilation purposes?

The traveling twin's outgoing inertial reference frame and the traveling twin's return inertial reference frame are not identical for time dilation purposes, unless you mean they give the same answer at the end of the scenario for time differential between the twins (but then, the answer is the same as the stationary twin anyhow). Using the outgoing reference frame, the traveling twin's clock moves faster than the stationary twin's clock on the outbound journey, and slower on the inbound journey. Using the return reference frame, the traveling twin's clock moves slower than the stationary twin's clock on the outbound journey, and faster on the inbound journey. Different, therefore not identical.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"Sorry, but no. Assuming Jill is really at rest and clock1 and Jack are really moving at .6c relative to Jill, separated by by a distance Jack meaures as 6 light-seconds..."

Well, as I said before, I'm really not interested in arguing about the particular details of any given "problem" except insofar as it may shed light on general issues.

The exact changes in the prof's example would depend on which, and how many, of the original details you "reverse" ...which I didn't clearly specify, and don't care to. I will say this: If Jack's clocks are 10 light-seconds apart in his frame as the original problem presupposes, then his clock will show 10 seconds, not six seconds, as you claim. But in that event, her clock would show MORE than 10 seconds, i.e. 12.5 seconds.

Either way, the main point is the same. Contrary to your repeated claims you do NOT get the same answer regardless of who is treated as moving.

aintnuthin said...

And, incidentally, if both "know their SR," then both would agree that the evidence shows that Jack is moving in that event, because his clock is slower.

aintnuthin said...

I guess you are right about the 6 seconds...I've kinda forgotten the details already, but I guess they were 6 light seconds apart in the orginal problem, not 10. But he would not record 6 seconds on his clock, because he is not travelling at the speed of light (as would be required to travel 6 light seconds in 6 seconds) Again, the details do not alter the point, however. The moving clock will (not just "appear to," but will) show less time elapsed per SR, and

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"SR analysis only applies to inertial frames. If you apply SR mechanics to a non-inertial frame, you get inacurate results."

Yes, and as I've said, the resolution is based on calculating the time differential for the vast majority of the time in which the travelling twin is in an inertial frame. Can't you see that?

aintnuthin said...

One Brow asked: "So, if you have two spaceships moving relatively to one another, how can you tell which clock is moving slower?"

We have already discussed that issue at length too, but it is totally irrelevant to the predictions of SR, as I said years ago.

The question of "how you can tell" is strictly a question of epistemology. Such questions in no way alter or effect the theoretical substance of a theory.

Suppose I "predict" that putting a match to gallons of gasoline poured on a building floor will result in the destruction of the building. Now suppose we drive by the ruins of a building recently destroyed by fire.

You ask me: How do you know if pouring gallons of gasoline on the floor of this building and then torching it caused this destruction?

My answer: Offhand, I don't, although further investigation might provide evidence of that. But what I know about this particular building in no way alters my theory as stated above.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"Reciprocity does not imply two clocks on different paths will always read the same time when they are rejoined. It says the Lorentz transformations work using any inertial frame as the rest frame."

Yes, there is a formal reciprocity, but not an actual one. As a matter of formality, given his (mistaken) assumption that he is "at rest" while the earth moves, he will conclude that time is running slower on earth. But he will be wrong, because, per SR, this is not "actually" the case. The twin resolution tells us HIS clock, not the earth's, clock, is running slower, regardless of what he thinks.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"Sorry, it was the link I found: http://www.wbabin.net/historical/essen1.pdf

OK, now I see the context. Einstien claimed that a clock moving in a polygonal pattern (in straight lines) and thereby returning to it's point of origin would record less time than one that never moved at all. Although the changes of direction constitute "acceleration" per Newton, the motion itself is in "straight" lines. By "uniform motion" a constant speed was apparently intended by Al in this context, it seems.

But again, Essen is merely recounting Al's claims, not trying to form a coherent theory of his own.

His criticism of the assumptions and logic utilized to draw dubious conclusions therefrom is the issue here. That same "logic" is used by "mainstream SR" and a verbal inaccuracy does not change that.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "So, if Einstein did claim said motion was uniform, than Essen claim that "Einstein fooled generations of scientists" is wrong, because scientists don't think the motion of the traveling twin is uniform."

Nor do they think (for the majority, anyway) that the question is relevant to the result obtained. In this same article Essen clearly notes that:

"The round trip could not have been made without accelerations being applied, but Einstein ignored their possible effect on the rate of the clock, thus implicitly assuming that they had no effect."

The argument about change of frames is NOT invoked to suggest that the travelling twin does not age less or to argue that the acceleration is what causes the difference.

It is invoked to say the situations are not "symmetrical," and thereby suggest that the "actual reciprocity" they want to uphold has not been violated. This suggestion is non-sensical, because the acceleration is irrelevant. As I said NO situation is presumed to be "actually reciprocal (symmetrical)" by virtue of the Lorentz Transformations. One clock must always necessarily be moving (faster) than the other when they are in motion with respect to each other. That is the inherent asymmetry (differing speeds) which causes the "assymetical result" (the clocks record time differently, and they do no merely do so randomly--the moving clock is slower).

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "Essen is trying to say that while there is no contradiction in unaccelerated travel, even though the idea is counter-intuitive, the contradiction arises in two-way travel. He errs as I described above."

That's not what he's saying at all. He's saying that there is nothing illogical about saying that clock A runs slow from the view point of B while clock B runs slow from the viewpoint of A.

Why? Because that is a matter of viewpoint, which coulc, for example, be explained by a loss of signals in transmission.

But since this is not the explanation offered by Al, he simply says the conclusion is inconsistent with the postulate of symmetry, which it is.

He notes the subtle equivocal shift Al makes. Al is fine, Essen says, when he talks about clock B being slow "as seen by A." But Al then shifts to saying that clock B IS slow compared to A, which is an entirely different statement. Once this claim is made, all pretense to symmetry goes out the window.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: ""This guy" is wrong, period."

Although you are quick to assert your superior knowledge, I notice that you fail to state how or why he "wrong, period."

This guy happens to be a professor of physics who has some pretty deep interests and substantial background, and who has published dozens of scientific papers:

http://www.tifr.res.in/~filab/personal%20info.htm

He is featured on youtube videos about time, gravity, etc. See, for example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwus3FZKG3w

What are your credentials in this field, Eric.

As always, you will immediately declare any person, no matter how much more qualified than you are they may be (including Einstein) to be wrong if he doesn't agree with what you remember your teacher telling you.

Your over-estimation of your own expertise and knowledge is truly astounding.

aintnuthin said...

Elsewhere "this guy"elaborates on the problems of asserting (actual) symmetry in the Lorentz Transformations. After discussing length contraction (where "a comparison after coming to relative rest will not reveal any residual effect") he turns to the question of time dilation:

"...this answer cannot be maintained when time dilation is considered because time is an accumulated quantity, like phase, and if the rate of a clock is affected during motion, then one expects a permanent imprint of that modification in the integrated recorded time. So, it makes empirical sense to ask whether the two clocks in relative motion will show equal times or different times at the end of the experiment if they are brought to the same spatial point and compared. If all effects depend only on relative speeds, then of course the time dilations are symmetrical, and the two clocks should show identical readings.

But this does not fit in consistently with the calculations from either of the frames, because each observer will conclude that he was at rest and other clock was moving throughout the experiment, and hence should show less time (younger). The twin-clock problem in relativity theory has been a topic of discussion since the early days of Einstein’s special theory of relativity. The point of contention was that a theory that predicted physical effects which depended only on relative velocity would have time dilations of clocks that are symmetrical in the relative velocity, and hence each inertial observer equipped with a clock would conclude that it was always the “other” clock that went slower. But each clock cannot be showing lesser reading than the other. Therefore, it is clear from the outset that some physical element that is beyond the physical description of motion in SR is involved in the analysis of the problem of time dilation of moving clocks."

Precisely the point Essen and many others (including myself before reading these guys) makes. Within a few years of postulating SR, Al himself put himself in the set of the "many others" which include Essen:

"The reality of time dilation is linked to some issue that breaks the symmetry of relative motion, and it goes beyond the special relativistic description of relative inertial motion. While most text books and writings on SR denies this conclusion, by asserting that the issue can be resolved fully within SR, Einstein’s own conclusion was exactly the opposite, and he categorically stated that a theory beyond SR was required to satisfactorily handle the problem of comparison of clocks."

http://www.physicsfoundations.org/PIRT/PIRT_X/papers/UNNIKRISHNAN%20PAPER%202%202006.pdf

If you are truly interested in such questions, you might want to read the whole article. If you are merely interested is repeatedly asserting your pet views, without further input, then you won't want to read it.

One Brow said...

aintnuthin said...
Well, as I said before, I'm really not interested in arguing about the particular details of any given "problem" except insofar as it may shed light on general issues.

Unfortunately, if you're not willing to get into the details, you have little chance of making a persuasive argument. There are many attractive big-picture descripitons of the universe, the details are where most of them falter.

The moving clock will (not just "appear to," but will) show less time elapsed per SR, and

Of course. When you treat Jack's clock/clock1 as moving, Jill sees them as running slower than her clock. When you treat Jill's clock as moving, Jack sees Jill's clock running slower than his. The moving clock runs slower. Regardless of which one frame is the moving one, eight seconds pass on Jill's clock between the encounter with clock1 and the encounter with Jack.

Yes, and as I've said, the resolution is based on calculating the time differential for the vast majority of the time in which the travelling twin is in an inertial frame. Can't you see that?

You are saying that the traveling twin is moving inertially on the outbound journey, and moving inertially on the inbound journey. I agree. However, this is not "an inertial frame", it is two different inertial frames. You can't add two distinct inertial frames to make a single inertial frame.

One Brow asked: "So, if you have two spaceships moving relatively to one another, how can you tell which clock is moving slower?"

We have already discussed that issue at length too, but it is totally irrelevant to the predictions of SR, as I said years ago.


Unfortunately, your aversion to details meant that you never provided a useful answer, one that could be putatively checked.

The question of "how you can tell" is strictly a question of epistemology. Such questions in no way alter or effect the theoretical substance of a theory.

They can discredit or confirm a theory.

Yes, there is a formal reciprocity, but not an actual one.

It's not merely formal, it's measurable/experimental.

The twin resolution tells us HIS clock, not the earth's, clock, is running slower, regardless of what he thinks.

The twin resolution relies on one twin being in different inertial frames.

By "uniform motion" a constant speed was apparently intended by Al in this context, it seems. ... His criticism of the assumptions and logic utilized to draw dubious conclusions therefrom is the issue here. That same "logic" is used by "mainstream SR" and a verbal inaccuracy does not change that.

If Einstein meant only constant speed (which I agree seems more in character with his work) as opposed to uniform motion, then certainly Essen would be right that modern physicists would agree with that interpretation on the basics. However, he would then be wrong in saying that the experience of the moving clock would be uniform, and therefore a valid viewpoint from which to use the Lorentz equations.

One Brow said...

The argument about change of frames is NOT invoked to suggest that the travelling twin does not age less or to argue that the acceleration is what causes the difference.

Correct. The change of frames merely means that the traveling twin can not use both the outbound and inbound journey as rest frames in the same calculation.

Why? Because that is a matter of viewpoint, which coulc, for example, be explained by a loss of signals in transmission.

Loss of signals? Did Essen use that, or are you throwing that in? It sure didn't read to be an issue of mechaical failure in his paper.

But since this is not the explanation offered by Al, he simply says the conclusion is inconsistent with the postulate of symmetry, which it is.

Feel free to show the inconsistency, if you can't.

Al is fine, Essen says, when he talks about clock B being slow "as seen by A." But Al then shifts to saying that clock B IS slow compared to A, which is an entirely different statement. Once this claim is made, all pretense to symmetry goes out the window.

Are you referring to after the clocks have been reunited, B have undergone non-uniform motion? The symmetry was lost when B's motion was no longer inertial.

I notice that you fail to state how or why he "wrong, period."

You should read more carefully:
"There is no way to measure who is right, becasue A and B are no longer in neglible spatial proximity. A observes B to be behind A. B observes A to be behind B."

This guy happens to be a professor of physics

Good for him. He's stillwrong in saying you can objectively compare two objects separated by significant spacetime and tell which of them is running slower than the other.

What are your credentials in this field, Eric.

Practically nil. My lack of credentials will not make his inaccurate analysis to be accurate.

Your over-estimation of your own expertise and knowledge is truly astounding.

*chuckle*. I'm quite aware of my lack of abilities. I barely qualify as a metaphorical patzer. Stil, even a patzer knows white shouldn't open with f3 and g4.

But this does not fit in consistently with the calculations from either of the frames, because each observer will conclude that he was at rest and other clock was moving throughout the experiment, and hence should show less time (younger).

Utter nonsense. If you have two clocks synchronized while next to each other, separated by motion, and then again placed next to each other, at least one of the clocks will have experienced acceleration in the meantime, and would therefore know he was moving. So, the only scenario where you can make the comparison that he referred to involves knowledge of motion.

If the clocks are not next to each other at the beginning, or at the end, of the experiement, you have no way to objectively compare them. Thus, no contradiction arises by saying each observes the other to pass time more slowly.

One Brow said...

If you are truly interested in such questions, you might want to read the whole article. If you are merely interested is repeatedly asserting your pet views, without further input, then you won't want to read it.

Unnikrishnan claims that the use of a preferred frame (what we have been calling LR) offers different predictions that SR. Every mainstream source, as well as many non-mainstream sources like Van Flandern, agree that since LR and SR uses the same equations, they make the same predictions when SR uses the preferred rest frame of LR. Since Unnikrishnan didn't give much detail in his calculations, I don't know why he thinks there should be different numbers. It does mean I don't trust his numbers.

If the calculation done by assuming instantaneous Lorentz frames on the other hand, at each instant the laboratory observer is to be considered at rest, and the clocks in the airplanes are moving at some relative velocity.

This calculation mixes not just two, but an infinite number of distinct inertial frames together. It is not using SR. It's using something similar to Dingle's misunderstanding of SR.

Since the time dilation factors in SR depend only on relative speeds, it is clear that the theory by itself does not have any acceleration dependent effect on time registered by clocks.

The first clause does not imply the second.

The issue becomes relevant in the context of the twin paradox. In the usual description of the twin paradox, a calculation done in the frame of the non-accelerated clock that is preferentially considered to be at rest in the laboratory frame gives the answer that the transported clock ages slower, and this result is independent of the accelerations in the trajectory of the transported clock, and only velocity needs to be taken into account for the calculation. But, the calculation done in the frame of the other clock, using special relativity, gives the symmetrical answer that the laboratory clock ages slower.

The "other clock"does not have a singular frame that can be used for special relativity calculations. If you pick any single frame from the frames the "other clock" experiences, then the "other clock" moves more slowly in each of those frames.

The correct resolution of the twin paradox is that the clock that moved more, in the sense made precise later, relative to the preferred frame of the universe is the clock that runs slower.

Actually, this is true in any inertial frame, preferred or otherwise. In the traveling twin scenario, if you use the frame of the stationary twin, the traveling twing moves more. If you use the outbound frame of the traveling twing, the traveling twin moves more. If you use the inbound frame of the traveling twin, the traveling twin moves more.

aintnuthin said...

"This guy" makes the same observations as Essen does which we have been discussing:

"Einstein stated the physical effect in his 1905 paper: "If one of two synchronous clocks at A is moved in a closed curve with constant velocity until it returns to A, the journey lasting t seconds, then by the clock that has remained at rest the travelled clock on its arrival at A will be (1/2)tv²/c² second slow". Note that Einstein does not insist that the clock is in inertial motion even though the theory was constructed to deal with only clocks in inertial motion."

Those who wish to blindly assert that the transformations are "actually reciprocal," want to claim that SR cannot be applied to accelerating objects. There are at least two problems with this assertion. The first is that if SR is actually to be treated as applying that narrowly, then it never applies to any empirical situation and is untestable. The defenders of the misplaced claim of actual reciprocity want it both ways. They will cite "experiments" conducted in accelerating environments(such as earth) as "validation" of SR, when it suits them, and then deny that SR even applies to such situations when it doesn't suit them.

The second problem is that SR can be applied to accelerating environments, as has been conceded from it's inception (by most) so the claim that it "doesn't apply" is bogus to begin with.

The author here, like Essen, establishes this. But they do not condemn or criticize Al on those grounds, because acceleration is irrelevant, as Al assumes it to be. "This guy" continues:

"This stand is physically reasonable since the closed trajectory can be built from a set of ‘piecewise inertial’ trajectories and the formula suggests that only instantaneous speeds matter for the calculation and not whether the trajectory is inertial or not. Indeed, modern experiments have confirmed that the relativistic modification of he life time of unstable particles are identical for motion along straight inertial trajectories and for motion along curved trajectories with high acceleration, provided the speed are identical. Therefore, acceleration is irrelevant for estimating time dilations."

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "It's not merely formal, it's measurable/experimental."

What has been "empirically measured" a la Hafele-Keating and GPS satetellites, is that there is no "actual" reciprocity. One clock really does run at a different rate than the other.

One Brow said: "The twin resolution relies on one twin being in different inertial frames."

Simply another red herring. As has been amply demonstrated many times, there is no need to start with both twins at rest in order to get the reach the same conclusions. One merely starts with a scenario where the twins are moving from the get-go and synchronize clocks when they pass each other.

As noted in other examples I have provided, the math dictates the same results even when there is no "return trip" and the analysis ends as soon as the travelling twin reaches his desination.

I really don't understand why you cling so desperately to these non-sequiturs.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"Of course. When you treat Jack's clock/clock1 as moving, Jill sees them as running slower than her clock. When you treat Jill's clock as moving, Jack sees Jill's clock running slower than his. The moving clock runs slower. Regardless of which one frame is the moving one, eight seconds pass on Jill's clock between the encounter with clock1 and the encounter with Jack."


You indulge in the same equivocation that Al does and which Essen points out. You conflate and confuse how "jack will see jill" and how "jill will see jack" with what is actually happening according to the lorentz transforms.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow asked:"Loss of signals? Did Essen use that, or are you throwing that in? It sure didn't read to be an issue of mechaical failure in his paper."

Essen talked about that, and other possibilities, at some length in the paper I originally cited--which I'm not sure you ever even looked at. Apparently you went to a different site and looked at a different paper of his.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "You should read more carefully:

"There is no way to measure who is right, becasue A and B are no longer in neglible spatial proximity. A observes B to be behind A. B observes A to be behind B."


1. The lorentz transformations, in themselves, have nothing whatsover to do with what you can measure. They predict certain changes, whether they can ever be measured or not.

2. Implicit in the statement you quote is that one is right(and therefore one is wrong) but they can't determine which is which. It does not say or imply that BOTH ARE ABSOLUTELLY CORRECT!"

3. Who are you quoting, and from where? Have you read the whole article?

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "He's stillwrong in saying you can objectively compare two objects separated by significant spacetime and tell which of them is running slower than the other."

Where does he say that? The quote you gave says the opposite.

You still can't distinguish the difference between theoretical physics and epistemology.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "Thus, no contradiction arises by saying each observes the other to pass time more slowly."

Of course not. I said this in what was probably my first comment on the topic to you years ago. Essen says it. The math guy says it. Everybody acknowledges that and I have cited you to many authorities who analyze the "contradiction" in question.

After all this, you still don't even understand what the problem is, and you think everyone else is improperly asserting the existence of a contradiction which they don't assert.

You are totally ineducable on this topic, Eric.

aintnuthin said...

The Indian physicist quotes Einstien (and give his source) as follows:

"If one of two synchronous clocks at A is moved in a closed curve with constant velocity until it returns to A....

One Brow: "Just stop right there, I've heard enough and refuse to read more! Einstien is obviously an utter fool (unlike me) and is making Dingles error. Anything moving in a "closed curve" cannot, by definition, be moving with "constant velocity." I can't believe anyone ever paid the least bit of attention to this nitwit."

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "Regardless of which one frame is the moving one, eight seconds pass on Jill's clock between the encounter with clock1 and the encounter with Jack."

This is just why I don't care to get into these trivial discussions.

IF, in Jack's frame, the two points are 6 light-seconds apart, and if he is the one moving at the speed of .6c, then it will take him 10 seconds(in his frame) to traverse that distance. The 10 seconds (for Jack) will be 12.5 seconds for Jill.

Go ahead and do all the transformations if you want. If the two points are 6 light seconds in Jack's frame and he is the one moving, what is the distance in Jill's frame? Given his speed, how much time would it take him to traverse that distance from her perspective?

These details are insignificant to me, but if you think they're important to what we're discussing, help yourself.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"The "other clock"does not have a singular frame that can be used for special relativity calculations. If you pick any single frame from the frames the "other clock" experiences, then the "other clock" moves more slowly in each of those frames."

I really have no idea what you think you are saying here. You appear to be advancing (or trying to advance) a position that every staunch pro-relativist I've ever encountered (in person or in print) would dispute and deny. If your understanding of SR is that idiosyncratic, then maybe you should ask a physicist you trust, like Colton, to read the passage you think you are refuting and tell you what he thinks it means and if it is an accurate summary of what SR holds.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"The "other clock"does not have a singular frame that can be used for special relativity calculations. If you pick any single frame from the frames the "other clock" experiences, then the "other clock" moves more slowly in each of those frames."

Bravo! Welcome to the world of reason and common sense. You have finally succeeded in refuting youself with your claims that "you never know who is moving." Who knows, you may even stand by your refutation for a few days. This guy did not recite that as something true, but only to explain the false premises which this particular "relativity principle" is based on.

aintnuthin said...

Oops. Wrong quote in the last post. Meant to quote you as saying:

One Brow said:"Utter nonsense. If you have two clocks synchronized while next to each other, separated by motion, and then again placed next to each other, at least one of the clocks will have experienced acceleration in the meantime, and would therefore know he was moving."

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"Since Unnikrishnan didn't give much detail in his calculations, I don't know why he thinks there should be different numbers. It does mean I don't trust his numbers."

Near the end of his paper (in the section entitled "Clocks moving in the matter-filled universe") he gives all his formulas and their derivation, right before he says: "The physical difference is enormous, as we have already seen in the analysis of transported clocks. It is this formula that we used earlier to estimate the time dilations in the Hafele-Keating experiments and the observed results agreed remarkably well with the predictions of the CR."

One Brow said...

aintnuthin said...
You are totally ineducable on this topic, Eric.

You keep bringing up people who use Dingle-style understandings of SR and refuting those understandings, when I don't hold to a Dingle-SR and mainstream SR is not Dingle-SR. You can't be troubled to realize the difference between an arbitrary inertial frame (mainstream-SR) and an arbitrary frame ignoring the need to be inertial (Dingle-style). This is indeed much like our probability discussion, except this time you are the one who is misunderstanding the issue. You have been ineducable so far, but I still hold out hope for you.

After all this, you still don't even understand what the problem is, and you think everyone else is improperly asserting the existence of a contradiction which they don't assert.

