1

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / The speed of light relation: 0.71 approximately !

« on: 18/06/2007 23:16:59 »

Hi Gurus.
  I still have this firm suspicion that even some of the most highly respected physicists do not understand, fundamentally, special relativity.  The reason for this is that if you read several layman's books on the subject, the respected authors all seem to take the Lorentz equations, plug arbitrary numbers in and draw completely different conclusions from the results!

For example, the worst authors ignore SR completely and say that because the speed of light is absolute, It would take 4.1 years even at just under light speed to reach our nearest star.  Of course, they fail to mention that that is 4.1 years as measured by the astronomer on Earth. For the astronaut, time has slowed down so by his watch is very much younger that 4.1 years older when he reaches there!

In another book, the respected author claimed you could go 'anywhere in the universe, in theory, in about 4 years.'  This claim was based on the idea that with a reasonably comfortable acceleration of 1G, using Newton's equations as a rough guide, it would take 2 years to reach just under light speed (ignoring the issue of energy required for the time being!) At this point, just under light speed, distance would shrink (as per the Lorentz equations) to almost nothing, and our would-be spaceman would blat across vast tracts of space in just seconds. At the convenient point, he would decide to decelerate by 1G, taking then a further 2 years to get back to rest, making a total journey time of 4 years.

In another book, I think it was the Physics of Star Trek or the sequel, the author  uses a similar idea but takes energetics into account, and tries to work out what practical speeds you could reach using antimatter for fuel, and then calculating the time-dilation via the Lorentz equations, and coming up with a different end figure for the 'local time' required to reach such-or-such a star.

Now, the logic in me tells me that as the interpretations are all different, they can't all be right!

So for a bit of fun I decided to calculate my own offering.
The question I posed myself was:

"At what percentage of the speed of light would an astronaut need to travel at to arrive at a destination, say the nearest star, in an equivalent LOCAL TIME as what the astronomer back on Earth is measuring ?"

If you do the simultaneous equations, I think it comes out to about 0.71 % of the speed of light, any mathematicians out there feel free to correct me.  Here's how it works.

A spaceship has been fueled and is set up to fly to our nearest star, about 4.1 light-years away. The spaceship sets off and soon reaches its maximum speed of 0.71 % of c.  Back on Earth, the spaceship is measured to take 5.78 years
to reach the star, as 4.1 / 0.71  equals 5.78.   However,  on board the spaceship, the spaceman's 'year watch'  has ticked over exactly 4.1 years,  because at 0.71 % of the speed of light,  time and distance dilation has become quite significant, significant to the point that for ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES, the spaceship, relative to itself, is covering a distance at LIGHT SPEED IGNORING RELATIVISTIC EFFECTS.  Mr. Spaceman knows the star is 4.1 light years from Earth,  his watch says 4.1 years therefore he has been traveling at the speed of light. Of course, in reality, time and distance have changed relative to him so in reality he has only been doing 0.71 % of the speed of light. 

But for all practical intents and purposes, he has only aged 4.1 years.

- - - - -

And then you have to stop and ask yourself - although speed can be made constant for all observers very very easily IN MATHEMATICS by allowing distance and time to vary (as speed = distance / time ) what is the REAL INTERPRETATION of these variations from a physical perspective?

I suspect that these two central pillars of SR/GR are in fact poorly understood.  I don't understand them, and I'm certain our scientists have only a vague idea as well - simply because their conclusions come out all different in the layman's books that they write .  As Einstein said - if you can't explain something to your grandmother, you haven't really understood it.  And in failing to reach consensus in their layman's (read grandmother's) guides, our scientists have shown that they too, haven't really understood it!  What chance the future of physics ?

comments please!
 []
thanks.

2

New Theories / Real time is invariant! A different interpretation of GR... Comment please !

« on: 09/06/2007 01:20:03 »

Hi all.
  My theory is that real, 'universal' time is invariant, I will describe the reasoning now with a thought experiment, and welcome comments.  None of the equations of relativity are violated.
  Before you dismiss this, for the first time ever recently I heard a respectable physicist allude to the same claim;  it was the 'physics for future presidents' lectures on Google video.

