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How could this be true? More important how could it be proved to be either true or false? I was thinking about this problem when it occurred to me that the speed of sound (because it is a wave) is also invariant.
Physicists have often been amazed at the invariance of the speed of light. This means that regardless of whether the source is moving or the destination is moving or even if both are moving, the speed of light remains constant at 3 x 105 km/s approx. What is so unusual about this? Unusual ! It goes absolutely against every practical experience known to mankind!
In the normal world things obey what are known as Galilean transformations. Thus take two fast cars 150 Kms apart and travelling towards each other. Car (a) going at 150 kmh and car(b) at 100 kmh. If they both start off at exactly the same time when will they meet ? It might surprise you at first to learn that the time at which they will meet is governed by their combined speed or 100 kmh = 150 kmh = 250 kmh. They will therefore meet after 36 minutes during which time car (a) would have covered 90 Km and car (b) would have covered 60 km. The same would apply if the cars were moving away from each other here, the speed of the two cars is again combined but this time they are moving away from each other, thus they are departing from each other at a relative speed of 100 km + 150 kmh = 250 kmh. If both cars are moving in the same direction than the speed of car (a) relative to the speed of car (b) would be the difference in speed 150 kmh - 100 kmh = 50 kmh. These cars are moving according to Galilean transformations.
I was thinking about this problem when it occurred to me that the speed of sound (because it is a wave) is also invariant.
No, the speed on sound is not invariant. The speed of sound is constant relative to the medium carrying it, and thus the speed of sound relative to you depends of the motion of the medium relative to you. If someone is upwind of you the sound they make would take less time to reach you than the sound made by someone an equal distance from you but downwind. Relative to you, the sound coming from one direction travels faster.
My web page on this subject ( http://www.magicschoolbook.com/science/relativity.html ) has been up for several years now
Very interesting David but I had to stop taking the relativity test because to me you made a straw man argument about time claiming that is how Einstein recognized time.
Time is just energy related to a measurement of distance.
So different frames have different energy levels available and the energy level dictates the tick rate of a clock.
Everything is in the present but the view is always from the past. We can only observe an event that already happened but not when it happened in its present.
Its your understanding of time that allows you to disbelieve relativity and if what you are saying about what is being taught is true no wonder we have not progressed.
I am shocked if what you are saying about Einstein is true about his understanding. All views are equally valid because none are valid. It would be incorrect to say they are equally invalid. The present - relativity of simultaneity is the equally valid view.
Contraction of time is actually an increase in distance as you have suggested. Contraction of view is an angle different from perpendicular.If you follow the postulates properly you will notice there is no such thing as a perpendicular view with velocity. And everything has velocity
Why would anyone consider time as anything other than a chosen cycle distance?
The equivalence is in GR as dilation where the radius expands for the density of energy particles c. At the speed of light the expansion of energy can no longer keep atoms apart and a BH forms
Depending on which frame you pick to work with for your calculations, those energy levels are different and the tick rate of clocks will vary too, so whenever you change the frame you're using as the base for your calculations, you will then generate new numbers with contradict the previous ones, meaning that different frames produce accounts of events that contradict each other. Only one of those accounts can be true
I need to know which question number you had a problem with so that I can find out where this straw man argument was and whether it breaks the argument or if the argument needs to be modified to resolve whatever issue you have with it.
Time is tied tightly to the sequence of events in chains of causation with past events dictating the ability of future ones to occur, so how can that be tied into your definition?
Causation chains depend on befores and afters and must run through all in sequence. When running through those events in sequence,
there are points during the processing when future events have not happened yet while past events have happened, and the time that clocks measure can vary on different paths from the same starting point to the same end point. The big issue here is whether those clocks are all running time at the same speed (with some reaching a destination Spacetime location before others, leading to event-meshing failure)
or if some of them are being forced to run slow (which allows events to mesh correctly but requires the time of a preferred frame of reference to govern the slowing of clocks for all other frames). You need to show me how your definition relates to any of that.