Gosh, no. I could probably identify five different putative problems that have been falsely asserted.

Those who wish to blindly assert that the transformations are "actually reciprocal," want to claim that SR cannot be applied to accelerating objects.

You can apply SR to accelerating objects. You can't apply SR using accelerating rest frames. Do you see a difference there?

What has been "empirically measured" a la Hafele-Keating and GPS satetellites, is that there is no "actual" reciprocity. One clock really does run at a different rate than the other.

That is what SR would predict.

One Brow said: "The twin resolution relies on one twin being in different inertial frames."

Simply another red herring. As has been amply demonstrated many times, there is no need to start with both twins at rest in order to get the reach the same conclusions. One merely starts with a scenario where the twins are moving from the get-go and synchronize clocks when they pass each other.


Actually, you can derive a twinish scenario with no acceleration at all by any of the clocks, using three clocks (I cave you three examples of such scenarios on the previous page, but you did not seem interested on looking them over). One of the clocks keeps time in an inertail frame, the other two share timekeeping duties while operating in two different inertial frames (again, details on the previous comments page). In every case, the clock that handled timekeepings duties solo shows more time to have passed than the combined time on the two clocks in different frames. The reason for this is that the resolution of the twin scenario relies on one twin (specifically, the traveling twin) being in different inertial frames on the outbound and inbound journey.

Maybe you didn't realize this, but traveling at .6c from point A to point B, and traveling at .6c from point B to point A, are two different intertial frames. That might explain your confusion with my previous sentence.

As noted in other examples I have provided, the math dictates the same results even when there is no "return trip" and the analysis ends as soon as the travelling twin reaches his desination.

If there is no return trip, the math dictates one result if the stationary twin's frame is in the rest frame, and a different result if the traveling twin's frame is the rest frame. Since the twins are separated by a non-neglible amount of space when there is no return trip, there is no unique answer to which clock ran slower until you specify the rest frame.

One Brow said...

I really don't understand why you cling so desperately to these non-sequiturs.

They are not non-sequiturs, they are important to understanding what is actually happening.

You indulge in the same equivocation that Al does and which Essen points out. You conflate and confuse how "jack will see jill" and how "jill will see jack" with what is actually happening according to the lorentz transforms.

The Lorentz transforms predict how Jack will see Jill and how Jill will see Jack, after adjusting for factors like angle of incidence.

Essen talked about that, and other possibilities, at some length in the paper I originally cited--which I'm not sure you ever even looked at. Apparently you went to a different site and looked at a different paper of his.

When the two pager contained the obvious error of using an accelerated reference frame as the basis for SR calculations, I didn't see the point in reading 27 pages. You have not presented anything of Essen's that suggested I revise that opinion.

1. The lorentz transformations, in themselves, have nothing whatsover to do with what you can measure. They predict certain changes, whether they can ever be measured or not.

The Lorentz transformations predict changes in measurement, whether these measurements can be conducted or not.

2. Implicit in the statement you quote is that one is right(and therefore one is wrong) but they can't determine which is which. It does not say or imply that BOTH ARE ABSOLUTELLY CORRECT!"

Using proper measurement techniques, both will get the measurements predicted, and thus both be corrected in their own inertial reference frame.

3. Who are you quoting, and from where? Have you read the whole article?

Unnikrishnan's misunderstandings didnt change much from article to article.

The resolution points out that during the transfer of clock information from the frame of B to the frame of C, the line of simultaneity has changed, with a discrepancy and advance of time at A of Dt. Thus it is suggested that the excess physical time dilation of the B–C system relative to A happens in the short duration of transfer of information from one inertial frame to another.

Non squitur. The change in the line of simultaneity is not a cause of excess time dilation.

Thus Einstein’s resolution invoking general relativity, equivalence principle and gravitational time dilation simply does not work,

It wasn't a resolution, but a way of examing the scenario from the viewpoint the traveling twin does not move. Since that requires using an accelerated from, SR is insufficient, and GR is needed. Einstein obvioulsy had the resolution in 1907: the traveling twin ages less.

One Brow said...

Where does he say that? The quote you gave says the opposite.

Applying any of the standard resolutions, including Einstein’s gravitational time dilation gives the result that B ages less relative to A, whereas in this particular problem it is A who ages less!

For one, the "standard resolution" can be worked from viewpoint that B's frame inbetween accelerations is the true rest frame, and the answer in that frame is that A will have aged less. Unnikrishnan misses that the standaed resolution can be worked from multiple inertial frames.

By the way, Unnikrishnan doesn't think very highly of Essen:
The criticism by L. Essen more recently (The Special Theory of Relativity: A Critical Analysis, Oxford University Press, 1971) is more accurate, having pioneered the cesium atomic clocks and done clock comparison experiments to test theories, but the suggested ways out are inadequate and fail to address the real physical problem.

Nothing more fun than cranks dissing on each other.

You still can't distinguish the difference between theoretical physics and epistemology.

Because espistemology rules, and theoreitical physics drools?

Anything moving in a "closed curve" cannot, by definition, be moving with "constant velocity." I can't believe anyone ever paid the least bit of attention to this nitwit."

Technically true, although it can be moving at a constant relative speed, which was Einstein's point.

This is just why I don't care to get into these trivial discussions.

IF, in Jack's frame, the two points are 6 light-seconds apart, and if he is the one moving at the speed of .6c, then it will take him 10 seconds(in his frame) to traverse that distance. The 10 seconds (for Jack) will be 12.5 seconds for Jill.

Go ahead and do all the transformations if you want. If the two points are 6 light seconds in Jack's frame and he is the one moving, what is the distance in Jill's frame?


The basic formula, with x being the rest frame, is x' = x/sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2). When x' is 6 light-seconds and v = .6c, you can solve this for x, and get a value of 4.8 light-seconds. So, the distance Jack measures as 6 light-seconds is really 4.8 light-seconds, since Jill is the rest frame.

Given his speed, how much time would it take him to traverse that distance from her perspective?

d=r*t, or in this case, t=d/r = 4.8 light-seconds/.6c = 8 seconds.

These details are insignificant to me, but if you think they're important to what we're discussing, help yourself.

As I told you before, while there are many big-picture ideas of the universe, the details are where most of them falter. If yo ignore the details, you'll have trouble making a persuasive argument. In particular, claiming that Jill would measure the time as 12.5 seconds was just wrong.

One Brow said...

One Brow said:"The "other clock"does not have a singular frame that can be used for special relativity calculations. If you pick any single frame from the frames the "other clock" experiences, then the "other clock" moves more slowly in each of those frames."

I really have no idea what you think you are saying here. You appear to be advancing (or trying to advance) a position that every staunch pro-relativist I've ever encountered (in person or in print) would dispute and deny.


Then you have either misunderstood every other staunch pro-relativist, misunderstood me, or (the most likely based on our previous conversation) confused the positions of Dingle-SR pro-relativists with those of mainstream-SR prorelativists.

If your understanding of SR is that idiosyncratic, then maybe you should ask a physicist you trust, like Colton, to read the passage you think you are refuting and tell you what he thinks it means and if it is an accurate summary of what SR holds.

We haven't bothered colton for a while now. Why don't you pick a passage, and let's see if we can even agree on what my objection is, and proper phrasing for asking the question neutrally.

One Brow said:"Utter nonsense. If you have two clocks synchronized while next to each other, separated by motion, and then again placed next to each other, at least one of the clocks will have experienced acceleration in the meantime, and would therefore know he was moving."

Bravo! Welcome to the world of reason and common sense.


Thanks, been here for a while now. I've agreed to that for a few pages of comments.

You have finally succeeded in refuting youself with your claims that "you never know who is moving."

You convinced me that acceleration was an absolute on page 3(?). That's basically the same sentiment as the quote above.

This guy did not recite that as something true, but only to explain the false premises which this particular "relativity principle" is based on.

Unnikrishnan's error is still that he is assuming SR can make a calculation based in different inertial frames. So, the 'this particular "relativity principle"' Unnikrishnan is disproving is not Einstain's SR (as far as I can tell) nor mainstream-SR, it is Dingle-SR.

Near the end of his paper (in the section entitled "Clocks moving in the matter-filled universe") he gives all his formulas and their derivation, right before he says: "The physical difference is enormous, as we have already seen in the analysis of transported clocks. It is this formula that we used earlier to estimate the time dilations in the Hafele-Keating experiments and the observed results agreed remarkably well with the predictions of the CR."

In those calculations, for the SR-predictions he used an accelerated frame (treating the gournd clock as always being at rest), and so was using Dingle-SR.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "If there is no return trip, the math dictates one result if the stationary twin's frame is in the rest frame, and a different result if the traveling twin's frame is the rest frame."

OK, that's all these critics are saying.

One Brow said: "Since the twins are separated by a non-neglible amount of space when there is no return trip, there is no unique answer to which clock ran slower until you specify the rest frame."

Yeah, so? What is the point? Are you claiming that no "rest frame" can be properly specified, other than on a purely arbitary basis?

1. Forget what answer you can give--is there is answer? If you say "no," as you do, why do University Professors say there IS a unique answer? Because they don't know "mainstream SR," like you do, that it?

2. If you think "separation in space" prevents you from giving an answer, then you deny what you to assert, i.e., that you acknowledge the role acceleration plays.

3. If you can give an answer, then the transformations are not "actually reciprocal." Only one clock (the moving clock) is running slower. If the moving clock asserts that his clock is NOT running slower than the other, but rather that the reverse is true, then, per SR, he is wrong, right? Or do you disagree and say that he is absolutely correct in his assertions?

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "You can apply SR to accelerating objects. You can't apply SR using accelerating rest frames. Do you see a difference there?"

I see a techniical difference without a meaningful distinction.

Is it your claim that on GR can be used to resolve the twin question, because SR is incapable of applying?

Is it your claim, contrary to the vast majority of physicists, that the lorentz transformations can't be effectively applied to a body in accelerated motion?

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "Unnikrishnan's error is still that he is assuming SR can make a calculation based in different inertial frames."

What does this mean? Are you saying that if you have two objects moving relative to each other, SR only applies to one of the two frames?

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "In those calculations, for the SR-predictions he used an accelerated frame (treating the gournd clock as always being at rest), and so was using Dingle-SR."

This is also what every physicist I've cited does. Are they all wrong? In SR, EVERY "inertial frame" is always "at rest" and they are all supposedly equivalent, right?

Or are we simply back to your implied claim that SR never applies to ANY empirical situation EVER, because empirically speaking, there are NO inertial frames, whether it be the earth, the satellites, or any other body?

One Brow said...

aintnuthin said...
One Brow said: "Since the twins are separated by a non-neglible amount of space when there is no return trip, there is no unique answer to which clock ran slower until you specify the rest frame."

Yeah, so? What is the point? Are you claiming that no "rest frame" can be properly specified, other than on a purely arbitary basis?


You have a non-arbitrary basis? In any inertial rest frame, all the laws of physics operate the same way.

1. Forget what answer you can give--is there is answer? If you say "no," as you do, why do University Professors say there IS a unique answer? Because they don't know "mainstream SR," like you do, that it?

If university professors say there is a unique answer to which clock moved more slowly in a situation where two clocks syncrhonize, and move inertially and relatively until they are in a non-neglible spacetime situation with no return journey, then they are putting in their arbitrary assumption of a specific rest frame as being the natural or obvious choice.

2. If you think "separation in space" prevents you from giving an answer, then you deny what you to assert, i.e., that you acknowledge the role acceleration plays.

In a situation where two clocks syncrhonize, and move inertially and relatively until they are in a non-neglible spacetime situation with no return journey, there is no acceleration to play a role.

3. If you can give an answer, then the transformations are not "actually reciprocal." Only one clock (the moving clock) is running slower. If the moving clock asserts that his clock is NOT running slower than the other, but rather that the reverse is true, then, per SR, he is wrong, right? Or do you disagree and say that he is absolutely correct in his assertions?

The transformations are reciprocal because they work (in that they present a useful picture of the universe from which you can make consistent, accurate calculations) regardless of which inertial rest frame you choose. In any inertial frame, at least one clock is moving (both may be), and the one that is moving faster in that frame will be running slower from the viewpoint in that frame than the clock that is moving slower in that frame. If in frame S1, clock C1 is running faster than clock C2, and A1 traveling with clock C1 asserts that clock C1 is running slower than clock C2 in inertial frame S1, A1 is wrong. However, if A1 is claiming that C1 is running slower than clock C2 in inertial frame S2, that could easily be true.

One Brow said: "You can apply SR to accelerating objects. You can't apply SR using accelerating rest frames. Do you see a difference there?"

I see a techniical difference without a meaningful distinction.


No wonder you are having so much trouble. The difference is procedurally fundamental to using SR to evaluate scenarios like the twin scenario.

Is it your claim that on GR can be used to resolve the twin question, because SR is incapable of applying?

You can use SR to resolve the twin question from any inertial frame. The three most obvious choices would be 1) the frame of the stationary twin, 2) the frame of the traveling twin on the outbound journey, or 3) the frame of the traveling twin on the inbound journey. However, any other inertial frame would be equally effective and give you the same answer, the math just gets more difficult.

None of those three frames is the (non-inertial) frame where the traveling twin is a rest over the course of the entire journey. SR does not apply to any non-inertial frame, such as the frame where the traveling twin is always at rest.

One Brow said...

Is it your claim, contrary to the vast majority of physicists, that the lorentz transformations can't be effectively applied to a body in accelerated motion?

Whether in SR or LR, the Lorentz transformations can only be effectively applied using an inertial frame as the rest frame.

One Brow said: "Unnikrishnan's error is still that he is assuming SR can make a calculation based in different inertial frames."

What does this mean? Are you saying that if you have two objects moving relative to each other, SR only applies to one of the two frames?


I am saying he picked a single frame from which to make his calculations (the frame where the ground clock was not moving), but this frame is non-inertial overall. He did this by using many small, different, inertial frames (each of which had the ground clock not moving for a very brief period of time) at different times and adding the results together. SR does not work that way.

One Brow said: "In those calculations, for the SR-predictions he used an accelerated frame (treating the gournd clock as always being at rest), and so was using Dingle-SR."

This is also what every physicist I've cited does. Are they all wrong? In SR, EVERY "inertial frame" is always "at rest" and they are all supposedly equivalent, right?


This goes back to the confusion over the difference between using an accelerated rest frame versus an inertail rest frame. Unnikrishan is using an accelerated rest frame in his depiciton of SR. The guy who wrote the Jack and Jill example used two different rest frames, but each rest frame was inertial, and he did not mix and match them. If you believe acceleration is an absolute, Unnikrishan's frame is incorrect.

Or are we simply back to your implied claim that SR never applies to ANY empirical situation EVER, because empirically speaking, there are NO inertial frames, whether it be the earth, the satellites, or any other body?

The equations of SR hold for the earth, satellites, and any other empirical situation to the degree and in the manner that F = ma holds to any interaction with a mass that causes a change in movement. The equations of SR do not hold for the earth, satellites, and any other empirical situation to the degree and in the manner that F = ma does not hold to any interaction with a mass that causes a change in movement.

If you want claificaiton of that, I suggest we discuss the various ways F = ma holds and does not hold, for a comparison.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "The reason for this is that the resolution of the twin scenario relies on one twin (specifically, the traveling twin) being in different inertial frames on the outbound and inbound journey."

No, the reason (if it's accurate)is that you are applying the Lortentz transforms to them at that dictates a mathematical result.

I couldn't follow your questions. They weren't coherent. If you want to state your premises clearly, to make a point, I will try to read it. Forget the pretense of "testing" my knowledge, because I don't trust yours. State your premises, show how they demonstrate some point you think is relevant, and explain why your point is relevant.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "Maybe you didn't realize this, but traveling at .6c from point A to point B, and traveling at .6c from point B to point A, are two different intertial frames. That might explain your confusion with my previous sentence."

Yeah, right, and Pete Marivich and Jerry Sloan played in different eras because they are not the same height.

Call it 10 million frames if you want (every time an objects moves an inch to the east, that is a new frame, an inch to the west = a new frame, two inches east = a new frame, etc.), I don't care. Just explain how and why it could make any difference.

I don't agree with your assertion, but I don't care if it true. Tell me how it is supposed to make a difference.

I'm very tired of your non sequiturs.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"
One Brow said:"If university professors say there is a unique answer to which clock moved more slowly in a situation where two clocks syncrhonize, and move inertially and relatively until they are in a non-neglible spacetime situation with no return journey, then they are putting in their arbitrary assumption of a specific rest frame as being the natural or obvious choice."

No, they are using the concept of "proper time," from Minkowski, et al, as it applies within that context. They don't have a personal choice to make. Determining proper time is not just a haphazard, random "choice" one makes; it is governed by principles and concepts.
You always know more than all the experts, don't you?

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "The Lorentz transforms predict how Jack will see Jill and how Jill will see Jack, after adjusting for factors like angle of incidence."

I never seen any part of the Lorentz transforms which purport to "adjust for angle of incidence."

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"When the two pager contained the obvious error of using an accelerated reference frame as the basis for SR calculations, I didn't see the point in reading 27 pages. You have not presented anything of Essen's that suggested I revise that opinion."

Nothing had been presented which your narrow, bigoted, indoctrined, unimaginative mind could even begin to understand, you mean.

We've been through Al's verbal inaccuracy, how you imputed an Al's insignificant linguistic error to Essen, and how, in context it is irrelevant already. But you simply to your utterly subjective and contrived claim that Essen is "crank" as you have been trained to call any "infidel." You should have your preaching and assertion of the indubitability of biblical scripture, with or without any sensible explanation, for the choir, Eric. I aint in it.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"In a situation where two clocks syncrhonize, and move inertially and relatively until they are in a non-neglible spacetime situation with no return journey, there is no acceleration to play a role."

In a situation other than the one you are addressing, you mean. This is another primary tactics of yours: To change the premises and facts underlying another's assertion, and then say that it's not accurate.

Heh.

aintnuthin said...

I asked:"Yeah, so? What is the point? Are you claiming that no "rest frame" can be properly specified, other than on a purely arbitary basis?"

One Brow said: "You have a non-arbitrary basis? In any inertial rest frame, all the laws of physics operate the same way."

Apparently you are making that claim. The question remains, "what is your point?" Even assuming your point is accurate, how would that in any way affect the Lorentz transforms or the predictions it generates?

Is you point that SR is a non-scientific, untestable, psuedo-scientific claim which rests on metaphysical speculation and which is worthless in practice? Like Mach?

I was hoping your "refutation" of yourself might last a few days, at least. Wildly over-optimistic, on my part, in retrospect.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"Using proper measurement techniques, both will get the measurements predicted, and thus both be corrected in their own inertial reference frame."

What, of substance, do you think you are saying here?

Let's play a little game. I'll lie to you, and you try to prove me wrong. Here's my lie:

Me: Jack is taller than John, and John is taller than Jack.

You: Doesn't sound possible. Let's stand them together and see.

Me: Can't do that. John's in Europe, Jack's in the USA.

You: Well, have an independent third party measure them both where they are.

Me: Can't do that, the measurements in Europe are different. They use metersticks, we use yardsticks.

You: That makes no difference---the two can be converted.

Me: NO! They can't.

You: Measured or not, it can't be true.

Me: It is true for both "in their own minds" therefore it is true.

Anonymous said...

One Brow said: "One Brow said:"Using proper measurement techniques..."

You would first have to know what proper measuring techniques are to start with. One major criticism of Essen, who spent his life doing experiments to MEASURE time, and who in the only scientist (excuse me, I meant "crank") to be awarded prizes by both the USA and the USSR during the cold war, was that Einstien:

1. Violated the fundamental scientific principles about measurement from the get-go, and

2.

To quote Essen:

"There were definite errors about which there can be no argument. One was the assumption that the velocity of light is constant. This is contrary to the foundations of science and the fact that it is repeated in all the textbooks I have seen, shows how little these foundations are understood by theoretical physicists. Science is based on the results of experiment and these results must be expressed in a single coherent set of units. The unit of length was the metre and the unit of time was the second. Velocity was a measured quantity as so many metres per second. Even though it was found to be constant under certain conditions, it was quite wrong to make it a constant by definition under all conditions. Only the unit of measurement can be made constant by definition and Einstein’s assumption constituted a duplication of units. It was this duplication that led to puzzling and contradictory results and not the profundity of the theory as relativitists like us to believe.

The question of units is a rather complicated one; and in this instance some writers are confused by the fact that the velocity of light is now often used as a standard, distances being calculated from the time of travel of a pulse of light or radio waves; but the value used is the measured value and the conditions of measurement are carefully defined. Quite recently a further complication has arisen. At the end of our work at the NPL we made the suggestion that as the techniques improved it might be advantageous to redefine the units of measurement, keeping the atomic second, giving a defined value to the velocity of light and discarding the unit of length. This has now been done, but these developments do not affect the criticisms of the theory. Even with these units it would still be absurd to assume that the velocity would be the same for two observers in relative motion. Units must be used with common sense."

aintnuthin said...

Hit publish on my last post prematurely:

2. Did not know how to properly conduct a time comparison experiment, which, he noted, where routinely done on a world-wide basis.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"Non squitur. The change in the line of simultaneity is not a cause of excess time dilation."

The Indian would agree with you, but the "suggestion" he is talking about is not his own. It is the one advanced by those advocating this particular resolution.

Anonymous said...

One Brow said:"In any inertial frame, at least one clock is moving (both may be), and the one that is moving faster in that frame will be running slower from the viewpoint in that frame than the clock that is moving slower in that frame."

My question wasn't about "viewpoints."

Are both clocks running slower than the other, or not?

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "The transformations are reciprocal because they work (in that they present a useful picture of the universe from which you can make consistent, accurate calculations) regardless of which inertial rest frame you choose."

The exact same thing can be said about heliocentric vs. geocentric "viewpoints." Are the two of them both "equally valid" and ABSOLUTELY CORRECT?

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:" However, if A1 is claiming that C1 is running slower than clock C2 in inertial frame S2, that could easily be true."

As ever, not the least bit responsive to the question.

It could also easily be NOT true, right?

Are you claiming that it is simultaneously both true and not true? Unless you are, the "reciprocity" is not actual, but merely formal.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "SR does not apply to any non-inertial frame, such as the frame where the traveling twin is always at rest."

1. How could a frame where the travelling twin is "always at rest" possibly be "non-inertial?" Are you some kinda crank, that it?


2. If you mean to say that SR doesn't apply to "accelerated" frames I will simply note that Al said the time dilation would be identical for objects which went and returned for objects following either a curved or polygonic path, as it would be if they were moving intertially.

3. ""SR does not apply to any non-inertial frame..." Are you saying, in effect, that SR doesn't apply anywhere in the known universe?

Between you and Al, I take Al as representing "mainstream SR," sorry.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "Unnikrishnan misses that the standaed resolution can be worked from multiple inertial frames."

