[David Cooper (OP)]

The preferred frame of reference is in the universe - fine. It doesn't actually need to be, but that's another discussion entirely which can bring in ideas of things outside of the universe. I didn't bring that up because it's completely superfluous to the argument.

"The universe" is not a reference frame within special relativity.  Reference frames are defined within spacetime.  All spacetime itself is not a reference frame.

Did I say it was? Look at the word "in" and think about what role it has in the sentence "The preferred frame of reference is in the universe". No one reads anything carefully here, so what's the point of trying to discuss challenging ideas?

[JP]

You're right.  I misread your statement. 

I've actually been arguing against your post:

To manufacture a block universe you actually have to build it up from one end (the past) to the other (the future), and that necessarily involves a kind of time that runs. This is absolute time, and the only frame which records absolute time is the preferred frame - all other frames will record a slower apparent time.

Since thinking about "building" a universe requires that you somehow exist outside of it.  Your argument with imatfaal appears to be about Lorentzian relativity.  I've responded to that on the more mainstream thread.

[JP]

Geezer, he's talking about an interpretation of relativistic effects that does involve keeping an "aether" but making it undetectable.  If we can't detect the preferred reference frame in any way, then all our experimental results will look the same as if there is no preferred reference frame.  This has fallen out of favor mostly because it is experimentally indistinguishable from special relativity (which has no preferred reference frame) and introduces extra complexity.

David, if both interpretations are equivalent in terms of predictions, then you can't make the claim that Einstein's is somehow scientifically flawed.  If either is to be discarded, it's Lorentz's interpretation, since it adds complexity without adding any new predictions, which is generally frowned upon in physics.  In fact, you can always take an existing theory and add some undetectable feature to it to make a new theory, so the simplicity test is a pretty useful feature in science.

[Geezer]

Geezer, he's talking about an interpretation of relativistic effects that does involve keeping an "aether" but making it undetectable.  If we can't detect the preferred reference frame in any way, then all our experimental results will look the same as if there is no preferred reference frame.  This has fallen out of favor mostly because it is experimentally indistinguishable from special relativity (which has no preferred reference frame) and introduces extra complexity.

I was just about to say that

[David Cooper (OP)]

Since thinking about "building" a universe requires that you somehow exist outside of it.  Your argument with imatfaal appears to be about Lorentzian relativity.  I've responded to that on the more mainstream thread.

You can think about the universe building itself - it is created at the big bang and grows from there. This can be done in two ways, one of which involves creating a block universe and the other which doesn't, but which considers whatever exists at one point to be a continuation and replacement of the past. Either way, there is no need to consider what might be outside of it. The issue is about how the universe grows the future out of the past, which it has to do regardless of whether you're looking at it as a block universe or not. During that process of growth, clocks will necessarily run slow in some frames of reference when compared with others - they cannot run at the same rate or they would get ahead of other things in the universe which they have to interact with - things which would have no possible way of getting there in time to interact with them otherwise.

[David Cooper (OP)]

This has fallen out of favor mostly because it is experimentally indistinguishable from special relativity (which has no preferred reference frame) and introduces extra complexity.

David, if both interpretations are equivalent in terms of predictions, then you can't make the claim that Einstein's is somehow scientifically flawed.  If either is to be discarded, it's Lorentz's interpretation, since it adds complexity without adding any new predictions, which is generally frowned upon in physics.  In fact, you can always take an existing theory and add some undetectable feature to it to make a new theory, so the simplicity test is a pretty useful feature in science.

It's Einstein's interpretation that adds the extra complexity - it depends on the very same extra complexity of the Lorentz interpretation to provide a crucial mechanism for its functionality, and then denies that that mechanism exists, leaving it all to happen by magic instead.

[Geezer]

 and then denies that that mechanism exists, leaving it all to happen by magic instead.

Yes, you mentioned that already. What's the magic trick? Is it that c is invariant?

[David Cooper (OP)]

 and then denies that that mechanism exists, leaving it all to happen by magic instead.

Yes, you mentioned that already. What's the magic trick? Is it that c is invariant?

The trick is using a convenient frame as if it is a preferred frame so that time can be treated as if it's running slow in other frames, then once the work's all been done, the mechanism that's just been used is denied and the assertion is made that time doesn't run slow in any frame.