Fact 1:
  According to Einstein, time slows down the closer you are to mass.
This means, for example, that there exist 'time shells' around a planet.
This has been proved with atomic clocks:   An atomic clock, at the top of
a high tower, runs faster than its originally-synchronized twin on
the ground.  I accept this as totally true.
  So most people say : proven by experiment:  time can vary.
  End of story? Not so.

Fact 2:
  Relativity is based on something called the Lorentz equations.  The basic
problem was this:  The speed of light was found to be constant, irrespective of one's relative motion and frame of reference, by experiment.  Now this at the time  was a huge problem to physics because it broke the standard formula of speed = distance / time.  One of the ways of bodging the equation so that speed can remain constant is to allow the measures of distance and time to vary. 

 However this is a purely mathematical construct.  The idea of the measure of distance changing does not bother me at all, it is the idea that time can be treated so similarly to the other three dimensions. In my view it can't, although an EQUIVALENT EFFECT is caused by high speed or proximity to mass.


Now consider this diagram, it shows one-second snapshots of a man walking
along on a low-mass planet like the Earth :

         O   
        -|-
        / \
------------------------------------------------------
      1 sec


                           O   
                          -|-
                          / \
------------------------------------------------------
                       2 secs


                                              O   
                                             -|-
                                             / \
------------------------------------------------------
                                          3 secs



Now consider the result of the same man moving along over 3 seconds near a black hole :


                                                     O   
                                        -|-
                           / \
-------------------------------------------------------
                        1.5 secs       2.25 secs    3 secs

- according to many physicists trying to explain these concepts in
laymans terms via the idea of 'time-shells,' the legs would be traveling
much slower in time, as they are nearest to the black hole, (read concentrated mass) the arms a bit faster as they are in the next time-shell up, and finally the head moving fastest in time, being the furthest away from the spacetime-curving effects of the black hole.

Of course, I am over-simplifying, the time-shell 'layers' would be
far more gradual, more finer, maybe even infinitely so.

However, can you see the problem? Near a black hole, the man is instantly
killed, because where his head is, three seconds into the future, he
has no arms or legs.

If time really does change , then this must be an accurate picture of what
would happen near a mass.  But wait a minute - you don't need to be by a
black hole for GR to take effect!  GR is in effect on the Earth - it has been
proven, as said, with atomic clocks mounted on towers clocking a faster time
than the ones on the ground.  But hang on again - the observer on the ground
does not see the clock disappear from the top of the tower!  The skeptic will
say (as one CERN scientist replied to me who didn't get my gist!) that we are
only talking about zillionths of picoseconds of difference, if that. Are we really going to notice that?   The answer is - it doesn't matter, the argument is irrelevant:
If my head disappears off one picosecond into the future, then in the time-shell
of my body, I am dead!  So the thought experiment is simple:  If time really does vary in ways that it is understood to vary as per most people's interpretation of GR,  *biological life could not exist.*   

So what's the solution to this?  As said, I am now very very happy that I have heard a senior scientist mention this, but basically, if an atomic clock at the bottom of a tower is showing a slower time, has time slowed down in the understanding, according to most physics layman's book writers, of : 'in a different time-shell?'  My theory is - of course not - it is the *clock* that has slowed down!!   And I don't mean via faulty clockwork!
Something must have happened, due to spacial dimensions changing but NOT time, that gives THE EQUIVALENT EFFECT of LOCAL TIME SLOWING DOWN for the object in question.  I like to imagine a scenario whereby distance has increased in some extra spacial dimension that means that all atoms and subatomic particles and waves in my body and feet have, effectively, FURTHER TO TRAVEL in the same relative measure-of-distance that my head is experiencing.

What does this mean in practice?  Basically this :

 If time is infinitely granular, and I admit that I don't like this idea, then it means that my head is still attached to my body, but is a fraction of a zillionth of a picosecond out of *physical* alignment - my head has the orientation of its atoms in a state of motion one zillionth of a picosecond 'on' from where its alignment would have been had it been in the same time-shell as my body.  But wait - surely even a small time difference would make a difference on planck scales? Scaling the idea up, would veins and bones and neural pathways get broken?   Not so - because if my body passes through an *infinite* number of time-shells (read layers) then the 'physical misalignment' of my body as it passes through the so-called 'time shells' is *infinitely* smooth.  Near a black hole however, I would be killed , as the misalignment would be so great between head and feet.