He misses it, because, despite being one of India's reknowned theoreticians, you know a lot that he doesn't, eh? You can view the twins from different frames, but that will just give you different answers, so it is NOT a "resolution." Only ONE frame gives you the proper resolution in the twin case--it is the frame of the earth twin and it therefore the travelling twin (not the earth twin, and not "both") who ages slower.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"He did this by using many small, different, inertial frames (each of which had the ground clock not moving for a very brief period of time) at different times and adding the results together. SR does not work that way."

The consensus I've seen says SR can work exactly that way if you care to admit it and use it that way. If you want to deny it, in order to deny a contradction, then you deny it can be done, whether honestly or not, so as to appear to give yourself an escape from an inescapable trap. Kinda like Christian fundies tend to do, ya know?

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "When x' is 6 light-seconds and v = .6c, you can solve this for x, and get a value of 4.8 light-seconds."

So, even if I'm going only a little over half the speed of light, I still cover 6 full light seconds in less that 6 seconds, eh? Yeah, right.


One Brow said:"claiming that Jill would measure the time as 12.5 seconds was just wrong."

Try again.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "When x' is 6 light-seconds and v = .6c, you can solve this for x, and get a value of 4.8 light-seconds."

If Jack sees the distance as 6 light seconds, and if HE is moving, then Jill will see the same distance to be greater, not less, than Jack sees it to be. No wonder your answers are so confused.

aintnuthin said...

Essen said: "At the end of our work at the NPL we made the suggestion that as the techniques improved it might be advantageous to redefine the units of measurement, keeping the atomic second, giving a defined value to the velocity of light and discarding the unit of length."

Essen campaigned for the abandonment of astronomical units of time (for purposes of consistency and accuracy) and played an instrumental role in getting "length" reclassified (abanoned actually) as a function of speed.

Nonetheless he says:

"...these developments do not affect the criticisms of the theory. Even with these units it would still be absurd to assume that the velocity would be the same for two observers in relative motion. Units must be used with common sense."

Can you see why he makes the latter claim?

This is not Essen's only criticism, but it is a valid one.

aintnuthin said...

Samuel Johnson, when asked if, and if so, how, he could refute the subjectivist claims of Berkeley, responded: "I refute it thusly" and kicked a stone.

Diogenes, when he encountered Parmenideans who advanced Zeno's arguments to prove motion was impossible, simply got up and walked away.

Who are the sophisicated philsopers here? Parmenides and Berkeley, or Johnson and Diogenes?

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said"The guy who wrote the Jack and Jill example used two different rest frames, but each rest frame was inertial, and he did not mix and match them."


Wrong. Once he got trying to give an illogical and irrational "explanation" of why Jill could, given the premises of SR, legitimately consider herself to be at rest despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he started mixing frames ad libitum.

aintnuthin said...

Essen, the "crank" who you falsely characterize as being "dissed" the the emininent Indian theoretical physicist, who you also call a "crank" was, among other things, distinguished mathematician, and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was d described by Sir Charles Darwin, one time director of the National Physical Laboratory where Essen’s work was conducted, as probably the world’s greatest authority on the practical problem of timekeeping.

And you purport to have more insight into "properly measuring" time than he does, eh? So typical of a brain-washed robot to refuse to even read what others who have vastly superior knowledge have to say by the simple (and seemingly genetically ingrained) expedient of dismissing them as "cranks." This kind of reasoning deserves the highest respect, I tellya!

It's not even possible that he could know more than you, and this can be determined by misreading one sentence, out of context, about which you have absolutely no understanding. Ad hominem reasoning, it ROCKS, eh!?

aintnuthin said...

More from the crank:

"Einstein’s theory of relativity was dealt with very briefly in my university course but we were told that we must not expect to understand it. I accepted this situation and I have since discovered that most physicists are content to remain in the same position assuming that it must be right because it is generally accepted. My doubts about it arose when I found that the experts did not understand either. An exchange of letters in Nature between Dingle and McCrea showed that they had opposite views about some of the predictions of the theory and the arguments advanced on both sides were in my view illogical and unconvincing.

Much of the discussion about the theory was concerned with the readings of clocks when they are moving relatively to each other, and since I had a wide experience of comparing clocks and measuring time it seemed to be almost a duty to take a closer interest in the controversy especially as some of the so-called relativity effects although very small were not becoming significant in the definition of the atomic second and the use of atomic clocks.

...I, therefore, studied Einstein’s famous paper, often regarded as one of he most important contributions in the history of science. Imagine my surprise when I found that it was in some respects one of the worse papers I had ever read. The terminology and style were unscientific and ambiguous; one of his assumptions is given on different pages in two contradictory forms, some of his statements were open to different interpretations and the worst fault in my view, was the use of thought-experiments. This practice is contrary to the scientific method which is based on conclusions drawn from the results of actual experiments.

My first thoughts were, that in spite of its obvious faults of presentation, the theory must be basically sound, and before committing my criticisms to print I read widely round the subject.

The additional reading only confirmed my belief that the theory was marred by its own internal contradictions. Relativitists often state that the theory is accepted by all scientists of repute but this is quite untrue. It has been strongly criticised by many scientists, including at least one Nobel prize winner. Most of the criticisms are of a general nature drawing attention to its many contradictions, so I decided to pin-point the errors which give rise to the contradictions, giving the page and line in Einstein’s paper, thus making it difficult for relativitists to dodge them and obscure them in a morass of irrational discussion.

...I had rather naively thought that scientists would be glad to have an explanation of the confusion which had existed for so long and would at least pay some attention to my explanation, since I had more practical experience in these matters than all the relativitists put together. But I was wrong. No one attempted to refute my arguments although they justified Einstein by repeating his thought experiment and his mistakes in different forms...I was beginning to realise that scientists could be just as irrational as anyone else and having accepted the theory as a faith without understanding it they closed their minds to argument. They also tried to suppress opposition and two of my papers after being accepted by the referees were mysteriously never published.

...Scientists badly wanted a more detailed satisfactory explanation and this is what Einstein thought he had done. All he did was to introduce irrational ideas into physics and incorporate the Lorentz explanation into electromagnetic theory as an assumption. The original puzzling results, therefore, remain and it is important to science that a true explanation should be found.

http://www.btinternet.com/~time.lord/Relativity.html

aintnuthin said...

Same source as before:

"Einstein had never made any actual experiments, as far as I can find, and he certainly had no idea of how to compare clocks. He imagined two identical clocks side by side and supposed one of them to move away at a uniform velocity and then return...Many thousands of words have been written about [the clock paradox], but the explanation is simply that he did not go through the correct procedures in making his experiment. It is a very simple experiment, being carried out every day in clock comparisons...

aintnuthin said...

Essen, while speculating a little about possible reasons, asked aloud the "difficult question" of how it could come to be that SR could achieve a status of strict dogma.

William Cantrell addressed this question better than Essen did, in my opinion:

"First, the alternative theories have never been given much attention nor taught at any university. Second, the establishmentarians have invested a lifetime of learning in maintaining the status quo, and they will act to protect their investment. . . . Third, Einstein's theory, being rather vaguely defined and self-contradictory by its own construction, allows some practitioners to display an aura of elitism and hubris in their ability to manipulate it. There is an exclusive quality to the theory – like a country club, and that is part of its allure. Fourth, to admit a fundamental mistake in such a hyped-up theory would be an embarrassment, not only to the physics community at large, but also to the memory of a man whose portrait hangs in nearly every physics department around the world."

http://andyzaps.blogspot.com/2006/10/einsteins-fallacies.html

It seems to me that reason #4 might best explain the "untouchable" status SR has reached in academia. More analysis from Cantrell here:

http://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue59/adissidentview.html

aintnuthin said...

Thomas E. Phipps, Jr., to whom the journal "Physics Essays" has previously dedicated a special issue, has some interesting comments on SR:

"Where clock rates are concerned, special relativity theory (SRT) is an amphibian between appearance and reality. It needs this quality to survive – and it is a survivor. (Authorities today in-form us that the theory is not a theory but a fact. Facts are not fal-sifiable. SRT being not falsifiable, it is clear why it survives.)

The relativity principle, as customarily understood, de-mands a symmetry of asymmetry – the clocks of two inertial ob-servers each running slower than the other. To avoid an infinite logical regression to nonsense, SRT therefore needs clock rates to be appearances.

..to earn credit for predicting the observed asymmetrical aging of muons (circling and stationary in the laboratory), SRT needs clock rates to be real and objectively asymmetrical...

This can only mean that the SRT stay-at-home observer’s predic-tion of uniform rate-slowing of the traveler’s clock describes not an appearance but a reality – a factually real asymmetry. How-ever, this conflicts with the “appearance” view of clock rates, dic-tated by the relativity principle. So, which shall it be? Symmetry or asymmetry? Appearance or reality? Agreement with principle or with observation?

SRT, of course, has a response – indeed, one for every shade and climate of authoritative opinion...When winkled out of the point event mold and considered as physical ob-servables in their own right, clock rates are described by SRT and described inconsistently. That is the bitter pill supporters of the theory can never swallow.

[continued in next post]

aintnuthin said...

...since the GPS data show that the orbiting compensated clocks all run at the same rate as the Master Clock, which tells earth-surface proper time, it must be objec-tively true that orbiting proper-time clocks run slower than earth-surface proper-time clocks. Thus the GPS is telling us that the slow-running of orbiting clocks is not an “appearance” nor a “perception” of the earth-surface observer, but a fact verifiable by any observer. The natural (proper-time) running rates of these clocks are asymmetrical as a matter of physics.

Thus the different inertial sys-tems are not equivalent for measurement purposes. This violates the relativity principle (RP) as currently understood...My claim of RP violation is based on the counter proposition, that clock rates are in fact direct physical observables in their own right.

...Thus the compensated (tampered with) clocks are all equivalent, none preferred, all being in various states of (iner-tial) motion that can be considered arbitrary, and all running at the same rate – an inconceivability within the ambit of Einstein’s theories – which consider complete physical equivalence of iner-tial systems to be achieved only in the absence of any tampering with the natural running rates of clocks.

The RP asserts the equivalence of all inertial systems for formulating the laws of nature. If, as we have suggested, natu-rally-running clock rates are objectively different in two inertial systems, this means that all natural physical processes proceed at different rates, and the identity of laws of nature in the two sys-tems can be maintained only by some retreat or reformulation. It is evident that the GPS evidence confirming the objective factuality of a naturally-running clock rate asymmetry among inertial systems writes finis to the traditional form of RP as physics.

...It mitigates this logical contradiction not a bit to say that reversing the motion of one of the observers and applying the event calculus resolves the “twin” problem. This does not re-solve, it evades. If no turn-around event occurs the contradiction persists indefinitely. There is no logical compulsion for such an event to occur. Logic cannot compel events – politics can.

...not one of these savants can offer his students a logical resolution of the clock (or “twin”) paradox based on ad-ducible evidence even of the conceptual sort. Instead, they employ smoke and mirrors (playing up SRT’s correct event-based predic-tions of elapsed times to distract attention from its false predictions of clock rates), supplemented by ridicule of critics such as Dingle (who was publicly accused of “dementia”). Ridicule is politics … they have nothing better to offer."

More here:

http://blog.hasslberger.com/docs/PhippsGPSRelativ.pdf

aintnuthin said...

Actually, Eric, if you looked around at all, you might notice that there are infidels on almost every street corner, many probably packing suicide bombs under their shirts and looking some SR-related venue in which to detonate it.

Prominent scientists like Phipps, who have proclaimed "finis to the traditional form of RP as physics" constitute nothing less than an intolerable threat to our security. Someone call Rudy Giuliani!

aintnuthin said...

After the finally comes when it is generally acknowledged that SR is an inconsistent and insufficient theory of relativity, my prediction is that you will be one of the last to jump ship, but will thereafter steadfastly maintain that all sensible people, like yourself, saw the demise of SR coming for decades.

Just a hunch, based partly on the way I saw your position shift on the modern synthetic theory of evolution.

One Brow said...

aintnuthin said...
One Brow said: "Maybe you didn't realize this, but traveling at .6c from point A to point B, and traveling at .6c from point B to point A, are two different intertial frames. That might explain your confusion with my previous sentence."

Call it 10 million frames if you want (every time an objects moves an inch to the east, that is a new frame, an inch to the west = a new frame, two inches east = a new frame, etc.), I don't care. Just explain how and why it could make any difference.


First, an analogy: you're heading down State Street from the elementary school to the Church's Chicken at 49th, at 35 mph. A car in the next lane, traveling at 35 mph, suddenly swerves into you. Is it a fender-bender, or a collision that can total your car? If the guy is also heading downtown, it's a fender-bender because the relative speed difference is near 0. If the guy is heading uptown, it's a major collision because the relative speed difference is 70 mph. So, I assume you'll agree in that situation, moving downtown at 35 mph and moving uptown at 35 mph are different physical states that cause different physical results.

So, let's say the stationary twin is at point A, and the traveling twin goes from point A to point B at .6c (let's call that part of the trip "going downtown"), and then from point B to point A at .6c ("going uptown"). The two parts of the journey are in different inertial states (there's no need to find 9,999,998 other states because the traveling twin is just in those two, no others). Going downtown is different from going uptown. Going downtown has different effects than going uptown. When a point a view changes from going downtown to going uptown, it's view of the downtown journey also changes.

The Lorentz transform reflect (not cause, just reflect) this change. They ony work in converting one inertial view to another inertail view. So, you can use them to predict the effects of the traveling twins journey from the viewpoint that the stationary twin is at rest. You can use them to predict the effects of the traveling twins journey from the viewpoint that the stationary twin is moving along with points A and B, and that the traveling twin was at rest going downtown, but gong very fast on the trip uptown. You can use them to predict the effects of the traveling twins journey from the viewpoint that the stationary twin is moving along with points A and B, and that the traveling twin was at rest going uptown, but gong very fast on the trip downtown. In all three cases, you get the exact same prediction for the differences in the traveling twin's clock versus the stationary twins clock. What you can't do successfully is apply the Lorentz equations to the point of view that the traveling twin was at rest both going uptown and downtown. First of all, it doesn't make physical sense anyhow. Secondly, the equations only work for inertial frames, that view that the traveling twin is at rest going uptwon and downtown is not an inertail frame. If you insist on using the view that the traveling twin was at rest going uptown and downtown, you need to use GR, which can handle non-inertial frames.

One Brow said...

No, the reason (if it's accurate)is that you are applying the Lortentz transforms to them at that dictates a mathematical result.

The Lorentz transforms change one inertial coordinate system to another. Changing one mathematical artifact into another mathematical artifact is not a cause of the traveling twin aging less, it can only predict the degree. Physical phenomena have physical causes, not mathematical.

I couldn't follow your questions. They weren't coherent.

It would help if you were more specific. I've already revised them once, I'll be happy to revise/expand on them further.

Forget the pretense of "testing" my knowledge, because I don't trust yours.

I've got a pretty firm handle on a couple of the gaps in your knowledge. I don't really care if you trust mine or not.

State your premises, show how they demonstrate some point you think is relevant, and explain why your point is relevant.

I was aiming for a couple of points. First, that being under propulsion has nothing to do with the time dileation effects of SR (you seemed confused on that when you said the clock on the bug would move slower than the one in the ocean). Second, that the clock in the inertial frame will always show more time to have passed than the pair of clocks in different inertial frames, even when there is no acceleration at all.

Determining proper time is not just a haphazard, random "choice" one makes; it is governed by principles and concepts.

However, you can not determine proper time between two widely-separated clocks. Proper time is the time that occurs between events, not differences among clocks. Proper time is unaffected by using different inertial frames. For example, in the traveling twin scenario, the stationary twin keep proper time, even if the stationary twin is moving inertially.

That sounded confusing, I'm sure. So, let's revise it to a pair of friends, both of whom are traveling at .6c in the same direction. One friend (the inertial friend), doesn't change his velocity. The other friend (the accelerated friend) stops flat for a while, and then catches up to the inertial friend. The clock of the accelerated friend will show less time to have passed. The clock of the inertial friend will not only have shown more time passed, but will have been the one to keep proper time. Proper time is based on moving inertially between two events, not on being at rest.

You always know more than all the experts, don't you?

Nope. I interpret many of the experts differently than you, and since you have decided you understand them better than I, you take that interpretation as my claiming the experts are wrong. However, I am just disagreeing with yiour interpretation thereof.

One Brow said: "The Lorentz transforms predict how Jack will see Jill and how Jill will see Jack, after adjusting for factors like angle of incidence."

I never seen any part of the Lorentz transforms which purport to "adjust for angle of incidence."


The adjustments need to be made by Jack and Jill, not by the transforms.

One Brow said...

Nothing had been presented which your narrow, bigoted, indoctrined, unimaginative mind could even begin to understand, you mean.

It would help it you were right, or at least understood some more of the basics of relativity theory. I think it's funny you think I don't understand, simply because I don't agree with your point. Here's a challenge: name one point you think I actuallydon't understand, and let's see if I can explain your point in terms you agree with or not.

One Brow said:"In a situation where two clocks syncrhonize, and move inertially and relatively until they are in a non-neglible spacetime situation with no return journey, there is no acceleration to play a role."

In a situation other than the one you are addressing, you mean.


I was trhying to address a claim of Unnikrishan's, where he talked about two clocks moving inertailly and then one of them stopping. In particular, Unnikrishan feels the stopped clock would be moving slower (and he is correct from the inertial state where the clock has stopped). I was pointing out that as long as the clocks were separated, there was no one way to determine which clock was moving slower or not, and you would get different answers using different methods.

This is another primary tactics of yours: To change the premises and facts underlying another's assertion, and then say that it's not accurate.

My description of Unnikrishan's scenario was accurate.

One Brow said: "In any inertial rest frame, all the laws of physics operate the same way."

Apparently you are making that claim. The question remains, "what is your point?" Even assuming your point is accurate, how would that in any way affect the Lorentz transforms or the predictions it generates?


That's pretty much one of the foundations for the Lorentz transforms. The transforms take the measurements you would make in one inertial state, and describe what the equivalent measurrments would be in another inertial state.

Is you point that SR is a non-scientific, untestable, psuedo-scientific claim which rests on metaphysical speculation and which is worthless in practice? Like Mach?

No.

I was hoping your "refutation" of yourself might last a few days, at least. Wildly over-optimistic, on my part, in retrospect.

Wild misinterpretation on your part.

One Brow said:"Using proper measurement techniques, both will get the measurements predicted, and thus both be corrected in their own inertial reference frame."

What, of substance, do you think you are saying here?


There is no non-arbitrary way to tell which inertial state has better information.

One Brow said...

One major criticism of Essen ... was that Einstien:

There have been thousands of physicists who have taken Einstein's work and expanded on it with more precise measurement techniques. Whether Einstein did or did not use good measurement technique in a thought-experiement in 1907 is not really relevant today. The focus on Einstein is so misplaced I'm surprised your not referring to Einsteinism.

1. Violated the fundamental scientific principles about measurement from the get-go, and

Violated measurement principles in a thought-experiment?

Only the unit of measurement can be made constant by definition and Einstein’s assumption constituted a duplication of units.

The speed of light is not considered to be constant by defintion, but as a physical property of light itself. It's straighforward to discredit: run an experiement where light moves at a different speed than 299,792,458m/s. This argument is like saying Newton's gravitational constant constitutes a duplication of units. You could use it to dismiss any physical constant in the world.

Even with these units it would still be absurd to assume that the velocity would be the same for two observers in relative motion. Units must be used with common sense.

Again, straightforward to test. Have observers in different inertial frames mesure the same beam of light, and see if it is different for them.

The Indian would agree with you, but the "suggestion" he is talking about is not his own. It is the one advanced by those advocating this particular resolution.

Rather, it is Uniikrishan's understanding of a particular resolution.

My question wasn't about "viewpoints."

Are both clocks running slower than the other, or not?


In no inertial state does each clock run slower than the other. So, no.

One Brow said: "The transformations are reciprocal because they work (in that they present a useful picture of the universe from which you can make consistent, accurate calculations) regardless of which inertial rest frame you choose."

The exact same thing can be said about heliocentric vs. geocentric "viewpoints." Are the two of them both "equally valid" and ABSOLUTELY CORRECT?


Actually, the same thing can not be said for geocentric viewpoints. Geocentric viewpoints require abaondoning many physical principles, such as the conservation of energy.

One Brow said...

One Brow said:" However, if A1 is claiming that C1 is running slower than clock C2 in inertial frame S2, that could easily be true."

As ever, not the least bit responsive to the question.

It could also easily be NOT true, right?


It depends on what the inertial frame S2 is. Did you want details?

Are you claiming that it is simultaneously both true and not true?

Depending on what frame S2 is, the claim will be either true or not true, but it will not be both at the same time.

Unless you are, the "reciprocity" is not actual, but merely formal.

Since you show know understanding of the reciprocity, I don't see a reason to take this claim seriously. Given your response to the analysis of Jack and Jill below, you really don't understand at all.

One Brow said: "SR does not apply to any non-inertial frame, such as the frame where the traveling twin is always at rest."

1. How could a frame where the travelling twin is "always at rest" possibly be "non-inertial?" Are you some kinda crank, that it?


How could the frame where the traveling twin always at rest be inertial?

2. If you mean to say that SR doesn't apply to "accelerated" frames I will simply note that Al said the time dilation would be identical for objects which went and returned for objects following either a curved or polygonic path, as it would be if they were moving intertially.

I have no objection to your note. You apparently think your note is relevant because you don't see a difference between 'applying SR to an accelerating object from an inertial frame' and 'applying SR in an accelerating frame'. However, since there is a difference, your note is correct, but in no way disputes what I said.

3. ""SR does not apply to any non-inertial frame..." Are you saying, in effect, that SR doesn't apply anywhere in the known universe?

Are you saying it's not possible to construct an inertial frame in this universe?

Between you and Al, I take Al as representing "mainstream SR," sorry.

What's the "between" part, in your opinion?

One Brow said...

He misses it, because, despite being one of India's reknowned theoreticians, you know a lot that he doesn't, eh?

Does an attack on my credentials somehow rescue Unnikrishan's oversight?

You can view the twins from different frames, but that will just give you different answers, so it is NOT a "resolution."

You can GR with use any rest frame to get the same, correct answer. You can use SR with any inertial rest frame to get the same, correct answer. However, if you use SR with a non-inertial frame, you will get an incorrect answer. The reason for that is SR is designed to be applied in an inertial rest frame.

Only ONE frame gives you the proper resolution in the twin case--it is the frame of the earth twin and it therefore the travelling twin (not the earth twin, and not "both") who ages slower.

Sorry, but wrong. The downtown frame gives the exact same answer as the earth twin frame. The uptown frame give the exact same answer as the earth frame. In all three frames, the traveling twin ages slower. Do you want details?

One Brow said:"He did this by using many small, different, inertial frames (each of which had the ground clock not moving for a very brief period of time) at different times and adding the results together. SR does not work that way."