[David Cooper (OP)]

A rogue moderator is wrongly moving all of this out of the thread it legitimately belongs to and into a forum to which it clearly does not belong. I am going to make an official complaint to the owners of the forum.

Edit: official complaint sent and copies of both threads stored.

[JP]

David, if you want to argue for Lorentzian aether, then it might be best to just come out and say you prefer it, but both are equivalent in their predictions.  Coming out of the gate insisting Einstein's theories are wrong and involve "magic," doesn't help your argument.  It also amounts to essentially arguing against a widely-accepted century-old theory because you don't care for the philosophical interpretations.  Also, coming up with pejorative names for the theories you disagree with ("magic") and name-calling doesn't help. 

As I mentioned above, you can create an infinity of relativity theories by introducing undetectable features.  In science, we don't choose one from among those because it happens to be the most comfortable to our preconceptions of how the universe should work.  We choose one by (generally) using Occam's razor to remove all unnecessary features.  We then worry about the interpretation of what's left.

If we're going to start introducing undetectable features because we feel more comfortable with them in the theory, who decides which features to allow and which to reject? 

[David Cooper (OP)]

Coming out of the gate insisting Einstein's theories are wrong and involve "magic," doesn't help your argument.

I'm saying his interpretation is wrong, and it's demonstrably inferior - it does depend on magic because it depends on a mechanism which it denies.

It also amounts to essentially arguing against a widely-accepted century-old theory because you don't care for the philosophical interpretations.

No, it's arguing against a philosophical interpretation which is clearly wrong.

Also, coming up with pejorative names for the theories you disagree with ("magic") and name-calling doesn't help.

What can I call it other than magic? If you depend on a mechanism which you simultaneously deny exists, you render that mechansim magical - I'm using it as a technical term.

As I mentioned above, you can create an infinity of relativity theories by introducing undetectable features.  In science, we don't choose one from among those because it happens to be the most comfortable to our preconceptions of how the universe should work.  We choose one by (generally) using Occam's razor to remove all unnecessary features.  We then worry about the interpretation of what's left.

That is certainly how you should do things, but in this specific case you are doing the exact opposite.

If we're going to start introducing undetectable features because we feel more comfortable with them in the theory, who decides which features to allow and which to reject?

Einstein's interpretation involves using an undetectable feature (the exact same one) which he relies on while at the same time denying the existence of it. That is not being scientific. If all frames are equal, he has no mechanism for time to record differently on different paths other than to borrow the idea of a preferred frame to do the calculation and then pretend there is no preferred frame on the basis that the frame chosen to serve as a preferred frame can't be distinguished from a different frame which might actually be the preferred frame.

[David Cooper (OP)]

Let me run through it again. This time we can start with two rockets which are sitting alongside each other, somewhere in open space. One of them accelerates away from the other and then coasts away for a long time. At some point, it decelerates, turns round, accelerates back towards the other rocket and then coasts back to it, decelerating to avoid an impact when it arrives. Now, where is Einstein's mechanism to cause its clocks to record less time if all frames are equal? He simply doesn't have one, so he has to borrow it from Lorentz and then deny the mechanism he's just used after using it, justifying this on the woeful basis that he can't tell which frame might actually be preferred. As soon as he does this, he renders all frames as equal, so either he can't have any clocks recording less time than others or he has to have an infinite variety of simultanious applications of the mechanism borrowed from Lorentz: one for every possible frame of reference. That isn't a simpler interpretation - it involves infinitely more extra features than the interpretation involving just one single preferred frame, all of them being duplicates.

[David Cooper (OP)]

I chose two rockets for a reason. Each rocket has another rocket within it, and during the first phase while the two original rockets are moving apart, the other two rockets inside them are released and sent out on similar journeys, each moving away (but towards each other) and later returning (to the rocket they started in). Each case of this is identical to the original case - one of the rockets accelerates away from the other, then stops and accelerates back again, although almost all the whole of each of these trips is done by coasting.