If I am right, what does this mean?
 - there's nothing wrong with the Lorentz Equations as they stand. It is just
   the interpretation of 'varying time' by most people that must be wrong.

 - The special relativity idea of time slowing down for a high-speed object
   is fine, as long as this is interpreted to mean 'CLOCK MEASURED TIME'
   and not universal time .  True, the concept in GR and SR is of course
   frame-of-reference time relative to another observer.  However I believe
   that this frame-of-reference time must always be relative to a universal
   time.

 - The science-fiction idea of going back in time ( a concept openly thought
   a possibility in the cutting edge of real-world quantum and theoretical
   physics as well! ) is absolute nonsense.  If such a 'local' effect is
   possible, then that is equivalent to negative spacial dimensions in the
   only-spacial-dimensions-are-allowed-to-vary way that I look at it, and
   the idea of negative spacial dimensions (i.e. a size smaller than nothing!)
   is just as absurd as negative time.

 - A spaceship leaving Earth just under the speed of light carrying an atomic
   clock would arrive on a distant planet at precisely the same real, universal
   time (read universal time to mean that measured by a motionless clock near
   no mass at the centre of the universe, the centre being the point of the
   big bang) as that of an Earth-bound atomic clock.  The spaceship's clock
   of course indicates a date far in the PAST of the earth-bound observer,
   and the astronauts are still, in real time, much younger than their aged
   friends on Earth.  This is caused by the spacially-slowed motion of their
   constituent parts due to the high speed, giving the EFFECT of local time
   having changed.  In reality, they exist in the same moment, the same
   'tick,' of universal time, it's just the clock of the astronaut is now
   measuring the 'wrong' time (slow) when compared to our theoretical
   clock-at-the-centre-of-the-universe.  Our astronaut can travel back to
   Earth, and true, he will meet and shake hands with his elderly Earth
   friends, and the reason they can do this is that they exist in the same
   moment of real universal time, and always have done !




In summary, my non-mathematical armchair theory is that some extra spacial dimensions have stretched, meaning all waves and particles have a LONGER PATH to travel through in space, giving the EFFECT of local time slowing down relative to a slower observer.

The Lorentz equations showing time in a reference frame as changeable MUST be simply a fortuitous mathematical equivalence to a more detailed, undiscovered equation that allows light speed to remain constant for two observers traveling in different frames of reference; one that would use maybe extra spacial dimensions to create the same effect.

My assertion here basically is that the idea of 'time-shells' is wrong, as
biological life could not exist, as per my thought experiment.

comments please!

p.s.
I can't remember it off the top of my head, but if anyone is interested, I will find and post the link to the Google video of the respected physics lecturer alluding to the same thing.

3

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Expressing simple electrical theory correctly in English

« on: 08/06/2007 23:37:09 »

Hi gurus.
  Hopefully this should be an easy one :  I am having
trouble finding the correct word, in English, to describe
a simple equation, concerning Energy,  Power, and Time:

Power =  Energy       or, with units:             Watts  =  Joules
         ------                                             ------
         Time                                               Seconds

So how do you explain the term 'Power,' in English, to the layman?  The answer of course,  Energy divided by Time,  is expressed in English typically as "the RATE of expenditure of energy."  So far so good.

But what if we want to use a common English term to describe Energy in terms
of power ?

So, turn the equation around and we get :

Energy =  Power * Time

So if Energy equals Power multiplied by Time,  what is the elegant
way of expressing this multiplication-by-time relationship in English?

"Divided by Time"  becomes "Rate" in the first example.  This is because
the word 'rate' means, not 'division,'  but  'division by time.'

What can I use as a substitute for "Multiplied by Time?"
please don't suggest "product" as this word is nothing to do with Time
as a quantity, unlike the word 'rate.'
I need an English word that conveys the meaning of this multiplied-by-time relationship, not just an alternative word for "multiplied by."

My only guess so far is 'time-spread.'

Basically,  I want to say something like this:

Energy is the 'time-spread' of power, or with units,
"One Joule is the time-spread of power."

There must be an official English word for this, used in science.

In maths, the terms are just joined with a hyphen:
1 joule = 1 watt-second
pronounced
"one joule equals one watt second."

However this does not convey anything like the same meaning
as the word 'rate' does for 'divided by time.'


help!