The consensus I've seen says SR can work exactly that way


This would be the consensus of Essen, Unnikrishan, Dingle, etc., who say SR is full of paradoxes and logically inconsistent? That's what you mean by "work"? I'd say the way they use it doesn't work.

if you care to admit it and use it that way. If you want to deny it, in order to deny a contradction, then you deny it can be done, whether honestly or not, so as to appear to give yourself an escape from an inescapable trap.

If you use SR correctly, there are no paradoxes.

One Brow said: "When x' is 6 light-seconds and v = .6c, you can solve this for x, and get a value of 4.8 light-seconds."

So, even if I'm going only a little over half the speed of light, I still cover 6 full light seconds in less that 6 seconds, eh? Yeah, right.


A light-second is a distance. 4.8 light-seconds is the distance Jill would measure between jack and clock1, when Jack and clock1 are traveling at .6c, Jill is at rest, and jack measures the distance between himself and clock1 to be 6 light-seconds. Traveling at .6c, Jack covers 4.8 light-seconds in 8 seconds (4.8/.6 = 8).

One Brow said:"claiming that Jill would measure the time as 12.5 seconds was just wrong."

Try again.


No need, I had it right the first time.

One Brow said: "When x' is 6 light-seconds and v = .6c, you can solve this for x, and get a value of 4.8 light-seconds."

If Jack sees the distance as 6 light seconds, and if HE is moving, then Jill will see the same distance to be greater, not less, than Jack sees it to be. No wonder your answers are so confused.


If Jack is moving, he has the shorter yardstick. He measures more yards in the same distance than Jill. So, Jack sees a greater distance than Jill.

I can see why you like to avoid details.

One Brow said...

"...these developments do not affect the criticisms of the theory. Even with these units it would still be absurd to assume that the velocity would be the same for two observers in relative motion. Units must be used with common sense."

Can you see why he makes the latter claim?

This is not Essen's only criticism, but it is a valid one.


It would be a valid one is the speed of light was considered constant by definition, as opposed to evidence. I agree that we rely on the constancy of the speed of light to make defnitions about units like speed and distance. However, the constancy itself is nor put forth as a definiton, but as a physical property that can be disproven or confirmed. His criticism is misplaced in that regard.

One Brow said"The guy who wrote the Jack and Jill example used two different rest frames, but each rest frame was inertial, and he did not mix and match them."

Wrong. Once he got trying to give an illogical and irrational "explanation" of why Jill could, given the premises of SR, legitimately consider herself to be at rest despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he started mixing frames ad libitum.


Present an example where the frames are mixed (as opposed to being compared). By mixed, I mean both used to at different points in the same calculation.

Essen, the "crank" ... the world’s greatest authority on the practical problem of timekeeping.

I have no reason to dispute that. Many scientists turn crankish for various reasons. Fopr example, Dr. Margulis did remarkable work with endosymbiosis, and turned the entire biological community on that subject, but lately has been finding endosymbiosis where there is no reason to think it has occured. She is both brilliant and crankish.

And you purport to have more insight into "properly measuring" time than he does, eh?

Absoltuely not. Nor do I recall criticizing anything he has written on time-measuring. Can yo provide a quote to back up that characterization?

"Einstein’s theory of relativity was dealt with very briefly in my university course but we were told that we must not expect to understand it. I accepted this situation and I have since discovered that most physicists are content to remain in the same position assuming that it must be right because it is generally accepted.

I feel sorry for Essen. I was not expected to unerstand it when I took Physics 105, but I was certainly expected to understand it when I took Differential Geometry. I have read a few physicists who understand it and expect others to be able to understand it.

One Brow said...

...I had rather naively thought that scientists would be glad to have an explanation of the confusion which had existed for so long and would at least pay some attention to my explanation, since I had more practical experience in these matters than all the relativitists put together. But I was wrong. No one attempted to refute my arguments although they justified Einstein by repeating his thought experiment and his mistakes in different forms...I was beginning to realise that scientists could be just as irrational as anyone else and having accepted the theory as a faith without understanding it they closed their minds to argument. They also tried to suppress opposition and two of my papers after being accepted by the referees were mysteriously never published.

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html

I think he's at a 90 now.

...Scientists badly wanted a more detailed satisfactory explanation and this is what Einstein thought he had done. All he did was to introduce irrational ideas into physics and incorporate the Lorentz explanation into electromagnetic theory as an assumption. The original puzzling results, therefore, remain and it is important to science that a true explanation should be found.

Maybe an 110.

"Einstein had never made any actual experiments, as far as I can find,

True enough.

William Cantrell addressed this question better than Essen did, in my opinion:

Hie missed a possibility. Since relativity is precisely defined, has made a vairity of successful predictions, and contains no internal contradicitons, it is widely accepted as something that works, for now.

SRT being not falsifiable, it is clear why it survives.

SR is eminently falsifiable.

The relativity principle, as customarily understood, de-mands a symmetry of asymmetry – the clocks of two inertial ob-servers each running slower than the other. To avoid an infinite logical regression to nonsense, SRT therefore needs clock rates to be appearances.

Nice to know Phipps can swallow nonsense whole. The change in clock rates for SRT are real.

...since the GPS data show that the orbiting compensated clocks all run at the same rate as the Master Clock, which tells earth-surface proper time, it must be objec-tively true that orbiting proper-time clocks run slower than earth-surface proper-time clocks. Thus the GPS is telling us that the slow-running of orbiting clocks is not an “appearance” nor a “perception” of the earth-surface observer, but a fact verifiable by any observer. The natural (proper-time) running rates of these clocks are asymmetrical as a matter of physics.

Thus the different inertial sys-tems are not equivalent for measurement purposes.


If you chose, you could choose a single GPS satellites as the master control, and set the clocks of every other satellite in accordance with that one satellite, but this would require some of the satellites to have variable clocks. Why would you bother when the earth's frame is so much simpler to use? Just because the measurement are possible and consistent does not mean the are easy to make.

One Brow said...

The RP asserts the equivalence of all inertial systems for formulating the laws of nature. If, as we have suggested, natu-rally-running clock rates are objectively different in two inertial systems, this means that all natural physical processes proceed at different rates,

Non sequitur.

...It mitigates this logical contradiction not a bit to say that reversing the motion of one of the observers and applying the event calculus resolves the “twin” problem. This does not re-solve, it evades. If no turn-around event occurs the contradiction persists indefinitely.

If no turn-aournd occurs, there is no contradiciton to persist.

After the finally comes when it is generally acknowledged that SR is an inconsistent and insufficient theory of relativity,

*guffaw*. Of course SR is insufficent, otherwise there would be no GR.

I expect SR/GR will eventually be replaced by something that incorporates quantum mechanics as well. What ever this new theory will be, it will continue to purport every feature you ignorantly claim is inconsistent.

Just a hunch, based partly on the way I saw your position shift on the modern synthetic theory of evolution.

The modern synthetic theory is alove and well, having brought many new mechanisms (such as endosymbiosis) into its fold.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "If Jack is moving, he has the shorter yardstick. He measures more yards in the same distance than Jill. So, Jack sees a greater distance than Jill."

Just that simple, eh?

It's not short to him. But the relevant point is that HE is moving while he measures distance, while she isn't. Since he is going .6c, and since, even so, he STILL measures light to be moving at c, then 6 lightseconds (for him) will be the equivalent of a much greater distance for Jill.

From his frame, the distance he measures to be 6 lightseconds would be equivalent to the distance light travels(relative to him) in six seconds. For Jill that distance would be much greater.


Example: Jack emits a light beam at point A. Six seconds (of his) later that beam is approx 1.1 million miles from him(as he sees it). Call that point B. But in that same time, he himself has moved about .65 million miles from point A. For Jill, motionless, the distance between points A and B is close to 1.8 million (about 10 light seconds). For Jack it is only about 1.1 million (because, per SR, he must assume he hasn't moved an inch in the last 6 seconds).

Take the wiki example, as an authoritative illustration, if you consider it authoritative. There is says:

"The ship's crew members also calculate the particulars of their trip from their perspective. They know that the distant star system and the Earth are moving relative to the ship at speed v during the trip. In their rest frame the distance between the Earth and the star system is εd = 0.5d = 2.23 light years..."

So, for the traveler the distance is said to be 2.23 light years. How about for the earth twin?

"Consider a space ship traveling from Earth to the nearest star system outside of our solar system: a distance d = 4.45 light years away..." OK, 4.45 light years for the stationary party.

Question: Which distance is more? 4.45 light years (stationary) or 2.23 light years (moving party)?

I could understand if you wanted to avoid details, as I do. SR is so equivocal with it's everpresent changes of units of measurement that it never really makes sense.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"However, the constancy itself is nor put forth as a definiton, but as a physical property that can be disproven or confirmed. His criticism is misplaced in that regard."

I've tried to explain the invalidity of your logic on this point many times, but you never get it. Essen says: "Even though it was found to be constant under certain conditions, it was quite wrong to make it a constant by definition under all conditions."

You can't "prove" what you assume, as a postulate, ab initio. If you use SR to calculate the speed of light then you MUST, by logical implication, always get the same speed.

Different assumption (as in LR) would get completely different results. So you are "proving' nothing by saying, given the assumptions of SR, the speed of light is constant in all frames. It's like "proving" that a panther is red by saying "red is red." An empty tautology is you have already posited that everything is red.

This is typical for you, just as when you thought your computer simulations "proved" your mistaken assumptions.

aintnuthin said...

I said: "From his frame, the distance he measures to be 6 lightseconds would be equivalent to the distance light travels(relative to him) in six seconds. For Jill that distance would be much greater."

The same point is supposedly made(it is merely assumed, really) in the light clock examples. The stationary observer sees the beam on a moving light clock(in the "same" amount of time) to move much further than does the moving observer. The "distance" is shorter for the moving party, longer for the stationary party.


These light clock examples also illustrate Essen's point very well, at least if you take the time to analyze the underlying assumptions and rationale.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"The speed of light is not considered to be constant by defintion, but as a physical property of light itself. It's straighforward to discredit: run an experiement where light moves at a different speed than 299,792,458m/s. This argument is like saying Newton's gravitational constant constitutes a duplication of units. You could use it to dismiss any physical constant in the world."

No, you miss the point. Although the two are related, Essen's point about "duplication" is different from using light as a definition. One is the consequence of the other.

As a matter of logical circularity, it is always wrong to prove your conclusion by positing it in the first place. That is a separate problem, whatever the argument.

But, as a result of this particular defintion, Al not only redefines both time and length, but he does it in such a way that it constantly varies (but is still treated as "the same"). That's where the "duplication" comes in. There is no one standard unit for a second, or an inch. It changes constantly, pursuant to the theory. There is no one "inch;" there are instead an infinite number of (different) inches.

As Phipps noted, all the different "seconds" must be treated as identical for SR to work. When they REALLY are identical (as with "compenstated, i.e., "tampered with" clocks used in GPS satellites) the theory falls apart. In the GPS set-up, the speed of light is NOT constant.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"Nice to know Phipps can swallow nonsense whole. The change in clock rates for SRT are real."

They are not real by your descriptions of them. Sure, you repeatedly *say* they are real, but you describe them in such a way as to demonstrate it is a matter of appearance only that you are describing. In your terminology, a "real appearance."

Phipp's definition of "real" is correct. Yours is wrong, as you have previously used it. If you now disagree with Phipps, then you are the one who is shallowing a misrepresentation whole, not him.

Do you agree with him? He's saying the same things I've been saying. The clock rate are measurable, not actually reciprocal, and a constitute a testable inherent lack of symmetry in EVERY situation where two objects are moving with respect to each other?

If you deny that, then you are simply using a different (mistaken) definition of "real" than he is, and, unlike him, you are ignoring the implications for SR generated by the working principles of the GPS system.

One Brow said...

aintnuthin said...
One Brow said: "If Jack is moving, he has the shorter yardstick. He measures more yards in the same distance than Jill. So, Jack sees a greater distance than Jill."

Just that simple, eh?


In the case where clock1 shares the inertial frame of Jack, sure.

It's not short to him.

Of course not.

From his frame, the distance he measures to be 6 lightseconds would be equivalent to the distance light travels(relative to him) in six seconds. For Jill that distance would be much greater.

Jack can't measure the distance light travels in six seconds, because he has no way of recording when the light stops. If he is measuring using light, Jack can only measure the 12 seconds it takes for light to leave and return. Since Jack is moving and his clock is slowed, he will show less time has passed then Jill for this same process. That means he sees the light to travel less of a distance.

However, Jill sees the light travel a longer distance because she sees clock1 moving away from the light (I actually got the full 12 seconds just to see the light travel from Jack to clock1 and 3 seconds for the return trip. I'm not sure why you say Jill sees ten seconds). She still sees the distance between Jack and clock1 as 4.8 light-seconds.

Calculations for Jill (who is not moving):
Time from Jack to clock1: Light travels at c, clock1 at .6c away from Jack. The difference in speeds is .4c Distance is 4.8cs. 4.8cs/.4c = 12s.
Time from clock1 to Jack: Light travels at c, Jack at .6c toward clock1. The of speeds is 1.6c Distance is 4.8cs. 4.8cs/1.6c = 3s.

Jill sees 15 seconds. Traveling at .6c, Jack is slowed by a a factor of .8 on his clock. 15 * .8 = 12, which is the time we had for Jack already.

Take the wiki example, as an authoritative illustration, if you consider it authoritative.

It will do.

There is says:

"The ship's crew members also calculate the particulars of their trip from their perspective. They know that the distant star system and the Earth are moving relative to the ship at speed v during the trip. In their rest frame the distance between the Earth and the star system is εd = 0.5d = 2.23 light years..."

So, for the traveler the distance is said to be 2.23 light years. How about for the earth twin?

"Consider a space ship traveling from Earth to the nearest star system outside of our solar system: a distance d = 4.45 light years away..." OK, 4.45 light years for the stationary party.

Question: Which distance is more? 4.45 light years (stationary) or 2.23 light years (moving party)?


The star is in the same inertial state as the earth, so the earth measures the furthest distance between itself and the start (the "proper distance", akin to the proper time). Clock1 is in the inertial state as Jack, so Jack measures the furthest distance to clock1. Feel free to go find any similar eaxmple from any site trying to teach relativity (as opposed to discredit it), and that aspect of teh calculation will always be the same. You'll get teh maximal distance when measuring from the same inertial state.

One Brow said...

I could understand if you wanted to avoid details, as I do.

But I don't. The details are where the truth comes out, where different understandings get tested.

SR is so equivocal with it's everpresent changes of units of measurement that it never really makes sense.

I will keep trying to help you out, there.

One Brow said:"However, the constancy itself is nor put forth as a definiton, but as a physical property that can be disproven or confirmed. His criticism is misplaced in that regard."

I've tried to explain the invalidity of your logic on this point many times, but you never get it.


What's the part I didn't get? That's it's wrong to use inductive logic in science? This is a special case where inductive logic is wrong?

You can't "prove" what you assume, as a postulate, ab initio.

Of course not. You can only disprove it. When you fail to disprove it, the failure is a confirmation, but it is not a proof.

If you use SR to calculate the speed of light then you MUST, by logical implication, always get the same speed.

You don't need to use SR to calculate the speed of light. All you need is a suitable yardstick, a suitable clock, a light generator, and a reflector. You can do it in more complicated ways, but none of them involve SR.

So if a physicist believe the speed of light is not constant, what to stop him from using this?

Different assumption (as in LR) would get completely different results.

Oooooops. LR assumes the constancy of light in a vacuum, just like SR.

So you are "proving' nothing by saying, given the assumptions of SR, the speed of light is constant in all frames.

Of course not. That would be circular, because the constancy of light is a postulate of SR.

These light clock examples also illustrate Essen's point very well, at least if you take the time to analyze the underlying assumptions and rationale.

Only if they could illustrate the difference between a definition for the speed of light and a physical property of the speed of light. The examples do not make that distinction.

No, you miss the point. Although the two are related, Essen's point about "duplication" is different from using light as a definition. One is the consequence of the other.

No, I got the the point about duplication is dependent on the point about definition. Again, you can make the same argument about any physical constant.

As a matter of logical circularity, it is always wrong to prove your conclusion by positing it in the first place. That is a separate problem, whatever the argument.

True. So go out there and find an example of light not moving as 299,792,458 m/s in a vacuum, or at the appropriate speed in some other medium. You'll win a Nobel prize if you can make it happen.

One Brow said...

But, as a result of this particular defintion, Al not only redefines both time and length, but he does it in such a way that it constantly varies (but is still treated as "the same").

We know passage through time varies.

That's where the "duplication" comes in. There is no one standard unit for a second, or an inch. It changes constantly, pursuant to the theory. There is no one "inch;" there are instead an infinite number of (different) inches.

In any inertial state, you can verify the length of an inch in that state using the same process. Whet difference does it make if it looks different to other people?

In the GPS set-up, the speed of light is NOT constant.

*chuckle*. Did Phipps say that, or is this your own spin on his words?

One Brow said:"Nice to know Phipps can swallow nonsense whole. The change in clock rates for SRT are real."

They are not real by your descriptions of them.


How kind of you to tell me what I mean. It will save you all that effort of actually understanding what I mean.

Sure, you repeatedly *say* they are real, but you describe them in such a way as to demonstrate it is a matter of appearance only that you are describing. In your terminology, a "real appearance."

Differences in inertial states are real, physical things. The changes caused by different inertial states are real, physical things. It's not just an appearance.

Phipp's definition of "real" is correct.

I didn't question his definition of real, but his characterization of a phenomenon as appearance, not reality.

Yours is wrong, as you have previously used it. If you now disagree with Phipps, then you are the one who is shallowing a misrepresentation whole, not him.

How frustrating this must be for you. My understanding every you say, pointing out why your understadings are misinterpretations, and you struggling to see it.

Do you agree with him? He's saying the same things I've been saying. The clock rate are measurable, not actually reciprocal, and a constitute a testable inherent lack of symmetry in EVERY situation where two objects are moving with respect to each other?

The clock rates are measurable in any inertial state the measurer happens to be in. In that state, the measurer see a real difference in the rates of the two clocks. In different inertials states, the measurer will copme to different conclusions abotu which clock is really faster. In particular, in the inertial of one clock, the other colck is running slower. This relationship is real and reciprocal.

Where I would disagree is the "testable" part. GPS is not a test, because it is constructed in one viewpoint only, that of the earth. Any time you construct a test to measure from one viewpoint, the test results will confirm that viewpoint.

If you deny that, then you are simply using a different (mistaken) definition of "real" than he is, and, unlike him, you are ignoring the implications for SR generated by the working principles of the GPS system.

The GPS system works according to the principles of mainstream SR/GR, with a chosen viewpoint.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "The speed of light is not considered to be constant by defintion, but as a physical property of light itself. It's straighforward to discredit: run an experiement where light moves at a different speed than 299,792,458m/s."

The "constancy" being referred to here is NOT the constancy within a single frame, it is the contancy among ALL inertial frames. You are confusing the two.

aintnuthin said...

Jack and Jill: Let's say Jack has been moving at .6c, relative to Jill, for years, and that it will be another month before he encounters (passes) her.

In that month, he sets up two clocks (each also moving at .6c relative to Jill. He sets them 6 light seconds apart. How does he "know" they are 6 light seconds apart? Because he knows that it takes 6 seconds for light to travel between the two (in his frame). Here we get into issues that Essen raised by defining "distance" (which should be used to help calculate the speed of light) itself being "calculated" by the very speed it is supposed to help measure (which is posited to by 186,000 mps). Jack is saying: I know the distance because I know the time it takes light to traverse it and I ALREADY know the speed of light.

That issue aside, a second in Jack's frame is longer than a second in Jack's frame (but it is still posited to travel at 186,000 mps for Jill in her frame). The question is, will light travel farther in 6 of Jack's seconds, or 6 of Jill's seconds?

Jack's of course, because his seconds are longer than Jill's (his clock runs slow compared to hers). So "6 light seconds" in Jack's frame is longer (more distance) than "6 light seconds" in Jill frame.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: " In different inertials states, the measurer will copme to different conclusions abotu which clock is really faster."


Another mistake you repeatedly make. If he, "the measurer," does (come to a different conclusion his conclusion will NOT be a function of either his inertial frame or his state of motion. Neither motion nor frames of reference reach into a guy's head and starting mangling his neurons around to force him to reach a given logical "conclusion."

His assumptions, and only his assumptions, together with logic, (good or bad) lead his to his conclusions.

Assuming each uses valid logic, his conclusions about his clock will be different from the conclusions reached by the other observer ONLY if their assumptions are different. If not, they will each agree on who's clock is running faster and who's is running slower.

If each assumes that HE is stationary, then they are making mutually contradictory assumptions. Only then will they reach different conclusions.

Again, conclusions depend on subjective assumptions, not motion, not a reference frame, and not even objective facts otherwise known to all.

The chump who is riding a motorcycle while insisting he is motionless will reach a different conclusion that a sane person who acknowledges his own obvious motion.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "Where I would disagree is the "testable" part. GPS is not a test, because it is constructed in one viewpoint only, that of the earth. Any time you construct a test to measure from one viewpoint, the test results will confirm that viewpoint."

GPS doesn't have to be designed as a to reveal inrefutable facts which are testable. That said, the GPS designers did "test" the clock rates. Initially they were not sure what empirical result they would encounter so they sent two types of clocks with the satellites. One adjusted, and one unadjusted. The unadjusted clocks quickly became desynchronized the the "master clock," The adjusted clocks did not.

aintnuthin said...

I said: "You can't "prove" what you assume, as a postulate, ab initio."

You said: "Of course not. You can only disprove it. When you fail to disprove it, the failure is a confirmation, but it is not a proof."

Once again, you completely miss the point. Once you posit something in a theory it is thereafter beyond testing within the tenents of that theory.

Example: Postulate: All cats are black.

Once that is assumed as a postulate, no future observation can contradict it if you assume the theory is accurate.

Anything that is not black cannot, by postulate and definition, be a cat. Likewise, anything that is a cat cannot be non-black.

Likewise, you can't disprove it by assuming it is false. Then it is false by assumption. This is essentially why SR cannot be tested against LR. If either of two theories predicts different "secondary" results (i.e., necessary implications of the postulates, as opposed to the postulates themselves) they can be pitted against each other in that way, but not otherwise.

aintnuthin said...

Example: A necessary implication of SR is that measures of time and will changes with speed.

Now, when you go beyond assuming that the hypothesis is correct, and extend your assumption of correctness to all implications also, you have rendered the theory untestable.

All the light-clock assumption DERIVE both time and distance in all frames from the postulate. Hence they use clocks to measure length, and yardsticks to measure time? How can that be justified? Well, because you KNOW, for a fact, that light travels at 186,000 in all frames. How do you know that? Because Al said so.

Now you never need to know both the time and the distance to know the speed (as you would with any other measurement. "Speed" is no longer distance travelled divided by time elapsed. Having accepted the indisputable truth of the unproven postulate, you need only know time elasped to know the distance travelled, and only need know distance travelled to "know" (assume) the time elapsed.