Depending on which frame you pick to work with for your calculations, those energy levels are different and the tick rate of clocks will vary too, so whenever you change the frame you're using as the base for your calculations, you will then generate new numbers with contradict the previous ones, meaning that different frames produce accounts of events that contradict each other. Only one of those accounts can be true unless you can demonstrate that your system is somehow Lorentz invariant, and if you achieve that, you still need to show that it can avoid event-meshing failure. Just changing the definition of time into one that calls it "energy related to a measurement of distance" doesn't make the problems go away.
Everything was or will be in the present when it happened or happens, but from any position that is present, we can only have measurements of the past. But how does that add anything to the argument?
What we need is clear description of what's what. All the objections that I make should be standard ones that everyone asks when learning about relativity and there should be standard answers available which clear them all up systematically. What I actually find though are people who claim to understand relativity who don't know how to handle those objections - they are unable to provide clear, rational explanations that show where those objections contain errors, and that's what leads me to believe that they have no answers. "You don't understand time!" is their usual response, but they never show where the faults are with my understanding of time, and their own understanding of time is shown by my argument to be an understanding which depends squarely on toleration of contradictions.
I can't work out from that which part of what I said you're taking issue with, and I don't know if those sentences are meant to be representations of what I've said or if they're what you're claiming. What I say is this: where different accounts contradict each other, only one can be valid (though all of them are potentially valid so long as they can't be disproved). If none of them were valid, it would be correct to say that all of them are equally invalid
and that all of them are equally valid, but saying that they are equally valid wouldn't mean that any of them are valid, and saying that they are equally invalid wouldn't mean they are all invalid if they're all valid, but neither of those cases has anything to do with my argument where we're looking at a case where at least one account is true and wherever two accounts contradict each other, one of them must be wrong.
But with measured distances changing as you change frame, you're on shifting sands, which brings you up against all the points in my argument, and you aren't resolving any of them.
If this relates to my argument, please show how it does it. How are you dealing with event-meshing failure?
How are you avoiding having a preferred frame?
Thanks for raising my hopes that you might be able to find a place where my argument breaks (because I would like to see it destroyed if it's wrong), but you need to show me that point and explain what the error is with it.
David - consider that we are measuring at ground level only. We measure the energy, frequency and wavelength of a whole bunch of phenomenon 'at' ground level 'from' ground level via the rate of time of ground level clock.We then place clocks at each elevation and observe from the lower potential at ground level that each clock at each higher elevation is ticking faster than the next...
Bringing the wind into it is surely not the point in question here? For instance when talking about the constancy of the speed of light it is always "The speed of light in a vacuum is constant." and never just the speed of light is constant. I think you have a lot of your facts mixed up. The speed of sound is a property of the medium.
If I measure the speed of sound in air I have to take account of the motion of the air relative to me- that's why wind makes a difference.In principle you would expect to have to do the same with light- you need to take account of how fast the vacuum is travelling with respect to the observer.But that's clearly absurd- a vacuum doesn't have a "speed" wrt anything. How can you say how fast "nothing" is travelling?
That's why the speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers- because a vacuum isn't moving wrt any observer.
Quote from: Bored chemist on 29/04/2017 19:10:24If I measure the speed of sound in air I have to take account of the motion of the air relative to me- that's why wind makes a difference.In principle you would expect to have to do the same with light- you need to take account of how fast the vacuum is travelling with respect to the observer.But that's clearly absurd- a vacuum doesn't have a "speed" wrt anything. How can you say how fast "nothing" is travelling?The model you use for a vacuum is incorrect Energy of space is stationary while mass moves because of energy c. Something is causing it to be constant and confounded with the electronQuoteThat's why the speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers- because a vacuum isn't moving wrt any observer. The speed of light is measured to be the same for all observers in a vacuum. There is a subtle difference.