Accelerations are shown by this to be inadequate as a mechanism - one acceleration of a rocket causes that rocket to record less time passing, while an identical acceleration of another rocket causes that rocket to record more time passing - the frames are not equal. This issue can be brushed under the carpet by only accepting the result of a round trip, not allowing more time to be recorded after one acceleration and less to be recorded after the other, but that's a cop out. The mechanism only works as a mechanism if there is an actual difference between the two halves of a round trip. Einstein refuses to accept that and insists that the mechanism doesn't apply to either half the trip, but only to both halves once added together. The only rational way to account for that is to allow one half of the trip to be recording both less time and more time at the same time, an infinite number of instantiations of the mechanism being used all at once in order to make all the frames equally valid. That is not a simpler explanation of anything!

[Geezer]

Edit: official complaint sent and copies of both threads stored.

That being the case, this thread is locked pending resolution.

[David Cooper (OP)]

What is the mechanism behind time dilation in Special Relativity? When calculating how things behave in different frames of reference there appear to be a few different methods based on a mechanism dependent on there being a preferred frame of reference, but none of them can be an actual mechanism if there is no actual preferred frame of reference. Clearly these methods are fine for working out how lengths appear to shorten and clocks appear to slow, but they have nothing to say about how things actually work in reality if there is no preferred frame. Worse than that, any attempt to use them as a mechanism leads to an infinite number of contradictions.

[yor_on]

When we measure something we use local time and a local ruler, then we measure some other locality relative that. NIST shows us that even on Earth you will find different 'frames of reference' based on gravitational time dilations in actual real experiments with atomic clocks. If it is so that two clocks on earth, synchronized resting beside each other on a table, start to diverge as you move one to the floor in their time measurement then you need to explain why they can do so.

A 'frame of reference' is a position in space and time, you have one, I have another, and our clocks will most probably differ. But if I would travel to you and put my clock beside yours we would find that they measure the exact same (hopefully being correctly synchronized once before we split up)

As for a preferred frame of reference? You have yours and I have mine What we share is 'locality' meaning the constant 'c' we can measure locally using our ruler and clock. Locally there should be no difference between your measurements and mine if using our own measuring devices but when we compare our own frame of reference to some other we will find that there is a discrepancy in 'time' and possibly in our definition of distance too depending on the relative motion measured between us. And that's where my head starts to hurt a little thinking of a system A. and B. Where A and B from a third observer C. is found to have different uniform motions relative him, but from A measuring B only, and B measuring A only, also can be defined as both having anything from 'zero motion' to having 'all the motion' assuming all moving uniformly.

If you think of it, having two objects moving uniformly A and B from eachother, can yhou prove which one 'really' is the culprit? You could use possibly use very distant 'fixed' stars, or the CBR (cosmic background radiation) but? Then you need to prove without doubt that those don't 'move'. So far there exist no proof for that, although I've seen some suggesting using just fixed stars as a practical reference point for 'motion'. Remember that all uniformly moving planets behave the same. If Earth went double the speed it has today through the universe, still uniformly, it wouldn't mean a thing to us as far as I can see. All experiments would behave the same as long as we're not talking about its rotation.

[yor_on]

Although, there might be a way if getting to relativistic speeds, thinking of LorentzFitzGerald contractions, but that assumes that you accept relativity. And then we have the radiation of course that would become blue shifted in a very fast speed, but that is also a relativistic phenomena. There is also the way the light would behave, describing the 'room' you see thinking of it
=

You need to find a frame that won't 'budge' to disproof relativity. The only 'frame' I can think of there is 'c' and if you use that one as your proof Then you will reach very interesting conclusions, in fact you will reach relativity as 'c' is a local definition to me, although shared by all frames of reference.

[JP]

David, starting new topics to continue an argument that was moved to new theories is a quick way to get your posts removed.  I've unlocked this thread so you can continue the discussion here if you want, but please keep it on topic and don't bring it back to the mainstream boards again.

[David Cooper (OP)]

David, starting new topics to continue an argument that was moved to new theories is a quick way to get your posts removed.  I've unlocked this thread so you can continue the discussion here if you want, but please keep it on topic and don't bring it back to the mainstream boards again.

This discussion does not belong in new theories. Why are you so scared of such a simple question? I'm simply asking what your rational mechanism is for time dilation without a preferred frame, and you have none.

[David Cooper (OP)]

This forum has a connection through Chris to Radio 5. It consequently has a responsibility to treat its users with more respect than this, and to treat questions fairly. I don't want to have to get in touch with Radio 5 to tell them how people are treated here.