And, course, it is just such unfalsifiable "tests" that lead you to insist that the reciprocity is "empirical," i.e., something "seen" and "measured." It aint, but I know you will never understand this.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "This relationship is real and reciprocal."

The relationship that's real is that one clock, and only one clock, is running faster that the other.

By definition this is a non-reciprocal, asymmetrical relationship, i.e., the opposite of what you claim it to be this is respect.

I said: "The question is, will light travel farther in 6 of Jack's seconds, or 6 of Jill's seconds? Jack's of course, because his seconds are longer than Jill's (his clock runs slow compared to hers). So "6 light seconds" in Jack's frame is longer (more distance) than "6 light seconds" in Jill frame."

Let's just cut to the chase on this. In the original problem, Jack's clock registered 10 seconds, and Jill's registered 8 seconds.

You claimed the answer would be the same if the situation were reversed, and Jack was moving at .6c and Jill was stationary.

Do you still maintain that the answer will be the same, i.e., that Jack's clock will still read 10 seconds while Jill's reads 8?

aintnuthin said...

I said:"After the day finally comes when it is generally acknowledged that SR is an inconsistent and insufficient theory of relativity,..."

You said: "*guffaw*. Of course SR is insufficent, otherwise there would be no GR."

GR is, despite having been misnominated from the get-go, a theory of gravity, not a theory of relative motion, so it has not a replacement of SR in that respect. It is probably true, though, that Al might not have attempted (and failed) to reformulate a new theory of relative motion had he not considered SR to be insufficient and inaccurate.

aintnuthin said...

I said: "In the GPS set-up, the speed of light is NOT constant."

You responded:"*chuckle*. Did Phipps say that, or is this your own spin on his words?"

That is simply common knowledge. In the GPS set up, the speed of light is constant and isotropic in only one frame--the ECI frame established for the "master clock." It basically relies on LR premises, not SR premises in it's operation.

Keep on chucklin, though, eh?

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "Differences in inertial states are real, physical things. The changes caused by different inertial states are real, physical things. It's not just an appearance."

Here again is the implicit assumption that an 'inertial state" can cause changes. This cannot literally be true. If real (not just apparent) changes in clock rates result, those changes must be caused by a change in the osilation frequency of physical events. Changing frames may make these changes apparent, but the change of frames cannot "cause" a real change. A change of frames could very well cause a different "appearance," but that would not be a real, physical change, only an apparent one.

aintnuthin said...

As a guy walks away from me, he gets smaller and smaller until, eventually, he just vanishes. There are two ways to explain what has happened:

1. The guy appears to get smaller with distance, and

2. The guy "really does" get smaller with distance.

These are two vastly different statements, as Essen properly noted. Anyone who thinks the two statements are equivalent simply cannot make the necessary distinction between objective reality and subjective appearance; between actual changess and perceptual changes; or, ultimately, between cause and effect.

aintnuthin said...

Needless to say, Eric, I am pointing out that you seem utterly incapable of consistenly applying this distinction in practice. Sure, you can, and will, insist that the distinction is obvious to everyone and denied by no one. But as soon as it comes to analyzing a concrete case where the distinction is relevant, you proceed as if there is no distinction whatsoever between perceptual and actual changes. You seem incapable of distinguishing objective from subjective causes and effects.

Those who can't make the distinction give themselves wide latitude in affirming the consistency of inconsistencies; of accepting magical and mystical explanations of causes; and of convincing themselves of the "truth" of just about any proposition they wish to advance.

aintnuthin said...

More from Phipps, who, as you may recall, authored a previously-cited article about the Galliean invariant form of Maxwell's equations by Hertz(and, independently, by many others subsequently). Phipps, by the way, recieved a doctorate in nuclear physics at Harvard and later taught for many years at the Univerity of Illinois. I predict that you will soon be calling him a "crank."

"There is no doubt of this decay asymmetry as an objective fact having nothing to do with any observer’s idea of “simultaneity.” Next, apply the Relativity Principle and hold the clock P at rest, while the set of Q-clocks rotate around it, so that the relative motion is unaltered. The Principle, as embodied in the (instantaneously applied) Lorentz transformation, asserts a symmetry such that what was true before must be true with the roles of P and Q interchanged. Thus the Q clocks progressively lose time relative to the P clock. This translates to a rate difference such that the laboratory Q-clocks now run slower than the muon P-clock. The circling P-muon therefore is predicted (by the same reasoning that just predicted the opposite) to decay more rapidly than its notional counterpart, the lab-stationary Q-muon. This is contrary to observed fact – what Dingle accurately termed a “lie.”

The Relativity Principle, incautiously interpreted, tells lies. As the muons are informing us, in nature timekeeping asymmetry
works in only one direction. This needs to be recognized as a physical fact that trumps the mathematical symmetry."

http://www.jscimath.org/uploads/J200816TP.pdf?CFID=3933639&CFTOKEN=92945736&jsessionid=843091f6226f3c624956293a3e3751652241

This is, of course, the same observation he made in connection with the implications of the facts demonstrated by the GPS system. In short, the reciprocity of the lorentz transformations is formal(mathematical symmetry"), but not actual (asymmetrical as "physical fact").

Phipps goes on to further analyze the necessity of distingushing math from physics by articulating the notion of what he calls a "produced motion" (basically how inertia allows the determination of motion, as I read it), which rejects the strictly mathematical approach to physics:

"That is, Einstein simply presents us with a set of imagined inertial systems, all in relative motion. Such relative motions are neither initiated nor terminated, but are perpetual. They exist and have always existed “in eternity.” This is decidedly a mathematician’s approach. A physicist must recognize that no relative motion occurs without being produced through performance of work or expenditure of energy...If we supplement SRT with the convention, definition, stipulation, or assumption that those clocks are rate-slowed that have work done on them – the more work the greater the rate change – then we seem to glimpse the possibility of resolving the ambiguity and extracting from the hazy theory (tarnished by its operationally meaningless flirting with “eternity”) a shiny, clean-cut prediction."

aintnuthin said...

While you're at it, you may want to call Feynman a "crank" too, for failing to acknowledge the "actual" reciprocity of the LT in SR. As Phipps notes....

"As still another alternative, the accelerative aspect of “travel” can be identified as itself responsible for the crucial asymmetry. This was Feynman’s approach (Feynman, Leighton, & Sands 1966). Such tacit recognition of the need to invoke a physical asymmetry inconsistent with (and over-riding) the mathematical symmetry of the Lorentz transformation takes us halfway to the main topic of this paper, to which we next turn...

The present resolution of the twin paradox will be recognized as rather close to that of Feynman et al. (1966). Like him, we acknowledge that the mathematical symmetry demands to be over-ridden by physically asymmetrical considerations, in order that the theory not make a fool of itself as physics. He chose “acceleration” as the physical symmetry-breaker; we have chosen energy or action expenditure for that role."

aintnuthin said...

After having previously observed that "I recognize that my contemporaries have been schooled to accept SRT as an Immaculate Conception," Phipps' offers these concluding comments on the topic:

"Physicists must decide what they desire of their “physical” theories. Do they want right predictions or do they want beautiful mathematics? As things presently stand, they are living in a dream world if they think they are entitled to both. Perhaps when the underlying mathematical formalism has been improved… But present practitioners have not earned improvement in that department because they have not only never sought it but have systematically fought it (Dingle 1972), with a success the endurance of which must become one of the wonders of future history of science. It will be compared with the success of Ptolemaic astronomy, a showpiece for the thousand-year persistence of a postulated mathematical beauty never surpassed – that of the perfect circle."

aintnuthin said...

You may notice that Phipps does not offer his slight "modification" of SR as any more than a "stopgap" measure necessary "to keep SR from making a fool of itself, physically." He believes a more complete theory of motion is needed.

Insofar as I understand him, the latter is what the Indian physicist is proposing. He calls it "cosmic relativity," which may suggest something novel, but it appears to be an attempt to adopt and justify Mach's suggestion that distant matter could be the heretofore unexplained "origin of inertia."

He seems to advance the proposition that ALL time dilation is gravitational in origin and explanation and to disavow the "artificial" division of time dilation into dynamic and gravitational components.

Motion, he claims, is simply motion relative to "the universe" (and all matter in it), and for this reason the CMBR needs to be used as a reference point against which an object is said to be moving.

Right or wrong, there is certainly nothing "crankish" about his suggestions.

aintnuthin said...

Actually, it seems similar to Newton's definition of "true motion." Although conceding that such a point could not be empirically identified, Newton said "true motion" was motion with respect to the point which was the center of mass of the entire universe.

One Brow said...

The "constancy" being referred to here is NOT the constancy within a single frame, it is the contancy among ALL inertial frames. You are confusing the two.

Not at all. Run an experiment where you measure the same light source from different inertial frames. If you get a different value for c, you disprove the constancy of light. It's actually a simple concept.

In that month, he sets up two clocks (each also moving at .6c relative to Jill. He sets them 6 light seconds apart. How does he "know" they are 6 light seconds apart? Because he knows that it takes 6 seconds for light to travel between the two (in his frame).

That's an easy way, but not the only way. He can also use a really long measuring stick. Of course, he can't set up both clocks while statying in his inertial state, but we can assume they are set up, and Jack has returned to his inertial state, well before the first clock passes Jill.

That issue aside, a second in Jack's frame is longer than a second in Jack's frame (but it is still posited to travel at 186,000 mps for Jill in her frame). The question is, will light travel farther in 6 of Jack's seconds, or 6 of Jill's seconds?

Jack's of course, because his seconds are longer than Jill's (his clock runs slow compared to hers). So "6 light seconds" in Jack's frame is longer (more distance) than "6 light seconds" in Jill frame.


However, because the measuring stick is shortened, Jack's light-second is shorter than Jill's.

I didn't see where this was supoosed to be going. Did you have a point?

Another mistake you repeatedly make. If he, "the measurer," does (come to a different conclusion his conclusion will NOT be a function of either his inertial frame or his state of motion.

Why not?

Neither motion nor frames of reference reach into a guy's head and starting mangling his neurons around to force him to reach a given logical "conclusion."

?????? I was referring to the conclusions derived from the measurement processes.

His assumptions, and only his assumptions, together with logic, (good or bad) lead his to his conclusions.

While some assumptions are fundamental to the process of measurement, the results of measurements relies on much more than just those assumptions.

One Brow said...

Assuming each uses valid logic, his conclusions about his clock will be different from the conclusions reached by the other observer ONLY if their assumptions are different. If not, they will each agree on who's clock is running faster and who's is running slower.

An "assumption" of which clock is running slower can be different from a measurement of which clock is running slower.
The assumpiton doesn't change the measurement.

If each assumes that HE is stationary, then they are making mutually contradictory assumptions. Only then will they reach different conclusions.

Right.

Again, conclusions depend on subjective assumptions, not motion, not a reference frame, and not even objective facts otherwise known to all.

The reference frame is the subjective assumption to which you refer. Once that is chosen, the objectve facts determine the conclusion.

The chump who is riding a motorcycle while insisting he is motionless will reach a different conclusion that a sane person who acknowledges his own obvious motion.

Sure. But in every way that matter, they lead to the same conclusions.

That said, the GPS designers did "test" the clock rates. Initially they were not sure what empirical result they would encounter so they sent two types of clocks with the satellites. One adjusted, and one unadjusted. The unadjusted clocks quickly became desynchronized the the "master clock," The adjusted clocks did not.

Interesting. I guess they weren't that sure of SR/GR after all. Nice to know it was confirmed.

Once again, you completely miss the point. Once you posit something in a theory it is thereafter beyond testing within the tenents of that theory.

Where did I miss that? Where have I propsed any test for the constancy of light that relies on SR? Of course you test the constancy of light without using SR.

Example: Postulate: All cats are black.

Once that is assumed as a postulate, no future observation can contradict it if you assume the theory is accurate.

Anything that is not black cannot, by postulate and definition, be a cat. Likewise, anything that is a cat cannot be non-black.


You are confusing a pustulate and a definition, just as Essen did. If the definiton of a cat is "something born within this lineage of mammals" or "a living things with features A1 through An", its extremely easy to test the pustulate against that definition.

So, all you have to do is use a distance acknowledged as a meter for the test. You can define a meter in fifteen different ways for this purpose, you don't have to use the standard definition.

One Brow said...

This is essentially why SR cannot be tested against LR.

The actual reason is that SR and LR use the exact same equations in the exact same way, with the primary difference being that SR recognizes all inertial frames as being valid, while LR recognizes one frame as being correct.

If either of two theories predicts different "secondary" results

They don't.

Example: A necessary implication of SR is that measures of time and will changes with speed.

Now, when you go beyond assuming that the hypothesis is correct, and extend your assumption of correctness to all implications also, you have rendered the theory untestable.


Why. You can test by checking if time changes with different speeds. Send a clock down a track at 1 mph, 10 mph. and 100 mph. SR predicts they will have a different ratio of time recorded versus the time elapsed. Since you control the length of the track and speed of the cart, the actual time taken can be calculated without using a light clock.

All the light-clock assumption DERIVE both time and distance in all frames from the postulate.

So don't use a light-clock.

And, course, it is just such unfalsifiable "tests" that lead you to insist that the reciprocity is "empirical," i.e., something "seen" and "measured." It aint, but I know you will never understand this.

You seem to think that I don't understand that a test constructed using the SR postulates and based on the principles of SR can't test SR. If so, your thoughts are incorrect. I fully understand and agree that a test constructed using the SR postulates and based on the principles of SR can't test SR. The solution is to construct test that are not based on the principles of SR. This seems quite elementary to conceive (if not necessarily easy to accomplish). I'm not sure why you have so much trouble seeing that I am suggesting SR-deniers perform the latter sorts of tests.

One Brow said: "This relationship is real and reciprocal."

The relationship that's real is that one clock, and only one clock, is running faster that the other.


That is the LR interpretation. It is not the only interpretation. An equally valid interpretation is that the corect answer varies upon the inertial state from which the answer is proposed.

By definition this is a non-reciprocal, asymmetrical relationship, i.e., the opposite of what you claim it to be this is respect.

I agree that once you determine the preferred inertial state, you have a non-reciprocal, asymmetrical relationship.

One Brow said...

Let's just cut to the chase on this. In the original problem, Jack's clock registered 10 seconds, and Jill's registered 8 seconds.

You claimed the answer would be the same if the situation were reversed, and Jack was moving at .6c and Jill was stationary.

Do you still maintain that the answer will be the same, i.e., that Jack's clock will still read 10 seconds while Jill's reads 8?


As long as clock1 is in Jack's inertial frame, yes.

GR is, despite having been misnominated from the get-go, a theory of gravity, not a theory of relative motion, so it has not a replacement of SR in that respect.

GR is a thoery of both gravity and motion. The GR equations reduce to the SR equations when all motion is inertial. Yhe GR predicitons become the SR predicitons when all motion is inertial. How can GR completely encompass a theory of relative motion and not be at least in part a theory of relative motion?

That is simply common knowledge. In the GPS set up, the speed of light is constant and isotropic in only one frame--the ECI frame established for the "master clock." It basically relies on LR premises, not SR premises in it's operation.

In LR, the speed of light is constant in all inertial frames, just like in SR.

Keep on chucklin, though, eh?

As long as you keep on being so amusing.

One Brow said: "Differences in inertial states are real, physical things. The changes caused by different inertial states are real, physical things. It's not just an appearance."

Here again is the implicit assumption that an 'inertial state" can cause changes.


No, a difference in inertial states causes change. To get from one inertial state to another is an acceleration. If acceleration is an absolute, it must be true that differences in inertial states are absolutes, and therefore capable of producing physical changes. This does not mean the inertial state itself has effects.

If real (not just apparent) changes in clock rates result, those changes must be caused by a change in the osilation frequency of physical events.

It can also be caused by the same oscillation frequency trraveling through the time dimension at different rates. You can change the mileage on an odometer by changing paths; you can change the ticks on a clock changing paths. There is a minimal distance you can put on an odometer between two locations, there is a maximal time you can spend between two events in the same location.

One Brow said...

1. The guy appears to get smaller with distance, and

2. The guy "really does" get smaller with distance.

These are two vastly different statements,


Your point is accurate. However, by focusing on the the guy, you forget that his being further away has other, physical effects. By focusing only on the effects related to appearance, you miss the larger point of extant physical differences.

Needless to say, Eric, I am pointing out that you seem utterly incapable of consistenly applying this distinction in practice.

I am quite aware that this is the reason you are pointing it out. I'm fully aware that you think I'm not aplying this distinction. You are just incorrect.

... you proceed as if there is no distinction whatsoever between perceptual and actual changes.

Feel free to being up an example.

More from Phipps, who, as you may recall, authored a previously-cited article about the Galliean invariant form of Maxwell's equations by Hertz(and, independently, by many others subsequently). Phipps, by the way, recieved a doctorate in nuclear physics at Harvard and later taught for many years at the Univerity of Illinois. I predict that you will soon be calling him a "crank."

He's basing his analysis on clocks revolving aro9und another clock while not being accelerated. You think that's good science?

Wait. olet me guess, you don't know. Sure, you can say that some 95% of physicists, who have heard and dismissed these ideas, they aren't reliable. this guy, you can't judge.

"There is no doubt of this decay asymmetry as an objective fact having nothing to do with any observer’s idea of “simultaneity.” Next, apply the Relativity Principle and hold the clock P at rest, while the set of Q-clocks rotate around it, so that the relative motion is unaltered.

1) One body revolves around another body, not rotates.
2) Clocks revolving around another clock are in an accelerated state, to relative motion is beiong constantly altered by the act of revolving.

The Principle, as embodied in the (instantaneously applied) Lorentz transformation,

Notice the need to use "instantaneously applied". That's because he's using Many different frames to analyze the situation from Q's point of view, each frame being used "instantaneuosly", and then added up. But SR doesn't work that way. You need to choose a single frame. P's frame will be easiest, but you could use any one of the many different instantaneous frames a Q occupies. You just can't use every frame a Q occupies in the same analysis. One frame per analysis.

One Brow said...

– what Dingle accurately termed a “lie.”

This would be the same Dingle that the mathguy said didn't understand SR?

The Relativity Principle, incautiously interpreted,

Inaccurately used, actually.

This is, of course, the same observation he made in connection with the implications of the facts demonstrated by the GPS system.

The GPS satellties are not in inertial motion. They accelerate around the planet.

If we supplement SRT with the convention, definition, stipulation, or assumption that those clocks are rate-slowed that have work done on them – the more work the greater the rate change – then we seem to glimpse the possibility of resolving the ambiguity and extracting from the hazy theory (tarnished by its operationally meaningless flirting with “eternity”) a shiny, clean-cut prediction."

You don't need to do that, you only need to pick an inertial frame. Why add on a lot of uneeded dross?

While you're at it, you may want to call Feynman a "crank" too, for failing to acknowledge the "actual" reciprocity of the LT in SR. As Phipps notes....

Quoting Phipps interpreting Feynman is still quoting Phipps, not Feynman. You want to being Feynman in, use his quote.

"As still another alternative, the accelerative aspect of “travel” can be identified as itself responsible for the crucial asymmetry.

Acceleration is an absolute physical occurence, with real physical effects. This is part of mainstream-SR.

He chose “acceleration” as the physical symmetry-breaker; we have chosen energy or action expenditure for that role."

I don't know this is an accurate interpretation of Feynman. I do know that neither is the physical symmetry breaker. The syjmmetry breaker is passing through different inertial frames. To the degree that acceleration, applicaiton of energy, etc. can result in a change of inertial frames, they can be a distal cause of the physical symmetry breakhng, but they are not a proximate cause.

"Physicists must decide what they desire of their “physical” theories. Do they want right predictions or do they want beautiful mathematics?

Properly used, SRT offers both.

He believes a more complete theory of motion is needed.

Who doesn't?

Right or wrong, there is certainly nothing "crankish" about his suggestions.

It's quite possible to propose reasonable alternatives to crankish interpretations.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "In LR, the speed of light is constant in all inertial frames, just like in SR."

Who told you that? It's wrong.

In LR the speed of light is MEASURED to be constant in all frames but it is NOT, in fact, constant. In LR light speed is constant and isotropic in only one frame, as a matter of claimed objective reality. The appearance of constantly is just that--a false and misleading appearance caused by the the distortion of length-measuring instruments and a factual fluctuation in the rate of frequency of physically oscilating processes(a distortion of time).

Once again, you seem incapable of distinguishing a claim of subjective appearance from a claim of objective fact.

aintnuthin said...

I asked: "Do you still maintain that the answer will be the same, i.e., that Jack's clock will still read 10 seconds while Jill's reads 8?"

As long as clock1 is in Jack's inertial frame, yes.

So, when Jill is motionless while Jack is movng they will both see Jack's clock as running faster(10 seconds is faster than 8 seconds), and when Jack is motionless, they will both STILL see Jack's clock as running faster, that the idea?

Restated: If Jill sees 8 seconds in her non-moving frame, she will see 10 seconds to have elapsed in Jack's moving frame, that it? So the moving clock runs faster if SHE is motionless, but the moving clock runs slower if JACK is motionless?

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "That's an easy way, but not the only way. He can also use a really long measuring stick...However, because the measuring stick is shortened, Jack's light-second is shorter than Jill's.

We were discussing distance. So what is your point? That you can arrive at two completely different lengths using SR, just depending on which of two "equally valid" alternative ways of determining distance you care to choose?

And you want to claim that SR is consistent? Go figure, eh?

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "That's an easy way, but not the only way. He can also use a really long measuring stick...However, because the measuring stick is shortened, Jack's light-second is shorter than Jill's.

We were discussing distance. So what is your point? That you can arrive at two completely different lengths using SR, just depending on which of two "equally valid" alternative ways of determining distance you care to choose?

And you want to claim that SR is consistent? Go figure, eh?

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "The reference frame is the subjective assumption to which you refer. Once that is chosen, the objectve facts determine the conclusion."

Repeating, for about the 100th time, your confusion about objective versus subjective reality.

The way you state that there are, and can be, NO objective facts (the primary point on which the mathguy chastised Dingle).

You have the "objective facts" pre-conditioned upon a subjective "choice." This makes those so-called "objective facts" strictly subjective in origin, and hence subjective.

Can't you see this?

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "Your point is accurate. However, by focusing on the the guy, you forget that his being further away has other, physical effects. By focusing only on the effects related to appearance, you miss the larger point of extant physical differences."

Of course there are physical explanations, founded on empirically-testable premises, of actual changes which explain WHY the guy appears to get smaller. But here again, you are off on another non-sequitur.

The question is about whether the subjective phenomena reflect a mere change in appearance or an objective physical change in the object (the guy walking) being observed. A change in mere appearance only may be fully explained by other physical variables, but that fact does NOT make it an objective change as opposed to a change in appearance only.

You want to equate any physical difference as being the equivalent of a claim that the guy walking "really gets smaller, as a matter of real physical changes."

Again, your utter confusion is amply demonstrated.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "He's basing his analysis on clocks revolving aro9und another clock while not being accelerated. You think that's good science?"

If it's not good science, then take it up with Al, who used identical scenario to explain his theory. In other words, haul off and renounce, once and for all, SR as any kind of viable theory, rather than contesting it's premises at every step, and then asserting that you agree with it.


One Brow said: "Sure, you can say that some 95% of physicists, who have heard and dismissed these ideas, they aren't reliable. this guy, you can't judge."

You mean the 95% of scientist who claim that, among other verifications..

1. The behavior of muons orbiting at relativistic speed in a particle accelerator,
2. clocks in airplanes flying in the earth's atmosphere, and
3. clocks in satellites orbiting the earth..

all "verify" the predictions of SR? Not to the mention all the other terrestrial experiments to which they attach implications which "confirm" SR?

Like, Al, physicists see that, hollow, formal arguments aside, linear and circular uniform motion are just special cases of uniform speed.

Again, experiment prove that acceleration (non-inertial motion) makes no difference whatsoever in the calculation of time dilation.

But you just keep on beating that drum, eh? Just remember to beat it selectively so that you can still claim that SR has been repeatedly verified by experiment, eh? No need for an amateur like me to remind a sophist of how to apply the tools of his trade though, I suppose, but, just in case you forget, ya know?

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "This would be the same Dingle that the mathguy said didn't understand SR?"

That would be the same Dingle who advanced valid criticisms about the consistency of SR. The mathguy basically makes Dingle's point for him, when it's all said and done.

Dingle's point was that SR's claim that all frames are symmetrical (you can't tell who's really moving) is inconsistent with it's predictions of asymmetry.

The mathguy does not deny this. In effect, he affirms it by saying that you *can* tell who's really moving. By implication, this makes any contrary assertion a mistake, just as Dingle said it was.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "The GPS satellties are not in inertial motion. They accelerate around the planet."

Yet the precise amount of time dilation predicted by SR (for linear or circular motion, inertial or non-inertial motion) is exhibited by them, eh? Even though SR doens't apply? What a coincidence. The scientists who devised this scheme should have KNOWN, a priori, that SR simply doesn't apply and that using it would lead to wildly invalid predictions, eh? Too bad they just can't master "mainstream SR" in the way you (and seemingly only you) can, eh?

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"You don't need to do that, you only need to pick an inertial frame. Why add on a lot of uneeded dross?"

If you were capable of reading and understanding him, you would know. It is to keep SR from "making a fool of itself" from a phsyical standpoint, even if it is mathematically consistent.

Phipps is far from alone in seeing this, but even if he was all alone, he is basing it on the empirical facts when obtained from designing and implementing the GPS system. Anyone who want to deny those facts is free to, just as they can deny that the earth is spherical and maintain that it is flat, if they "feel" like it

aintnuthin said...

Panos Pappas is a certified genius and a Greek professor of both math and physics at Athens who has been studying and analyzing relativity for decades. He defines SR as follows:

"That which is currently called 'Special Relativity" is actually a melange of sub-sets of objectives, assumptions and results, where any individual sub-set has consistent and compatible objectives, assumptions and resulting equations. Many of these individual sub-sets conflict because one sub-set of objectives, assumptions and results conflict with those of other sub-sets. Such an environment has made it possible to prove or refute any particular sub-set of results by simply shifting the underlying assumptions to or away from those in that sub-set."

He lists 34 separate assumptions of SR, falling into 4 different categories. According to his analysis, the problem with SR is not one, or one small set, of it's assumptions, but with trying to coherently and consistently apply them as a whole.

The problem with trying to articulate and analyze SR is, he says:

"Assumptions in SR have been allowed to shift inappropriately. Those shifts were masked in turn by inadequate notation. As a consequence, that which is called 'special relativity (SR)' is actually a collection of differing results each based on its particular sub-set of assumptions. In many cases, there are conflicts between results of sub-sets because their assumptions conflict. When any single set of those assumptions is constantly assumed, no satisfactory solution to SR objectives is found."

Shifting assumptions masked by inadequate notation, eh? What I would call logical equivocation. No wonder he concludes, after giving about five examples, that "We are unlikely to have an intelligent discussion about SR as long as underlying assumptions are allowed to shift about or be combined in such ways."

http://www.cartesio-episteme.net/quest.htm

aintnuthin said...

"Such an environment has made it possible to prove or refute any particular sub-set of results by simply shifting the underlying assumptions..."

I like it when I can prove or refute the very same proposition, at will, just depending on my objective at the time. That ROCKS, eh!?

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "The solution is to construct test that are not based on the principles of SR. This seems quite elementary to conceive (if not necessarily easy to accomplish). I'm not sure why you have so much trouble seeing that I am suggesting SR-deniers perform the latter sorts of tests."

"Test theories" (such as LR, using the CMBR as the "universal rest frame") have been employed as a constrast to SR. Sexl and Mansur in fact expressed amazement that "a theory based upon absolute simultaniety" was identical, result-wise, to SR.

You want a better test? Then read Phipps. Empirical results from the GPS system show that the mathematially consistent "reciprocity" posited by SR is false as a matter of empirical observation and physics.


Phipps is fully aware of, and conversant with, the premises of the strictly mathematical interpretation of SR which you purport to KNOW is accurate. He criticizes it on both pragmatic and theoretical grounds.

1. As a physical matter, the loss, in a theoretical instant(at turnaround) of years, decades, centuries, or millenia (depending on the variables) of time which that theory uses to "explain" the asymmertical is physically absurd.

2. Theoretially speaking, it is self-refuting insofar as it posits that time proceeds in a discontinous fashion in the case of a turnaround, but proceeds continously in other circumstances.

3. As he says in his abstract: "In brief, clock rates represent physical observables not delimited by specific point events; therefore they do not conform to an event calculus and are not consistently described by special relativity theory." In other words, the use of an event calculus is inappropriate to begin with. As he says in the body of his GPS paper: "In brief, clock rates represent physical observables not delimited by spe-cific point events; therefore they do not conform to an event calculus and are not consistently described by special relativity theory."

Which underscores the point he makes in his other paper also. Physics cannot be reduced to math as a matter or objectively reality. Naturally, you think, excuse me, KNOW, otherwise.

aintnuthin said...

Pierre Noyes, formerly the head of theoretical physics at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, says it took him 10 years to understand and adopt some of Phipps' novel insights. He wrote the preface to one of Phipps' books. Among other comments, Noyes said:

"This means that [Phipps] must meet the problem of clock synchronization” in a space-proper time metric. He does this in an ingenious way, to say the least. I accept his construction as
valid, and profound..."

"So far as I know, Phipps was the first one to point out this obvious
asymmetry between classical and quantum mechanics in such a way that the major problem of “measurement theory” dissolves. The parameters he retains make it clear that each phase severance corresponds to the start of a new problem with new boundary conditions, and is in no way mysterious. There is no “collapse of the wave function”.

"This was the second point in my career at which I came into active and fruitful contact with Phipps. He made me aware of this work (which I hadread in emasculated form in the Physical Review much earlier) by sending me a reprint of his paper in Dialecticat . I was not ready then to understand in
any deep way what he meant by “The Relativity of Physical Size”; in fact his understanding of this idea has only started to work on me as a consequence of reading this book. What I seized on then was the “phase severance” so neatly
introduced into quantum mechanics by Phipps’ Hamilton-Jacobi generalization....Since I saw then
(and still see) quantum phenomena as a symptom of the need for a paradigm shift (i.e. a radical break with the past) rather than as a need for a “covering
theory”, I clung to this aspect of his work."

"Phipps’ treatment of discrete, infinite processes is eminently practical and well worth studying...I know that it has taken me over a decade to come to grips with the insights I gained from Phipps at that time; I am only now starting on computing the numerical consequences."

What are we to make of this book? To begin with it is the life work of a very talented, dedicated and profound scholar and physicist; it should be respected on that ground alone...My own hope is that this work will also be read by “professionals” who
sincerely profess that they are open to new ideas and try to put that profession into practice. They will need tough hides to get through this book, - but the rewards can be great. I have tried to indicate above how contact with Phipps’ ideas revitalized my own work at a critical point; the same thing seems to be happening again as I try to evaluate the corpus of his work presented here."

"His basic claim is that both relativity and quantum mechanics have departed in dangerous ways from the methods that had led to steady progress over the years, and that much of the current theoretical confusion results from this fact. For the professional who would like to see the
new physics encompass, rather than reject, three centuries of the practice of physics, Phipps provides much to ponder."

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/getdoc/slac-pub-4007.pdf


I notice that Noyes believes that Phipps provides "much to ponder" only for a certain subsegment of professionals. Those may not include "professionals" who KNOW better than Phipps the TRUTH about "mainstream SR." I'm sure they know, instantly, that Phipps is a mentally unstable crank.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "?????? I was referring to the conclusions derived from the measurement processes."

This is a big problem with you, Eric. You never seem to acknowledge the existence of, let alone critically analyze, your own tacit assumptoions.

If a guy knows (and believes) in SR, then his measurements, corrected as necessary, will be completely different (whether it is for the speed of light or anything else) depending on whether he assumes he is moving or if he assumes he is stationary. Just like they would differ if he believed his ruler was 12" long than if he believed it to be only 6" long, it's nominal gradiations notwithstanding.

You act as though a measuring instrument gives some absolute, indisputable truth apart from such assumptions. Fraid not.

One Brow said...

aintnuthin said...
One Brow said: "In LR, the speed of light is constant in all inertial frames, just like in SR."

Who told you that? It's wrong.


Not by what you said below.

In LR the speed of light is MEASURED to be constant in all frames but it is NOT, in fact, constant. In LR light speed is constant and isotropic in only one frame, as a matter of claimed objective reality. The appearance of constantly is just that--a false and misleading appearance caused by the the distortion of length-measuring instruments and a factual fluctuation in the rate of frequency of physically oscilating processes(a distortion of time).

So, you confused "constant in a frame" with "the same speed in all frames". How very typical. Constant means "unchanging". In LR, the speed of light doesn't change in any frame.

Once again, you seem incapable of distinguishing a claim of subjective appearance from a claim of objective fact.

Once again, you're so confused on the basic concepts you can't intelligently understand a statement.

I asked: "Do you still maintain that the answer will be the same, i.e., that Jack's clock will still read 10 seconds while Jill's reads 8?"

As long as clock1 is in Jack's inertial frame, yes.

So, when Jill is motionless while Jack is movng they will both see Jack's clock as running faster(10 seconds is faster than 8 seconds), and when Jack is motionless, they will both STILL see Jack's clock as running faster, that the idea?


No, Jill sees 6.4 secondes pass on Jack's clock, whether Jill is moving or Jack is moving. When you say "Jack's clock will read", I assume you mean read by Jack unless you specify otherwise.

We were discussing distance. So what is your point? That you can arrive at two completely different lengths using SR, just depending on which of two "equally valid" alternative ways of determining distance you care to choose?

The two different ways arrive at the same distance, but one does not depend upon using light itself to make the determination.

And you want to claim that SR is consistent? Go figure, eh?

Your understanding of SR is an inconsistent theory. Actual SR is consistent.

One Brow said...

One Brow said: "The reference frame is the subjective assumption to which you refer. Once that is chosen, the objectve facts determine the conclusion."

Repeating, for about the 100th time, your confusion about objective versus subjective reality.


You think you present an objective reference frame? Go for it. Provide a proof that the CMBR is the true reference frame (or any other reference frame you prefer). However, you can't simultaneously claim the CMBR is the true reference frame and that GPS satellites are proof of LR. So, choose carefully.

The way you state that there are, and can be, NO objective facts (the primary point on which the mathguy chastised Dingle).

I claim that one particular class of facts can not be objective. You interpret that to say no class of facts can be objective. You then insult me based on that interpretation. I see no reason to take your argumehnt as meaningful.

You have the "objective facts" pre-conditioned upon a subjective "choice." This makes those so-called "objective facts" strictly subjective in origin, and hence subjective.

Wrong. All of the important, meaningful facts turn out the same regardless of the subjective choice, when the subjective choice is the one of inertial rest frame.

Can't you see this?

I can see that you are correct if you are arguing against a Dingle-style SR. Since I don't hold or defend one, your ar the one with the troubled vision.

Of course there are physical explanations, founded on empirically-testable premises, of actual changes which explain WHY the guy appears to get smaller. But here again, you are off on another non-sequitur.

For me, that is the point.

The question is about whether the subjective phenomena reflect a mere change in appearance or an objective physical change in the object (the guy walking) being observed. A change in mere appearance only may be fully explained by other physical variables, but that fact does NOT make it an objective change as opposed to a change in appearance only.

Right.

You want to equate any physical difference as being the equivalent of a claim that the guy walking "really gets smaller, as a matter of real physical changes."

Except, I've said many times this is not true, and in particular effects based on acceleration are absolute.

One Brow said...

Again, your utter confusion is amply demonstrated.

Then show it. Show how my position imples acceleration is relative, and that I believe in Dingle-style SR. Your empty accusations are boring.

One Brow said: "He's basing his analysis on clocks revolving around another clock while not being accelerated. You think that's good science?"

If it's not good science, then take it up with Al, who used identical scenario to explain his theory.


Get a clue. Einstein described an absolute result to the effects of the motion, that the moving clock (the one that went in a circle) was slower. You are saying that Phipps analysis that Einstein should not have said this is correct, and then elling me to take it up with Einstein. Einstein didn't make the error, Phipps did.

In other words, haul off and renounce, once and for all, SR as any kind of viable theory, rather than contesting it's premises at every step, and then asserting that you agree with it.

I don't contest mainstream-SR. I only contest Dingle-Essen-Unnikrishan-Phipps-SR. I denounce Dingle-Essen-Unnikrishan-Phipps-SR completely. It is a totally non-viable theory. Mainstream-SR is a highly tested, successful theory.

You mean the 95% of scientist who claim that, among other verifications..

1. The behavior of muons orbiting at relativistic speed in a particle accelerator,
2. clocks in airplanes flying in the earth's atmosphere, and
3. clocks in satellites orbiting the earth..

all "verify" the predictions of SR? Not to the mention all the other terrestrial experiments to which they attach implications which "confirm" SR?


Yes.

Like, Al, physicists see that, hollow, formal arguments aside, linear and circular uniform motion are just special cases of uniform speed.

Uniform speed is not uniform velocity. SR uses vlocity to determine a reference frame.

Again, experiment prove that acceleration (non-inertial motion) makes no difference whatsoever in the calculation of time dilation.

I find that easy to believe, although I'm not aware of the particular experiement to which you refer.

One Brow said...

But you just keep on beating that drum, eh?

Which drum? I agree that acceleration makes no difference in time-dilation calculations.

Just remember to beat it selectively so that you can still claim that SR has been repeatedly verified by experiment, eh?

I am quite consistent on this.

That would be the same Dingle who advanced valid criticisms about the consistency of SR. The mathguy basically makes Dingle's point for him, when it's all said and done.

The mathguy explicitly says Dingle misunderstood SR.

Dingle's point was that SR's claim that all frames are symmetrical (you can't tell who's really moving) is inconsistent

Which was his error. SR's claim is that all inertial frames are symmetrical. Non-inertail frames are not symmetrical in SR.

The mathguy does not deny this. In effect, he affirms it by saying that you *can* tell who's really moving.

I cant provide a direct quote of the mathguy saying Dingle misunderstood. Can you provide a direct quote saying you can tell who's "really moving" between two objects in different inertial states:? You have not done so yet.

By implication, this makes any contrary assertion a mistake, just as Dingle said it was.

Your implication is based on a false premise. Present the required quote, or it is unsound.

Yet the precise amount of time dilation predicted by SR (for linear or circular motion, inertial or non-inertial motion) is exhibited by them, eh?

Using an earth-centered frame, not a satellite-centered frame. The earth-centered frame is inertial.

Even though SR doens't apply? What a coincidence.

SR does apply. It just has to be used from an inertial frame.

The scientists who devised this scheme should have KNOWN, a priori, that SR simply doesn't apply and that using it would lead to wildly invalid predictions, eh?

They used SR predictions the correct way. It's the Dingle-Essen-Unnikrishan-Phipps crowd that has the problems.

One Brow said...

One Brow said:"You don't need to do that, you only need to pick an inertial frame. Why add on a lot of uneeded dross?"

If you were capable of reading and understanding him, you would know. It is to keep SR from "making a fool of itself" from a phsyical standpoint, even if it is mathematically consistent.


A philosophical preference only.

Phipps is far from alone in seeing this, but even if he was all alone,

He would be wrong.

he is basing it on the empirical facts when obtained from designing and implementing the GPS system.

So, he's conducting a good test against an invalid model? I thought you didn't like that sort of behavior.

Anyone who want to deny those facts is free to,

No need. Phipps model of SR inaccurate, so mustering facts against aninaccurate model is pointless.

Panos Pappas is a certified genius and a Greek professor of both math and physics at Athens who has been studying and analyzing relativity for decades. He defines SR as follows:

... Such an environment has made it possible to prove or refute any particular sub-set of results by simply shifting the underlying assumptions to or away from those in that sub-set." ... He lists 34 separate assumptions of SR, falling into 4 different categories.


I'm not sure what he means. However, every time I read one of these, it fails to live up to your billing. Every single time. From Van Flandern (who at least got the SR and LR were indistinguishable experimentally) to Unnikrishan, they fail to live up to your billing, or don't say what you think they say. It's not worth pursuing anymore.

I will look up one more link on this topic from you. That's it. If you can, make it one that shows the author actually knows the subject. However, i don't think you have the experience to actually do that.

Here's a quote from Pappas:
2a. My answer #2: First, we define a 'rest' frame K containing observer P and a 'moving' frame K' containing a light source, and also define light speed seen on K by P as cP and light speed on K' as seen from K by P as cP'. Using precise notation and holding #10 LIGHT USE constant, it is easily shown, c.f. [3], that cP' varies significantly from cP by the amount predicted by Newtonian mechanics. Since the only difference between this light speed and the light speed measured by P on her own frame is associated with the velocity v of the light source, this contradicts Einstein's Second Principle -- an underlying tenet of SR.

There is no reason to think cP differs from cP'. Light propogates like a wave. Sound waves travel at the same speed, regardless of the speed of the object making the sound. Water waves travel at the same speed regardless of the speed of the oject disturbing the water. Light propagates at the same speed regardless of the speed of the object emitting the light. Further, we both know there is experiemental confirmation of this.

Do you actually read this stuff before you link it? Did you just miss this point, or not understand it? Why should I waste my time with more of it? If I linked you to site after site in this fashion, would you keep following?

One Brow said...

One Brow said: "The solution is to construct test that are not based on the principles of SR. This seems quite elementary to conceive (if not necessarily easy to accomplish). I'm not sure why you have so much trouble seeing that I am suggesting SR-deniers perform the latter sorts of tests."

"Test theories" (such as LR, using the CMBR as the "universal rest frame") have been employed as a constrast to SR.


Describe how such a test would distinguish from arbitrary choosing the CMBR as the inertial frest frame and saying the CMBR is the one true rest frame.

Sexl and Mansur in fact expressed amazement that "a theory based upon absolute simultaniety" was identical, result-wise, to SR.

Odd, since it's been known for decades.

You want a better test? Then read Phipps. Empirical results from the GPS system show that the mathematially consistent "reciprocity" posited by SR is false as a matter of empirical observation and physics.

The GPS uses an earth-based frame, not the CMBR. Do you think the earth is at rest with respect to the CMBR? If not, how can both assumptions be confirmed? I'll give you a hint: both assumptions are valid, and arbitrary, in mainstream SR.

Phipps is fully aware of, and conversant with, the premises of the strictly mathematical interpretation of SR which you purport to KNOW is accurate. He criticizes it on both pragmatic and theoretical grounds.

Phipps is criticizing the SR of Dingle, which I purport to know is inaccurate. You just can't seem to tell the difference.

1. As a physical matter, the loss, in a theoretical instant(at turnaround) of years, decades, centuries, or millenia (depending on the variables) of time which that theory uses to "explain" the asymmertical is physically absurd.

Yes, it is.

2. Theoretially speaking, it is self-refuting insofar as it posits that time proceeds in a discontinous fashion in the case of a turnaround, but proceeds continously in other circumstances.

I agree.

One Brow said...

3. As he says in his abstract: "In brief, clock rates represent physical observables not delimited by specific point events; therefore they do not conform to an event calculus

I'm not sure what an "event calculus" is supposed to be.

Which underscores the point he makes in his other paper also. Physics cannot be reduced to math as a matter or objectively reality. Naturally, you think, excuse me, KNOW, otherwise.

Naturally, you're come off as ignorant and full of yourself by saying that, despite my making clear I do not think physics can be reduced to math, because you claim to you know what I think/believe/understand better than I.

Pierre Noyes, formerly the head of theoretical physics at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center,

may or may not have been talking abot the arguments of Phipps yo present here. Certainly, the fucus was on quantum mechanics in Noyes' forward.

I'm sure they know, instantly, that Phipps is a mentally unstable crank.

Who said cranks can't be mentally stable?

This is a big problem with you, Eric. You never seem to acknowledge the existence of, let alone critically analyze, your own tacit assumptoions.

this conversation would have been much shorter if you could accurately analyze my ability to acknowledge teh existence of my assumptions.

If a guy knows (and believes) in SR, then his measurements, corrected as necessary, will be completely different (whether it is for the speed of light or anything else) depending on whether he assumes he is moving or if he assumes he is stationary. Just like they would differ if he believed his ruler was 12" long than if he believed it to be only 6" long, it's nominal gradiations notwithstanding.

You act as though a measuring instrument gives some absolute, indisputable truth apart from such assumptions. Fraid not.


However, in SR, he reads the ruler as 12" and uses it as being 12". that's all the consistency needed.

aintnuthin said...

Jack and Jill:

One Brow said: "As long as clock1 is in Jack's inertial frame, yes."

It is tautological, and goes without saying, that 6 light-seconds in Jack's frame will always be 6 light-seconds in Jack's frame.

It is just as tautological to say that an object which is moving at .c6 relative to him will always traverse 6 light seconds in 10 seconds IN HIS FRAME. The question is about Jill's frame, relative to his. If he is the one moving, then the time required in her frame for an object to cover the same distance will, according to SR at least, be MORE (not less) than the 10 seconds Jack thinks it takes. Why? Because, per SR, his clock is moving slower than hers. 10 seconds for him would be more time(say 12.5 seconds--10 is .8 x 12.5)) for her.

You have previously conceded this:

One Brow said: "Jill sees 15 seconds. Traveling at .6c, Jack is slowed by a a factor of .8 on his clock. 15 * .8 = 12, which is Jill sees 15 seconds. Traveling at .6c, Jack is slowed by a a factor of .8 on his clock. 15 * .8 = 12, which is the time we had for Jack already."

"Already," we had 10 for Jack, not 12, and 8 for Jill, not 16.


The problem is, as you also just acknowledged, 12 is NOT "the time we had for Jack already.

Nor can you seem to keep straight what what I say. One Brow said:"I'm not sure why you say Jill sees ten seconds)." I never said that Jill would see 10 seconds. I said Jack would, and that Jill would see more (not less) time elapse than 10 seconds.

One Brow said: "I will keep trying to help you out, there."

Who needs help here? You, or me?

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "One Brow said:"I'm not sure why you say Jill sees ten seconds."

As noted, I never said that. The better question is are you sure why YOU said THIS?: One Brow said: "Regardless of which one frame is the moving one, eight seconds pass on Jill's clock between the encounter with clock1 and the encounter with Jack."

This is in the face of your acknowlegement that: "The moving clock runs slower."

aintnuthin said...

I asked: In the original problem, Jack's clock registered 10 seconds, and Jill's registered 8 seconds.

You claimed the answer would be the same if the situation were reversed, and Jack was moving at .6c and Jill was stationary.

Do you still maintain that the answer will be the same, i.e., that Jack's clock will still read 10 seconds while Jill's reads 8?"

You responded: "As long as clock1 is in Jack's inertial frame, yes."

===

Now you say: "No, Jill sees 6.4 secondes pass on Jack's clock, whether Jill is moving or Jack is moving"

Your answer changes every time you answer the question again. Before that, you said Jill would see 15 seconds, and Jack 12.

Let's assume your "current" answer is right. Then that is NOT the same answer as was given in the original problem, where Jill's clock showed 8 seconds and Jack's 10, is it?

You maintained the answer would be the same. It aint.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"I find that easy to believe, although I'm not aware of the particular experiement to which you refer."

Shows that you have a poor memory. Phipps recited it is his article and, a while back, you made the same statement (that you were not aware of the relevant experiments). At that time I found an article from a U of I professor for you which recounted the experiments showing this.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "The mathguy explicitly says Dingle misunderstood SR."

Yes, he did. He said that Dingle, like you, thought SR was a relational theory which held that "you can't tell who's moving." That has nothing to do with Dingle's observations about the inconsistent claims made by SR, which are valid criticisms, which the mathguy agrees with.

In effect the math guy says:

Dingle, being a relationalist, thought that SR provided no way to determine which object as moving. Dingle took Liebniz and Mach's veiw on this matter and incorrectly imputed it to SR. But SR DOES provide a way to determine which objects are moving and SR is inconsistent with the claim that all objects are equally entitled to be treated as though they were the ones "as rest." Therefore, it is mistake to claim otherwise. Because Dingle misunderstood SR, he thought there was a logical constradiction. There would, in fact, be a logical contradiction IF SR claimed that "you can't tell who's moving." But it doesn't.

Anyone, like you, who claims that SR says you can't tell who's moving, misunderstands SR and is contradicting SR when making such claims. The misunderstanding, IF CORRECT, would indeed make SR inconsistent, but it aint.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "You think you present an objective reference frame? Go for it."

What I, or anyone else, thinks about that matter is totally irrelevant to the point at issue, which is objective reality (vs. subjective reality). As always, you conflate questions of epistemology with questions of ontology, and seem unable to distinguish between them.

aintnuthin said...

LR implies that a moving observer will NOT see a stationary clock to be running slower than his, but will rather "see" that it is running faster. This is also what the Jack and Jill scenario demonstrates, i.e., that both Jack AND Jill will see Jack's clock to be running faster (and both see hers running slower) when Jack is stationary and Jill is moving.

The effects of distortion are NOT reciprocal in SR, just as they are not reciprocal, not even operationally, in the GPS set up. Phipps goes through a long logical analysis to demonstrate this (even though it is intuitively obvious, given the facts. This analysis ends on page 11 where he says:"In short, operational symmetry fails, and with it the RP. Incidentally, this argument shows that BE<, hence BE≠, so proper-time symme-try fails, as we have repeatedly claimed."

On it's face, this consideration would favor LR over SR, but Phipps does not favor the acceptance of LR. He says, for example: "Finally, let me say that any setback for the RP will be in-stantly seized upon by supporters of “the” supposed alternative theory to SRT, the Lorentz ether theory (whereby a physical ether is assigned a determinate state of motion). I do not myself accept this as the only, or even an attractive, alternative … far from it."

But, of course, the notion of "LR" may mean different things to different people. Myself, I call a theory which posits absolute time and simultaneity "Lorentzian Relativity," irrespective of whether is posits an ether, the CMBR, the local gravitational field, as the best candidate for the "universal time frame."

To this extent, Phipps clearly agrees. He says:

"There is little doubt that some form of the RP must hold. The question, I venture to suggest, is how to conceptualize “time” in order to make it hold. Einstein conceived of time as what natu-rally-running clocks tell, thus as affected by gravity and by mo-tion. I propose instead that time (like temperature and other sim-plest physical descriptors) be defined in such a way as to make it independent of irrelevant environmental influences. Time, in other words, is merely suggested by clocks. Clocks are subservient to time, not vice versa. GPS evidence indicates that Einstein’s version of the RP fails..." (page 15).

aintnuthin said...

I said: "[The mathguy said] SR DOES provide a way to determine which objects are moving and SR is inconsistent with the claim that all objects are equally entitled to be treated as though they were the ones "as rest."

Ironically, in this case, even though the mathguy is presumably a mathguy, he takes a physicist's view of the matter rather than a strictly mathematical view. Without elaborating on it (but instead just generally stressing the role of inertia in SR and all that implies) he claims, as Phipps does, that motion can be discerned, via inertia (which provides the basis for Newton's other two laws).

Since this fact is not made explicit by the theory (SR), which is in fact rather equivocal about it, some have ignored the role of inertia and claimed that SR posits that "you can't tell who's moving"). This is why Phipps wants to clear up any such interpretations, based on ambiguities.

To that end, Phipps points out, as did the mathguy, that: "A physicist must recognize that no relative motion occurs without being produced through performance of work or expenditure of energy."

Once that clarification is made, Phipps says: "we have what would appear to be a practical criterion by which ambiguity can be resolved as to how “relative motion” is to be apportioned between any two clocks or objects in relative motion."

Phipps, like the mathguy (but unlike you), rejects the Dingle (relationalist) approach to SR.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"Naturally, you're come off as ignorant and full of yourself by saying that, despite my making clear I do not think physics can be reduced to math, because you claim to you know what I think/believe/understand better than I."

Eric, believe me, I tend to remember what you say. I am well aware, for example, that you have "said" such things as:

1. Physics cannot be reduced to math, which is merely arbitary and, in itself, tells you nothing about objective reality.

2. SR recognizes that acceleration is absolute.

3. You do NOT consider yourself to be a relationist and you do NOT claim that SR is a relationalist theory (evidently your notion of what a relationalist theory is differs from what the mathguy thinks it is).

4. You do NOT claim that time dilation and length contraction are "mere appearances," but rather that they are "real, physical phenomena."

That list is not all-inclusive, just a sample.

But I listen to more than just the adjectives you select. I analyze your assertions for what they necessarily imply, regardless of how you want to characterize them. I really don't think you do the same with your own assertions.

In this particular case, you presumed to KNOW the reason for the break in symmetry in the twin paradox. You said:

"I don't know this is an accurate interpretation of Feynman. I do know that neither [acceleration nor "produced motion"] is the physical symmetry breaker. The syjmmetry breaker is passing through different inertial frames."

This is to adopt a strictly mathemantical approach to the question of broken symmetry. It is one that Phipps acknowleges has been advanced by some (not Feynman, and not innumerable others, but some).

This happens to be the resolution you want to insist is the one, the only, and the TRUE one which provides the TRUE symmetry breaker. You KNOW it. (Feynman and his ilk doesn't know it, but YOU do).

Phipps provides ample reason why this isn't the symmetry breaker from a physical standpoint. In fact, it doesn't even purport to give a physical explanation, merely an abstract mathematical one.

It is so abstract that it doesn't even make sense to a person like me. Surely you must be using the phrase "passing through different inertial frames" as an obscure shorthand for something more substantial that you have in mind, but which you do not articulate or spell out in any comprehensible way. I'm not sure what it is shorthand for, and I'm not convinced that you are sure either. It just "sounds good," and no doubt parrots what you have been told about the matter.

aintnuthin said...

A long time ago we both looked at John Baez's analysis of four separate resolutions to the twin paradox. Among those is what he calls the "spacetime diagram analysis."

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/TwinParadox/twin_paradox.html

I assume, without knowing for sure, that this is the kind of resolution you are presenting as the true one when you say such thing as "the syjmmetry breaker is passing through different inertial frames."

Baez explains that "Traditionally, one plots events in spacetime on a Minkowski Spacetime Diagram. That's just a piece of paper (or blackboard!) with the t co-ordinate running vertically upwards, and the x co-ordinate running horizontally." He then proceeds to analyze the paradox within that framework, which, he says, "has a very simple resolution in this framework."

The bottom line, he says is this: "Conclusion: the value of Stella's integral is less than that of Terence's integral. I.e., her elapsed proper time is less than Terence's. I.e., she ages less. That's the whole story!"

In a subsequent section, entitled "The Twin Paradox: The Time Gap Objection," a question is raised: "Where did the missing time go?"

The "answer" he gives is that: "The apparent "gap" is just an accounting error, caused by switching from one frame to another."

He then notes that "the Spacetime Analysis offers the same elucidation, graphically expressed."

When you talk about "switching frames" as being the physical symmetry breaker, I assume you must have something in mind such as this so-called "accounting error."

In yet another subsequent section, entitled "Too Many Analyses: a Meta Objection," he comes back to the "time gap objection" as it specifically pertains to the "spacetime diagram analysis." There he shows a graph and says: "The "gap" (the section of Terence's worldline devoid of blue lines) is a consequence of this abrupt switch."

There is not a shred of "physical" explanation for this mathematical "accounting error." This is precisely the kind of explanation that Van Flandern satirized when pointing out the physical implication of a guy orbiting a far-off star with the consequence of people perpetually "rising from the dead" and then "returning to their graves" on earth as the guy changed directions in this orbit.

It is not a physical explanation--it is math (accounting).

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"Do you actually read this stuff before you link it? Did you just miss this point, or not understand it?"

Did you actually read it?

Did you misread it or did you just not understand that your "point" does not address the issue?

You say: "There is no reason to think cP differs from cP'.


Other than the fact that SR says it would differ, (if it used precise notation and held "light use" constant) you mean? Do you once again renounce SR, that the idea? If so, then I guess you agree with Pannos.

aintnuthin said...

It is so typical of you and your arrogance, Eric, to think that you can, by misreading and misunderstanding a sentence or two written by an eminent specialist with years of experience, dismiss everything he says as garbage within the course of a minute.

Have you no limit to your hubris? Can you not consider, even for a second, that perhaps YOU, not the professional, is missing a point?

One Brow said...

aintnuthin said...
One Brow said: "As long as clock1 is in Jack's inertial frame, yes."

It is tautological, and goes without saying, that 6 light-seconds in Jack's frame will always be 6 light-seconds in Jack's frame.


In your rush to show me my arrogance and hubris, You seem to have missed the part about maxial distance in the same inertial frame.

If he is the one moving, then the time required in her frame for an object to cover the same distance will, according to SR at least, be MORE (not less) than the 10 seconds Jack thinks it takes.

You're just babbling nonesense now. People who ignore details tend to do that.

Why? Because, per SR, his clock is moving slower than hers. 10 seconds for him would be more time(say 12.5 seconds--10 is .8 x 12.5)) for her.

This is reflected (from the LR perspective you prefer, when Jill is not moving) by the fact that Jill sees them pass in 8 seconds while seeing 6.4 seconds pass on Jack's clock. Jack may see it as ten seconds, but he is WRONG. Jack's perspective is MISLEADING.

It's so amusing you complain of my arrogance when you can't even apply your own basic principles.

You have previously conceded this:

One Brow said: "Jill sees 15 seconds. Traveling at .6c, Jack is slowed by a a factor of .8 on his clock. 15 * .8 = 12, which is Jill sees 15 seconds. Traveling at .6c, Jack is slowed by a a factor of .8 on his clock. 15 * .8 = 12, which is the time we had for Jack already."

"Already," we had 10 for Jack, not 12, and 8 for Jill, not 16.

The problem is, as you also just acknowledged, 12 is NOT "the time we had for Jack already.


So, you confused my analysis of your example about watching a beam of light pass back-and-forth between Jack and clock1 with the experiment of clock1 and Jack passing by Jill. Typical.

If Jack passes a beam of light to clock1 and it is refecled back, jack sees that to occur in 12 seconds, Jill in 15. This does not change that jack sees 10 seconds go by as clock1 and then ne pass Jill, while Jill sees 8 seconds pass. Either way, in LR, Jack is wrong and Jill is right.

One Brow said...

Nor can you seem to keep straight what what I say. One Brow said:"I'm not sure why you say Jill sees ten seconds)." I never said that Jill would see 10 seconds. I said Jack would, and that Jill would see more (not less) time elapse than 10 seconds.

You meant Jill would see light pass through 10 light-seconds in some other amount of time? I was responding to your statement:

For Jill, motionless, the distance between points A and B is close to 1.8 million (about 10 light seconds).

As I said, the actual time from A to B, for Jill, would be 12 seconds.

Who needs help here? You, or me?

You, AFAICT.

As noted, I never said that. The better question is are you sure why YOU said THIS?: One Brow said: "Regardless of which one frame is the moving one, eight seconds pass on Jill's clock between the encounter with clock1 and the encounter with Jack."

Yes, I'm sure of why I said that.

This is in the face of your acknowlegement that: "The moving clock runs slower."

Not at all. With Jill not moving, her perspective is used to determine the true motion of the clocks, and she observes 6.4 seconds to pass on Jack/clock1.

I asked: In the original problem, Jack's clock registered 10 seconds, and Jill's registered 8 seconds.

You claimed the answer would be the same if the situation were reversed, and Jack was moving at .6c and Jill was stationary.

Do you still maintain that the answer will be the same, i.e., that Jack's clock will still read 10 seconds while Jill's reads 8?"

You responded: "As long as clock1 is in Jack's inertial frame, yes."


As I explained yesterday, Jack sees 10 seconds pass.

Now you say: "No, Jill sees 6.4 secondes pass on Jack's clock, whether Jill is moving or Jack is moving"

Jack sees a different amount of time pass on his clock than Jill sees pass on Jack's clock. Since Jill is not moving, Jill is correct.

One Brow said...

Your answer changes every time you answer the question again. Before that, you said Jill would see 15 seconds, and Jack 12.

For a light beam pasing between back and forth between Jack and clock1.

Let's assume your "current" answer is right. Then that is NOT the same answer as was given in the original problem, where Jill's clock showed 8 seconds and Jack's 10, is it?

I see no reason that the answer for the amount of time it takes a beam of light to pass between Jack and clock1, then return, should match the amount of time it takes clock1 and then Jack to pass Jill (or in the book, Jill to pass clock1 and then Jack).

You maintained the answer would be the same. It aint.

Different experiements get different results.

Yes, he did. He said that Dingle, like you, thought SR was a relational theory

I don't think SR is a relational theory. In a relational theory, all aspects of motion (including acceleration, jerk, etc.) are relative. In SR, acceleration (and therefore inertia) is an absolute. 'Acceleration is relative.' =/= 'Acceleration is absolute.'.

which held that "you can't tell who's moving." That has nothing to do with Dingle's observations about the inconsistent claims made by SR, which are valid criticisms, which the mathguy agrees with.

The use of realtional acceleration is the foundation of many of dingle's claims (others have to do with mistaken notions of simultaneity).

Anyone, like you, who claims that SR says you can't tell who's moving,

Actually, I very specifically said that the traveling twin was moving in the twin paradox. Thanks again for correcting me from a osition I dont hold to. Maybe I should return the favor and deconvert you from Scientology.

One Brow said: "You think you present an objective reference frame? Go for it."

What I, or anyone else, thinks about that matter is totally irrelevant to the point at issue, which is objective reality (vs. subjective reality). As always, you conflate questions of epistemology with questions of ontology, and seem unable to distinguish between them.


What, running for cover? If the reference frame is objective, you should be able to present it.If you can't demonstrate the reference frame to others, in what way is it objective?

LR implies that a moving observer will NOT see a stationary clock to be running slower than his, but will rather "see" that it is running faster.

No, LR requires that the moving observer calculates from the viewpoint of the stationary observer, and based on these calculations determines the other clock is running faster. However, the moving observer will observe the other clock to be running slower. He's just WRONG, remember?

One Brow said...

This is also what the Jack and Jill scenario demonstrates, i.e., that both Jack AND Jill will see Jack's clock to be running faster (and both see hers running slower) when Jack is stationary and Jill is moving.

Jill observes 6.4 secondes to pass on Jack's clock.

The effects of distortion are NOT reciprocal in SR, just as they are not reciprocal, not even operationally, in the GPS set up.

GPS is set up from one particular viewpoint.

"In short, operational symmetry fails, and with it the RP.

GPS satellites are in accelerated motion. Symmetry would be expected to fail within the relativity principle (unless RP means relational principle).

I propose instead that time (like temperature and other sim-plest physical descriptors) be defined in such a way as to make it independent of irrelevant environmental influences.

In SR, time is not affected by environmental influences.

Time, in other words, is merely suggested by clocks. Clocks are subservient to time, not vice versa.

In relativity, clocks don't control time. they measure the rate at which we move through it.

... he claims, as Phipps does, that motion can be discerned, via inertia (which provides the basis for Newton's other two laws).

I agree with that. Inertia is detected by an attempt to accelerate.

To that end, Phipps points out, as did the mathguy, that: "A physicist must recognize that no relative motion occurs without being produced through performance of work or expenditure of energy."

Once that clarification is made, Phipps says: "we have what would appear to be a practical criterion by which ambiguity can be resolved as to how “relative motion” is to be apportioned between any two clocks or objects in relative motion."


I have no problem with that. It's as good a method as any other.

Phipps, like the mathguy (but unlike you), rejects the Dingle (relationalist) approach to SR.

Did you know that the pratices of Scientology were laid out by L. Ron Hubbard when he was talking about how to vreate a profitable, false religion? You need to get out.

One Brow said...

3. You do NOT consider yourself to be a relationist and you do NOT claim that SR is a relationalist theory (evidently your notion of what a relationalist theory is differs from what the mathguy thinks it is).

Where is the evidence for your "evidently"? The mathguy refers to the relationism of Mach, for example, who thought acceleration was relative.

But I listen to more than just the adjectives you select. I analyze your assertions for what they necessarily imply, regardless of how you want to characterize them. I really don't think you do the same with your own assertions.

Then, bring out the implicaitons, instead of the implicaitons of relationalism. Why waste both of our times with that nonesense.

"I don't know this is an accurate interpretation of Feynman. I do know that neither [acceleration nor "produced motion"] is the physical symmetry breaker. The syjmmetry breaker is passing through different inertial frames."

This is to adopt a strictly mathemantical approach to the question of broken symmetry.


I was careless in my wording, sorry. I meant "passing through different inertial states". Naturally an inertial frame is just a mathematical construct.

It is one that Phipps acknowleges has been advanced by some (not Feynman, and not innumerable others, but some).

Since you haven't quoted Feynman, we don't really know if Feynman advanced this or not.

This happens to be the resolution you want to insist is the one, the only, and the TRUE one which provides the TRUE symmetry breaker. You KNOW it. (Feynman and his ilk doesn't know it, but YOU do).

It's the resolution that works in every scenario, under both LR and SR interpretations. Resolutions based on acceleration/energy expenditure don't answer, for example, the three-spaceship version of the traveling twin. the resolution of passing through different inertial states does.

... an obscure shorthand for something more substantial that you have in mind, but which you do not articulate or spell out in any comprehensible way.

Well, I have before mentioned the difference between going uptown and downtown on the same road at the same speed. They are different inertial states.

The "answer" he gives is that: "The apparent "gap" is just an accounting error, caused by switching from one frame to another."

He then notes that "the Spacetime Analysis offers the same elucidation, graphically expressed."

When you talk about "switching frames" as being the physical symmetry breaker, I assume you must have something in mind such as this so-called "accounting error."


There is no gap. The only apparent gap comes from an acounting error. Is that what you meant? Did you think by apparent gap, he was referring to a real gap?

One Brow said...

In yet another subsequent section, entitled "Too Many Analyses: a Meta Objection," he comes back to the "time gap objection" as it specifically pertains to the "spacetime diagram analysis." There he shows a graph and says: "The "gap" (the section of Terence's worldline devoid of blue lines) is a consequence of this abrupt switch."

On the Outbound Leg Stella uses one frame of reference, and one notion of simultaneity. On the Inbound Leg she switches to another. The "gap" (the section of Terence's worldline devoid of blue lines) is a consequence of this abrupt switch.

There is not a shred of "physical" explanation for this mathematical "accounting error."

The gap is a mathematical gap, caused by mathematical notions of simultaneity and the swtiching from "one notion of simultaneity" to another. Are you expecting a physical explanation for a gap that comes from switching notions of simultaneity? Do you think notions of simultaneity are physical? I thought you were opposed to the notion of reality being controlled by drawings on a piece of paper? Or, is that only when the drawings are more difficult for you to interpret into your own worldview?

One Brow said:"Do you actually read this stuff before you link it? Did you just miss this point, or not understand it?"

Did you actually read it?

Did you misread it or did you just not understand that your "point" does not address the issue?


Of course it didn't address the issue Poppas raised directly. Rather, it pointed out that the issue was based on an improper foundation, one that was experimentally disproven.

You say: "There is no reason to think cP differs from cP'.

Other than the fact that SR says it would differ, (if it used precise notation and held "light use" constant) you mean?


To be clear, cP is the speed K sees for light from a source in his frame, cP' is the speed K sees for light from a light source in the frame of K'. SR says these speeds will be the same. This has been experimentally confirmed.

Do you once again renounce SR, that the idea? If so, then I guess you agree with Pannos.

I don't need to renounce Sr to point out Pannos' mischaracterizaitons.

It is so typical of you and your arrogance, Eric, to think that you can, by misreading and misunderstanding a sentence or two written by an eminent specialist with years of experience, dismiss everything he says as garbage within the course of a minute.

GIGO. When you start from garbage, you get garbage.

Of course, you're not showing any arrogance at all when you, by misreading and misunderstanding the opinions of the vast majority of eminent physicists, dismiss what they say as nonsense.

Have you no limit to your hubris? Can you not consider, even for a second, that perhaps YOU, not the professional, is missing a point?

*chuckle*. The irony is strong with this one.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "This is reflected (from the LR perspective you prefer, when Jill is not moving) by the fact that Jill sees them pass in 8 seconds while seeing 6.4 seconds pass on Jack's clock. Jack may see it as ten seconds, but he is WRONG. Jack's perspective is MISLEADING."

Heh, I suspected any discussion of "details" would lead to utter sophistry on your part. Now, there is a WRONG party, eh? Now there is an absolute perspective that is right and another that is misleading, eh? Is there a limit to the amount of times you will contradict yourself if you think it will "win" an agrument for you?

We are talking about clocks. Jack's clock will show 10 seconds. You have everything backwards, including your transformation. With both clocks in Jack's frame, synchronized in Jack's frame, Jack will always see 10 seconds pass on his clock, whether he's moving or not, assuming he doesn't change speeds.

Just answer the question:

"Let's assume your "current" answer is right. Then that is NOT the same answer as was given in the original problem, where Jill's clock showed 8 seconds and Jack's 10, is it?"

If all this time, you have always thought that if one clock reads 10 seconds and the other 8, and then, if you reversed your assumption about who was moving the very same clocks would still read 10 and 8 respectively, then you have a SEVERE misunderstanding about SR and it's premises.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"What, running for cover? If the reference frame is objective, you should be able to present it.If you can't demonstrate the reference frame to others, in what way is it objective?"

Does the dragging of red herrings never cease? I have already pointed out to you that your responses do not address, and have nothing to do with, the issue raised or the point made.

Anonymous said...

One Brow said:"Jill observes 6.4 secondes to pass on Jack's clock."

You can tell yourself this 1000 times, Eric, and it still won't be accurate. The prof makes it quite clear what Jill observes on Jack's clock--10 seconds, as seen by both at the same time from the same place. All the rest is poorly reasoned rationalization design to reach a (wrong) conclusion that you are determined to reach. It is not "observation." SR tells her she's moving, but she still wants to, and does, insist that she is not. This insistence, however, is NOT based on "observation."

That said, the fact that you would take any old flimsy, illogical whimsical assertion to deny what you see to be tantamount to "observation" doesn't surprise me.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"The gap is a mathematical gap, caused by mathematical notions of simultaneity and the swtiching from "one notion of simultaneity" to another. Are you expecting a physical explanation for a gap that comes from switching notions of simultaneity? Do you think notions of simultaneity are physical?"

No, I don't think notions of simultaneity are physical. You always seem to quickly lose sight of the reason we are even discussing a topic, and the point at issue.

I explained, at great length, why I said that you, by claiming the "physical" symmetry breaker was a passing through different intertial frames, were merely reducing physics to math. You got indignant about this, because you have previously "said" that you don't do that (even if you do).

My point is just what I have already said it was--this is math, not physics.

You asked: "The gap is a mathematical gap...Are you expecting a physical explanation for a gap that comes from switching notions of simultaneity?"

No, I was not. Apparently you were, since you asserted that you knew that was the physical cause of the break in symmetry.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "Of course it didn't address the issue Poppas raised directly. Rather, it pointed out that the issue was based on an improper foundation, one that was experimentally disproven."

The claim that SR is vague and is amenable to manipulation by way of constantly shifting between contradictory assumptions has been disproved by experiment? Who knew?

One of these days, you may actually comprehend the issues being raised by these cranks who spew garbage. Then again, maybe not. Maybe you will always respond with a non sequitur, a red herring, or an attack on a straw man.

Whatever best suits your intention to immediately convince yourself that these experts are idiots and that you know and understand 1000 times what they do, I spoze.

aintuthin said...

I asked:"are you sure why YOU said THIS?: One Brow said: "Regardless of which one frame is the moving one, eight seconds pass on Jill's clock between the encounter with clock1 and the encounter with Jack."

You responded: "Yes, I'm sure of why I said that."

Then you should be able to explain it. There is no apparent reason, to me, why Jill's clock, but not Jack's, would remain constant when the opposite assumption about motion is made WHEN the whole problem starts with 2 clocks synchronized Jack's frame, not Jill's.

He can be moving at an absolute speed of zero, 10 mph, or 10,000 mph and he will AlWAYS see 10 seconds pass on his clock. Millions of objects can be travelling at millions of different speeds throughout the universe and all that will not affect my clocks one iota.

Hers would vary, relative to his, in strict accordance with her relative motion with respect to his, once his frame is set. If she is moving, she will show less time than his (say 8 seconds). If she is motionless and he his moving, his clock would still show 10 seconds, given the facts. But she will not STILL show 8 seconds if clocks syncronized in his frame show 10 in that case.

Change the circumstances and HER clock will read differently, not Jack's, because nothing has changed for Jack. The clocks are still 6 light seconds apart in his frame and the relative motion between them is still .6c.

I find it strange that you deny even tautological conclusions while braying that: "You're just babbling nonesense now. People who ignore details tend to do that."

People who can't think straight see errors in the most precise logic.

If you refuse to admit your error, and want to continue to say I'm "babbling nonsense" because I don't ratify your confused ignorance, then this would be an appropriate time to refer the question to Colton.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow asked: "Where is the evidence for your "evidently"? The mathguy refers to the relationism of Mach, for example, who thought acceleration was relative."

Go read it again. I've already pointed it out. Newton disputed Liebniz's (relational) claim that all relatively moving objects are equally entitled to be considered as "at rest." THAT is a relationalist claim. If you make that claim, even while (inconsistently) acknowledging that "acceleration is absolute," then you are taking (an admittedly self-contradictory) relationalist stance.

If I ask you a true/false question and you say it's "true," and then answer the same question as "false" you will later say you were "right" because you already said it was true/false, whatever the answer is. You think self-contradiction makes you "right" under any imaginable circustances, because you have answered both ways. Fraid not.

aintnuthin said...

If a car rolling at the rate of one inch per year hits you, you might barely notice it. Not true of the same car (with the same mass) uniformly moving at the rate of 100 mph.

Why is that? If F = MA and the mass is the same why should it be any different if neither car is accelerating?

The answer, of course, lies in the fact that the car has PREVIOUSLY been accelerated, even if it is not accelerating now.

This is the kind of thing I have repeatedly pointed out to you, but which you ignore/deny. This is what Phipps was saying when he noted that: "Einstein simply presents us with a set of imagined inertial systems, all in relative motion. Such relative motions are neither initiated nor terminated, but are perpetual. They exist and have always existed “in eternity.”
This is decidedly amathematician’s approach.

A physicist must recognize that no relative motion occurs without being produced through performance of work or expenditure of energy."

You have wanted to maintain that the history of acceleration imparted to an object must be ignored and that a passenger on rocket blasted into space or on a moving train "can't tell if he's moving" and is "completely correct" in assuming he is motionless because such a view is "equally valid" and the traveller is therefore "entitled" to insist that he is motionless.

In effect, you want to say that as soon as acceleration ceases, all the accumulated effects of having been previously accelerated suddenly disappear.

But they don't. The previously accelerated clock will continue to run slower, not faster, even after it quits accelerating. This fact alone gives you an objective, measurable way to tell if an object currently in inertial motion is moving. Whether or not this can be determined from entirely within a moving system, as some theorists insist, it can certainly be determined via access to external information.

This is the implication of absolute acceleration that you have consistently denied in order to maintain your dogma that an apportionment of motion to objects moving inertially with respect to each other cannot possible be made(a la Dingle, Mach, and Liebniz).

One Brow said...

If you refuse to admit your error, and want to continue to say I'm "babbling nonsense" because I don't ratify your confused ignorance, then this would be an appropriate time to refer the question to Colton.

Cool. I will propose wording, let me know what you would like to change:

Colton,

Could you please resolve an analysis for aintnuthin and I?

Scenario A: Clock1 and Jack are 6 light-seconds apart as measured by Jack, both are at rest. Jill is moving inertially relative to Jack and clock1 at .6c. Jill passes by clock1 and synchronizes her clock to clock1, and then by Jill passes by Jack and they compare clocks. Jack observes ten seconds to have passed on his clock and eight to have passed on Jill's, Jill observes eight seconds to pass on her own clock.

Scenario B: Jill is at rest. Clock1 and Jack are moving relaively to Jill at .6c in the same direction. Clock1 and Jack are 6 light-seconds apart as measured by Jack. Jill synchronizes her clock to clock1 as it passes by, and then as Jack passes by Jill they compare clocks.

Q1: How much time does Jill observe to have passed on clock1/Jack's clock in scenario A?

Q2: How much time does Jill observe to have passed on clock1/Jack's clock in scenario B?

Q3: How much time does Jack observe to have passed on clock1/Jack's clock in scenario B?

Q4: How much time does Jill observe to have passed on Jill's clock in scenario B?

Q5: How much time does Jack observe to have passed on Jill's clock in scenario B?

Let me know if I left out any pertinant information.


On this question set, I predict answers of Q1 6.4, Q2 6.4, Q3 10, Q4 8, Q5 8.

One Brow said...

aintnuthin said...
One Brow said: "This is reflected (from the LR perspective you prefer, when Jill is not moving) by the fact that Jill sees them pass in 8 seconds while seeing 6.4 seconds pass on Jack's clock. Jack may see it as ten seconds, but he is WRONG. Jack's perspective is MISLEADING."

Heh, I suspected any discussion of "details" would lead to utter sophistry on your part. Now, there is a WRONG party, eh?


Yes, from the LR perspective you prefer, when Jill is not moving, only Jill sees things correctly. Boilerplate LR.

Wait, you think that I don't get LR, right? 'If only One Brow understood LR, he'd see how right it is an d how wrong SR is'? I understand LR. I just see the added ontological assumption as unecessary baggage.

Now there is an absolute perspective that is right and another that is misleading, eh?

I'm not allowed to speak from your perspective?

Is there a limit to the amount of times you will contradict yourself if you think it will "win" an agrument for you?

Who's trying to win? I'm trying to learn and teach.

We are talking about clocks. Jack's clock will show 10 seconds.

Jack will observe ten seconds to pass on his clock. Jill will observe 6.4 seconds to pass on Jack's clock. Both observe eight secodns to pass on Jill's clock. This is true in LR or SR. When you add the position that Jill is not moving in LR, Jack's observations is wrong.

You have everything backwards, including your transformation. With both clocks in Jack's frame, synchronized in Jack's frame, Jack will always see 10 seconds pass on his clock, whether he's moving or not, assuming he doesn't change speeds.

That's what I have been saying.

Just answer the question:

"Let's assume your "current" answer is right. Then that is NOT the same answer as was given in the original problem, where Jill's clock showed 8 seconds and Jack's 10, is it?"


It is the same answer. In the original problem, when Jack is not moving, Jack saw ten seconds pass on his clock, while Jill observed 6.4 seconds to pass on Jack's clock, and both saw 8 seconds pass on Jill's clock.

The difference comes in an LR interpretation. Under LR, if Jack is not moving, his observations are correct and Jill's are not reliable, although they may be correct. Under LR, is Jill is not moving, her observations are correct and jack's are unreliable.

One Brow said...

If all this time, you have always thought that if one clock reads 10 seconds and the other 8, and then, if you reversed your assumption about who was moving the very same clocks would still read 10 and 8 respectively, then you have a SEVERE misunderstanding about SR and it's premises.

I think one of us may be making the error of assuming both Jack and Jill observe the same amount of time to pass on Jack's clock.

One Brow said:"What, running for cover? If the reference frame is objective, you should be able to present it.If you can't demonstrate the reference frame to others, in what way is it objective?"

Does the dragging of red herrings never cease? I have already pointed out to you that your responses do not address, and have nothing to do with, the issue raised or the point made.


If your claiming that asking ofr proof of an objective reference frame has nothing to do with the claim of an objective reference frame, I just don't take that claim seriously.

The prof makes it quite clear what Jill observes on Jack's clock--10 seconds, as seen by both at the same time from the same place.

No, he does not. You can refute me if you provide the quote where he says, specifically, that Jill observes 10 seconds pass on Jack's clock. Due to Dopper shift, she will see 11.2 seconds pass on Jack's clock but observe 6.4 (subtracting from light-speed delay across a distance she measures as 4.8 light-seconds).

I explained, at great length, why I said that you, by claiming the "physical" symmetry breaker was a passing through different intertial frames, were merely reducing physics to math. You got indignant about this, because you have previously "said" that you don't do that (even if you do).

I also acknowledged that the wording was in error, and offered a correction to "different inertial states", which are not merely mathematical constructs, but a physical property of motion. In fact, you still have not reponded directly to the point that traveling uptwon and traveling downtown are physically different. Do you think the difference between traveling uptoen and traveling downtown is merely mathematical?

No, I was not. Apparently you were, since you asserted that you knew that was the physical cause of the break in symmetry.

Movement through different inertial states is the only explanation for all the results, in SR or LR.

The claim that SR is vague and is amenable to manipulation by way of constantly shifting between contradictory assumptions has been disproved by experiment? Who knew?

The overarching argument fails when the foundations fail.

One of these days, you may actually comprehend the issues being raised by these cranks who spew garbage.

I already comprehend them. I also reject them.

One Brow said...

Then you should be able to explain it. There is no apparent reason, to me, why Jill's clock, but not Jack's, would remain constant when the opposite assumption about motion is made WHEN the whole problem starts with 2 clocks synchronized Jack's frame, not Jill's.

The synchronizing of Jill's clock to clock1 is a scalar (in Hogg's usage), since it happens with negligible distance in spacetime. That means everyone in an inertial state sees the synchronization the same way. The comparison of Jill's clock to Jack's clock is also a scalar. Thus, regardless of their inertial state, everyone sees eight seconds pass on Jill's clock between when she passes clock1 and when she passes Jack. It is the only possible physical result. However, in different inertial states, people will observe a different time on Jack's clock when Jill passes clock1 (because there is a significant separation between Jill's and jack's clock when Jill passes clock1). This is a prediction of both LR and SR..

Millions of objects can be travelling at millions of different speeds throughout the universe and all that will not affect my clocks one iota.

Who's talking about your clock?

But she will not STILL show 8 seconds if clocks syncronized in his frame show 10 in that case.

Jill will see 12.5 of her seconds pass for every ten of Jack's. However, she will still observe 6 seconds between when clock1 passes her and when jack passes her, which will be 6.4 seconds she observes to pass for Jack's clock.

Change the circumstances and HER clock will read differently, not Jack's, because nothing has changed for Jack.

Neither clock reads differently to either person.

The clocks are still 6 light seconds apart in his frame and the relative motion between them is still .6c.

Correct.

I find it strange that you deny even tautological conclusions while braying that: "You're just babbling nonesense now. People who ignore details tend to do that."

People who can't think straight see errors in the most precise logic.


The irony is strong with this one.

Newton disputed Liebniz's (relational) claim that all relatively moving objects are equally entitled to be considered as "at rest." THAT is a relationalist claim. If you make that claim, even while (inconsistently) acknowledging that "acceleration is absolute," then you are taking (an admittedly self-contradictory) relationalist stance.

I don't make that claim.

Relationalism: All moving objects are equally entitled to be considered as at rest.
SR: All moving objects in an inertial state are equally entitled to be considered as at rest.
LR: All moving objects in a specific inertial state are equally entitled to be considered as at rest.

See the differences? Both the second and the third are consistent with saying acceleration is an absolute, the first is not.

One Brow said...

You think self-contradiction makes you "right" under any imaginable circustances, because you have answered both ways.

You are equating my taking of position B with a taking of position A, then taking a contradiction to A, and claiming I am contradicting myself. However, B does not imply A. The set of objects entitled to consider themself at rest in B is a proper subset of those so entitled in A.

If a car rolling at the rate of one inch per year hits you, you might barely notice it. Not true of the same car (with the same mass) uniformly moving at the rate of 100 mph.

Why is that? If F = MA and the mass is the same why should it be any different if neither car is accelerating?


They are in different inertial states woth respect to you.

The answer, of course, lies in the fact that the car has PREVIOUSLY been accelerated, even if it is not accelerating now.

The prior acceleration is an indirect, distal cause, not a direct nor proximate cause.

You have wanted to maintain that the history of acceleration imparted to an object must be ignored ...

It can be very convenient for determining a rest frame designed to make simple calculations.

and that a passenger on rocket blasted into space or on a moving train "can't tell if he's moving" and is "completely correct" in assuming he is motionless because such a view is "equally valid" and the traveller is therefore "entitled" to insist that he is motionless.

As long as the motion after the acceleration is inertial, and only one inertial state is used as the rest frame, this is correct.

One Brow said...

In effect, you want to say that as soon as acceleration ceases, all the accumulated effects of having been previously accelerated suddenly disappear.

Do you think the effects of acceleration reach through time?

But they don't. The previously accelerated clock will continue to run slower, not faster, even after it quits accelerating.

Of course it will. this is sufficiently explained by the difference in inertial states.

This fact alone gives you an objective, measurable way to tell if an object currently in inertial motion is moving.

Once the acceleration is over, there is no longer an objective way to measure which clock clock is running slower without making the prior assumption that the pre-accelerated state is the rest state. You can't use the assumption of the prior state as the rest state to prove the prior state is the rest state.

Whether or not this can be determined from entirely within a moving system, as some theorists insist, it can certainly be determined via access to external information.

The external information being the pre-determination of the rest state.

This is the implication of absolute acceleration that you have consistently denied ...

Prove it. Prove that treating acceleration as an absolute quantity implies the existence of a pre-acceleration rest state as being the only valid rest state.

By the way, you didn't repond to a particular point. You have one set of LR proponents saying that everything works out using the CMBR as the inertial rest state, and this supports LR using the CMBR. You have another set pointing out that the GPS system supports using LR with the earth as the rest frame. If LR is true, why don't one group or the other discover an error? I know my answer, I seek yours.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"The earth-centered frame is inertial."

No, it is not. It is co-moving with the earth in it's revolution around the sun, the solar system's movement within the galaxy, presumably under the influence of an "external force" imposed by gravity, the galaxy's movement with respect to other galaxies, etc.

Your argument proves too much. If SR only applies in frames that are 100% inertial, then it never applies to anything. In practice, it is a uniform speed, not an absolutely uniform velocity, that is used to calculate time dilation, and even that calculation can ignore linear acceleration as such.

wiki: "ECI coordinate frames are not truly inertial"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth-centered_inertial

You might want to get a little better acquainted with your topics before pronouncing promenient physicists to be cranks because they don't share your misunderstandings.

aintnuthin said...

Scenario A:

Clock1, at point A, is 6 light-seconds away from Jack as measured by Jack in his frame of reference. Jack is a point B with Clock2, which is faithfully synchronized with Clock2 in his frame. Jack and both clocks are at rest.


Jill is moving inertially relative to Jack and both clocks at .6c. Jill passes by clock1 and synchronizes her clock to clock1, and then by Jill passes by Jack and they compare clocks. Jack observes ten seconds to have passed on his clock(Clock2) and he observes eight to have passed on Jill's. Similarly, Jill observes eight seconds to pass on her own clock and also sees 10 seconds to have passed on Jack's clock.

If you are curious as to how and why both parties see the same elapsed time on both their own and the other clock, you may want to read the published problem this is based on, which can be found at [site].

Most of specific questions asked below are based on the the assumption that all essential details of the original problem remain unaltered with one sole exception, i.e. that their states of motion are reversed so that the original problem is treated as though Jack was at all times moving at .6c while Jill was at all times motionless during their original encounter. For example, under this alternative scenario, clocks 1 and 2 are still synchronized in Jack's frame and still 6 light seconds apart as measured in his frame.

====

I really haven't even read all of your proposed question, and may have simply repeated things you included elsewhere, but I prefer to make Colton aware of the relationship between the two scenarios and believe it may be useful for him to read the original set-up as stated. The only caveat there is that the prof. assumed that clocks 1 and 2 were "started" (at"0") in some mysterious way.

aintnuthin said...

In my last post, I simply should have called this scenario B:


Scenario B: Assume that that all essential details of the original problem remain unaltered with one sole exception, i.e. that their states of motion are reversed so that the original problem is treated as though Jack was at all times moving at .6c while Jill was at all times motionless during their original encounter. For example, under this alternative scenario, clocks 1 and 2 are still synchronized in Jack's frame and still 6 light seconds apart as measured in his frame.


One Brow said: "Q1: How much time does Jill observe to have passed on clock1/Jack's clock in scenario A?"

Omit this. We've aleady told him what she sees in scenario A.

If you want, include this:

First question: Do you disagree with anything concluded by original author with respect to what the parties will see in "Scenario A"(8 seconds passage for Jill, 10 seconds for Jack).

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "Jack will observe ten seconds to pass on his clock. Jill will observe 6.4 seconds to pass on Jack's clock."

Now you have completely changed the problem in your head. I'm still not sure you ever saw it correctly.

In the orginal problem, there was no disagreement whatsover, by either party, about what either their own or the other's clock read. Now you have Jack and Jill reading Jack's clock differently, while they both read Jill's clock as the same. L

t's just see what Colton says. But I want him referred to the original website and not relying on what you tell him about the problem in private conversations.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "It is the same answer. In the original problem, when Jack is not moving, Jack saw ten seconds pass on his clock, while Jill observed 6.4 seconds to pass on Jack's clock, and both saw 8 seconds pass on Jill's clock."

Fuck you and your equivocal quibling, Eric. My question is about clock readings and observations of clocks as ACTUALLY SEEN by the parties at the time they pass each other. I WANT THAT MADE CLEAR TO COLTON.

You can call illogical and fallacious mental processes "observation" all you want, but I aint playin that game and don't want Colton to think that's what it's about.

Anonymous said...

One Brow said:"I think one of us may be making the error of assuming both Jack and Jill observe the same amount of time to pass on Jack's clock."

Anyone who thinks otherwise is the one making the mistake. As I've pointed out about 6 times now, the prof says they BOTH see Jack's clock as showing 10 seconds elapsed.


I'm really gunna be pissed off if you end up telling me that all this disagreement was caused by the utterly stupid and childish game you play of giving a word your own meaning while knowing the other party rejects your meaning, but pretending you don't know they reject it and pretending that you couldn't possibly be misunderstood.

I HATE INSINCERITY like that, not to mention the utter waste of time expended on such sophmoric crap.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"If your claiming that asking ofr proof of an objective reference frame has nothing to do with the claim of an objective reference frame, I just don't take that claim seriously.

The question is about your ability to even distinguish between the concepts of an objective versus subjective reality, which has nothing to do with any objective reality anytime, anyplace.

The issue is about NOT conflating epistemology with ontology, which you just continue to do with every post.

I guess I can't expect you to "take seriously" something that you can't seem to even begin to comprehend.

I don't ask my dog to pay attention to or, "take seriously" a game of chess that I play, either, ya know? All he sees in a chess piece is something to chew on.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said:"No, he does not. You can refute me if you provide the quote where he says, specifically, that Jill observes 10 seconds pass on Jack's clock."

This IS one of you idiotic words games isn't it? I'm willling to just hear Colton's answers so long as you don't poison the question with your stupidity. Just let him read the site (including the prof's long-winded bullshit about why she denies the evidence of her own eyes) and see what he says.

aintnuthin said...

One Brow said: "SR: All moving objects in an inertial state are equally entitled to be considered as at rest."

That is Dingle's SR (i.e. relationalism), which the mathguy denies is accurate because it fails to understand that SR is based on inertia, no less than Newtonian mechanics.

You can't just take a small part of the implications of inertia and call them the whole.

«Oldest ‹Older   1401 – 1600 of 2208   Newer› Newest»